This guide is broken into two parts: The first deals with important strategic concepts in details and the second covers with all attributes in brief.
Note: This page still being written. Not all topics are included yet.
Contents |
Strategic Concepts
Morale and Government Power
Morale is how happy your workers are. The happier they are, the better the industrial and research output of your planet is. Morale can be increased through special structures (such as the Entertainment Center) or through improved government power.
A government structure provides a morale boost (empire wide) and a government power level. The latter, government power, is the most effective way to improve morale in the galaxy. A government center, parliament, or palace helps maintain your government infrastructure. With too little government power, corruption blossoms and your people no longer feel safe. This is translated into lower morale. The closer a planet is to the center of government, the less they are affected by this corruption, and the higher their morale is. Conversely, a planet further away may have issues with corruption even when you have adequate government power.
Any unused government power is applied directly to the production of planets as a bonus. Thus if you can support 50,000 people and you have 40,000 people, the remaining government power will give a small percent bonus to the output of all your planets. This can be seen in the Empire Overview dialog under "Unused Production."
The third way to maintain high morale is to prevent your planet from going over 5,000 population, but this is impractical if you expect the planet to have any decent production output. Instead, use this limit to get your basic factory production and an initial entertainment center out when you know the planet will have too little government power to stamp down the corruption.
Production, Trade Treaties, Excess Government Power, Idle Task, and Fleet Support
Production is the output of your planets, measured in CP or Construction Points. By opening Empire Overview you can see the combined totals of your entire empire's production.
There are two primary components under this: Unused production and Fleet support.
If you want to increase the unused production component, there are three ways to do it:
- Trade Treaties: Broker treaties with your neighbors through Diplomacy. Each trade treaty can add up to 5% to the unused production figure, based on the weakest player's raw economy (before bonuses).
- Government Power: Unused government power is converted into unused production as a bonus. There is little you can do to change this component directly.
- Idle Planets: Either through idling the planet (empty queue) or by running the idle task project, you can temporarily boost your production bonus. However, you lose the production of those planets you idled to do this, so use this method sparingly.
Fleet support is then removed from your production, resulting in your total empire effectivity rating and your final production figure.
Combat and War
Military fleets, when they encounter each other, will attack unless you have "Passage for military ships" enabled with that player. When ships engage in battle, war is immediately declared.
When ships fight, both sides fire as many weapons as they can, but since a large fleet trying to attack a small fleet will have some of their own ships getting in the way, some weapons on the larger fleet will be unable to fire. This is called "Shot Limiting" and is discussed elsewhere.
Each turn damage is done, destroyed ships are removed, and combat is finished until the next turn. So long as combat has occurred, ships are prevented from immediate retreat. There is a three turn delay on retreating. This is because you are actively engaged in battle and it takes time for your fleet to fully disengage. It also prevents people that have too much time and can log in every turn from having too large an advantage.
Be aware: Many new players think a handful of fighters and bombers is a large fleet. It is not. Mid to late game fleet often enter the thousands or tens of thousands of ships in any single battle.
Capturing Planets
To capture planets, simply bomb them until either they rebel, or you wipe the surface of all population. In the first case, it will be a lengthy rebuilding process and you and you may need a colony ship to drop a base on the planet to prevent the population from dieing of starvation. In the latter, you will need colony ships.
Weapon Classes
There are four classes of weapons:
- Anti-small: These include cannons, turrets, mortars, and pods. They are used primarily to shoot small hulls, but can damage larger hulls and planets, albeit minimally.
- Anti-medium: These include missiles and beam weapons. They are primarily used to shoot medium hulls, but can be useful vs large hulls. Against planets, their firepower is weak. Due to their unwieldy nature and the high maneuverability of smaller ships, they are ineffective against small hulls.
- Anti-large: Torpedoes are the ultimate anti-ship weapon, but they are useless vs medium and small hulls. Due to their high firepower, they can be used to effectively bomb planets.
- Anti-planet: Bombs are the primary bombing technology. Because they are unguided, they cannot shoot ships.
Odds and Ends
- Ships gain experience when in combat. When they gain enough, they gain an experience level. Every level of experience increase the chance for your weapons to hit an enemy, and decreases your enemy's chance to hit you. You can also train your ships through training facilities.
- Signature of a ship is based on hull size and equipment installed. The higher your ship's signature, the easier your enemies can see you. Note: ships in close proximity during movement sum their signatures for detection.
Important Attributes
Important Attributes of a Planet
- Min / Minerals: The mineral abundance of a planet. Early technology factories and power planets are entirely dependent on mineral abundance. Later in the game, cyborg and (less so) human factories and power plants continue to rely on mineral abundance.
- En / Energy Abundance: The energy abundance of a planet. Solar power plants, advanced human factories and farms, and some other structures rely on the energy level of a planet. Additionally, you can only terraform planets within specific energy ranges.
- Slots / Available Space: This is how much room you have on a planet. You can increase your slots to the maximum (hover over the slot number to view the maximum) using Habitable Surface Expansion.
- Env / Environment: Environment represents how hospitable the environment is on the planet. This is especially important for early level farms and all bio race technologies. It is also an important factor in terraforming. See also Env Status.
- Env Status: Every time this breaks 1000, a planet will upgrade to the next env level. See also Env.
- Diameter: This is the actual diameter of the planet and is used to determine the maximum number of slots a planet can contain during galaxy generation or planet condensation.
- Population: This is the number of people you have on the planet. On the planet info screen, you will also see "Free Workers," which represents the portion of your population that your structures are not using. Every 100 people, by default, consume 1 unit of food. The exact consumption is available under "population support."
- Biomatter: This is how much food reserve you have. Every 100 people, by default, consume 1 unit of food. The exact consumption is available under "population support." Some structures may also consume food. Biomatter is shared among planets you own in the system.
- Energy: Separate from the Energy Abundance, this number details the reserve energy you have on a planet. Your various structures on the planet will use energy. Energy is shared among planets you own in the system.
- CP / Construction Points: The industrial output of your planet.
- RP / Research Points: The research output of your planet.
- Morale: This represents how happy your workers are. When they are happier, they are more productive.
Important Attributes of a System
- Refuel: This represents how fast and how much you can refuel your ships. Your home system has a basic level space dock with 60% maximum refueling. If you want more, you need to research Space Port, Space Dock, or any other refueling technology.
- Repair Ratio: This represents how fast your ships can repair battle damage. These are cumulative between multiple docks, but there is a limit to prevent 100% repair rates.
- Upgrade Points: This represents how fast your ships can upgrade. Larger hull classes take more upgrade points to upgrade than smaller hull classes. In general, a single dock can upgrade one large hull, or multiple medium or small hulls, per turn.
- Fleet Speed: This represents how fast this system can accelerate/decelerate your fleet. The receiving system must also have a fleet speed boost and be owned by your or a fueling partner for your ships to be accelerated. The slowest of the acceleration and deceleration values are used when determining fleet speed. 100% is normal speed and all planets have this by default. Scanning facilities can provide a nominal speed increase, but you need Star Gate technology for significant speed bonuses.
- Strategic Resources: Strategic resources belong to a single planet in the system, and you must have colonized that planet to gain access to them. Strategic resources grow at one per week, and building a structure, hull, weapon, or other device that uses the strategic resource will deplete them at one per use.
Important Attributes of an Empire
- Government Power: This represents the power of your central government. See the section titled "Morale and Government Power" above.
- MP / Military Power: This is a general representation of how strong your fleet is. However, it can be deceptive. For instance, if you have a large number of large hulls with torpedoes on them, they could be vulnerable to a well designed and crafted small hull fleet of significantly less MP.
- Upgrade Pool: This shows how many CPs you have invested toward upgrading ships. The upgrade pool can be stored up, but like ships, they require fleet support. Unlike ships, however, they have no MP value. When you order a ship class upgraded to a new design, your ships will upgrade at systems with Upgrade Points and deplete the upgrade pool. For example, if you are upgrading a ship that cost 2000CP to one that costs 3400CP, you will use 1400CP from the upgrade pool for each ship upgraded.
