Can't believe I've been playing ES2 and haven't found this awesome community until today! So my question is thus, my usual MO for system improvements is that I build everything I unlock in every system that I own. I recently got the Vaulters DLC and started a game with them yesterday and, instead of building everything in all my systems, I'm building everything I unlock in my home system but specializing other systems (predominantly science systems for science improvements, etc). Sorry for the short ramble, is there a better way to utilize system improvements or just about what I've been doing?

It kinda depends on each individual game you play, but you can go either way since you'll eventually reach the stage where you'll want to build everything in a system. 

Specializing systems is good if, for example, you have a highly militaristic neighbor and you want a system near them dedicated to industry (for ship production) and military system improvements, so you decide to cut out on Dust/Science production in that system. 

But honestly I tend to go for the jack-of-all-trades system style, where I build everything in a very organized manner (so industry is always the first built, then food production for pop, then influence if I'm worried about border friction or diplomacy problems, then science/dust which depends on the victory type and faction I'm playing, then strategic resource improvements, then public order, and lastly military improvements unless I'm at war and then those go first or behind industry). 

So it's less of specializing systems than it is, 'which improvement/resource style do you want to finish first'

Perfect! Thank you Suis3i for the quick reply and awesome advice! Haven't played 4x a whole lot and wanted to make sure there wasn't a mysterious "right" way to do things.

Nomadsquirel3200 wrote:

Perfect! Thank you Suis3i for the quick reply and awesome advice! Haven't played 4x a whole lot and wanted to make sure there wasn't a mysterious "right" way to do things.

Of course ! Haha, with 4x, well strategy/turn-based games, there are certain strategies better than others but there's no "best" way of doing things.

You'll eventually learn these strategies from playing the game ^~^