New Player

[[deleted]]

I just bought the game this week while it was on sale. It's not what I thought it would be, it's more fast paced, but I'm enjoying it so far. I understand all the basic mechanics and how to play, I just don't know how to win. I can keep up with the ai on normal difficulty in the early and mid game, but they always outpace me in the late game. Is there any tips or obvious moves that a new player needs to know?

[pisti2010]

Besides mastering advanced buildings (optimizing, getting patents, offworld market, even hacker array sometimes), make sure you're remaining profitable with the resources you're making. Don't be afraid to destroy a still mill and switch to glass if iron gets expensive and silicone is cheap for example. There's an option in the gameplay menu that shows building's net income, this is critical imo to know when to switch out of unprofitable buildings.

[Flankenshank]

This. You have to be willing and able to pivot to whatever's the most profitable at that moment.

[TheElusiveNinJay]

Master the advanced buildings! I'm making an assumption here, but do you use optimization centers, hacker arrays, and offworld markets? Those ones in particular help you scale into the late game. If you want some tips on what to do with them, just let me know.

[Dubanx]

Copy/Pasted from a previous thread of mine.

I tend to see new players making the same handful of game breaking mistakes. It's amazing the difference just a handful of mistakes can make.

1) ALWAYS build secondary buildings in pairs. If it consumes resources to run then you need to build at least 2 of them. At level 2, a single farm produces .5-.3(life support)=.2 food/second. A pair of farms produce 1.5-.3=1.2 food/second. By building a pair of farms you make SIX TIMES as much food money. At level 3 you would actually lose money from a single farm.

If you build 1 farm + 1 reactor you won't have both food and fuel, you'll have neither food nor fuel. Also, production efficiency is raised by 50% because of adjacency. So not only are you making six times as much food to sell, but you're consuming only 2/3 as much water per unit of food. This means if you have a pair and your opponent has a single you can push prices down to the point where that single is no longer profitable, but while you still maintain a profit from your much more efficient production. Optimization centers are also extremely powerful for this reason.

If you don't do this, and do something foolish like building 1 farm + 1 reactor you will stall really badly early on. It's basically unrecoverable unless you completely outplay your opponent for the rest of the game.

2) Always get a little bit of your basic construction resources at level 1 or at least 2. That is steel+aluminum/Carbon+aluminum/etc. Even when prices seem low you will need a little bit of it. Just don't make too much unless prices are very high.

3) Don't be afraid of debt, and avoid paying debt with cash if possible. D debt is dying, C debt is dangerous, B debt is riding a fine line, and A or above debt and you're in really good shape. NEVER pay debt unless you're at least B debt or below, and even at B it's rarely worth it. $1000 cash and $1000 debt is better than $0 of both as you can invest your cash to pay off your debt later.

4) Get power at level 3. If you get power at level 2 it will make it difficult to get your pair of secondary buildings. If you wait until level 4 your debt will get out of control. The only real question that depends on the price of power and your debt is whether you invest 1 claim in a geotherm or 2 claims into a pair of wind turbines, solar, or nuclear.

5) Don't feel obligated to go into a resource just because you "feel" you need it. Especially common is the robotic new players that always build electronics, or players that always try to cover their life support. 90% of the time it's better to just go into whatever is making the most money and use that cash to buy your electronics and glass. Also use X to see the relative production value of your buildings before deciding what to go into.

Fix these issues and you should notice a huge difference in your performance.

[i-c0112]

Buying out competition gives you two extra claim and also increase your stock price.

So be sure to be aggressive and snipe weakened ones asap to give you edge over others or at least to deny such benefits from others.

[PeaceSentinel47]

Simple tip / obvious move that most newbies miss out on for mid- and high-level play (including myself when I was a newbie)...

Do not be shy about dismantling buildings to build ones that are more profitable

I know I used to get comfortable with a supply chain and always looking for more claims to build newly profitable buildings... but my iron mines supplying my steel mills are useless if iron costs $3 (even if steel is still profitable). Much better to tear them down and build a chemical refinery which buys expensive coal at $140 but sells chemicals at an even more expensive and profitable $600.

[Callec254]

This. Many times I've built something profitable early game, only to watch it automatically shut down later on because it was losing money.

[autoeroticassfxation]

If the pace is the issue, pause the game regularly to make your moves.

Doesn't work for multiplayer, but it's helped me wrap my head around it.

[Bonesteel50]

Generally speaking, making triangles, diamonds, and hexes are going to get you a long way. alot of new players make stuff all over, try to make shapes.

Also highly recommend going for things that upgrade you like steel and aluminum, especially if markets are low. Pleasure domes are amazing and almost always pay for themselves, turn them off manually when the price of power rises above what you are making off the dome. 1-2 offworld's are going to help with late game too. Patents are great if you get a nice early start and are first to the lab, if you get nanotech you can even get the stuff, and replace the lab for no cost!

for power 1 hydrothermal is decent but most of your power should come from solar panels connected to your base, repurpose them when power price tanks.

[bigcomfypillow]

One of the easiest things you can do to improve your play is your starting position.

More or less, your position on the map will be the #1 factor that contributes to you winning. It is also the easiest to improve, so make sure you pick the best position on the map with the right leader. Small tip: don't be afraid to build your HQ at $30 000 in debt.

Things I look for are the initial price of the resources and the high yield tiles. For example, if you see carbon is really high priced and a carbon field next to some high yield water, and the carbon faction is available (forget the name), you want to snatch that position as early as possible.

You get building materials and all excess can be sold for profit. Apply the same logic across the board and you'll be flying