When To Upgrade What?

[Orelius]

In my current games, 8/8 Golemites, this is my research setup:

Mark II Fighters/Frigates/Bombers/Bonus Ship --> Early conquests --> Econ II --> Econ III --> Gravity Turrets --> Fortress Mark I--> 1st Spire City, 3 reactors, 3 habitation centers --> Forcefield II/III, Heavy Beam I/2, Laser Turret II/III, M/C Harvesters II/III, Military Command II/III --> 2nd Spire City, 1 reactor, 1 habitation center, 4 shipyards.

Optionals:  Hardened Forcefield I, Engineer II/III, Fortress Mark II/III

Basically, I'm banking on getting enough resources to build a spire fleet as soon as I can, with my main defence as a spire city with a military command station. Oftentimes, I'll put fortresses everywhere on border planets to protect them, as I will have lots and lots of disposable income as a result of my early conquests.  I put fortresses down whenever I have excess economy which usually gathers up during the early game when I'm aggressively conquering and don't have the ships to protect everything.

[keith.lamothe]

1st Spire City, 3 reactors, 3 habitation centers

Really?  That's very interesting.  I do intend for hab centers to be a sort of tradeoff where if you really want a heavy resource income you can displace some shipyard capacity to get it, but I'm very surprised to see that option being used on the very first city, to the complete exclusion of shipyards.  Granted, a city with 6 non-shipyard modules has a pretty hefty defensive capacity, so if you can get all the exos to have to go through that you're probably ok.  But not having any capital fleet beyond what the refugee outpost provides is not something I anticipated people finding viable during that phase

Of course, having the resources to build said fleet is something of a prerequisite

[Orelius]

1st Spire City, 3 reactors, 3 habitation centers

Really?  That's very interesting.  I do intend for hab centers to be a sort of tradeoff where if you really want a heavy resource income you can displace some shipyard capacity to get it, but I'm very surprised to see that option being used on the very first city, to the complete exclusion of shipyards.  Granted, a city with 6 non-shipyard modules has a pretty hefty defensive capacity, so if you can get all the exos to have to go through that you're probably ok.  But not having any capital fleet beyond what the refugee outpost provides is not something I anticipated people finding viable during that phase

Of course, having the resources to build said fleet is something of a prerequisite

I think I may be doubting the value of two shipyards worth of a spire fleet.  I think I could possibly make it work if I made the first city 2 reactors/2 habitation centers/2 shipyards, destroying the shipyards and replacing them once I get a second city, though it's something I'll have to look into.

However, oftentimes, the way shard spawning works goes against me because my policy of rapid expansion just leads to shards spawning in increasingly inconvenient locations.  Wasn't there going to be some sort of alternate shard spawning algorithm?  I remember reading about it a few months ago, but haven't heard about it since.

[keith.lamothe]

Wasn't there going to be some sort of alternate shard spawning algorithm?  I remember reading about it a few months ago, but haven't heard about it since.

I do want to make that more varied, yes, but I haven't gotten to it.

[Silver]

My personal must-have techs include:
Forcefield (usually all of them, FF's are crazy good)
Bomber 2 & 3
Missile Frigate 2 (possibly 3)
Fighter 2 (rarely 3)
Either scout 3 or Scout starship 4 (depending on availability of a Mk4 Factory)
Turrets depending on the situation (the beam, missile and electricity turrets are always a solid choice).

[NickAragua]

Top priority:
Fighter/Bomber MK II right off the bat
Bonus ship MK II if applicable (generally is since I picked it)
Raid Starship to MK III as soon as possible
Scout II and eventually III so I can get a good picture of the galaxy going.

Once the priority items are done:
Force Fields as necessary to increase available force field numbers.
MK III of fleet ships except for missile cruisers
Anti-missile turret if the AI is using a lot of missile ships or I'm seeing a lot of marauders
Gravity turrets if I'm seeing large numbers of fast dinky ships or ships immune to tractors
Anti-dark matter turrets to avoid annoying attack warnings when astro trains are flying by my command centers
De-cloaking ships if I'm seeing a lot of cloaked ships

[PokerChen]

I'll split my list into various conditionals. The overall scheme here is very tight on K, and focusses on keeping total AIP lower for amount of resources and firepower.

Immediate use:
- Eco command II
- mark II fighters, mark II bonus ship. Build rate is important here, as one wants maximum effective FP sooner rather than later.
- Gravity turret. On lower AI-levels, delay this until a larger wave hits.
- Advanced warp sensors and other miscellaneous.
- Other mark IIs.

At 3+ planets:
- Eco command III. Replace eco-IIs. Prioritise planets with 5+ rocks for future upgrade to harvestors.

When I find a convenient defensive front:
- Basic turret II, spider turret (if excess crystal), fortress I
Alternatively, when a string or ring of planets is better:
- Zenith ST manipulator, spider turret, Riot Control II.


When AIP is around the tech upgrade (hopefully before):
- scout III, Raid starships II and III.


Military sequence:
Mark II fighters -> Mark II bombers -> frigate II -> flagship. Bonus ship sequence on what has been selected.

When I plan to take on a fortress choke, will unlock Mark III bombers before other mark III ships.

At 1000~1600/sec asteroid income:
- Harvestor upgrade II and III for that resource.
(Rationale: Total benefit of eco III over eco I is (160-32)*6 = 768 m+c/sec. Total benefit of both eco II and eco III is thus 288+768= 1056m+c/sec.  Each harvestor tech gives 40% boost over base, thus the four harvestor techs together gives +80% boost, and I would like to see ~1300 m+c/sec for the total knowledge investment.

Check in resources income tab to see what ratio harvestors and command stations are contributing to your economy.)

With the AI @ diff. 7 or below, it's also fairly easy to plan planet set-ups to optimise knowledge raiding before the AI gets to mark II, and starts spawning mark-III ships in K-raid defense. Prioritise mark-III triangle ships over defenses in this case to pwn the auto-spawn.

[Martyn van Buren]

I tend to feel like I don't really need all my knowledge early game (I'm playing mostly below diff , so I start with unlocks I'm absolutely sure I'll need later --- econ station II, fighter II, bomber II, plus one starship (usually flagship or raider), and then go into a less proactive mode where I save knowledge and use unlocks to solve problems as they come up.  Of course, that could be why I'm stuck at the middle difficulty levels.

[Shrugging Khan]

My starting special ship, mkII and mkIII. Tends to be SSBS, Zenith Bombard, Vampire Claw, Youngling Commando or Youngling Nanoswarm. Just for flavour.

After that, it's either Basic Turrets mkII and mkIII, if there are hybrids in plaguing me, or just ALL THE CHEAP THINGS! Cloaker starship, scouts, basic turrets, scout starships, tachyon turrets...QUANTITY!