I pre-ordered this but only managed to have the time to play it in the last week or so and so far it's kept me up till six in the morning for a couple of nights.



Now, I have a very very basic grasp of a lot of the game mechanics - I tend to choose my heros relatively well (as far as I can tell), but up till now I've left the admin AI in charge of my systems once I have them and this seems to work relatively well.



Having played Sophons solely in the SP mode till now (I'm a scientist, I can't help it!) I've noticed a couple of things:



Research is much much quicker if you balance it across all the tech trees - If I focus on one/two tech trees each stage will take longer than if I research them all equivalently - so far I've managed to win several science games by just taking each tier as it comes and doing it in order.



What's the best way to build ships - so far I've tended to go "HNGH BIGGER IS BETTER" and go for the bigger ships - I then tend to pick one of each attack/defence module. Add one of each support module and click "auto-upgrade". It's worked relatively well but I'm sure it could be done much much better.



There are so many things I need to work on - I want to get to the point where I can actually control starting populations properly and run that, and I would like to get to the point where I'm not just clicking "auto" on all my combat options unless I intend to run away.



Any advice would be nice, cheers guys.

Best ships IMO are weapon based destroyers (able to destroy opposing destroyer in 1 round) against human players and impenetrable omnitank Dreadnaughts (Up to 95% in defences, more weapons reduce time wasted, but doesn't increase its power.) against the AI.



Manual battle may help you abit, but a complete waste of time imo. You shouldn't colonise second planet in each system before the first planet is full. The only exception is if you need approval and the second planet gives you a net increase in approval. (Eg, arctic with transvine only.)



Play ameoba and watching multiplayer games that show up is probably the fastest way to learn ONCE you've grasped basic game mechanics.

ryousei wrote:
Best ships IMO are weapon based destroyers (able to destroy opposing destroyer in 1 round) against human players and impenetrable omnitank Dreadnaughts (Up to 95% in defences, more weapons reduce time wasted, but doesn't increase its power.) against the AI.



Manual battle may help you abit, but a complete waste of time imo. You shouldn't colonise second planet in each system before the first planet is full. The only exception is if you need approval and the second planet gives you a net increase in approval. (Eg, arctic with transvine only.)



Play ameoba and watching multiplayer games that show up is probably the fastest way to learn ONCE you've grasped basic game mechanics.

Thank you, it's certainly something to work on. Is it safe to leave the AI in control of my systems or should I be allocating their construction time accordingly?



What are the best ways to minimise time spent researching while still getting the most out of research? If I try and bumrush up two trees the times spent researching get incrementally longer and I suffer by missing things in the other two trees.

My advice is never let the AI govern your planets. Even if you focus say on industry it will tend to build all improvements anyway - for example bunkers/influence stuff that actually means only wasted cash in most cases. If you don't have the energy to govern a place just turn all planets arctic, use the "industry to sci", rename the system (for example "Sci 1) and wait for something nice in the sci tech to build later.

@Hellbringerx: The AI governors have been improved quite a lot in the Automaton update.



For example they will not overdo food anymore, pick the right exploitation for the respective planet-type once the system is full pop,

won't build Sensors, won't explore unless the planets are almost full, won't build-trade stuff if there is no trade-route, won't build buildings that do not benefit the system, only build bunkers if there's nothing else left to build and have a relatively good build-order in general.

They even know that they shall not build the A.I.S. (Food=>Prod-Building) before the Pop is maxed out and that after they built it, they can add all the food-buildings they missed out.



So while there might be some things where one could disagree with them, I actually do use them most of the time.



Of course one should have done it manually at least once so one can better judge if there's huge discrepancies to what the Governors want to build and intervene if necessary.

As for research path, don't research a tech for the tech's sake, it needs to unlock something useful.



I don't aim for techs in a given tree, or techs at a given tier. I aim for things I want to unlock next in a reasonable time. If there are prerequisites, I choose the shorter or most useful one. There are often techs that never seem useful, so I never research them, for example one of the two tier-1 military techs.



If all my planets are food exploited and that exploitation upgrade can be researched in let's say 4 turns, I might choose that. Dust improvements when your populations are low aren't worth it, so those techs can wait. Military techs can also wait until you think pirates or enemies will be a problem soon. Try to predict when approval will be a problem, and unlock the approval improvements as late as possible while still having enough time to build those.

Ail wrote:
@Hellbringerx: The AI governors have been improved quite a lot in the Automaton update.

Thanks for the info - the improvements to AI sound impressive. I will most likely end up doing full manual anyway since I simply got used to turning fringe worlds into sci and cash farms. But I might take a look at it in case of some conquered single planet systems that are simply a pain to maintain.