Matrix Games Forums

I finally purchased this game and getting into with manual setting.

Is there a list of tips and tricks for building out ships and bases? I am mostly looking for a guide on what are some minimum, maximum and optimal number and combination of components needed for each design.

For example, on one video it said that your excess energy output must be greater than maximum weapons energy usage plus shield recharge rate plus movement energy. There is no way that I would figure this out on my own.

So, is there a guide? If not, can you post your tips and tricks here?

Thanks.

If you are playing clusters, I place intelligence/monitor stations between my cluster and the closest couple. This keeps track of anything inbound.

I place a defensive station with a construction ship at a planet where I intend to build a starbase to keep the pirates and raiders off of it while it is being built.
I build a also defensive stations with fighters as primary weapons...

A couple of thoughts from the peanut gallery.

You don't have to have excess energy output greater than than maximum weapons energy usage plus shield recharge rate plus movement energy. I don't know what kind of video you watched, but that is purely only a recommendation that you do this only if you want to run your ships continuously whilst shooting and taking fire and moving. You can just as easily design a ship with less excess energy than weapons and shields and engines. It will operate as normal till the energy storage runs out.

You don't need to design the energy needs for sprint as opposed to cruise either, though personally I recommend it as the cost benefit weighs towards adding an extra reactor.

Don't forget vector engines into that calculation. And I am not sure how much energy the shield recharge requires either. I think someone said it was 0.5 per shield component once.

There really isn't any minumum, maximum combinations of components, other than the obvious like having only one hyperdrive or command centre or targetting component. Though I guess you can have more than one hyperdrive you you really hate the idea of your ships being damaged and not hyperdriving away.

As for optimum designs, that really depends on your specific preferences. Tell us your preferences and we can give you advice. Most people here seem to prefer the roleplaying style as opposed to the efficiency style anyhow. If you want to design the most effective combat ship, the space allocated to weapons and defence should be divided equally. Or if you want to be more exact, the space allocated towards weapons and their energy needs and defence.

Things you may not figure out in terms of design. Spaceports on colonised planets do not need cargobays as resources are stored on the planets they are in.
All spaceports demand resources to store them. Small I think is 300 of each. Medium is 2000 of each. Large demands and stores everything else.
Medical and Recreational Centres in spaceports increases happiness of the colony they are on. You only need one of each.
Medical centres are recommended to regain troop strength in ships that has Troop Storage.

Mainly, just read the components part of the galactopedia.

I'll throw in a few related tips.

Only use Energy Collectors on designs that will be stationary. For example, every station should have enough energy collectors to meet or exceed static energy usage. If you have a fleet you will be controlling manually, or one that is set to defend a certain point and thus won't be moving all that much, make sure you give them collectors. However do not give collectors to freighters, passenger ships, automated escorts, etc as those will be in transit most of the time. Since energy collectors use Chromium, use them sparingly. Don't slap them on everything (unless you have an abundance of Chromium which is somewhat rare).

Resort Bases require at least one passenger compartment to function properly. This requirement isn't listed in the design screen yet, but should be when the next patch is released.

When you've done some research into reactor tech, it's recommended to switch your military over to fusion reactors so they'll use Hydrogen instead of Caslon as fuel. This is especially important as you expand, since the private sector will continue to build ships, refuel them etc and you don't want to be competing for fuel.

Always check the component summaries in the design screen so you can figure out what resources will be needed before you mass produce something (mining station, warship, freighter etc). If I recall correctly, one of the energy torpedo techs requires Chromium, so unless you have an abundance you probably shouldn't outfit a warship with a bunch of those, otherwise your economy could grind to a halt when you run out of Chromium.

I highly recommend turning off auto-design for ALL ships. It sucks when you research a new reactor and the private sector decides to retrofit every private ship with that reactor, and so on. It's much less of a headache if you start out designing everything manually (I just start with my empire's default ships and modify them as I see fit).

Similarly, do not upgrade private designs too often, otherwise the private sector will be in a constant state of retrofit and thus constantly draining your resources. Some players do this on purpose, because even though it might drain resources, a lot of people see it as an exploit to get some quick spaceport income. I tend to upgrade private designs only after I've unlocked a handful of useful tech (ie small to standard fuel cell & storage, along with a more efficient hyperdrive, better shields, etc; I wait until I can bundle them together).

And try not to go too crazy designing ships. It's temping to get everything to the maximum ship/base size, but it's a balancing act. Make your primary warships the biggest and best if you like, but don't go overboard with other designs. If you give your freighters a fuel range of 20.00 sectors when your colonies are within 2 sectors of each other, prepare for occasional fuel shortages if a group of them decide to refuel together at the same spot.

Here is a good thread to read and extend: Post your optimal base/ship design tips and why!?!

ORIGINAL: zenkmander

When you've done some research into reactor tech, it's recommended to switch your military over to fusion reactors so they'll use Hydrogen instead of Caslon as fuel. This is especially important as you expand, since the private sector will continue to build ships, refuel them etc and you don't want to be competing for fuel.

I would disagree with this advice. I find it rare that you would not have enough supply and fuel stored to make switching to another fuel source worthwhile. Not to mention that by switching to fuel efficient Hydrogen reactors instead of energy/space efficient Caslon, you are making your personally designed military ships more fuel efficient at the expense of being militarily efficient.

ORIGINAL: zenkmanderAlways check the component summaries in the design screen so you can figure out what resources will be needed before you mass produce something (mining station, warship, freighter etc). If I recall correctly, one of the energy torpedo techs requires Chromium, so unless you have an abundance you probably shouldn't outfit a warship with a bunch of those, otherwise your economy could grind to a halt when you run out of Chromium.

This is fairly important, and is often a stumbling block of newer players. I always check for supply of Carbon Fibre, Chromium and Polymer in particular, stored by that space port, before selecting the amount of ships to build.

ORIGINAL: Plant
I would disagree with this advice. I find it rare that you would not have enough supply and fuel stored to make switching to another fuel source worthwhile. Not to mention that by switching to fuel efficient Hydrogen reactors instead of energy/space efficient Caslon, you are making your personally designed military ships more fuel efficient at the expense of being militarily efficient.

That's a very good point, I may have to redesign to take advantage of that. My particular predicament (which prompted the recommendation) was a somewhat difficult starting position for my empire. I found that I was running into Caslon shortages fairly early on, forcing my fleets to travel farther to reach a refueling point that had not been emptied by the private sector. I decided to get the final Fission Reactor tech and the starting Fusion tech, and switch my military over to hydrogen; a quick band-aid to the problem at hand. But I suppose my advice is relative and depends highly on starting settings, luck of the draw, gameplay, etc.

I'll look into the reactor numbers now. Would you recommend switching the private sector to Fusion? If so, at what point would that be considered worth it?

ORIGINAL: Plant
I find it rare that you would not have enough supply and fuel stored to make switching to another fuel source worthwhile.

This depends on how you play.

I find it essential in the later part of the early game. I always have fuel shortages if I don't use more than one fuel source, as I build a large early fleet of exploration ships and shortly thereafter pirate extermination fleets.

That said, later on, when fuel is abundant, I agree.

ORIGINAL: Plant
Not to mention that by switching to fuel efficient Hydrogen reactors instead of energy/space efficient Caslon, you are making your personally designed military ships more fuel efficient at the expense of being militarily efficient.

I normally play Quameno and so put Novacore reactors on my state ships.

Of course it depends on how you play. Everything depends on how you play. But inappropriate advice for a new player is still inappropriate advice for a new player.
Does your fuel shortage happen to coincide with the specific time frame where your tech happens to be where the tech splits up before it rejoins?

So what if you put race specific reactors on your state ships?

Afterall it during early game that you will face fuel shortages, when the reactor tech splits up is entirely dependent of your choice of tech and tech rate. If you advice to be Quameno race and purely have Energy and Construction research labs and make a beeline towards not only your race specific technolgy, but also the alternate quantum reactor technology, you are no longer advising but proposing a very specific playstyle dependent on race.


Yeah Zenkmander, it makes sense to design the private ships to Fusion Reactors, if you have the technology to do so. Still, you can just as easily make do not doing so, as long as you don't have fuel shortages problems.

Fuel shortages are not rare. It is important for new players to be aware of alternate fuel sources, particularly when they learn how to expand more quickly.

By the time you have the tech to have alternate fuel for reactors, you should no longer have fuel shortages.
Unless as apparently you play a very specific style where you research reactors 5 times faster than normal.
And play Quameno where you have that alternate fuel reactor almost straight away.

Like I said, you are no longer advising ship design, you are proposing your very specific game style.

Let's not mix topics. My comments on Quameno Novacore were only relevant to your comment on efficiency.

Let's focus on the need to use more than one fuel type.

When I first started playing, I played a variety of races, and again fuel shortages were not rare.

The root cause of the fuel shortages early was building a lot of exploration ships then having that followed by fleet building and defence ships for invaded independents. I expect a lot of new players will try variations of this and run into fuel shortages.

I quickly learned research to Hydrogen Reactors had a lot of value (soon after hyperdrive) to optimise expansion rate.

Will you two just get a room

Darkspire

Thank you all of your input. Lots of great suggestions.

Most of what I have been learning is from watching videos by Larry Monte. He does a ship redesign at almost end of each of his videos.

Good points on fuel. What is the best screen to see all of the available current resources? When I look at the colony screen, I can see quantity and reserves. Not sure if these are my total inventories or not.

Also, what is really happening when some of my mines stop due to lack of resources? However when I check my resources on the colony page, I have plenty in stock. Is it because resources are used to actually mine more resources and a delivery ship has not delivered the needed materials? A bit confused here.

The Empire Planner is the best screen to see overall stock of resources in your empire, but don't pay too much attention to the Unfulfilled Resources; this gives you a general idea of your empire's demand, but the actual number it displays can be wonky sometimes. The cargo tab on the colony screen is just the stock on that planet of course.

When your mines stop, there are a few possibilities:
1) They ran out of fuel and have no energy collectors (which can power the extractors by themselves as long as Energy Collection = Static Energy Usage in the mining station design detail).
2) If you're getting a notification that your mines are lacking resources, this could mean they're trying to retrofit but don't have the necessary resources to do so; private freighters will deliver them, but it can take a long time based on how clogged your supply line is.

Please note that resources are not 'universal'; this means that they actually have to be transported to locations, they don't just apply across your whole empire. The resources you see on the colony page are ONLY at that colony, nowhere else.

Resources are not used to mine more resources, unless of course your mine runs out of fuel and has no passive energy collection.

Thanks again guys. A few more questions.

Can resources run out or be depleted in the universe?

My second question is about obsolete ship designs. I just started a new pre-warp game and everything I create a new ship design or upgrade the previous one, I get a new line with two of the same ship types. One of them is marked obsolete and I cannot delete it since it is in use. I am not sure what happened here but it was not doing this in my previous game. I would go to manual upgrade and make changes and save the version as the next Mk..

Is the game pulling in designs from my previous game? How can I just over-write the old design and upgrade it?

Resource sources can occasionally get depleted on colonies, but resources that are mined by stations don't run out.

The design screen is showing the obsolete design because you have the 'Show all designs' selected in the dropdown menu near the top left. It wasn't doing it in previous games because you probably had the 'Show latest designs' selected then. When you upgrade a design, the previous design is automatically made obsolete; that's how it should be. You don't need to delete any designs really, just select a different viewing option like 'show latest' or 'show non-obsolete only'.

Every empire has default designs, so when you start a game you'll see those default designs. If you capture/board a ship from a pirate faction, a different empire, or one of the abandoned ones that your explorers find, that ship's design will show up in the design screen as well.

You overwrite old designs by manually upgrading (or auto upgrade if you wish, but most prefer manual for more control). When you manually upgrade a design and save the new version (Mk1 to Mk2 for example), Mk1 is set to obsolete and Mk2 is obviously the upgraded design.

However, if you upgrade the design of a military ship, and you have manual control over the military, then YOU will need to order the ship(s) to then RETROFIT to the latest design. Just think of the design screen as a library of blueprints, and of course blueprints aren't the ships themselves.

Private ships/bases (like freighters, mining ships, mining stations etc) automatically retrofit; think of the private sector as a separate AI. It's part of your empire, but you have no direct control over it. So that's why you need to be careful when upgrading private ship/base designs, because the private sector will automatically retrofit to meet those new blueprints; if you upgrade their designs too much, you could burn through your empire's stocks of resources and freeze your supply line while their ships retrofit.

This game is a little complicated at first, but once you get used to the way it works it's actually pretty intuitive.