Building a Better Bomb(er)
The voting went strongly in favor of independence from national oversight. This nets us the least industrial aid, but relatively good recruiting. Leaving the Faction Manager screen temporarily, I advanced time past midnight so that the industrial base allocated to us can be assigned more effectively. But while we're here, let's take a look at the main screen of the game:
The main window covering the center through upper-right is the current view of the solar system. It can be adjusted by click-dragging with the mouse, using the arrow keys, and scrolling in and out using PGUP/PGDWN or the scrollwheel. Scrolling all the way out shows the solar system, and the fact that the alien scum infest many of the planets, larger moons and planetoids. Of particular note is that their 'home base' seems to be out in the area of the Kuiper Belt, with both
Makemake and
Eris having detectable alien presences.
One thing not yet implemented in the game is planetary rotation - perhaps due to the difficulty of handing transit. At the lower tech levels, I could well see the rotation of Jupiter relative to the inner system rendering long periods where neither the player nor NPC can make the jump within the 30 day supply limit. As such, the planets operate in static relation to each other. Not accurate, but at least it won't lead to 'and for the next two years, we both twiddle our thumbs while the celestial objects align...'
Clicking on a planet fills in the upper-left box with information - in the case of Earth, we know that it has an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere (the two boxes on the right), and produces militarily valuable Titanium and Uranium for the war effort. Mousing over those two circles shows how much per month is mined of these minerals.
Now, as the game will point out later, not all information is shown from the start. We don't even know about some of the more valuable minerals, in particular whatever it is the aliens use in their antimatter reactors. Once we figure that out, we can also figure out what planets, moons or planetoids we need to capture and mine to start producing anti-matter powered ships of our own.
The middle box on the left is the known transit box. If you detect alien ships moving, or once you can send your own ships from planet to planet, the task force name is shown in this box with destination and remaining time to their destination. In the early game, it's a great warning as you can watch the aliens hop an attack fleet closer and closer to Earth, picking up extra ships when they pass through colonies that have some handy.
The box on the lower left is an overview of the system - all planets with a colony are highlighted red (hostile) or green (ours), and if a fleet is present it's also noted. As you can see in the screenshot, the 1st and 2nd Defense Squadrons are visible, and scrolling down reveals the 3rd Defense Squadron.
Under the system map is a list of our current resource stockpiles, and below that are the game controls. On the left is the enormous research box, which allows us to tech up and better face the aliens on an equal footing - and we need to, fast. The aliens aren't happy to have lost to a bunch of primitive hairless apes, and they're going to quickly pick up the idea of throwing missiles right back at us.
I'm not going to go through all the research techs - if you download the demo you can see the majority yourself. A few require being researched before you can read the fluff, but it's easy enough to survive in a beginner game and focus on research if you want to see it all. For now, I tell the scientists to get busy making a better warhead - the nukes were fun, but I didn't like how the cruiser survived nine to the face. They assure me that using a warhead wired for an emp burst will fry the alien ships far better - at least so far as every bit of electronics in the ship is concerned, including the circuits that prevent the antimatter reactors from going critical.
It's also a prerequisite for even better missile warheads down the line, and until we're far more researched, throwing tons of missiles will be our primary defense.
The build screen serves as a combination of building queue and ship design option. Clicking on the Earth allows us to choose what we want to build - at later points, we can include new buildings such as orbital beam weapon batteries or shipyards, but for now our construction facilities are firmly ground-bound, limiting us to fighters and corvettes. We can also choose to build, edit or delete one of the existing designs, or design a new ship entirely from scratch.
The first thing we do is delete the design for the fighter - I wasn't kidding when I said they were terrible and I wasn't building any more. The Command Corvette also goes the way of the dodos. Earth provides all the sensor coverage we need, and by the time we go anywhere else, our ships will be a damned sight bigger, and we'll stick sensors on one of those.
This leaves us with two options - the beam-equipped close combat specialist and the missile-equipped long range attacker. Both are fairly well designed as it is, but are still tweakable. Let's get started with the Gun Corvette.
On the top left, you can choose the ship class from the dropdown menu - currently it's on K for Corvette. You can name your class next to that. Down the top-left is a row of buttons showing you the available items you can place in the ship. To the right are the ship's stats, including the three-way balance of mass, power and heat dispersion. Generally, anything you add increases your ship's mass (affecting it's speed), power and heat in various ways. Some items are low-mass but high-heat and power usage, others might mass a lot, limiting what you can place in the ship but not affecting it's power usage or heat very much.
Finally, at the bottom are the list of components used in the ship. At the moment, we can't do a lot with the Gun Corvette - we simply don't have any better technology to replace its equipment with. Even swapping the armor up to multilayer plating doesn't do any good, so I elect to leave it alone.
Instead, we'll change the Missile Corvette a bit. As I said before, it currently uses a short-ranged fusion plasma blaster, which conflicts with its purpose of sitting back, looking pretty and firing missiles at things. You can fit two Chemical Lasers into the same space as the fusion blaster, which is what I elect to do. The damage output is worse in this setup, but the lasers are far more accurate at range. Having changed the design, I also change the name, giving rise to the Arrow Mk I Corvette.
Saving the design, I order Earth to start producing Arrows to round out our fleet. Earth's defense currently consists of three not-really-useful Command Corvettes, four powerful but fragile Gun Corvettes, five necessary Missile Corvettes and six rattling deathtrap Auxillery Fighters. (And I totally didn't intend for those to count upward so neatly...)
Clicking on the 1st Defense Squadron in the list brings it up - and reveals that it is commanded by yours truly, Fleet Admiral Han Zoku. Hovering over my insignia reveals all sort of details - basically that (in game) I'm the best strategist that humanity has ever produced (probably due to the Protagonist trait.) The other two squadrons also have Commodores of lesser skill (30 and 37) assigned. However, it's time of fleet reorganization.
Dragging one of the Auxillery Fighters and dropping it on Earth creates a new fleet, which I select and rename 'Scrapyard'. Every other fighter and the command corvettes join this fleet, and then I select the first fighter and hit the button 'Details'.
Here you can see how the ship was designed and handle the officers and crew assigned to it. Clicking a position allows you to assign someone directly, or you can fill empty positions with the handy Auto assign officers button. Removing officers is done with the button below that, which we do for the deathtraps. Officers are hard to come by, and these fighters are basically floating coffins.
Next, I click on the Scrapyard fleet and click on the button Details.
Here, you can assign ships to two AI rolls. Main are ships directly controlled by you - the only thing they'll handle in automated fashion is firing point defense weapons at enemy missiles. Minor ships will charge the enemy firing their weapons as they go - good for handling missile attackers if you don't want to individually target all the missiles. Screens will hang back and fire all their weapons at enemy missiles. If nothing suitable exists, they'll hang back and plink at the nearest or most threatening enemy.
All the scrapyard ships go to the Screens group so I won't have to move them during the fight. Closing this window, I click on the Scrapyard fleet again and click on the empty leadership portrait.I don't intend to assign anyone to 'command' this fleet, but it does allow me access to the promotion menu.
Command of a ship requires the character be Captain rank to Commodore rank, and command of a fleet requires the character be Commodore rank or higher. What I generally do is promote anyone with a Leadership rating of over 50, and check back once a year. Promotions cannot happen too often, otherwise the character receives heavy permanent penalties to their leadership skill. With time in grade, they eventually come up for promotion again.
As you can see, our leadership pool is... narrow. I lower my promotion standards to 45 to start getting that mass of ensigns and second lieutenants ready to someday command their own ship.
Now, I'm not allowed to rename characters, but ships are open game. If you'd like to have your own personal ship, speak up and I'll rename the ship how you'd like. (with the obvious right to object to something completely obscene.)
My current plans are to have 6 Gun Corvettes and 8 Missile Corvettes on hand to defend Earth before we get our first capital ship class. We'll probably be attacked at least once before that happens.
Before I unfreeze time and get going, I should visit the Faction Manager screen again.
Now that time has advanced to midnight, the Industrial Base we've negotiated for has become available - this is unusually quickly handled by the various governments - maybe the whole 'nearly murdered by alien invaders' kicked them into action?
Solar War defaults to an even 20% to each option assignment. We don't want that.
Taken from the top, you have Production, Fleet Repair, Fleet Resupply, Research and Recruitment/Training.
Production influences how quickly Earth and (later) other bases produce their current building or ship. This is an important one, and deserves more resources
Fleet Repair determines how quickly damaged ships are repaired at a repair dock. This one can be safely set very low - right now, corvettes just don't come back damaged. They come back untouched or not at all. Even later, it can still be set lower than 20% of our budget.
Fleet Resupply handles travel supplies and missile reloads. It needs to be higher than 0, but it doesn't need 20% of the budget.
Research influences how quickly our scientists make new discoveries.
Recruitment/Training helps with how often officers join as well as how what quality and how many crew members are available.
I set the Fleet options to 10 points each and divide the rest evenly among the other three options. Below these fields are information on training, how many recruits we should see per day, and our pool of available crew and their skill level.
With everything set to my liking, we can let time start flowing again while building up Earth's defenses and technical knowledge.
Poll
