Just bought the game, few Q's...

[Vindico Atrum]

So, i've read the wiki pretty extensively, and played a few early rounds of games just picking up the pace, but there is a few things I don't get atm -

1 - Early on, the ship limits mean I can only really have ~250 ships to raid nearby planets with. I have M1/2 fighters, M1/2 Bombers and M1 MissileFrigates, and a small group of engineers repairing. I got to a planet with 5 psysite 1 reptite (spelling on those?), had a look at those and figured adding some of those really powerful ships could only be a good idea, only the AI came and *blew up the asteroids*?! Real mean  . I also understand that capturing Adv. Factories grants one additional ship type. Found one pretty close to my home and took it, and got this "Acid spitter" type thing, didn't like that and it's sat in the old dock with none being built.

The wiki suggests there is hundreds of types of ships, are they really all locked away, with only a few being unlocked each game? I get that this would mean probably different ship types each game, and so making differet strategies necessary, but seems awfully restricting.

2 - On the subject of AI progress, and the levels it should be at, I'm a little lost. If a planet looks useless to me, but I need to pass it, I usually just send in the little raiding party, kill everything but don't bother colonising. The AI gets quite a bit of progress for every planet I need to do this with, and I'm struggling on how to expand outwards to the better planets (Meaning more ship types, asteroids, finding home planets) without handing them a ton of AI progress along the way? Is it really just as simple as killing all hostiles and then leaving their command center alive, and hoping it doesn't rebuild anything?

3 - I have all the expansions, bought the whole lot from Steam. For the first few games, I just had absolutely everything on. Turns out, thats a crappy idea when 40 ships of 2.2million HP from some faction or other decide to trash one of my weaker planets (Weak because it had no direct lines to enemy planets), while all my fleet was 8 jumps away. 8 jumps with missile frigates is not fun 
Is it just a better idea to play without most of these factions, or is there some sort of selective idea that others use?

4 - I realise that this is a much different game in terms of progression than other similar games, but a 360,000,000 AI superfortress blocking my way, while holding two wormholes within it's (insanely long) range? I can't even get close to it or the wormholes. Is this the random generation screwing me, or a common occurence? I managed to kill one of these, a 120,000,000 HP version, with sniper turrets and an awful long time of just ignoring it, but 360,000,000? Zzzzzzzz.

5 - I'm a big multiplayer fan, in all games, and with the strong multiplayer this seems to have (dropping players and adding others is a brilliant idea that ALL online RTS need) I'd love to play some multiplayer. I get that the length of these games is far longer than other RTS, but a few hours here and a few more there, it's easily completed. Many europeans still play multiplayer?


Finally, gotta say, some of my questions seem like complaints - They aren't. The game is amazing, it's depth seems to be insane, but picks up easily once I got going. Really do like seeing new stuff each game, and I havn't even played with AI on 7 yet.

Thanks to anyone who can answer any questions.

[keith.lamothe]

1 - Early on, the ship limits mean I can only really have ~250 ships to raid nearby planets with. I have M1/2 fighters, M1/2 Bombers and M1 MissileFrigates, and a small group of engineers repairing.

There's also the bonus ship type you start with and a variety of starships that are unlocked from the start though the resource cost can be restrictive there.

I got to a planet with 5 psysite 1 reptite (spelling on those?), had a look at those and figured adding some of those really powerful ships could only be a good idea, only the AI came and *blew up the asteroids*?! Real mean  .

Yep   That's the Spirecraft minor faction, there's challenges involved (particularly on the Hard version) as well as the rewards.

I also understand that capturing Adv. Factories grants one additional ship type.

Advanced Research Stations, actually.  They unlock mk1 and mk2 of a new bonus ship type.  Advanced Factories just let you build mk4 versions of any fleet ship type you have mk3 of.

Found one pretty close to my home and took it, and got this "Acid spitter" type thing, didn't like that and it's sat in the old dock with none being built.

If you want more ships then you'll want to learn to use the types it gives you.  If you get all the ARS's you can probably afford to neglect one or two types (or more, if you're playing a supership-heavy strategy with golems, spirecraft, and/or fallen-spire ships), but if it's early on and you're hurting for shipcap it's best to use it.

The wiki suggests there is hundreds of types of ships, are they really all locked away, with only a few being unlocked each game? I get that this would mean probably different ship types each game, and so making differet strategies necessary, but seems awfully restricting.

More than a few are unlocked in a single game; between your starting bonus type (which you pick), the ARS-granted types, the fabricator types (which are limited in number and place of production, but still there, and the mk5 versions can be pretty good) you could easily find yourself working with 12 different bonus types to varying degrees.  You can also use parasite units to grab bonus types from the AI (but you can't build them yourself).

But yes, there are way more bonus types than will ever show up in a single game (unless you play against an Everything AI... that's probably pretty painful), and this is quite intentional on our part

You get free run of the full complement of turrets and starships, though (well, there are a couple experimental starship types you only get from fabricators, but you get the idea).

2 - On the subject of AI progress, and the levels it should be at, I'm a little lost. If a planet looks useless to me, but I need to pass it, I usually just send in the little raiding party, kill everything but don't bother colonising. The AI gets quite a bit of progress for every planet I need to do this with, and I'm struggling on how to expand outwards to the better planets (Meaning more ship types, asteroids, finding home planets) without handing them a ton of AI progress along the way? Is it really just as simple as killing all hostiles and then leaving their command center alive, and hoping it doesn't rebuild anything?

Yea, definitely don't kill the command station and/or warp gates if you can avoid it.  There are also some other structures that cause AIP on death.  A "neutered" AI planet (all guard posts dead, just leaving the command station) is typically not very dangerous and won't rebuild guard posts but you do need to keep an eye on the gradual reinforcements that get sent to the command station itself.

3 - I have all the expansions, bought the whole lot from Steam. For the first few games, I just had absolutely everything on. Turns out, thats a crappy idea when 40 ships of 2.2million HP from some faction or other decide to trash one of my weaker planets (Weak because it had no direct lines to enemy planets), while all my fleet was 8 jumps away. 8 jumps with missile frigates is not fun 
Is it just a better idea to play without most of these factions, or is there some sort of selective idea that others use?

Yea, turning everything on is a good way to die

I'll leave suggestions to others, but I'd say staying close to vanilla for at least one full game will help the learning process.

4 - I realise that this is a much different game in terms of progression than other similar games, but a 360,000,000 AI superfortress blocking my way, while holding two wormholes within it's (insanely long) range? I can't even get close to it or the wormholes. Is this the random generation screwing me, or a common occurence? I managed to kill one of these, a 120,000,000 HP version, with sniper turrets and an awful long time of just ignoring it, but 360,000,000? Zzzzzzzz.

Sometimes the RNG does nail you, yes, but there are ways of dealing with superforts.  Bombers are the main thing; if you can get it down to just the bombers versus the fortress, it should be just a matter of time.  Bomber Starships are also helpful, iirc, and some bonus shiptypes are also good.  I don't think they'll help against a superfort itself, but EMP warheads go a LONG way to making any non-mk5 AI planet a ton easier to break down.  It costs AIP, sure, but the warheads make good equalizers when the RNG hates you.

5 - I'm a big multiplayer fan, in all games, and with the strong multiplayer this seems to have (dropping players and adding others is a brilliant idea that ALL online RTS need) I'd love to play some multiplayer. I get that the length of these games is far longer than other RTS, but a few hours here and a few more there, it's easily completed. Many europeans still play multiplayer?

Quite a few people play multiplayer around here, I imagine someone will pipe up

Finally, gotta say, some of my questions seem like complaints - They aren't. The game is amazing, it's depth seems to be insane, but picks up easily once I got going. Really do like seeing new stuff each game, and I havn't even played with AI on 7 yet.

Very glad you're enjoying the game   Yea, there's so many different games you can play without even recycling any setup options, let alone the many other ways it achieves variety.  And there's more coming, when we get back into AIW development

[keith.lamothe]

Random addendum: 8 jumps with missile frigates is a lot easier with transports.

[MuckingAbout]

1) Yes, initially you only get those 4 ships plus a bonus ship that you may select at the galaxy setup screen (but don't have to). You can unlock more ships by capturing (colonizing) a system with an "Advanced Research Station". This will permanently unlock another random ship type.
Furthermore you can find 'Fabricators' that produce a specific ship at a specific tech level.

Build boatloads of turret defenses in you systems, not just one or two of each. Hold Ctrl to build 5 at a time. It takes a bit to getting used to the right numbers in this game.

Yeah, you only get a few ship types to play around with each game.

2) Colonizing a planet doesn't raise the AI Progress, only killing the Command Station and Warpgate (and certain guard posts). If the planet is totally uninteresting, you can opt to just kill every guard post and leave the rest be. Place a scout there and occasionally clear any spawned ships that might threaten nearby colonies. To prevent Waves at adjacent colonies you can destroy the warpgate for just 5 Progress instead of the 20 a complete wipe would occur.
The Wormhole Guards barely do any damage but take a while to destroy. They do spawn ships on higher difficulties, but not many. It's usually safe to ignore them. To safely pass them with civilian ships (engineers, colony ship) put them in transports.

You don't need to take every planet, but a few resource/asteroid rich planets here and there won't hurt you much. Anything under 230 (@ difficulty 7) is easily manageable, but don't be afraid to take stuff you need. When the AI Progress hits tech level 3, things get to start... interesting.

3) Yeah, I made that mistake too. "I've bought everything, might as well turn it on!" ^^
Win a game without any expansions or factions activated to get the hang of the game, then activate the expansions and maybe some factions that don't complicate things much. All that stuff makes the game much more harder, but also more interesting.

4) Different AI Types prefer different strategies and buildings. You probably ran into a 'Fortress Baron'. There's a checkbox somewhere in the setup screen that allows you to see what AI you're up against, when selecting 'Random Whatever' as personalities. Mouseovers give you a brief description on the type and some are harder than others.
Two Tips against Fortresses:
- The barely do any damage against Bombers but obliterate anything else in their range.
- Mouseover the fort and press 'Z' to see their range projected.

Stuff like this makes the game really interesting. A SuperFort, a Gravity Drill, a Black Hole Machine and two Ion Cannons? How could you ever take this bloody system? Well, figuring this out is the most fun in the game for me. Maybe you need to do costly raids before you can even consider assaulting the systems. Maybe you can take an alternate route to destroy annoying stuff quicker. Or maybe you can just ignore the system when the benefits don't outweigh the costs.

5) Haven't tried Coop yet, since for every minute gametime, I have at least 5 minutes of pausetime.
But yeah, dropping in and out is a really cool concept.
I'm from Germany (GMT+1) and might be interested, but have annoying work schedules right now.


You've seen nothing yet!
At difficulty 7+ the game gets much more challenging and interesting. You begin to actually need a strategy for each enemy planet, but higher levels don't hug you over in terms of attacks.

You can easily make mistakes in this game, but also learn as easily from them. That's what makes the game so special.

[Vindico Atrum]

plus a bonus ship that you may select at the galaxy setup screen (but don't have to).

Eek, didn't see this at all. Had another look and can't see it. Where am I supposed to be looking?

Is it the map that shows ships? It has *some* planets with ships on them, and I can click it, but it doesn't seem to be doing much :/

[keith.lamothe]

plus a bonus ship that you may select at the galaxy setup screen (but don't have to).

Eek, didn't see this at all. Had another look and can't see it. Where am I supposed to be looking?

Is it the map that shows ships? It has *some* planets with ships on them, and I can click it, but it doesn't seem to be doing much :/

Iirc 16 planets are available as starting positions, and each has a bonus type associated with them.  This is in the Lobby that you see after clicking Start Game on the main menu.  When you mouseover the planet it will show the stats of the ship type.  When you click it you're setting your homeworld.

[Hearteater]

If you do not click any, a random one will be selected for you.

You can click more than one, but be warned the more planets you start with, the stronger the AI is.

[Vindico Atrum]

Thanks for that one, had no idea at all. Started a new run, picked tele-raiders. So much fun with those little blighters.

[MuckingAbout]

In the Lobby, under the Tab 'Ships', there's also an option for 'Simple', 'Normal' and 'Complex' Ship Types and you can disable certain ship groups. I usually find Teleporting, Parasites and Swallowers hugely annoying and often turn them off. You could also disable those forts and force fields if you want, but the latter makes your own command stations very vulnerable, too.

[Nalgas]

In the Lobby, under the Tab 'Ships', there's also an option for 'Simple', 'Normal' and 'Complex' Ship Types and you can disable certain ship groups. I usually find Teleporting, Parasites and Swallowers hugely annoying and often turn them off. You could also disable those forts and force fields if you want, but the latter makes your own command stations very vulnerable, too.

At one point I got sick of cloaked ships and tried disabling them, which seemed to help for a little while until I discovered that it also disables scouts.  You might think you're being clever and taking away something annoying/powerful that the AI has, but there's always some sort of drawback on your side, too...