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[birdy51]

If that is the case, then we may want to avoid conflict for now. We can expand our reach to other planets until we have a firm foothold.

Should we come to war, it may be wise to play it conservatively, especially since we're playing the expansion game. Easy come, easy go eh?

[C-SH4M4N]

Don't the Zuul have a unique racial situation where if they don't play aggressively, their worlds suffer a production penalty due to lack of slaves?
If so, playing conservatively will not be to our advantage... besides, this Consortia looks to be small fry; we CAN make use of diplomacy to absorb them peacefully into the Horde. But would that be a dwarf Zuul thing to do?

I hope this economic stimuli gets done real soon; I always feel more comfortable with at least 1-2 extra fleets staying idle.

[GentlemanRaptor]

The Zuul have, by default, a small amount of overharvest on every planet they own, and cannot reduce it below this number. We need planets and slaves, and quick. First contact this early isn't game-ending, but we need slave ships to take advantage of it. Once we actually have an economy, tech to get them.

[JackOSpades]

Don't the Zuul have a unique racial situation where if they don't play aggressively, their worlds suffer a production penalty due to lack of slaves?

yes but one should also remember the Zuul design philosophy, our ships are a pile of guns held together with duct tape
I'm honestly surprised the drive system isn't just guns pointed in reverse... oh wait http://sots.rorschach.net/Node_Cannon

as such we are going to need at least superior numbers before we engage, let the harvest ripen before we descend upon them besides we apparently don't have the tech to build slaveships to gather them yet anyway.

continue colonizing habitable worlds and growing but we might want to look into getting a battle fleet up and running
go to the Income screen and up the tax rate to 7. Zuul don't suffer from moral so their is no reason not to tax the hell out of them, 7 is where the last guy set his so that seems a good place to start.
also hows the corruption level doing? you need to manually adjust the slider, it doesn't do so automatically.

And S**T i just realized we forgot to set up our ship designs on turn 1 to get the free prototyping bonus 
so not only are we not going to be getting better tech for awhile but we are stuck with poorly designed default ships at that, unless we want to pay 2x-3x prototyping cost to redesign them now  might not be the worst Idea to do so anyway but I'd prefer to at least have some upgrades to help justify it.

[Duuvian]

Forgetting to design ships on turn 1 is a good reason to start over in my opinion at least the way I do things as Solforce, you aren't that far in. Those turn 1 designs will be useful for a long time if you design one of everything.

Speaking of starting over for future reference, unless patches have changed it I've heard some races should be assigned extra starting planets as they spread slower and the other AIs will usually settle many more colonies and leave few for them. I know hiver was one, I think Loa was the other. I start with max cash, ten technologies for all races. I do 100% research rate, because if it's set too high the AI reaches dreadnaughts really quickly and it messes up my usual slow buildup that benefits from being able to use the turn 1 designs for a while.

The first thing to research if you don't start with it is FTL economics (freighters). I usually rush for Large Freighters so I can switch on economic stimulus because your Turn 1 designs will be able to handle other empire's fleets for a long time.

The way I do it is to put 100% minus trade expansion and anti-corruption funds into savings until I have 10 million saved up. At 10 million your entire empire gets a morale boost from large savings, and it's enough to minimize the number of rebellions you get. In addition you earn interest on your savings every turn, 10% if I remember correctly. It can help pay for ship construction and upkeep once you stockpile enough cash.

Regarding stimulus, it's something I try to do but is too unreliable not to be annoying. For example, to use economic stimulus (the one that makes new freighters) don't use it AT ALL until you design the large freighters. If you use it before then you will be stuck with a one slot cargo ship there until a pirate explodes it if you are lucky. What I do is build non-civilian small cargo ships at first until I research large freighters. After that I scrap small cargo ships in systems that I want the next stimulus civilian large cargo ships to appear. If you set the stimulus level to just above the cost of a new large freighter it will make a new one every turn. Eventually it will save you a lot of money in upkeep, a big merchant fleet costs a lot of trading profits to operate.

I try to use Colony stimulus too, but I have less luck with it. It's less controllable than economic stimulus, so it's harder to use. It requires some research into political science I think before you can convince the civ colonies to join your empire (usually once they've terraformed the colony for you.) In some games colonies seem eager to join the empire once I start inviting them, other games are marked by colonies being attacked by Zuul recently inexplicably refusing my repeated offers to save them. In addition sometimes the civs will colonize a really nice planet, which sucks because one of the advantages of civ colonies is they will terraform their planet (slowly) at no cost to you. I've wiped out enemy colonies before to have a civ colony pop up on it before I could colonize it, and diplomacy may or may not work before it's reconquered due to being on the front lines.

Remember not to overbuild your stations, they have massive upkeep. Don't build more docks on civ stations than the system needs. You can destroy your home planet's naval base to increase your income at the start, which can be useful until proteons or meteors show up and you really wish you had five drone satellites and ten police cruisers flying around.

Regarding your security budget, since you require a minimum spent in it for anti-corruption purposes you have some to move the sliders with. It doesn't matter which sliders, so I usually leave the non-defensive sounding one much higher than the others. I don't know if the AI uses intelligence gathering because I've never seen them use it, so there isn't much point to counter intelligence. You can do intelligence ops on the AI though, so you might as well put the security budget there, though they aren't super useful. Rarely you will get some progress towards a new tech (I think) that another empire is researching.

[Xantalos]

Ooh, PTW as I just got this game.
From what I know of Zuul, aquire more worlds, spam shitty ships with a metric asston of guns on them, and steal others' tech to get better.

[JackOSpades]

Ooh, PTW as I just got this game.
From what I know of Zuul, aquire more worlds, spam shitty ships with a metric asston of guns on them, and steal others' tech to get better.

 Good news then I hear MOST of the game breaking bugs have been fixed by the one dedicated programer who is still working on it but who knows if that's actually the case or if fundamental problems with the code are just being worked around. everything might Still spawn inside the sun before being teleported to the correct starting position. (yes that is a thing that happened a lot, the joke was the reason binary systems weren't in the game was what would happen when they tried to spawn inside eachother.)

Xant you probably would have been happier with SotS 1 if you don't already have it... it's basically the same game only done better.

I would have suggested a restart for the failure to setup designs on turn 1 but this is called Let's Survive SotS II so resetting for any reason short of a game over screen doesn't feel right, the word survive implies this is Iron man SotS so no save scumming.

[C-SH4M4N]

Good news then I hear MOST of the game breaking bugs have been fixed by the one dedicated programer who is still working on it (...)

You mean there's just ONE guy doing it now? Sad to hear it ... wow, Mecron really dropped the ball on the sequel.
Hat's off to the lone and brave warrior still at the trenches.

[Xantalos]

Nope, I got SOTS I as well. I'm playing them both in order to immerse myself more fully with the lore.

[GentlemanRaptor]

Nope, I got SOTS I as well. I'm playing them both in order to immerse myself more fully with the lore.

I bought both at the same time from an Amazon Paradox bundle, and I'm glad I did. One thing I will say for the SOTS II is that the SolForce ship appearance improved remarkably.

[hermes]

TURNS 6-9

The Construction fleet, under Imperator GentlemanRaptor the Mad, since we shall not build anything for the time being, has been sent to Talos to protect our interests there in a patrol mission.


Oh my, this picture is totally wrong.  I couldn't patrol a system not controlled, so GentlemanRaptor's fleet is actually going to Talos on a "Colonization" mission, if you get what I mean.

The stinky human scouts have since left, for the time being, and our Colonization fleet shall be headed there post haste once they restock at Shamballa.  Our own Survey of Talos is completed, and it looks quite reasonable...



Some civilians, Upper Board members probably, approach us with an offer to colonize Alpha 1 free of charge, provided they have some autonomy.  Since our colonization fleet is en route to the strategically more important Talos, and the Empire can ignore the terraforming costs of Alpha 1, I agree.  Do we have to twist their arm to get control of Alpha 1 later?  Let's hope they don't bork that world.


They submitted the request before the Colony fleet even arrived.  Maybe they are trying to tell us something?

go to the Income screen and up the tax rate to 7. Zuul don't suffer from moral so their is no reason not to tax the hell out of them, 7 is where the last guy set his so that seems a good place to start.
also hows the corruption level doing? you need to manually adjust the slider, it doesn't do so automatically.

With some tinkering with the finances, ramping up the tax rate (seriously no consequences for that?) we cut the research time for Tribute Stations down to 4 turns.  Woot!




Ship designs.  Getting stuff for "free" on turn 1 seems pretty gamey.  I think designing ships when we have new tech, or when we know our enemy is better.  That said, I have no idea what a good design is.

You mean there's just ONE guy doing it now? Sad to hear it ... wow, Mecron really dropped the ball on the sequel.
Hat's off to the lone and brave warrior still at the trenches.

Modding in the Toady avatar and cautionsaurus was ten times harder than it should have been.  That experience alone taught me they made some seriously wierd design decision with the game.  Engine and asset creation pipeline aside, from what I've seen of it the game mechanics I love.

[hermes]

TURNS 10-12


The Sol Force Admirals dream of unleashing all that weaponry at our faces... with no more provocation on our part than simply existing nearby.

.....

Spoiler: ... (click to show/hide)

That Hazard Rating of 303, turns out that means they flip their shit real soon.

Full steam ahead with Talos colonization, humans are too slow, but what does the "Development" value mean?  For Talos 1 about 100k, Talos 3 was 30k as you can see and Talos 4 was 300k.



Sensors have detected an incoming Sol Force fleet, commander...

If something happens, how should I fight?  The real-time combat has always thrown me off because I panic and start rolling ships and issuing 100 orders per minute Starcraft style while the ships slowly float around and get blasted.  Maybe that's just Sol Force and the Horde will kick ass..?

[C-SH4M4N]

  GRUS, too much stuff to answer all at once!!! 
LET'S GO!

Full steam ahead with Talos colonization, humans are too slow, but what does the "Development" value mean?  For Talos 1 about 100k, Talos 3 was 30k as you can see and Talos 4 was 300k.

Don't quote me on it, but I think those are the values that you'll be spending to develop the world. At least until you reach the barely-minimum for habitation.

If something happens, how should I fight?  The real-time combat has always thrown me off because I panic and start rolling ships and issuing 100 orders per minute Starcraft style while the ships slowly float around and get blasted.

Calm down, there's a panic button..... DON'T! PANIC!
Strategic Combat is the best part of the game, so you should really set aside a few battles to learn it. You're gonna have to be smart about WHERE you deploy your ships in-system; I think there are a few tutorial videos on Youtube, you should watch those. You can hit ships anywhere but if you blow up the Command ship, you are guaranteed to win the fight. Oh, and if you hit the main portion of a ship and blow it, the ship's gone... if you hit the engine, it just stops dead in its tracks, which can be a breather depending on what you're up against.

You mean there's just ONE guy doing it now? Sad to hear it ... wow, Mecron really dropped the ball on the sequel.
Hat's off to the lone and brave warrior still at the trenches.

Modding in the Toady avatar and cautionsaurus was ten times harder than it should have been.  That experience alone taught me they made some seriously weird design decision with the game.  Engine and asset creation pipeline aside, from what I've seen of it the game mechanics I love.

There's this guy named Dave Perry ... he had a MO when it came to designing games: he would overlook a feature proposed/already-developed, try his hand for awhile and then ask the whole team "OK, but is it fun?". I feel that it's the closest to a good feedback tool as a developer can get his hands on.

[hermes]

Don't quote me on it, but I think those are the values that you'll be spending to develop the world. At least until you reach the barely-minimum for habitation.

OK, that sounds good, would tally with the environmental danger values.

Calm down, there's a panic button..... DON'T! PANIC!
Strategic Combat is the best part of the game, so you should really set aside a few battles to learn it. You're gonna have to be smart about WHERE you deploy your ships in-system; I think there are a few tutorial videos on Youtube, you should watch those. You can hit ships anywhere but if you blow up the Command ship, you are guaranteed to win the fight. Oh, and if you hit the main portion of a ship and blow it, the ship's gone... if you hit the engine, it just stops dead in its tracks, which can be a breather depending on what you're up against.

Will try to watch some training vids first, preferably ones with 1997 era Denise Richards.

Checking out Perry, I played Cool Spot a bit and that was fun.  Also makes me want to play Hyborian Age, but I want to play a single player Conan game, not MMO.

[JackOSpades]

With some tinkering with the finances, ramping up the tax rate (seriously no consequences for that?) we cut the research time for Tribute Stations down to 4 turns.  Woot!

well other factions would have you take a hefty moral penalty but guess what your the Zuul so you don't care. you are a Godking and your word is law, the suffering of unhappy zuul is your nighttime lullaby. besides what are they gonna do rebel against their god? pfffft not bloody likely
(it's ether they cannot get negative moral, or don't suffer from the effects of having negative moral. check your moral screen and let us know which it is. this is not actually a bug, if you look at the lore that is how zuul are suppose to function.)

Ship designs.  Getting stuff for "free" on turn 1 seems pretty gamey.  I think designing ships when we have new tech, or when we know our enemy is better.  That said, I have no idea what a good design is.

it's suppose to represent the centuries of ship building and design before the point where you take over or some bull, but really it's to help offset the enormously increased cost for the first ship of each new design.
also the default designs we're stuck with now are junk, they have their supply/energy allotments all wrong, you more than likely have ships with mass drivers and/or missiles and very little supply to fire them but an over abundance of energy for the energy weapons they don't have, this also means your ships likely have only half the range they should since supply also means fuel.

when I said fixing these problems was likely a good Idea despite the enormous cost involved in prototyping a new design I wasn't kidding.
since your going to be getting some tech soon (thanks to whipping some lazy zuuls into shape) you might want to look into the ship designer to see how much of a difference that makes, as well as seeing what weapon's we can research after we get slave disks.

Some civilians, Upper Board members probably, approach us with an offer to colonize Alpha 1 free of charge, provided they have some autonomy.  Since our colonization fleet is en route to the strategically more important Talos, and the Empire can ignore the terraforming costs of Alpha 1, I agree.  Do we have to twist their arm to get control of Alpha 1 later?  Let's hope they don't bork that world.

please don't tell me your putting money into the civilian "stimulus", if you are please stop your just making more work for yourself. you'll have to conquer that world now if you want it (or research protectorates, not bloody likely cause Zuul)
everything you gain from civilians you could get cheaper yourself and they build randomly which inevitably means as dumb as possible Uhg 
you have basically been paying for corporate bailouts (thanks a lot Zuul-obama) besides that is money which should be going into research and the treasury for building warships.

oh well at least if you get some Slave Disks before you re-conquer them you can get some easy slaves.

If something happens, how should I fight?  The real-time combat has always thrown me off because I panic and start rolling ships and issuing 100 orders per minute Starcraft style while the ships slowly float around and get blasted.

DON'T Panic, there should be a pause button if you need to take a moment to think about things or just calm yourself...
as zuul you have more guns than anyone except the Loa, but your ships are made of cardboard. I'd normally recommend kiting with missiles except without dedicated missile ships that will just get you killed... so close to attack, concentrated fire and hope for the best.

I'd recommend you take some time with the design screen and make yourself a dedicated missile ship, that isn't going to need a refit for awhile (until something like better Armour or Engines) so it would be a good investment now.
my recommendation would be taking the default Armor design (hopefully with a hammerhead front) and replacing all the large mounts and most of the medium with missiles then put energy weapons anywhere else and replace all the modules with the ones that give supply. remember Supply = Ammo AND fuel so keep an eye on that.

get a fleet of mostly those and supply ships then you can kite like crazy until your opponent develops point defense or you have ships that can use boarding pods.