Things I think every player should know

I see these points come up a lot on the boards, so I figured I'd repost them all in one place.

1. Shield Mitigation continues after shields are down, this is explained in the manual.

2. You can add time acceleration in single player games with the + and - keys, from 1x to 8x (added in 1.02)

3. Turrets are excellent at keeping the AI at bay. The AI also fears capital ships.

4. Pirates lack shields, and should be focus fired upon whenever possible.

5. Armor is not a straight damage reduction but is effectively a 5% bonus to health per armor point. This is different than health upgrades because armor effectively makes heals and regeneration count for more.

6. Capital ships can single handedly max out the mitigation of enemy ships.

7. Fighters/Bombers without a host ship will lose health at a constant rate.

8. The computer tends to keep a large amount of credits on hand, it is not cheating when it matches your bounty of 6,000 credits on it. (except that it can do it instantly, but it's a minor issue)

9. The current system of ship maintenace being based on your current maximum is intended, it's designed so that you need a solid economic base to keep up fleet expansion, not that you upgrade as soon as you have enough money to do it.

10. Capital ships are somewhat strong by themselves, but adding a support fleet greatly increases their power.

11. Culture Buildings in the same system stack without diminishing returns, as do trade ports.

12. If you try to play a large FFA without locking the teams, you will likely get overwhelmed.

13. Building a culture building in friendly territory increases your base gather rate for all resources in that system and likely surrounding systems, because it will raise the allegiance a static 10% above it's base value. (100% -> 110%, 65% -> 75%, 25% -> 35%, etc.) .

14. Capital ships push back culture, if your culture cannot penetrate (but is not pushed back), chances are they have a lot of capital ships in that territory.

15. Pirate Strength is Increased when there are :  More occupied planets,  More cargo ships,  Higher bounties placed.  The strength is reflected on the bounty screen.

Edit 1: #13 clarified.
Edit 2: Added #15
40,456 views 20 replies
Reply #1 Top


Excellent write-up!  :CONGRAT: 
Reply #3 Top
Flaks counter LRMs.
Best tip ever.  ;p 
Reply #4 Top
Thank you, friend! That was very, very helpful!
Reply #6 Top
AI tends to run away if they have no more capital ships, unless they're at their last planet.

Prices on the black market increase as you buy more, but will decrease if left alone for awhile.

Pirate strength is based on the amount of bounty placed, but has a limit.

Having a greater allegience on a planet causes greater resource/taxes output.
Reply #7 Top
Some more things (although these are less essential)

1 Each side has a super weapon and an extremely useful ability at the end of their tech tree.
2 Exploration occasionally gives you artifacts and other bonuses.
3 Experience is shared between capital ships and is aquired from being in a gravity well where enemies are destroyed.
4 Never build a fleet of all capital ships, except for the achievement.
5 The ponies and imperials are opposing clans- it has no relevance to the game except on mp.
6 The tech trees each have a differant focus- Advent do well with culture, Vasari with mining and TEC with money for example.
7 If you can't coloniza a planet due to enemy influence, station capital ships overhead
8 Some of the achievements are broken.
9 Control shift z alters the view to movie.
10 Unless you have a peace treaty with the computer, it will betray you when you destroy the remaining open enemies (aka 3 player, you take out one player and the ceasefire will be canceled).
Reply #8 Top
So that's how experience is dished out...
Reply #9 Top
Durikkan wrote:
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13. Building a culture building in friendly territory increases your base gather rate for all resources in that system and likely surrounding systems.
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why is it so? or do you mean it is a side-effect of the increased allegiance?


Sam Skinner wrote:
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8 Some of the achievements are broken.
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with achievements do you mean researches? can you list which ones?
Reply #11 Top
13. Building a culture building in friendly territory increases your base gather rate for all resources in that system and likely surrounding systems.
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why is it so? or do you mean it is a side-effect of the increased allegiance?


Yeah, It's because of allegiance, I'll edit the main post to clarify.
Reply #12 Top
The AI will always defend its home planet with its full fleet (no matter if it is the last planet or not) and not run away there (1.02, guess it's still valid in 1.03).
Reply #14 Top
Really awesome. If others contribute more info in here, I could see consolidating that info, updating as patches come out, and getting this promoted to a sticky. There's some really good to know game mechanics in here (as well as ideas for future patch improvements).
Reply #15 Top
OMG wtf i mad a 1 flak and i died to 20 lrms omg datz not fair u said flak r gud agaisnt lrm but tey arnt waste of time
Reply #16 Top
OMG wtf i mad a 1 flak and i died to 20 lrms omg datz not fair u said flak r gud agaisnt lrm but tey arnt waste of time


Looks like someone forgot to take her meds this morning...!
Reply #17 Top
14. Capital ships push back culture, if your culture cannot penetrate (but is not pushed back), chances are they have a lot of capital ships in that territory.


That's a good one to know. I like that one. Great list!
Reply #18 Top
Great info! Thanks!