Some Questions regarding conquering enemy planets and econmy.

[lighthaze]

First of all: Hi and thanks to the developers of this great game!

At the moment I am playing my first real game (had started 3 (or so) before but didn't play them longer than 2 or 3 hours because my own errors frustrated me so much) against two lvl 7 Ais. The game itself is going pretty well so long (I'm about 5 hours in the game) but I've got some question which I ask myself again and againn.

1. At the moment I conquer enemy planets like this:
I enter the system, then move my fleet around in (semi)clockwise direction, slowly destroying most of the enemy guardposts and wormhole defenses. Then I destroy the Command Center. Work pretty well, apart from the fact that I effectively destroy the whole system two times. The AI rebuilds every turret I destroy after my ships are out of range. Is there any effective way to prevent this? I figure parking some ships at the right spots would do the trick but that doesn't seem very elegant. Apart from the fact that one would need an even bigger fleet to conquer the planet.

First I thought rebuilders are the problem. But after I brought cleaners I realized that the AI even sends constructors.

2. Sometimes my crystal / metal consumption gets very high. Wouldn't be a problem if I could see which of my units consumes so many ressources. Is there any way to speed up this process? Clicking around isn't the fastest way.

3. At the moment I'm trying to figure out the capabilities of starships. Work pretty well. Only the riot controll ship poses a riddle to me? How can one use it?

Thanks in advance!

€: Reading the forum I just realized that I actually seem to expand too slow. As I said - I'm 5 hours in the game and I just conquered my 5th planet. Economy is stable (more or less) but I actually fear that sooner or later the reinforced AI planets will stop me.

[x4000]

Welcome to the forum!  And, thanks for the kudos, glad you are enjoying the game.

1. To this one, bringing in cleaners is definitely helpful -- and they are cheap.  But I would suggest trying to kill the command station sooner than you normally would, if you think you can take on the entire system at once.  That way you fight all of their ships away from their turrets, and then you can just go and clear off their turrets the one time without having to worry about them rebuilding.  The downside is that if the planet is too strong, you might lose that battle... and then the game, as the freed AI ships then flood over to your planets.  But if you are strong on defense, and/or have a big enough fleet on their planet, you can save time and work by killing the command station earlier than is generally otherwise recommended.

2. Sure, just open up the stats menu (click the scores box) and then see the Expenses by Player tab.  It shows you exactly what is costing you resources, and where.

3. Well, that is a bit of a vague question, I am not sure if you mean strategically or just how to functionally make it work.  It has a variety of build templates in there that make its "nodes" filled to start.  Or you can start empty, I believe, and fill the nodes as you want.  When you select it, it lets you select the things you want on it.  If you meant strategically, generally that one is for use against swarms of smaller ships -- but since you can customize that ship's loadout, you can alter that to some degree.

Hope that helps!

[lighthaze]

Ok, thanks. Your answers help a lot.

Regarding my expansion speed: Is it really so slow? I thought I did a to some extent a good job - but now 5 Planets after 5 hours played seems a litte less.

[ShadowOTE]

Easy way to track consumption: in the bottom right you've got your scores. Click on the header of the scores to view detailed statistics, then look at your expenses by player (it should be broken down by unit type and system). The only downside is that if you've got engineers, I don't think it adjusts your consumption stats to reflect that you're eating up resources faster than the default levels (I could be wrong, but since I was having problems with engineers shutting my econ down and dont recall seeing them listed, I doubt it).

[superking]

Ok, thanks. Your answers help a lot.

Regarding my expansion speed: Is it really so slow? I thought I did a to some extent a good job - but now 5 Planets after 5 hours played seems a litte less.

yes, that is probably a little slow.

fast captures are easy, especially early game: have a colony ship, a mobile builder and a FF gen on your side of the wormhole. once your fleet goes through, trash all the big deposits of mobile enemy units then take out the command station. Push your colony kit through, set a command station building in the FF and throw up some turrets for good measure. clean out the turrets and gaurd posts now nothing can respawn, and job done; planet cleaned in 5-10 minutes. spend the same amount of time building up for the next one and repeat. later game, when garrisons get big, this isnt so possible, but early on where garrisons are sub 200, its easy to capture chains of planets very quickly by having 'colony kits' ready to send through the wormhole.