Too hard ?

[fredingue]

I'm quite familiar with 4X Space games, but i must admit that i feel very bad at his one :

I tried about 15 times a default settings campain game, each time i give up after 10 or 15 minutes, for the same reasons :

- barely 5 to 10 turns after the start and 10 cms away from my home planet, my explorer ship is destroyed by "something" that comes with 4 ships and zap you're dead...

- i never can find a proper planet to colonize : all planets around my home world are sterile, irradiaterd, snowy and so on. So i try to reach a farther world...and meet doom on the way.
Or if i find an "allmost proper one" it has no agriculture and the world is lost before i can set up some food shipping.

- i'm early threatend by pirates and i'm encouraged to destroy their lair...

It is allways the same, so i restart ever and ever to face the same conditions, while the home planet is too slow to produce anything to compensate this.

So, while i am barely capable of building one thing in 30 turns, the game would require to craft 10 things in 20 turns to face all the dangers and needs...

I never played Stardrive 1 more than 1 hour because i could not really get good feelings with the gameplay. I was eager to give more time to this sequel...but it's quite frustrating.

I read some guides about the game, i think i do things the most clever way...but i get discouraged so early...

Nota : i tried a game with different settings, like only 1 opponent, more worlds, more quality and so on...to face exactly the same starting despair.

==> How do you get your kicks and make a good start ?
Are the tutorial conditions too hard or am i specially bad ?

[[[Citation Needed]]]

I have found that a good starting position makes a huge difference in the game. When I start a new game, if I don't find two or three good planets in the neighborhood, I usually restart.

Also, try playing the game with clustered stars. It buys more time to develop before meeting an alien race.

I'm playing a custom version of the Humans, where I sacrified a lot in order to get the Creative advantage, and that helps me out a lot as well.

There's nothing wrong with waiting to establish a colony until you have a freighter fleet ready to send food to it.

Finally, don't think you have to be able to explore anomalies early on. There's nothing wrong with bypassing them for a while,k coming back when you're stronger. That would include going after pirate lairs and such.

[White Wolf]

The first thing I build is a freighter fleet so I can send citzens to my new founded colony to speed up the process significantly, as for early game pirates, they'll never get past your starbase.
It also lets you take out the derelict ship questline which is 2 missions and nets you 500 RP in the aeroponics farm one, basically getting you aeroponic farm and another tech for free. (A little overpowered if you ask me)

[Zanteogo]

Starting planets are a massive random effect on the game, with the game leaning towards crappy ones. I sort of like it, it makes the good ones targets to be fought after.

It does add a good degree of "luck" to the game however.

Also, it would be nice if desert and ocean planets spawned more by default. It seems we usually get 70% toxic/barren types with a few tundra, terrian and gaia mixed in. Desert and ocean planets are ultra rare however.

[Solofox]

I love +9 production asteroid belt even the +8 aren't bad. You don't have to worry about pollutions and they make great starship builders sites.

My starting planet and a couple good belts it all I need.

[Zunnoab #931]

Considering how quickly you can research late game, I do not consider a reward being moderately useful by mid game overpowered personally.

I only played a couple games so far but indeed early game seems hardest.

Remember aside from several very specific events you can run from hazards and they may even help protect you from the AI empires.

Ship building is very powerful. Before you meet AIs is when to snatch up planets. The diplomatic hit for ANY colonizing outside of your own systems is enormous, and still does not go down (which is a bug). Any colonization ticks any AIs that know about you off more than most other things in the entire game (more than outright invading them then signing a peace treaty sometimes). I found once meeting AIs at least until the crazy faction hit for expansion is fixed I am safest building a defense and getting troops set up so I can use them when the time comes.

Again maybe a bug, but aggressive AIs will sometimes declare war for no reason, their diplomacy screen even still showing 100 percent positive attitude towards you. Even the "honorable" Kulrathi declared war while showing adoration and through a non-aggression pact. So the easiest way to expand is to swallow territory from aggressive AI when inevitable war comes.

There is also a super lame in my opinion mechanic that spawns a wormhole in your space if you go awhile without contacting others. It is disabled on easy but hopefully it can just be a option at some point. The event is 100% artifical. A scout WILL come into your space immediately after. If this is an aggressive civilization it can be bad. Save often. The wormhole is scripted but the target empire is random. You can reload if you get a wormhole giving a super aggressive empire a gateway into your territory. Also beware the unarmed scout can destroy all of your freighters too, as happened to me once when the Ralyeh devoted immediately declared war after the magic wormhole from nowhere event.

I love the game, but those are some workarounds I use. Also remember you can trade to end wars. I knew Opteris, the Kulrathi, and the Ralyeh devoted would always declare war eventually, but I would trade/bribe to end wars until I was ready. Perhaps eventually they will not suicidally declare war no matter how badly they are beaten, but for now the aggressive empires WILL declare war always eventually, so they are prime pickings to invade when they attack you.

A mean but effective strategy is to invade an aggressive empire when they attack a more trustworthy one too since they often are not at all prepared for a war on multiple fronts.

[BoydofZINJ]

You can retreat your explorer. Move the ship in the deployment area as far back as possible and give the retreat command BEFORE you start combat.. and wham... it should escape everything but late tier stuff.

[FireStorm20]

I am winining now my game on brutal. Imho on start you dont need to expand alot. Remember planets are big investements that gives return slowly and within 20 turns you wil get atacked by pirates or crystals. I tend to find one ultra rich planet and build it asap with starbase then build up 2 cruisers as defence against pirates/crystals. Only then (and it takes a long time) i start expanding further, Remember about tax slider if oyu need money, exploit whatever random good luck you have (a hero with class2 shield or a minor race planet nearby can amke a huge difference.)

Basicly imho early on its all about production and population growth.

Also imoh cloning center is a must have early , otherwise population grows to slowly.

[Zanteogo]

Originally posted by FireStorm20:

I am winining now my game on brutal. Imho on start you dont need to expand alot. Remember planets are big investements that gives return slowly and within 20 turns you wil get atacked by pirates or crystals. I tend to find one ultra rich planet and build it asap with starbase then build up 2 cruisers as defence against pirates/crystals. Only then (and it takes a long time) i start expanding further, Remember about tax slider if oyu need money, exploit whatever random good luck you have (a hero with class2 shield or a minor race planet nearby can amke a huge difference.)

Basicly imho early on its all about production and population growth.

Also imoh cloning center is a must have early , otherwise population grows to slowly.

I agree, by mid game I have to slow down my ship producing machine not because I don't want more ships, but because it just costs too much money to have that many.

The research negitive for taking planets is also sort of balances the research issues of wide vs tall empires.

So yes, your better off having a couple good planets.

It's actually has a nice effect of delaying the late game clean up phase. *dread*

[fredingue]

Thanks for feedback

[fredingue]

Just to focus on a typical situation, my last game
Easy mode with spiral galaxy, more habitable planets and no attacks, only 3 players
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=433721483
This is very early in the game, on the left i soon found an agressive opponent, plus another hostile independant faction in Eladus
The way to the eastern/south systems are also blocked by hostile forces.
Allaby and Sigma and the other stars have no interesting planets

So...i lost my explorer and my 2nd colony ship...too bad...no luck each game ? :p

Nota : it's freaking how the Chukk territory expended compared to mine...

[Marcos_DS]

Originally posted by fredingue:

Just to focus on a typical situation, my last game
Easy mode with spiral galaxy, more habitable planets and no attacks, only 3 players
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=433721483
This is very early in the game, on the left i soon found an agressive opponent, plus another hostile independant faction in Eladus

Independants are basically a freebie planet, conquer em as soon as you spot them and you have a great lucky start.

The way to the eastern/south systems are also blocked by hostile forces.
Allaby and Sigma and the other stars have no interesting planets

What do you mean, no "interesting" planets? No food -> produce food elsewhere. Poor -> use it for science.

So...i lost my explorer and my 2nd colony ship...too bad...no luck each game ? :p

A colony ship is a significant investment that early, i'd protect it with your fleet or make very sure there are no hostiles. Anyway, turn 90 is early for your 2nd colony ship. How did you build your fleet so fast?

Nota : it's freaking how the Chukk territory expended compared to mine...

Chukk has probably 3 planets: their homeworld, the one they colonized first and a third one (all center of the respective border bubbles on the map). If you had a 2nd colony ship, you probably were about to get the same size (just not as spread out).

[Elethio]

Random list of game play tips, for economy mainly and some for military.

1. use tax
2. extra food will give you extra income
3. specialize your worlds
4. garrison fleets this lets you build bigger fleets than your CP for no extra cost
5. get trade deals when you can, these make a big impact to trade production.
6. try and get multiple trade deals at the same time, then focus your production on trade to maximize the bonuses, when the trade deals are complete return to building things as normal.
7. If you can get nano caches at the same time as trade deals you can push your income through the roof, but remember your trade income will not go higher than your max production
8. remember higher tax = slower production, but maximum tax will only slow it by 50%.
9. get those ships built!!
10. your ship designs matter, also update your design regularly and refit your ships.
11. its ok to let them come to you fight them near a Starbase if you can.
12. if there is a remnant fleet too strong for you, just avoid them as long as their not in a central shipping lane, a few freighters are cheap to replace.
13. again if there is a pirate, crystal, or remnant fleet too strong for you, just let them blockade your world for a few turns, 1starbase & a little lost production is not that bad.
14. use corvettes, you have CP free corvettes up to your CP level.
15. More pop = more tax
16. use the tax bonus buildings
17. get good production techs
18. Asteroids are good for production and have zero pollution, use that!
19. asteroids with increased population (bio domes, asteroid habitat, Arcology,) are reall really good for production
20. get those higher richness worlds !! even if small pop, these can be terraformed later and become absolute powerhouses.
21. only build structure that help your production & income on higher maint worlds.

I'm sure others will have more tips for you.

[times05]

I generally like to play 30 star map with all races present on easy with encounters set to minimum. Maybe someday I'll bump up the difficulty, for now it's still fun.

30 stars can get pretty difficult to manage towards endgame, and there are still some challenging battles here and there. Pirates or crystal invasions can get pretty annoying on higher encounter settings as their fleets get pretty big. Even with those settings it can turn into a 5-10 hour game easily.

[fredingue]

Thanks for all, i think that i want to expand too early...but there is this incitation early in the game like "have 3 colonies and get XXX bonus"...i'lm allways running after the carrot :p

Anyway, the game seems more hardcore than casual...until i master it after zillion hours

[Drunetovich]

Playing wide currently way more beneficial then playing tall due to unlimited cp limit growth per planet.