Matrix Games Forums

I've picked this back up since universe was released and find myself a little confused on some of the things that happen during the game and hope someone can help out.

1st I have several times now found abandoned spaceports in asteroid belts and once investigated gain control of them. What's confusing is my constructers start going there for the supply run before building a station even though it doesn't have enough stocked items to complete the construction project often times flying right by homeworld to go there. Is it better to just scrap these stations as soon as they are claimed? Do they add anything positive to your empire?

2nd I am getting huge differences in my level vs the AI levels depending on the start. ie if I start prewarp when I start scouting and find other empires its virtually always "intimidated by your huge size and power" in the diplomacy screen but if I start a post warp game I usually find that I'm even or a bit behind in most areas. I think the pirates are the cause of this gap but wonder if anyone else has any ideas.

3rd and probably the most frustrating is starting a new game with everything random and there have been so many times I have had another one sometimes 2 empires within 1 sector of me. On a 10x10 there are 91 other sectors on the map that would be at least more than 1 away from my homeworld.

4th intel agents........... I have read on here how they are OP, well mine never succeed. I even had one that was a 95% chance get caught. Seems like, for me anyway, the odds are reversed.

thanks in advance for any insights[&o]

1st I have several times now found abandoned spaceports in asteroid belts and once investigated gain control of them. What's confusing is my constructers start going there for the supply run before building a station even though it doesn't have enough stocked items to complete the construction project often times flying right by homeworld to go there. Is it better to just scrap these stations as soon as they are claimed? Do they add anything positive to your empire?

I'm not certain, but constructors might be assigned to draw resources from the station closest to the project site rather than from the nearest station with an adequate amount of available resources.

As far as whether or not you keep it, well, that's up to you, but I like to scrap mine if they're well within my territory, and I like to sell them to foreign empires if they're within the foreign empire's territory. If they're in neutral territory, then I usually scrap it, though sometimes I hold onto it in the hopes of selling it in the future, using it as a monitoring station, or maybe getting enough freighters out to it for it to be useful as a fueling station, but if I'm using it as either of the latter two it needs to be in a good location, and I generally prefer to replace it with something that causes less issues with ship routing and mass construction orders (because while I might not care where in my empire my build order of 200 automated escorts or some such thing gets built, I do care that it actually gets built, and don't want half of it sitting in a stalled construction queue in empty space for years).

2nd I am getting huge differences in my level vs the AI levels depending on the start. ie if I start prewarp when I start scouting and find other empires its virtually always "intimidated by your huge size and power" in the diplomacy screen but if I start a post warp game I usually find that I'm even or a bit behind in most areas. I think the pirates are the cause of this gap but wonder if anyone else has any ideas.

The computer factions can have a lot of difficulty getting off the ground in a pre-warp start. Check out their information in the diplomacy settings or steal/trade for a territory map; if they're still on a single colony and don't have any mines outside their home system, there is a decent chance that they don't have Warp Bubble Generators yet, and you might want to give them a little 'push' using the game editor, or barrage them with gifts of cheap hyperdrive-equipped low-tech ships. You may even want to hold off on further expansion for a little while and go pirate hunting in the vicinity of the other factions to help them out a bit.

Another cause of this gap might be if you stacked up Energy Research Stations at your homeworld or in your home system, or built a lot of energy labs on your home spaceport, and rushed out Warp Bubbles and Gerax Hyperdrives, had decent luck finding nearby independent colonies to invade, and pushed colonization tech out quickly after getting hyperdrives. The computer isn't really as good at the game when it doesn't start out with these early critical technologies, and especially if you pick a species with a research bonus you can easily be well ahead of your competitors fairly early in the game if you are focusing the labs into one or two good areas. It also won't help your opponents if you set your home system quality to one of the higher settings, as this will help you be relatively rich early on.

3rd and probably the most frustrating is starting a new game with everything random and there have been so many times I have had another one sometimes 2 empires within 1 sector of me. On a 10x10 there are 91 other sectors on the map that would be at least more than 1 away from my homeworld.

Can't really help you here. Maybe try a more evenly distributed star map? Use the manual opponents settings and set the proximity of most or all of your opponents to distant?

4th intel agents........... I have read on here how they are OP, well mine never succeed. I even had one that was a 95% chance get caught. Seems like, for me anyway, the odds are reversed.

Intelligence agents are highly luck-dependent, especially in regards to whether or not your opponents have a good counter-intelligence agent. I'd recommend trying the Ketarov or one of the other factions that have espionage bonuses or good starting intelligence agents if you want to see why intelligence agents are sometimes called overpowered. With Ketarov in particular, it can often feel like the majority of your research comes from your intelligence agents. But there's always the chance for bad luck, particularly if one of the other factions gets lucky and has a good counter-intelligence agent actually doing counter-intelligence missions. There's also some suggestion that longer missions may be more risky than shorter missions, despite the higher success chance listed during mission selection. More opportunity to get caught, essentially.

Concealment seems to help with remaining undetected in all mission types, and is supposed to be the skill for Deep Cover assignments. Otherwise, you'll want espionage for stealing research and maps, and psyops for rebellions and revolutions. It should be fairly obvious which missions you want sabotage and assassination for, though as long as you don't mind the guaranteed relations penalty, a fleet is generally a more reliable way to blow up a station and is less of a risk for a potentially-valuable asset.