Any tips (already)?

[Gertjan]

After I finish the tutorials and start playing the game I suppose I could use some advice from players that already have been playing since yesterday (does that dont sleep, work, or have friends [;)] ). Let us help each other!

[DivePac88]

Tip number-1; put a new coffee-pot on, and breakout the jellybeans. [;)]

[Yskonyn]

Make that a BIG-a$$ pot of coffee! [8D] I suppose we won't know what day of the week it is anymore, quite soon!

[impact]

Here are a few pointers, they might be subjective though:

What will almost inevitably happen during your first few games while you watch the AI and get your feet wet a little is that sooner or later your empire will go broke.
Getting your head inside the economy to optimize it and prevent something like this from happening means getting your head into empire management. Which is pretty much the most complex topic there is in the game.
However, you can make it a bit easier, so don't panic.
What you do is this:
Start a sandbox game (no victory conditions) in a fairly large galaxy with 4-6 other races. This will give you plenty of room to expand.
As your race, select the traders. I am not at home right now and can't remember their name, but they get Merchant Guild as government form (which you should choose).
Start the game by building 3 additional explorers, one additional constructor and a colonizer (if you want).
Leave the ships on automatic, it will be fine.
Once those ships are built, you can accept the AI suggestions for building warships.
Now with the number of explorers flying around, your expansion planner should fill up nicely.
Look at the resources your empire has in demand. Make sure that on top of that list there are only luxury goods and that you have at least one source for the production recources you require (otherwise your empire won't be able to produce any warships, your production will halt, which is bad).
Most important keyword however: colonies, colonies, colonies.
Your empire get's about +50% tax income from colonies, so don't build any mines your don't absolutely need in the beginning and build colonies as many as possible to make money.
Befriend and pay off every pirate faction you meet - you are a trading empire, not a warmonger. Being friends with pirates doesn't come cheap, but your income shouldn't be a problem once you have a few colonies. The big plus is: they will leave you alone, sell you valuable intelligence and raid enemy empires for you should it come to a war.
With other empires you deal more or less the same way: make friends. Send gifts, try to get a trade agreement with them.
Some races however you just can't befriend. Don't declare war. Declare trade sanctions. Starve them out. If this doesn't work: make sure you have a few fleets and blockade their colonies.
If they declare war, pull back your ships to bolster your defense and let the pirates and allies handle the attack.
You don't wage war by sending massive fleets, because every warmonger or technocrat will just wipe them off the face of the galaxy. You wage war with money and contacts, just like a trade empire should.
With a strategy like that, your empire will expand very very quickly from the beginning - this is good. Even if it causes corruption, money won't be that important. Control over resources is.
Spreading out means controlling more luxury goods. That way, if someone messes with you, a trade sanction will severely hurt them. The pirate raids and your allies will do the rest.
And while this is the overall strategy, it should give you an empire that is stable enough so you can try getting your head into the micromanagement aspects of the game.
You should probably start by grabbing a few ships, switching them to manual and put them into one or two fleets you can manage. But make sure that you still have enough ships on auto for defense.
Next thing should be one or two constructors. Look at resource requirements and mining closely and get a feel for it.
The rest should come bit by bit.
Hope this helps, and sorry for the wall of text

[Erik Rutins]

Great advice Impact, thanks for sharing your "mercantile guild" strategy. You should write up an AAR about that. [8D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: DivePac88

Tip number-1; put a new coffee-pot on, and breakout the jellybeans. [;)]

Or get a mini-fridge and plug it in right by the computer desk. You can take a guess at what's keeping nice and cold inside. [;)]

[DivePac88]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: DivePac88

Tip number-1; put a new coffee-pot on, and breakout the jellybeans. [;)]

Or get a mini-fridge and plug it in right by the computer desk. You can take a guess at what's keeping nice and cold inside. [;)]

That would have to be Ice-tea in your mini-fridge there Shark... would it not old Friend. [:D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: DivePac88

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: DivePac88

Tip number-1; put a new coffee-pot on, and breakout the jellybeans. [;)]

Or get a mini-fridge and plug it in right by the computer desk. You can take a guess at what's keeping nice and cold inside. [;)]

That would have to be Ice-tea in your mini-fridge there Shark... would it not old Friend. [:D]

And it goes so well with pretzels too. [:D]

[Xmudder]

ORIGINAL: impact

As your race, select the traders. I am not at home right now and can't remember their name, but they get Merchant Guild as government form (which you should choose).

Ooh... I quite agree on the Teekan front. -30% maintenance, +50% colony income, and you can colonize desert worlds from the start. Will have to try a game as them.

[Gertjan]

Impact, thanks for the excellent advise!

[bbmike]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
...You should write up an AAR about that. [8D]

That's a great idea. Maybe someone will be kind enough to write up a tutorial AAR. [&o]

[Webbco]

Hi folks, in serious need of a few pointers here!

Can someone explain to me what the AI does regarding upgrading ship designs? I've heard conflicting reports and it's not clear when I'm playing how the automated AI decides on which ships to upgrade/retrofit.


There seems to be many different types of ship sub-roles (e.g. 6 types of destroyer) in the 'Designs' list that were created automatically by the AI so when I want to manually retrofit my fleets, I don't know which ones are the updated ones!


Also, I heard somewhere that ships in your fleet are called back to a space port to be retrofitted. Does the AI do this automatically when automated? Are people finding it better and easier to do this manually?

[Gertjan]

Good questions Webbco. Unfortunately I dont know the answers. I have not been looking into the designing aspect that much. Perhaps someone else could help us? Probably the are all playing the game

[SicTyrannis]

My experience...the computer updates the designs as soon as a component tech is researched.

[Webbco]

Ok, so the ships already in existence stay put and the ones created post-upgrade are the new design?

Or have you experienced ships automatically going to spaceports to get retrofitted?

[malkuth74]

No they don't auto upgrade. You have to do it manually. Which is a huge chore when you have some 200 + ships.

Even if you want to scrap them you have to do it manually. LOL. Which usually means you end up with HUGE Amounts of ships where a good portion of them are so old that they could not even take on a Merchant ship. LOL.

[Gertjan]

Is this really the case? I'm not sure.

[Mark Weston]

ORIGINAL: impact

Now with the number of explorers flying around, your expansion planner should fill up nicely.
Look at the resources your empire has in demand. Make sure that on top of that list there are only luxury goods and that you have at least one source for the production recources you require (otherwise your empire won't be able to produce any warships, your production will halt, which is bad).

...

Next thing should be one or two constructors. Look at resource requirements and mining closely and get a feel for it.

One question I've come across. When you're designating mining bases to be built from the expansion planner, which ships are you issuing instructions to? Is it your fleet of existing automated constructors, or do you have to have constructors on "manual" to accept those jobs?

[DivePac88]

When I normally use the expansion planner like this (for a strategic resource I'm running short of), an automated constructor will come and build the facility after a time. But I must admit that the constructor that ultimately turns-up for the build seems to have come from the furtherest afield.

[sbach2o]

ORIGINAL: DivePac88

When I normally use the expansion planner like this (for a strategic resource I'm running short of), an automated constructor will come and build the facility after a time. But I must admit that the constructor that ultimately turns-up for the build seems to have come from the furtherest afield.

I am not entirely sure, but I had the impression that either no constructors on autopilot will be considered for building mining stations through expansion planner, or the autopiloted constructors are only considered as a last resort.

At one time I couldn't order resource mines through the expansion planner at all. When I checked my list of constructors, I found them all to be automated. Having an idle constructor will make it appear in the list that is presented in expansion planner's resource browser. You could then even pick one best suited for the job (among those that are idle of course).

This is similar to conlonization. Where you have a list of colony ships without a set target in expansion planner. This is a neat, if somewhat fiddly, microig-heavy, feature where you can pick the colony that should produce such a ship through e.g. the ship yards dialog and then set its target via expansion planner.

I did not test this out systematically, though.

Edit: after looking closer at constructors for a different reason, I do not think any longer that automated constructors aren't eligible for projects ordered via Expansion Planner. I must have run over something else, when I couldn't order mines via the planner, or I just did something clumsy.