Fast guide for newcomers

I am a VGA Planets veteran, who just find out this jewel of a game. :)

I jumped into an ongoing game to see how can I do in harsh circumstances. To my disapointemnt, the previous player had build a lot of medium freighters with lvl 6 or 7 engines. This made me write the following fast guide for new players.

1. Engines

Dont't build anything else than lvl 10 engines for ur ships. Anything else is just not efficient.

Trick: If you fight with a carrier race, u may notice that big carriers require a lot of engines (gorbie class for instance). It may be wise to build ur initial carriers with lvl 1 engines and tow them arround.

2. Freighters

For expanding ur empire, build only Large freighters, as those are the most efficient.

3. Combat Ships

Beam only ships are generally not efficient. You will notice that each race has an overall efficient medium ship somewhere arround lvl 6 hull tech. This means the best combination between firepower and cargo. These ships are as follows:

Feds: Nebula Class
Lizards: Lizard Class
Birds: Fearless Class (cloak, good cargo), Death Specula Class (cloak, good weaponry, low cargo).
Fascist: D7 (cloack, fair weaponry, good cargo), Ill Wind (doesn't cloak, good cargo, great hull, great weaponry), Death Specula.
Privateers: MBR
Cyborg: Firecloud Class
Crystals: Emerald Class
Empire: Super Star Frigate (the only torpedo ship), Super Star Destroyer
Robots: Cats Paw (the only torpedo ship). Instrumentality (great fighter ship for lvl 6, low cargo tho)
Rebel: Tranquility Class
Colonies: Cobol Class

4. Early expansion.

Game tutorial sais its best to build a Large freighter in first turn. My opinion is to build 2 combat ships first and to move as fast to ur neighbours, while droping clans on nearby planets. Try to move stealthy if possible (jumping from planet to planet). Dont use cloack (if available) until u feel u are close enough to ur neighbour. This strategy will allow u to get as much land as possible when u will negociate a peace treaty with ur neighbours. Note that a large freighter will certanly only get killed in an encounter.

Trick (thanks to veldan for reminding me this): When the next planet is 2 jumps away from your ship location, dont move directly to that planet. Select instead a waypoint between the 2 planets. This way the enemy will not be able to see where u are coming from, as ur ship will appear as just sitting in space, opposed to when u have a clear waypoint. If there are more planets where u can go or come from, try to set a waypoint between them, so that the enemy will not know for sure where u go or come from. Just make sure u will arrive at ur destination in 2 turns, ok? :)

Once u get 2 combat ships out its time to build ur first large freighter. U will use it to colonise ur planets with natives first, as this is where the money come from. I take priority in ghipsoidals and humas, as they offer the greatest benefits when building starbases. And you will want as many good starbases fast, in order to build as many good ships until the ship limit is reached.

If your combat ships and initial medium freighter have discovered many native planets, its good to build another freighter. If u are not lucky, then build another 2 combat ships and send them towards enemy border aswell.

Use ur freighters to expand above and bewllow ur homeworld, where u are not likely to jump into enemy ships.

5. Base tech level

Best tech level for your base for the first turns is Engine 10, Hull 6, Beam and Torp 5.
Personally I go for Beam lvl 5 and not 6 because disruptors ocasionally allow u to capture an enemy ship (like a large freighter for instance) in the first skirmishes.

6. Fuel

Don't fully load ur ships with fuel when leaving ur homeworld. You will run fast out of fuel on ur homeworld this way. Besides, fuel counts towards ship mass, so the more fuel you get onboard, the more fuel u will consume for your travel. 

Uncolonized planets always have some neutronium on surface. Use this to your advantage and use the beam up fuel mission while droping clans and move to other planets. Beam up fuel works before the ship moves, so you will never run out of fuel this way, while colonizing in the initial stages of the game.

Well, this is it, I hope this will be of help. And thank you for reading. :)

Edit: Some typos and added veldan sugestion when moving between planets

Good additions.

I think I forgot to mention that all the ships I listed are meaned for initial expansion. The point is to be able to carry as many clans/supply/torps and still put a good fight/survive in an initial skirmish. Once the economy is rolling and u have enough MC to go for better hulls, there are of course new options.

But again, the main point is to have the best chances to survive in the initial encounters with your neighbours. This is decisive on the diplomatic relations that will follow. If you lose the first fight, you will likely get a bad deal. If you win the first fight you can be cocky when negociating. Of course, there will be neighbours that will seek a fight at any cost. Privateer being prolly the main offender here.

I think that playig Romulans with Resolutes early will put them in a MC shortage, wich means this is not a good idea for a new player. Thos its clear that Resolute >> Fearless/Death Specula

Also Rebel and Colonies cygnus+patriot combo is good for fighting, tho I personally prefere guardian when playing rebels. However, when it comes to expansion, its clear to me that Tranquility 380 cargo is way better than cygnus 50. Also Tranquiliy has a biger mass so will last more in border skirmishes.

Regarding EE, I think I forgot about SSF low crew. SSCa is also a good option, not to mention it have a good cargo too, tho early one will lack the MC to build the fighters required to fight. While on the other hand, SSD has its utility (Imperial Assault).

Anyway, I will update the guide with some of the advices.

Edit: Umm, strangely, I can't edit again the orginial post...

Truer words were never spoken :)

Also if new players will ask for help in game from their neighbours, I am sure most of them will find there are great people out there that will do their best to help them. :) This will significantly reduce the learning curve.

Back in the days, when I played carrier races, I tried diffrent combinations. Here are my conclusions:

If u're defending, u're usually mining ur territory, so u can move safe ur lvl1 engine ships with 2 engines low hp ships. No need for anything else than lvl1 for those carriers meaned to be on homeguard

While when u're attacking u're usually under the enemy minefields pressure, so u'll want to tow ur carriers with other carriers that can take more minehits and still hold. Cos if not, than half of ur fleet might not get to the target, wich in most cases will make u lose the battle. And if u lose the battle, u'd better be sure ur stranded ships will get intercepted and killed, be them lvl 1 or lvl 7 engines. This being the case, why bother and build anything else than lvl1 on a ship that is meaned to be towed?

Also I'd like to mention the only time when I build lvl 7 engine carriers was when I played shareware. :)

Every time I've towed a ship, the next turn it has it's speed set to 0.  This allows your opponent to determine which ship is towing and which is towed.

Personally, I devide my ships into Defensive (low tech engines), Offensive (transwarps), and sacrafice (mid tech engined torp ships to lead combat)

Rudel I would agree with your encouragement to not think of this as a single player game however don't limit it to just the ships that others have.

Pretty much every unique ability a race has makes a worthy benefit for an ally so yes ships are important considersation but i noticed you struggled with robots as an example(when only talking about ships)..

If you mentioned that they build free fighters and have x4 mines then they become quite attractive to many other races as an ally etc.

I know you know this but since this is a thread for newcomers i wanted to make the point ;)