Help Tips For New Players

[BadgerBadger]

I'm looking into whether I can make some quick "Hey Commander, you should be careful of XYZ" tips that can appear in game. The goal is to help novices not shoot themselves in the foot.

These will be disablable with a Setting.

So far my ideas are things like
If you have paid the AIP for X planets and only neutered X + 2 planets, say "You might be annoying the AI by raising AIP too much"

If you have > 2 ARSs on planets that are neutered and accessible, say "You should consider hacking those ARSs to boost your fleet"

If you own 4 planets but have not GCAs, say "You should consider taking a GCA to bolster your defenses".

I'm looking for more suggestions, of the form
"Specific condition that can be checked easily" and then "Here's the helpful lesson"

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

If you have a CGA or Coordinator on a planet that is exposed to waves and enough hacking points to hack it, say "You should consider hacking this infrastructure to avoid losing it."

If you are metal stalling and your home planet has 0 science levels, say "You should consider leveling up your home planet with science to increase your metal generation."

[StarKeep]

Golem Under Construction, Golem Construction under 50%, and Metal is under 10k: "You should avoid taking major capturables like GolemName until you have enough metal stockpiled to pay for it.'

Have not Loaded a single Fleet an hour in: "You can press LoadHotkey to gather up all of your units into your transport, allowing them to be easily moved through the galaxy."

When killing an AI Command Station 2 hops from the homeworld while there is still an active Warp Gate adjacent to your homeworld: "'Be careful. You have left your homeworld open to AI attacks by leaving Warp Gates alive on planets adjacent to your homeworld. Consider killing the Warp Gates or taking the planets in their entirety to better protect yourself from AI aggression."

[CRCGamer]

When deep striking 5+ deep: "Strike forces more than four planets deep into enemy territory need to immediately neutralize a command center at their destination to avoid massive counter attacks. Alternatively have supporting allied planets as your supply line every 4th jump."

Transports / Combat Factories getting repeatedly crippled: "It may be worthwhile to upgrade fleet centerpieces with science at least once or twice to make them more durable and less prone to being crippled."

Fleet center pieces getting crippled on worlds with mass drivers: "Either quickly hack or neutralize heavy defensive armaments that cripple flagships to avoid losing your ability to reinforce mid battle."

[Mac]

Eye active on planet for at least 15 seconds:  "You can avoid an Eye by activating by never going above the fleet amount listed in the Eye's tooltip.  Alternatively, you can destroy all AI guard posts in order to assault the Eye itself, or simply hack it with the sabotage hack."

[Metrekec]

If a player is above 100 AIP, has a major capturable within 4 hops, has had near-capped metal for a while and has no major capturable fleet: "You should consider getting majorcapturable. They have unique bonuses that aren't found on the average ship, but increase AIP proportional to how powerful they are."

If a player has not leveled a major capturable for a long time and does not have any levelled major capturable: "You should consider levelling majorcapturable. They get more fleet strength per science upgrade than the average fleet centerpiece."

[Ovalcircle]

I don't know if this is said anywhere in game, but:

If using a sabotage hack and there are more than 1 possible targets, you need to move your flagship closer to the structure you want to sabotage.

Some players might infer (or already have) the idea that the hack picks randomly every time.

[Mac]

If 20 minutes into the game and never built a single turret: "You should try building some turrets to help defend your planet from enemy attacks."

If a planet has had cloaked enemy forces on it for 3 minutes (or whatever time works best): "Tachyon arrays and sentry frigates can de-cloak invisible enemies, allowing you to attack them."

[Lord Of Nothing]

Some feedback:
It might be a good idea to disable the "A player is trying to take too many planets early (the check is 'if the player has captured the majority of planets they've defeated the defenses on'), the player is reminded that this is a game of guerrilla warfare." one if the fallen spire campaign has already been started.

[BadgerBadger]

Have you actually hit that message playing spire campaigns? I didn't think players would ever capture almost all the planets they've attacked except by mistake.

[Lord Of Nothing]

Have you actually hit that message playing spire campaigns? I didn't think players would ever capture almost all the planets they've attacked except by mistake.

Yeah, I hit it this morning. It's a bit of an edge case that may speak a lot to my play style with Fallen Spire, I guess - when I set out to play a spire campaign, I always start going for it right from the beginning, so I'm not spending time clearing out any planets before I need to, since my Spirefleet is only going to outscale them anyway, so there isn't the initial buffer of neutered planets to keep the ratio of attacked:taken planets in the normal place, because right from the start I play with the full intention of clearing the whole map and fitting as many cities in as possible, rather than pushing out to control chokepoints. It may also indicate that I should up the fallen spire difficulty one more notch...

Lategame Fallen Spire I think almost anyone would hit it unless they're just toying with the AI. (I mean, obviously to some extent by refusing to build the transceiver they're just toying with the AI, but those Mk6 and Mk7 spire cities exist for a purpose.)

[BadgerBadger]

I think if you are playing in that style then you either are an expert and know what you are doing, or you are a novice and getting into trouble. I'd rather let the experts say "I know better", and disable the Tips if desired.

[rudhek2]

If you have paid the AIP for X planets and only neutered X + 2 planets, say "You might be annoying the AI by raising AIP too much"

Call me a newbie, but I rarely neuter planets unless I intend to capture them or they are among a contiguous group of uncaptured planets which I've walled off from the rest of the galaxy.

Doesn't neutering a planet simply cause the AI to spend its budget elsewhere? If so, then what purpose is there to destroying guard posts of planets which the player does not intend to capture?

[tadrinth]

I believe that the AI prefers to reinforce planets near the player, and when reinforcing a neutered planet, the AI pays full price but gets less forces.  I don't think it's smart enough to pick planets to reinforce to avoid paying this penalty. 

[ArnaudB]

Indeed. The AI reinforces a planet per interval (pretty much every second) and get ships for the command station + for every guard post. So when it's reinforcing a Mark V with 8 guard posts, it's getting nine times what it would get if neutered, which is even worse with a Mark V or VII than a Mark II.

You really don't want to leave a high mark planet alerted for hours. In maps where you create a chokepoint to the AI Homeworld, you can lock yourself in an unwinnable situation as Hunter+Warden+mass reinforcement stack on Mark V world. Neutering matters a lot for that.