When making a game

[brianc]

I've been playing on and off for almost a year now and there's one thing that I just can't figure out.  I often see people mentioning something like: "oh I started with 4 planets" or "make sure you pick a seed that has so and so ship type".  How do I pick the amount of planets??  Better yet, can any of you guys give me game creation tips (for apparently a real moron since I can't find this info anywhere) such as left click this, press _ on that.  Thank you 

[PokerChen]

Click the planets with bonus ship-types you would like to take in the galaxy map - they will then be highlighted by your colour, and you will own them when you create the game.

[Diazo]

First, the Map Seed question.

When in the new game lobby, "Host New Campaign" from the main menu make sure the first tab "Map" is selected.

The "New Map Seed" button in the middle will generate a new starmap and new bonus ships for you to pick from.

Note that on the simpler maps, it can happen that only the bonus ships and location of the ships change, the map itself does not.

Second, selecting homeworlds.

Left-Clicking a bonus ship will tag that as your homeworld, Right-Clicking will untag it. When a planet is tagged, it's fill color changes from gray to your player color.

This way, you can left-click multiple planets to start with multiple homeworlds. If you left-click no planets (or untag all you have selected with right-click) the game will randomly select a single homeworld for you to start at during game creation.

Hope that helps.

D.

[Mánagarmr]

Do note that a "Multiple Homeworld" start isn't what the game was designed around and can, in addition to making things easier, make other things incredibly much harder. For instance, you now have FOUR weak points instead of one. If a single home station dies, you lose.

[brianc]

Thanks guys!  All the info helped out a lot