I'm loving the game so far, and understand its early days so there's a lot to come in terms of balance, features and tutorial-esque material. However, coming into this with no help is a little tough, especially when there is nowhere to go to ask for any! I was curious, is there anywhere on here where beginners could ask for general help? If not I'd propose that a forum dedicated to beginner questions would be quite useful.



Anyway, on to my main point. My first game (using all the standard settings and just hitting play) saw me decimated in 100 odd turns, due to the fact I spawned surrounded by the Hissho and Horatio, in just 50% of the galaxy, with the other United Empire faction having fifty percent of the galaxy to itself. Needless to say I was surrounded and doomed by tech I didn't understand.



Following some tips I found dotted around I thought my second game got off to a better start, until I had a damn 60 turn long invasion of the first Horatio planet system I attacked. I finally took that and another of their systems, and closed in on their capital (I had read online by 75 odd turns you should be able to overthrow one faction near you if you're progressing well.)



So this is the point. I was surrounding their capital, they had no other systems at all, and yet they were steadily producing full 7 ship fleets every, single, turn out of only their capital!?! First turn they threw out 2 full fleets and 2 extra 1 ship fleets. I somehow beat that with my 2 smaller 5 ship fleets (haven't worked out how to increase that cap), but then they just went on to throw out so many more ships. How is that even possible off 1 system? Is it a bug? So now I'm 88 turns in with basically nothing to show for it, and the Hissho are about to turn on me and murder me now I have nothing left.



Any help/tips please? Thanks in advance.

You can find beginner help links in my sig, look at the FAQ for some good general tips.



As for your enemy churning out so many ships; it is possible they had an extremely industrialised homeworld making cheap ships, but more likely it is a known exploit that allows the AI to overproduce ships. It becomes a real pain when in 150+ turn range as they have so many you get serious processing problems on turn ends. You might be able to find a workaround in the linked thread on my sig, but I don't know of one myself.

Davea has a good Challenge system he has implemented, known as the 30 turn challenge. Please see his thread here, have a look at the posts for some good advice on how to progress early game and perhaps try out his provided saves for yourself and see how you do.



Enjoy

We should have a forum sub-section dedicated to tutorials and guides soon. In addition to the info and links Maclardal posted you can also check out ArrowLance's tutorial here. Thread closed/