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unmerged(402379)

Second Lieutenant
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Oct 30, 2011
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  • Sword of the Stars II
Intro / Disclaimer

I decided to write this up because I figure that in a couple of days we might get new players coming to the website to look for help, couple things you should know before you read this = 1) There is a manual, it is fairly in depth, and there is also a beginner's guide attached to the launcher, click on the small text on bottom the splash screen to open them up. Why write this if there's already an official guide? 2) This guide is meant to help you figure out how to get started in game once you understand the basic concepts of what the various menus do, ideally you'll have at least looked through the manual before looking at this. 3) I only can only speak from my own experience playing this game and give suggestions that reflect how i play the game, there are other ways to play and other strategies to try, so don't take this as absolute bible or anything. 4) i'm writing this before the expansion comes out so I don't know if there will be any major gameplay changes as a result of the new stuff, but my gut feeling is not really, unless you're playing the new race, in which case you're on your own.

Last Edited = Dec 2nd

I made a few changes to the guide to reflect changes made to the game and minor tweaks I have thought of.

I - Picking which map to play.

- If this is your first game and you are looking at the game setup screen, you have a lot of choices in front of you. Relax, lets just start you out with something simple. For the purpose of this guide I'll go ahead and recommend you pick the "Disk". Its a medium sized map with 6 players that's extremely easy to visualize so wont confuse you if 3d maps aren't familiar to you. I personally prefer playing larger maps, but "Disk" is large enough not to be too fast paced and small enough not to be too long. Bigger maps mean more time to expand before conflict, so can be more epic in scale and duration, small maps means you'll probably be at war sooner than you think.
- Having picked "Disk" just go ahead and click "Confirm" we'll leave all the sliders and stuff alone for now. The manual does explain what all of it does if you're curious.

IMPORTANT COMMENT = This guide really works better in larger maps than smaller. You might find that in a small map, this approach will leave you vulnerable to early game attacks by other players. If you want to use this guide pick a 6-8 player map with a fair number of stars.


II - Pick your race

- The next screen lets you choose what race you're playing as and what your opponents are. Lets just leave the enemy players alone and focus on your race. Click where it says select faction to pick which one you feel like playing. In general, the races are fairly balanced to play, it is possible to play well with any. That being said, if you don't have a lot of experience with the game or the races in general, the Tarkasian Empire is the easiest to play. That's what i'll recommend you play. 2nd choice would be either Morrigi Confederation, or Liir-Zuul Alliance, both of which have +'s and -'s, third choice is Sol Force (humans) whom despite being the most popular race to play as, are actually somewhat difficult to play at first due to their node line style FTL
. - Quick rundown of my opinion of the pre-expansion races (plenty of difference of opinion on this topic) =

Tarka
Pros = Very Good Cruisers, Decent Dreadnoughts, Effective easy to use FTL,
Cons = No major disadvantages
Playstyle = Favors Ballistic Weapons and Cruisers, 2nd strongest race in early game stays strong though out. Many strategy games use humans as the most well rounded race, in SotS2 I'd say Tarka is most well rounded instead.

Morrigi
Pros = Good Cruisers, Very Good Dreadnoughts, FTL can be fastest in game with big fleet and gravboat, Agile quick ships in tactical combat, Many ships designs come with drones - allows for faster survey times, small research bonus, bonus to trade income, powerful drones.
Cons = Small fleets without gravboat have very slow FTL speed, most expensive to build ships in game especially dreadnaught and gravboats, having to build gravboats is a handicap because fleet size is limited and they're expensive especially dreadnaught size gravboats.
Playstyle = Favor Energy Weapons and should aim for Dreadnaughts earlier than most. Playstyle favors peaceful early game as they are stronger late game, expensive ships makes for slower start.

Liir
Pros = Very good researchers, have ability to build carriers for special STL-only Zuul ships which are very powerful.
Cons = FTL is slow over short trips because ships slow down near stars, Slow in tactical map, Liir ships are weak compared to others with equal tech.
Playstyle = Favors Energy Weapons and Carriers, should aim to deploy Dread Carriers and Zuul battle cruisers. Very weak in early game, should avoid early game warfare.

Human
Pros = Good Dreadnaughts, Dreadnaughts are cheapest to build of all factions, fast FTL if connections are favorable.
Cons = FTL can sometimes fail to link stars near each other, trips often take longer due to circuitous route, survey of distant stars problematic (slow expansion)
Playstyle = Does not favor any particular weapon but should aim to deploy dreadnuaghts asap, at slight disadvantage early game and can be difficult to play on large maps due to node line randomness, cheap dreads big advantage mid to late game.

Suulka (also known as Zuul)
Pros = Ability to raise taxes to 7 without worrying about morale (best early game income), Most heavily armed ships of all types, cheap ships, can summon powerful allies.
Cons = Ships are lightly armored, FTL tech requires planning and maintence, ships move slowly when building new paths, Poor researchers: don't get many techs. Lack of citizens means late game income can be significantly lower than other races, loses resources per turn on all worlds.
Playstyle = Favor Ballistic Weapons, overwhelmingly strong early game if played aggressively. Needs to build and expand quickly, not for new players IMO. Easy victory in small maps, tougher battle in large ones. Requires more fleets early game to compensate for slow FTL on survey fleets.

Hiver
Pros = Heaviest armor of all factions, ships are durable and high top speed, gate network offers huge strategic advantages once in place, Ships have lots of supply
Cons = Early game exploration is very slow as ships must travel sub light, ships have few turrets and are turn slowly, gate network is somewhat expensive.
Playstyle = Favors Ballistic Weapons, expands very slowly due to lack of FTL ships, should aim for farcaster gate technology early on in large maps, can be very formidable late game and has very strong defensive advantages, does much better in small maps than large ones.

Loa
Pros = Most powerful cruisers of all faction, Strong dreadnaughts, high structure on all ships, don't need to pay security or upkeep on colonies, can colonize any planet. Don't need supply, cubes can be reconfigured into any fleet configuration at will, can repair ships instantly during turn at cost of lost cubes, fleets can be used for any purpose given enough cubes.
Cons = Slow FTL even with gate network, pay maintenance on gate network and costs cubes to build gates, limited fleet size unless combining multiple fleets at target location, expensive ships when paying full price for cubes, colonies require extensive supply missions before hitting 0 biosphere and enabling population growth, currently somewhat buggy firing arcs prevent full firepower from being used, can't build police cutters so trade is vunerable to pirates.
Playstyle = Favors energy weapons, expansion can be slow due to support requirements on colonies and slow FTL, cube mechanic offers many big advantages but requires "out-of-the-box" thinking to really use all of them, not recommended for new players.


This next bit is a rough estimate, based solely on experience of larger battles and some looking at numbers, but the reason I wrote it was to illustrate both relative starting strength and to give you some expectation of how strong ships are relative to each other. So, in a 1 v 1 battle using cruisers built with starting technology, in a head to head close range battle, the order of strength =
Loa > Suulka or Tarka > Morrigi or Hiver > Human > Liir.
Keep that in mind when you pick a race and when you go to war. Human and Liir will require at least some improved technology or at least superior numbers to an handle inherently stronger race's fleet.

But by turn 150 your most powerful dreadnaught in a evenly balanced game would probably be a fully loaded Liir Battlecruiser Carrier, followed by a Morgii war dreadnaught, and then third place would be something of a toss-up. (I haven't had enough experience with Loa to say how their dreadnaughts compare)


III - What to do on turn 1.

Ok, I'm going to assume you picked one of the recommended races (Tarka, Morrigi, Human, or Liir), and take it from there. If you picked Zuul or Hiver your going to have to learn what to do from trail and error or from someone else as their starting strategies are completely different. If you're playing the expansion race i have no idea if this guide will be helpful at all, you'll have to use your own judgement.

First thing you should do (for any faction) on turn one is to design your ships. Ever since a few months ago the game now allows you free design of ships on turn 1, so you should immediately head over to the design screen and start building your own designs. Basically you should just scroll down the tab of mission sections (middle part) of cruiser designs and build a design for each type. You will notice that you already have a few starter designs, but they kinda suck (not as much as they used to on release, but still sub-optimal). Biggest problem with all the starter designs is that they aren't full of "camel" modules.

For every ship you design on turn 1 go ahead and fill every available module slot with "Camel" modules.

Other important changes from the starting designs =
1) Morrigi command section should be changed to "Battle" on all designs except colony ships, Tarka and Liir (or human) should be set to "Hammerhead".
2) change any rear facing medium turret into a missle turret (except Tarka who have none),
3) Left click on a small turret to change them all to green beams (Blackwarder suggested this, and i've decided to include it).
4) All large turrets should be set to Heavy Driver.
5) Set all medium turrets to mass drivers, except the rear facing turrets which should remain missles. (Tarka have no rear turrets on fusion cruisers)
6) Make sure that "Polysilicate Alloy" is disabled on every section except the "armor" mission section of your "armor" ship, its not worth the extra cost IMO.
7) On bottom left of design screen adjust green beams to PD (point defence) by clicking on where it says "ALL" next to the green beam icon a few times. Then put the star next to mass drivers (the medium sized iron spheres) by clicking on the tiny empty star next to that weapon type (this tells your ships to try to get into optimal range for this weapon).

Name them something useful, I usually call my ships "C001 Armor" "C001 Command" etc because I denote what turn they were designed on. what size they are, and what mission section they have at a glance, so i'll know that my "D105 War" ships are dreadnaught with war sections designed on turn 105 and i know what techs i had recently unlocked on turn 105 that made me feel like building a new design. But that's just my boring way to name things feel free to be more creative but try to keep them something recognizable. Don't name your colony ship something that sounds like a warship if nothing else.

Do you really need any design except "Armor", "Command", "Supply", and "Colony" ship? Not really. But why not design them while they're free to do so instead of later in game when it will cost you a lot more? Having designs floating around means you can later refit them into updated versions instead of paying full prototyping costs. Morgii will also need gravboat design*.

* Special note for Morrigi players = Gravboats are special Morrigi only ships that give your ships a 50% FTL speed boost. Without a gravboat Morrigi move at 3 LY per turn + 0.3 LY/turn per ship (dreads count as 3 ships). Gravboats speed that to 4.5 LY/turn + 0.45 LY/turn per ship. So a fleet of 9 ships including graveboat moves at 8.55 LY/turn while a single command ship by itself moves at 3.3 LY/turn. This can be improved with tech.

Click on the Empire Manager button, thats the one that looks like a pie chart near top left corner. Slide your Goverment/Research bar (at the top now) all the way to the left so its all green. We will not be researching anything on turn 1 because turn 1 is for shipbuilding. More on that later. If your income is under 400k right now, you will be at a bit of a disadvantage, because it means your starting colonies are small , but real men tough it out, others consider restarting (your starting income varies from like 350k to 550k). Go ahead and set your tax rate (middle of screen) to 6. Now look at your "Security" Bar (top left under government/research slider) see that notch? Move the bar so that the orange part ends on that notch, this is your "minimum" security, anything less you will lose money to corruption, anything more is a waste (unless you trying to spy/sabotage/counter intel other people). Also make sure your stimulus is set to "0" at all times = some people really like stimulus (i don't), but its not really something you want to worry about your first game. Looking at the list of planets below the tax rate you will notice your home world has the most population, the second highest is going to be the bigger of your two colony worlds, remember what that planet is called.

Ok lets go ahead and dissolve your starting fleets now. Yeah again you don't have to, but might as well. If you don't know how, you probably should consider reading the manual, but i'll go ahead and tell you to click on the fleet tab, then right click on the fleet to get to "dissolve fleet". When all 3 starting fleets are dissolved you will have 3 Command, 1 Constructor, 2 Armor, 2 Colony, and 5 supply. Ok now we make new fleets. There is now 2 seperate ways to do this task, the create fleet button and the fleet manager button. From the Fleet Manager window you click create fleet, then again create fleet next to your first admiral on the list, the one with "Pathfinder". Go ahead and call that fleet something reasonable like "Survey 1" or "1st Survey" or "Pathfinder 1" if you want to go by admiral trait. Then drag 2 supply ships and 1 armor ship onto that fleet. Do it again for your second survey fleet and use an admiral with "pathfinder" trait if you have another, something other than "livingstone" if you don't. For your third fleet call it a colony fleet of some sort and pick your "Green Thumb" admiral, who should be 3rd on the list, dump your 2 colony ships into that fleet. You will end up with 1 supply ship and 1 constructor in reserve.

Great, exit the fleet manager and go click on your homeworld. Its the one with a star on it if you don't know (read the manual if you're confused here). Each one is going to have 1 - 7 planets listed under the planet tab. The green bar with a marking on the end colored the same as your empire color is your homeworld, if you have more planets, some/all might be green or some/all might be red. If you have unmarked green tabs in same system as your homeworld it means you've got something for your colony ship to do right at turn 1, which is awesome. But before you start colonizing, click on the green tabs and make sure the "Climate Hazard" isn't over 250. Worlds with over 250 climate hazard aren't going to be worth colonizing right away even if they're green. If you have more than one to chose from, remember the planet number of the one with the lowest climate hazard. If you have no green planets on your homeworld's starsystem check the stars on your other 2 colony systems.

If you find a good world on one of the other two systems then you'll have to do a relocate mission with your colony fleet to that system on turn 1. Again if you have no idea what im talking about, consider reading the manual, but missions generally work by right clicking on the destination star you want things to happen at, so either right click your homeworld and pick colonize (do you remember which planet number was better if you had more than one to chose from?) or send your colony fleet to the star with the green world. If you have no empty green worlds in any of the 3 star systems you start with, well don't panic, just go ahead and dissolve your colony fleet again and forget about it for now. If you like playing with a good start you could start over again, but its really not that big a deal, i recommend you keep going.


Ok what to build.This is going to be hard to explain because of all the variables, so i'm going to do it list fashion.

1) If you are Tarka, Human, or Liir, and your first colony to colonize is in the home starsystem OR if you have no colony to colonize
--- Homeworld should build 6 colony ships, Command ship, then 2 more colony ships (later configured to make 2x colony fleets with 5 colonizers each)
--- Larger colony world (the one you going to use for trade) should build 2 command ships and 3 constructors (relocate 1 command & 1 constructor to homeworld)
--- Smaller colony world (the one you are going to use to build survey fleets) should build 1 command ship, 1 supply, 1 armor, 1 command ship, 2 supply, 1 armor
--- (to make 2x survey fleets of 1-2-1 command-supply-armor). (did you remember to relocate that extra supply ship from homeworld?)

2) If you are Tarka, Human or Liir with a colony to colonize in one of your colony systems (relocate colony fleet to star with colony world)
--- Homeworld should build 2 command ships, 3 construction fleets (relocate 1 command ship and 2 constructors to your biggest colony world)
--- System with Colony world should build 6 colony ships 1 command ship and then 2 more colony ships (to make 2x colony fleets with 5 colonizers)
--- System without Colony world (building 2x survey fleets) should build 1 command ship, 1 supply, 1 armor, 1 command ship, 2 supply, 1 armor
--- (to make 2x survey fleets of 1-2-1 command-supply-armor). (did you remember to relocate that extra supply ship from homeworld?)

3) If you are Morrigi with your first colony to colonize in the home starsystem OR you have no colony to colonize
--- Homeworld should build 5 colony ships and gravboat (to make a colony fleet with 7 colonizers and gravboat).
--- Larger colony world (the one you going to use for trade) should build 2 command ship, 1 constructors, and 1 gravboat
--- (relocate gravboats and 1 command ship to home star. add the gravboat to one starting survey fleets).
--- Smaller colony world (the one you are going to use to build a survey fleet) should build 1 command ship, 1 supply, 1 armor, 2 gravboat
--- (make a survey fleets of 1-2-1-1 command-supply-armor-gravboat and relocate extra gravboat to homeworld for survey fleet).

4) If you are Morrigi with a colony to colonize in one of your colony systems (relocate colony fleet to star with colony world)
--- Homeworld should build 2 command ships, 1 construction ship, 2 gravboats
--- (relocate 1 command ship and 1 constructor to your biggest colony world, add gravboats to survey fleets)
--- System with Colony world should build 5 colony ships 1 gravboat (to make colony fleets with 7 colonizers and gravboat.)
--- System without Colony world (the one you are going to use to build survey fleet) should build 1 command ship, 1 supply, 1 armor, 1 gravboat.
--- (make a survey fleet of 1-2-1-1 command-supply-armor-gravboat).


Now you have already used your colony fleet or dissolved it, so its time to send out your two survey fleets. Your best bet is to look for nearby stars with lots of planets, if you mouse over the star it shows you a diagram telling you how many worlds it has. Stars with more planets take longer to survey so pick the admiral with "Pathfinder" to survey the one with the most planets. Pick two unexplored stars and send out your survey fleets. Unless you are playing Morgii, in which case you will instead relocate both your survey fleets over to whichever of the two colony worlds is building survey fleets because you want to pick up the gravboats before you go anywhere. An important thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn't be ashamed to run if you encounter something at that system. Random encounters are all too powerful to fight with just 2 supply ships and 1 armor so you should simply avoid conflict (either just hit "+" on your keyboard and make the time run out fast if they are far away or move your ships directly away from the enemy if they are close). The next turn after combat you can go to your scout fleet that encountered trouble and hit cancel mission to get them to go home instead of face same enemy over and over. When you get a combat fleet (mentioned later in guide) you can use that to survey the system; 7-8 armors even with just starter tech are strong enough to beat any random encounter.

Also go into the station manager, click on your homeworld's naval yard, and build 2 docks. This improves the construction rate on your homeworld.

Click on each of your 3 worlds and set the population slider to 100%... its probably best that you do this for all new colony worlds you colonize too. (this has downside of making you lose resources on overpopulated worlds, but income bonus is worth that price)

One last thing to do is to relocate your last supply ship from the reserve on your homeworld over to the star system you're building the survey fleets on. To do this you will need to use "reserve transfer", which is done via the relocate screen by clicking the reserve transfer button at the bottom.

IV - The first several turns.

It is possible that if you have too little income due to small starting worlds you might hit negative savings on one of these turns. If that happens, stop production on your worlds by moving the "Ship Construction" bar down to 0 until you go positive again. You should avoid being negative in your "Imperial Treasury" unless its a dire emergency. Most likely to run out of cash early game is Morrigi who have the most expensive ships, Tarka and Humans can probably start researching after only 4-5 turns of no research, Morrigi might require more. It also matters what your starting income is, as people who are playing with low starting income may have to wait longer.

If you relocated your colony fleet you will need to start colonizing the world once it gets to the star you sent it to. Each new colony worlds has 2 tasks to do before its "grown up", it needs to get Climate hazard down to 0 via terraforming and it needs to get infrastructure upto 100 via infrastructure Once you start the colonization process you will need to keep an eye on the world because the sliders do not adjust automatically. For now leave it as it is when you first see the world pop up on your screen, 50% terraforming and 50% infrastructure. If terraforming or infrastructure gets done you will have to move the other bar to full if you are in a hurry to use that world, if it doesnt really matter then it will eventually finish both projects on its own.

What i do is leave my colony ships supporting the world until such time as its under 150 climate hazard and over 50 infrastructure. With 6-8 colony ships in your fleet that usually happens quickly. But as you only have 2 right now, you will notice it taking a long time. Remember to keep adding new colony ships to colony fleet as they get built, and to break them into 2 smaller fleets if you are not playing Morrigi (i made 2 small fleets of 6 because you can only relocate up to size 6 fleets to new colonies). You can drag colony ships from your reserve right into an active fleet so long as it isn't full. It might ask you if you wish to continue supporting that world, go ahead and click yes, if you click finish colonizing, you might then have to do a support mission with your colony fleet to achieve the same effect. If you are at 50 infrastructure on that world you can cancel mission to stop your fleet from continuing to drop supplies on that same world. If you are done colonizing that world start on the next one if you have one avialable somewhere.

When you colonize a new world, you can cancel the mission then relocate that fleet to the star system of your new colony then do "supply" mission once it gets there to speed up the process. Morrigi will have to leave 2 colonizers behind to do this though, so you will have to decide if its worth it. If you find a lot of worlds and you can't colonize all of them right away focus on the best ones and especially systems with multiple green worlds.

Low climate hazard worlds are much better than high, avoid colonizing worlds over 250 climate hazard early game. If your starter colony fleet finishes helping a world reach 50 infrastructure before its fully assembled, just start relocating everything to your next new colony world.

The survey process should be ongoing through these turns. If you are playing morgii you need pay attention to where your gravboats are and add them to your survey fleets as you can. If you are not playing Morrigi just keep sending out your starting 2 fleets but be aware that over time you will be able to assemble 2 more survey fleets from the ships you are building in your survey fleet construction system and the supply ship you relocated there. Technically you don't really need 3-4 survey fleets but i find it to be a huge help to have them. Survey fast, colonize the best worlds you find.

You will have enough construction ships to build 2 construction fleets, 1 for your homeworld and 1 for your largest colony world. Remember to make sure they end up in the right place.

At some point during the first 10 turns you will be done building these ships (or at least have enough money saved up) and you will be ready to start researching.

V - Researching FTL Economics.

The first tech i always get is "FTL Economics" if you are done building your ship (or about to be done - make sure you have enough imperial treasury to finish), then you go back to goverment pie chart button and set the research slider most of the way over to purple "research". This is a little tricky because you need to watch the notch on the security bar to know where to set it. The objective is to max research without getting corruption. If you see corruption listed as a value or a black slice to your government pie chart, you're doing it wrong. Adjust the purple slider to your max safe research and then move the security bar so it stops on the notch. In order to completely avoid corruption you will need to watch for the notch not to be all the way to the right side of the security bar. If this isn't making any sense to you, just go ahead and move the purple bar about 4/5ths of the way purple, thats close enough. Be sure to put the security bar on the notch and keep stimulus at 0.

This doesn't actually start research though, its possible in this game to waste money researching nothing at all, so be careful. Before you hit end of turn go to the research menu by clicking on the research button (its the ? in a box) and click on "FTL Economics", you can find that by clicking on the icon of a sphere floating above two books in the icons on the bottom. Make sure you click on the right tech then click research tech. If you did it right you will exit the tech screen and see the tech spinning where there used to be a ? mark.

Remember that just because you're researching something is no reason to let your ships go idle, keep sending them out to colonize and survey as you do this. If you want to save a little money you could dissolve the constuction fleet you relocated, to be honest i tend to dissolve idle fleets like that because they cost less money in reserve and the end of turn prompt about idle fleets gets annoying. You can rebuild your construction fleets when you need them later.

If you want to be optimal about money usage with regards to research, here's the best policy = research at max rate while your bar is less than 2 / 3rds full, then switch over to researching at about 1/2 max rate when you reach that mark. You can tell your progess by how far the circle is around the spinning tech icon. This is because you have a chance of breakthrough on a per turn basis any time you're over 1/2 done, so best bet to get breakthroughs is research the first half of the tech as fast as possible, and then take your time with the second half. This reduces the overall cost of research if you do it consistantly, but makes it take longer.

When you finish researching "FTL Economics" you need to 1) prototype a police cutter at your homeworld and start building it. 2) go ahead and start a second invoice at your homeworld for 3 freighters, to occur after the prototype finishes 3) start building 3 freighters at your secondary trade world (the larger of your two starting colonies where you sent the construction fleet). 4) Use/assemble a construction fleet at both these worlds and build a civilian station, should only take 1 or 2 turns. 5) set research back to 0 again.

Once the prototyping is done the next turn, you need to put in invoices for 4 more police cutters at your homeworld to be built after the 3 freighters, and 5 of them at your secondary trade world. You need 5 police cutters at any world with civilian station + a naval yard to be safe from pirates.

When the construction fleets are done building you need to -
1) Tell the construction fleet at your secondary trade world to start building a naval station.
2) go into station manager and build modules on your civilian stations. Ideally build the 1 dock first then the other 2 requirements for upgrade, but if you'd rather just hit "automatic upgrade" then "confirm build order". That will build what you need for for a level 2 station, but you should go ahead and fill those 2 stations completely, go ahead and que up all 6 modules possible (ideally 1st dock first, 2nd dock forth). If this isn't making sense to you, you need to read the manual, i don't really know how to explain it clearer.
3) Start building a naval yard in your secondary trade world. Due to some bug your fleet will finish building things 1 turn before it goes idle, which means that on the turn you get the announcement that something is built, you can go cancel mission on your construction fleet and start something else, or you can just wait 1 more turn, either way is fine.

Over the next few turns you will need to use the trade view (its an icon next to the turn counter on bottom of screen that looks like a 4 pointed star that opens up a drop down menu with that option) to set up trade routes. The trade view uses triangles and circles to explain things. This is in the manual probably more clearly than what i'm explaining, but here's a quick version = top row of circles explains how many "goods" a system can produce, filled ones are being produced, empty ones aren't. To fill the circles you need to adjust the sliders under the planet names in that system to the various notches, production used this way can't be used for terraforming/infrastructure or shipbuilding so be careful. When you have filled circles you next need to look at the next row which contains triangles. The triangles represent docks, you get 1 free dock for building a civilian station then 1 extra per dock module you've built at that station (1 turn delay for it to show up on trade view), empty triangles are available docks that don't have freighters to use, and filled triangles are docks that do. You will need 1 filled circle per filled triangle to get profit. Level 1 civilian stations have 3 docks when both dock modules are built, and each upgrade after that opens up possibility of 3 more docks, so build 3 freighters each time you build or upgrade a civilian station.

When your secondary trade world has a naval yard, you should be ready to upgrade both your civilian stations to level two (might be 1 turn wait). This can be done with the upgrade mission, you will notice a number on the station manager icon that tells you how many stations can be upgraded and it will flash on turns that new stations become upgrade ready, but if you did everything right just know that 3 turns after you built a lvl 1 station you should be ready to upgrade to a lvl 2. Remember to go to the station manager and click automatic upgrade and confirm order on that naval station but you probably will never need to upgrade that to a lvl 2.

When your upgrade is done (should take 2-3 turns) you will want to add invoices for 3 more freighters to both these star systems and start building more modules on the level 2 civilian station (docks first). Your home world should eventually be upgraded to a lvl 4 civilian station, but your secondary world can probably get away with a lvl 3, how quickly you upgrade to that depends on how much you want to spend... by the time you're ready for size 3 you might want to hold off a bit to focus on other things. Remember each level of upgrade gives you 3 more docks so try to fill up the triangles with freighters and match them up to the number of available circles.

The reason i only build 2 trade stations out of a possible 3, is that you want to have a star system free to build ships in. As you fill up those circles you will lose production capablity on your trade worlds. The world without trade station should probably either be used to build a second colony fleet or a combat fleet consisting of 8 armors (7 and a gravboat if you're morrigi) and a command ship. You should start assembling a combat fleet of 1 command 8 armors (-1 armor and +1 gravboat for morrigi).

When you have enough stars colonized past the starting 3, remember to set up a providence. Reason for this is that it gives a bonus to your trade income to trade to providences, its not necessary that every star is in a providence, but having providences where possible helps.


VI - Beyond FTL Economics

By this time your income should be coming along nicely, remember to avoid negative Imperial treasury by lowering research or pausing construction wherever necessary, keep in mind that stations cost a lot of money so you might be looking at several turns of no research to keep yourself afloat with all these costs. When you have a nice comfortable amount of money saved up, at least 1 million, start researching X-Ray lasers, then study feasiblity on Point Defense lasers, hopefully you will get that tech, if not, you might have to go try the ballistic pd tech or vice versa if you are Tarka. If you are Tarka you might be better off researching "VRF Systems" in the ballistics tree instead, that leads to the ballistic point defense system which works about the same. When you have point defense of either type go ahead and design your next generation of warships with the new tech filling all the small slots with the point defense tech you've unlocked. If you are Liir or Morrigi fill up all the forward facing medium slots with X-ray lasers, Tarka should stick to mass drivers.

Its a bit difficult to do much of a guide past this point because it all starts getting circumstancial. You will have to react to what your enemies are doing. How much of a war footing you go on depends on your play style. Building up the trade stations gives you more money to work with, but you will need to keep expanding into new worlds to keep that edge going. Go ahead and build naval stations where you want to concentrate your defenses, but don't build them everywhere. Build research stations if you have the money, but don't go overboard on them. Keep your important worlds protected (did you know to put your police cutters into the defense fleet and set them up in defense manager?).

Moving forward you might want to head towards antimatter and improved drive techs if you are in a big map, or dreadnaughts if you are playing morrigi or human. Liir could focus on getting phasers next or maybe put together some Zuul battler riders. Go ahead and try out whatever works for you. This is the end of my guide, but go ahead and post questions or comments and I'll try to respond as I can.
 
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Megastrip mining is alot better than FTL economics. It nets alot more benefits, if systems have good planets and good asteroid belts. I usually go for megastrip first. TFL requires more investment for a smaller income, if asking me.
 
Megastrip mining is alot better than FTL economics. It nets alot more benefits, if systems have good planets and good asteroid belts. I usually go for megastrip first. TFL requires more investment for a smaller income, if asking me.

Megastrip mining doesnt give more income, it just gives more Industrial Output. Unlike SotS prime, unused IO doesnt translate into income anymore.
 
Thank you for the guide, it is very much appreciated (at least for me, that I'm more reading how to play than playing this lasts days).

Just some questions to ask (and maybe even more personal view) are:

- In the relevant of managing defenses. How should be adressed? I'm not always sure if its better to leave fleets, rely on defense platforms or simply leave the system on its own. I ask this because of the dificulties of managing random encounters and out of radar/interception attacks from players. Under this I would like to know if its better to fortify one system and leave the rest to die/recolonize when the moment comes or make somekind of defense to each planet (with the corresponding drain of income).

- Provinces: Due to the complexities (sometimes) of having a cluster of colonizable systems in an "efficient" configuration. Should we wait for the proper techs/expenditures to state a clean province distribution or aim to form it as soon as we can? I ask this due to the permanent condition of making provinces.
 
- In the relevant of managing defenses. How should be adressed? I'm not always sure if its better to leave fleets, rely on defense platforms or simply leave the system on its own. I ask this because of the dificulties of managing random encounters and out of radar/interception attacks from players. Under this I would like to know if its better to fortify one system and leave the rest to die/recolonize when the moment comes or make somekind of defense to each planet (with the corresponding drain of income).
Re-colonizing is expensive. If you can, it's worth quite a lot of expenditure to stop anything that can destroy or seriously damage one of your colonies.

On the other hand, a lot of the smaller events can't seriously damage an undefended colony, so there may be some potential to not fighting too hard unless you've got a known existential threat.

If you don't install a military station, your defense platform budget probably won't be enough to really stop very much. I'd use them anyway to degrade enemy forces, and definitely use them anywhere a fleet will be stationed so that if the fleet needs to fight it can fight from the best position possible.
 
Thx you very much. Is hard to find this clear info for learning. I am big noob :D
I have few questions.

1- What are and how work defense platforms?
2- How exactly a military station helps you to defense vs random events?
3- Why dont you use supply in combat fleets?
4- What are scouts ships used for?

And 2 other questions about Liir
5- Should Liir tech on shields techs?
6- I saw Liir needs like 3-4 turns to move to a very close system, wich makes a very close survey to last for like 10-11 turns eventually. Is this normal? or i am missing something?

Thx you very much.
 
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Thx you very much. Is hard to find this clear info for learning. I am big noob :D
I have few questions.

1- What are and how work defense platforms?
2- How exactly a military station helps you to defense vs random events?
3- Why dont you use supply in combat fleets?
4- What are scouts ships used for?

And 2 other questions about Liir
5- Should Liir tech on shields techs?
6- I saw Liir needs like 3-4 turns to move to a very close system, wich makes a very close survey to last for like 10-11 turns eventually. Is this normal? or i am missing something?

Thx you very much.

1-There are a few techs that give you option to build defense satellites and system defense boats, you have to go to defense manger to control where they show up or go to "Auto Options" (hit escape) to have them be placed automatically if avialable.
2-Naval stations will reduce chance of pirate attacks in systems with trade. Also they help increase the number of ships you can have at a given star and number of defense assets you can deploy.
3-Using "Camel" modules on all my inicial ships kinda makes them unnessecary. Later on i do use them though, but i tend to only use them in support fleets. You can send multiple fleets to one enemy star, having 1-2 fleets be combat fleets and 1 fleet with repair and supply ships is actually very useful, since you can pick which fleets fight and which don't right before the battle starts.
4-I think scout ships have more supply than other ships but more guns than supply ships. Not very useful honestly.

5-It's one way to go certainly. I don't much like shields since the basic kind can only be placed on cruisers, but there's some good techs in shields and liir are decent at getting them.
6- No that's one of the disadvantages of being Liir. This can be improved with better drive techs

Also, the forum over at http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=37 is a lot more active, I don't check this one very much.
 
What are the "police cutters" you mention in your guide? I just researched FTL Economics, and can't figure out how to prototype a police cutter. I am playing as the Sol Force. Would the police cutters happen to be assault shuttles or drones?
 
You should find the Police Cutter in the Cruiser's "Armor" section in the design screen (click on "Armor" to get a drop down list of all the central sections available).
 
Thank you, Ti. I have another question. Following the guide, I'm at the point where I'm building freighters and new stations. I can't build all of these without going into debt. The naval stations cost so much maintenance too. Do I allow myself to go into debt, or what do I do?
 
You should avoid debt if at all possible unless you are in desperate need. If it takes a little longer to get everything built just slow down on construction by adjusting the construction bars on your worlds or by canceling construction of new modules on your stations then re-queing them later. The Morrigi especially have a hard time building so much so quickly early game, but by the same token the Morrigi also have a built in trade bonus so gain more income from building trade early on. Just build as fast as you can trying to manage your money so as to not go into debt.
 
I noticed that in the latest patch they changed the composition of the starting fleets so you might have to adjust how many ships you build to start out with or at least increase the number of survey fleets to work with this guide.
 
Loving the guide, maybe at some point you could add the way you play hivers too hehe

Saddly i don't play hivers. One of these days I might, but they require a lot of patience. I think basically you'd play them the same way but instead of having 2-3 survey fleets you'd want to have as many "Gate" fleets as you had admirals available and keep sending them out constantly to expand your network as fast as you can.