I always beeline nonbaryonic particles, usually by turn 30, even as sophon. Then usually infinite supermarkets, unless I have encountered a number of races already in which case it is relativistic markets.

What I am looking for is a list of techs which I should focus on getting and in what approximate order.



Assuming no free techs I always go for N-Way Fusion plants first... (tier 1)

I like Soil Xenobiology (tier 1)



Of course there is Applied Casmir Effect but that can depend on map layout as well. (Tier 3)



Nonbaryonic Particles is a great way to jack up sciences but its a bit later in the game at 680 cost (Tier 4)





So can others chime in on which techs are good and why? Which do you go for fast assuming you started with none

When designing ships, on the support-modules screen, you can scroll down. There's more stuff to put in there!

bigger ships are also far more vunerable to missiles than smaller ships (due to them attacking only 1 ship)

Simple but somehow I missed it.



7. When designing ships you can click modules multiple times to add more of the same module to the ship.

My initial ships had 1x Kinetic Gun, 1x Missile, 1x Beam and I was getting slaughtered.

Use the bar on the right in the ship design screen to gauge the amount of modules you can have.



Also keep in mind some modules require strategic resources (eg. Titanium-70). Hover your mouse over the module to check if it needs a strategic resource.

If you do not have the strategic resource you will not be able to build the ship.

As far as I know, *exactly one* turn of overflow is stored. So if you let a queue (research or system production) stay empty for more than one turn, you have lost points.

Ablaze wrote:
When you build a building or a tech there are almost always some left over points, these points will always be either applied to the next item in the queue or they will be thrown away and lost, never to return. Therefor, it is always a good idea to have 2 or more things in every queue at all times. You can queue research items by holding down shift. If you don't like deciding your research path in advance you can queue one "pie in the sky" research to throw your extra points in to. All research points are "stored" in a technology until you come back to it.



Every time you let a queue run out you have lost points that can never be retrieved.

This information is patently false, all overflow is stored for the next turn. There is some sort of cap, but it seems to be close to a full turn of production worth as far as I can tell. so you can build a 40 ind item in your 800 ind system and be fine, but if you do it a 2nd time in a row you are going to lose ind. Same goes for research.

Ablaze wrote:
When you build a building or a tech there are almost always some left over points, these points will always be either applied to the next item in the queue or they will be thrown away and lost, never to return. Therefor, it is always a good idea to have 2 or more things in every queue at all times. You can queue research items by holding down shift. If you don't like deciding your research path in advance you can queue one "pie in the sky" research to throw your extra points in to. All research points are "stored" in a technology until you come back to it.



Every time you let a queue run out you have lost points that can never be retrieved.

With research, I've noticed that they get applied to your next research item when it gets assigned on your turn. (I'm not sure about massive overflow cases where you assign a 1-turn tech...)

With construction, they don't tell you how much is built yet, which makes it hard to gauge, but I know that overflow also applies there; it's just not documented.

When you build a building or a tech there are almost always some left over points, these points will always be either applied to the next item in the queue or they will be thrown away and lost, never to return. Therefor, it is always a good idea to have 2 or more things in every queue at all times. You can queue research items by holding down shift. If you don't like deciding your research path in advance you can queue one "pie in the sky" research to throw your extra points in to. All research points are "stored" in a technology until you come back to it.



Every time you let a queue run out you have lost points that can never be retrieved.

Almost every net value in the game has a tooltip breakdown. Do you want to know how that system is producing 24 Science? Hover your cursor over the "24" and you will see all the positive and negative values. This tooltip is especially useful when you look at your entire empire's Dust production (in the empire overview window).



Be wary of pirates. Just because those systems are isolated and empty doesn't mean they will stay that way. The baddies can still spawn there later on.



The tax rate. Ask yourself, do you really need it that high? If you are producing enough Dust, consider turning down the tax rate. You will be rewarded with happier, more productive colonies.

Do not leave systems idle. If nothing is being built from it at least have ind-dust or ind- science conversions. Every little bit helps.

In Endless difficulty don't try to fight the AI on equal terms. Don't rejoice when you kill an entire fleet at the start of a War just losing a single ship or 2.

Build a solid fleet that can withstand enemy fleets without a single loss (or keep your destroyers/corvettes cheap when you got loads of CP so it really doesn't hurt to lose some and still have enough in the next fight).

Believe me, the AI has the Fleets. You wont see it when the AI declares but woe to you when the main armada arrives. Had 2 Wars with AIs fighting me at choke pints, had to fight off 5-10 fleets (yes I mean full fleets) a turn for 5-10 Turns before the AI armada dried up enough for me to even start conquering one of their systems after the next wave arrived fighting a war of trenches (in the final War the Fleets actually never dried up...).



And hell don't forget to blockade. Otherwise you are toast.

mart.n wrote:
I hope I got that right from reading the forum today @work and comparing it in my head to the game @home =



- new colonies in your system do not give you a free population (unlike MOO2)

- terraforming does not give an additional penalty to approval

- unless the planets are terran, jungle or ocean you will receive an approval penalty for the whole system

- rapid expansion also hits your approval rating

One correction: Any expansion (beyond a certain point) hits your approval rating. It hits it harder when you have multiple full colonies. Fortunately, there are techs that reduce this, and you want the first two (for wormhole travel and battleships) anyway.



Edit:

It's a day later and nobody has made a reply, but there's one that I really want to add...

All of the + on moon improvements are + per population. This sends Careful Sweeping from useless to absurdly good, and it sends the food one from maybe nice to pretty excellent.

Never drink orange juice immediately after brushing your teeth. The acid will strip your tooth enamel, and it tastes proper rank like.

Mer wrote:
In multi-player on decent level(skilled players) if you don't have hero with administrator trait(and at least one of your opponents have it) you can leave game. You have already lost.

Well if they have the legendary hero trait you could say the same. Its a kick start beyond what most people can do

Early in the game move your Administrator hero(s) around. That way you can use them to hurry initial building of improvements on new systems. I have jumped my hero from system to system every three to five turns early on to get specific items built faster.

I hope I got that right from reading the forum today @work and comparing it in my head to the game @home =



- new colonies in your system do not give you a free population (unlike MOO2)

- terraforming does not give an additional penalty to approval

- unless the planets are terran, jungle or ocean you will receive an approval penalty for the whole system

- rapid expansion also hits your approval rating

In multi-player on decent level(skilled players) if you don't have hero with administrator trait(and at least one of your opponents have it) you can leave game. You have already lost.

The improvements that give plus 2 dust if you have a moon and plus 3 food, give that per person on your planet.

LePoisson wrote:
Weapon Types matter way more than you think. Slaughtering enemies with missiles when they didn't have any flak on their ships (or very little) is immensely satisfying. I think the ship design and combat stuff in this game is way crazier than at first glance.



You can retool your ships to deal with your major enemy don't be afraid to change your ships to accommodate who you are fighting if it's a war on a limited front with one enemy. You can always retrofit your ships later if you have the dust.

To expand on your point. Do not mindlessly select auto-upgrade. You can rip out all the internals of a ship and replace them as you see fit. I like to keep two distinct designs for each hull size from destroyer and beyond. I will tailor upgrade them to the enemy they are fighting and have retrofitted fleets on the fly when an AI opponent is configured how I did not expect - or better yet while hunting pirates.



While missiles look appealing I have destroyed entire missile fleets before their missiles hit, hell in some cases I have taken out many of their ships before they fired with just beam weapons. I know, I know, they will simply mount deflectors - unless they are BB sized it won't matter. They cannot mount enough defenses without crippling their offense.