The early game

[Lancefighter]

Seems a tad grindy from my standpoint.

The first hour of the game I just started seems to be nothing other than waiting for resources to build starships, even with a minor acquisition or two.

[Vinraith]

Why do you even need starships in the first hour? Those first few planets can usually be taken with nothing but fleet ships.

[TechSY730]

Yea, it does to me too. But to be honest, for every RTS I have played the very early game was grindy and boring.
It sort of is the nature of RTSs where you start off with little to your name.

[BobTheJanitor]

You might just be playing too slowly and defensively. The first few planets should be low reinforcement and low tech levels unless you got a really bad map seed and are surrounded by high tech worlds. But between starting my fleet, and scouting everything, and building turret defenses, and setting priority numbers and long-term plans, and performing gate raids, and then actually taking any worlds of opportunity, I find that I have plenty to do in the early game. You might just try playing more aggressively in your next game for the start and see if it doesn't work out for you.

[Lancefighter]

well thats just it - I can advance perfectly fine until I start hitting mk3+ worlds, which at diff 8, seems to happen all too quickly.

And dont get me wrong, fleet ships are ok and all, but I find them too expensive for what they do. Mostly bombers and frigates, actually. I still subscribe to the fighterswarm technique, but thats only because full cap of fighters at 200m/c per, is a total of 20k m/c. Compared to, say, bombers, who cost 20k crystal and 140k metal. And tend to die.

Flagships, on the other hand, while costing similar numbers to caps of bombers, tend to NOT die. And, well, not dieing means they are cheaper. Cheaper means better. Better means.. Well. I like.

I get that at some point someone tried to balance the not dieing of starships by making them twice as expensive. Meh. Congrats. They are expensive. Which brings me back to -> The early grind is annoying to build the first set of starships. Once you get that ball rolling, its easy enough to start doing things.

[TechSY730]

And dont get me wrong, fleet ships are ok and all, but I find them too expensive for what they do. Mostly bombers and frigates, actually.

Yea, I found it odd that the amount of extra total resources is greater than the extra firepower you get from them compared to standard fighters. It used to be that frigates had a greater total cost than bombers. When people pointed this out, instead of lowering the cost of the frigate to mirror the bomber, they raised the cost of the bomber to mirror the frigate.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I don't start building Starships until I've claimed my 3rd planet, and even then that's a maybe-maybe-not.  Sure, flagships survive a long time, they cost a heck of a lot to make up for it.  I've just noticed the game moves faster if you stick with a higher number of fighters, good amount of bombers and a chunk of missile frigates. 

King

[Lancefighter]

I should properly restate a few things then - I absolutely abhor the thought of micromanaging fleet ships solely because they die. I hate replacing them, I hate keeping track of how many there are, I hate keeping track of tractor beams, because those make them leave the formation. You get the point.

If I am going to work with ships, they have two types - small, easy to micromanage, or suicide. If I am going to make a wave of bombers, it has a singular purpose. to blow something up. If they live, yay. If they dont, whatever.

In their current mechanics, I cant deal with swarms of ships that die. Because ships are not replaced in a hive-esque manner ( as in, a control group loses a ship, it automatically requests a replacement from the nearest spacedock, who automatically rejoins the 'hive'.

Anyway. I use starships because I cant deal with replacing losses like that.

[TechSY730]

In their current mechanics, I cant deal with swarms of ships that die. Because ships are not replaced in a hive-esque manner ( as in, a control group loses a ship, it automatically requests a replacement from the nearest spacedock, who automatically rejoins the 'hive'.

I put my space docks on loop build and keep them on. Thus when one of my fleet ships die, it gets replaced quickly.

Granted, I can only pull this off once I reach the later stages of the early game. Before then, my economy cannot handle non-stop ship building to ship caps.

That doesn't solve the hassle of ordering those forces to join the main fleet, but its not that big of a pain for me. (Thank you ctrl+,

EDIT: I just remembered there is a space-docks stop building if there are N ships on the planet control option. That may let you use this technique some without building to ship cap all the time. You can increase N as your economy grows, and then finally get enough income to just build to ship cap.

[Lancefighter]

 the newly produced ship does not add itself to my current selection, nor control groups (yes, i know I can select the spacedock and give it a control group, but my control groups change far too often for that)

The ships also do not move to join the current group, etc, etc, etc.

[NickAragua]

I keep my fighters in one control group, bombers in another, missile frigates in a third, etc. As long as I can redirect ships to the current planet using rally posts / warp gates, it's pretty trivial to get all the reinforcements into the necessary control groups manually. I guess the only thing I can think of to improve that is, yeah, self-replenishing control groups. Of course, then you have the problem of your reinforcement trickle running through AI worlds or whatever.

As to the original subject, I do find myself wishing there was a 'quick start' option where you'd start off with a full cap of MK I fighters/bombers/frigate/special ship and have to fight off some extra AI waves or something to pay for it. Gets you into the action quick so you can just start whaling on the AI right off the bat rather than have to wait 10-15 minutes to build your fleet ships.

Not sure what to say about trying to build starships on just homeworld income plus surrounding small fries though. Seems like it wasn't meant to be an option until you develop your economy a little more.

[Ozymandiaz]

Seems a tad grindy from my standpoint.

The first hour of the game I just started seems to be nothing other than waiting for resources to build starships, even with a minor acquisition or two.

I am enteirly opposite. I build lots of fleet ships and go out and fight. Resources seem more then adequate to build basic fleet up within reasoanble time to go and take more planet to build an economy base that can handle MK III fleet ship production and starships.

Starships puts too large of a strain on the economy early game imo. Best to waith with them until later. MK I/II Fighters, Bombers and Missile ships is more then enough to get the ball rolling and get 3-4 system early on (and defence). After that one can start to think about starships.

I guess the only thing I can think of to improve that is, yeah, self-replenishing control groups.

Not tested in a while, but I thought that was implemented already if you just add the space docks producing the ships ot the wanted control group?

[Lancefighter]

I guess the only thing I can think of to improve that is, yeah, self-replenishing control groups.

Not tested in a while, but I thought that was implemented already if you just add the space docks producing the ships ot the wanted control group?

It works, to a point. the ships are merely added to the control group and sent away to whatever the rally point for the spacedock is. Sure, great if you are just sitting around doing nothing, and your control group isnt moving or whatnot.

Because you can never control units on more than one planet at once (aside from using search, which is slightly cumbersome for this), you can never issue some sort of 'regroup' command to the entire control group - you must go hunting for them all to bring them together.

[TechSY730]

Because you can never control units on more than one planet at once (aside from using search, which is slightly cumbersome for this), you can never issue some sort of 'regroup' command to the entire control group - you must go hunting for them all to bring them together.

For the most part, allowing the current selection to span multiple planets would just be cumbersome and confusing. However, allowing the exception of letting a control group select all ships in that group across all planets would be nice. It would also help the case of sending an attack group through and immediatly goving it orders, instead of having to wait for all of them to get in, or issue the order multiple times as the rest of the group trickles in.
For bonus points, maybe some way to change planets without clearing the current selection, for player who think they can manage that confusion.

How that would work with scrapping could be a little confusing though.

EDIT: Or maybe instead of changing how normal control group selection works, maybe add anew key binding like x+N selects all units in control group N, regardless of planet. If it proves to be very popular, then maybe the default group selection can be made this way and the x+N can be made the old behaviour.

[chemical_art]

The concept of a universal "command group on all planets. here. NOW." sounds  handy. It doesn't have to necessarily get the ships on other planets to go to an exact spot on the selected planet, but even if it would gather up the whole fleet onto a single planet would be a boon.  I often feel that command groups are very cumbersome and are usually saved as a last resort for getting as big a blob as possible. This in itself is fine, but generally to get around it means doing some micro to use it effectively. Since micro is frowned upon, a command to help streamline a group without switching planets would be helpful.


EDIT: For thread's relevancy. Normally I just blitz making fighter swarms (and my tech choice if it's cheap) till I acquire two planets. Then I drop two MK II military stations which jump start the economy and enables quite an acceptable economy. Generally I can be done with this before the hour, and from there I can generally build whatever I need at a reasonable pace. Rarely do I feel I have to stop due to the economy. But I avoid starships except as a last resort due to their price.