A beginner's primer

[EricLarsen]

I wrote this up for a friend who just bought the game and figured it might come in handy for other new beginners.

While the game looks somewhat simple from the outside there's lots of stuff to do so here's a little quickie primer on what's up in SUDG.

First off there's a folder called "Manuals" in the SUDG folder that contains the manuals. There's a really good manual in there, about 97 pages long, that you should print out. Read it carefully as it contains many valuable hints to be taken seriously. There's also a file in the SUDG downloads section of the Matrix forums that contains a very nice color rendition of the tech tree which can be printed out and read. That is very useful for easily seeing what leads to what. My first game I didn't bother researching rams, only to find out that that's why I never saw assualt pods.

Don't trust all the automations! Don't even bother with the spy automation as that really doesn't work past the first alien world and this part of the game is actually a lot of fun to manually play with. Build an informant first, and then a spy for every alien world you encounter and try to do it quickly. When you're in the intelligence screen you be able to send them on missions. There's some numbers on the left that will tell you the percentage chance of getting caught. Wait until those numbers go down to the mid-to-low teens before sending a spy on a mission. Stealing money is one of the least risky and most rewarding as well as sabotage. I really like espionage even though it usually gets your spies caught because you can steal tech and sometimes your spies get you just what you're into researching. But it's lots of fun to spy on some race while their security is low and then right after your spy gets some goodies the alien security shoots through the roof. Not to worry as it will grow lax again. Make sure to build security on your worlds early on, I'll explain later.

Now to production. Unfortunately they made production/research an all-or-nothing adventure. You get your world as the focus world by selecting it from the menu. Once it's selected you can then select the production button with the hammer on it. That brings up your production menu for that world. In the bottom box you'll see what's already built on the world and on the top what's in the current production queue. When you select the "Add" button in the middle right another menu overlays the top current production queue with the item queue. Then you select the item you want to build and now all you have to do is wait. You can have up to 6 items in the build queue. There are two things that may hinder production of an item, lack of money and lack of placement slots on the world. You only need to build stuff for the world or ships, but not ship components.

When you select to build a ship you'll get the basic "hull" and then you have to tell it how you want it configured and it will then spend some time in spacedock while the spacedock produces the goodies. This is one type of production that does not hinder research. But when you have stuff in your world's build queue then your world doesn't research. Early on when you only have one world that's a tough call for balancing production and research.

Research is another fun topic. Lots of cool stuff to research. I tend to go for computers and drives first, then labs and informants and spies, and then my weapons. Sometimes I'll mix weapons along with the labs and spies. I usually go for beams first, then standoffs, and then waves. It's really important to establish your weapons lines fast and in the order you want them in. Sometimes the aliens like to play a little joke on you by giving you a gift, usually stating something about it being the useless kind. What they do is give you beginning weapon tech in some line in hopes you haven't established the weapons pecking order yet and they toss you a little poison pill by making their gift weapon line come before weapons lines you want. The first weapons line is penalty free, but each succeeding weapons line incurs further research penalties. So what they're trying to do is make the weapons you really want to research more expensive by slipping you a mickey. But don't forget to keep upgrading your freighters early on. They are vital to maximizing your take from your resource routes.

Staffing your worlds and ships is also something you want to manually control. When you select a world or ship there's this button with a person, arms and legs outstretched, that allows you to select the staffing perentages. At first you've got lots of scientists and engineers and that's good for a while. But before you run into the aliens you want to start setting up some security, maybe 10% and some navy around 5%. This will come in handy when the aliens find your world and start sending spies to steal your money. You may want to change the percentages a bit as you may know you're not going to need production from that world for a while and you may want to switch some engineers to scientists to speed up research. But each switch costs $5 per person so don't go wild here early. Security on your homeworld should be the highest as that's where you'll keep your wisdom artifacts. The aliens will go after these valuable commodities if you have more than they do and you really have to pump up the security to keep the wisdom artifacts safe in your hands until you've gotten the singularity age laboratory. Then they could steal all of them and you'll still stay in your new age.

Diplomacy is also fun, but also it can be fraught with backstabbing and double dealing. I've found that the Somu are the race to find early on, and if they're of the same philosophy as you then you can wheel and deal this alien into your federation. You have to be careful not to bug them too much, unless you're giving them a gift. Always be prepared to give them $500 when you want to offer a gift. Sometimes a star system they covet will appear as a selection but you want to hold off on giving them a world or good tech until they're really close to federating with you and usually it's those types of gifts that will finally sway them into your corner for good. Don't trust the Mirrshi, dang that's a tough one for me to say since they're big cats and I love kitties. Even though they're of the same philosophy I have found that no matter how much you bribe them they will always backslide on their liking of you and will always end up stabbing you in the back. Keep a constant eye on that diplomacy screen because you want to know when the aliens start trying to spend money to cause unrest amongst your population. If you see your unrest go up start spending money to keep it down. Same goes for an ally that you're trying to federate, don't let the other aliens upset the apple cart by causing unrest with your new pals.

Pirates are another fun feature. I started out trying to fund pirates and found that the more I spent the more pirates I was fighting and the better they were equipped. Talk about your two-edged sword that cuts both victim and attacker! I let the aliens fund the pirates and I just use the pirates for target practice to train my ship crews for battle. Early on in the game though it actually pays to talk to them and let them go as they will provide you with some useful info on your alien enemies. When you get the message you're about to go into battle with a pirate you can then hit the communications button and hail them. Always use the line that says you'l let them go if they tell you something useful. Usually they'll give you the layout of some alien's worlds and resource routes. But that also cuts both ways because that causes first contact to happen and they find out about you too. So don't ask about aliens until you're ready to learn about them and are ready for them to learn about you, ie until you've got security on your world and can build spies.

The freighter automation is good, but it's slow to pick up new worlds sometimes. I like doing this manually myself. I also think that the world governor does the world builds and sometimes this can be a problem when you're into research and the governor all of a sudden decides to go on a building spree. In one game I found I had 2 transwarp drives on my world and I'm certain I didn't build them. The real bummer was that that world got attacked (and wiped out) and I couldn't scoot my world out of danger with those transwarp drives.<ROFL> You really want to keep an eye on worlds that come out of turmoil and are ready for some player to pick up, I usually like to watch this carefully myself so that the instant I see a world become available I pounce on it and put a freighter into production. I also saw that by not using this automation I don't have superfluous stuff built on my worlds at the most inopportune times.

Colonizing is crucial. I ignored this the first two games and I lost each one. The game I did a good job on it I'm winning handily. First you have the program generate a list in the planets screen. I like to hone my selection to type 1 or 2 worlds and huge and very large worlds. I like to use a gunboat as I can free up two component slots and still have enough for shields and weapons. I cancel that ship's mission and then I can select the planet I want to colonize from the list and at the bottom it will usually ask me if I want that gunboat I freed up to do the job for me. In my last game I had less than 20 star systems but built 2 colony worlds out of that. After getting some minimum stuff built those worlds can come in real handy for resolving the research/production all-or-nothing dilemma as you can usually keep one world production free all the time and constantly have research happening. It's also useful to have multiple spacedocks so your fleet has multiple places to refit from.

I'm sure there's lots of other stuff i could explain but I really want to get back to my game.<g> I got to the singularity age and have almost completed all my research. Can't wait to do some punch button war with interstellar standoffs. Man I love standoffs, the true fire-and-forget weapons. The ship launches them from long range and usually before your ship can even get close to the enemy the standoffs have already arrived and poof goes the alien ship. I've even used them in a true fire-and-forget fashion when I've had one of my gunboats run into a much bigger vessel and I fire off a few standoffs and while the alien ship is busy fending off the standoffs (if it can) I send my ship bugging out of the system to home.<G> Their only downside is ammo supply, usually 5 shots but it goes up a bit in the later stages. The beams are great all-around weapons and they don't run out of ammo, and that makes beams and standoffs a perfect combo. I like shields and haven't even bothered with armor yet. I even don't bother with cloaks and sensors as the more advanced computers are able to defrock the cloaks anyway.

When you start the game with your first ship put an extra rocket pack and rocket motor aboard. The extra rocket pack gives your scout enough punch to usually blow up any artifact defenders and the extra rocket motor gets you to and fro faster and that's crucial in the beginning. Think of the beginning of the game as if it were an Easter Egg Hunt. You got to be fast to beat those nasty alien kids to as many eggs as possible. Aside from the all important wisdom artifact, there are two artifacts in particular to watch for. One is the planet killer and the other is the killer beam. The first one needs little explaining except you sure don't want some alien ship showing up at your homeworld with one of these and you don't have invincible shields or an invincible fleet guarding your homeworld. The other one is a one-shot wonder weapon that will kill anything.

Last night I found this scout ship with one of my heavy duty cruisers. I checked out the scout and saw it had advanced radiation wave and defensive wave weapons while I'm sporting advanced antimatter standoffs, 2 advanced phasor beams and multiphasic shields with plenty of antimatter generators (4). I figure this ought to take one standoff and I'm out of here. Well I was kind of right. My ship fired 3 standoffs and the little scout picked off each one unerringly and then proceeded to charge my mighty cruiser. It gets in close and lets off one shot of a yellow beam and poof my cruiser was indeed out of there! I'm going what the f___ just happened here? So I reload my last save (save early and often) and get back into the same confrontation and yet again the scout toasts my cruiser with ease. Ok my curiosity has now been picqued as to how this little uber scout keeps trashing my superior cruiser. I see the ship has 4 special abilities, one a crack shot and the other a double weapons shot, but that doesn't seem to make sense that that would make the scout so powerful. Then I finally see the killer beam weapon line and I finally realize why that little scout is so powerful. So I restore yet again and this time decide to send 2 cruisers. One is one of my 100% experienced (now that's a nifty artifact to find) cruisers and the other a newly minted one on it's first mission. So off go those 2 cruisers and they meet up with my little pesky friend. Yet again the little scout blows away my inexperienced cruiser but my good cruiser nails it now that it has expended the killer beam. But I figure I can do better and probably capture that killer beam if I send 2 of my good 100% experience cruisers. So once again I restore and get 2 good cruisers up against the little scout that could. I even get into trying to run the ships myself, but no the little scout gets one cruiser every time I try. Unfortunately this time I am in one of his sytems and sure enough along comes one of his freighters. At first my 2 cruisers meet up with the little killer scout around the star and fire off a couple of standoffs, and then sense that freighter orbiting a planet. Sure enough they decide they've done in the little scout with standoffs and go after the freighter. Sure enough the little killer scout unerringly shoots down the standoffs. My cruisers finish off the freighter and I save the action there. Sure enough the little killer scout comes to fight my big bad cruisers and it's all I can do to order them to break patrol and head to Isengard which turns them into the scout's direction just as the scout shows up to blow the lead cruiser to atoms and then my other cruiser blows the now meek scout out of my sky. All that work and I ended up losing a good cruiser instead of taking the loss of my new one first. But it allowed me to figure out that killer beam and what it does and why that little scout kept blowing away cruisers. I suggest that you also save and try different permutations of something to really get the hang of it or to understand it better.

The other cool artifacts I've come across are "specialists of some weapon" which you take back home and activate on the world as they will provide a research bonus for that particualr weapons line. The invincible shields artifact goes on your homeworld and activate it. If an alien comes around with a planet killer this shield can save your world. But it has a 5 shot limit so the first 5 shots will always be blocked but the shield goes away after that. Unless you have droves of them at the beginner level don't waste them on ships. You can get weapons aces that give that kind of weapon an accuracy boost, and crack shots that don't miss as I unfortunately found out. The dissapator artifacts are only useful early on so when I find them I use them right away. After all the star systems are explored they're useless but they can help overcome some early tough artifact defenders.

I usually build one more scout early on to help out with the easter egg hunt and then wait until I get a gunboat and then wait for frigates. This is one game where you don't control massive quantities of units. I've played over 700 years in my current game and only have 9 worlds and 15 ships. Usually 9 of those ships are always patrolling my worlds. But I'll tell you that with jump drive and some busy pirates I can end up with 3 of them in combat at a time, and combat is one automation I use exclusively. I just don't putz with micromanaging the combat. I just let her rip until something strange happens and then replay it to see what's up. I'll sometimes have ships break combat and make for home but I let the program run the actual moves and shots.

Hope this helps get your feet wet in the game. I really like it even though I'm not real keen on the all-or-nothing production/research modeling and the random events that aren't random. When you first try the game go with the beginner level in a 50-star galaxy/universe and use the random events. The beginner level has lots of good artifacts and there's wisdom artifacts a plenty. The 50 stars are manageable and you'll only see 2 or maybe 3 other alien races. The random events are more likely to help you in your first games because they only trigger if you're playing very good or very bad. I found that in my first game I ended up getting 5,000 credits from an annonymous donor, and that's when I knew I was playing crappy but I was as I was really only playing around with a few parts of the game and ignoring many other important features. But by the time I was about to end that game because the two aliens federated and I was really doing poorly a random event gave me one of the alien's star worlds that had a bunch od resource star systems hooked to it, over a dozen in all. Now I'm doing very well and getting whacked by bad random events like losing 25% of my money (over $10,000) from a stock market crash, and losing 20% of my population on all of my worlds due to a plague, but the real kicker was when I had just sent my cruiser with the planet killer weapon that had been patrolling sol on a pirate killer mission and the ship rebels on me while it's still very near sol. That's when I knew it was way past bedtime and exited without saving.
Eric Larsen
GO RAIDERS!