A couple of noob questions...

[mavorspam]

Hello all. Playing my first campaign. Just bought the expansion, can't believe how much content there is. Have a couple of questions I could use some help with..

1) Is there a self-destruct button? I have a couple of turrets I no longer need and dont want to reach my cap.

2) Why should I be skipping planets enroute to the AI home base? Won't that put my planets out of supply?

3) What order should I be attacking enemy structures in? I understand if I attack the AI's command station all the AI ships will be freed up, but if I don't destroy it the enemy turrets just keep getting replaced.

4) Should I be building command stations on every planet I take, or just mobile builders?

Thx for any help.

[keith.lamothe]

1) Is there a self-destruct button? I have a couple of turrets I no longer need and dont want to reach my cap.

The delete key should work for scrapping; it will ask you to confirm.

2) Why should I be skipping planets enroute to the AI home base? Won't that put my planets out of supply?

Taking a planet increases AI progress (and thus wave size, etc), so you generally don't want to take every planet along the way even though there is a cost to that.  You can re-establish supply by taking a remote system and building a command station there.

3) What order should I be attacking enemy structures in? I understand if I attack the AI's command station all the AI ships will be freed up, but if I don't destroy it the enemy turrets just keep getting replaced.

It depends, if you have defenses or other ways of dealing with the freed ships, you can go ahead and kill the command station.  Best to clear up what you can first, though.

4) Should I be building command stations on every planet I take, or just mobile builders?

Once you've destroyed the AI command station there isn't a particular cost to claiming it for yourself, and you can get resources and supply extension that way.  On the other hand, the AI does treat a human-controlled system differently than a "neutral system".

Glad you like the game
Keith

[x4000]

Yes, glad you're enjoying it!

To add to Keith's comments:

1. To prevent the AI from rebuilding turrets from remains, just bring in a cleanup drone (or three) of your own to deal with that.  Or, once you kill their command station, then of course that automatically prevents them from rebuilding, as you noted.

2. If the planet is weaker than your defenses are, then popping the command station early is a great idea, because it can let you fight on your turf with your turrets, rather than on their turf with their turrets and ongoing reinforcements.  But, this can backfire and get you killed if you are not careful with it, so often just going around and picking off the various guard posts before taking out the command station is the best course.  Once you kill the guard post and the mobile ships guarding it, you can ignore the turrets if they are not n range of hurting you on an ongoing basis; then come back and clean up those later, after the command station is dead.

3. Sometimes it is nice to create a "dead zone" that is a buffer between you and the AI, which would be when you kick the AI off the planet but don't build a command station of your own.  The majority of the time, though, you will probably want to build a command station because you've "paid" for that planet already in terms of time, AI Progress, your resource expenditure, etc.  So best to capture it and let it start generating more resources for you, if you can use them and it's not going to create a weak spot in your defenses or anything.

4. To clarify keith's response to your #2 question, supply does not have to be all interconnected as one network.  So when you go out of supply and kill an enemy's command station, and then bring a colony ship over in a transport (usually colony ships cannot make it there without the transport if it is out of supply, due to enemy fire), then you can take the planet for yourself.  Having a command station on a planet gives supply to that planet and all the adjacent planets, which then can give you a pretty powerful forward base at way less AIP cost.

Good luck!

[WinterBorn]

at my current level of play (AI 7.0) if i take a planet out away from my starting system to get a special like a lvl 4 factory I will often cap an adjacent planet for a couple of reasons. If my com center gets blitzed on my factory planet and it is the only planet I have in that area then all my turrets and ship factories etc go off line from lack of supply. If I have a neighboring planet then they are still in supply and still killing the AI, making ships etc. I can build ship factories on my neighbor planet if required inorder to retake my special planat asap. I have had a few games where the neighbor planet was crucial to saving the important stuff on the important planet I wanted to keep nextdoor. Of course it may be that I just dont understand the game well enough yet to get by taking single planets out in the wild yet

[mavorspam]

Thx alot guys. My main issue was that I thought command centers had to be connected. This clears things up a bit. Didn't know about cleanup drones either. Awesome game man!

[x4000]

Thanks!  And glad we could help.

[rubikscube]

Just saying, x4000 answer SOUNDS much more nicer than keiths(plz don't kill me) but keith was just busy answering the question.

1 big thing = YOUR mobile military counts as defense so keep your main fleet at the worm hole, set a lot of mines and just let your MOBILE military do the rest, after i cleared a planet, that wormhole they came in is all turret dead.