Okay, thanks all. Seems like my food is useless to me so far.
I'm now at 7 hours. Attached is a screenshot. I'm the humans of earth. What should I be doing here? I need some direction.
I have 2 more colonize-able planets that I have found. One 25% habitable, one 90% habitable. Should I continue to explore, colonize, and build systems for resources and research? I'm also building my planets up as the pops grow.
I dealt with a few pirates in a couple of my systems.
I have a rescue mission to do in the bottom right. I have no idea if I have a big enough fleet for it.
Is my fleet in general puny and weak? I'm researching destroyers right now.
Do I have typically a certain number of years of peace before an inevitable war with someone?
I also have the dudes in the top left, militaristic and demanding a tribute of 500 energy. When I originally went to survey the unknown system, it looked like their military capability was 50,000, mine is about 500. Do I keep giving in to their demands? They've only demanded once so far. The description of them was militaristic but fighting among themselves, if they united we would be in big trouble. That's the only contact I've had.
Do the rescue mission whenever. I can’t remember the exact strength of the ransom event, just scout it out with a single corvette or science shop set to neutral stance (don’t engage them) and come back with a large enough fleet.
For now, corvettes are fine and you don’t absolutely need to be at the naval cap. Once you have default empire neighbors that are hostile, build to your cap (or over if you can afford it and want to go to war).
Ignore that other post, you’ve found marauders next door. These are not a default empire, but are special nomadic raiders. You will actually get some cool events from bordering them and can hire mercenaries from them later (or pay them to raid your rivals, lol). Eventually you will want to fortify the systems adjacent to them and tell them buzz off when they ask for tribute, but for now pay them with food or energy if you can afford it. They might wake up in 100 yrs or so with space Temujin, in that case you either beat them back with a larger navy or as a new player just become a tributary.
For this version of the game, colonize everything you can. The priority right now is your economy so get pops out.
There is no inevitable peace, but wars rarely happen until you touch borders with someone hostile, once they claim your systems, make sure you fortify chokepoints near them and have your fleet built up. Early game wars are usually small, unless you are by a genocidal empire.
