Jump start TEC Economy.

[RiskyFrisky]

I've only played as the TEC so far and am having trouble jump starting my economy, partially due to enemies coming in with seekers and misc, taking my Crystal/Metal mines.

Seems I can't get enough ships out to get things done and defend it, as if I put frigates in, enemies come in with a nice amount of cruisers.

If I put cruisers in, they bring capitals. If I put capitals in, they bring a ♥♥♥♥ton of stuff and harass everything!

My biggest problem is credits though, is there anyway to get this upwards of 20+ a second within the first ten or so minutes of the game?

[shibby191]

Remember that you get a free capital ship you can build right away. Get that going to defend your initial colonies and take a few asteroid systems to get the mining going.

[wrath89]

Originally Posted by RiskyFrisky

I've only played as the TEC so far and am having trouble jump starting my economy, partially due to enemies coming in with seekers and misc, taking my Crystal/Metal mines.

There are a few things to consider.

* Are you playing on Faster speeds? (default HW income is 19.3 creds/sec on Faster)
* How large is the map? In a 1v1 random small, there are 20 planets, so there's quite a lot of room to expand and economize before you have to fight. But in a 5v5, for instance, you'll be forced to go military ASAP so you can get a fleet to defend yourself against nearby enemy players.

partially due to enemies coming in with seekers and misc, taking my Crystal/Metal mines.

You are referring to enemies taking your neutral extractors, correct?

To keep the enemy from capturing your neutral extractors, you can position a very small fleet in that gravity well - a few scouts can fight off enemy colonizers easily. Also, you could just keep a single one of your own colony frigates in the well as well, so that if the enemy happens to be able to grab a neutral before it dies, you can recapture it a few seconds later.

Make sure to put the scouts on autoattack though (else you'll have to do it manually every time and could easily miss it).

Neutral extractors are quite useful - each one is worth about as much as a trade port. Don't defend them to the death though, if you're playing against the AI: if the enemy sends a moderate fleet in that direction, just run (and try to come back once the enemy leaves the area).

Seems I can't get enough ships out to get things done and defend it,

If you're playing the AI and feel like being cheap, build a starbase at a choke point. Also build repair platforms around to repair the starbase. The AI will suicide its entire fleet on you every time, giving you more flexibility to explore the game.

as if I put frigates in, enemies come in with a nice amount of cruisers. If I put cruisers in, they bring capitals. If I put capitals in, they bring a ♥♥♥♥ton of stuff and harass everything!

What difficulty AI are you playing against? If you're playing Unfair or below, you should be able to kill the AI simply with LRF spam (a type of frigate). Cruisers are generally nice for special abilities, and carrier cruisers in particular can host very powerful bomber squads, but a good general-purpose combat frigate is the LRM.

My biggest problem is credits though, is there anyway to get this upwards of 20+ a second within the first ten or so minutes of the game?

If you're TEC, it should be relatively simple. Start out with 2 civic stations, research trade ports ASAP. Build a colony frigate to colonize the roid next to your HW. Also build a colony cap to colonize the full-size planet on the other side of your homeworld. (a roid and a planet will always spawn very close to your starting location). You should be able to have both colonized within 5 minutes or so - then, build a single trade port on all 3 planets. That should get you up to around 26 credits/second pretty quickly.

The more trade ports you build, the larger your income is.

Another easy way to increase your income at the beginning is to research Terran population research. Both basic upgrades are available at the 1st tier of civic research, and they pay off about as much as a trade port while costing slightly less.

This sort of strategy works well if you're TEC, but other races take more civic labs to get trade ports researched, so it takes longer to get a good trade chain up.

The base income rate for a trade port is 1 credit per second. 0.075 credits per second are added to the income for each of your trade ports for each jump in the longest trade route you have. For example, if you have a continuous trade route 4 jumps long, you would earn 1.3 credits per second at each of your ports.

Multiple ports at a planet DO stack. You receive income for each of them. However, it is better to spread your ports out, so you expand the length of your longest trade route and boost your income more.

[RiskyFrisky]

Thank you for your responses. +1 Rep to y'all.
That will help.

[MrD3a7h]

Remember, one of the biggest advantages of TEC is getting trade ports early in the tech tree. Get a couple of civic research facilities and put at least one on each planet.

[Rechar]

A capital ship (usually the Sova or Akkan) with 5-10 Cobalts is enough to take the first 3-4 planets, use the time to pump cash into your civic research and grab the trade ports.

Remember you don't have to kill all the militia around a planet to colonize it, take out the siege frigates then colonize and immediately build a single turret. This will take care of any remaining militia (as long as they are a resonable size), allowing your main force to move onto the next planet.

Also don't feel you need to colonize everything in order, if you have a good metal income, bypass volcanic planets infavour for further planets that you can colonize then come back to them when you are set.

Above all, don't forget to upgrade you planets ASAP to negate the credit loss you suffer.

[wrath89]

Originally Posted by MrD3a7h

Remember, one of the biggest advantages of TEC is getting trade ports early in the tech tree. Get a couple of civic research facilities and put at least one on each planet.

While this is a decent rule of thumb that newer players often use, if you're concerned about getting the maximum amount of money out of your investments into trade ports, you should (1) aim to be making as long of a trade chain as you can and (2) continue building trade ports on planets that don't shorten the chain

Doing this efficiently often means leaving one or two or three planets completely free of trade ports.

To clarify (1) and (2): Each extra consecutive planet with a trade port gives every trade port you own a small credit income boost. When you have 4 or more trade ports, this bonus starts becoming quite significant. So if you have a bunch of trade ports in a row along different planets, that's a trade chain which will also give each trade port you own a moderate income bonus.

But sometimes building a trade port on a planet can shorten your trade chain. The game calculates the trade-chain-bonus by taking the planets furthest away from each other (but still connected by trade ports) and then by finding the shortest distance (number of phase jumps) between those two planets.

So if there are planets A --- B --- C --- D --- E in a row (which you own and all have a trade ports) you'll be getting a 4-jump bonus. But if all those planets are also connected to a central planet Z, if you colonize Z and put a trade port on it, your trade-line will be reduced to a maximum of 2 phase jumps between the furthest-away planets.

That's just an example, but that's the kind of thing good players are keeping in mind when they start building trade ports.

Originally Posted by Rechar

A capital ship (usually the Sova or Akkan) with 5-10 Cobalts is enough to take the first 3-4 planets, use the time to pump cash into your civic research and grab the trade ports.

Remember you don't have to kill all the militia around a planet to colonize it, take out the siege frigates then colonize and immediately build a single turret. This will take care of any remaining militia (as long as they are a resonable size), allowing your main force to move onto the next planet.

Also don't feel you need to colonize everything in order, if you have a good metal income, bypass volcanic planets infavour for further planets that you can colonize then come back to them when you are set.

Above all, don't forget to upgrade you planets ASAP to negate the credit loss you suffer.

If you're going to use the turret strategy (which is an EXCELLENT idea because it allows you to take planets much faster), I strongly recommend using scouts instead of light frigates - this is because scouts are much more efficient for their cost against the light armor of siege frigates than LF are against siege frigates. Plus, long range frigates (very common, even in planetary militia) make your initial light frigates quite prone to dying, unlike scouts, which are only priority-fired upon by the rare Heavy Cruisers.

If you're going to do this sort of thing though (rapid colonization), a colony cap is going to be essential to get the benefits from your speed.

I recommend against "skipping" planets, especially if it's only for resource purposes - gravity well control is important, and colonizing a new planet provides very useful logistics slots for more trade ports or a farther-up frigate factory or two. Plus, since you should have a moderate scout fleet (maybe 9 to 11 scouts) it should take very little time to destroy all the siege frigates in the gravity well, allowing you to colonize and move on quickly anyway.

I would usually only skip planets when there is very heavy militia there and my capital ship is heavily damaged already and I don't have enough scouts to kill the siege frigates quickly enough. I would also "skip" a planet if it's very close to the enemy's front-lines early game and I want the enemy to warp in first to be fired upon by the heavy militia.

[devorules]

Is it economical to have refineries on all planets or only ones with lots of resources?

[wrath89]

Originally Posted by devorules

Is it economical to have refineries on all planets or only ones with lots of resources?

Refineries are rarely useful period. They cost a whole lot and give only meager benefits: you'll almost always be better off building only trade ports.

What refineries do is they slightly boost resource production in the gravity well the refinery is in, as well as giving an identical resource boost to all adjacent gravity wells with extractors. I think the default rate is +0.08 resource income per extractor.

The only time I would even think of building refineries would be if there was a gravity well which had a total of at least 14 ish extractor rocks in the well itself and in all surrounding wells.

[Rechar]

Each extractor can have a maximum of 3 refineries so as Wrath said, you typically want to situate them on a world that has at least 13-14 extractors within a 1 jump range, which is pretty rare.

For faster games though the 4500+ cr, metal and crystal not to mention the extra research costs are better off spent on ships to acquire enemy planets! You'll get much better profit margins.

I tend to only bother with them on large maps against computer players.

[Florio]

Risky, I've only just started the game but am not having your problems. I think this is because: (i) when I colonize a planet I boost the planet's/asteroid's infrastructure to maximum as soon as possible to start to get a positive income from that planet immediately; (ii) I usually have superior firepower.

I haven't tried building trade centers yet but this sounds great. However, I'd personally go for a strong military first.

In a small game I get a couple of scouts out, then research a few of the first tier civilian techs (soon building a 2nd civ research center so I can build the volcanic and ice planet techs), whilst building 7 cobalts to take the first 1 or 2 asteroids. Then I build 2 military research centers and research the Javelis frigate and build 7 of them (soon getting the missile upgrade above the Javelis research box). That fleet of 14 can easily take out the hostiles around the first few planets. Then I go straight for the Kodiak for some heavy firepower and then build my 1st mothership and many more pairs of Cobalt and Javelis.

The point of this is not to research any other tech, saving all credits for planet infrastructure and the above paths to quickly get a superior fighting force. Forget about 2% increases to laser damage and all that guff until you've got adequate ship numbers first.

With a few siege frigates, 10-15 each of Cobalt & Javelis, 10 Kodiak and 1 or 2 capital ships at a choke point planet at an early stage of the game you'll be winning the fights, and most importantly you'll be able to play aggressively and thereby win.

Oh, and don't forget you can get huge amounts of credits by selling all that excess Metal.

[wrath89]

Originally Posted by Florio

Risky, I've only just started the game but am not having your problems. I think this is because: (i) when I colonize a planet I boost the planet's/asteroid's infrastructure to maximum as soon as possible to start to get a positive income from that planet immediately; (ii) I usually have superior firepower.

If you're colonizing a planet I recommend only buying the first two infrastructure upgrades; don't buy more until the population comes close to the limit. After all, infrastructure is EXPENSIVE, especially at the higher levels. (Infrastructure/population upgrades after the first two only provide benefits once the population has grown past 70 or 100 or so, which takes 5-15 minutes)

I haven't tried building trade centers yet but this sounds great. However, I'd personally go for a strong military first.

In a spacious map such as random small with 20 planets and 2 players, getting trade up early is a very good idea - it can boost your income from 20-25 credits/second to 50+ credits/second before you meet the enemy player!

It's very possible to take planets fast and effectively with only the first 100 fleet supply available, by using only colony ships and scouts. (The general idea is to use the scouts to attack the siege frigates, and to then colonize, build a turret, and move on ASAP, letting the turret take care of the rest of the militia. This allows you to take planets extremely quickly.) While using light frigates instead is a strategy that works, it isn't exactly that efficient.

In a small game I get a couple of scouts out, then research a few of the first tier civilian techs (soon building a 2nd civ research center so I can build the volcanic and ice planet techs), whilst building 7 cobalts to take the first 1 or 2 asteroids. Then I build 2 military research centers and research the Javelis frigate and build 7 of them. That fleet of 14 can easily take out the hostiles around the first few planets. Then I go straight for the Kodiak for some heavy firepower and then build my 1st mothership and many more pairs of Cobalt and Javelis.

The point of this is not to research any other tech, saving all credits for planet infrastructure and the above paths to quickly get a superior fighting force. Forget about 2% increases to laser damage and all that guff until you've got adequate ship numbers first.

With a few siege frigates, 10-15 each of Cobalt & Javelis, 10 Kodiak and 1 or 2 capital ships at a choke point planet at an early stage of the game you'll be winning the fights, and most importantly you'll be able to play aggressively and thereby win.

If you're going to be fighting against enemy players (AI or human) you should probably focus almost completely on LRM frigates instead of Cobalts (LF) - LF are only effective against a few ship types, and are also extremely weak to enemy LRF, which is common. Also, LRM have a huge range, allowing them to snipe out enemy turrets without taking damage. In addition, the AI will very often spam a TON of light frigates early-game, which long range frigates are very effective against.

Kodiaks are quite durable and have a ton of firepower, but I personally prefer using the LRM simply because of their range advantage.

You focus primarily on your fleet. While that is an excellent strategy in the more cramped games (where there are a lot of players in a single star system) you might want to consider focusing more on economy in the games where you have more room to expand before you start fighting the enemy.

[Florio]

Cheers wrath, I'll bear those points in mind. Cool game!