Colony Building Guide

Help for new users

Moderators: Moleman, Kwijibo, Luna, Major

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Colony Building Guide

Post by Nightmare » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:11 am

Nightmare’s Colony Building Guide

0.Table of content.
1.Version History [ver01]
2.Introduction [int02]
3.Preperation [prep03]
a.Servers [ser04]
b.Stats [sta05]
c.Ships [shi06]
d.Making money [mamo07]
e.Exploring [expl08]
f.Planet types [coty09]
4.Building [bui10]
a.Building [bui11]
b.Defending [def12]
5.Aftermath [aft13]
a.Cash cows [cas14]
b.People factories [peo15]
c.Weapon farms [weap16]
6.Tips and tricks [tat17]
7.Special thanks and legal stuff [spe19]

1.Version history [ver01]


08/09/2007 Version 1.0
09/09/2007 Version 1.0.1 changed some minor things, added version history and tips and tricks sections.
10/09/2007 Version 1.0.2 added "Another point of view" section, added some stuff some quotations on ship comparison and added more tips and trick.
13/09/2007 Version 1.0.3 added some things to the conclusion concerning making money, changed advise on arctic colonies and nuanced the end conclusion on building volcanics a bit. More advise was given on all aftermath possibilities for colonies and more specifically for rebangs, tips added, important note concerning defences added.
14/07/2008 Version 1.0.4 corrected some spelling errors, updated ship info.
27/02/2010 Version 1.0.4 corrected some spelling errors and improved the readability and language.

2.Introduction [int02]

This is my second guide on the MMO game, Starport Galactic Empire, I hope you enjoyed my New Player’s Guide and I hope I can make this guide at least a bit better than that one, I have already started pretty good with this table of content :P, use the [something] to search for a certain section quickly (Ctrl+F and type it in or use copy and paste).

I would like to point out that I am not that an experienced builder, however, since the only good guide that existed has been deleted and the author has quit the game a long time ago, I decided to write a new guide.
This new guide will be up to date with the most recent changes in building and will hopefully help new players with their struggles when building, while also showing to older players that have forsaken building because of the latest changes that building can still be done relatively easy and that it is not as time consuming and mind numbing as you would think.

My 5 years of experience playing SGE is what I hope will give this guide the extra edge, not many can say they have been around for that long and that they both have adequate rebang and permanent server experience. I was also sick of not being able to do anything about the changes, as many of you also did, I whined and complained about it, even tried to give constructive feedback on small changes that would improve game play in my opinion (and sometimes also in the eyes of many others) so that the developers could implement them and make the game more fun, but non of that helped.
This guide will hopefully change things, even if 2 or 3 more people start building, I will have done some constructive to the game and that is my ultimate goal.

I will try to cover the many aspects of building in this guide in the order that they happen when playing a rebang game (and since permas are just endless games, you can use the same techniques to start on one of those). I begin with the choice of stats and I will end with what you can do with a fully developed colony.
PAX, rebang and perma will all be covered in the guide, the biggest part is written from the normal rebang point of view, but I will throw in some tips and tricks for the other game types should there be a difference between them. This guide does not explain things that can be read in the starepedia or in my other guide (New Player’s Guide), I did this so the guide does not become too long and so that I can get to the point faster.

Do realise that this guide is influenced by my personal preferences, I always try to explain why I do things a certain way and I try to give other examples and possibilities, but that does not change the fact that what I describe here is mainly the way I do it, and that might not necessarily be the best way to do it. What I am trying to tell you is that this guide is intended to open your eyes and give you ideas on how you can approach building but using this guide as a step-by-step plan to building might not be the best idea, if my guide can be a step-stone to building for newbies and advanced players alike, my mission is accomplished.

Thanks for reading through the introduction, I realise that not many of you will actually read it and just skip to the guide.

Yours sincerely, Nightmare

3.Preparation [prep03]

This section of the guide covers everything that happens before you drop your very first dome. Building in this game is like playing chess, especially in PAX games, you have to think ahead about what you are going to do and plan ahead. Preparation is essential and will increase your chances of success greatly.

a.Servers [ser04]

Here are a couple of servers that might spark your interest you as builder, note that new servers bang frequently and I will not update this guide every time that happens, these are just some examples of servers, and how they will/can influence your building strategy.

PAX Andromedea, a basic PAX rebang game, biodomes cost around 760k $ here instead of the usual 40k $, and the price increases as more people buy domes (so get in early ;)). U.N. protection however is permanent and Sol’s earth does not contain any colonists! Do not forget that permanent U.N. protection has one big disadvantage, taxing your colonies will not give any worthwhile cash revenues, this is because you do not gain interest under U.N. protection.

New Explorers, a real builder’s server, few NPCs and very fast fuel regeneration. You can build fast but remember that this can also be a disadvantage since invaders will have more fuel to search for you, fortunately this server has many long arms, so if you hide well, your colonies will be hard to find and invade.

Rise of The Empire, a very special server, U.N. protection last 5 days on this server instead of the usual 3 days, biodomes start around 90k $ a piece though instead of the usual 40k $, this helps a great deal and I advise this server to all new players who want to try building for the first time.

Extended rebangs and permanent servers are not included here for the simple reason that most of the characteristics of a server do not really matter on permanent, or extended rebang servers. These games last months or years, and with almost unlimited time, fuel and money it should be relatively easy to get a colony up and running (defending from invaders however, is an entirely different subject, see 4.Building [bui10] b.Defending [def12])

b.Stats [sta05]

Every game begins the same, you create a new character in the universe, the name and looks of your character do not really matter, but what does matter for the remainder of the game is your stats. The three stats are dexterity, charisma and wisdom. What follows are my personal preferences when it comes to building. I think that by giving you these combos accompanied with an explanation why I often choose these combinations of stats will give you an idea of what each stat means and what would be a good combination for you personally.

5 charisma, 0 dex, 10 wisdom : No dex basically means that you can not do any decent fighting/invading. You will only build this game, very good for PAX games and maybe for an all out building approach on a normal rebang, but a very poor choice for permanent or extended rebang servers as you will have to fight and (re)invade on permas to be able to do anything decent.
Charisma is at 5 so colonists from ports will come with you easier and in higher numbers, higher charisma will result in higher population growth and morale growth on your colonies and as a result of that also higher maximum population on all your colonies.
Wisdom is high so you will use fuel as efficient as possible, this means that this stat combo will work best on 14-18 rebangs where fuel efficiency is more important than on extended rebangs or permas where fuel efficiency is not as important.

10 charisma, 5 dex, 0 wisdom : Good stat combo for extended PAX rebangs and PAX permanent servers, charisma is at it’s highest because the only thing you will be doing is building and because fuel efficiency is not that important on those types of games you might as well spend the 5 points on dex so you can fly smoother and kill some NPCs when you are bored.

5 charisma, 10 dex, 0 wisdom : You will see this stat combination on most normal permanent servers and extended rebangs, again fuel efficiency is not really important, you mainly want to invade and fight but the charisma will help you if you decide to build some colonies, may it be as a starting platform for a server or when you are bored, the charisma always comes in handy.

0 charsima, 5 dex, 10 wisdom : You might think this is a really weird stat combination for building but it is actually pretty good, it is a very versatile combo for normal rebangs and to a lesser extend for PAX rebangs. You want to fly around and use fuel as efficiently as possible and use the dexterity to kill some NPCs and invade a little, you can still build as the fuel efficiency will help you with that and on short servers, the lack of charisma can more easily be compensated by bringing in more colonists or resources.

I hope that these combos with their explanations help you a little and make you think about what each stat does, I have tried out almost every combo of stats there is and let me tell you that it is the explanation behind the combos that I give here that is most important.
7 charisma and 8 wisdom might work a lot better for you then the 5-10 or the 10-5 combo, the combos above are just examples.

b.Ships [shi06]

Ok so you chose a server, picked your stats, now what? You are in your cruiser with 10k, now you might think it is more logical to put the money making section first, however, I think it is of big importance that you decide what ship(s) you will be using first, so you can work as efficient as possible, switching ships costs money and you do not want to switch 5 times because you did not think ahead about your ship choices, so here comes a small “builder’s ships analyses”. I will not cover ships here that do not server well as build ships (e.g., vulture, battle ship, etc.) and I will only discuss activities that resolve around building when I analyse these ships.

You basically only have 3 choices (actually 4, you can use the IGS too) when you first start out, those are:

Merchant Cruiser, piece of crap ship in my opinion, some people use it to do fast cabs, but since I rarely do cabs myself I find this one advantage not nearly enough to use it. It does not have a lot of cargo, so it is not a good trade ship either and its secondary is not going to help you a lot either (except for cabbing as I said above). Its fuel efficiency is also pretty bad, a definite no no, in my opinion.

Scout Marauder, I used to prefer this as my first ship, why? The low amount of fuel it uses makes it a very good exploring ship, it can also be used to escort and cab people around, it is very fragile, but usually does quite well for the first few hours, I usually upgrade to a real trader ship pretty fast though, but search for some trade routes or possible good locations for colonisation with this ship.

Falcon, my preferred ship to start out with these days. You can steal cash and cargo from NPCs with its secondary and it has the best handling of the 3 beginner ships, which makes it more versatile, you can explore, trade and kill NPCs with this ship, it is pretty good for a starter.

Once you have made some cash with one of these ships you will want to upgrade to something better:

Merchant Freighter, I usually switch to this ship very quickly, it is a great all around ship, strong enough to fight, especially with it is secondary that can shoot down missiles and weapon bullets like fusion blasts and explosive charges, it has a high amount of cargo holds (80) for such a cheap ship and its warp fuel effiency is also very good.

Dreamsower, this ship is fairly cheap and has a huge amount of cargo holds (250 cargo holds), it is very hard to manoeuvre properly though, and it’s secondary is very bad, its 2000 shield make it the most fragile ship in the game, I rarely use it, of course this ship works wonders for shipping colonist from sol to a colony, trading and moving resources from one colony to another within the same system. Basically, a great ship if you have decided what to do, but if you are still in the exploring phase, this ship will be a very bad choice, also consider the fact that if you are only going to use it for trading and you blow the trade by haggling too much, finding a new trade route in this ship will be very frustrating.

Galaxy Whale, a much better choice than the dreamsower, in my opinion, is the whale (160 cargo holds) and a lot easier to manoeuvre around, it also costs a bit more but I don’t mind that, as I usually spend some time exploring and getting starting cash in my freighter anyway, more versatile than the sower but still not the best ship if you still want to explore some more.

Galaxy Barge, do not use this for trading or exploring, the 24 hardware slots will be useful to bring flaks/lasers from sol or another starbase) but that is it as far as usefulness is concerned, the 100 holds and fairly high cost of the ship make it a very bad ship for trading or exploring, use a whale, CEO ship or a freighter instead.

Antarean Speedstar, the ship with the best cargo/fuel efficiency rating (that can be bought without spending real life money on tokens). This means that this is the best exploring ship and it still has a nice amount of cargo holds (100 cargo holds). This also means that you are better of trading with this ship in the long run then with the dreamsower. However, if you are trading resources in one system (without hopping to another system), most ships will do a better job. I do not use this ship a lot because of its fairly high cost, but I know a lot of other people do use it.

Corporate Flagship, great ship for its price, fairly good at everything, the ship of choice, with 16k shields, low fuel consumption, 200 cargo holds and 16 hardware bays this will be your ship of choice as a builder especially if you are planning on doing other things as well.

Sethdar Cruiser, another great ship yeah, but how you are planning to get this ship when you are going to build remains a mystery to me, if you are evil and have decided that you are going to build this is a great choice, but then again, you probably already are in this ship. Do not get it if you are not evil already, both the flagship and whale are far better choices if you want a ship that can defend itself properly while you are building.

ISC, best ship you can get without using tokens, you need 2 million $ and 5000 rep or more though, you will probably end up with this ship eventually, but not when you first begin, if you are on a perma consider getting this ship before building because you can easily barge some stuff for a rich player/corp and get an ISC quick that way.

IGS, the ultimate builder’s ship, 160 holds and very fuel efficient, extremely fast, high shield and nice secondary weapon, you need 10.000 tokens to get one though (10 USD). Not a good idea to get one of these on a rebang because it will get quite expensive after a while, but on a permanent server, especially on PAX permas where people rarely die, this ship will be a great asset to your strategy.

b.Making money [mamo07]

So you now know what ships you are going to use (or you at least have an idea on what each ship can do for you), now we can start making some money. This is the first section of the guide where I will devote 2 extra paragraphs to give some advise and tips for PAX and permanent servers specifically. (extended rebang games are the same as rebangs in their early stages and the same as permanent servers in their later stages, that is why I will not give an extra explanation on them.)
You will most likely want to combine making money with exploring, so read these 2 sections before you start. Also remember to jettison some spice as soon as possible for the sake of warp fuel efficiency and never use up all your cash so you can still trade resources in case of an emergency.

These are your possibilities for making cash:

- Cabbing NPCs around
- Escorting NPCs
- Killing NPCs
- Stealing cargo/cash from NPCs (can only be done in a falcon)
- Barging things for other players
- Killing other players (PK-ing)
- Trading
- Taxing colonies
- Selling resources from colonies
- Selling buildings on colonies

I will “eliminate” a couple of options immediately when it comes to making cash for the purpose of building:

Normal rebangs:
PK-ing other players or barging for them is nearly impossible to use as a good way of making cash, why? Other players will not have much cash and even if they do it is very unlikely you will kill them and even more unlikely that you will actually make a profit doing this. Barging for other people on a rebang, I have not seen it before, unless you are just helping out a friend in need.

Taxing, selling resources or selling buildings on colonies is also impossible, because you do not have any colonies yet. However, I will already explain here what your best options are once you do have some colonies up.
First of all, taxing is not such a great idea, like I have told you before, moral and population growth are strongly related, if you want to sacrifice colonists for cash that is your choice, but I personally think that the cash generated just is not enough for the amount of colonists you have to sacrifice. If you are in a situation however where your population is maxed out (because you do not have the next biodome upgrade build yet for instance) you can tax a colony. Keep in mind that you do not get any interest if the colony is under U.N. protection and that tax revenues are reduced. Conclusion: Taxing is a bad idea on rebangs, unless you want to sacrifice population.

Selling resources however is a great idea, just take a look at what the local port(s) want to buy and sell any excessive resources you have. If your colony has Commodities market of any level researched, you can also sell resources directly from the refinery without wasting fuel, selling them to a port gives you more cash though. Commodities market is great for selling resources your colony makes that can not be sold to a nearby port.

Selling buildings is in my opinion another bad idea, construction time is something I like to keep to a minimum and selling buildings will only increase that time. You could however make small colonies that harvest just enough to stay intact and build radio receivers over and over again, you can than sell the radio receivers every 4h minimum. This can be a great way of making cash even during U.N. protection but do not do this on colonies you intend to fully develop. It is still a good tactic for U.N. colonies and maybe on small enemy colonies you invaded. When you reach the end of a game however you could sell some useless buildings. If you decide to build a deep sea explorer on an ocean for instance and by the end of the game decide that you have researched enough, you can sell the explorer.

Killing NPCs is a fuel and time consuming pass-time and will most likely not generate as much cash as other options would, it is best to just kill every NPC you run into while doing something else, instead of making this your primary objective. There is no good way to “lure” NPCs or predict where NPCs will be, so this type of cash making activity depends too much on luck in my opinion. Check the amount of NPCs in the server you are playing, this will give you a good idea on how important killing them will be in terms of making cash/exp. The number of NPCs will probably influence your ship and stat combination choice.

Stealing cash or cargo is a pretty good way to make cash, but it can only be done with a falcon, and a falcon is not a ship you want to use for too long.

Cabbing NPCs (the ones at the bar in ports that only appear in your cargo, not the regular ship NPCs in space) is another way of getting cash, the faster you do this, the more cash you get. If you combine this with trading and killing NPCs it can be great. You might want to mark the black holes on your map and where they go to so you can use them to cab people around faster and get more cash! Not my favourite method (I rarely use it) but it is there and it gets you some experience and good rep which will help you get colonists from bars easier.

Escorting NPCs is something I do regularly, I just hit accept, and let them fly, if they make it, good for me, if they do not, no harm done, I did not waist any fuel following them. This can be a great combo with trading and killing NPCs. Be warned, if the NPC dies you will lose experience (the maximum amount you can lose this way is 1000) and some rep. I do not really mind that though, and most NPCs make it to there destination eventually, even if they go alone. Keep close to a starbase though, the cash you get from escorts is dropped in your bank. (Even if you log of while an escort is still flying around, you will still get the cash if it makes it, you will also lose exp/rep if it dies.) You can also steal cash from an escort (with the falcon)! Don't underestimate that, you can easily steal 50k-100k per escort that way, and the escort will not attack you unlike other NPCs.

And finally, trading, the best way of making cash on all rebangs in my opinion (both PAX and normal). A recent patch made trading even more attractive, high % at ports are very important when doing this, you can make more cash trading oil at 90% than you can with spice which is more expensive, at 70%. Find a good trade route and get a ship with high amount of cargo holds and begin trading like a mad man/woman, combine with NPCs hunting, exploring, cabbing or escorting NPCs for maximum efficiency.

PAX:
You can not kill people :P, you will never have to barge either, people only need biodomes and will probably not need them in groups of 24, maybe you could barge domes on a PAX perma, but I think it is rather rare even there.

Taxing colonies is a really bad idea because you do not gain interest and reduced tax revenues under U.N. protection.

All other things, trading, killing NPCs, selling buildings are the same as on normal rebangs though.

Permas:
Barging is an actual option for making good cash on permas, especially on very active ones.

Escorting and cabbing become obsolete because taxing is a good technique of making cash on permas. You want your colonies to be able to maintain themselves on permas, not only does that mean they need to harvest, they also need to make cash to clean the pollution they produce, this makes it so that population is not that important any more, so you might as well tax 2-3% more so you gain some cash even while not playing.

Conclusion:

When you have gotten the ship you wanted (with maxed shields and cargo) and at least 40k additional cash, you are ready to begin building! However, you should have explored for a good system to begin building in, it is best to combine getting starting cash and exploring so you do not use up too much fuel. Anyhow, even if you did get cash without exploring too much, it is not a big problem, you can explore a lot from the galaxy map, especially if you have already been in a system.

If you intend to seriously go building I advise to at least get 2 million $, if possible 5-6 million $, the reason is this: You’ll want to start up 2 colonies and rush both the refineries and radio receivers, ( 2 x (40k+400k+600k) = roughly 2 million $) and then you’ll need some cash for basic resource runs (1 million $ ?) and at least enough cash to defend both those colonies with flaks (125 is the max / 2 = approx 60 flaks per colony --> 2 x 60 x 25k $= 3 million $ approx). Lasers are 3 times as expensive as flaks so you can easily derive how much cash you would need for 50% defence lasers.

I am just giving you these estimates so you know what each colony will cost you roughly, of course a lot of things depend on what ports are selling what resources, how far the nearest starbase is, how many colonies you are going to build and if their resources outputs balance each other out, etc.

c.Exploring [expl08]

OK, the next thing you are going to do is explore the server and while doing so make some cash, using the strategies and possibilities described above. When you warp around the map you should look out for a couple of things, I advise you to use flags and to note things about a system in the special “note” section of the galaxy map :

-Ports and mainly what they sell so you know where you can get what resources for your colonies (and also what they buy for trading purposes). (I mark all systems with ports white when playing a building approach game). Ports are also important for getting colonists, especially when you are building further away from sol.

-Trade routes, I usually make a difference between regular ports and real “trade route ports”, why? Regular ports are mainly used for their colonists and if you are going to build in a system with a port, you will use the resources they sell. A trade route is specifically used to get cash, you might want to search a couple of those close together so that you always have one ready to be used in case of an emergency. Very important is that the % of a trade route are high, especially when you are selling resources (the port buys from you), because that is when the biggest profits can be made. Trading metal ore and anaerobes between ports is not such a good idea because they do not give any serious profits, spice, equipment, uranium and oil are all good though. A high % medicine-equipment run can also be very profitable. Just look around and use the best routes you can find.

-Starbases, where are they and how far are they from each other? Also note which one is the pirate base because you will not be able to use it because of your high rep. The pirate base is the one called “Cherny Almaz”. This type of exploration can be done from sol, before you even warp once.

-Black holes and where they lead, I usually check out the starbases and black holes before doing anything, I advise you to mark all black holes with a flag (I use blue), you can use another colour flag (I use red) for their exits and you can then write where a certain black hole goes to in the “note” section of that system in your map (and you can also write in the system where it leads to which black hole got you there). This way you can easily spot where all black holes are and go to and if you need a specific location you can look at the note. Marking the exits is very interesting when deciding where you want to build. It is a lot safer to build somewhere where no black hole leads to.

-U.N. colonies and IGPs, I personally would not hunt for these but if you come across one, you might as well mark it on the map and invade and use it to your advantage. You can use the colonists for your own colonies, sell or transport the resources, sell the buildings for cash, etc. (I use purple flags to mark IGPs and green flags to mark regular U.N. colonies). Do, however keep in mind that if you invade someone else's small colony that might give them an idea of where you are building! So be careful and think things through.

OK, once you have started to look around and done some money making activities, you will want to find a good system that can serve as your homebase where you will build your first couple of colonies. But what defines a good homebase system? This is where your personal preferences will shine through the most. Here are a couple of pointers:

-You can build near sol (a starbase), or further away from sol (a starbase), both have advantages and disadvantages, the obvious advantage of building close to sol is that you can ferry an unlimited amount of colonists from Sol’s earth to your colonies and barging defences will also go a lot easier.
The disadvantage is that your colonies will be found very quickly and that it is not hard for other players to invade them since they can easily switch ships or get a new ship should they die on your colony. Building further away from sol means you will need to get colonists from U.N. colonies you found or from ports nearby, this will most likely cost more fuel than getting colonists from Sol’s earth. Barging will also be harder, depending on how close the other bases are, the big advantage is that your colonies will not be so easily found, a player would need to get scanners and most people start exploring close to sol and gradually go further away, this means that it will take longer for your colonies to be found and that less people will find them. Invading properly defended colonies is also a lot harder when not near a base.

WARNING: DO NOT build close to the evil starbase! This is just asking for trouble, you will not be able to use the evil base anyway because of your high rep and most evil player get to the evil base to get a sethdar cruiser, on top of that they will have the advantage of being able to nuke your colonies very easily if they find them, you have been warned!

-You can build in a system with a port or not, building in a system without a port has the huge disadvantage of being very fuel inefficient, especially if the nearest port(s) are a couple of hops away. The advantage is, that it will take a lot of fuel for someone to invade you because they will have to reshield further away.

-Another thing to look out for is planet lay-outs, some lay-outs are easier to defend than others, in general, ring lay-outs are bad ideas on rebangs because they are very easy to slide into. I could write a whole guide about lay-outs but for the sake of keeping it a building guide, go to viewtopic.php?t=2928 this topic has all the planet lay-outs and several people also give advise on which ones are good and how to defend them. There are however servers with new lay-outs (they can not be viewed in the above topic). Just study the lay-oust and think of the advantages/disadvantages, discuss with other people (especially invaders) if you are not certain!

-You will also have to decide what planet types you are going to build, but because this is very important before starting to build, I made an extra chapter about it, so read that through should you need help deciding.

I personally prefer building at least 10 hops away from sol and preferably even further away from the other bases. I usually do not check all black holes when building so I will not really take into account where the black holes lead. I want at least 6 ports fairly close by (for colonists) and at least all resources within a 1 or 2 hop radius of my home system (to build faster without losing too much fuel). I also prefer building in a system with a port because fuel is waisted very fast if you need to system warp every time you need resources, it is also a lot more fuel efficient to sell resources from your colonies to a port in the same system. Anaerobes and oil seem to be the biggest ”problem” resources these days, all though having medicine and organics close by is important to (a specially at first).

PAX:
Not much changes, you do not need to barge defences though and on PAX, Sol’s earth does not contain any colonists! So building near a base does not give any real advantages, but no real disadvantages either because you can not be invaded anyway. Building in a portless system does not give any advantages either and colony lay-out does not matter at all. All the rest is basically the same.

Permas:
You can not really hide on permas, you will be found pretty quickly either way so make it easy for yourself and build as closely to sol/starbase as possible when you start out. If you are playing a fairly old perma you will most likely be left alone as long as you do not invade or build right in the middle of someone else’s territory.

d.Planet types [play09]

I’m devoting an entire section of the guide to colony types because it is very important that you realise what colony type has what advantages and disadvantages, so here we go:

NOTE: Due to new patches all planets can now harvest almost all resources, relative to each other though, the resource outputs I listed below still apply, for example: an earth still produces a lot more organics than a volcanic type planet

IGP :
+ Harvests most resources well.
+ High default population growth.
+ No pollution.
- IG shrine is a pretty useless special building (doubles IGP xp bonus (from 50 to 100 exp/h)).
- Only 3 per galaxy.
- You can not chose the dome placement because they are always U.N. colonies.
- Easy to find and pursued by many.
- No U.N. protection (not even on PAX games!).

Earth:
+ High population growth.
+ Low pollution.
+ Good special build (Church of earth decreases pollution).
+ Harvests most resources pretty well.
- Low production of anaerobes and metal ore.
- Can only support a 1 solar shot in most cases.

Oceans:
+ High population growth.
+ Harvests most resources well.
+ Pretty good special building (Deep Sea Explorer doubles research/environment output).
- Suffers from anaerobes and sometimes oil shortage.
- Can rarely support more than 3 solar shots.

Mountain:
+ Very useful special building (atom smasher can change any resource into another using uranium).
+ Besides metal ore and uranium to keep the smasher going, also harvests anaerobes well.
+ Can support multiple solar shots, and sometimes even 10-shooters.
+ Can easily be set to pretty high military settings.
+ Drag is pretty high, making it harder for invaders.
- Special building requires a lot of resources to be build.
- Useless planet type without smasher.
- Low population growth.

Rocky:
+ Can easily support multiple solar shots (between 4-7 depending on research).
+ Harvests anaerobes which increases population growth.
+ Very good special building (Artesian's Well increase moral and since moral influences population growth, also increases population growth).
- Low population growth.
- Can rarely support high population even with good research.
- Does not harvest medicine, organics or oil by default.
- Very low drag, making it more easy to invade this planet type.

Arctics:
+ Pretty high population growth.
+ Harvests anaerobes and medicine.
+ When lucky with research can harvest all resources.
- Can not support more than 3 solar shots with default harvesting rates.
- Does not harvest oil and only a very low amount of organics by default.
- Utterly useless special building (Heater core, increases construction speed with 150%).

Deserts:
+ Pretty good population growth.
+ Harvests most resources pretty well.
+ The inclination of light on this planet type might make solar shots invisible on the mini-map.
- Has close to no drag making it very easy to slide these kind of planets.
- Pretty useless special building (Spice mine doubles spice production).
- Does not support higher amount of solar shots.

Greenhouse:
+ Harvests anaerobes.
+ Drag is very high, making invasion a lot harder.
- Useless special building for permas, not good enough special building for rebangs (Ion Tower, cloaks the colony and defences on the planet from scanners).
- Does not harvest medicine, organics or oil by default.
- Does not support high amount of colonists in most cases.
- Does not support higher amounts of solar shots.

Volcanic:
+ Very useful special building (Lava mill doubles all weapon production)
+ Supports high amounts of solar shots by default.
+ High drag makes invasion hard.
- Very low population growth.
- Does not harvest any morale or population boosting resources by default.
- The 2 disadvantages pretty much destroy the advantages because high population is needed for those advantages to come into effect.

Normal rebangs: : Building needs to go fast, so I would go for oceans and earths, throw in a mountain or arctic to get rid of the disadvantage of those 2 planet types not harvesting a lot of anaerobes. The high production of organics, oil and medicine will then help you build those mountain or arctic colonies up quicker, you could also start out with an ocean/earth and an arctic/mountain, you will most likely suffer from an oil shortage then, so always make sure you have at least 1, best 2, oil selling ports near you. You can get population to go very high on rebangs so you can even get most earths to be at least 5 shooters.

PAX: Same as for rebangs. But solar cannon shots support does not matter.

Permas: Planet types do not really matter, if you are just starting out get at least 1 or 2 earths, the diversity in colonies will help you building, I usually get an ocean or earth up to support the other planet types’s harvesting disadvantages when I go to a new area or new server. Use the planets you already have to get rid of the disadvantages of other planet types.

Never start building with volcanics, they usually will not go higher than 500 pop without 2x anaerobes bonus(es), channel discrambling or weather prediction, and chances just are not that high that you will get high enough levels of those researches. No matter what the advantages are, a 500 population colony is always useless.

4.Building [bui10]

OK, so you have got your ship, some pocket change and you found yourself a nice system with some planet types and lay-outs you like. Now you need to get some domes and start building, I will again explain this from the point of view of a normal rebang first, then I will give some PAX and perma tips.

Timing is very important, not only when you are going to drop your first (set of) dome(s) but also when you build what and in what order. I will try to give you an idea on what things work and why I use them so you can decide whether you are going to follow me on them or not.
Before you even drop a dome you must consider the day of the server, if you started on day 0 that means you could start building right away and get your first colony finished around day 5. Important advantage is that you still have a lot of time to build more colonies and that you can use the first set you build to support the newer ones. An important disadvantage is that most invaders build up fuel untill day 4-5 and then begin scanning for colonies, on day 4-5 your first colonies will most likely be very vulnerable because U.N. protection has ended but the colony is not fully build yet and will probably not have maxed defences yet.

The advantage of waiting a bit before building is that your colonies will still be under U.N. protection when invaders will start exploring and that you can spend more time getting starting cash and can explore longer for an adequate home system. The disadvantage is that you will have less time to build additional colonies and that you will eventually get less experience, money and resources of your colonies because you will finish them later.

PAX: Start as early as possible, you do not have to worry about invaders anyway.

Permas: Timing in terms of what day to start building does not apply here unless the perma just started in which case the same rules for rebangs apply.

a.Building [bui11]

Buy a couple of domes and dome the planet’s you have explored earlier, make sure to pick a good spot to drop the dome. (Use this topic if you need help:viewtopic.php?t=2928)
Now you can build either a refinery or a radio receiver, but because all planet types have bad population growth without any resources, it is best to always start with the refinery. I usually rush this structure even on rebangs for that exact reason. After that I usually go for biodome upgrade 1 and then refinery level 2, I get colonists from ports till I reach 800-900 pop, then I put in resources and put the colony on prison, 99% construction and 1% harvesting.

Why do I do this? Simple, I want to keep construction time as short as possible because I am losing resources while doing that, losing resources means that I will lose population and that is exactly what I do not want to happen. I put in enough resources in the factory for the colony to survive to grow until it has finished building bio upgrade 1 (which usually take around 12-15h), after 10h, population will be at its maximum for bio1 (1000 pop) and after just 2-5h the population can grow again because the colony will have finished the upgrade by then.

I then build the refinery upgrade following the same philosophy (prison, 99% constuction, 1% harvesting). The 1% harvesting makes sure that in case the colony does not have enough resources to construct it will go to 1% construction and 100% harvesting (and not to 1% construction and 33% for the other 3 sliders, which is less efficient). When the refinery upgrade has finished I put it on 100% harvesting and I let the planet get some resources and grow in population. I then rush the radio receiver, the radio boosts morale greatly and as I have already mentioned a couple of times before, morale boost equals a population growth boost.

After this I usually build the broadcast receiver but only after the colony has gathered enough resources to at least build one. (resources that are generated really slowly, like anaerobes on oceans for instance, are ferried to the colony of course). When I construct I usually set the colony back to prison 99% construction. After the broadcast I usually, harvest a bit then build a building using the 99% construction prison technique and repeat this until I have all the buildings.

A must have building is the solar cannon, I usually finish building this 4-5h or even more depending on the colony type before my colony loses its U.N. commission, do not forget to put the solar on 0 shots while harvesting under U.N. protection, you do not want to lose 25 metal ore/h on a solar cannon that does not need to fire anyway. (If you are a forgetful person keep it at 1, it is worse to forget to put the solar back on when U.N. runs out).

After that I let the colony research on directorship 100% (or 50/50 between research and harvesting depending on how much resources it has) so I can get some (hopefully) useful research advantages. Once U.N. protection has ran out, I put some % of the population to military for protection and I barge some defences (mainly flaks) from a starbase. It is best not to research till you get all 10 researches, the longer you research the longer it takes to get something new, I usually go for 5-6 researches on rebangs, do not forget to put your government on directorship for double research speed and never let a colony research under prison! Prison government never discovers anything!

From then on you put the colony on construction and military or if you stay online you can put off the military, should someone land you can put it back on again. On oceans I do not recommend building the special building, because you will not research long anyway, if you decide that you want a lot of researches to be discovered on your colony you might want to consider building it, but I personally do not see the gain, on rebangs that is.

Refinery level 3 is a must, because pollution will go up very fast since you need to harvest a lot, if you are building an earth type planet, a Church of Earth is also recommended, it does not require a lot of resources, except organics, but earths harvest that resource very fast anyway, and it reduces pollution remarkably.

If you are building arctics I would let the heater core for what it is, by the time you have one build you could have build another structure and when you get at the point when building a heater core would be easy, you will have already finished most buildings, and construction will soon become obsolete anyway.

If you decided to be bold and go with a mountain type planet I would build the atom smasher ASAP, possibly postponing bio upgrade 1 for later and building the smasher and ref2 before it, but that is just my personal opinion.

If you decided to go with another planet type on a rebang, I hope you are building an easier colony near it so you can ferry resources from one colony to the other so you do not waist too much fuel on resource runs. Deserts’ spice mine is not recommended to be build, the rocky’s Artesians Well would be best build right after the broadcast receiver, the Ion Tower I would get up as fast as possible because it will become useless as soon as someone finds your colony, if you have other colonies in the same system it is very unlikely the Ion Tower will help, since most people are smart enough to check every planet manually if they find a system with well developed colonies. The IGP’s shrine I would build last because it does not help your colony grow or defend, it just gives you a bit more experience and if you decided to go with a volc, which is extremely bold, I would build the Lava Mill right after the Weapon Factory (a Lava Mill without Weapon Factory is useless anyway).

PAX:
You can skip the weapon factory of course, I would use the same approach as above, of course you will need more cash for the domes, but you will not need any cash for defences, so that cancels each other out. If you went for a volcanic type on PAX, you could also skip the Lava Mill because it has no reason to be build, but building volcs on PAX is pretty insane (and on normal rebangs too but at least there they could be of some use).

Permas:
I build in 3 phases in permas:

Phase 1: Get a dome on the planet, get 800-900 pop, rush refinery, refinery 2, bio upgrade 1 and put the colony on socialism and 100% harvesting afterwards.

Phase 2: After a couple of hours or days, rush the rest of the buildings using the resources the colony harvested, if you domed different colony types near each other you can use the resources from the other ones to efficiently build every building on all of the colonies. Get the planet full of lasers, either with lasers from colonies nearby or with a barge (that can be yourself or you can hire someone). Just leave the colony at socialism and 100% harvesting.

Phase 3: Once all buildings are build and I have some decent population (3000-7000 pop depending on the type of colony), I set my colony on 50% research, directorship and 50% harvesting (for maintenance reasons).

Once you get all your research done you can decide what you want your colony’s final settings to be, I usually get socialism and at least 4% tax so I can always clean pollution and still have a profit without lowering the colonies population level too much. (Remember taxing decreases moral so that also decreases population growth and thus decreases the colony’s stable population level).

Some people decide that they want to research as soon as possible and let the colony die if the research turns out to be bad. In that case I would rush the refinery and radio receiver and then put the colony on 100% directorship for a couple of days, you should occasionally ferry some resources to maintain it, but 200 of each type per day should be more than enough. Just sell the buildings and move the colonists to another colony if you do not like the research it discovers the planet will soon be "abandoned" and you can retry after a couple of days.

b.Defending [def12]

Important! You can check military strength and you can even control the way the solar cannon fires by clicking on the solar cannon in your colony's biodome.

I advise building a weapon factory, let it build lasers, you should have barged 24 flaks, 2-3 times and now you can change the flaks at the LZ with the lasers your colony produces, the flaks you then recover can be used to further defend the colony, or can serve as new defences on another colony. Tips on defending: get at least 2 or 3 walls of flaks around the dome and some at the LZ, get the solar cannon up before U.N. runs out because a solarless colony, even with 125 lasers, is a joke. The higher your population gets, the more metal ore you will have and the more solar shots you can let your solar cannon fire.

PAX: You do not need to defend :)

Permas: Only use lasers and compound mines, and get every colony maxed with defences.

5.Aftermath [aft13]

OK so you are done building, now what? These are the 4 big things you will want to use your colonies for. I will also provide some advise on how you can approach each of these usages (good settings for a cash cow colony for instance).

a.Cash cows [cas14]

Normal bangs :
If you want some quick cash fast, get the all resources a colony needs to boost moral/population growth. Most of your colonies will be oceans/earths so they need anaerobes. Put in one load of anaerobes (100 is enough) and put your colony on such a high harvest level that the resource(s), in this case anaerobes, do not go down. For earths and oceans this means 93% harvesting and 7% something else (most likely military). Now you can tax your colony, this will reduce pop growth but since pop growth is immensely high, even at very high population levels (a 12k pop ocean without anaerobes does not grow, a 12k pop ocean with anaerobes grows roughly 200 colonists/h) you should be able to tax your colony 12% on socialism government without population going down!

Of course this will reduce moral significantly, but this is not a technique that is usually used for long term cash making, it is more of a thing you can do for a couple of hours in which case moral level will not go down that much. You must also remember that moral level really does not matter that much any more, (except for revolting in which case your colonists will stop doing anything) some of the older players are used to having unity colonies but unity does not reap any benefits any more (besides giving a lot of rep/h, then again once you have 5k rep, rep does not really matter any more either).
You will most likely hit unity just before you finish all your buildings, even if you always build under prison. This means that you have more than enough moral and that you can easily waist some getting cash for additional defences, rushing, etc.

If you do not like military being so low, you can just put in enough resources for a couple of hours and tax it the same way as explained but with less harvesting and higher military %, of course you will need to make sure you log in when the colony runs out of resources or your population will decrease fast.

You can also sell resources you do not need to nearby ports.

Permas:
You will want to tax and harvest these colonies as much as possible, unfortunately, the more you tax the lower your morale and thus your population will be. Less colonists on a colony also means that there are less people that can be taxed. I usually go for 4-5 taxes, if for some reason you want population to be low but you just want morale to be stable, or slightly positive, democracy will help you with that, you will be able to tax more without morale going down dramatically, however democracy does not have a reproduction bonus like socialism has and your weapon factory will not be able to produce nukes.

Try to get commodities market as a research for these kind of colonies (in most cases it will be the other way around, if a colony gets that research you will use it as a cash cow).
Selling resources to ports can also be done, but since every colony now harvests so you do not need special “cash cow” settings in order to do that.

Remember that on permas you will want your colonies to be able to survive as long as possible without you interfering, using the rebang technique is a bad idea, of course if you are in desperate need of cash you can still use it.

PAX:
Taxing is not a good idea, since you will only get very little cash, try to find a good balance between harvesting and constructing entertainment to increase morale or decreasing pollution by researching environment. Selling resources is the best way to get cash, whether you want to sell at a port or use the commodities market is up to you.

b.People factories [peo15]

All game types:
Colonies that have very high reproduction, you will want a colony with a high default reproduction rate (earths and oceans for instance), with all population and moral boosting resources and with a radio and broadcast receiver so population growth is maximal. A 8k pop earth can easily reproduce 200+colonists/h even without channel discrambling (boosts morale) or weather prediction (boosts reproduction) researched).
Charisma also gives a boost to all your colonies's morale and as a consequence also boost reproduction. Do not tax a colony you want to use for this purpose too much because that will also decrease colonist reproduction.

Rebangs specifically:
Remember that population = experience, so if you want a lot of experience you will probably
want to have the above colony settings. On the other hand you do not want to go around
cleaning pollution on rebangs because harvesting needs to be set so high to keep getting colonists, another negative side affect is that military will be very low which is a huge problem especially if you build near a starbase where you will be easily found.

My solution is to build a weapon farm (explained here under) and use that to get some additional defences for new colonies or to upgrade the defences on my planet (add flaks/lasers or change flaks with lasers, etc.). When the game is coming to an end and you want even more followers you can put military down and harvest more, but why do I do it this way?
I will explain: First of all you do not want to keep barging flaks/lasers from a starbase because that just takes up too much fuel. Secondly, you will start running out of cash pretty quickly if you get to your 3rd and 4th colony when you keep barging, trading will costs additional fuel and you will be forced to defend your colonies less effective, which would make invading easier. Thirdly, military would have to be lowered as already explained, which is also a huge risk.

By the end of the game however, you will stop building new colonies so the first and second reason to keep high military fall away. The third reason is a lot less of a risk because your colonies will most likely have been found already and people will have landed on them (with the high military on). People will know how the colony looks like and will remember the high military, if they did not bother to invade your planet earlier, chances are slim at best that they will bother to travel to your colonies to invade them the very last couple of days. Most people find a colony and either decide to invade it, or to leave it be, they will not keep coming back to check every day. Of course the risk still exists, it is just a not as high on day 12 as it was on day 7. Higher harvesting also means more metal ore, so you can set the solar cannon a lot higher than with high military (especially on arctics).

c.Weapon farms [weap16]

All game types:
You will want the population of the colony as high as possible while still being able to maintain high military, the exact settings depend on colony type and research, but what you will want is this: Your colony can support at least 1 solar cannon shot, harvests oil and medicine and either organics or anaerobes, so the 2 moral boosting resources are required but only one of the reproduction boosting resources, why? If you have all 4, your colony will grow unstoppably and it will eventually kill itself. So you will want either organics or anaerobes to be in negative growth and the other 3 positive or at least at 0/h. (Example: an ocean with no research, no taxing and with 55% harvesting and 45% military will support a stable population of 12k pop and 2 solar cannon shots, military strength of the colony will be at maximum.)

PAX specifically:
Military is unimportant on PAX games, if you really need weapons for some reason you can us the above technique, but in general you are better of harvesting, or sometimes even research environment to decrease pollution or construct entertainment to increase moral growth.

6.Tips and tricks [tat17]

- A black hole near a base can be of big importance when deciding where to place your colony. If a black hole 3 hops from sol brings you 23 hops away from sol that means that the average distance from sol in terms of fuel is only (23+3)/2 = 13 hops! You can build far away from sol (or any other starbase) with relative ease if you learn to use black holes correctly.

- When you first get some cash and are using the Falcon, try using its cargo disrupter secondary weapon on your own escorts, they will only drop cash, which will always come in handy and this will not decrease the amount of cash they drop in your bank, should you succeed in escorting them. If the escort turns hostile just type in /e go quickly and it will continue on it's mission immediately.

- If you are building on a normal rebang, do not drop too many domes simultaneously, I usually drop one dome every 1-2 day(s), this way your more fully developed colonies can support your other colonies, it gives you some time to get more fuel and it gives the ports near by some time to refill with colonists.

- Trade whenever you can! If you are building on a rebang and need to go 4 hops to get oil for instance you could trade some resources with the ports that are located in between. You can also use this when barging defences! You can look at what a port is selling/buying from the map so use that option to think ahead.

- The maximum pollution a colony can produce is 14.29%, you might think this is an irrelevant fact but it is not. Keep this in mind when building, you do not need a church of earth or refinery 3 on a colony that will never have a disaster anyway!
For instance, the maximum pollution an earth could have when you drop the dome on day 7 of a 14 day bang is just 100% (=14.29%*7 ~= 91%) and since you know that you will not even pollute half that much the first few days you know pollution will never be a problem. This means that you do not need to build a church of earth or a refinery 3 which saves you a lot of time, money and resources! Also keep this in mind when allocating how much harvesting you want or when you can sell refineries/church of earths on your older colonies.

8.Special thanks and legal stuff [spe19]

Special thanks to:

Toonces, Aaron Hunter for creating SGE.
The entire SGE development team.
All visitors of the SGE forum, for their help.
Thx to all starport players who have helped me for ideas on my updates!
Last edited by Nightmare on Sat Feb 27, 2010 10:45 pm, edited 13 times in total.

User avatar
PhantoMuse
Posts: 15
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:29 am
Location: Perm 2
Contact:

Post by PhantoMuse » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:19 am

I think this is a good edition to the forums. This should help newer players alot. :)

User avatar
Gloin
Posts: 496
Joined: Sun Nov 05, 2006 6:32 am
Location: I only use 0.09% of my brain...

Post by Gloin » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:25 am

Wow. Nice dude... must of taken forever to type that all out

User avatar
Moleman
Posts: 1838
Joined: Tue Feb 21, 2006 4:13 pm
Location: Northern Ireland

Post by Moleman » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:29 am

Awesome guide nightmare, let me know when you are ready and i'll sticky it in the launchpad.

moleman

User avatar
Thavy
Posts: 265
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 7:32 am
Location: Illinois
Contact:

Post by Thavy » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:34 am

ahh very good well done Nightmare this is greatly appreciative to all who contributed and helped you out

User avatar
Deathreape98
Posts: 398
Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2007 6:03 am
Location: making somebody look stupid

Post by Deathreape98 » Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:00 am

pretty good, but theres some errors. like for artics, they can support more then a 3 shot. I had a 7-shot on of mine with it still producing artics

User avatar
MegaMan
Posts: 638
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2006 5:24 am

Post by MegaMan » Sun Sep 09, 2007 2:01 am

Really nice job, Nightmare. I have 1 correction for you:
Nightmare wrote:Antarean Speedstar, the ship with the best cargo/fuel efficiency rating.
The IGS has the best cargo/fuel efficiency, at 160 holds / 8 fuel to warp = 20 holds / 1 gallon warp fuel. The Dreamsower comes in 2nd at 200/11 = 18.18, followed by the Whale at 160/9 = 17.77, then the ISC at 150/9 = 16.66.

Keep it up :)

KiT
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:51 am
Contact:

Post by KiT » Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:19 am

MegaMan wrote:Really nice job, Nightmare. I have 1 correction for you:
Nightmare wrote:Antarean Speedstar, the ship with the best cargo/fuel efficiency rating.
The IGS has the best cargo/fuel efficiency, at 160 holds / 8 fuel to warp = 20 holds / 1 gallon warp fuel. The Dreamsower comes in 2nd at 200/11 = 18.18, followed by the Whale at 160/9 = 17.77, then the ISC at 150/9 = 16.66.

Keep it up :)
It actually depends on your wisdom and number of IG maps. The fuel saving bonus is numeral - i mean that it can be -1 fuel/jump but not -20% fuel per jump. This is important because for speedstar it drops fuel costs very seriously - on 10 wis you have -2 fuel bonus, for speedstar it drops fuel costs by 33%,\ while for IGS this bonus drops fuel costs only by 25%, for dreamsower - by 18%, for whale - by 22%.
SO, for players with maxed out wisdom the results will be following:
IGS: 160/6 = 26,6 Dreamsower: 200/9 = 222,2 Whale: 22,8 , Speedstar:22,5. Making dreamsower only the third most efficient ship.
With additional IG maps the situation further improve for the ships with less fuel consumption.

User avatar
MegaMan
Posts: 638
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2006 5:24 am

Post by MegaMan » Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:58 am

A very good point from Kit. Drinks all around!

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Sun Sep 09, 2007 4:21 pm

MegaMan wrote:Really nice job, Nightmare. I have 1 correction for you:
Nightmare wrote:Antarean Speedstar, the ship with the best cargo/fuel efficiency rating.
The IGS has the best cargo/fuel efficiency, at 160 holds / 8 fuel to warp = 20 holds / 1 gallon warp fuel. The Dreamsower comes in 2nd at 200/11 = 18.18, followed by the Whale at 160/9 = 17.77, then the ISC at 150/9 = 16.66.

Keep it up :)
Yes, I know the IGS is more efficient, I was just thinking of non token ships only because I was speaking from the rebang point of view. I changed it to make that more clear and added the info you gave, thx.
Deathreape98 wrote:pretty good, but theres some errors. like for artics, they can support more then a 3 shot. I had a 7-shot on of mine with it still producing artics
That's not an error, I meant that an arctic without metal ore boosting research can not have more than 3 solar shots, and since it is impossible to know what research you will get I see this relative low amount of solar shots as one of this planet type's disadvantages.
I know see that that sentence was written pretty confusing though, so I rewrote it, thx for the response.

I started writing the guide on friday and was done by saturday night, I wrote it in word (16 pages) and I had to manually add all the tags for bold, italic and underlining the text, which was a long, boring task but I knew I would only have to do it once (unlike cleaning pollution :P).

I hope it helps, and yes please leave it here at least untill the guide has "aged" a little, if you know what I mean :)

Nightmare

User avatar
Nolanor
Posts: 217
Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 1:55 am
Location: CS, Colorado
Contact:

Post by Nolanor » Sun Sep 09, 2007 6:55 pm

im going to take the liberty of spell checking you and doing grammar checks. first mistake iv seen is in the stat setups, on the last one, you only put in 5 points for dexterity, and nothing else, i believe the other 10 were supposed to go for wisdom, XD, might wanna fix that

avitohol
Posts: 1037
Joined: Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:23 pm
Location: Samarkland

Post by avitohol » Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:09 pm

Alot of people on perma's use the 10 dex 5 wisdom combo. The fuel efficiency is;t massive but in the long run it mounts up.

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:35 pm

Updated!

Nightmare

User avatar
Luumukukko
Posts: 183
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:20 am
Location: Finland

Post by Luumukukko » Mon Sep 10, 2007 10:17 am

Good that someone has the will and patience to do these guides.

Well done nighty

User avatar
fireblade211
Posts: 325
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2007 12:50 am

Post by fireblade211 » Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:09 am

dang man, im guessing a good 45 min-1 hour's typeing for that????


man, this needs a player selfguide in the starpedia or it should go in the starpedia when its finished

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:33 pm

fireblade211 wrote:dang man, im guessing a good 45 min-1 hour's typeing for that????
Try 5 or 6 hours.

Nightmare

User avatar
_Starblade_
Posts: 69
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:39 pm
Location: 11th Demension BH
Contact:

Post by _Starblade_ » Tue Sep 11, 2007 8:16 pm

Awesome! You might wanna put on pax the igp can be killed an re-dropped on for forever protection.

Edit: We should have this stickied soon b4 it goes to next page of topics.

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Tue Sep 11, 2007 10:01 pm

My guide is getting too long, I actually went over the post limited for one post last time so I'll have to delete some stuff, probably the author points of view section will just become a link to the topic those things were written in.

Nightmare

User avatar
_Starblade_
Posts: 69
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:39 pm
Location: 11th Demension BH
Contact:

Post by _Starblade_ » Wed Sep 12, 2007 12:37 am

You should just copy and paste each section into a different post and put hyperlinks to each one of them. I'm not sure if the mods will delete em though

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Re: Colony Building Guide [please leave in tavern for now]

Post by Nightmare » Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:16 pm

I wrote:13/09/07 Version 1.0.3 added some things to the conclusion concerning making money, changed advise on arctic colonies and nuanced the end conclusion on building volcanics a bit. More advise was given on all aftermath possibilities for colonies and more specifically for rebangs, tips added, important note concerning defences added.
Nightmare

User avatar
Talak.Winstar
Posts: 2392
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:29 pm
Location: In Space, contemplating how exactly to negate the crappy events of OMD and BND story arcs.

Post by Talak.Winstar » Thu Sep 13, 2007 2:07 pm

Nightmare wrote:
fireblade211 wrote:dang man, im guessing a good 45 min-1 hour's typeing for that????
Try 5 or 6 hours.

Nightmare

DAAAAMMN! THere's like 23 pages of this stuff if you copy this all to a word document..... BTW Is there anything you did not cover in that huge post?
Last edited by Talak.Winstar on Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Thu Sep 13, 2007 3:14 pm

Not that I know of, and yes it's about 23 pages long in word, and I think I hit 10h with this last update.

Enjoy it, I particulary like what I did with the lay-out, a lot better than my first guide, not bad eh for someone who's third language is English :wink:

Nightmare

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Sat Sep 15, 2007 11:47 am

First bang I build using the technique's described above, oil was far away and I had 0 wisdom as a stat so I think I did pretty well, just proves that this guide will help you even if you're an experienced player (You're probably not that experienced with the new way of building :)).

I didn't invade any colonies and barely killed any NPC and even no pks (as you can see).

Image

You can move this guide to the launchpad section, there isn't going to be more comment on it here than it will have there anyway.

Nightmare

User avatar
Before
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2006 5:20 am
Location: NJ, USA

WOW

Post by Before » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:17 pm

That was a great guide. Good job!

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Sun Sep 16, 2007 10:39 pm

Thx Before.

Please move to launchpad, thx.

Nightmare

DionysuZ

Post by DionysuZ » Mon Sep 17, 2007 4:16 am

Nightmare I will write you a Dogzilla building guide (with some parts left out ;)) when we've perfectioned building again. In the old system, our building system was pretty good. It still is good but we are changing tactics every day. Screenshotted one of our old rebang scores:

Image

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Mon Sep 17, 2007 1:35 pm

My personal old high score is 1.1 million experience, but that's kinda of topic, cool you want to to share some stuff DionysuZ, the other builders here don't respond at all :(

Nightmare

User avatar
milo
Posts: 844
Joined: Tue Dec 12, 2006 4:58 am
Location: wouldn't you like to know
Contact:

Post by milo » Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:07 pm

hmm all my earthlikes get up to 3 solar shots when fully built. with no research and a 15k pop. also my arctics tend to get of 2-3 shots on average. oceans i'm not sure about though.

User avatar
Nightmare
Posts: 1462
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:58 pm
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Post by Nightmare » Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:14 pm

Cool thx for the info mate :P

Nightmare

User avatar
milo
Posts: 844
Joined: Tue Dec 12, 2006 4:58 am
Location: wouldn't you like to know
Contact:

Post by milo » Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:38 pm

yea if your not getting 3 shots out of your earthlikes your doing something wrong. although i like to keep taxes very low on them to boost pop which might be why i get more metal ore produced than other people.

Post Reply