Tips for New Players

[Revenantus]

*bump*

Can this be pinned so it doesnt fall off of the main page?

I've moved this to the new strategy discussion forum, as there are now quite a lot of stickied topics in the main forum.

This forum was originally suggested by Pantera, and while I've decided that a dedicated forum for strategy discussion is a good idea, feel free to post your tips on the community wiki, too.

[RCIX]

Cool!

[nullspace]

My tip for new players is:  Beware the AI home world!  I lost the intermediate tutorial because my failed attack on the home world unleashed a stream of core ships that rampaged through my planets.  Don't put it on alert until you're almost ready to attack it.  Have full caps of many types of mk3 and mk4 ships and starships.  Stockpile resources so that you can replace losses and build turrets and fortresses during the battle.  And don't go straight for the AI command center, it is much too tough and the AI ships will leave their posts to protect it. 

[RCIX]

Once i get to the actual ingame part, i'll add that. In the meantime i tweaked a bunch of the information to make more sense overall!

[alphaone]

The strategy I have found that works for me not to take a world from the AI without first neutering all adjacent planets to that world. It makes expansion a bit slower but ensures that there won't be any unecessary buildup on border planets. This goes significantly faster with raid starships, especially against class 3 and 4 worlds.

[pallenda]

http://arcengames.com/communitywiki/index.php?title=Unit_Types_and_Tactics

Is a nice overview but I have a question... If I look at Standard Fighter

Description: Inexpensive, with a small attack range. Great against many smaller ships. Also excellent against starships in numbers.
Bonuses: 12 Raider, 5 Scout Starship, 2 Laser Gatling, 16 Bomber, 12 Parasite, 2 Plane, 12 Cutlass, 2 Autocannon, 2 EtherJet, 12 Vampire, 5 Raid Starship, 5 Fleet Starship, 5 Alien Starship, 5 Dreadnought, 5 Bomber Starship, 12 Grenade Launch, 16 Z Elec Bomber, 12 Z Paralyzer, 12 Z Shredder, 12 Impulse Emitter, 12 Marauder


What does those Bonuses mean?

[x4000]

Please note that that page is for 3.0 of the game, and hasn't yet been updated for the many changes in 3.060.  Really, all the information you generally need is in the game itself in the form of the more-informative strong vs and weak vs data (which is different from the bonuses you are looking at there). 

Or, if you want the latest exports (in Excel XML format) of the AI War ship data that was used to create that page, you can export that yourself.

Now: all that said, to fully answer your question. This was such a good question, and one that has been raised a number of times before, that today I've made a whole wiki page about it.  Please let me know if there are any further questions on that, but hopefully that covers it in more depth than you could possibly want!

[Frozen Critical]

Fix : Its possible to finish a game in one sitting if there are 10 planets , even without fast & Dangerous on , but playing a 10 planet game is totally a death wish : The first attack wave contains 100 Core Ships and will skyrocket to Thousands of Core ships should you shove several attack waves back to their base

[danando]

i have been playing this game a month after it got released and have completed 10planet 80 planet and 120planet , easiest way is to disable cheats and keep defending your main base with ecessive amount of turrents then build raiders to defend to then attack a planet at a time with 300+ships ... send about 5-10 waves / if you act like an ai you can win send waves rather than a full scale force  if you want tips ask me

[danando]

for the love of god plzzzzzzzzzz mix up your forces    fighters alone in there 1000s will lose against 1000s of mixed drones capital ships bombers its scientific

[BobTheJanitor]

Please note that that page is for 3.0 of the game, and hasn't yet been updated for the many changes in 3.060.  Really, all the information you generally need is in the game itself in the form of the more-informative strong vs and weak vs data (which is different from the bonuses you are looking at there). 

Or, if you want the latest exports (in Excel XML format) of the AI War ship data that was used to create that page, you can export that yourself.

Now: all that said, to fully answer your question. This was such a good question, and one that has been raised a number of times before, that today I've made a whole wiki page about it.  Please let me know if there are any further questions on that, but hopefully that covers it in more depth than you could possibly want!

Since this page, and the previously mentioned page in this thread don't exist any more, is there any place where one could go to browse ship stats? I know I can just go in game and look at them, but sitting at work that's not exactly possible. Having a list of all the various ship types and numbers would be fantastic. I would have expected something like that would be an obvious thing to put in the wiki, but I can't find it anywhere. Am I blind, or is it just nonexistent?

[x4000]

You can actually export that from the game itself by pressing F3, and then I think it's Ctrl+Alt+F8.  Then your game will close instantly, and you wind up with some spreadsheets in your Data folder under RuntimeData in your game folder.

[Mithror]

Tested it and it is ctrl+shift+F8, so: close =)

[x4000]

Oh, that's right, I remapped that at one point.

[Lightbulb]

As  a new player myself I think that AI level has less of an effect than AI type.

Some of the medium AI types are ridiculous for new players. I played my first game on 7-7 and picked 2 easy AI types. Sledgehammer and one of the defensive ones I believe.

The problem with random AI is some of them require totally different tactics. Since I tend to lose early and hard initially playing against radically different AI types when I restart would really frustrate trying to puzzle out how to play.

I would not play below 7 because this is when the AI has all of its 'tools' but I would not play on random type - I don't want to win because the AI is STUPID I want the full INTELLIGENCE of the AI but not one of the nasty to play against AI types.

For your first game maybe 2 difficulty 7.0 Vanilla or just pick any 2 easier AI types.