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[Jacob/Lee]

I usually focus on most C/P stuff and engine tech when I start, then almost run my economy into the ground with financial centers and labs. I set up mining stations all over Sol then explore, with some basic weapons tech. If I hit a hostile, I switch over to weapon research and can usually get a good fleet up rather quickly thanks to the crazy amount of labs I usually have.

[Bouchart]

I never seem to have enough Mercassium for mass labs.  Anyone else have that problem?

[Paul]

I tend to turtle in Sol (mainly to avoid situations like Paul's), putting my efforts into improved research rate, terraforming, industry (mining, construction, etc.), and financial centers. Then I crank out a bunch of research labs and terraforming ships, start building up weapons tech while terraforming Mars. When I'm about a year from finishing Mars, I start building my colony ships. At about the same time that my colonists are starting work on Mars, my survey ships make the jump over and start working on those systems. If there are any terraforming targets, I send the TR fleet to those each in turn. By the time those surveys are complete, I usually have enough miltech to lay down a destroyer design that can stand up to Precursors, and I start laying those down. From that point on, I blow through the miltech as fast as I can, with a few dedicated Con/Log/GF teams working on those things.

For me, the most important part is upping the research rate early and churning out more labs. More research means you're going to be better prepared for things down the line. The Invaders might show up thirty years in the future; they might show up next week. I like to be as ready as I can be.

But why would you want to avoid situations like mine? That was a lot of fun, battling the four precursor ships with my little low tech fleet was way more fun than sitting there colonizing mars and mercury for 10+ years could ever be.

Turtling up in Sol is safer, but it's boring. I like to go out and explore the universe as soon as possible, make use of ruins I find for tech advances, establish early colonies via infrastructure, and battle it out with alien life while they still pose a real challenge. It's not a real fight if you don't lose half your fleet in the process

If it was adjustable I'd make ruins with precursor guardians and swarm and such more common, it makes exploring the universe interesting.

Techs I got with my starting points:
Research rate 280 (10k + 5k for 240): 15000
High Density Duranium armor: 2500
All the jump drive basics, + efficiency 4 so I could make cheap jump tenders for very early exploring: 14000
Ion Engine and the Ion missile drives (speed is good): Total of 30000
Fuel efficiency .8: 3000
2 tiers of Reload Rate, Agility, and Warhead techs for missiles: 18000
85 mag ejection, 80 efficiency: 5000
Active and EM sensor techs: 12000 for tier 2, I think I might have put 20,000 to get the 3rd tier of active sensitivity.
Grav sensors: 2000
Then I spent about 5k or so on developing the various components. Engine, launchers, sensors, fire controls, magazine, missiles, etc.
Forgot where I put the leftovers. I think I got small fuel tank? Those are handy for topping off a design.
This way on day 1 using the fast OOB creation points I can have a survey fleet out exploring the galaxy and a defense fleet training for the inevitable bad guys. I also develop a basic jump tender right from the get go, military jump engine on a commercial ship. I try for 4-5k tons depending on what I can afford, and build my early military ships to match. My early exploration ships are grav survey sensor + military engine and some fuel tanks, basic 750 ton design that goes 4k with ion engine. Cheap and expendable. The geo survey are bigger due to using a commercial engine, usually about 1800 tons with a speed of 4166.

I'll set up one of the SYs it gives me to build a constant stream of warships to bolster my fleet while researching better techs, never know when having 20+ warships can come in handy.

I'll get a scientist in every field that I want research in and put 1 lab with them so they can build up their skill faster. Then I put the rest on getting research rate and mining rate and such while I explore and fight using my low tech fleets. If I hit a real snag I'll focus research on something to improve combat effectiveness, like missiles or whatever - but generally I do a balanced approach - level or two of research rate, then use the better rate to get the next tier of other techs. Then more research rate, and so on.


-edit-

Ooh, I captured the two DSTS bases in the system where I beat the precursors. No ruins, but there are 900 of those nasty size 4 missiles. Just my size! My fleet just got a new toy, I'll put them to good use against the next threat I face - have all my ships loaded with them now. Too bad you can't disassemble missiles for tech, they're twice as fast as mine with a 50% bigger warhead and a bit better hit chance to boot - could probably pull some good tech from them if it let you.

[Dutchling]

Well, 26 years into the game and I entered my first jump point..
Two cost 2.00 worlds (only need (more) O2) and one cost 3.00 world (already has enough O2, but it has fluorine).
I just hope they'll have a good amount of minerals. It will take a while to find out though, because my Gravitational Survey Vessels are the only jump-capable ships and are unable to bring other ships with them. I guess I'll design my first jump gate constructor than.

EDIT: German names are glorious: I just got a Stark as commander.
'In space, winter is coming'

[MarcAFK]

I'm still on on First game, invaders off, still turtling in sol and spamming 30 day turns, which is fine because i'm finally coming to grips with the interface and all the undocumented/poorly documented features missing fron the tutorials on the wiki.
Problems recently overcome either from trial and error or rereading the wiki:
-Realised that every 1x multiplier for colony cost causes an additional 5% of population to be devoted to farming (No wonder venus wasn't doing anything with those 100 terraformers despite the 20,000 infrastructure and 8 million population.
-new grav ship not following orders? Of course, it's set to the same task group as the next one in the build queue, so it'll sit there 2 years waiting for the next one to be built so the group can form up.
-Freighters cancelling orders? Make sure you empty them before reaching the next pickup location, they'll cancell if there's nothing to pickup (unfortunately, i do sometimes want them to continue anyway despite this if the planet is still producing whatever i've told them to pick up . is there an option for a ship to wait for stuff to pickup then go on?)
-Discovered gas giants can't be surveyed with geoteams
-Discovered how to send geoteams using ships, and also how to cheat and teleport them using the economic window
-Learned how to manage task group orders, including fuel pickup, in a related note, learned how to refuel empty vessels floating in space
-learned about maintainance failures, keeping engineering/maintainence storage ratios right, learned how to salvage wreakage from my first survey vessel which was poorly maintained
-learned about engine efficiency and fuel use... Oh those freighters ran out of fuel because their engine was crap and i didn't have enough fuel, i see.
Anyway, i've been spamming 30 day turns and am upto about 50 years played without much to show for it except for valuable knowlege about playing which i'll put to use next time, for now i'm about to design first warships and start exploring jump points, should be lots to learn and fun to be had
Edit: I'm really hoping to find some corundium out there somewhere, because as i  mentioned earlier while complaining about bad luck from the RNG

Edit 2: So i'm playing my first game, i finally got a geoship out there and *sigh* everything in sol looks rather barren,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mercury: Nothing
Venus: Neutronium 27,000k, Tritanium 8,000k, Sorium 3,750k, Corundium 33,755k
Earth 10-100k of everything, about 5-15 years Till it's mined out from the 400 mines i started with
Luna: Neutrinium 2,000k, Tritanium 200k, Vendarite 97k
Mars: Nothing
Phobos, Deimos: Nothing
Jupiter: Nothing
Metis: Nothing
Amalthea: Nothing
Thebe: Nothing
Io:Duranium 685k
Europe:Nothing
Ganymede:Nothing
Callisto:Sorium 278k, Corundium 2,742k
Himalia:Nothing
Lysithea:Nothing
Elara:Nothing
Ananke:Nothing
Carme:Nothing
Pasiphe: Carbomite 1537, Sorium 635, Corundium 924
Sinope:Nothing
Saturn: (oops, forgot to survey this one, it's queued after the rest of the moons)
Atlas; Nothing
Prometheus: Nothing
Pandora: Nothing
Epimetheus: Nothing
Mimas: Nothing
Enceladus:Nothing
Tethys:Nothing
Dione:Nothing
Rhea:Nothing
Titan: Nothing
Hyperion:Nothing
Iapetus: Nothing
Phoebe: Nothing
Edit : nothing on 11 moons of uranus or 8 moons of neptune, but some sorium on the giants themself (1.5 mil and 230 mill respectively)
Pluto: nothing
Charon: Neutronium 280k, Tritanium 230K, Mercassium 200k, Sorium 200k, Boronide 37k and Vendarite 87k (erk, my only mercassium deposit and it's 2 months away at 1500km/s ? well at least it's 0.9 availability unlike my only corundium deposits which are all 0.1 )

My only corundium deposit's are all .01 % and its fairly badly effecting my growth.
Also i've probably learned it's a good idea to survey the planets with your huge 200million deposits last in the hope you'll increase the availability with the well trained team.

[Jacob/Lee]

I'd train my geoteam on asteroids if you can, then get them to the real planets.

[Bouchart]

Training geology teams on asteroids takes forever.

[Azkul]

Training geology teams on asteroids takes forever.

And it's sort of cheating

[Akigagak]

Training geology teams on asteroids takes forever.

And it's sort of cheating

Eh, not really. The shear amount of time it takes makes it kinda not worth it. It might be cheating if it took a lot less time than a planet (which would make sense for a much smaller rock), but it takes aaaaaages.

I like to think of each asteroid survey location representing a large group of asteroids, rather than a single one. Makes things make more sense.

[Jacob/Lee]

Training geology teams on asteroids takes forever.

indeed, but if you can hold your economy together until they survey the *real* planets, you can get better rewards.

[Paul]

You could just train them up on mineral poor planets outside Sol. They aren't exactly in short supply.

Then when skilled they can come back and survey earth, mars, venus, mercury.

I've had kinda strange results with skilled geo teams though. Seems like 150-200 or so give good results, but once they get super skilled they start to suck. In one game I trained a geo team up to 300 on various planets outside Sol, then brought them back and surveyed Sol. They found a grand total of 1 deposit on earth, 2 on mars, 1 on venus, 1 on mercury. The planet they surveyed at 200 they stayed there for years and found probably 50 deposits, adding about 5 million minerals to the planet.

[Bouchart]

Is the hyper drive something that works automatically when you are out of the hyper limit or do you need to toggle it manually?

[Trorbes]

Manually, I recall, which means that AI civilian lines won't use them either.

[Bouchart]

Manually, I recall, which means that AI civilian lines won't use them either.

That's what I thought.  It's a pain to do that, though.  Not that useful in Sol but I have some really spread out systems.

[MarcAFK]

Is grav survey sensor a militar only tech? I can't seem to find anywhere to research a commertial version, despite finding ships on the wiki that are commertial grav sensor ships :/