Matrix Games Forums

Ok I’ve searched around for the info, and it’s probably out there somewhere, but please be patient this game is quite in depth and sometimes finding that nugget of information is difficult.

I’m starting as a pre-warp to get a handle on some of the basic mechanics, and still, what I understand, is called “early game”.

Question: Research Stations: To increase my capacity up to my potential, does it make sense to build a research station at every planet in my starter system (and then when I find more systems, slowly destroy the ones in my ‘home’ system to build them at planets with good research bonuses?)

Building ships: So I queue up 10 of my “PT-109” designs and let them build at my home spaceport. When they are completed, it’s difficult to select one and give it orders because my cursor usually changes to a “patrol” or “escort” symbol, and I want to simply add it to my “1st Fleet”. Is there an easy way to select and give orders -other than patrol/escort- rather than searching for that one magic pixel on the screen where I can right-click and get the menu for the ship?

Early-Mid-Late Game: In DW, what do forumites consider to be the typical “barrier” to know when you’ve gone from early game to mid game to late game. I.e. I’m playing pre-warp, obviously at start is the early game…. Does the change to “mid game” come once I’ve researched warp and travelled to another system, does the early to mid-game barrier come later (i.e. once I have xxx colonies or xxx tech researched). Same for the mid-to-late game…. What would occur/happen to know I’ve made it to “late game” (all tech researched, most of the empire automated, ???)

Sometimes I see a bunch of mining ships standing around my home port doing nothing, but there are plenty of planets to mine from. What should I look at to see “why” my miner ships are standing still. They all have plenty of fuel. How do I see if their cargo holds are full (perhaps they are waiting for an open dock on colony or home space port)? Can the colony take any amount of resourced the mining ships return with – or does all mined cargo have to be held on the space port? How do I check spaceport cargo holds (or any ships holds for that matter) to see if they are full?

What’s a good number of cargo holds to put on a mining station? I think I figured out that if the planet is further away from the colony, you want more cargo holds.
Is there a limit to the number of private ships that can be built? Does the game build xxx number of private ships for each colony?
In early game, still stuck in home system, should I build a mining station at every planet and then as I expand to other systems, destroy them (rather than maintain them) as I find better planets to mine in other systems?

How do I “park” a ship so that it doesn’t burn fuel? For example – I build 5 explorer ships to scout my system. Once I’ve scouted everything in my home system, I want to “park” them at a space dock so they don’t fly around and waste fuel. Is there a command I can give to do that?

As I upgrade in tech, do certain things automatically upgrade on my ships? For example – the resource scanner. First tech gives a range of 500, er, units. 2nd tech gives a much greater range. If I have an explorer ship out and about when I hit that new tech, does the scanner upgrade “on the spot”? IIRC the upgraded scanner isn’t a “different component” in the ship design screen but I may be wrong as I’m at work.

If I have a ship on a mission (say, for example, fly to Planet X on the other side of the solar system) and a new tech is researched, and I create an upgraded design for that ship, and I have “automatic” retrofit/upgrade turned “on”… will my ship complete its mission and then return, or will it cancel its mission to return and upgrade/retrofit.


Yeah I realize these answers are probably out there somewhere. Heck I’ve probably read the answers a few times… but this game (like all Matrix Games) throws an awful lot at you at the very beginning.

Research stations:

No, you need quite a few research labs, but not a whole lot. You need the total amount of lab points (unmodified number seen in the research screen for the 3 branches) to be higher or equal than the research potential (on the right with red background).

See part 2 of the first answer here: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3170698

Assigning new ships to fleet:

One way to do it: Build your ships when paused. Head to the ship list, you should find your latest build at the very top (or bottom?). Click the first, shift-flick the last to select all the new ones. Then use the fleet pulldown to assign them to the correct fleet.

Get used to the ship list. You can filter by type, and sort by various numbers, giving hints about for instance "which destroyers are not yet retrofitted with new weapons?". They will stick out among the destroyers if sorted by firepower. And if you automate all your troop transports, those with order "none" will be full, while those traveling around are either refueling or heading off somewhere to pick up more.

Early-Mid-Late Game

There are no definitions here.

I would say that early game is over when I have a few colonies at near max population (giving high income) and I can afford a number of large battle fleets. In a pre game start, the mid game starts when I am significantly stronger than the pirates, and can quite easily bust their spaceports as I find them.

Late game would in my mind begin when the whole galaxy is settled, and there are lots, and lots of "high population" colonies all over.

Idle miners

It is impossible to know why they are idle. In the expansion planner you can see what is a high priority and what you lack stores of. I assume them being idle means they do not feel a need to mine, that is, if you have any low stores, you lack available sources.

Or it could just be that the AI forgets to send them away for a while...

The colony's bases (spaceport and any other) share cargo with the colony. Which does not have any limits.
If you open the colony/spaceport/ship in the colony/ship list (double click on the selection panel with it selected), you see some tabs in the lower left. One of them are "cargo". You see total and reserved amounts, if there is no free cargo (not reserved), you got a shortage.

Civilian designs

The default cargo holds are OK. If you want a gas mine to function as a refueling stop for fleets, you may want to give some extra cargo space and also more docking ports. If you ever have a shortage that makes the AI very eager to pick up the resource mined, very high cargo is not needed, since freighters would be arriving all the time to pick up what is there. And if it is not needed, it will just sit mostly full even if very high cargo capacity.

I think you got the right idea about ship numbers. Ships for colonies, probably with some modifier about overall economy numbers.

Parking ships

Have them with "no command". If they sit "at a planet" they will follow the planet around (in the gravity well). To achieve this you typically do not automate them, although if the galaxy is all explored and you are not at war, you will see your exploration ships sit idle even if automated.

Tech upgrades

Are indeed "automatic" and instant as long as it is still the same component. An improved maxos blaster works the moment it is researched, but when you research a new type of weapon you have to retrofit to get it. The scanner is the same component, so no action needed.

Automatic retrofit/upgrade

These settings are about designs. Whether the AI should automatically replace the design or not, and whether ships using the design should retrofit on "group orders" or not (I mix up which is which). So if you have the standard frigates, and a very special one, you can turn these off for the special frigate. If you tell the fleet of all your frigates to retrofit, the "special frigate" will not swap to the newest frigate design (since retrofit/upgrade is off).

To actually swap designs, the ship needs to get the retrofit order. The AI will give it if all is automated, and if you have construction on Suggest your will get the suggestion to "retrofit all ships and bases". Apart from that, manual ships retrofit when you tell them to.

As far as I know, the AI will never, ever cancel an order to retrofit. So in your example the ship would fly to the other side of the galaxy, and when arriving there, if automated, the AI may decide that the next mission should be "retrofit". You can of course cancel an order at any time you want.

As for AI to cancel orders, the only things I believe leads to that are "under attack" and "short of fuel". Which looks quite funny when a fleet heads in to refuel at a colony that is under attack, while they still have 1/3rd a tank of fuel or something like that.

Question: Research Stations: To increase my capacity up to my potential, does it make sense to build a research station at every planet in my starter system (and then when I find more systems, slowly destroy the ones in my ‘home’ system to build them at planets with good research bonuses?)

It does not make sense to do this, for several reasons. Firstly, there is a very high cost in travel time in sending construction ships out to each world to build research stations. Secondly, the homeworld can build as many research stations over itself as you want, if you need to increase lab capacity to match empire potential, which leaves the construction ships free for other projects; more importantly, the homeworld can also build all the research stations you'll need much more quickly than the construction ships will, if you're sending the construction ships any further than maybe the homeworld's moon or the gas giant that the homeworld orbits. Thirdly, research stations necessary to reach empire potential are relatively valuable pieces of infrastructure, particularly early on when you're trying to get the basic techs completed, and scattering them all over the system makes it much more difficult to protect them than keeping them in one place does. Fourthly, it can make sense to put most of the labs you need at the start of the game onto the home space port or a single big research station at the homeworld, as it reduces the costs you'll incur for all the redundant components you'd need with multiple research stations. Fifthly, research stations at the homeworld can draw fuel and other resources directly from the homeworld stockpiles rather than requiring a freighter to deliver the resources to the station, which is convenient for upgrading the stations and keeping them capable of fighting off attacking pirate vessels (assuming you bother to arm the stations, which isn't strictly necessary).

Building ships: So I queue up 10 of my “PT-109” designs and let them build at my home spaceport. When they are completed, it’s difficult to select one and give it orders because my cursor usually changes to a “patrol” or “escort” symbol, and I want to simply add it to my “1st Fleet”. Is there an easy way to select and give orders -other than patrol/escort- rather than searching for that one magic pixel on the screen where I can right-click and get the menu for the ship?

One of the buttons - the one with a single ship icon - at the top of the screen opens a list of all your ships and bases. Open that menu, set the filter at the top of the menu to "military ships," and select the ship(s) you want to add to a fleet from the list. Once you have the ship(s) you want to add to a fleet selected, click the dropdown list labelled "fleet" just below the dropdown menu and select an entry in that list to add the ship(s) to a fleet.

I would further suggest that this is best done immediately after you order construction; the default sort order (which can be restored by clicking on the far-left column header and refreshing the list, say by changing filters) is oldest ships first, so new construction will appear at the bottom of the list.

Early-Mid-Late Game: In DW, what do forumites consider to be the typical “barrier” to know when you’ve gone from early game to mid game to late game. I.e. I’m playing pre-warp, obviously at start is the early game…. Does the change to “mid game” come once I’ve researched warp and travelled to another system, does the early to mid-game barrier come later (i.e. once I have xxx colonies or xxx tech researched). Same for the mid-to-late game…. What would occur/happen to know I’ve made it to “late game” (all tech researched, most of the empire automated, ???)

There are a number of ways in which you could demarcate the early and mid games.

If going by technology, I would suggest that a "mid-game" empire should have at least one of the midgame hyperdrives (Equinox, Kaldos, Calista-Dal), at least one mid-game primary weapon (Shatterforce Laser, Impact Assault Blaster, Phaser Cannon, Phaser Lance, Velocity Shard, Shockwave Torpedo, Concussion Missile II, Heavy Railgun II, or similar tier tech), construction size ~500, standard armor, Fusion or Quantum reactors, Corvidian III or Deucalios or Talassos shields, support size 85, Colonization, Standard Troop/Passenger/Cargo Compartments, and energy collectors, at a minimum. Target Tracking, Fleet Targeting, Countermeasures, Fleet Countermeasures, Damage Control, HyperDeny, dedicated carriers, and at least some of the special-purpose weaponry (ion cannons, tractor beams, graviton beams, area weapons, bombardment weapons) and defenses (ion defense, point defense) should probably also be available for an empire that's really in the midgame, but I wouldn't consider these to be absolutely essential. Late-game empires should have at least one of the late-game primary weapons (Titan Beams, Phaser Lances, Plasma Thunderbolts, Assault Missiles, Massive Railguns), Torrent Drives, HyperFusion Reactors, construction size ~1000, Meridian Shields, Repair Bots, and HyperDeny, at a minimum. Basically, if judging by technology, break the tech tree into thirds moving from left to right, and the transitions come when the techs for the components you most use reach the middle and then the final third of the tech tree.

If going by game state, I would suggest that transition between early and mid game is roughly when your primary external threat shifts from piracy to other empires. The transition to late-game when going by game state is less clear, but you should by that point have a decent number of developed, high-population colonies, relatively little room left to expand without engaging in warfare with another empire, and little or none of the galaxy left to explore.

Sometimes I see a bunch of mining ships standing around my home port doing nothing, but there are plenty of planets to mine from. What should I look at to see “why” my miner ships are standing still. They all have plenty of fuel.

The only reason that I am aware of for a mining ship to be idle is that the computer does not perceive a need for any resources which the mining ship could collect.

How do I see if their cargo holds are full (perhaps they are waiting for an open dock on colony or home space port)?
...
How do I check spaceport cargo holds (or any ships holds for that matter) to see if they are full?

No mining ship with a full cargo bay should ever be idle, as a mining ship with a full cargo bay should be moving towards the nearest spaceport to drop the resources that it has collected off; if you happen to find such a ship, it is likely that you have encountered a bug. Nevertheless, if you want to check on the mining ship's cargo, select the mining ship and double-click on the selection detail panel in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, and select the tab that says "Cargo" in the menu which opens up. Alternatively, you could open the Ships and Bases list, select the ship from the list, and look at the tab labelled "Cargo." Both of these methods also work for freighters, stations, construction ships, resupply ships, and military vessels, if you want to inspect their cargo. To check a colony's resource stockpiles, select the colony, double-click the selection details panel, and look at the "Cargo" tab, or select the colony from the Colonies menu (button with a planet icon in the upper center portion of the main window) and look at the "Cargo" tab, or select the colony from the Construction Yards menu (button with a robotic arm icon in the upper center portion of the main window) and look at the cargo tab (note that construction ships, spaceports, and anything else you have that has a construction yard will be listed in the Construction Yards menu, so you can also use this menu to find out about their cargoes).

Ships waiting to dock at a spaceport or colony should not be listed as idle; they will have a "deliver {resource} to colony" order or something like that listed just under the ship name in the selection details panel.

Can the colony take any amount of resourced the mining ships return with – or does all mined cargo have to be held on the space port?

Any space station built over a colony owned by the same empire uses the colony's cargo bays instead of its own, and a colony has effectively-unlimited cargo capacity.

What’s a good number of cargo holds to put on a mining station? I think I figured out that if the planet is further away from the colony, you want more cargo holds.

I generally put about 20 or 30 cargo bays onto a mining station if I design it myself, but I find that the designs that the computer generates from the templates are typically good enough, so I rarely bother. The design templates call for 20 cargo bays.

Note that if you intend to use a gas mining station as a refueling point, it is a good idea for the gas mining station to have at least enough cargo capacity to completely fill the tanks of all the ships in the largest fleet you're using and enough docking bays to refuel a significant fraction of the ships in the fleet simultaneously (note that "a significant fraction" is not a constant fraction for all fleet sizes; with fleets of no more than, say, 15 or 20 ships, it might be best to have as many docking bays as you have ships in a fleet, but that becomes less and less practical the larger your fleets are).

How do I “park” a ship so that it doesn’t burn fuel? For example – I build 5 explorer ships to scout my system. Once I’ve scouted everything in my home system, I want to “park” them at a space dock so they don’t fly around and waste fuel. Is there a command I can give to do that?

Ships which are idle do not burn fuel unless they lack energy collectors, and all missions other than the "patrol" mission will leave ships in an idle state upon completion. If the ships are automated, or if certain conditions are met (e.g. a hostile enters the system and the ship has "flee when enemy military sighted," or the ship is a warship set to engage system targets), the computer may issue orders to idle ships which causes the vessels to leave the idle state.

If I have a ship on a mission (say, for example, fly to Planet X on the other side of the solar system) and a new tech is researched, and I create an upgraded design for that ship, and I have “automatic” retrofit/upgrade turned “on”… will my ship complete its mission and then return, or will it cancel its mission to return and upgrade/retrofit.

Automatically-issued retrofit orders are put at the end of the ship's order queue. If it is currently on a mission, it will complete that mission before moving on to the retrofit.

Thanks for all the great answers. I'm sure I'll have more later - once I get into the infantry and colonization portion of the game.

"Secondly, the homeworld can build as many research stations over itself as you want, if you need to increase lab capacity to match empire potential, which leaves the construction ships free for other projects; more importantly, the homeworld can also build all the research stations you'll need much more quickly than the construction ships will, if you're sending the construction ships any further than maybe the homeworld's moon or the gas giant that the homeworld orbits. "

I didn't know you could build as many research stations above a planet as you wanted, for some reason I thought you could only build 1 per planet. most likely that belief comes from other games where there's a limitation of 1 per city/colony/etc.

That being said, since I'm still early tech, I can't build a "super research station" with "300 labs" as the size is too large for me to construct, so I'll have to stick with multiple small stations for the time being.

That being said, since I'm still early tech, I can't build a "super research station" with "300 labs" as the size is too large for me to construct, so I'll have to stick with multiple small stations for the time being.

Colonies ignore the size limit when constructing stations. If you want a research station with 6000 size in labs and can afford to build such, you can do it so long as it's built by a colony. I can't say I'd actually advise making such a station even if your empire has the research potential to make use of it, but if you wanted to do so you could.

"Colonies ignore the size limit when constructing stations." That's a good tidbit of info that I know I read, but it didn't register at the time. Now it does. Explains why my colony can build a Large Space Port with size 1,000,000,000. Clears up some confusion I had in "why was I able to build a SSP at Terra Firma, but can't at this planet??? I didn't do anything to the design, they are the same size. WTF"


Stupid Noob Mistakes: Got Warp. Updated three of my Explorer ships with Warp Drive. Zoomed out to watch the ships march across to three neighboring systems. Got there. Explored. Gave the ships orders to return. Promply ran out of fuel on the way back home. By this time I had researched the Gerax Drive. Put them (and a bunch of fuel cells) on my construction ships. Gave orders for my Construction ships to head to these systems and build gas mines on the gas planets. They built the mines. Gave them orders to return to Terra Firma. On their way home, the Construction ships flew by the reduced speed Explorer ships. “Pleasantries” were exchanged. Memo to self – don’t send ships out without enough fuel.

Now I’m off to figure out Refuel and Resupply ships. I saw some threads on it and skimmed over them – figuring that I’ll learn about it when I get to it. And now I’m to it.

Question – will mining stations automatically upgrade “by themselves”? Or, for them to upgrade, do civvies ships first need to bring resources to them (without any input from me), or, for a mining station to upgrade, do I need to have construction ships fly there and upgrade it?

Stations will upgrade themselves.
When you build a station, the constructor leaves all the leftover materials at the station so it has materials for an upgrade. If the station is short of anything, freighters will be dispatched to bring it to them. Constructors are not involved in the upgrade.

Remember to check that the upgrade setting is "Automatic" for the design.

I watched a lot of your tutorial vids last week. Thanks! Great Stuff there RemoteLeg.

Thank you! [:)]

How big is the event horizon of a black hole?

Yup, built a research station next to a black hole. Then watched it get sucked into the black hole, followed shortly thereafter by the construction ship that built the research station.

Obvious question - is there a way I can tell how far the black hole's event horizon extends, how far it's gravity well extends so my next attempt doesn't end up inside the hole?

Also - how far away should I build a resort to a black hole (I want to do so for immersion purposes) so that the passenger ships don't come out of hyperdrive at a point "inside" the event horizon and/or gravity well?

Man, your gonna have to make your best guess. Zoom in close and then make your best guess. I have never had that happen before....GP

Wow. I never saw that either. Very interesting though.

Zoom out. Right click black hole for build options. Builds bases at a safe distance every time.

To be fair, when I gave orders to build the Research Station at the Black hole, I was in the "sector" view. Then I saw a report that said "Research Station xxxx destroyed". Then I zoomed into that view, and watched my construction ship trying to escape. I wondered what would happen if I let it go and didn't give it warp orders... it got sucked in and destroyed.

Is there a range that you have to be "inside" to get the research bonus for a black hole? Because if that range is like 20, I"ll build my station at 19.99999999.

As was said: Zoom out, and the game places it just fine. Far out as in "you see many, many sectors of space". Just about anything in this game is easier done when zoomed very far out.

Like placing defensive bases around the colony, placing spaceports on top of the colony, selecting fleets, giving fleets attack or refuel orders, or pacing research bases at black holes.

Some very few things requires being close and personal (deploying resupply ships, and possibly unloading troops). And battles are much more exciting when watched from up close.

I’ve read through the guides on this one but not sure of the answer.

Lets say my Empire Research Potential is “200” and I have enough capacity and output to reach my total potential. If I “turn off” the research in the “Weapons” field, and “turn off” researching in the “Energy” field, will all of that potential then be used in researching whatever it is I’m researching in the “Hi-Tech” field?

I.e. Pre-Warp, I’m researching the Maxos Blaster tech, the “Scanner” tech, and the “Standard Fuel Cell” (one tech being researched in each field). I just discovered the Warp Field Precursor ruins. I switch “Scanner” to “Warp Field”. Will it research faster if I turn off researching the Maxos Blaster in Weapons and the Standard Fuel Cell and have all that research go to the Warp Field Precursor? Or, will Warp Field research at the same pace no matter what I do in the other tech trees?


Thanks for the answers so far Bingeling and everyone else.

Research is distributed proportional to your lab output (without modifiers).

So as long as you have enough energy labs, the full research output will go to your warp field precursors if you remove all high tech and weapon labs. You can also do like 100 weapon, 100 high tech and 200 energy to tweak the output a bit towards energy research.

A reason for not having a "whole lot more labs than required", is that it makes it easier to tweak outputs.

Thanks again!

Human Race – took over planet Sol, an independent colony that was, naturally, friendly to my race… and it instantly became one of my highest population planets.

Then I noticed a couple of Pirate Bases on the planet. Is there any way to remove them or destroy them? The colony is mine, and I’m not sure how to do it.

I’ve been playing as a very “non-aggressive, friendly to all empire”. I haven’t built anything that has any weapons on it, yet. All broken ships I’ve found and repaired get retired at a spaceport for the tech boost.

But in my opinion, I’m kinda losing out on half the game (eXploit and eXterminate). So I started up a new game as a Military Dictatorship, with enslave all non-human race policy, accept no protection pacts with pirates, and go on a warpath from the start. I called this game, “The Oppression”. The question will still remain, when I encounter a colony with a pirate base on it, how do I remove the pirate base?

I thought I read some threads that say “if you have ground troops at the colony/planet, click on the Pirate base and select attack” but when I click on the pirate base, it gives me no attack choice – it goes to the galactopedia.

To remove a pirate base go to the "facilities" tab of the planet view for that planet. Select the pirate base and click "attack".
Usually its a pretty quick battle if you've just finished invading the planet and still have lots of troops there.

To get rid of pirates, you need some troops. Then you go to the colony screen (double click the selection panel with the colony selected, or find it in the colony list). In the Facilities tab (I think) you should find an option to Attack the pirate structure. It seems I am a bit rusty when it comes to the details...

The "click on the pirate base" is probably in the facility tab on the colony screen.