Episode 1 of Scott's HARSH/EXTREME series - Ackdarian Agony: Getting out of my Home System!

[@charliepapa5518]

Really enjoyed watching this, I mean finally someone shows us a video of the game and game mechanics in play. I look forward to seeing more.

[@scottsspace5562]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@bigal1093]

Wooo ... glad to see a new series started !!

[@scottsspace5562]

Episode 2 almost done. Glad you like it.

[@I_am_Locutus_of_Borg]

Nice to see a new let's play! :) About pirates: 1) I think the cutoff for accepting a protection agreement is -30 relations. If you get below that they will refuse to "protect" you. 2) As exploration goes on I regularly check what information I can gift to pirates (with additional money if necessary) so I can get to non-agression pacts with them. For example they value very much the location of independent colonies (if they don't already know about them, of course), ruins, special locations, etc. You may already try now that you found that human colony.

[@scottsspace5562]

Yup, it drops quickly if you start firing on them which can happen if you don't sign quickly (thus my panic). I've done the same but I could not afford any gifts to Pirates this play thru. I will be taking them out (hopefully) early Episode 2 - because I need strong fleet to expand early anyway.

[@teambellavsteamalice]

@@scottsspace5562 I wondered, I was puzzles by the impression you'd go for the invasion first. Compared to that getting rid of the pirates should be easy, or not so much at this setting?

[@scottsspace5562]

@@teambellavsteamalice Gotta build a big fleet either way. I'm going to attempt both in Episode 2 with a short time between - not going to make a huge difference.

[@teambellavsteamalice]

@@scottsspace5562 I thought the type of ships and tech needed would be very different for any of these: defend and scaring away pirates (they flee if you take out shields or go for disabling and boarding, that sounds lucrative) taking out pirate bases (tougher ships, destroyers with higher tier weapons?) killing ai faction fleets (even tougher?) invading a planet (including lots of troops and transports)

[@scottsspace5562]

@@teambellavsteamalice it’s early game. And I’m rushing to tier IV missiles. Still it will be close w just frigates.

[@CrimsonNasferatu]

What made me find out I love this game is when I realized I could purposefully make private ships and stations be fuel inefficient and get rid of energy collectors so they become more fuel dependent and make more money off of them. Also I think if the freighters are slower and less effective they need to make more of them furthering the issue. This game appears simple at first glance for players used to dwarf fortress kind of stuff but you get to see what you do in this game play out in a huge way. Big fan.

[@marshalldavout7541]

Really interesting to watch you play the early game. Some nuanced decisions going on there. How and where to mine asteroids was an eye-opener. I don't really understand the research funding problem and how that works. There seems to be a toggle between colony development and research, but again, still a mystery how it works. I like the early game. Once you get to the middle game, I find that I am overwhelmed with stuff, and handling of ships and fleets is messier than I would like. I would also like to have reminders more often of what my resource situation is, since occasionally I get myself in a bind, and it would have been useful for someone to remind me that spending my last resources would leave me unable to build the next mining base (to get more of the resource that I am short of). Basically the resource situation needs another screen I think, showing stock levels and turnover. I also often forget which resources I have or don't have when I am designing ships, and i know I should really bear it in mind.

[@scottsspace5562]

Glad you like it! You are right on both counts - the game needs some love in both areas (middle game and resource shortage prediction). So my primary income (not bonus income) needs to be high enough to fund research to run at the max level. On this play thru obv. money is tight so I don't have enough. The goal is always money (long term strategy but as quick as you can). My home colony is almost useless to I need to expand fast.

[@inspiraPaz]

I recently started a new game and immediately had four pirates in my home system despite the settings being "normal". I decided to just let them pillage my stations while sending my spies to rob them of their tech. As a result my bases became very strong defensively in an incredibly short amount of time. If I had to do it over again I'd befriend the two strongest pirates, and plunder the two weakest.

[@scottsspace5562]

Yeah - buying the 2 closest and then ignoring the other 2 (initially) works for me as well. Just be sure to build 4 troops on your home so that they can't raid and ruin your cashflow

[@Eratosthenes0fCyrene]

Жду продолжения с нетерпением!

[@ainyele]

One comment on upgrading to the new Lab's. I've found that the "ancient" bases and research centers tend to already have the mid range Lab's (16 research) so researching that tech doesn't give you a bump on them.

[@scottsspace5562]

You know I caught that when I was editing the video - and I was going to add a comment about it - but then I watched it go up from 40 to 42 (check it out if you get a chance). I didn't pursue it (too busy) but in general I think you are correct.

[@Heisenbug311]

A couple things to note: (1) you mentioned you "may rush the second tech because the first was already half done." Rushing tech is acually always the same value no matter when you do it. It's always $100 per unit of science and reduces as you slowly research them. So rushing 2 T1 techs and then slowly researching a T2 is the same as slowly researching the T1s and rushing the T2. The only real difference is rushing the small techs allows you to spend smaller chunks of money, and rushing the first techs gets them sooner, giving you their benefits for longer. You mention a little later about rushing them towards the end to ensure you don't get a big failure, which is technically a slight advantage if the failure happens early on and tries to take out more than the % you've researched, but really I think getting skip drives 1 year earlier is a bigger benefit than potentially delaying warb bubbles a bit if you happen to get a critical failure in the latter half of reasearching it. Even with a harsh system you'd probably still get warp bubbles before you've finished building everything in your home system, so there's not much of an opportunity cost if you do get that rare critical failure late in warp bubble research. Particularly since rushing skip drives would get you mining bases in your home system quicker, which pays you money you can then use to rush the warp bubble research. (2) I like the missile build from your guide for late game, but I find that at T1 and T2 the AoE weapons 'wave bomb' and 'intimidator surge blast' actually outperform everything else in the same tier by a really wide margin. Not sure what's going on there. Even the strength scores of ships equipped with them seem to be higher than expected. Once you get that T2 intimidator surge blast, it just really seems to outperform any other T2 weapon by a truly massive amount. (3) You say most of the expense for the mining stations is payed by the private sector, but actually it's 100% of the expense. In fact, they literally pay you the cost of a mining station when you force them to build it, and then pay you more when they build ships to transfer its resources back to planets/starbases. I wasn't sure if you knew that the 'ship building' bonus income also included those stations, they're in fact a very large chunk of it, building even a small mining station pays you 2.5x the cost of a small freighter/mining ship, about $5k. The only downside to building mining bases constantly would be the loss of resources used for their construction and the potential for overloading the civilian economy with maintenance (really hard to do normally, but with a harsh home system they've technically got lower income just like you). I actually like getting the large mining base tech really early on, not for the resort bases, but because (a) it lets you build mining bases that can hold off pirate attacks on normal pirate settings (not sure about your extreme settings) because you have so much room to stack crew quarters that your boarding defense can resist them, and (b) When you design a large mining station it force rebuilds all the existing mining bases at full cost, flooding you with money from the private sector's piggy bank so you can rush research all tech for a while. It gives way way more money than resort bases could ever give you, like a single large mining base is several years worth of a resort base tourism. Every new mining base after that point gives you significantly more moeny due to the construction cost of the fully equipped large bases being so much more than the small ones. It just lets you snowball so quickly because you can 100% rush all those T1 techs like shields, armor, fighter craft which is basically tier 1 for ackdarian because of the free 50% for rebuilding their starting station, wave bombs, and even frigates at T2 which is only 15k more. That's only $45k all totalled to rush all that, and you get ~4k for each fully equipped small mining station you force upgrade into a large one. Building new bases from scratch will also net you about ~$2.5k more for each base you build compared to the small ones. And best of all, you can stop paying pirates sooo much sooner due to having stronger bases with shields, armor and fighters being able to hold their own for a bit and whittle down the pirate shields before you send in your ships. The fighters tech + shields is a big one, they can't do crap vs armor, but they'll strip shields from pirate ships really quickly, it's basically like each mining station having 4 escorts stationed at it, and when pirates lose their shields they always retreat. Boarding pods is usually what I get after that, because a few frigates of your own with 4 fighters each will do the same thing and let you board the pirates for capture. Usually you want to disable them first to avoid escape, but with a few frigates + a station all firing wave bombs off that's usually pretty easy with a single volley. And once you stop paying off pirates you can actually dedicate your income to research or growth which you can't do if you've got a deficit. The only time I consider paying a pirate as ackdarian is if they've got one of those uber strong 2000k strength ships, or if there's only a single nearby pirate faction and the payment is cheaper than the frigate maintenance. (4) Does a harsh home system actually make resources rarer? Because the only real difference I see so far is that your home world suitability is low twenties instead of high thirties / low fourties. You had plenty of planets with resources in that system. (5) I usually rush those abandoned space ports with a constructor to repair them ASAP. Not only do you potentially get techs for doing so, but once they're built you can retrofit them into a design with a research lab if they didn't already have one. It's less than a proper research station, but those are rare early game, and getting an abandoned spaceport up and running asap can easily be a 25% boost to research for a long time. Probably more important it you didn't keep getting lucky, first with that uber scientist and then the +10% all research station. :) (6) Is the ultra genius maybe applied to the actual research output instead of as an "All research" bonus? Because it doesn't actually phrase it like it usually does for "All research" bonuses. So, e.g. if you dismss him does the beaker count go down?

[@MaciekKleczar]

1,5 - agree 2 - good catch. I played a bit with area bombs with race that gets them better (I think Teekan) and I still think I was doing quite bad in fights. Damage is not that big and I rarely see it hitting more than one ship at once. So even while I get better strength than enemy, I lost battles poorly. Maybe I did something wrong, need to check again. 3 - nice catch, money boost from those is huge. I never considered myself building quickly mine stations capable of defend pirates, but those are great ideas. Usually I leave auto design and once shields are researched, they are doing quite good.

[@Heisenbug311]

Yeah, heavily defended mining stations are incredible. With T1 tech they have some 60 odd strength by themselves, resist boarding when they actually are breached, and you can add a small fighter bay for four mini ships with shields of their own. As for the AoE weapons, it's not about hitting multiple ships at once, their AoE is too small for that in any of the early tiers. It's about that front loaded DPS. They do a large damage per shot with a very slow fire rate, and their just at the upper size limit of what you can comfortably fit on most ships. A frigate with two intimidator surge blasts puts out 256 damage into space the moment it gets into range. 4 of those frigates firing together the moment they appear is 1024 damage. Even accounting for misses that's pretty much guaranteed to instantly drop a ship into boarding territory, remember, unlike he wave bomb at T1, the intimidator surge blasts have 84% targetting at max range and a pirate frigate has probably 30% countering to your base 10% targetting, so you're looking at 2/3 hitting their mark. That will strip all shields and armor from a standard pirate frigate with double corvidian + armor instantly, causing them to try and flee, even a pirate destroyer is screwed. Intimidators are so powerful I usually don't even get frigates at first, I just rush that T2 area weapon tech for the intimidator surge blast and toss it on an escort. Even a simple T1 escort with T1 shields and armor with 1 intimidator surge blast and no second weapon has 130 strength! They can run off pretty much any pirate escort escort 1on1, particularly if the pirate is getting mauled by a base with an intimidator surge blast of its own. Before that, Wave bomb + plasma torpedo gets you 44 strength. Still really good for pure T1 tech, and I usually build 4 like that to runn off pirates and avoid paying any pirate protection money. But the jump at intimidator surge blast is incredible. Intimidator + plasma torpedo is 143! strength on your escort, all for the cost of one T2 tech and ~126 in maintenance, they make pirates irrelivant really cheaply. I usually then actually grab T2 escorts and assault pods to quickly upgrade my escorts, because you can pack an intimidator surge blast, wave bomb, + third weapon into them with an assault pod, Thats ~170strength+boarding all for a ship that costs 160 credits maintenance, so you can have nine of them for the maintenance of a single pirate protection pact. At that point you're just raking in the tech from retiring captured pirates. Ususually nets you a good shield upgrade or two as they often have corvidians.

[@scottsspace5562]

Wow - so much to cover here - but awesome points and thanks for contributing! 1) I might not have been clear - apologies. But I THINK we are saying the same thing. My point (and my comments) was INTENDED to point out that it is cheaper to crash research after it has gone on for awhile (e.g. 60% researched) and I don't care so as much if it gets a critical failure when it's only 15% or 20%. But getting a critical failure at 90% is rage-quite heart breaking. I never said it was cheaper per unit of science - but the higher tiers obviously have more science cost per tech. The cost balance you mention at the end is valid - but I don't think game breaking or going to make a huge diff - might even be break even. But good to discuss here to clarify for other viewers either way. Thanks! 2) You are 100% right about AOE weps str. They are real good. And I did mention that missiles are not good prior to T4. I am forcing myself to use missiles because I haven't in the past and I want to see how they go (get some experience). Others rave about them so I'm trying them out (and early game - you'll see in the next video that the range definitely helped me). Not min/maxing at this point (though maybe I should on this difficulty). Watch my damage video and you'll see high damage weps long term win (assuming AI can keep pace with shield/armor research which is a big if). 3) Well again - if I implied that, it was not my intention. In my guide, you'll see I clearly mark out who pays for what. I THINK I said afterwards that the state pays for Research construction in contrast. As for the side benefit of getting bigger mining bases, 100% agree (I mention this in one of my other videos). You'll see how much money I made from the private sector in this video. But we'll have to agree to disagree on the tourism income v maintenance. Totally worth it in every game I've played (though it does vary somewhat between ok and great). But never negative. finally, as far as pirate, I will wipe them out fairly quickly in Episode 2 (though you'll see I get distracted and forget about 1 of them which is my bad). My preference - if I had tons of money, bribing them then treaty work fine (and even has some tiny benefits later). 4) Good question! So the in my other Let's play video (and some other times I've done it) - it seemed to. But I can't be sure. I will say this - I've always had silicon in normal plays - but every Harsh/trying start I've never had it in my home system. So the answer MIGHT be: It does but there is still a bunch of randomness. But I honestly don't know for sure. Just a feeling. 5) Very good points and I agree. I don't (but might need to!) design my own spaceports unless I'm feeling really motivated. I don't mention this in this video specifically - but it's just like spies for me - too easy to game so I unofficially set my own restrictions to make it harder. I WILL if I notice the AI is not putting med/recreation (hasn't happened to me yet) OR if I want to buff it's defensive capability because I'm fighting over a crucial system. But I won't add research to it (it's normally too easy to get ahead w. research - same reason I refuse to use spies offensively). But nothing wrong with it. It's confusing - because I don't min/max with some things - but with ships I do. 6) The only reason I know it's a bug (though as someone else mentioned earlier - I think it IS being applied) is because I've seen it in the ALL RESEARCH category before. So it does belong there. I am just happy it's being applied (I didn't think it was until someone pointed this out).

[@teambellavsteamalice]

Great comment! On 1, rushing the skip drive seems worth it to me always. And even to wait for skip drive (and retrofit immediately) before moving anywhere! The explorer only got to the first planet and had to get back slowly to retrofit. With the skip drive it would have gotten there a little later but could move onwards right away.

[@harvbegal6868]

Does anyone else find themselves mesmerized by the ant farm like lines of freighters and passenger ships carting products and people all around?

[@scottsspace5562]

I do - and I love to click on one freighter and just watch it to 2 or 3 runs, checking out it's cargo, etc. Makes the galaxy feel alive (though there is SO much more they could do to improve that feeling...)

[@marshalldavout7541]

Yes, but I'd like to be able to turn them off with a click, so I can see where my state ships are

[@scottsspace5562]

@@marshalldavout7541 You can! ESC then settings. Turn off everything but state ships.

[@harvbegal6868]

@@marshalldavout7541 It's in the settings but yes it would be nice to have a button dedicated to it either on the UI or mapped to a keyboard key.

[@1509Freeze]

First up, great vid, I really appreciate your effort, even adding chapters in and stuff, for such a game with a quite small player base. So kudos. I have a few questions regarding the starting setup, maybe someone has more insights. 1. Pirate abundance and strength. While I dont doubt more and stronger pirates create more of a challenger for the player and an incentive to build a fleet early, I feel the AI really struggles to deal with them much more than a human does. Sometimes if feels like the AI takes ages to wipe them out, some even having those pesky neutral bases in their homesystem by the time I have battlecruisers. So by having lots of strong pirates, I think one does harmstring the AI empires quite a bit. Having a few normal strenght pirates works better in my opinion. Hard to quantify, but I think the AI has an easier time expanding this way and provides a more interesting challenge for the player. I felt this helps, (in similar games the AI also very often has trouble dealing with independents/barbarians etc.) While the player can capture a small fleet, get tech boosts etc, AI empires seem to pay protection for ages? Because if they do, that will explain why often AI homeworlds have quite a bit lower population than mine when I find them. Especially if there a tons of pirate factions and the AI pays them all off. So essentially, less (pirates) might be more. But I generally think pirates dont add that much currently beyond early game and become a chore (or loot pinatas) once I get a passable fleet. Space creatures, nebulas and such are less annoying and fulfill a similar function, but thats just my preference. Btw., that first pirate faction had already +1 relation because they also were ackdarian. You could have payed them immediatly a large gift and gotten a NAP. Did you do this intentionally? 2. I find the difficulty setting itself makes basically no difference, while starting system and planet are the biggest challenge. However I dislike slowing my start down even further (takes a long time to get from prewarp to the more interesting tech and empire building choices for my taste, even at 4x speed), so instead I gave the AIs a better starting tech level. A bump to 1 or 2 is a huge help to the AI, who seems to be struggling with early expansion, teching and scouting, while you are handicapped at prewarp tech. But a player can catch up in tech, especially the important ones, quite quickly. This way the AIs are much more established with a more or less functioning empire when I find them and I dont have the subpar homesystem. 3. I read your guide and followed the tip with the resort bases. It does provide a good amount of cash, also the other civi techs along the way gives a lot of income. I also have tried not prioritizing it that much and only building it when having positive cashflow, and it honestly felt better. In those attempts I only build a resort on my home colony, regardless of the scenerey bonus, and on new colonies if the have a bonus (which might or might not happen early on). My reasoning was this: I delayed building the resort because I did not want to pay the upkeep, thats deducted from cashflow, which seems very important to me. One trades a delayed payoff via growth(especially important with the nasty -10% growth from technocracy) and tech investments for immediate bonus income. So a resort basically transforms a bit of your cashflow into bonus income at a favourable rate. But if that means having negative cashflow, its not worth it early in my opinion. But then again, I dont play on harsh homeworld, and the bonus income of resorts might be crucial in this setting to afford anything at all and survive or going to war early. Also I found it really annoying when my limited number of passenger ships were busy transporting tourists to some far off place instead of migrants once I start colonizing planets. Having those ships delivering new colonists constantly gets new colonies up and profitable really fast. Not the case if one builds lots of resorts in far fung places. Still provides bonus income which is always nice, but having those pops at colonies multiplying and boosting my actual cashflow is preferable in my opinion(if affordable, harsh home system might still force you to convert cashflow and growth into bonus income early on to stay afloat or get a fleet up). I am really excited to see how your decisions play out. Going to war early is someting I generally dont do, so I am hyped to see under these harsh conditions. Sorry for this wall of text, but YT algorythm is happy at least :)

[@scottsspace5562]

Lol - all good. So you may have a point with the Pirates. However, I haven't had much trouble with the AI doing poorly with Strong pirates. They seem to very quickly gain non aggression pacts and they seem to do OK. I think the AI's other issues (too many troops, etc.) are bigger fish. And stronger Pirates DO hurt me. I think it might be a wash but by no means am I discounting your hypothesis. Might very well be true. #2 - I don't enjoy it either - but I wanted to try it. I agree with you that it would be more fun (I don't know about more challenging - but maybe?) to start the AI one tier higher in expansion. Next one I do I will consider it! #3 - in general you don't want to sacrifice cash flow for more bonus income - but at this difficulty I will NEVER get enough cash flow anyway. This bonus income lets me crash more research - which CAN generate more money for me in the long term.

[@Michaelrsem0010]

Good video thank you

[@scottsspace5562]

No problem 👍

[@doomhammer4577]

Hell yeah 1000 view bro love the vid

[@chazmcdaniels6173]

Thoughts on strapping a resource scanner on a fuel tanker and sending it out long range scouting? With a mining engine, it never has to come home and range is irrelevant. Feel like this is cheating but I can't help myself.

[@eng1twr]

Ackdarian multi beam lasers are actually really good

[@scottsspace5562]

I'll give them a try. Thanks for the tip!

[@williamklett6660]

The Warp experiments is only 3700 to rush from scratch and has become my standard goto. At Harsh I have had games without Caslon in my home system, at least that doesn't need advanced Survying to find. The worst game I had was a Max Pirate & Max creature at Harsh... it was lost after an early Pirate Raider event and their Destroyers ate my stations and SSP.. Ancient Slave Colony is BAD, multi species and high corruption, terrible luck on your closest Independent

[@scottsspace5562]

Wow! ALWAYS assumed there was Caslon. Yup - No indie for me this time! Episode 2 almost done. I take a few risks...

[@williamklett6660]

@@scottsspace5562 It really sucks when the Ancient Slave Colony appears across the galaxy, revolts and joins you freely. -10k in support that takes ages to get better, and in my case being in the border between the Boskara and Mortalan, they tag teamed war on me. War weariness hurt even more. I gave the colont to the Morts and never looked back lol BTW, I think it is only under Excellent home system that you are guaranteed to have every strategic resource

[@destroyer7742]

@@scottsspace5562 I've had a start where i started in a nebula. Safe to say it was an instant restart because everything that tries to be built instantly blows up lol

[@MaciekKleczar]

my worst game so far was when, almost at the start of the game, 10k strength AI Battleship (fraction less) jumped to my home planet and started destroying everything that moves. It was funny and stupid at the same time. It took around 5-10 years since he get bored and disappeared :). I was totally restarted, but still won that game.

[@scottsspace5562]

@@destroyer7742 Yup - I THINK they fixed that in latest update

[@DancingSamurai]

Have you tried to manually move the scientist to a different research base? Maybe that will kick in his Ultra Genius trait?

[@scottsspace5562]

Good idea. I'll give it a go!

[@Finch2584]

@@scottsspace5562 When you checked on him earlier he was still in transit, when you checked at the end he had finally reached the station but it had no fuel so that may be why it still wasn't showing up once he was actually doing research. The 10% from the prime research base wasn't showing up because you had just forced it to begin a retrofit right before checking to see it's bonus. The scientist bonus might be a bug but it's 50/50 from what the video shows.

[@TristanSeligmann]

I think you are getting the "Ultra Genius" bonus: at 15:14 your max potential research output is 70, and at 18:29 it has gone up ~20% to 85.

[@scottsspace5562]

Awesome find!! Thank you! I should have noticed my research is running higher than expected on these settings this early. I'll note in an upcoming episode (2 is done - I'll mention it in #3). Thanks again!

[@williamklett6660]

@@scottsspace5562 BTW, if the homeworld has an R&D bonus you can start with a SSP and an RS there. This is early game relevant in all cases, but the Zenox have an early game event of 'finding' resources that changes or adds if there was no bonus before, a +20% all tech the both the SSP and the RS can claim. Essentially a fixed event +40% All Research.

[@torsteinnielsenhole8928]

Wasnt it a big mistake retrofitting the ancient Ackdarian spaceport? It is highly advanced and in effect is substantially downgraded by retrofitting.

[@scottsspace5562]

There is a pop-up in episode 2 about this. Makes little difference in this case (except it saves a little $ to do it) but yes - in general you don't want to do that.

[@MaciekKleczar]

@Scott's Space, firstly big thanks for your guide, it helped me start with game. Now let me give you some tips after having a lot more experience and watching few of your games. 1. The most important thing early game is having positive state income and actually the more the better. Why ? It both boosts research but more important it boosts population growth on planet. More population = more money = more growth, etc. This is actually huge snowball in this game. Yes, you can play without it and still win, but it is much more easier with more pops :). As you can see, you have 1,2% pop growth, which could be 4-5% or so. 2. Now, how to achieve it ? This might be a bit more tricky and a bit random. Different in each game. But there are few standard steps. - after skip drive, research medical center and recreation center. Each gives +3 to happiness, which allow bigger taxes and more income. Make sure that your spaceport have one of each. Auto-designs sometimes do, sometimes don't. This needs manual attention and it is important - avoid unnecessary maintenance, don't build military ships unless really need to. - this alone should give you positive income, even with 6-10 non-military ships. - try to find and deliver luxuries as fast as possible. Development increase is crucial at start - [try hard more] check planets in your neighborhood and pick first ones with bigger chances for luxuries. I never do that, but probably that could boost a bit. - I saw you started with -1000 income, not sure if it is because Ackdarian or harsh start. Would be worth to check what takes so much maintenance. Maybe this pretty shiny spaceport. While not cool, It might be actually worthy to downgrade it to something really simple and cheap. - avoid protection agreements from pirates. (look step 3) - don't do resort bases. Tourism income is not really that big and loss in maintenance is too important. Avoid that until you have steady state income. - you may want to change taxes at start to keep happiness at 0-1, to increase income - [try hard mode] manually design everything that costs maintenance to lower its cost as much as possible. I never do that, but it may save few bucks. For example you may live without too many or all weapons at research stations and spaceports in early game. 3. Pirates. This is again tricky and it depends on the race you are playing. My old tactic was: - agree on every protection - wait until relations goes to -4 , then pay 37k gift and sign Non aggression pact. This tactic was quite ok and I thought I found a perfect way to deal with pirates. But this has a huge downside. For the time until you can sing NAPs you will have a negative income and that is really bad (look pt.1.) So my new tactic is: - ignore all the pirates in early game. Let them raid the mines and chase some civil ships. It doesn't really matter much. Only thing that matters is raids against home planet, especially on trying/harsh settings. So what to do ?: - if you play a race with good armies, recruit 3-4 armies at home planet. It will help against most raids and it is cheaper than signing protection agreement. - if you play weak race, you may still want to sign protection with FIRST pirates and boost their relations to +11 ASAP and sign non-aggression. Ignore other pirates, as usually only first ones raids your homeworld. - if you are lucky and quickly find some nice escorts/frigates at scrapyard, repair them quickly and go kill pirate base, or at least use to defend raids of homeworld. - otherwise, do not build any ships to deal with pirates, it is unnecessary maintenance, let them raid mining bases from time to time. - once your net income is strong enough, either sign protection/NAPs with them (like in my old tactic), or build a fleet and kill bases if you find them. Up to you. Some other thought: I don't find missiles/torpedos too good. Yes, occasionally it might be nice to make a fast escort/frigate with long range weapons and try to stay out of range. But usually it will not have enough firepower to kill anything before it escapes.torpedos have poor damage against shields and shields are everything, so I think in a real fight you need as much anti-shield dps as possible. Usually rail-guns, but some races have nice beam weapons on its own worth to use. I think Ackdarians have star beams ?.However it is sometimes tricky to make a good design with rail-guns, that will fire its full potential. It may require good speed and maneuvering. I still haven't master this, but I think it is right way :) Cheers!

[@MaciekKleczar]

btw. I play this way on Extreme/Trying and had no problem with positive income few games already. I never played on Harsh, it might change perspective, would need to try.

[@Heisenbug311]

You generally don't want to research medical/recreation early as ackdarian because their free starport often has one or both of those. Also, early railguns aren't an anti-shield weapon, they suck vs shields, they have low damage per shot and a massive 50% shield bypass which means half their low damage ignores the shield completely and hits the armor where almost all of it gets absorbed by the reactivity causing them to do very little damage at all. Until T3 when they get high damage variants they're basically shooting yourself in the foot. For anti shields you want either fighters (their pure DPS is really high, like astonomically so, they just can't do crap vs armor because of their low base damage not overcoming armor resistance) or you want a weapon with no +/- to shield bypass like the pulse weapons or AoE line.

[@MaciekKleczar]

update: It seems on Harsh setting it may not be possible to get positive state income at start. In that case you may want to consider lowering taxes immediately to 0, to increase pop growth

[@scottsspace5562]

Thanks for sharing! Many good points. 1) 100% agree (and on normal I take much slower approach to keep Pop growth and research maxed). However, my home colony on Harsh will always be sub-par - even if I had the money to dedicate to pop growth. In Episode 2 - if I manage to take an enemy empire early (my goal), you will see how much more profitable that colony will be almost immediately. SO much more profitable long term with a trade-off of slightly slower growth early game. So what you point out is exactly what I will achieve (IF I can take a neighbor out!). 2) So here is where I disagree with you on many points (for a HARSH start in particular). But that's ok! I love different opinions to contrast with! So I agree with some points (e.g. I research tier 1 med/rec, etc. very early) - even if I don't state it in video (I should). But totally disagree on tourism. I DO NOT disagree (you are generally correct) that you could min/max maintenance costs and even downgrade the spaceport possible to save a little - but I personally cannot be bothered with that level of micro managing (but cool that the game allows you to choose to!). It's personal preferennce. Finally, just in general - at this Harsh level - even if all of these were done - you cannot break even or make enough to fully fund research/pop growth. Any my terrible home colony is not worth it. Conquering better planets quickly is the way to go (and hopefully I can prove it in episode 2!). Your approach works very well on normal. 3) I plan to take them out in Episode 2 fairly quickly. Ignoring them (my old tactic) SOMETIMES works - but I have had raids where my standard 4 troops can't even handle it (on extreme difficulty and STRONG pirates which this play-thru is set to). And they can (though not often) destroy a base or 2. It's offset by the resources/$ you don't lose from ignoring them. As far as WEPs choice, see my other reply. I'm forcing myself to use missiles because I don't usually (they work very well in Episode 2 btw). But they are not the best nor my favorite. Don't disagree with you there. Thank you!!! Great discussion and you make many good points (esp. for normal difficulty)

[@MaciekKleczar]

@@scottsspace5562 My points are for both normal and extreme difficulty (it doesn't matter much), however not for harsh start :) I agree that with harsh start, it is not possible to make positive income soon, so finding another planet to conquer, either independent or enemy is the key. As for all min/maxing, I also do not do that, just pointed out that you can improve start quite a lot this way, especially on trying or above. At start I basically only manually change space station to include medical/recreation as this is far too important. But maybe If I play on harsh, I will have to do more initially. From what I see you have a really rich start this game !. My first 3 quick tries on harsh I get basically nothing (like single 4% silicon at 2nd planet and nothing else in home system. And twice without Caslon).

[@ora10053]

when you upgraded the ancient starport its strength went from 400+ to 35

[@scottsspace5562]

Yup - I put a warning in the video not to do this (a pop-up text box).

[@validng]

Did you test utra genius when you have 2 scientists? It might aply the bonus for every scientist except the one that has the perk

[@scottsspace5562]

No - we figured it out - it seems to be working but just not registering in the bonus tab (and it will eventually - as i've seen it happen before). Thanks for the idea!

[@timmietimmins3780]

It's a real shame that the game is so buggy. I JUST tested building a resort base on my starting planet again today, and I was JUST about to post a comment here saying that it doesn't work. I got a super lucky 15% scenery homeworld, built a super early resort, got out my super early resort shuttles... and then absolutely nothing happened. passenger liner sat idle for 20 years as I paid maintenance on my useless resort base. But then I watch you, and it works fine. Are you on the steam version?

[@scottsspace5562]

No - not using Steam version. I've had the same thing happen to me - passenger ships just sit there. But eventually they start working. I have the latest beta version running for this video.

[@MaciekKleczar]

Actually resort bases and tourism is useless in early game. This is one thing I would definitely cross out from Scott's guide. Yes, they can give some money, but they are changing state income (maintenance of bases) for private sector income. In practice you will probably always have enough money from private sector, but having positive state incoming is far much more important in early game

[@scottsspace5562]

@@MaciekKleczar It is less important on normal or easy settings where money is plentiful. It's benefit at ALL levels is you have so much more money to crash research. The Maintenance is minimal really.

[@MaciekKleczar]

@@scottsspace5562 I do not agree here. I play only on extreme and never do them and it's really crucial. At start every maintenance $ is crucial. Look my tips :) 2-3k cash per year is nothing, you get 50k every now and then from building ships and it is enough. Positive income is much more important. If you play a game when there is no chance for positive income, then yes, build tourism.

[@RadioactiveBraunMan]

@@MaciekKleczar Worse Even, it seems to be bugged, not only do the econmics scale poorly... they seem to be bugged. No difference between 1 resort base and a dozen. The few thousand at BEST you can get out of RB never really amortize. Need serious rebalancing. As much as I love this game, it REALLY needs technical fixes (A lot still) and by now more importantly; Rebalancing.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

I found anything other than these supposed hardest settings was way too easy. Too much money mostly, having a livable starting system isn't too dramatic.

[@scottsspace5562]

they REALLY need to up the difficulty in general

[@timmietimmins3780]

@@scottsspace5562 I think a lot of it is that the game doesn't really draw a bright line between exploiting and good play. Suppose I build a mining station in my starting asteroid belt, then destroy it, then rebuild it, and I do this.... 30 times. I have now "made" 300k cash, while doing absolutely nothing of value for either me or the private economy. Is this an exploit? YES. Or I can do what I do, which is never build a mining station I don't feel I actually need, which cripples my early game. I crash research almost nothing. Is this NOT exploiting? yes. But what is needed? what is the line, between "I am cheating", and "I am playing well"? You are building a ton of mining stations that I would argue, you don't need, but actually HURT you.: it allows pirates to find and extort you, while just stockpiling more resources you either don't need, or could easily supply with mining ships, instead of stations. Early game, mining ships can EASILY supply your economy with basically everything but luxury resources, and they even keep up on those once they have had a few years to get into the swing of things and aren't distracted mining caslon. But I find it impossible to suggest your start is not more powerful than mine. I do the exact opposite, and money really matters. I can crash skip drives, recreation, medical, and research, but then I need to bank ALL money for building my starting scouts and my starting navy to fight pirates. And I would argue, this is narratively, vastly superior. I never have to pay pirates, I can fight them the second I meet them. I don't extort my private economy by building them a ton of stuff they don't need and can't use. But mechanically, it's just VASTLY Worse play. You don't end up with a 300k early bank to crash everything, you end up with a 30k bank you deplete entirely building escorts. Because building useless stuff for a civilian economy is free money. Building critical things that will massively benefit your colony (you can support 10 escorts on the price of a single protection treaty even neglecting the tech and ships you can salvage or the treasure you can get from ship wreckage), COST you money. really, it will be impossible to balance as long as there is this giant loophole in the game, where anyone at any time can just exploit a bit harder to get even closer to infinite money.

[@scottsspace5562]

@@timmietimmins3780 you are totally correct about the loopholes. And it’s a bad design. But you can roleplay and limit yourself (I do). Though not the same exactly, save scumming in any game is a loophole. You can choose not to do it and have fun.

[@timmietimmins3780]

@@scottsspace5562 I think the distinction there is that you can actually completely abstain. I feel in the game, you have to eventually build at the very least, a caslon mining station. So now you are just arguing degrees. Is the second caslon station an exploit, or a reasonable expense? What about the fourth? Are we going to spreadsheet out our caslon needs? Probably not. My sense is that it's much easier to limit oneself when there is an identifiable principle or rule. Like "okay, we are playing civ V, but we won't found a second city". Rule, which we can identify, and follow. Which I feel this game lacks. Because the exploit is absolutely necessary core gameplay. The faster the devs fix this, the more confidence I will have in them long term.

[@williamschubert4819]

Hey I've been enjoying your recent videos, especially about ship mechanics, but I've noticed the volume of them seems to change between videos. You probably already know but maybe not.

[@scottsspace5562]

Yup - thanks. The newest videos have the audio fixed - I had issues when I first started.

[@williamschubert4819]

@@scottsspace5562 love be the detail and graphics you put into your videos, they really are great.

[@MERK_JEY]

47:15 wait, so a ship takes people from your planet, they never come back and your state receives money in return

[@scottsspace5562]

Soylent green. Btw trivia note: in the book (that the movie is based upon) they don’t eat people.