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[forsaken1111]

I don't even put defenses on them until the colony passes a few million. Just an orbital med/rec and commerce center to help them along

[Sergius]

I don't even put defenses on them until the colony passes a few million. Just an orbital med/rec and commerce center to help them along

I suppose that just depends on how contested is the area. The good thing is that armor and fighter bays (which require no energy at all) work as soon as they're built so it can survive attacks mid-build. Damage control thingy should also work even with one energy collector. Shields also start recharging as soon as they get power, I think it needs at least a reactor and cells tho (and a freighter to fuel it). So even if your base is half done it's already soaking hits and fending baddies off.

[forsaken1111]

I don't even put defenses on them until the colony passes a few million. Just an orbital med/rec and commerce center to help them along

I suppose that just depends on how contested is the area. The good thing is that armor and fighter bays (which require no energy at all) work as soon as they're built so it can survive attacks mid-build. Damage control thingy should also work even with one energy collector. Shields also start recharging as soon as they get power, I think it needs at least a reactor and cells tho (and a freighter to fuel it). So even if your base is half done it's already soaking hits and fending baddies off.

Comes down to play style and doctrine I suspect. I usually colonize in batches. I will designate 3-5 worlds as a new area of interest and pre-stage small strike forces at each planet, then send out colony ships. I build the small support stations immediately and later upgrade them into full stations.

If one of the planets is attacked, its honestly cheaper to just recolonize.

[Sergius]

Another thing I would like to know, in a couple of games I've found an alien colony ship. If I put these aliens in their own planet, will my own race migrate there and overpopulate them? Is there any policies I can modify to keep the races somewhat separate (I only care that the alien race keeps at least 51% pop so that they can produce more colony ships of that race or something).

Does it matter if their native environment is the same or different than my faction race? Will they integrate any less if it doesn't match? Example, continental vs volcanic.

EDIT: I assume if I set the policy per colony, the dominant race for that colony will determine which race stays/migrates/etc?

[forsaken1111]

Another thing I would like to know, in a couple of games I've found an alien colony ship. If I put these aliens in their own planet, will my own race migrate there and overpopulate them? Is there any policies I can modify to keep the races somewhat separate (I only care that the alien race keeps at least 51% pop so that they can produce more colony ships of that race or something).

Does it matter if their native environment is the same or different than my faction race? Will they integrate any less if it doesn't match? Example, continental vs volcanic.

As far as I know there is no way to keep your native race from migrating there via policy. You can encourage that race to grow by assimilating them and making sure the planet is the correct type for them. If they breed faster than your race, its unlikely that yours will 'catch up' to their numbers.

Migration is a bit hard to predict too. I've had planets where my race never migrated in, so it was entirely a different race. That was mostly after conquering the planet, not an alien colony ship, but the situation is still similar.

[Sergius]

Seems like keeping alternate races is a bit of a PITA, and kinda useless if they just share the same biome.

If I get an alternate biome race I'll settle them somewhere appropriate, I suppose that the native biome gives a growth bonus to that race that will outperform my race anyway.

I guess also that letting them mix into my own planets and then set their policies to Resettle when I get a brand new colony will make most of them move there, also ensuring a majority.

[forsaken1111]

Keep in mind that other races can and will migrate around your empire as well. I'm not sure if there is any benefit to keeping a planet all of one race honestly

[forsaken1111]

Make sure you build colony ships from worlds where that race is the majority, then you can spread them around to new worlds

[Sergius]

Keep in mind that other races can and will migrate around your empire as well. I'm not sure if there is any benefit to keeping a planet all of one race honestly

Like I said I don't care if a race gets exclusivity, but setting my capital to Resettle will push any members of other races already living there to other worlds, hopefully to one where I'm trying to get a majority. This is just so that I can make Colony Ships of that race.

Once I get more than two races then all bets are off tho.

[puke]

50% off on a flash sale, if you're following this thread and don't have the game yet.

[Knave]

Slllllliiight necro to say the DW is on sale for 60% off. http://store.steampowered.com/app/261470/ 

I think this might be the steepest discount I've seen for the game so far, so if the $$ always put you off now is your chance!

[BigD145]

Slllllliiight necro to say the DW is on sale for 60% off. http://store.steampowered.com/app/261470/ 

I think this might be the steepest discount I've seen for the game so far, so if the $$ always put you off now is your chance!

I think that is indeed the cheapest. It's been off and on 50% off for the past two years or so.

[Damiac]

I've been having some fun with this game, I broke down and bought it for full price, I missed the 60% off sale by like a day...

It's an awesome game, I have to say.  Terrible tutorials, laughable help files, incredibly outdated wiki, a weird mix of great and terrible UI, but I'm a DF player damn it, no fancy graphical game is going to get the better of me!

But yeah, it's a lot of fun.  I'm on my third game now, after the first two went rather poorly.

Game 1: What am I, a wimp? I don't need no stinkin' tutorial.  Oh, and I read the AI isn't that great, so I'll start on hard mode, cuz I'm a pro at everything!  (Builds a crappy spaceport and like 1 research lab, and a couple ships) Ok, my advisors think we should stop paying these pirates, sounds good to me! Hey wait, all my stuff is asplode... 

(Do some internet reading, try the laughably useless tutorials)

Game 2: Ok, let's go with normal difficulty.  (Does stuff, gets a decently sized empire) Ok, now to crush some of these puny weaklings around me. HAHAHAH!!! (Takes over some weaker races) Hmm, those new refugee guys are really doing well.. oh well, they're on the other side of the galaxy, I'll deal with them later. (Continues a fruitless war against a neighbor)  Wow, the AI sure is bad at running wars for me... I guess I'll handle that in the future... (Story stuff happens) Hmm, well I have an alliance with most of the other races and those ancient robot guys, it should be fine, besides this is a story encounter, I'm sure it'll be easy to win. (More stuff happens) Well... those guys seem to be kicking everyone's ass... oh well, I'm sure some scripted event will happen and turn it around. (More stuff) Well! I'm sure dead!

Game 3: Well, screw that story mode noise, I want to just play in the galaxy!  And the AI did such an atrocious job, I'll just handle everything my damn self.  (Does the things) Hahahah, stupid dinosaurs, your puny colonies will be mine (Blows up the stuff) Hey, what the hell, why are all my colonies rebelling.  Oh... I have dinosaurs in my empire too... oh right, that independent world, apparently I colonized a few more worlds with them... now they're all mad because I'm attacking the empire of their race. (Continues with the war, planets continue revolting and re-joining the dino empire)  Damn it!  (Pirates take advantage of all ships in the warfront, build bases all up in my territory) No! More raids?!? Why is my money so red, anyway?!? ARGHGHGHGH!!!! Fine, no more war, as long as you dinosaurs will be my subjugated slaves. (Ends the dinosaur war, having ended up with 1 of the 3 planets originally conquered)

So that's where I am now, trying to build the infrastructure I should have had in place before I started this war.  Also, my stuff periodically just blows up because a nearby empire is really mad at me and apparently has really good intelligence agents.  I also now realize the error of my ways when I just went to the expansion planner screen and just colonized every available world.  As a result, my empire has a few distant outliers and it takes forever to build a defensive base.  My awesome warships turned out to be a little light in the fuel tank department, so now they need to be retrofit...

I'm really liking this game.  The usual 4X strategy of wild expansion is punished just like in real life, with logistical problems, rather than artificial silly penalties.  The fact that my fleets are way more powerful than an enemies does me no good if I can't keep those fleets well supplied.  My explosive expansion looked like it was working really well, until it became obvious that I had stretched myself too thin.

I do wish someone could do a mod to make the UI better.  I know there are mods to make it better looking, but I need more functionality.  It annoys me to no end that there is no way (that I could find) to quickly check if each colony has a defensive base, I had to actually zoom into each planet and click to see if there's a base.  Really?!? They couldn't put a tab under the colony view for space structures?!?  I can't be the only person who's run into this.

The galaxy map in general could afford to show a bit more in terms of what's going on in each system as well.  At least whether or not there are independent colonies there! That's important and useful info that would be good to have at a glance.

The fact that fleet stances don't work at all against pirates is also really annoying.  I know it's because technically you're not at war, but that's a stupid cop out.  Yes, fine, that's the technical reason, but obviously if a player tells a fleet to defend a certain region, he means against enemy empires and pirates that he's not in a protection agreement with.  If a player commands a fleet to attack bases in a certain region of space, it's a safe bet he wants to kill the pirate bases there too.  It's a shame they left this feature half finished (And from what I've read, even in the circumstances where it works it does not work well).  If automation is a big selling point of your game, it's a good idea to make sure it actually works...

So, like many games, I really like it, and I'm really disappointed in the devs in some respects.  It's just weird they went to the effort to make such a great game, but left so many things in a state of half-assedness.  The fact that they advertised that universe would be discounted for people who owned previous titles, then retroactively made that advertised offer a limited time one, really rubs me the wrong way, although I personally wasn't affected, it's just plain bad ethics.  In fact, it might qualify as downright fraudulent...  So I will be quite unlikely to buy another matrix published game, at least, it would have to be really good, because on top of shady marketing practice, you know it'll be wildly overpriced.

So my review? Great game under the hood, quite bad UI, not much in terms of resources to help learn the game.  If you're not willing to put in a bit of a frustrating slog to learn the game, don't bother with this.  If you don't mind deplorably awful UIs and shady ass marketing, I'd recommend it. 

[Akura]

Yeah, if you're just starting out, here's a few tips:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When designing ships, make sure you have a decent range - fuel cells are small enough to put more. The effective range is calculated from the number of fuel cells, hyperdrive type, and probably amount of reactors.

Fuel is a critical resource. Actually, two critical resources: caslon and hydrogen. Your initial reactor types use caslon, the highest-end reactor uses hydrogen. The mid-range reactors are split - the caslon reactor provides more power but uses more caslon per 100 energy while the hydrogen reactor uses less resources. The hydrogen reactor therefore requires fueling less often, but you may need more reactors to power all the weapons.

In fact, most mid-game tech is split between more efficient or more powerful. I personally go with the more efficient options.

Hyperdrives have three options mid-game: high speed, more efficiency, or faster jump initialization(the delay between prepping the jump and going plaid). I find the last one to be completely useless for regular use as it's both slower and uses more fuel - it's only useful if a ship needs to GTFO right away and most of the time there's plenty of time to make the jump. I personally prefer using the high-speed hyperdrive on civilian ships and efficient drives on military. Cargo ships get places faster and they always refuel at their stops if possible.

You seem to have had a problem with rebellions from bombarding aliens who also live in your empire. Yeah, pissing off a race in general will piss off all citizens of that race in your empire. What's more, unless the empire your bombing has a particularly evil reputation, your own reputation goes down which in turn upsets your people. Apparently turning a nearly-useless volcanic rock inhabited by billions of bug people who hate your species' guts(mutual feeling) into a crater-covered volcanic rock inhabited by no one is considered abhorrent by your people even if all of them are of the same species who hated the bugs and are the only other known entity in the galaxy.

The advisors suck most of the time. Especially for diplomacy. The only time I really go with their advice is for new colony suggestions and facilities.

Speaking of colonies, don't just mark every planet on the planner screen for colonization. Colony ships take a long time to build, and can only be built at worlds with 500m people or more. Really, you should go with planets given the following criteria(in order): unique resources(Loros fruit, etc.), unique structures, closeness to empire, quality(>50% always, >80% is great), size(planets are better than moons), and resources. Note the last three can be switched up a bit if there's resources you need, but remember that a mining base works just as well in the meantime. Do note that when assigning a world for colonization, it queues up a colony ship at the nearest world with 500m(and without already building a planet-built ship or station or the smallest queue for such), regardless of the race of that world - it uses the dominant race if multiracial.

Finally, money. I usually automate taxes(because manually setting taxes for more than a handful of colonies is a chore). Set smaller colonies to lower taxes and they'll grow faster. Don't build massive death-fleets with every ship-type being at the full size. These will kill your cashflow. Massive armies also detract from the budget a lot. Research troop logistics(under Weapons) to lower army costs, and command/governance(under HighTech) to lower ship maintenance. Another source of income are space ports(only at colonies that see a lot of freighter traffic), research commerce to boost that. Also consider resort bases near places like black holes or ruins. These can rake in obscene amounts of cash, and are best built near large and highly developed worlds.

[Zangi]

To add on:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Colonies under 50% quality does not generate revenue on its own, it actually costs upkeep to keep such a colony afloat.  Make sure it is worth it.  The AI usually has a good handle on what is worth and what isn't.
Small-new colonies don't generate much tax revenue at all, zero taxes.  Medium ones may also be better served to growing as quickly as possible before taxing their everything.

Diplomacy: Advisors base their suggestions on the same relationship AI that NPC empires use.  That stuff is dictated by many factors, including 'natural' racial relations.  Their suggestions with pirate factions are always garbage.  (No, I do not want to break relations with the pirate faction I'm paying 70 credits to every month.  That is some very very cheap security that I do not want you to touch.)