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[rumpel]

Okay. I'm finally trying to get into the game. I just did the quick start I found on the wiki and now I'm... I don't know. Wish me luck, hehe.

[Dorsidwarf]

I really wish the pausing for ships out of fuel was less fucking obnoxious.

Yes, I know you're out of fuel. If you would WAIT FOR THE TANKER TO GET THERE INSTEAD OF CUTTING ME DOWN TO 1-HOUR INTERVALS it would be very NICE

[Girlinhat]

I really wish the pausing for ships out of fuel was less fucking obnoxious.

Yes, I know you're out of fuel. If you would WAIT FOR THE TANKER TO GET THERE INSTEAD OF CUTTING ME DOWN TO 1-HOUR INTERVALS it would be very NICE

Cancel the ship's orders, they no longer warn you about their fuel.

[Insanegame27]

I've had ships sitting on earth not doing anything warn me of their low fuel

[AlStar]

I've had ships sitting on earth not doing anything warn me of their low fuel

They'll still complain about it, but they won't actually interrupt your turn if they don't have current orders or triggering conditionals.

[Girlinhat]

I've had ships sitting on earth not doing anything warn me of their low fuel

They'll warn, but they don't auto-pause.  Ships with zero fuel and active orders will pause the game.

[Urist McManiac]

Okay, so recently started playing this 'game'. Although I'm still not sure if this actually IS a game at all. But it's fun, so even though I have a hard time figuring stuff out, I really want to give it a try. So the following are some noob questions I need answered:

1. What are the things I should do first?

I started a few games and my course of action was pretty much building up my Military Academy while researching TN technology and upgrading my SY. After the TN technology is unlocked, I start to research components I need to build a small geo survey vessel and start to convert my conventional industry into mines and construction fabs (50/50, so I end up with 500 mines and 500 factories when this is done). Usually my survey ship has found large deposits on the inner planets and smaller deposits in the asteroid belt, which I start to mine (more on that later). Is this a good start? Should I change something? I'm especially curious if I should prioritize building new research labs or should I work to convert my conventional industry as soon as possible.

2. Those eggheads always specialize in things I don't need!

Is there a way I can influence what types of scientists I will get in the first few years? It really makes a difference if I start with a CP scientist or not, due to the important TN technology. Assuming that I don't have good CP scientist, should I assign a scientist with a large bonus to another field to it or rather a scientist with a 0% bonus?

3. Where to establish a colony?

So I really want to start a colony on Mars. But is this really a good idea if I don't find large mineral deposits there? Does this in any way help my civilian economy (by creating trade routes or whatever)? And what is the best way to establish an atmosphere? I set up a few Terraforming installations after getting a small population up and added oxygen up to 20%. What gases should I add next to get the atmospehric pressure and temperature right?

4. Logistics

I upgraded my naval SY to 30 000 tonnes so I could create a basic freighter with a 25k tonne cargo hold. I guess I should have rather build a commercial SY, right? And how do I use this ship to transport a larger amount of cargo? I do have 100 automated mines and some mass drivers that I would like to place on Venus. What orders should I set for the freighter to get them there? Should I set the orders to:

Code: [Select]

Move to Earth
Load Automated Mines x100
Move to Venus
Unload All Installations

Or should I rather repeat a simpler command a hundred times? I understand that the freighter can only take one mine in it's cargo hold, but how do I get the freigher to continuosly ship them to Venus and come back for more? Especially since the ship always comes back to Earth to refuel (which is good) but stops doing its assgined task of transporting the mines (which is bad).

5. To infinity and beyond - but with what ship?

How should the ship that enters the first new system be desgined? In my most recent game, I desgined it with some minial (passive) thermal and EM sensors, geo and grav sensor, a jump engine and a CIWS - that way, the ship could pretty much explore the whole system on it's own. Should I instead create a task group with more, but more specialized ships?

[Mini]

Is there a way I can influence what types of scientists I will get in the first few years?

No, only how many you get (by building more naval academies).It really

Assuming that I don't have good CP scientist, should I assign a scientist with a large bonus to another field to it or rather a scientist with a 0% bonus?

For such a vital tech probably, but scientists do get better over time (both from actually researching and simply existing, but the former is much faster) so for more minor techs I tend to use worse scientists with the appropriate field, because it doesn't take much for them to be better than the off-spec scientist.

3. Where to establish a colony?

Mars is fine for just getting a colony going, even if there are no resources having population spread out increases the rate at which it grows. Additionally, yes civilian shipping will start going backwards and forwards, first transporting colonists and infrastructure and then (as the colony grows) standard trade goods. Since Mars is very close to Earth those trades tend to complete quickly, giving your shipping lines a lot of money, which means they get more ships and become more useful faster (which can potentially be a bad thing, later on when you have so many civilian ships it's notably impacting performance).

I guess I should have rather build a commercial SY, right?

For building a freighter? Yes. Commercial SYs are much cheaper and faster to expand. On the bright side, now you have a 30kt naval yard you can use to build warships.

And how do I use this ship to transport a larger amount of cargo?

Either cycling orders (if you just want it to do its task indefinitely, such as if you have a tanker transporting fuel from fuel harvesters to a colony) or repeating orders (if you want it to do it a set number of times and then stop). Sounds like the latter in this case, but be wary of off by one errors when you're repeating the orders, the number you input is how many extra times it will repeat the order, so if you want it to do something 100 times put in one cycle and then repeat 99 times.

How should the ship that enters the first new system be desgined?

Depends a lot on what you want to do, and what the objective of your game is. Just want to find what's in a system, not really caring about what it is specifically? Throwaway survey ships. Trying to defeat every NPR you come across as quickly as possible? Large battlefleet. There's not really an answer that's always applicable to every situation.

[Dorsidwarf]

1. Convert your CI first, because it makes you build the labs faster

2. No. Yeah, it's a pain.

3. There's no benefits to building a colony on a mineral-less planet except as a military staging post. However, if you train a geology team on some of the random asteroids and planetoids, you might be able to discover extra resource deposits (While these may be vast, they are unlikely to be very varied).

4.  Load mines Earth (They'll always load to full unless you tell them otherwise) -> Unload mines venus , with a 20% fuel conditional, and toggle the "Cycle moves" checkbox to have it repeat until no longer able. HOWEVER - Do not do this. You want to drop automated mines on venus, because even if you build a colony there, the colony rating is so gargantuan that all workers are in agriculture/maint, leaving none to mine, terraform, or construct.

5. Survey vessels should generally do geo and grav, as long as you don't mind the maintenence issue on grav sensors. A CIWS isn't needed - if you encounter aliens on the first jump, they're not going to be stopped by a basic TN CIWS system.

[Metalax]

3. There's no benefits to building a colony on a mineral-less planet except as a military staging post.

This isn't true. Civilian population, and hence wealth production, grow faster on smaller colonies. So even if a planet lacks it's own mineral supplies it can still be very much worthwhile to establish a colony, especially on low cost/easily terraformed planets. It also, once it has grown to a sufficient size, gives another node in the civilian trade network, further increasing wealth production.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, you drop colonists on every habitable rock you find. That's how you increase your production of dank memes and stop the ayy lmaos from colonizing in your territory.

[Girlinhat]

Build Naval Academies.  You start with 1.  Building more increases the rate that you get new scientists, officers, and civilian administrators.  One of the first things I do is build 9 more (10 total) and use the researchers I have.  By the time the first project or two is finished, I've got the right specialist.

[Urist McManiac]

Thanks everyone for the clarifications!

4.  Load mines Earth (They'll always load to full unless you tell them otherwise) -> Unload mines venus , with a 20% fuel conditional, and toggle the "Cycle moves" checkbox to have it repeat until no longer able. HOWEVER

But that's... exactly what I did? But when the freighter get's to the conditional order because it's running low on fuel, he heads back to earth, tanks up and then stops, with some error message about "only one order in cycle -> command stopped".

[Mini]

That's because when a conditional order fires it removes all the TG's current orders to replace it with the appropriate orders (in this case, to refuel). I guess then it doesn't cancel cycling orders, because then the game tried to cycle the refuel order, which obviously doesn't make sense. If you want it to make sure it has fuel and still continue, you need to put a refuel order as part of the cycle.

[Man of Paper]

Yeah, you drop colonists on every habitable rock you find. That's how you increase your production of dank memes and stop the ayy lmaos from colonizing in your territory.

Oddly enough it's posts like this that made me want to play this. I mean, the sweet detail stories helped, but mostly it was this stuff. ayy/10