So, this is a complicated game. Not in a bad way but definitely in a throw back sort of way to AC and earlier civ games. For example while civ 5 simplifies the tech tree from civ 4...our tech tree is the most complicated I have seen in any game. While no sid game other than AC allowed you to design units...designing units here and getting good at it and designing them on the fly is not only possible but necessary. So the learning curve is high. Here are a few things that I learned the hard way that you may find useful.



1. As soon as you get a new ship base...you have to design your units using it. The game only gives you examples with the first base...after that you are on your own.



2. ALWAYS update ship designs when you get new military techs. The difference between the beginning ship the game gives you and one with two or three military upgrades is enormous.



3. You know the bar between when you click on manual in a fight and when the fight actually starts....move your mouse over the ships that are attacking you...ohh look at that you can see what weapons they have. Sure would be silly to use camouflage if the fleet you are fighting doesn't have missiles wouldn't it?



4. At least for my western mindset the placement of things in the tech tree doesn't always make sense...you want to increase the number of ships you can have in a fleet...yeah that's over in the alien diplomacy side. Better military ships (dreadnoughts, battleships) that's on the bottom in the expansion tree.



5. You WILL NOT be able to focus in any kind of real strong way on one side of the tech tree... see above. That cool new laser weapon you just researched yeah that requires a resource you can't recognize until you have a tech from the tech advance side of the tree...more hero's to make better fleets? Yeah that's pretty high up in the alien cooperation tree...



From Apollysis

6. Always check to make sure all your systems are doing something...the bottom square where the name of the colony is should have something on it..if it doesn't PUT SOMETHING THERE. The game doesn't warn you if a colony isn't doing anything..just if you have no science being researched.



Feel free to add things to this you found out..and I'll update the first post.

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

LOL took me a couple games to realize this.

To grow a system faster make sure to take people from poor food planets and move them to the food producing planet in the system. Later in the game swap out exploitations for food growth to something useful

Just for convenience: you can select, click, and drag to transfer ships between fleets. Also, it was a few games before I first realized you could colonize additional planets in a system you already control without building an entire colony ship.

Later in the game, when you unlock planet terraformation, turn all of your barren planets into arctic planets. While putting a science exploitation on a barren planet does give you more science per population, barren planets receive no planetary science bonuses while arctic planets get +5 per population and 1 science less for science exploitation, it also gives you more satisfaction for the planet. Same thing goes for desert planets, turn them into an arid planet for a direct upgrade.

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.

I too learned the power of missiles the hard way. They are crazy effective. And kinetics at long range are not that good.

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.



You can keep enemy/cold war status fleets from entering or exiting when you click the defend button in your fleets screen (pro tip I just found out: since movement occurs simultaneously (not truly turn based) you can turn this on and off during your turn to allow ships through or not. This can let you allow players to explore your empire to trade with you and maybe give you an up on meta-game diplomacy in multiplayer.)



You need to diversify your tech tree; some things in this game just need to be researched.



(reading this: /#/endless-space/forum/33-strategy-guides/thread/14009-how-combat-works-a-guide-to-combat-for-arguements-and-gameplay.)

Ye i discovered that too. Therefore i usually draw cards with reduced missile accuracy or dmg. That kind of evens this disadvantage out.