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[forsaken1111]

The missile and sensor guys are nice to have. Biology is next to useless early game (and honestly I've never found a use for it tbh)

4x construction is kinda awesome, but sucks having no power or energy weapons scientists.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, the Con doesn't bother me as much as it does when I get something like all but 2 for Biology (which I never use), but having no EW,  no Power/Propulsion, no Defence, no Logistics, and only 1 for the others bothers me a bit. Kinda makes me wish you could affect the recruiting practices of your academy, because I just know they'll be recruiting nothing but more Con, unless they recruit more Bio.

[forsaken1111]

throw up a bunch of academies and hope.

[Ehndras]

Aaaargh! Damn you, seemingly peaceful universe!

--- --- ---


Having had explored a number of extra-Solar systems without any luck, the citizens of Barnard's Star Colony X-1 became accustomed to celestial isolation; the only colonized planet in the known Galaxy beside Earth. The 'Earth Mobile Fleet', comprised of three inexperienced 'Hyperion M-1' class Missile Cruisers and one 'Thunder' class Anti-missile defense escort, has been put on permanent guard of Earth while their neighbors in Barnard's Star were defended only by a company of ground troops. A company of men to protect 20 million colonists... Thankfully, there were no incidents and our mining operations were booming. Our Geo-Team had found hundreds of millions of trans-Newtonian materials deep within the planet, rocketing Colony X-1 to a new-found economic utopia. Factories gradually surfaced on X-1 as a trickling flow of increasing wages and scientific breakthroughs made X-1 more and more valuable to the Terra Imperium. Soon X-1 will achieve the stability needed to produce its own fleet of defensive ships. As a new defensive fleet will soon be in the region, Earth's government sends the EMF (Earth Mobile Fleet) to explore a new Jump Point found 5 systems away, hoping to discover a new X-1 equivalent to colonize.



But, of course, the Gods of Random Generation are fickle and filled with spite... Just we are to inaugurate the X-1 Defense Fleet, the idiots in Joint-Survey Team 1 break through to an unexplored system on the opposite side of the long jump-gate chain leading to X-1 and Earth... In little time, the crushed wreckage of Grav J-1 and Geo J-2 are floating aimlessly in space while the people of X-1 are dieing en masse via thermonuclear annihilation. Too late, the Earth Defense Force reaches the burning husk of what was once our most promising colony. Even the corpses of the dead are gone, the entire surface of the planet glassed over and the very soil turned crystalline.

Captain's Log: Year 3042, Month 7, Day 3.
Geo-Spacial Locator: Escape pod outside of 'Hyperion' 003's wreckage - Earth orbit

Note to self, and all commanding officers:

Luck, Chance, Fate, and Nature are a family of complete and utter assholes. Don't leave your colonies undefended, as hostile aliens will choose that moment to race towards our home system out of dozens, and annihilate our entire species without prior warning during the previous 42 years. The truth is out there; and here, well, I'm going to die in a floating tin can.

[BurnedToast]

I keep crashing on runtype 13 mismatches or summat.  What'd I doooo?

Also, research- Which direction do I take with it? What do I need to explore other systems and defend myself?

Edit: Civilians established a mining colony on Mercury. Do they do their own thing, or should I help 'em out, and if so, how?

Civlians establish mining outposts, not colonies. You can either buy the minerals from them (in which case you can pick where the built in mass driver sends them) or let them sell the minerals (you get money but the minerals are permanently lost). You can't do anything to help them, but they won't interfere with your own mining or colonization efforts.

Research: well C/P is good to start out with - research rate in particular will get you everything else faster so it's good to keep someone on that, at least till it gets unreasonably expensive. Other then that, it's whatever you need and whatever you have good scientists for - if you've got no energy weapon scientists (like me) you probably better focus on missiles for example. To explore other systems you need gravitational survey sensors and either a jump drive or jump gate construction. To defend yourself, it depends on what the enemy is attacking with but generally you need some PD (point defense) such as CIWS, (turreted) Gauss cannons, anti-missile missiles, or a combination.

For the error, I have no idea I've never seen that one before, sorry.

[BurnedToast]

Well, what I do is when I find a new jumpoint I send in a scout ship with a max sized/sensitivity thermal and EM passive sensor and engines with my best thermal reduction tech (right now I'm down to 12% which makes a solid-core antimatter drive have a signature of only 24, practically invisible)

If you have decent sensor sensitivity you can spot engine flares from a pretty huge distance with a sensor that large, and with reduced thermal emissions from your engines the enemy probably won't even know you are there at all. That way you can spy on them a bit and decide just how ready you are, and if you're not ready you can leave them be and they won't even know you exist.

You could add cloaking too if you can spare research for it, though I generally find I can detect enemies from LOOOOOOOOONG outside their active sensor range so it's not that necessary.

The downside is the sensors are so big they take lots of maintenance, so I have to send them back for overhauls a lot and the reduced thermal sig engines are EXPENSIVE (over twice the cost of a normal 100% engine, and it gets worse with every level of reduction). On top of that, it can't really fit any guns or shields or armor so if it happens to jump right on to someone it's pretty much screwed (though that's not happened... yet)

After scouting out the system and making sure it's clear, then I send in the survey teams.

Edit: oh yes, one important and often overlooked thing - always train your combat ships at least a little bit before you send them into combat (pick the taskforce, pick the second tab, then pick start taskforce training). If they have very low skill level there's a delay in orders (up to a minute sometimes) which is both frustrating and will get them killed. Higher trained crews also have better chances to hit and (maybe, not 100% sure) can see things further with sensors.

[Flying Dice]

I tend to just build cheap survey ships early on, with only one type of sensor (to cut down on "cannot obey order because there are no acceptable locations within..." messages), and because they're cheap, they alert me to alien ships/minefields/bases by suddenly going kablooie for no apparent reason.

[Paul]

Getting mars to habitable status isn't that difficult. With only about .35 or so of an atmosphere you can get it to 0 cost.

Mercury is a bit over twice as hard, it requires like .65 or so of anti-greenhouse gas just to get the temp down, plus the .1 oxygen.

I always go overboard with my colonies and leave behind some terraforming modules to make them all have a full 1 atmosphere eventually though. My Mercury had like .68 anti gh gas, .2 oxygen, and .12 nitrogen before I turned on invaders.

I'm starting a new game now, haven't found any enemies but have found several ruins. One has 388 TL2 installations for me to recover. Should boost my early research as soon as I can get some engineering teams and troops to protect them out there.

[Ehndras]

Lucky btard. Every single ruin I find has an escort, if you know what I mean.

I have no luck genning NPRs. I tried to make a custom NPR on Mars but they automatically spawned about 30 ships, and our relations instantly went to shyte, not to mention the annoying lag from having something in firing/intercept distance. Bah.

[Ehndras]

Colony on both, ship auto-mines to the inhospitable to get a close-by constant shipment of minerals, that's what I do.

[Flying Dice]

So I ventured into one of the systems I could jump to, since it had a jumpgate. Technically, they should all have jumpgates since I told them to in galaxy creation, but only this one does.

Anyways, it has a planet I can inhabit with some terraforming, has a moderate amount of minerals (and by that I mean several million in Duranium, Corbomite, Corundium, and Uridium) and old ruins on it. Thankfully, nothing seems to mind my flyby of the place, and from the looks of it, it's only linked to the Sol system, so probably no threat to it.

There's another inhospitable planet with tens of millions of each mineral, but it's all at .1 availability. Great backup, I guess.

Don't even bother trying to mine anything below 0.3 or so, it is horribly inefficient.

[Sheb]

Yeah, but send a geo team there, they can increase accessibility.

[Ehndras]

Make sure to send ONE high-level geo team. Higher the level, better your chances. Best to train geo teams on moons and crappy planets before sending them to earth, mars, and good colony planets, to make sure it generates better numbers and quality minerals before exhausting itself.

[forsaken1111]

So I ventured into one of the systems I could jump to, since it had a jumpgate. Technically, they should all have jumpgates since I told them to in galaxy creation, but only this one does.

Anyways, it has a planet I can inhabit with some terraforming, has a moderate amount of minerals (and by that I mean several million in Duranium, Corbomite, Corundium, and Uridium) and old ruins on it. Thankfully, nothing seems to mind my flyby of the place, and from the looks of it, it's only linked to the Sol system, so probably no threat to it.

There's another inhospitable planet with tens of millions of each mineral, but it's all at .1 availability. Great backup, I guess.

Don't even bother trying to mine anything below 0.3 or so, it is horribly inefficient.

Even an inefficient mine is a mine, and if you need the minerals it is worth it.

[Sheb]

At least 150%.