Cannot even complete tutorial

[unseen4ce]

Okay so I have tried to complete the intermediate tutorial four+ times now. I get a large force of almost 700 ships, every ship maxed except mercenary units. Human raid and Bomber starships maxed in terms of volume not level, have level 2 bomber starships. Level 4 teleport ships.

I go to the enemys home planet and manage to destroy most guard post. But the retaliation wipes out my closest planet to the enemy homeworld, the enemy then occupies that territory with such a massive force that I have just reloaded my game and tried again.

I cannot send multiple waves as the first wave is already gone before a second wave can even be constructed. I'm out of ideas now, not sure how to avoid such a massive retaliation or get a second wave in time.

Any tips would be great...

[Kittens]

Tutorial was a long time ago for me but I guess you can try the following:
- Build a TON of turrets (like, all that you have available) in range of wormhole exits and build forcefields around wormhole entrances for the impending counterattack. Don't build your forcefields around your turrets, though, because that will lower the damage of your turrets by 75%. Minefields are also nice.

- Have multiple spacedocks (five-ish) all in a production loop with multiple engineers (ten-ish) assisting, you'll rebuild your fleet in no time IF you have the resources available.

- Generally, I don't bother with unlocking starships except the Flagship. I find fleet ships are a better Knowledge investment. I don't even build other starships than the Light and Flagship unless I'm floating a ton of resources.

Hope that helps a bit.

[unseen4ce]

I will try some of those things like the minefield and forcefield at the otherside of the wormhole.

I should add that I already have 5 space docks with engineers, they don't seem to replace what was lost very fast regardless. I leave them in loop so that they rebuild as soon as a ship is lost, but when you lose a whole armada they don't seem to replace it quick enough.

[zoutzakje]

it's been ages since I played the tutorial as well... I remember I just let all those ships take my planet and rebuild somewhere else, succesfully destroying them and the homeworld in my next attack. Can you build gravity turrets in the tutorial? If yes, that will slow down the enemy ships significantly, giving you more time to rebuild.

[Cyborg]

You do not need to build five stardocks. The only time you should be building more of these is if you are going deep into enemy territory, possibly with hostile planets in between your path and you need a forward base. To make them build faster, you can place an engineer (or many engineers) onto them, and it will build faster. Also, it could be that your income level is not high enough to support the kind of production you are looking for.

On the defensive side, since you know what is coming, set up a trap using your defensive structures and make sure that you have fighters as your primary replacement ship. You can control this by clicking on them a few times so that it builds five of them before it builds anything else.

[zoutzakje]

and don't worry unseen4ce... you're not the first one to have problems with the tutorial ^^
just keep trying and don't give up. you'll get there eventually.

[Gudamor]

You do not need to build five stardocks. The only time you should be building more of these is if you are going deep into enemy territory, possibly with hostile planets in between your path and you need a forward base. To make them build faster, you can place an engineer (or many engineers) onto them, and it will build faster. Also, it could be that your income level is not high enough to support the kind of production you are looking for.

While you are probably right that his bottleneck is resources, there are a couple good reasons to build extra stardocks. Each additional engineer assisting construction at a dock has a diminishing effect AND stardocks have a minimum length of time that a ship must take. For example, 30 engineers on one dock producing something like neinzul ships will be slower than 15 engies each on two docks.

[Nalgas]

30 engineers on one dock producing something like neinzul ships will be slower than 15 engies each on two docks.

And either one of those is absolutely absurd overkill in terms of number of engineers on a single space dock for things that build so quickly to begin with.  Even 15 is far more than enough to hit the cap on how quickly it's allowed to spit ships out, last time I checked.  By like a dozen or so for some of them.  Heh.

[Hearteater]

Also, don't replace Merc ships until you've built everything else.  The cost so much resources they will tank your economy.  So Pause that build queue before you even launch your attack on the home world.  Also consider pausing at least some of your starship queues until your fleet gets rebuilt.

[mindloss]

I was using one/two docks until recently, and now I've switched to 4-6. It's basically the same either way insofar as resource use, and with multiple spacedocks you have more granular control over queue order and routing to planets/control groups etc.... can be useful once you're used to it.

But that's off topic, isn't it?

[Hearteater]

I'm pretty sure multiple docks vs multiple engineers is an energy trade off if you haven't hit the cap for production speed from one dock.

[mindloss]

I'm pretty sure multiple docks vs multiple engineers is an energy trade off if you haven't hit the cap for production speed from one dock.

...good point. True. But I also think it's 1000 energy per, which works out to 1m+1c per second, I think, which even for several docks is gonna be <1% of your overall resource income, which is the important thing. Not a big enough difference to matter compared to whether it helps you play more effectively.

[Nalgas]

I was using one/two docks until recently, and now I've switched to 4-6. It's basically the same either way insofar as resource use, and with multiple spacedocks you have more granular control over queue order and routing to planets/control groups etc.... can be useful once you're used to it.

It does come at the cost of using a bit of energy for each, so you do spend slightly more resources maintaining them, which makes them a tiny bit less efficient, but the convenience can be worth it unless you're really anal about things like that.  I still don't usually use very many, though, with the exception of building extras for nanoswarm/autobombs next to systems I'm attacking or in systems that are being attacked so I can spam them in FRD mode as support and toggle them on and off as needed.

But that's off topic, isn't it?

That's how it works around here, you know.  Heh.

Edit (sort of): And someone said what I was saying while I was in the middle of typing it before I hit the button to post it.

[unseen4ce]

I managed to overcome the counter-attack using mines. I then destroyed the two remaining guard post.

Now I have to destroy all the Core shield generators, in order to destroy the large sphere guard  which is surrounded by a force field; I need to destroy this before I can destroy the command station.

So where are the Core shield generators as I have destroyed everything but the command station and the spherical guard thing. I need to destroy all Core shield generators first.

So I'm almost there now

[zoutzakje]

tutorial has CSG's? Must have forgotten about that. If you're sure it's CSG's you need to kill, make sure you scouted every planet and check the structures on them. once you found a Core Shield Generator, destroy the planets command station and capture it yourself. Only then you'll be able to destroy CSG's. Good luck.