Next level noob tutorials/guides

[Gregorovitch55]

This a message to Das, Larry, ice, shark, Timotheas (oh sorry, not you, you don't do neckbeards) and everyone else I've forgotten to mention: I've put 100 hours into this game so far and in this my third restart I am by a long shot the strongest faction, but there are two things that are just driving me bonkers and I cant seem to figure out how to deal with them, not with all hell breaking loose every 2 seconds anyways. This noob need some assistance:

1. Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag, nag..........

So I start the game. It runs for 2 seconds. I get about 6 messages and suggestions. I spend maybe 3 ot four minutes figuring out what to about them all. Cool, done. Start the game again. Two seconds later, another 8 nags, WFT? Pause. I've just told you i don't want to colonise that crappy moon, and I already have a fleet on the way to that pirate base you retard!. F***!. Unpause. Two more seconds, *ten* more nags. [public taste and decency edit][:-]

So I'm getting maybe 10 seconds of game progrss for maybe 3-5 minutes of figuring out what to do with all these nags, and this is starting to pi....annoy me. A bit.

So why not turn the one's you don't want to deal with to auto i hear you ask? Well, 'cos a lot of the time I've got a clear idea of what I'm doing and the AI's ideas are just at cross purposes to mine (e.g. I'm setting up to attack this faction and the AI thinks I should be attacking that faction).

So why not just turn the nags (sorry, suggestions) off then? Well, because I'm not confident enough to pick up on the important messages without the help. About 10% of these messages are things I really need to know and would probably miss otherwise.

2. Fleet AI settings, postures, orders etc

My MO so far is this: AI nags me to build a load of ships. I have a load more colonies, mines, resorts and bases. Figures, I need to protect them, but I got five main battle and invasion fleets on manual and I'm sorting out logistics ready to trounce my next victim. So I order all these ships the AI wants and set them to auto. There after I have no idea what the AI does. My bases get attacked, the AI ships are over the other side of the map attacking someone I specifically don't want to antagonist while I'm dealing with my current target, WTF? Listen AI, you fuktard, I just spent 100k credits to get you what you want and this is what I get for it? But that's what you told me to do, Sir. [public taste and decency edit][:-]

The problem is I'm so frazzled trying to keep up with all these nags whilst I'm conducting complicated manoeuvers with my main fleets I just can't watch what the AI does for long enough at any one time to figure out how all the fleet AI settings work, nor do i know or understand most of the relevant commands and settings involved. I need a heads up here, badly.

Well, once you've played maybe 1000 hours you'll have a better idea how to deal with this stuff, I hear you say, the great strength of DW is it's flexibility to set things up to suit your play style. Yeah, but this is also it's greatest weakness because even after 100 hours I haven't really got a clue what sort of play style suits me and sometimes you can have just too many choices. I'd also like to get some sort of handle on this before I reach maybe 150 hours, ideally 110.

Anyways, what I'm looking for is something I can watch or study that gives me:

* An overview of the main options, or approaches, you can take in dealing with these two issues.
* The mechanics of how you set these options up
* Some examples to watch or experiments to run that illustrate the effect of the possible approaches in game play.

[Bingeling]

For the military, I am a very manual kind of guy. I should really try to do manual fleet postures with maybe automated fleets to operate within those postures.

I almost always play the game on 2X, and I pause when thinking. I have helped a friend (shared screen over skype) to get started, and I notice that he uses way more time than I do in seeing what happens. That is about experience. I "instantly" notice the circle of an independent in a system, or a fleet sitting outside rather inside our colony system, for instance. As long as I look at that part of the map, of course. I do notice "grey" or pirate ships revealed by my long range scanners, or the off color in a system hinting that there is some sort of pirate there.

The spam? In my AAR game I have killed my nearby pirates, and strike at those that attack me. I hunt their bases. There is some attack spam since my automated constructors enjoy building all over the galaxy in "free space" or in a couple of places with mining rights. I don't care about those mines. When an attack pops up, I ignore them totally as soon as I spot "exploration", "construction", anything civilian, or recognize the names of those frequently attacked far away mines. If they are not instantly ignored, I figure out where it is, check out which pirate group is guilty, and hunt their base.

I react if it is a military ship under attack, though, that is a location I care about, since I have no automated military ships.

If I run manual constructors, though, I would never ignore attacks on them. I just ignore them on silly AI constructors

Diplomacy spam? If it is important it is a proper popup. I don't click the small ones unless bored. I still get their gift, and a "non" answer works the same as a "no" to a trade deal. Colonization spam? I got that in my game, I know my options, I just haven't turned that suggestion off. Build suggestion? A "bump" about defensive base builds can be nice as a reminder. For ships I ignore them and the only "bad" effect is having to clean up the build orders screen before buying stuff myself. A suggestion for a new AI construction ship is a nice reminder, though, if those are automated.

When pirates roam, I don't care about my mines, I defend colonies. And I kill pirate bases and mines. When they have no nearby base, they won't attack my mines, so that solves itself. And if they steal the resources and 300 credits from a mine, I don't really care. I may visit the site and use the quick button to have the AI rebuild the mine, or send a fleet ship from somewhere to kill off the mine if captured. But anyways, if we have the need for the mine, and just lost it, the AI should compensate with a new mine somewhere.

In being very manual, problems happen during war. Lots of attack spam on freighters in enemy systems and such. This will lead to me missing info about pirates, and they can prosper a bit at the other edge of the empire. It would be better to set up something decent and automated to handle such things. It can also be a problem during war that I use the normal defensive fleets for offensive missions... But pirates exploiting my war status makes sense, I can live with that. I kill them afterwards.

If you are new, and a bit overwhelmed, try to avoid those 1000 star 15x15 galaxies where you intend to expand a lot. Keep it smaller. There are less spots to pay attention to, less targets for anything, and thus less nags. Attempt some automated fleets with attack/defend posture and a desired range. And a home base. I have not done that myself, though, but I guess those should work for the "rear" of your empire where a pirates makes some noise. Or maybe you prefer it that way.

An AI attack suggestion (I have those off), is nothing more than a reminder that there is something to attack over there. It is not always easy to notice the spotted pirate mine somewhere. Or a pirate base. Which may make them useful. Don't assume that the AI is correct in what fleet to use though, especially not if you employ some "weird fleets" by AI standard. My fleet of 1 destroyer and 25 troop transport is not suited to do any "base" attack, for instance.

Yesterday, I made a screenshot of the "top right" spam while reporting a bug on another forum. Apart from the buggy one, I don't even register that those other are there. The bug? We warn ourselves about removing military forces.



Be aware that this game is played in many different ways. I play it my way.

[FingNewGuy]

I have come to favor playing 1400-star, 15x15 sector, Very Hard, Unstable aggression, Pre-Warp, Research at Very Expensive (999K), with Normal-Normal Pirates at Average distance with max AI empires in a Sandbox. What this has caused me to learn is that pre-planning and organization are key: and the secret to success here is exploiting the UI to the max. Here is what I mean:

The first thing I do is to go to Options-> Message Settings and configure what I want to be a Scrolling Message and what will be a Pop-Up Message- or what (if anything) will be neither. I can't think of a good reason to overload your Scrollies if you have the attention-getting Pop-ups for the same messages. Next, I set my Empire Policies as I want them for the game. In my case it's manual everything except Ship Design which I will adjust manually as required. Don't forget your Empire Navigation Tool!!! Use it- a lot. Ditto your mini-screen on the bottom left; also ditto never be bashful about going to .50X or .25X as needed. Pause as much as needed to gain a thorough awareness of the situation ahead of time as much as possible.

My point here is that with a familiar mastery of the UI even the most massive icon-filled maps are fun to play! [:)]

Edit: As to #2- I NEVER rely on the AI to advise me about ship-building (numbers of ships needed) as I Manual my Fleets and all ships except Escorts are in Fleets.

[unclean]

ORIGINAL: FingNewGuy
Edit: As to #2- I NEVER rely on the AI to advise me about ship-building (numbers of ships needed) as I Manual my Fleets and all ships except Escorts are in Fleets.

Yeah, this. There's things I set to auto but I never trust the AI with fleets or ship building.

If you don't know how many ships to build, check the military rating of the empires you're going to be messing with in the diplomacy screen, and spy on them by stationing explorers in their main systems.

Personally the only fleets I ever set to auto are small anti pirate defense groups. Use defensive fleet postures and they wont end up chasing slugs on the other side of the galaxy.

Also you're building monitoring stations, right? If you're worried about your defenses being stretched too thin good LRS coverage makes things a hell of a lot easier.

[Gregorovitch55]

I'm not sure how I missed this, but I've just discovered Gelatinous Cube's post about fleet postures in the stickies.

tm.asp?m=2973167&mpage=1&key= [&o]

[Timotheus]

On full manual, I usually turn the suggestions off other than new possible colonies as the explorers fly around exploring whole systems/sectors with nary an input (and that is also manually done, heh).

I know who to spy on and what spy missions to run, I know what mines to build, I know who to attack or where to put the fleet.

Once you know what you are doing, turn the naggers off.

PS
"I've put 100 hours into this game so far".
You are now an honorary non-neckbeard, congratulations.