A Better START/PLAY GUIDE!!! By Garkenesha (A Retired Vet) :D **** This is a free guide. You may use it, and any information contained herein. I possess no intellectual copyright over Star-fury, nor lay any claim to any stratergies stated here. This guide may be distributed freely, so long as it is neither charged for, nor modified without my expressed consent.**** **** Best Viewed In 1024x768 **** This is going to asume that you've read that Skeletor's Newb Guide, and have at least a basic understanding of where everything is, and what everything does. While that is a good guide and can give u an idea, it doesn't really give you a good understanding of how to play. This Should give u a much better idea of what you need to do to get your empire stronger. Remember this is a long game(unless your playing a speed round), so always think ahead! Also, this play guide is assuming that you have signed up at the start of the round. You've made your account, but are unsure as to what do first. The first thing you should do, is modify your eagle to 100% sensors and build 2 100% sensor Corvettes(vettes). Since you cannot be attacked in newb mode, you should ALWAYS be exploring, so as to expand your empire. ALWAYS mod your eagle, and make vettes. While a wolverine(wolv) might be bigger, it's easier to make the 2 vettes first, as you can reuse those vettes as leechers. At the start of the game, vettes are your friend. I recommend researching Adv. Power first. While Skeletor says to pick between adv. power and adv. mines, I find that it is always better to have the extra power, as by the time you finish your first research, you should be starting to build larger ships. Also I recommend building all spare land into power, and all spare roids into tri-lithium mines. Unless your trying to get probes as fast as you can, there really isn't any other building that you should spend your extra land/roids on, and even then it's probably a better idea to use the explored land for the extra research labs. After 2 ticks have passed, set all 3 ships to explore land. I personally do not see any benefit to exploring roids straight away, as although you need the metal/deu/credits soon, you are in far greater need for land for research, power and cadets. To put it simply, newb move is 48 ticks to get your empire set up. Minus the 4 ticks for ship modding(2 at start, 2 at end), you have 44 ticks for exploring. With rewards, your empire should have 230 land. I suggest that you ALWAYS have your first reward land, as that extra 30 land will equal to about an extra 900(1080 Ferrion, 810 Versuden) power by the end of newbie mode. While that may not seem very much, if that enables you to make an extra vette, that can be all that stands between you living, and having to remake. Since it takes 16 ticks for contruction of your buildings to finish, 18 ticks in, you should put all your explored land into power plants. However, some people will want some extra cadets, or extra research labs. Unless you are researching probes, you should go with the power plants, as the 50 residence you start with, is enough to make 7 vettes at the end of newb mode. After about 30 ticks, check your power. If u have enough for another 2 vettes, build another 2 vettes with 100% sensors. If you do not have 4k power, DO NOT BUILD THAT EXTRA VETTE. The jump in NW you experience might put you in the top 50 for a while, but your wasting 1k credits per tick. It might not seem like much, but eventually you will need it. Towards the end of newb mode, I like to change from exploring land, to exploring roids. I do this because once newb mode ends, finding land is quite easy compared to getting roids. However, since it takes 16 ticks to finish constructing buildings, and you only have 44 ticks of exploring, it is difficult to say exactly when to switch from land to roids. Anywhere from 14-18 ticks left in n00b mode is when you should make the switch, so it really depends on whether you want 20(24 if you have 4 vettes) extra land or roids. Also, once you make the switch from land to roids, you should build your spare land on power plants again. When you have 2 ticks left till you come out of newb mode, you should pull all ships off explore, build any vettes you can(not wolvs) and build all of your spare roids into tri-lith . Once you pull your ships off explore, you should mod 3 vettes to 25% weapons and 75% engines. All other ships should be 100% weapons(as these will be your defense). The 3 25%/75% vettes are what's known as "leechers". These ships are used to attack empires with little or no defense, and return home quicker then if you sent ships with more attack power. If you didn't use leechers, then you'd get say, 60-100 land every 10-14 hours, depending on the empire you attacked, and the ships you sent. using leechers, you would get 60 land (3 attacks of 20 land) every 4 hours. Also, if you are playing the Merlin server, all rewards gotten should be the same as what you were exploring. So if you were exploring land, get a land reward, exploring roids, get a roid reward. Once you leave newb mode, you want to get your empire as strong as possible, as fast as possible, without becoming target(too much land/roids compared to your NW). A good ratio to keep your empire, as a general rule, is that your defense should NEVER be less then 10% of your NW. so if u have a 200k NW empire, u want to have about 20k defense(eagle + 3 vettes). However, if you become to fat a target(accumulating too much land/roids without having a high enough NW) you are going to die, no matter how much defense you try and keep. For land, try to keep it around 1/1000th to 1.5/1000th of your NW(this is a VERY rough rule. This won't apply to empires less then 300K, Or empires that have signed up late in the game) so a 400kNW empire should have 400-600 land and your roids should be about 75-100% of your land count. (so 400kNW empire should have 250-400 roids). any more land/roids then this, and you'll start getting probed, and most likely attacked and killed. With researches you should always go adv. power then adv. mines. After that, it's really what you need. While you will need most of your researches eventually, some, like particle accelerator and plasma exciter you'll want to leave till last, since you won't be able to build the ships they give you till nearer the end of the round. A good tech path to follow, would might be something like Adv power, Adv Mines, adv Buildings, Repair Drones, Fab Plants/Gen Scan, Fleet Scan, Pop Tax, Big Hammer, Adv. Fab Plants, Part. Acc. then Plasma Exciter. However, some players might want to only use their research plant land for fab plants, so they'd move fab plants further down the priority list. Other players will want to have scans as soon as possible, and will research Fab plants, Gen scan and Fleet scan straight off. It all comes down to what you need, and when. When setting up your empire once you are out of n00b mode, it is a good idea to leech for land the first day. Once you get to 500 land, you should set it up, so that you have 30% of your land in residence(res), 50% of your land in power and either 10% in both defense platforms(dplats) and research labs(rlabs) or 20% in research labs. So that would be 150 res, 250 power, and 100 rlabs, for a 500 land empire. It's best to try and not become too large if you are not in a good alliance. Staying with 500 land till you are over 200-250kNW is a good idea if you land in a small alliance. Building ships is one of the main points of this game, and choosing what to build can be a tough choice. BUT building the wrong types of ships can actually slow your empire down. I find the best way for most to build ships, is to get one of the better types, then get 8 of them. In other words, once you have 11 vettes and an eagle, start to get 8 talons(plus your 3 vettes and eagle. Though you will replace your eagle once you move up from frigates/destroyers). Once your empire starts breaking, it is better to have only 2 leechers, since your break fleet will be out for most of the day and the extra vette will be sitting there providing VERY little defense. A good progression of ships for newer players would be vettes, talons, frigate's, falcons, dreads. The reason why I have not said Star-Fury's as the last progression, is because SF's take a LONG time to research, so your empire would most likely benefit from not having to research them. Also, dreads cost ALOT less, use less maintainance but only have 30k less health, and 12%(roughly) less power. Breaking is the one thing that kills most small empires, as a lessed experienced player doesn't know how much to send, and often sends more then they should. So long as your empire follows the aforementioned rule (defense = 10% of NW) you should be fine. You should also try not to send your 5 strongest ships, these are needed for defense. If you end up with less then 5 ships at home, your chances of becoming a target and getting killed with rise dramatically. After you have read through this, and feel ready to learn a bit more about indepth empire management, don't forget to look at my advanced tactics page located here: http://www.geocities.com/garkenesha/Adv_Tactics.txt If you have any questions, feel free to email me at Garkenesha@gmail.com. Version 1.4 - Fixed more errors. - Noticed that Geocities seems to be geneerating doubled letters, whereas the version on my computer is error free. - Added Link to Advanced Tactics and my EEmail Address. Version 1.3 - fixed stupid errors. They don't call mme The Village Idiot for nothing. - Added that distribution thing. Not thaat anyone cares. Version 1.2 - Updated to include larger, inexperienceed empires towards the end of the round. - MASSIVE revisions. - Fixed Spelling Errors. - Created Version Log. - Updated guide to explain in further dettail.