Intermediate Guide

This site belongs to Merovech, formerly of Ceti; now resident of Epsilon.

  Ok these are tips for people who are out of newbie protection and have a basic concept of the game. The higher up players should find this all common knowledge.

1. So you started to expand your empire and build new bases. Now your job is to figure out what planets and where to build them. If you followed the starter tips in the other post you will know to keep your bases in the same galaxy for the most part and in regions close to each other, but not all in 1 system or region. Send out scout ships to check out the surrounding regions. and think about what you wish to make, production, research, economy?
2. Specialize your bases. Having generalized bases is alright for some of your bases, but in order to get up and running efficiently and cheaply you are going to want to have some bases built to do specific things. Each type of specialization has a type of planet it is best with.

a) Economy - The best type of astros for economy are crystalline and asteroids. Crystalline offer a slight advantage by having 3 crystals rather than an asteroid's 2. This means that on the high end you will have 20 to 30 econ higher at this base than a similar asteroid. This however does not mean that crystalline are better. Asteroids have their size working against them, but this also means that high end defenses are cheap. Asteroids are much easier to defend than a crystalline planet as you can have 3 levels of planetary shields and orbital rings for about the same cost as 1 level on a planet. This makes defending them a lot easier to do, however the energy needed eats up precious space which will hurt you in the long run. Asteroids also have 1 extra advantage over crystalline, their metal content. Higher metal means better construction, better construction means faster build times, faster build times means more economy quicker. Crystalline will out pace an asteroid in economy, and unless you build high end defenses on both will over all be cheaper due to the size on the higher end, asteroid is a good choice if you have no crystalline available.

b) Production. Rocky astros are best for production. They have the highest fertility and size of any astro with 3 metal. This means that they have the highest production value at the lowest cost. Their size and fertility limit the amount you build however and if you add research or economy too high you will find that it gets extremely costly and difficult to build. These planets are best for high end shipyards. If you can not find a rocky then a crater or metal will do, they have 1 less fertility so will be less efficient in the long run.

c) Research. This can usually be a generalized astro which has a well rounded economy and shipyard. For research bases you will want size and fertility as research buildings give neither econ or production, but eat up alot of space. The three top contenders for this are Arid, Tundra, and Gaia. Arid and Tundra are exactly the same as far as size and fertility go, Gaia is 5 less area, but 1 more fertility. What this means is that after the 25th level of urban structures a Gaia will outpace Arid or Tundra. Twenty-five levels however, is extremely high end so for the most part I recommend Arid or Tundra unless you plan to build to the very high end.

d) Truly generalized planets. By generalized I mean bases with a mix of production and economy. There is no real purpose in building a low end research base meaning that a truly generalized base will have no research at all. For balance between econ and production you will most likely have shipyards, but probably not past level 16 or so. You will have production buildings and economy buildings, but only as high as it is economically viable. After all, why spend 5000 credits on a building that gives 2 credits per hour? These bases are best as Arid, Tundra, or Gaia, you will have the space and fertility to keep them cheap and they should be able to come out around 130 or 140 economy before you think about slowing down or stop building them. By using the space for economy and production rather than research buildings you will find these usually have 30 or so more production and economy than your research bases.

e) Other planet types. There are other planet types with their own special aspects, some can get up to 5 energy per building extremely cheap, some have high space but low fertility, some have high fertility but low space… In the end it is up to you to decide. The planets above have been determined by me to be the best for their certain specialization.

1. Determining the best slot for your base (i.e., slot 10, 11, 20, 21, 30, 31, etc.). Slots in the 10s give one extra energy. This in turn makes building cheaper by allowing cheaper solar planets using less space over all, however for this the fertility is lower than slots 20s and 30s. In general it is easy enough to increase your energy through technology by 100% or more. This brings us to slots 20 and 30. Slots 20 and 30 receive 1 extra fertility. What this does is allows your population to grow by 1 more point for every urban center, this in turn provides a cumulative effect of offering cheaper urban structures due to needing less of them and freeing up more area for other buildings. The down side is that this extra area is usually taken up by power generation. Slot 20 is best as solar plants still produce 3 energy base making power cheaper to build still where as slot 30 you will want to stick with fusion plants to save space, this will become extremely expensive as time goes on. Slot 40+ is only good for Toxic and Magma planets as these slots receive 1 extra gas. This extra gas allows those two types of astros to reach an energy level of 5 freeing up more space as gas plants are very cheap to build. The fertility however on those two is only 4 in those slots eating up more space with urban structures.
2. Command centers. It is wise in order to best maximize your fleet's ability, to keep the majority of your fleet at one base and ship your fleet out from t here as needed. This base should have command centers (all bases should have some, but this one should have more). Command centers provide 5% per level to your fleet's offense power (and defense? I am not sure I have not tested that part). This means that with level 20 command centers your 50k fleet now attacks like a 100k fleet. This makes the base you keep your fleet at much easier to defend. You only need 1 base dedicated to this, and remember you still should keep small amounts of ships at other bases to defend trade routes.
3. Base defense, bigger is better. The bigger your base defenses the better they defend, and remember they regenerate so they are cheap to keep. By bigger I do not mean lots, I mean bigger as in guns… Disruptor turrets are the obvious choice for cost and destruction. One level of disruptors will always be better than 3 levels of ion. This brings us to high end defenses of planetary shields and orbital rings. These are extremely expensive, but also the ultimate deterrent. On planets these run 25k for 1 level of shields, 50k for 1 level of rings. This can be offset by picking moons instead of planets, the size loss is made up for by the 50% cost reduction in these defenses. In the end however, no matter how big your defenses are you will still find someone bigger and determined to take your base. This brings us to number 6.
4. Fleet ships, bigger is NOT always better. The way combat works is that ships will generally try to pick a target to fire on that they can kill in 1 shot. This means that a battleship will not usually target other battleships. I say usually because with enough tech and command centers a battleship could theoretically take out a dreadnought. As a general rule however, this is not the case so we need meat shields. Meat shields are large amounts of fighters and bombers meant to distract enemy fire. If a battleship can not 1 shot kill another it will target the next ship down that it can 1 shot kill, with the right set up this means fighters. So with a little luck the enemy's entire first round of attacks will be focused on the meat shield. Smaller ships are handy to have when attacking an enemy fleet.
5. Don't bring 1000 fighters when 1 dreadnought will do the job. Only 1% of fire goes through the shields, this means that 500 fighters versus 1 dreadnought, the dread aught will generally win (again dependent on command centers and tech level). On the other hand 1000 fighters would win too, but would cost you around half of your fighters. Dreadnoughts can be repaired instantly, fighters need to be built. This is a general statement though about all ships and fleets, don't bring a large amount of small ships when a small amount of large ships will do.
6. There are a lot of jerks in this game. Cooler head will prevail. If someone is a jerk to you ignore it. They will lose thier temper when you free your base and if sufficiently pissed off, along with the personal threats on your life, they will send the good majority of their fleet to attack your bases. This has 2 effects. Number 1 if you were smart and built good defenses their fleet will be crippled. Number 2 this will leave their bases with very few to no ships defending them, you may take this opportunity to plunder trade routes or pick off undefended bases with ease. Again, cooler heads prevail.