Okay, so you followed
the GUIDE when you first started, but now you're past that and you've just colonized a new base. What's the most efficient way to get it going so that you can address econ, capacity, and defense as fast as possible? Here is a suggested approach, much of which is already mentioned in the guide:
First off, you should endeavor to bring along some fleet whenever you start a new colony, but not so much that people will be tempted to come by for profit. Sending solitary colony ships once you've gotten past level 10
(initial server protection) is suicidal. Send over some token fleet -- a few corvettes, for instance -- and then build more fighters as your new base matures.
Regardless of what role you decide for your base, you should start out with a
Construction Commander. This will lower your construction costs, and thus your construction time, and enable you to get protected quite a bit faster than normal. After you have gotten the base to a decent capacity or level of protection, you can put the appropriate commander
(e.g. Research Commander) in place. I'd recommend holding off on
Production Commanders until after your PRings have been built, and then only placing them on your highest production base within a particular galaxy.
Select a good astro
(preferably a Metal 3) and start building metal refineries (MR). You build five of them before pursuing anything else
(except, of course, structures for population, power and space, as required). After your 5th MR, you should build one each of the following: Robotic Factories (RF), Shipyards (SY), Spaceports (SP). The one spaceport will enable you to setup a single trade route, which also helps your econ. You don't need more right now. From this point, alternate between 1 MR, 1 RF, and 1 SY until you have at least 5 SY.
All four structures, MR, RF, SY and SP add to your econ, but only the first 3 improve your production capacity, and only the first 2 improve your construction capacity. The strategy is to build the lowest cost capacity improving structure available to you at each turn. As the cost for the MR and RF catch up to Nanite Factories (NF) and Androids Factories (AF), add the NF and AF to your construction rotation.
If you're making a Research Base, you can sneak a lab into the mix every now and then, but remember that your goal is to get this base well protected as fast as possible, after which it will be much smoother sailing for building labs or anything else.
(The only exception to this if you're just starting out, as you need your labs up as soon as possible if you're to make any progress in the game).
As it pertains to defense, you need to do several things. First of all, for every 10 econ that you achieve on that base, build one Command Center (CC). Secondly, you want to produce fighters (FT) in batches of 10 and 20, as your production capacity increases.
(If your base is about to finish a construction that improves production, then wait for it before starting the new production. Production times are calculated only at purchase time.)Next, you want to periodically build static defenses
(Ion Turrets, etc). Once the construction time for Ion Turrets is under 8 hours or so, you should build one. Build the second one when it would take less than 8 hours to do so. You want to build your first set of rings on a base by the time you have approximately 16 MR / 12 RF / 3 NF, at which time it should take 150-175 hours on a moon. If you're building PRings with only 50 Construction Capacity, then you're just hurting yourself.
Build each level of
defense according to our guidelines, because you need to be protected throughout the whole process. If you try to skip directly to prings, you won't have adequate capacity AND you'll find yourself virtually unprotected for 3 weeks, rather than reasonably protected for the week or so it will take you to get your rings if you follow the recommendations above.
After your rings are in place, you can start boosting econ, research and production without fear of attack. Well, not as much fear, anyway.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:
- Try to keep your queues full at all times.
- Build long-running construction projects while you're asleep or away for a long time -- especially if you are using an upgraded account. Better to set that level 2 Photon Turret to build overnight, or that level 4 AF to build over the weekend, than have another spaceport finish early with nothing else going on for hours.
Sun Nov 16, 2008 2:39 pm