Wow cicobuff, you’re doing a great job! The devs should pay you for this and make a pdf manual and distribute it with the game. I know writing manuals isn’t typically a fun task to do but it amazes me that companies refuse to document their games (complicated ones at least) in any meaningful way.
Yea. The game is quite complicated but provided very elegant tools to manage the complexity.
It’s unfortunate that there are no written documentation that leads beginners through the complexity. I was sad that a lot of people may miss this gem due to the lack of readable information when facing a pretty daunting game. It is my motivation for doing this. Thanks for the encouragement guys!
First baby steps, colonizing and gaining our first planet level (Continued 2)
Let’s check out the other system!
We find:
- 2x Food planets
- 1x Special Orb that must be activated with energy
- 1x Tier Planet: Chemical Resource
Game Mechanics: Resources The economy of SR2 is based on different types of resources. Take a look at your top bar.
We have:
- Budget ($$$), we have already encountered this. It’s mainly used to build things.
- Influence, this is the diplomatic currency. We use this to buy special cards and to activate the cards.
- Energy, this is used to activate special powers or orbs. We saw how the Mono started off with some orbs. If we accumulate enough of energy, we can activate orbs which brings special effects like, making orbital stations, activating ancient abandoned spaceships and stations, creating new planets or even new stars!
- FTL, this is used whenever we perform FTL travel. Mono also uses this when they teleport colonists to colonise planets. We’ll see how important this is in a while.
- Research, in SR2 research is mainly purchased with research points. When we accumulate enough research points, we can spend them on the research “tree”, it’s actually a web, to unlock new technologies.
- Defence, defence is a special resource that is automatically used empire wide to help build support ships for defence of planets. We’ll go into this later.
As you can see, all our resources at at 0 production rates. Only our FTL is accumulating at 1/s. But it’s capped at 250. This is because we can only store 250 FTL. Later we can build structures to accumulate more of this crucial resource. But more on that later.
So how do we increase the production of these resources? By colonizing Tier 1 resource planets and using the resources.
Let’s take a look at the resource planet we found at the star.
You will wonder what does Chemical do. Let’s find out. Double click on the planet.
To get an explanation on what the Chemical does, we just go into the planetary screen and hover our mouse over the Chemical icon. The UI tells us exactly what it’s for!
Game Mechanics: Resources and Types To add flavour to the game, the game designers have named the resources on each planet with names like “Plastics, Chemicals, Explosives” etc etc. This will require us to get familiar what each resource type actually does. Chemicals --> Research, Explosives --> Defence etc.
As you get more familiar with the game, the resource types will start to make sense. So don’t worry too much about knowing everything. You can always check the exact meaning by just double clicking on a planet and reading the tooltip to find out what resource each resource type contribute to.
Now we have a Tier 1 resource planet. We want to increase the level of our starting planet to level 2. The requirement is that we need to import a tier 1 resource. So let’s get it going!
I typically zoom out to get a view of the planet I am sending colonists from and the target planet in the screen.
Now, LEFT CLICK Dupo I, RIGHT CLICK our target Imaliz III, and LEFT CLICK “Transfer 1B Population (42 FTL)”
As you can see, a new colony is founded! Our FTL is used, and 1 unit of our robots brethren is shipped over!
But wait… something’s wrong…
Interface Tip: Planets health indicator The planets have rings surround them. A blue ring indicates everything is working as it should. A red ring means something is wrong.
Let’s take a look and see what is wrong with the planet. Note that this the same UI scheme for indicating planet health is also present in the Planet Screen.
Double click on the unhealthy planet and see what’s wrong.
Ah! We see that the game have not updated the status of the planet due to the pause. Let’s quickly unpause and then pause again. Here is the updated view.
Aha! We see the problem, we don’t have enough population on our planet!
Game Mechanics: Minimum population level Each level of a planet has a minimum population for it to work properly. A level 0 planet needs 1. A level 1 planet needs at least 2 population. A level 2 needs 6 and so on. It is critically important to have the minimal population on your planets. Else everything stop working.
Game Mechanics: Planet Level and Income A planet of level 0 will cause a deficit in our income. It may seem like a small amount 80K. But if you have too many of these, the amount stack up really fast.
Let’s repair the situation and send another colonist over. You can of course go to the Galaxy screen and perform the transfer. But let me show you something really cool. Let’s visit the Planets screen.
Now you can perform what you did in the Galaxy Screen in the Planets Screen! LEFT - RIGHT - LEFT click! The advantage of the Planets Screen is that it only displays things you are interested in. In this case it’s our 2 planets.
We perform the transfer. Now, unpause the game and pause it again for the status to update. Let’s go and check out our Galaxy Screen.
We see something interesting here. On the galaxy screen, you will see the planet with an orange ring.
You can see that now. The planet has an orange ring. That is weird! Didn’t we just sent 2 colonist over? It should now be a level 1 planet right? Why is it still orange?
If you double click the planet, you will get a clearer picture.
:
The answer lies in a very powerful advantage of the Mono Race!
Race Mechanics: The Mono’s power Mono does not need any food, so on a level 1 planet, they basically does not need any inputs apart from having 2 population. On a planet with a Tier 1 resource present, all Mono level 1 planets automatically qualifies for level 2! As long as you can get 6 population onto the planet! With other races, you will minimally need 1X Water, 2X Food and a Tier 1 resource to qualify. For the Mono, the requirements is drastically reduced!
But what we’ll do here is now to ship out the Tier 1 resource to Dupo I our starting planet. So that Dupo I can become a level 2 planet. Let’s do that!
On the Galaxy Screen (or the Planets Screen), you can click and drag the resource to import the resource into Dupo I. You can also use the “LEFT CLICK - RIGHT CLICK - LEFT CLICK” to export the Tier 1 resource into Dupo I.
Let unpause and pause and update our screen!
Our level 2 Dupo I is updated! Remember when I said that you need a minimal of 6 to make the planet work? That was not a typo. Because Dupo I does not have a Tier 2 resource, it does not need the minimum 6 population to work properly as it does not have anything to export. The starter planet may also be special as it does not seem to to have the requirement like other planets do, so we’ll keep this discrepancy in mind as we move along. The 6 pop for level 2 planets still hold for other planets we colonize.
Ok now we have expanded and is on our way. Let do something with the scout. Let it auto explore!
Our new planet is at 2/3 population and is not operating at maximum efficiency. Double click it to go to the planetary screen and build 1 population.
Ok things seems to be in order.
Summary
- We have added a new colony with checmicals which will contribute to research. We have expanded with 1 more colony.
- Our scout is scanning the debris field.
- Our other scout is on auto-explore.
- We have another scout queue in production and the main planet is building additional colonists.
- We have learned quite a lot about the interface.
- We not that the usage of the pause function means that we’re only about 1.5 minutes into the game!
Next steps, await the result of the next explored star system and see what we find at the debris field!
Edit: Messed up the sequencing of the pictures earlier. So may be a bit confusing. Corrected them.
Explaining Pressure and More about the Economy
We have spent quite a lot of time looking at the various UI and ways to do things on the Galaxy and Planets Screens.
That is good that we have the basics of the UI learnt. Now, we’ll explore some of the more non-obvious things.
We had just sent the scout on auto-explore. The other scout is examining the debris. Let’s un-pause and take a look at things while things are happening in realtime.
Game Mechanics: Economy - Pressure If you take a look at the planet Dupo I, you see an interesting thing. I would like to draw you attention to the game concept “Pressure”. Remember that we had shipped a resource called “Chemicals” from our first colony here? At our colony, it was exporting 2/3 Chemicals here, and over here, the Chemicals produce a “Pressure” on Dupo I. This pressure causes Dupo I to build a building on it’s surface to utilize the resource. In this case, we see a University being built. All this is automatic. The Pressure exerted by the resource on the planet automatically generates a building that will consume the resource. As can be see, it’s 73% complete at the moment and have not yet contributed anything to our resource generation. We’ll let it build for a while more and see the results.
Game Mechanics: Economy - Pressure Capacity Every planet has a capacity that is dependent on it’s level/space and quality and population available. Here we see that Dupo I has a capacity of 7. We have used up 2 because our colony is shipping 2 pressure worth of Chemicals to Dupo I. When capacity is filled up. Excess pressure is used at a much reduced rate. This means Dupo I can only accept 7 Pressure from various resources before becoming inefficient. We’ll keep this in mind when we expand. We’ll also keep a look out for technologies and buildings to see it can increase our planet’s capacity.
Game Mechanics: Labour In Dupo I, our planet has a labour generation of 8/min. This means that 8 labour will be generated every min to build things. All construction require labour to build them. For example, now 1B Population will require 12.8 Labour to build. Which means that on Dupo I, it’ll take slightly longer that 1m 30s to complete. As the Mono, or any other race, having high labour planet will mean having faster build queues. Which is a good thing.
Now, let’s see if we can increase our labour generation. We have a few choices right out of the start.
- We can build a factory. Which can increase 3 labour per minute.
- Remember our Iron planet? It has labour! And it seems to be able to add 4 labour!
The factory cost 200K to build which is not a big problem. But the maintenance cost is 285K which seems very high! Take a look at our remaining budget. It’s 70K, that means we had spent 700K of the 770K this cycle.
Budget is the lifeblood determining what we can do each cycle. We’ll like to have a large pool so that we can safely exploit our discoveries. We’ll hold off the factory for now.
On the other hand, the Iron from our neighbouring planet looks interesting. Let’s colonize that and see what the Labour pressure brings. So we’ll colonize it and import the Iron into Dupo I.
We now see that a industry building is automatically constructed! And our research university has been completed, contributing 0.74 research points per second.
Looks like our economy is humming along. Let’s un-pause and see what other things have completed. Our timer is also reaching a new budget cycle and we’re ready to see how much influence the 71K excess budget buys.
Game Mechanics: Excess Budget Earlier we covered how we can route excess budget to the various resource. It’s quite expensive it seems at this stage. So we are not really expecting much. See below. 350K for a unspecified unit.
Further exploration and the debris field
Let’s take a look at what is happening with our explorations.
We scouted the 3rd star, but it seems like our scout got destroyed in the process! Ok, let’s put this on hold and check out our debris field scan.
We double click on the scanning scout on the right quick access panel.
And we investigate the debris field. We are offered 2 choices! A one off 400K addition to budget or a new warship.
Every 3 minutes, the budget cycles resets. We’re not so pressed on money. But it seems that we are surrounded by remnants! So let’s pick the warship!
Hmmmm, it seems that we’ll need to fix this junk before we can use it.
Ok, so we have a destroyed scout. And our scout just finished scanning and we reaped the benefits of our first debris field. Let’s make the scout scan another one. And send our newly made backup scout to visit another star.
And continue our exploration with the newly built backup scout. Precautions pay off, haha.
Next, we’ll check out the star system where our scout was destroyed.
This is unbelievable. Exactly what I needed to jumpstart the learning curve.
@Firgof (dev) take note!
Awesome, thanks so much for this cicobuff! This might convert Star Ruler 2 from Installed status to Actually Played status within my Steam library. Lots of games do not even make it past Purchased to Installed, so this would be really special!
Thank guys.
Examining our options and update our plans
Although I have written a lot explaining basic concepts and UI elements, we realise that we have not completed our 1st 3min budget cycle!
We have taken our first baby steps and have accomplished the following:
- We have started our 1st 2 colonies. 1 of them is a Tier 1 chemical Planet the other is a Tier 0 Iron planet.
- We have shipped both resource to our home planet Dupo I and we saw that Dupo I have built structures automatically due to the pressure the Iron and the Chemicals exerted.
- Research is now accumulating due to the Chemicals.
- We have explored 3 star systems.
- One of our scout just got destroyed at a newly discovered star system. But our newly built scout is assigned to continue exploring neighbouring stars.
- We’ve only spent 2.5min of game time so far and is awaiting the next budget cycle for more spending budget
Let’s take stock of our situation
Let’s take a look at the colony where our scout got destroyed.
We see things we have encountered before, more planets and orbs, a remnant and a debris field.
But we note some things that are interesting that we should take note of immediately!
- We see planets with Thorium which is represented by a “II” on the resource icon.
- We see an interesting orb called the “Arcology”
Game Mechanics: Planet Level and Tier 2 Resource Types Planet levels are increased when certain requirements are met. For the Mono, our planet level increase is as follows:
This is different from the other races because of the Mono’s advantage. They do not need food or water.
Planet Levelup Requirements
Basically, what this means is that for a planet to achieve
Level 1: No resource is needed.
Level 2: 1x Tier 1 Resource is required
Level 3: 1x Tier 1 and 1x Tier 2 Resource is required
Level 4: 2x Tier 1 and 1x Tier 2 Resource is required
Level 5: 2x Tier 1 and 2x Tier 2 Resource is required
With each level of planet, the amount of population and the pressure the planet can use is increased. This means that an empire with high level planets will out perform one without high level planets mainly because they will be able to support high populations and pressure capacity.
It is a primary object of any empire to build up at least some high level planets if possible. Currently Dupo I is at level 2. To achieve level 3, it will need 1xTier 1 and 1xTier2 resource.
Tier 2 Resource: Thorium
It seems that we have found 2 planets with Tier 2 resource. Both of them are Thorium. But what is Thorium and what does it do? The game itself tells us! Let double click on the planet and see for ourselves!
Interface Tip: Tool Tip and General Information You will find that SR2 is actually very liberal and generous with the information that it provides to let you play the game. Once you have a basic understanding of how the game mechanics work, you will find that information is actually available. You do not really have to look for a WIKI to find meanings for obscure icons and stuff. The difficulty is actually having a basic framework and mental map of what things actually are and how they interact with each other. The information itself is present in the game via tooltips and info panels. SR2 designers have actually meticulously made sure that all the information required to make decisions are actually accessible.
Game Mechanics: The critical Tier 2 resource planets As you can see from the Planet level up requirements. We need Tier 2 resources to level up any planets. The news is that Tier 2 planets are not as common as Tier 0 and Tier 1 planets. It’s pure luck that we have discovered 2 x Tier 2 in our vicinity. The RNG (random number generator) typically will provide at least a Tier 2 nearby to assist starting empires. But to level up more, we’ll need even more Tier 2 planets. In all, a level 5 planet will need to be supplied with 4xTier 2 planets. And Tier 2 planets are less common. Typically they can be found closer to the galactic center. The RNG seems to generate more of them there. What this means is that there will be a rush for Tier 2 resource planets. We need to grab as many of these as possible because they determine how many high level planets we can support in our empire!
Hold the celebrations! Discovering a Tier 2 planet is normally very good news. But here we have a problem. So far, we have only discovered only 1 Tier 1 resource. Which was our Chemicals that was used to level up our Dupo I. This is frustrating because, even if we can colonize the Thorium planets, we cannot level them up to level 2 to enable them to export!
This means that we have found 2 big discovery that we cannot immediately make use of. So let’s be patient and wait for a chance to exploit our findings.
Game Mechanics: Increasing Population Base and Arcology
The tooltip of the Arcology tells use an interesting fact. A planet’s maximum population that can be put to work can be increased. Here we have an “Artifact” that can be activated with 1500 Energy. (Which incidentally can be generated when we make use of the Thorium resource.)
Increasing the maximum population of a planet is always welcome news. Because the as a planet contains more population, the income it generates, the pressure capacity increases!
As you can see, a point of population makes a big difference in how pressure and income is affected.
This means something for us. It is important that we keep the population at our key high level planets high! As we colonize and teleport our population to the colonies, we may find our population decrease at our production planets and affect our output. This is something we will have to manage which is why you see me building the 3 population right at the start!
There is not much we can do now. So let’s wait for the budget cycle to complete to replenish our treasury and give us new budget to work with. And we’ll see what our scout had discovered. While we are doing this, let’s build another scout and move it up in priority so that we can get a new scout asap.
##Awaiting the next budget and anticipating the next star
We un-pause the game and see goto a zoom level in the galaxy map to have a birds eye view of the situation.
Interface Tip: Tooltip Goodness When you hover over things in SR2, you will come to realise that the UI does something amazing with the Tooltip. They give you realtime information regarding that object! Take a look!
This means that in our Galaxy view, we can quickly hover over planets and see what is happening at all times! There is no need to click into planets to see what is currently building. With just a simple hover, we can see what is happening with our planets!
As we wait for the exploration to complete, let’s take stock of the situation. We have explored the surrounding areas, we discovered a roadblock. There are no more level 1 planets we can use… This is worrisome. In most of my play throughs, the Tier 1 planets are typically nearby. It seems that the RNG has stumped us.
This is a concern but not an unsurmountable obstacle. In fact, I’m kind of glad this happened because I can use this as a teaching moment and show some additional mechanics in play we can use.
So let’s see what our scout turn up in the next star system.
Our immediate aim is to build up our economy and find additional Tier 1 star systems to colonize.
Summary
- We have found 2 tier resources but is unable to use them
- We discover that the RNG had generated very few Tier 1 resources around us.
- We would like to build up our economy
##A harrowing escape
Seeing that our scout got destroyed. I kept an eye on our scout as it travelled to a new star.
And I saw a remnant in the path of the scout!
I quickly issued flight path change, wanting to escape. Here is what happened!
Game Mechanics: Inertia and the wonders of Space Flight In SR2, spaceships do NOT turn on a dime! Even a scout travelling at high speed have a big momentum and need time to turn. You will find this play a very important role in space combat later. Huge lumbering hulks with weapons facing forward can be destroyed by a nimble force attacking their rears! It’s quite amazing how SR2 actually modelled this. And this design ties in extremely well with the very complex ship builder subsystem they have in the game! FTL ships can actually teleport behind enemy fleets. Ships can actually surround and hit enemies at all their sides! This is a far cry from games where everything is abstract and just based on pure numbers. Here in SR2, weapon facing, engine sizes, thrusters, weight and momentum etc are actually important in the fight!
Would it be possible to make one of those Wiki type messages out of this whole thread? :)
Here’s the wiki’s address if anyone wants to log it to the Wiki: http://wiki.starruler2.com/Main_Page
After you create an account, you ought to be able to edit the SR2 wiki freely.
Just chiming in to thank you for the amazing “How To” guide. Its really great and MUCH appreciated!!!
Thanks for writing the cool guide. I don’t have a ton of hours but I really dig Star Ruler 2. If only my ship designs didn’t always end up so malformed.
Guys thanks again for the encouragement. The shipbuilder is very complex but there are simple ways to handle that subsystems as beginners. I’ll touch on that later.
Bad RNG but a potential life saver
Our scout had it’s narrow escape. And we note that we ended up with 2 food and 2 water planets… again we have not found any Tier 1 resource yet. Looks like the RNG really dislike us.
Interface Tip: Notifications If you check out the bottom Right panel. You’ll see 2 semi-circles. It’s SR2 UI way of presenting notifications. Clicking on the scout notification will center our view to the scout and dismiss it. Clicking on the Anomaly notification will ave us a lot of clicks and bring up the “Analyze Anomaly” command screen.
A lucky break! A serendipitous find!
It seems like the RNG has given us a lifeline. Intelligence on nearby star systems! A lucky break.
Our current situation is not ideal. So far we have only found 1 Tier 1 resource. This gives us some problems as we are unable to level up our planets. We found a lot of food and water planets which are not useful to us at this stage because we cannot easily exploit them. Later they will become extremely powerful but to exploit them, the Mono need a very reliable economy that can produce colonist Populations as well as have a healthy income to generate budget. I’ll touch on Terraforming later when we get to that stage.
Let’s pick the free Intelligence on un-scouted systems and see what we find.
As you can see Debris Analysis can make a HUGE difference to your planning and strategy! In our case, our lucky find saved us a LOT of grief and time. We found 4 systems with just 1 click! Instantaneously! Woot!
And we have even better news!
We found our Tier 1 Resources! With with a Tier 2 and even a Tier 3! This is a tremendous find!
Game Mechanics: Debris, Anomalies and Treasure Loot! As you can see, debris can actually be a big game changer. In our case, the debris gave us exactly what we needed. A much needed view of our needed resources! To explore the 4 stars individually, we’ll need at least 2 minutes more of real time with 2 scouts. But we are now given an immediate view. Which means our scouts can leapfrog the finds and move more into the Galactic Center! Therefore, it pays to manually control at least a scout to perform the debris scan. Another way is to set the scouts to auto-explore but track the Galaxy screen closely to see if you need to retake control to perform debris scan.
Let’s see what we have found.
Here are the resource planets we found. We have:
1 x Chemicals => Research (We already have 1 of these)
1 x Plastic => Influence
2 x Natural Gas => Energy
1 x Antimatter => Energy (A Tier 3 resource that produces a lot of energy pressure)
2 x Electronics => Income/Money/$$$
1 x Jewelry => A Hybrid Influence + Income Tier 2 Resource! But the top right corner shows that it’s a Noxious Planet that reduce Max Population by 1.
1 x Glass => A special Income planet that also gives 1 energy
As beginners, we should take some time to check out the various planets. Double click them and take a look at the Resource they contain. They are unfamiliar to us now, so it’s good to get as much information as possible about them from the nice UI. Then we can make good decisions.
Next, we’ll do some maintenance stuff and then plan out how to expand our economy.
First let’s handle the scouts.
Next we take a look at Dupo I, our only planet that can meaningfully produce something.
As we can see, our Dupo I has only 5 Population. We have 1 more coming up in 21 seconds. We have a production capacity of 12 labour/min. Meaning we can produce 50% faster then before we started importing Iron. We’ll queue 1 more Population, then we’ll formulate our expansion plan.
Race Mechanics: Mono’s Disadvantage The Mono needs to produce Populations in order to expand and populate their planets. As you can see, our production queue is tied up producing Population almost all the time. This means that at anytime, we start to build structures/orbitals/ships (that require labour) on Dupo I, our Population growth STOPS. This is a very big disadvantage because it means that we have to consciously make trade-offs between growing quantitively (adding more population) or qualitative (improving planets with structures). This big disadvantage does not go away until we have another high labour planet that can help us produce the Populations required to expand our empire. This is why Mono has a relatively weak start among the various races.
Theory Crafting A quick analysis of the this disadvantage shows us how much more carefully we need to manage our initial periods of expansion. As you could see earlier, if we send out colonists from Dupo I, the pressure capacity gets reduces and suddenly our labour drops. A 4/8 Dupo I produces ~20% less than a 5/8 Dupo I. This means that to keep our Labour at 12/min. We’ll need a minimal of 5 Population.
To settle a level 1 planet, we need 2 population. That means it’ll take us approximately 2+mins of build time at our current rate.
To settle a level 2 planet and export it’s resource, we need 6 population. That will take us about 7+mins to build!!!
All this time, we are not able to build any structures that requires labour at Dupo I to improve our labour. What this means is this. We must upgrade Dupo I to improve the Labour because every invested Labour improvement stack up.
But now we have a Huge dilemma. If we improve the planet, lets say with a forge instead of additional Populations, we delay colonizing. This gives us a huge problem, because our various resources like Influence and Energy etc are still at zero. Meaning that we will be late to get into the game in those areas.
And delaying getting to the Galatic center means that good resource types will be taken by our Opponents.
So now, we see a very glaring weakness of the Mono. But then again. We are the Mono! Failure is not an option! And we have not played to our biggest strength yet! Our time will come!
So with all that in mind, let’s come up with an expansion plan that plays to our strength and weakness.
A Lull, Disadvantaged but Playing the patience game
We’ll wait for Dupo I to build up some population and I use the lull time to keep a close watch on the scouts.
Taking a look at our Dupo I, we see that a new Population had been added. And our economic values improved.
As you can see, a 6 population Dupo brings us a better production capability. And our income also increased. I’ll let the game run a bit. Let’s get Dupo I to 8/8 and see what the scouts bring up before we weigh our options to expand.
More discoveries and new options
We’re waiting in the lull for our Dupo I to become better at labour production by building more population.
Patience Pays off
We held off colonizing because the reduction to our population on Dupo I would have tanked our economy. Meanwhile, Our scout found an interesting system.
This is quite a nice turn of events! We found another 2 Tier 2 planets! With a Tier 1 Planet in it! What’s more! The Remnant fleet is at the far right, meaning that it will not be interfering with us much due to it’s limited range!
And it’s connected to our Dupo I’s economies via the star lanes!
Game Mechanics: Star lanes for economies and Blockade SR2 cleverly integrates blockade mechanics into the game. Connected systems, when doing their import/exports simulate the export by sending out what I assume to be trade ships (non-controllable) between systems along the star lanes. As long as they can safely reach the target planet, everything is well and good. But if an enemy fleet blocks the path and shoots down the trade ships, then a blockade is in effect! This is a great use of the spatial simulation of the Galaxy map to integrate a crucial game mechanic into the game! I have to give it to the developers! Well done! Needless to say, blockade = bad. More on that later.
Blockade runners?
We note that the in 2 systems connecting the resource rich regions to the left; the region where we found lots of Tier 1 resources, there are Remnants near the star lanes! That is bad news for us!
We might be able to use the bottom star lanes to escape attention of the Remnants for connecting to our resource rich region.
Now we have 2 choices, to expand left towards the Galactic Center and have lots of Tier 1 resources available, or to the right. Where a nice combination of Tier 1 and 2 exist in the same system with a nicely connected trade network.
Let’s take stock and pick a way forward.
First we’ll set the scout to scan the debris.
##Making a decision
We are offered 2 choices. Should we expand left towards the Galactic Center or Left where we are already connected.
Weighing the advantages
If we expand Right, the benefits are non-trivial:
- The trade network is already connected.
- We know the position of the Remnant and we are certain it will not affect the trade.
- This is a conservative choice as there is basically zero risk.
If we expand Left, we have some risks balanced by advantages.
- There are a LOT of Tier 1 planets. Offering a lot of possibilities for growth!
- We note that there are hybrid Resources that we can use right at the bottom! These are fantastic in getting us started in generating resources for our use. I am looking the planet providing Glass which in addition to generating 3 Income, also adds 1 Energy pressure! And it’s next to a Jewelry which provides 5 Income and 2 Influence! That is a fantastic mix as it build up income which is great for budget and throws in Influence and Energy at the same time!
- The RISKY bit is that we do not know if there are any Remnants there.
- Additionally, we’ll need to use up 1 colonist to colonize a planet in the connecting star system if we want to hook it to Dupo I, our main production center where we want to level up.
My preference is to expand to the left towards the Galactic Core. The main reason is that even if we choose the right path, it will still take a log time before they are developed. We are looking at 2 + 6 Populations to bump up the colonies. When you take that into account, the 1 additional Population to connect the trade network is not that big of a problem. Furthermore, if we so decide, we can build the right cluster to support a high level planet and perform colonization form there! The nearness to all the Tier 1’s give a very good base for expanding our empire.
With the decision set, we’ll work towards that. We’ll let Dupo I build a couple more Populations and see the results of the debris scan.
Let’s wait for Dupo I 8/8 to maximize the Labour and build 2 more Population for colonizing.
And it seems that the Anomaly scan is complete. Let’s investigate it!
This time, we’ll pick the 400K for our Treasury. The reason for this is that I’ll like to buy some influence and introduce our fellow beginners to the Diplomacy screen!
Game Mechanics: Leftover Budget (Reminder) Leftover budget is used to buy resources. They are bought in 350K chunks. So let’s see if we can buy a chunk and see if it’s enough to play with diplomacy!
I’ll queue another Population for Dupo I since the 8th Population will finish building before this budget cycle ends.
Additionally, our scout has discovered a new star.
As we explore we find strange new resource types. In this case, we find a Marenium which is a unique resource that enables us to build a new type of reactor for our ships! From the requirement and the fact that it’s unique. It would seem that Marenium Reactor is a powerful one!
Game Mechanics: Moons Sometimes, you will come across planets with moons. You can build moon bases that can boost a planet’s maximum population by 1 point each. If a planet has 2 moons, it means that you can build 2 moon bases and that will add 4 Population Max to your total. A level 1 planet will be able to utilize 3+4 Populations! It’s nothing to sneeze at. Especially on a production focused planet!