alright thanks for that...what would be the best way to go about some stuff...from what I have read I should get some mass drivers and auto miners on asteroids/planets and have them shoot to earth? (also having a mass driver)
any other good starting tasks I should set into motion? I am gonna try to set that up and then try and terraform mars...and then from there build up a fleet of some high tech massive ships!
There's multiple ways to do mining. Automines are generally your best option for moons and planets which are uninhabitable. If they're somewhat habitable then establishing a colony might be better. Not only are regular mines a lot cheaper but having multiple colonies will really give the civilian shipping lines a shot in the arm. Used in conjunction with civilian contracts, setting up new colonies can be relatively painless (if somewhat slow).
For asteroids, you can go automines and a mass driver or you can build some asteroid miner ships. If there's only a handful of major asteroids, and you have a core colony planet in-system, then I'd go with the automines/driver set up. But if it's mostly lots of little asteroids, or you're already low on resources, or you have no colony in-system that can be used as a gathering point, I'd use mining ships.
Terraforming is a long-term projoect. Mars is relatively habitable compared to a lot of places you'll find out there, and it still takes decades to terraform to the point where you no longer need infrastructure.
Some other good things to get started on:
--Build a surveyor fleet. I like to use one of two models:
- A squadron of 3 light military vessels with geosurvey and grav survey sensors, jumpdrives, lots of fuel, decent speed and hyper-capable engines. Once they hit a new system, they split into seperate ships and each takes a "ring" of geosurvey points, with the inner ring vessel also scanning any worlds of interest. Then they form back up into a single group and hit the next jump point. Even though the outer ring vessel has a lot further to travel, that ring is typically outside the hyper limit.
- 3 FACs with both survey sensors and enough fuel to transit about 30 billion km, and a single jump-capable carrier vessel with lots of fuel, a maintenance bay, and sufficient hangar space for the 3 FACs. Possibly some light defensive weaponry as well.
I'm actually coming to favor the 2nd model heavily, because it's cheaper and far safer. If you stumble across Precursors or a hostile NPR, you'll lose a cheaply replaceable FAC instead of an expensive 6-7kton survey vessel. Downside is that if you lose the carrier, your FACs are stuck.
--Start assembling your skill teams. Find unassigned officers with high skills in espionage, diplomacy, and xenology and create a team for each. Even though they're not actively doing anything, it'll keep them from getting released every 6-7 years like most unassigned officers. There's nothing worse than losing a 30% officer to dismissal. Plus, just being in the team will count as training, and they'll steadily build up. When you see new officers pop up with high stats, you can always dismiss and rebuild the team to drop the weakest link and add new officers. After several years, your teams will be pretty highly skilled so that when you finally *do* meet another race, you can bust out some grade-A diplomacy on them. Or when you find ruins, you can have a better result of what gets found.
Geology teams are a different animal. Start them out on a moons to get their skill up (asteroids take too long to get results, and you don't want unskilled teams completing planetary surveys too soon), then rotate them through the planets. You can even assign them to planets which showed no minerals, and they'll often find a node or two.