Strategy Guide? This game is awesome but needs one

[Atrocities]

I must admit, that there is a lot to learn about this game, espically detail things like weapons mounts and such. I had no idea that weapon mounts ment so much to the development of ships that it cost me early on. Now I do. Heck each time I play the game, I learn something new about it. I love it. I absolutely love it.

[imperishable]

When you designing a new race to play and you choose home planet type, what do you prefer?

It is clear that the best pick would be Gas Giant home world. That's cause those planets are often huge and large size, and they are just as abundant as other planets.

[Tomgs]

While gas giants do give you an advantage another way to look at it is what isn't out there. A no atmosphere start will give you an additional type of atmosphere to colonize that none of the races in the game "breathe" (unless you are using the neutral race expansion pack you can get from Universal Shipyards). If you go this way I would pick ice worlds because there are a lot of rock colonizing races out there. If you look at it from a research standpoint gas giant is again the way to go because gas giant colonizing races are very rare. You can of course change the atmosphere and starting colonization tech some of the races use to even it out a bit also.

Also if you play in an ancient galaxy there are not as many gas giants so you also have to know the part of the galaxy you are in . I usually avoid ancient galaxies myself because I find the frequent black holes very annoying there. Its tough to find a clear path from point A to point B frequently. In a full tech start that wouldn't be a big hinderance though.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 30 December 2000).]

[ColdSteel]

Yes Virginia, this game badly needs a strategy guide of some kind. Badly.

Of course, the easiest thing to do would be for someone to go through all these informative Posts and cut and past the really great tips here from you SE3 & SE4 elite into a document. From there it would be fairly easy to organize, consolidate and publish it as a SE4 Strategy FAQ.

I've done this cut and paste on a very minor scale for my buddy who is just starting out (as I am) in the brave new universe of SE gaming and needs some tips.

What say? Any takers? I don't know enough yet about the game to accurately represent valid strategies or organize it very well (just on my very first game).

[disabled]

There is a fan made one in the works at HyperionBase.com and soon one at the SE4 Compedium that is presently under construction.