Tips for new players

[Hawkeye]

Any sensor larger than size 1 is considered a military sensor.

[Steve Walmsley]

As I saw in the Tutorial, the geolocial and grav survey ships are designed as military vessels with military engines.

Why is that? Why would I want to do that instead of making them commercial vessels?
Not having to care about maintenance seems like a big pro for these ships as they tend to fly out there for a loooooooooooong time.

Gravitional sensors are military systems whereas geological sensors are commercial, so even with commercial engines a gravsurvey ship will be military. Gravsurvey will tend to spend a long time in flight too so faster engines are usually a good idea.

Steve

[Sarganto]

Thanks for the answers.

Here comes the next one:
How do I build/research box launchers?
What are the prerequisites?

[Hawkeye]

Box launchers are the last step in the "reduced launcher size" research tree

[Sarganto]

Alright, then I know what I have to research.

Next question:
Is there a good way to get around the inevitable Corundium-Crunch at the beginning?

In my first game (that I am still playing) I didn't have a lot of Corundium, Neutronium and Sorium left on Earth. While I had all of these available in Sol, they are spread out on different planets/moons and therefore I had to spread out my Automines, which leaves me with unsatisfying mining rates for all of them, although Sorium isn't really a problem at the beginning. Sadly Mars only holds Duranium, Uridium and Gallicite, so I can't really use the cheaper normal Mines.
In an adjacent System, I found a planet with 0.26 Colo-cost which has almost every kind of resource, but all of them with only 0.1 accessibility.
The problem is that I need Corundium to make more Corundium. But as it is now, I can only make around 10 to 15 Automines a year which increases my Corundium production rreeeeaaaally slowly. Corundium is almost bleed dry at Earth and my only other source in Sol has 0,5 accessibility

Solutions?
Should I focus all my Automines on mining Corundium while massively building mines?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Which minerals you roll on your HW can be pretty random.  Corundium crunch is bad, almost as bad as duranium crunch. Especially if, like has apparently happened, you get no good sources elsewhere in the system.  I usually reroll the Sol System's minerals until I get amounts i like, haha....

Focusing research on increasing mining production will help. Do focus on the mineral you are limited by - well, that and Duranium. You can cope with shortages of nearly every mineral except Duranium. 

If you are limited almost entirely by Corundium - and not other resources- you can build regular mines and deploy them to quasi-habitable worlds (such as Titan or Mercury) that have corundium.  You will need to back them up with massive construction of Infrastructure. In an extreme corundium shortage, you can even staff regular mines at inhospitable worlds using orbital habitats.   The wealth and duranium cost of both strategies is high however.

Asteroids and Comets are good places to concentrate mines on, they'll run out relatively quick but you can really use the high accessibility boost in the early game. Note that an Asteroid Mining Module is equivalent to an automated mine, but only costs 60 Corundium. The downside is that they can only be used at asteroids and tooling for mining ships can be expensive.

Don't be fooled by the worlds with huge amounts of low accessibility minerals. You need good accessibility in order to mine economically relevant quantities.  Millions of units of corundium doesnt help you any if its 0.1 accessibility.    Don't be afraid to exploit mineral sources a few systems away, either - the real problem will be shipping mines there (and possibly defending them). Setting up shipments back is pretty simple, not that much harder than using mass drivers.

[chrislocke2000]

Also don't forget to get a Geology survey team trained up, there is a reasonable chance that a team can uncover an extra 100,000 tons for you or improve the accessibility of existing deposits substantially.

My normal policy is to send a team round the moons of Jupiter then once they have a score of above 150 or so bring them back to the inner planets. That way they have a better chance of finding something useful on the planets that have the easiest logistics for moving mines to.

Was having exactly the same problem as you in my current game up until I found a good source two jumps out from Sol. Just takes a bit of time to get the infrastructure up and running.

[Marthnn]

About colonising non-ideal worlds, I was thrilled when I found out civilian shipping lines can trade with those to bring infrastructures you didn't even build! Now, I always start my colonies at the same time as terraforming. The shipping lines use their free time transporting infrastructure trade goods, which gives them and yourself wealth. In my current game, after Mars and Mercury were done for, I had about 75k infrastructures to move to Titan for a long term colony in non-ideal conditions. I built 1k of those at the start, the rest came from trade goods and didn't cost me a dime.

[Thiosk]

About colonising non-ideal worlds, I was thrilled when I found out civilian shipping lines can trade with those to bring infrastructures you didn't even build! Now, I always start my colonies at the same time as terraforming. The shipping lines use their free time transporting infrastructure trade goods, which gives them and yourself wealth. In my current game, after Mars and Mercury were done for, I had about 75k infrastructures to move to Titan for a long term colony in non-ideal conditions. I built 1k of those at the start, the rest came from trade goods and didn't cost me a dime.

Im really wondering about the exploityness of this.

Since infrastructure is a trade good we get paid to have, how is it in any way detrimental to have infrastructure based colonies?  Just skip terraforming entirely.

I think civ trade needs a colony-cost modifier, with colony-cost zero being a major bonus.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It is kind of asploity, but only on real short term runs (like earth-mars) and only for relatively smaller colonies.  Once colonies grow in size, even the homeworld's prodigious civilian infrastructure capability will not be enough to keep up with even native growth.

You can massage colony cost to prevent that, but at that point you're really starting asploit.

Additionally, if your civilian fleet is entirely tied up shipping infrastructure to a single colony, you will have an extremely limited capability to establish other infrastructure colonies.

[Sarganto]

Also don't forget to get a Geology survey team trained up, there is a reasonable chance that a team can uncover an extra 100,000 tons for you or improve the accessibility of existing deposits substantially.

My normal policy is to send a team round the moons of Jupiter then once they have a score of above 150 or so bring them back to the inner planets. That way they have a better chance of finding something useful on the planets that have the easiest logistics for moving mines to.

Was having exactly the same problem as you in my current game up until I found a good source two jumps out from Sol. Just takes a bit of time to get the infrastructure up and running.

I have a survey team with 150 skill. I send them around to all the potential colonies and mining colonies to search for more stuff.
But sending them to every planet? That sounds like an awful lot of micromanagement.

I will probably go the focus road. Focus on Duranium and Corundium mining early on and build mines like crazy.

Oh another small question:
In the task force screen, next to the name of some ships there is an (A)
What does that mean?

[MattyD]

The (A) means that they have active sensors on

[Stromko]

I made a fleet of about 12 mixed ships (total tonnage about 48,000) to take out a fleet of about 15, 800 ton ships (so about 12000 tons).  I designed the sensors on all my ships to ideally detect 800 ton ships, and that seems to work fine-- I noticed the enemy pretty much right at my max sensor range, about 44 minutes before they closed in (at 10,000 km/s!) to fight me.

Here's the problem.  My ships fired once, as soon as they decided they had good enough odds.  Even got a few hits, for 1 damage apiece.  Unfortunately, now they're continually saying, at every 5 second increment, that they're trying to fire but their weapons have 0 out of 3 (for the 10 cm lasers) and 0 out of 6 (for the 12 cm) charge.  I have rank 3 capacitors on their beams, and the 10 cm list an ROF of 5, while the 10 cm's list an ROF of 10.  These are full sized Near Ultraviolet lasers without any reduction in Rate of Fire.

Basically, my ships have fired once, and now all their weapons are failing to charge, at all.  What's going on here? The enemy has meson beams, so I don't think they're scrambling my systems or anything funky like that.  They're simply trying and fire over and over again because their lasers have no charge.

[Panopticon]

Without seeing your design, the first idea that comes to mind is that you may not have power plants to charge your weapons.

[Stromko]

Oh crap, power-plants are a thing? Thought I just needed engines.  Mmkay that's 48,000 tons of ships that won't be coming back to Sol.