Advice for resource collection and fleet building

[Fried Toast]

So on my most recent playthrough, I thought I was doing pretty good, I had about 100 resources/energy monthly and my fleet power was around 5k and I had just unlocked the battleship, but then the unbidden spanwed right in the middle of my borders with a fleet of 50-somethingk, I have no idea how i'm supposed to get enough resources and energy credits monthly to build such a massive fleet so quickly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[NixBoxDone]

First off: With the Unbidden in your face, you're just going to be toast as a beginner. That's less on you and more on the fact that the Unbidden are the final boss of Stellaris. They kick the butts of even seasoned players now and then, so don't take it badly.

As to your resources, there are several things you need to keep in mind. The beginning of your game is very important, because every mineral lost/gained is a little bit more speed on building the next mineral station, which will then make it easier for you to build the next.

Send your science ship to first scan your home system and then all systems within your initial borders, prioritising systems with habitable planets. Split one of your corvettes off from your main fleet and have it scout out planets in a circle around your influence to find habitable planets outside of your current borders. Pick your initial research (ALWAYS pick the colony ship and ignore researching the alien lifeforms you encounter until you have it) and look at your capital planet. You should have most pops busy building a balanced amount of resources and 1 or 2 that are just farming tiles with no building on it. Keep enough people on food so you have a healthy surplus (you are most likely going to have to build an additional farm to keep your people growing at some point before you reach the next upgrade on the farms). Build one more energy building and one more mineral farm. You'll need the energy to be able to guarantee not going below positive income when you build mining stations.

As you do this, your science ship should have found a few initial resources. For now, you should prioritise building mineral stations over building energy, unless you would sink below positive energy income by doing so, in which case you build one energy credit mining station. The reason for prioritising mining over research is that minerals are very important to get enough colony ships out fast enough in the early game to expand. Research will be prioritised when you either have more minerals than you can realistically spend on colonies without getting overhwelmed with the managment of same, or when you have reached a stalemate and your borders are blocked by other empires, whatever comes first.

You will also want to build stations over planetary buildings because they are only useful when you have a pop working them but will cost minerals and energy for upkeep even if they aren't being worked, becoming a cost without benefit until a pop grows to make them useful.

You keep building mineral stations with the occasional energy station until your colony ship research is half finished. At that point, you start saving minerals to rush out the colony ship as soon as you can.

In this time, your scouting corvette should have managed to uncover some colonizable planets outside of your influence. It pays to check each green planet so uncovered for size and to send out a science ship to survey the biggest one that is reasonably close (influence cost for colonizing) in advance so that you can colonize as soon as your ship is done. The planet should be outside of your border so more stars fall into the extended range around it when you do colonize, and preferable in direction of the closes AI empire if you found one, unless that empire is a Fallen Empire. This serves to claim space that would otherwise be claimed by said empire as they expand, leaving space that is NOT (to your knowledge) near an alien empire in another direction free for expansion a bit later.

After your colony ship finishes, focus on building corvettes with the best tech available to you until you reach a fleet strength of at least 250, better around 300. Park your fleet on the border of your capital planet so it can warp out immediately if needed, because shortly after your establish your first colony, pirates will spawn. If your fleet is docked at your spaceport, you will likely lose at least 1 station before you can intercept them. Keep up the routine until the pop up for the pirates comes up, then pause, hire an admiral with a battle bonus (best would be evasion, attackspeed, then range, combat speed and then anything else if you didn't get access to better - try to avoid the type that will disable FTL emergency jumps) and unpause when on your galactic view, zoomed out far enough so you can see each of the systems you own minerals in.

If you are a warp or hyperlane species, you will likely see the pirates enter your scan radius before they enter one of your systems. If you do, pause immediately. Select the pirate fleet to see which system they are targetting and send your fleet there as close to discovering them as you can so they have no time to destroy your stations. For warp, unpause at normal speed to see follow the line of their travel back to their likely system of origin to find where the pirates are based. For hyperlane, study the connections of the planet they have to have come from to see which systems could be likely candidates. For wormhole gates you will only see the pirates as they are in one of your systems, unfortunately. You'll have to scout all around to see where they came from unless you are willing to sacrifice a station and let them wormhole home, as you can then select them and see where they are wormholing to to find the station.

Destroy the pirates and the base while making as sure as you can to not lose any minerals to destroyed ships.

You will keep colonizing (prioritising outside your influence/range from capital/size/direction) until you are stymied for further growth and only then start colonising planets already within your borders. Your science ship will prioritise scanning systems within your influence, except for when your star port can pump out another colony ship, which is when you scan another likely green planet candidate to colonize in advance so you can claim it asap.

I found that you will have plenty of space on your planets for research if you build balanced colonies, meaning if you take advantage of what is on the tiles anyways to begin with. You may want to make resource hubs later when you get a really juicy planetary modifier (+ minerals, science, energy), but for the beginning going with balance is best.

For a good material start, consider making a race with a high happiness modifier and starting as a plutocratic oligarchy if available. It confers a valuable early game advantage by making your mining stations cheaper, letting you snowball faster, and by giving you extra energy and minerals in general. You can keep it throughout the game (upgrading it once available to double the bonus) or switch it out with a government type that gives better boni (such as research or navy boni) once you have your economy running.

Keep in mind that happy people create bonus resources, so buildings that increase happiness are valuable. The Social Welfare policy seems like a huge dump in the beginning but becomes less taxing when you consider that the resource output of your planets gets boosted - this becomes more effective later, when higher levels of buildings make planets more profitable.

Other than that, just pump out colonies and claim space in early game like mad. You can start building tall once all the space around you is claimed (which is pretty quick in any galaxy that isn't very sparsely populated), but with more resources because of all the stations and planets you have access to. Your research should grow slowly on its own as your colonies grow and you hit the time when the only slots left are ones that confer science boni, or as you reach times when the only stations left to build are observation stations and science stations.

Some exceptions: Build science stations on any one source that offers 4 or more of a given science type to boost your early research. Police up the remainder once your mineral and energy stations are done.

Make sure to build a spaceport in every colony (for the fleet capacity) and build a solar panel on it once you research it.

Make sure you always invest in your navy to the point it is close to capacity, even if your economic growth suffers a bit, because otherwise you'll look like an easy victim and might get gobbled up by neighbouring empires. War is waste until you have all the space you can get without having to lose ships and spend time bombing. Exception to that is if you have an enemy that cut you off early (fight him and claim or liberate planets until you gain enough access to unoccupied space to resume colonising) or an enemy like the fanatic purifiers or crusaders of any type - there is no coexisting with them, they will always wait for a moment of weakness and should be crippled as soon as reasonably convenient.

Keep checking each of your planets every few months to see if a new pop is on the way on a slot you have no building on - if you do find such, build just enough buildings to occupy each new finished pop and the one on the way, but no more. Wouldn't want to waste energy on upkeep and minerals on building them until they can be used. ^^

You'll want to deviate from this for some special occasions - such as building an outpost to claim especially resource/planet rich systems or to make sure a leviathan is within your borders so the AI won't murder them.

Hope this helps. I have yet to lose a game to standard AI empires when expanding like this - got wrecked once by the Unbidden when they spawned in my face, though.

[Fried Toast]

Originally posted by PonySlaystation:

First off: With the Unbidden in your face, you're just going to be toast as a beginner. That's less on you and more on the fact that the Unbidden are the final boss of Stellaris. They kick the butts of even seasoned players now and then, so don't take it badly.

As to your resources, there are several things you need to keep in mind. The beginning of your game is very important, because every mineral lost/gained is a little bit more speed on building the next mineral station, which will then make it easier for you to build the next.

Send your science ship to first scan your home system and then all systems within your initial borders, prioritising systems with habitable planets. Split one of your corvettes off from your main fleet and have it scout out planets in a circle around your influence to find habitable planets outside of your current borders. Pick your initial research (ALWAYS pick the colony ship and ignore researching the alien lifeforms you encounter until you have it) and look at your capital planet. You should have most pops busy building a balanced amount of resources and 1 or 2 that are just farming tiles with no building on it. Keep enough people on food so you have a healthy surplus (you are most likely going to have to build an additional farm to keep your people growing at some point before you reach the next upgrade on the farms). Build one more energy building and one more mineral farm. You'll need the energy to be able to guarantee not going below positive income when you build mining stations.

As you do this, your science ship should have found a few initial resources. For now, you should prioritise building mineral stations over building energy, unless you would sink below positive energy income by doing so, in which case you build one energy credit mining station. The reason for prioritising mining over research is that minerals are very important to get enough colony ships out fast enough in the early game to expand. Research will be prioritised when you either have more minerals than you can realistically spend on colonies without getting overhwelmed with the managment of same, or when you have reached a stalemate and your borders are blocked by other empires, whatever comes first.

You will also want to build stations over planetary buildings because they are only useful when you have a pop working them but will cost minerals and energy for upkeep even if they aren't being worked, becoming a cost without benefit until a pop grows to make them useful.

You keep building mineral stations with the occasional energy station until your colony ship research is half finished. At that point, you start saving minerals to rush out the colony ship as soon as you can.

In this time, your scouting corvette should have managed to uncover some colonizable planets outside of your influence. It pays to check each green planet so uncovered for size and to send out a science ship to survey the biggest one that is reasonably close (influence cost for colonizing) in advance so that you can colonize as soon as your ship is done. The planet should be outside of your border so more stars fall into the extended range around it when you do colonize, and preferable in direction of the closes AI empire if you found one, unless that empire is a Fallen Empire. This serves to claim space that would otherwise be claimed by said empire as they expand, leaving space that is NOT (to your knowledge) near an alien empire in another direction free for expansion a bit later.

After your colony ship finishes, focus on building corvettes with the best tech available to you until you reach a fleet strength of at least 250, better around 300. Park your fleet on the border of your capital planet so it can warp out immediately if needed, because shortly after your establish your first colony, pirates will spawn. If your fleet is docked at your spaceport, you will likely lose at least 1 station before you can intercept them. Keep up the routine until the pop up for the pirates comes up, then pause, hire an admiral with a battle bonus (best would be evasion, attackspeed, then range, combat speed and then anything else if you didn't get access to better - try to avoid the type that will disable FTL emergency jumps) and unpause when on your galactic view, zoomed out far enough so you can see each of the systems you own minerals in.

If you are a warp or hyperlane species, you will likely see the pirates enter your scan radius before they enter one of your systems. If you do, pause immediately. Select the pirate fleet to see which system they are targetting and send your fleet there as close to discovering them as you can so they have no time to destroy your stations. For warp, unpause at normal speed to see follow the line of their travel back to their likely system of origin to find where the pirates are based. For hyperlane, study the connections of the planet they have to have come from to see which systems could be likely candidates. For wormhole gates you will only see the pirates as they are in one of your systems, unfortunately. You'll have to scout all around to see where they came from unless you are willing to sacrifice a station and let them wormhole home, as you can then select them and see where they are wormholing to to find the station.

Destroy the pirates and the base while making as sure as you can to not lose any minerals to destroyed ships.

You will keep colonizing (prioritising outside your influence/range from capital/size/direction) until you are stymied for further growth and only then start colonising planets already within your borders. Your science ship will prioritise scanning systems within your influence, except for when your star port can pump out another colony ship, which is when you scan another likely green planet candidate to colonize in advance so you can claim it asap.

I found that you will have plenty of space on your planets for research if you build balanced colonies, meaning if you take advantage of what is on the tiles anyways to begin with. You may want to make resource hubs later when you get a really juicy planetary modifier (+ minerals, science, energy), but for the beginning going with balance is best.

For a good material start, consider making a race with a high happiness modifier and starting as a plutocratic oligarchy if available. It confers a valuable early game advantage by making your mining stations cheaper, letting you snowball faster, and by giving you extra energy and minerals in general. You can keep it throughout the game (upgrading it once available to double the bonus) or switch it out with a government type that gives better boni (such as research or navy boni) once you have your economy running.

Keep in mind that happy people create bonus resources, so buildings that increase happiness are valuable. The Social Welfare policy seems like a huge dump in the beginning but becomes less taxing when you consider that the resource output of your planets gets boosted - this becomes more effective later, when higher levels of buildings make planets more profitable.

Other than that, just pump out colonies and claim space in early game like mad. You can start building tall once all the space around you is claimed (which is pretty quick in any galaxy that isn't very sparsely populated), but with more resources because of all the stations and planets you have access to. Your research should grow slowly on its own as your colonies grow and you hit the time when the only slots left are ones that confer science boni, or as you reach times when the only stations left to build are observation stations and science stations.

Some exceptions: Build science stations on any one source that offers 4 or more of a given science type to boost your early research. Police up the remainder once your mineral and energy stations are done.

Make sure to build a spaceport in every colony (for the fleet capacity) and build a solar panel on it once you research it.

Make sure you always invest in your navy to the point it is close to capacity, even if your economic growth suffers a bit, because otherwise you'll look like an easy victim and might get gobbled up by neighbouring empires. War is waste until you have all the space you can get without having to lose ships and spend time bombing. Exception to that is if you have an enemy that cut you off early (fight him and claim or liberate planets until you gain enough access to unoccupied space to resume colonising) or an enemy like the fanatic purifiers or crusaders of any type - there is no coexisting with them, they will always wait for a moment of weakness and should be crippled as soon as reasonably convenient.

Keep checking each of your planets every few months to see if a new pop is on the way on a slot you have no building on - if you do find such, build just enough buildings to occupy each new finished pop and the one on the way, but no more. Wouldn't want to waste energy on upkeep and minerals on building them until they can be used. ^^

You'll want to deviate from this for some special occasions - such as building an outpost to claim especially resource/planet rich systems or to make sure a leviathan is within your borders so the AI won't murder them.

Hope this helps. I have yet to lose a game to standard AI empires when expanding like this - got wrecked once by the Unbidden when they spawned in my face, though.

Thanks a lot! I'm defintely going to keep this in mind for my next playthrough, i'm guessing if the unbidden spawn in the middle of your empire you're kinda screwed no matter what?

[NixBoxDone]

Not always. I played a few rounds with my brother (I bought him the game and we've been having a lot of fun). In one of them, the Unbidden spawned right in my brothers system.

What you have to realize is twofold:

First - The Unbidden do not always spawn, and like the other end game crisis events, WHEN they spawn varies. That means that in the later stages of the game, you may have a fleet on your own that can stand up to them for quite a while, and possibly enough allies to wipe them out at full strength.

Second - The Unbidden snowball. The portal they use to enter this dimension is capable of reinforcing them indefinitely, which means that they get stronger the longer they manage to keep a foothold.

In our case, they spawned somewhat later, which meant that I had an 80 k fleet and my brother was commanding 50 k.

We were also lucky in that the portal spawned right between us on a border. Within days of the portal opening, my brother charged into the system from the far side of the portal, attracting the roughtly 200 k combined strength of 3 fleets over to him. As soon as they were engaged, I initiated my own jump and had my fleet of 80 k charge the portal.

We ended up losing most of my brothers fleet and about half of mine, destroying around 30ish k of the Unbidden, but the portal was closed.

The Unbidden have no way to build ships - all of their power enters through that portal. Once it was closed, it was a very easy thing to rebuild our fleets and wipe out the now stranded survivors.

Netted us some neat 4th dimensional energy weapons, better than the best we had up to then researched.

Now, it is to be said that we were lucky. I've had the Unbidden snowball to 1.2 MILLION in fleet strength in another game, when they were too far away to oppose in time.

[Adonai]

I just got a snowball of unbidden, ruined my game. the fallen empires who were awoken decided to do nothing. except moral support.