Thanks Exterous. You'd think there would be more response here. Orion, Civ, you name the strat game and the opening moves made the game. Come on vets

Usually it goes like this:

Buy 100 crystal
Build cap ship factory - queue carrier
Build crystal mine
Build level 4 planet infrastructure
Queue 2 scouts, set to auto-explore
Build metal mines
Build colonizer
Colonize the asteroid

by then, I usually know what to do next

Mine's almost the same, but I get the colonising Cap ship. It can grab most planets on its own. If there's something tough (like a terran planet - they always have a lot of neutral defenders), I build some light frigates to support it.

As Vasari...

Queue extractors, cap ship facility, and 3 scouts.
Queue Carrier Cap ship.
Queue Skirmishers until I don't have the fleet capacity to hold more.
Spend the last 6 fleet points on a colonizer.
Send my ships to target destination (whatever I want to colonize first) while I wait for my colonizer to build.

After I establish a second colony I begin working on the resource technologies to improve my resource gains. So, I build 2 imperial labs and get to researching... then I build 2 more and research the next tier.

After that is all taken care of I begin researching fleet capacity. I proceed to build a single weapons facility and research the improved repairs tech at the bottom of warfare. I get the second weapons lab up and running and queue the rest of what I need to get the repair skill itself.

While researching, I spend my time colonizing and producing more skirmishers.

It's pretty similar for other factions. With Advent I spend more time on resource technologies instead of improving my ships (I still boost the fleet capacity), and with the TEC I try and get trade centers and LRM frigates fairly early. With the advent i also like to get Guardians as soon as possible.

1. build cap ship factory and que up a ship
2. build scount and set to auto
3. build a couple of frigates
4. Send cap ship and frigates to clean out nearest planet
5. build colonizer and send to nearest planet
6. Upgrade new planet infrastructure
7. build 3 civ research centers and research whichever resource Im short on and trade routes

The Cap ship factory is the first thing I build (with the free cap ship of course)

2 (for small or medium maps) or 3 scouts for bigger, set to auto explore.

Resources come next (whatever they are).

Then a Colony ship followed by a couple of light frigs.

Off goes my cap ship as soon as it is ready to the best resource planet I am next to. The light frigs go with it if they are needed or to the next best one. Colonising at a pace I can sustain financially.

Then what I am stuck with, where I am and who I am against determins my next move. Those first moves seem to work for me though.

I'm doing a wierd Vasari resource rush.

I think Ice / Molten colonisation are my first techs almost every time (depending on local map conditions).

What I'm doing is taking advantage of the AI's slow start, and (so far) other players' similarly tentative play. Also the poor militia defences of Ice and Molten worlds. I focus like crazy on economy: straight to civ tech 2 for colonies, grab all "easy" colonies nearby - that is, I fill my default fleet with the colonising capship and, what? 6 Frigates? But I do NOT upgrade fleet supply yet, so I can't comfortably take most Terran and Arid planets due to strong defence. Anyway, stomp some Molten / Ice worlds and some Roids, and then strap crystal / metal mines to EVERYTHING. Get Civilian infrastructure up to level 2 asap to prevent credit drain.

Vasari scouts can take extractors, and the AI doesn't seem to know how, while most players seem too lazy in the early game. This gives a surprisingly large bonus to income.

Sell heaps of stuff on the black market. Any AI in the game usually runs the Crystal price up to insane levels, like $1000 per 100 crystal. So you have piles of cash for mines, then piles of crystal for infrastructure. Cash also makes you King of the Pirates, which hugely mitigates your poor early military. Really, the black market is the key, even if you're only selling for 200. Losing income due to low infrastructure? Gain it back with the mines you got when you took the planet. You're still better off taking those planets.

Then I rush up the Civ tech for Trade (remember, I'm playing Vasari here, so that's Civ tech 4), and put a trade port in pretty much every system. Even more cash.

It's only then that I bother with military. Mil tech level 2 for Hangers / Missile Frigs, level 1 Supply for a big-enough-for-early-game fleet (at only 9% economy loss, which is ok), level 1 capcrew for a second capship. Get some defences on the frontiers, rely on your early push to have secured enough to justify all-out defense, nab any unowned Terran / Arids nearby, then back to civ tech. (I don't come back to mil tech until I've got all my civ labs built).

Civ tech gets resource upgrades, then rush (!) down the tree to Vasari Jumpgates of Pure Awesome. Suddenly defence gets heaps easier. With judicious pirate attacks you're often not far behind in military even now - all of this is suprisingly fast if you've gone resource-crazy. Then push for Returning Armada, and sit back and get military techs while your fleet goes RAAAH!

I'm in a stupidly-big game at the moment, with 4 hards, 4 mediums, and an easy AI ("the Gimp"). One of each personality type for each group of 4, and I'm right next to the agressive-hard one. I just researched Returning Armada, and I have an economy twice the size of my nearest competitor. I've only just had to fend off the first attacks because, as I said, I own the pirates. What's more, with high development on the map (ie. me), the pirates went to level 3 pretty quick. That hurts early game.

Even on small maps, where admittedly you end up fighting a lot more, a very early, very heavy resource grab can mean plenty of resources to rush defences or re-build fleets. Only against Humans on small maps - who can be relied on to do a decent rush - do you need to focus on military more than resources. Pretty much any other map, it seems to me, resource rush it the way to go - battles are so slow that you almost always have time to get some extra defences going, as long as you have enough income and you weren't completely defenceless to begin with.


*Note that Vasari have tough but expensive frigates. That, IMO, makes them uniquely suited to sitting on a low supply capacity and defending while they tech up - supply really tears up your economy. Sure you can't have as many ships, but you might not have been able to afford to fill a higher supply cap anyway. In terms of cost, you end up with a lot more in the field at the same supply level.

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Tips for fighting the AI (some useful even in all-human games for anti-pirate):

AI fleets largely (completely?) ignore contruction frigates. Keep building cheap-ass defence guns in your system, in range of the enemy (especially siege frigs) but further away than whatever their combats ships are shooting at right now. You can keep a fleet tied up pretty much forever doing this, and with some hangers in the system can often whittle them down.

The AI will also chase Capships all over the system. Jump in, poke 'em, dance around the edge until they get close, jump out. Get to the other side of the jump, turn around and come back, rinse and repeat. If you're using a carrier you'll even be doing some decent damage through all of this.

Put a bounty on two AIs. They'll think it was each other* and start bidding. They lose money, one will get attacked, and then probably the other in the next go 'round, all for a 500 cred investment.

*(Actually, I think they just want to divert the pirates, and see pumping the next-highest bounty as the cheapest way to do that - which makes sense really, but it's easy to manipulate).

I quite like the diplomacy - you need to *earn* your favour, rather than just slowly ask for upgrades / get random fluctuations like most games' "diplomacy". Remember a few things: it doesn't go negative, so if you need a fast ally you can always check what missions are going; losses for failing missions are much less than gains for succeeding, so you don't need to complete every mission; if you're fighting someone, check who else is - they'll have missions for you that you won't have much difficulty doing; getting trade / non-aggression is usually all you need, and that only needs around 60% - two completed missions. Early missions are often just 200 metal or something easy.

Placate your AI neighbours early and you will have heaps of time to get established, and steal those Ice / Molten worlds that the AI takes so long to grab. Better, they'll have to pick someone else to target, which sets up long-term wars that'll go on even if you let your diplomatic rating slip to zero.

I'd say it really depends on playstyle and race. With Vasari I love the carrier ship, but that's purely because it has the ability to repair my ships... which saves me some cash early on.

i tend to go with firepower for my first cap (only played single player so far) Have you tried playing a caps-only game for kicks? you will need you economy to be able to punch out a gorilla with its right hand tied to its back but damn is it fun to do!

 - Proximity of an opponent, location of pirate base
 - Metal, Crystal or Credits rich/starved environment
 - Invulnerable conquerable mines (->Vasari Scout)
 - Topography (layout of phase lanes, chokepoints, wormholes)

- ...

In general in 1v1 you would probably be best advised to take an offensive stance. I think 1v1 could be called a zero-sum game: e.g. 

if player A loses 3 frigates and player B loses 3 of the same type, the relative power balance has not changed. If it's 1v1v1 maybe 

player A defeats player B, but then player C will probably have the upper hand over player A weakened by war.

So the more players there are, the less benefit you get from hurting one single player and the more important it is to develop your 

own strength and economy. These things apply to a lot of RTS. Games in "free for all" mode (FFA) with more than two or three players 

of comparable skill sometimes get into a stalemate unless the game provides enough (economic or military) incentives to make it worth 

making oneself enemies and starting with the hostilities.

Before coming to some SoaSE-specific things let me ask a question: how do you guys play the game? Are you the perfectionist who plans 

every move, hits Pause all the time and saves a lot? Or do you play real-time to be prepared for multiplayer? Has it already happened 

that you saved at the beginning of the game and then later reloaded to make a better start?

I am the perfectionist type of player. At the beginning of the game I pause and constantly pause and adapt to the new information 

from scouting and other developments. The difficulty setting "unfair" is the only challenging one with this style of play. Maybe a 

human versus 2 AI offers a good challenge, too. Let's assume that the map is a medium random map and all opponents are random.

Ok, now to the details. Some common questions at the start of the game:


1) Should I build a Capital Colony or a Colony Frigate or both?

The TEC and Advent need the Colony Frigate to capture neutral (invulneable) mines, so if there are enough of them around, it would be 

a mistake not to build a Colony Frigate and grab them - virtually instantly and for free! The Vasari have a huge advantage here, 

because their scouts can take them, although they need enough antimatter to crew the extractor. In this short period of time your 

opponents can easily scare it away if it's not escorted. Same applies for the fragile Colony Frigate.

Here lies the big advantage for the Capital Colony: it can take a beating. Nearly all planets can be colonized with only one single 

Capital Colony (Progenitor/Akkan/Jarrasul) by defeating all Korsov Frigates (they would bomb the newly founded colony), colonizing 

and moving to the next target. The planet can be left alone as it is for a moment or frigates can take care of the cleanup work.

Is the choice of the Capital Colony a no-brainer? Not exacly. For "strike-and-colonize" missions the Akkan excels, but in combat it's 

not superb. Here for the TEC faction a Kol (Gauss Rail Gun, Finest Hour), Marza (Missile Barrage) or Sova Carrier would probably be 

better suited, especially when they reach level 6.

The Vasari can rely entirely on their Capital Colony and their Scouts for taking all goodies on the map. But even here a Vulkoras 

Desolator (level-1 Phase Missile Swarm) or Skirantra Carrier (level-6 Replicate Forces) start could be tempting.

Often you need more than one colonizer, because you don't want to retreat a Capital Ship to a distant planet. A thing to consider 

when investing points in the colonize ability for the free metal mines.

---

2) When is the best time to increase the home planet's population limit?

There are some economic boom strategies that involve buying 100 Crystal and building both the upgrade and the Capital Factory. 

Generally I think this is not a good idea, except for very poor starting locations that lack credits (no easy planets around). The 

investment just takes too long to pay off compared with the alternatives.

The upgrade increases the pop limit from 190 to 280, which takes the tax income from to 10.1$/s to 12.6$/s. At 2.5$/s (150$ per 

minute) profit sounds nice, but it takes 12 minutes to reach that level adding only approx. 0.2$/s tax revenue per minute. The 

population growth seemed linear when I tested with the stopwatch.

On the hand 750$ 225m 225c for the upgrade, maybe 500$ for the crystal from the BM, plus the 90 seconds build time all add up to a 

hefty bill for a tiny empire - especially the opportunity costs. You could have taken and cleared that desert or terran planet, built 

a colony to capture mines, gained experience with your cap ships, etc. (by the way, the output of 2 or 3 mines would sell for about 

2.5$/s on the BM)

The build cost of "DevelopPlanet-4" (maybe together with 100c from the BM) can be estimated at $1500-$2500 and the amortization time 

at 10 to 15 minutes. With all these resources at hand it should be possible to take two or more planetary bodies including mines and 

grow at a multiple of that rate.

---

3) How many scouts should I build?

As a rule of thumb right on the start I build as many scouts as there are phase lines connecting my home planet. When I'm confident 

of having found the heighest priority target to colonize first, scouting can go on more slowly. Use your first frigates to scout. 

After some time has elapsed it is helpful to know where all opponents have there homeworld, especially the pirates base.

The Vasari are an exeption, because a few captured neutral extractors can easily fund half of your early empire - strangely, AI's 

don't seem very interested in them. As Vasari build a bunch of scouts and explore/capture everything, if possible. 

---

4) When should I upgrade weapons tech?

Some techs not only affect your frigates/cruisers, but also the capital ships and structure (e.g. health upgrades). Ask yourself if the fleet would be stronger with 1 or 2 ships more or the little improvment to all ships. Are you floating resources and don't want to expand the feet logistics limit? The fleet is far from reinforcements and could need a combat buff?

Most of the time it's not advisable to upgrade weapons if the total number of ships is less than 20. The effect of economic upgrades is easy to juge. It's harder to determine the effect of a weapon upgrade on combat strength. To my knowledge the combat system still has some underlit aspects.

---

Ok, I see this is getting a bit long. There could be said much more and about specific faction, tech, setup strategies. Just experiment, experience and have fun!

Like the original poster said, the opening moves are decisive and this strategy game makes no difference. To give a meaningful answer to the question one needs to make (a lot) of assumptions. We are talking single player here. Some of the factors:

- Game setup chosen
 - Size of map
 - Number/personality/AI of opponents
 - Game speed settings

- Early scouting
 - Proximity of an opponent, location of pirate base
 - Metal, Crystal or Credits rich/starved environment
 - Invulnerable conquerable mines (->Vasari Scout)
 - Topography (layout of phase lanes, chokepoints, wormholes)

- ...etc.

In general in 1v1 you would probably be best advised to take an offensive stance. I think 1v1 could be called a zero-sum game: e.g. if player A loses 3 frigates and player B loses 3 of the same type, the relative power balance has not changed. If it's 1v1v1 maybe player A defeats player B, but then player C will probably have the upper hand over player A weakened by war.

So the more players there are, the less benefit you get from hurting one single player and the more important it is to develop your own strength and economy. These things apply to a lot of RTS. Games in "free for all" mode (FFA) with more than two or three players of comparable skill sometimes get into a stalemate unless the game provides enough (economic or military) incentives to make it worth making oneself enemies and starting with the hostilities.

Before coming to some SoaSE-specific things let me ask a question: how do you guys play the game? Are you the perfectionist who plans every move, hits Pause all the time and saves a lot? Or do you play real-time to be prepared for multiplayer? Has it already happened that you saved at the beginning of the game and then later reloaded to make a better start?

I am the perfectionist type of player. At the beginning of the game I pause and constantly pause and adapt to the new information from scouting and other developments. The difficulty setting "unfair" is the only challenging one with this style of play. Maybe a human versus 2 AI offers a good challenge, too. Let's assume that the map is a medium random map and all opponents are random.

Ok, now to the details. Some common questions at the start of the game:


1) Should I build a Capital Colony or a Colony Frigate or both?

The TEC and Advent need the Colony Frigate to capture neutral (invulneable) mines, so if there are enough of them around, it would be a mistake not to build a Colony Frigate and grab them - virtually instantly and for free! The Vasari have a huge advantage here, because their scouts can take them, although they need enough antimatter to crew the extractor. In this short period of time your opponents can easily scare it away if it's not escorted. Same applies for the fragile Colony Frigate.

Here lies the big advantage for the Capital Colony: it can take a beating. Nearly all planets can be colonized with only one single Capital Colony (Progenitor/Akkan/Jarrasul) by defeating all Korsov Frigates (they would bomb the newly founded colony), colonizing and moving to the next target. The planet can be left alone as it is for a moment or frigates can take care of the cleanup work.

Is the choice of the Capital Colony a no-brainer? Not exacly. For "strike-and-colonize" missions the Akkan excels, but in combat it's not superb. Here for the TEC faction a Kol (Gauss Rail Gun, Finest Hour), Marza (Missile Barrage) or Sova Carrier would probably be better suited, especially when they reach level 6.

The Vasari can rely entirely on their Capital Colony and their Scouts for taking all goodies on the map. But even here a Vulkoras Desolator (level-1 Phase Missile Swarm) or Skirantra Carrier (level-6 Replicate Forces) start could be tempting.

Often you need more than one colonizer, because you don't want to retreat a Capital Ship to a distant planet. A thing to consider when investing points in the colonize ability for the free metal mines.

2) When is the best time to increase the home planet's population limit?

There are some economic boom strategies that involve buying 100 Crystal and building both the upgrade and the Capital Factory. Generally I think this is not a good idea, except for very poor starting locations that lack credits (no easy planets around). The investment just takes too long to pay off compared with the alternatives.

The upgrade increases the pop limit from 190 to 280, which takes the tax income from to 10.1$/s to 12.6$/s. At 2.5$/s (150$ per minute) profit sounds nice, but it takes 12 minutes to reach that level adding only approx. 0.2$/s tax revenue per minute. The population growth seemed linear when I tested with the stopwatch.

On the hand 750$ 225m 225c for the upgrade, maybe 500$ for the crystal from the BM, plus the 90 seconds build time all add up to a hefty bill for a tiny empire - especially the opportunity costs. You could have taken and cleared that desert or terran planet, built a colony to capture mines, gained experience with your cap ships, etc. (by the way, the output of 2 or 3 mines would sell for about 2.5$/s on the BM)

The build cost of "DevelopPlanet-4" (maybe together with 100c from the BM) can be estimated at $1500-$2500 and the amortization time at 10 to 15 minutes. With all these resources at hand it should be possible to take two or more planetary bodies including mines and grow at a multiple of that rate.

3) How many scouts should I build?

As a rule of thumb right on the start I build as many scouts as there are phase lines connecting my home planet. When I'm confident of having found the heighest priority target to colonize first, scouting can go on more slowly. Use your first frigates to scout. After some time has elapsed it is helpful to know where all opponents have there homeworld, especially the pirates base.

The Vasari are an exeption, because a few captured neutral extractors can easily fund half of your early empire - strangely, AI's don't seem very interested in them. As Vasari build a bunch of scouts and explore/capture everything, if possible. 

4) When should I upgrade weapons tech?

Some techs not only affect your frigates/cruisers, but also the capital ships and structure (e.g. health upgrades). Ask yourself if the fleet would be stronger with 1 or 2 ships more or the little improvment to all ships. Are you floating resources and don't want to expand the feet logistics limit? The fleet is far from reinforcements and could need a combat buff?

Most of the time it's not advisable to upgrade weapons if the total number of ships is less than 20. The effect of economic upgrades is easy to juge. It's harder to determine the effect of a weapon upgrade on combat strength. To my knowledge the combat system still has some underlit aspects.

---

Ok, I see this is getting a bit long. There could be said much more and about specific faction, tech, setup strategies. Just experiment, experience and have fun!