2. Fleet Building
3. Making Planets
4. Planet Stacking
5. Planet Production
6. Other Planet Options
7. Attacking
8. Attack Ships
9. Clans and Diplomacy
1. Getting Started
Assuming Start Cash is 50k
What you do first is take your start up cash and "Land" on sol using the link. Next go into the Space Craft Shop and buy yourself Merchant Freighters. Each cost 10k so you should be able to afford 5. Select mass purchase and you'll see the number 5 that corresponds to how many you can afford. It will ask for a name for this grouping and will number them sequentially. Once bought, return to the Star System as the link at the bottom or left hand side of your screen says. From there, hit invert ship selection, which you should see above your fleet. (Note: under options you must select tow option #2) Then select the little dot next to tow and click the tow/release button. Your fleet is now bought and in tow. Click the star links at the top to move out a system. Find a place where there is fuel. Select mine-all. Each ship mines at 4-6 an hour, which happens at the turn of the hour. Fuel can be sold at a Star Dock, one of which is located at Sol. Use the revenues to buy more ships. The overall idea of the game is to get a mining fleet that can support a planet. The planet you use to build fighters and tax colonists. With your fighters you fill warships and attempt through diplomacy or battle to wipe everyone else out. Keep in mind though that right now you have safe turns, which protect you from all forms of attacking. Each time you move, it uses a turn and each time you sell-all it uses 5 turns. When you're out of safe turns, others can attack you and you can attack anyone also out of safe-turns. My advice is find a clan to join. Clans offer you protection of numbers.
2. Fleet Building
First thing is to know the Ship Max for the game your in. We will go with 100 ships for our purposes here. What you need to do is buy merchant freighters also known as MFs. This is the staple of your mining fleet for the early going. You want to time coming out of protection with having an almost maxed out fleet of MFs (100 Mfs total). The next idea is to "Swap Out" your ships. To get rid of MFs you can either blow them up or sign them over to another player. (Note: there is a 1-3 day time limit that prevents transfers of cash or ships for new accounts) You MFs mine at 4-6 per hour where as the next ship up, a harvester mammoth or HMs, mines at 13 per hour. Ship limits limit your mining or cash potential through mining. To get around that fact you purchase better ships. HMs cost 50k and are tempting to buy straight off. One thing to understand is the ability to make cash is exponential. This means the more ships you have the faster you make money and the faster you can upgrade to better ships. 5 merchants will mine total 20-30 fuel per hour. For the same amount of money, a HM mines 13 only. So make sure to fill your fleet with MFs first. The other benefit of the HM is their large cargo capacity of 1k. This comes in handy when getting colonists from Sol. There is a ship above the HM called the mega-flex. This ship mines 15 an hour. Cargo is needed for Mega-flex's only and can be purchased at the Upgrades and Accessories section on Sol. Most players purchase 3 upgrade Cargo pods. This provides 20 hours worth of mining capacity and takes the ships total cost to 80k. A good rule of thumb is to have 1/3 your fleet as Mega-Flexs and 2/3's as HMs. War-Ships are best bought before you launch an attack, or only if you face the threat of being trapped in your system.
3. Making Planets
The only place to purchase planets is at Sol, system 1. Land on Sol and select equipment shop. From there select to buy a genesis device which in most cases cost 9k. After you purchase one (you can buy as many as you can afford) fly out to a system to set up shop. The best place is a system with a Star Port (Dock) with lots of fuel. Make sure no other ships are in that system that is not yours or your clans. You can build a planet with other non-clan member players in system, only you will not be able to turn it Hostile. To "build" your planet, select the link on the right-hand side of the screen that says, "use genesis device." After making the planet, set it to hostile to protect your mining fleet. Land on the planet and select leave-all for fighters to garrison the planet. Hostile planets will protect any planet set to passive. Passive planets are ideal for building fighters and massing colonists.
4. Planet Stacking
The idea of planet stacking or having all your clans planets in one system, makes getting through and killing you and your clan-mates, much harder. This is commonly done in fuel rich games and systems where you will not have to worry about running out of fuel. Usually 3-4 players per system is a good rule, the only disadvantage to this strat. Is someone could trap you in system by attacking your top hostile planet reducing it to very few fighters. Then coming back with a large war-fleet, they can take over the planet through attacking land their fighters on their newly conquered planet. This traps you in system. I will note here this is not a common tactic. To prevent this, either keep a few warships full of fighters or have two systems. You can use two extra systems just to dump fighters while keeping your mining fleets under the strongest position. Another option in games with high planet attack costs such as most Newby games, is to keep all your fighters on large warships and make a series of hostile 20 fighter planets totaling about 30-50. This will absorb a clans turns not allowing them to be able to break through your defenses. This is very useful when your enemies have significantly more fighters than you. Note: it does make you susceptible to the Enemy Trap Method mentioned above. Also when going with this option, make sure whenever you log off for the day to be in command of your tow ship so if you are indeed trapped and need to run you can with no problems.
5. Planet Production
To make the best use of your planet you need to not only garrison it with fighters, but also land colonists upon it. This is achieved by flying to the Sol system and using the "Land Link" to land on Sol (earth). Once planet-side, click the link for colonist recruitment center. You may then select to load your current ship with colonists or load your entire fleet. In most games it cost 1 turn per ship to load with colonists. For example if you have 100 ships it will cost 100 turns. Always make sure to leave yourself enough turns to get back to your home system. Most games colonists cost 1 credit apiece. You must have enough cash to fill your entire fleet when going into Sol and Loading them. Once you have a number of colonists on your planet, we will say 100k as an example, you can begin producing. The formula is 1 fuel, 1 metal, 1 electronic with 1k colonist assigned to produce the fighters will generate 10 fighters. On your planet you will see options to set your colonist to produce various things such as electronics, organics, or fighters. A colonist may have only one job at one time and cannot be assigned multiple tasks. For our planet to produce its maximum capacity using all 100k colonists you will need: 1k metal, 1k fuel, 1k electronics. All of which can be bought at a Star Dock while fuel and metal can be mined. This will produce 10k fighters. The main idea behind making your own fighters is two fold. First you do not have to waste turns flying to Sol to buy them. Secondly, the cost in making fighters in generally half of what it costs to buy them. All production happens at the Day Maintenance.
6. Other Planet Options
Besides producing fighters, you can do a few other things. By setting your "idle" colonist to produce organics you can make an item to sell at Star Docks. 1k colonists makes 2.2 organics rounded down to the nearest whole number. Organics can be sold for varying prices. If the price that organics can be sold is 100 or greater it is a good idea to focus on getting lots of colonists and making organics with them.
Also, to save money you can make your own electronics. 1metal plus 1 fuel with 1k colonists will make you 1 electronic. This helps cut costs and allow you to optimize your fighter production
Taxes. You may tax all idle colonists. By setting a tax rate of 0% your colonists will reproduce 30% each day maintenance. However you will make no money. By setting your tax rate at 11% you will make money, however your colonists will not reproduce. By setting a tax rate higher than 11% (max of 20%) causes your colonists to leave your planet. A popular strat. Is to allow most of your colonist to continually reproduce until you have about 100 million of them. This is a good idea for long-term games where the extra 10 million in taxes would make you a powerful player. Draw back is you may not be able to defend yourself and be killed before you can achieve this goal.
7. Attacking
When you wish to attack you first have to be out of safe turns. This can be done by flying around till you have exhausted all of them. Next check the player rankings and see who else has used up enough turns, over 100 in some cases, to be out of protection as well. Or, fly from system to system where you will notice a little attack link next to the persons ship or planet. You have to have under options the show all ship setting on. This is setting number 1 for that feature. If you wish to attack the players ship, click attack. It will ask you to verify with a yes or no option. Click yes. Your ship deals about 2/3's damage to the enemies ship.
8. Attack Ships
There are three ship classes: Battle Ship, Merchant, Flex. Any ship can attack, however a few deal more damage since they are of the Battleship type. You can obtain a BS upgrade and place it on any Merchant or Flex if it has available room to upgrade. The standard warships are:
Attack Battle ship: 50k, 5k-fighter capacity
Warmonger: 95k, 9k-fighter capacity
Skirmisher: 200k, 17k fighter capacity
Brobingnagian: 1 Million, 30k fighter capacity
(A full description of each ship can be found by landing on sol and going into the spacecraft emporium)
Brobs can be vastly overrated. The sensible time you should buy one is if you get to be the proud owner of a terra-maelstrom, the only upgrade for a Brob. Skirmishers are the staple attack ship of the game and its recommended not to bother upgrading them. They are cannon fodder, nothing much more than that. You could spend a million on 3 1500 fighter bays upgrades (found in Bilkos) to put on the ship. End result you do 500 more damage. Not worth it. To attack, lots of skirmishers. In advance stages of the game, keep a minimum of 5 Skirms maxed and in the air to defend your system should an enemy land fighters.
9. Clans and Diplomacy
The main point of being in a clan is so you can play with your friends and offer each other joint protection. A large part of Solar Empire is the social interaction. Allot of players coordinate their clans through AOL instant messenger, or AIM. Clan players have common goals in the clan's success and work together getting colonists and other materials to build fighters. More experienced player's play as Independents for the challenge but do not often win. When looking for a clan, the most important things are:
1. Active. Are the players active? You need a clan with members who log at least 2 times a day.
2. Reputation. If everyone hates your clan members you will be attacked more often.
3. If starting your own clan, think of a catchy name. New players join clans mostly because they like the name.
The most important thing to remember is Clan Diplomacy. Certain clans have traditional allies and traditional enemies. For instance, -X- (The Knights of Sol) are natural enemies with TM! (Trex Mercenaries) and *R* (rebellion). D~A (dark alliance) is normally an ally of iCe (ice pirates) and HS (he!! spawn) Clan politics shift from game to game to gain advantage over enemies and common foes. Each player can develop to a lever where they are equal to other players in mining and planet building. What can make you truly great is the ability to negotiate a NAP. NAP stand for Non Aggression Pact. The term was introduce by Syce21 into the world of SE and originated in a video game called "Masters of Orion." A NAP will give you a secure backing to deal with your enemies. An Alliance will have another clan helping you kill your enemies. Such treaties can be broken at set times, or usually when 24 hour notice has been given. Some treacherous players break them at will and gain a reputation for doing so. The other quality that makes a player truly great is knowing when to attack. This is instinct in part and accomplished by knowing when your enemies are planning to attack you.
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