Tips spaceempires

Mouse Controls

• Double click = colonize planet, tow mineral, tow wreck, deposit mineral, deposit wreck
• Mouse wheel = up/down scroll
• SHIFT + Mouse wheel = left/right scroll
• CTRL + Mouse wheel = zoom in/out

How to Build Ships

To build a ship, you need (a) cash, and (b) a colony with shipyards. At the start of the game, you only have shipyards at your homeworld, so if you want to build ships anywhere else, you must first build some shipyards (SY). You can only build one shipyard per planet per turn, and you can only build shipyards at planets that are generating at least 1 income. You cannot use a shipyard the same turn it was built. Once you have a planet with a shipyard, the planet will show the capacity for building, in the form #/#. At Shipyard technology level 1 (the initial level) each SY can build one ship with a hull size of x1. Click that planet, and then choose one of the ship-building options on the blue buttons at the top of the screen. The game automatically keeps track of this building limit and of the maximum amount of counters - the check is carried out when you click on Done, so if you exceed a value you need to go back and fix it. To remove a ship which you don't want to build any longer, you can click on the counter which has appeared next to the planet.

Strategy Guide

Settling Planets

The basic opening strategy is to settle as many planets as quickly as possible. To do this, you mostly want to build enough scouts to explore all of the stars near your homeworld, especially the colorful stars (rather than the grey stars), because the colorful stars are more likely to have habitable planets and less likely to have lethal damage. You then need to build colony ships and send one of them to each habitable planet. There are always 8 habitable planets in your home sector and one Barren, so you will need to build 5 colony ships in addition to the starting 3. Your colonies will then automatically grow. If you invent terraforming, then you can also settle barren planets. (In an advanced game, you must research terraforming before you build the colony ship, or specifically upgrade your colony ship at one of your shipyards.) Mind that terraforming has a large up front cost and with a single planet pays itself in 8 economy phases (24 turns). A colony pays it's colony ship in 4 turns and then it will need to pay the terraforming cost up until you turn profit. It might be better to concentrate on fighting instead.

You should also build a second miner and then send both of your miners to grab mineral deposits and tow those deposits back to your colonies and deposit them on your colonies. It may be worthwhile to buy one or two levels of move technology in the early game so that you can send ships into deep space a little faster. If you have a lot of surviving scouts, you can send them into deep space (the grey stars) and just let them die if they run into danger. If most of your scouts die early, then it might be worth buying the exploration tech (and two levels of ship size tech) so that you can buy a cruiser with advanced exploration technology (basically the USS Enterprise from Star Trek) and safely explore the remaining grey stars.

Think carefully about where to build new shipyards -- you need shipyards in order to build new ships, and shipyards make reasonably good defensive units, but you can only have shipyards on 4 planets at a time. You should save at least one 'stack' of shipyards to use as a forward base near where you think your enemies will appear.

Building a War Fleet

After you have five or six planets colonized, it's time to think about building your first war fleet. Consider investing in ship size (to build larger, stronger ships), attack technology, and/or defense technology. It's better to buy the technology before you buy the ships; otherwise your ships might not benefit from the technology. On a small map, you will need to pick one or two technologies to focus on, because you won't have time for all of them to pay off before you are at war. On a larger map, you can invest in more technology. You can only improve each technology by one level per economic turn, so if you want to build huge battleships, or cruisers with +2 offense, start buying the relevant techs a few turns before you plan to start construction.

Note that attack and defense technologies are capped by the hull size of each ship. This means Scouts and Destroyers can only benefit from +1 attack and +1 defense, Cruisers and Battlecruisers can only benefit from up to +2 attack and up to +2 defense, and so on. In general it is advised to build bigger ships only when you have at least one technology (attack or defense) capped for that hull size. I.e. Cruisers and Battlecruisers should have Attack/Defense 2/1 or 1/2 at least or they may be outperformed by smaller ships. Ditto for Battleships and Dreadnoughts. If you are playing with advanced upgrade rules, then you must also invent the tech before you build the ship; otherwise you have to specifically go and upgrade the ship before the new tech will take effect.

The amount of technology you can afford to invest in before building your first fleet will depend on the size of the map and on how aggressively your opponents are behaving. On a larger map, or if your opponent is mostly sticking to their half of the board, you may be able to research battlecruisers or other more advanced technologies before doing any significant construction. On the other hand, if you are playing on a small 2-player map and your opponent is sending scouts into your half of the board, you may need to build some destroyers, shipyards, and/or forward bases to protect your colonies before you continue researching more advanced technologies. Although larger ships will eventually be more cost-effective (because they can retreat and automatically heal the damage they take for free and because they cost slightly less in maintenance fees), in the opening it is actually smaller ships that are more cost-effective. A swarm of smaller ships will usually get a +1 fleet size bonus to their attack rolls, and if you only have time to build 2 or 3 of your high-tech ships, then it is too difficult to justify the large up-front investment in technology when that investment is only being divided among 2 or 3 large ships. To get good use out of a technology, you usually need to be able to deploy it on 5 or more ships before the decisive battle.

Winning Battles

If your fleet is larger than your opponent's fleet, you will have the option to "screen" some of your ships before each round of combat. Screened ships can neither make any attacks nor be the target of any attacks, but they still provide you with their special abilities. For example, a destroyer with scanner technology will continue to scan cloaked enemy raiders even if it is screened. It can be useful to screen a relatively weak ship with an important special ability, or to split off and screen damaged ships, or to screen ships that you plan to retreat very soon and that otherwise might not survive. Civilian ships like miners and merchant pipelines are automatically screened and cannot retreat. Otherwise, you generally should not screen your ships; screening your ships badly weakens your offensive power. If you're not willing to risk a ship, then either don't send it into combat, or retreat it from combat at the first opportunity.

When deciding which enemy ships to target, keep an eye on your opponents' offense, defense, and hull strength. There is little point in targeting a x3 hull strength ship if you only have 1 attacker, because if the x3 ship is ever in serious danger, it can simply retreat. Similarly, if your opponent has +3 defense and you are attacking with an E3 laser, you are going to do very little damage. If at all possible, it is better to target ships where you have a realistic chance of killing your enemy. If all of your enemies are vulnerable, then look at which enemies are capable of doing the most damage to your fleet. It may also make sense to target enemies that have not yet fired in the current round. For example, if you are attacking an enemy colony defended by a Base (tactics A) and a Destroyer (tactics D) with a fleet of cruisers (tactics C) and scouts (tactics E), then you might want to use your Cruisers to fire at the Destroyer -- if you hit it with your Cruisers, it will be dead before it can return fire, whereas if you hit the Base, the enemy Destroyer will live long enough to fire on your Scouts. Note that between firing this turn and next turn all enemy ships in this example will have a chance to fire, so it may make sense to shoot at the higher class ships regardless.

The Tactics technology allows the attacker to shoot first for equal firing class ships (for example CAs with higher Tactics will shoot before enemy CAs even when attacking). Note that Nebulas and Asteroids force all ships to shoot at the same time and the higher Tactics ships (or defender, if tied for Tactics) will all shoot first, regardless of firing class.

When deciding when to retreat, keep an eye on your fleet size bonus (for fleets of small ships) and your accumulated damage (for fleets of large ships). If enough of your small ships have died that you are no longer collecting a fleet size bonus (you no longer have 2:1 superiority), then the battle will likely only get worse for you from now on, so you might want to leave. Conversely, if one of your x3 Battleships has already taken 2 hits, you might want to retreat that ship and continue fighting with your undamaged ships. This temporarily weakens your fleet, but it keeps you from losing a valuable resource.

Keep in mind that ships can retreat in unexpected directions as long as they do not move further away from any of their owners' colonies. Note that "any" means that all of a player's colonies can be used to determine the path of retreat. You may be able to retreat "forward" into enemy space, depending on where the battle is taking place. Novas and any player unit (including colonies) block retreat for enemy ships. You can use Decoys and civilian ships to block retreat paths and even completely block retreat path for the enemy.

Determining odds

In a small fight between 2 ships you can determine the odds fairly straight forward. See Example 1 below.

On a larger battle it is very hard to calculate the exact odds. Instead you can calculate the average damage that both side deal and note the amount of hull points each side has. Run a turn or two in your head to see who would be getting the upper hand.

The average damage is the roll that a ship has to roll equal or below to hit a target. For example a Scout shooting on another Scout without any technology hits on 3s and has an average damage of 0.3. The average hits are taken into account to make a somewhat quick analysis of who would have the upper hand on average.

Examples

Example 1: A Red Scout is attacking a Blue Scout. Neither has any technology. The Blue Scout shoots first. He has 3 attack and the Red Scout has 0 defense. So the Blue Scout has 3/10 chance of destroying the other on the first shot. If the Blue Scout missed (7/10 chance), the Red Scout can hit on 3/10. The chance of this happening is 7/10 (Blue missed) * 3/10 (Red Hits) = 21/100. The chance of neither hitting in the first round is 1 minus the chances of any scout hitting, or 1 - 3/10 - 21/100 = (100 - 21 - 30)/100 = 49/100 = 49%. Then in case neither hit The Blue Scout has 3/10 out of the 52% and the Red has 18/100 out of it and so on. So the overall chance of someone hitting on a round would be 30 + 21 = 51. Red Scout has 21/51 (~40%) chance of winning, while Blue has 30/51 (~60%). With bigger ships the odds could be calculated similarly, but one ship would likely retreat if he is left with one hull point only.

Example 2: A battle between two Scout and a Cruiser, neither having any technology can be analyzed as:

• 1st Round: Cruiser deals 0.4 hits, Scouts deal 0.6 hits (2 shots hitting on 3s, since the Cruiser has 1 Defense, but Scouts have fleet advantage)
• 2nd Round: Cruiser deals 0.4 hits (total 0.8), Scouts deal 0.6 hits (total 1.2) damaging the Cruiser and leaving 0.2 for next round.
• 3rd Round: Cruiser deals 0.4 hits (total 1.2) and kills one Scout. Surviving Scout Deals 0.3 hits (total 0.5)
• 4th Round: Cruiser deals 0.4 hits (total 0.6). Scout deals 0.2 (fleet advantage is lost) total 0.7.
• 5th Round: Cruiser deals 0.4 hits (total 1) and kills remaining Scout.

Clearly the Cruiser is supposed to be able to narrowly win this fight. Note that this analysis is only for the average results. Actual combat may go either way. The point is to be able to determine who has the advantage and if you should fight on or run. Normally you only need to calculate the average damage of each side and how fast each side is expected to lose ships to determine who has an advantage.

Example 3: Blue has 3 Destroyers with Defense 1. Red has 6 Scouts with Attack 1, Defense 1.

• Average Damage per Turn: Blue has 3 DDs hitting on 3 (4 - 1 Defense). 3 x 0.3 = 0.9 Hits. Red has 6 SCs hitting on 4s (3 + 1 Attack + 1 Fleet advantage - 1 Defense), dealing 6 x 0.4 = 2.4 hits.
• 1st Round: Blue's DDs shoot first dealing 0.9 hits. Even if we round that up, they kill one SC. Red's SC deal 2.4 hits (or 2.0 if they lost a SC, or 1.6 if they lost 2), which kills two DDs.

Red is expected to kill Blue's DDs faster than Blue can kill Red's SCs. Red can expect to win this battle while loosing 1-2 Scouts.

Example 4: Blue has 1 Battleship, 1 Battlecruiser and 5 Cruisers with Attack 1, Defense 2, Tactics 1. Red has 7 Cruisers and 2 Scouts with Attack 2, Defense 2 and Tactics 2.

• Blue's average Damage per Turn: If Blue shoots at the Scouts with the BB and BC he hits on 5 + 1 Attack - 1 Defense = 5, with the CAs 4 + 1 Attack - 1 Defense = 4. Or a total of 2 x 0.5 + 5 x 0.4 = 3.0 hits, which is enough to kill them in a single round. Against the Cruisers each attack hits on 2 lower number for 2 x 0.3 (BB+BC) + 0.5 x 0.2 (CAs) = 1.6 hits per turn.
• Red's average Damage per turn: Against Blue's the BC and CAs Red's CAs hit on 4 + 2 Attack - 3 Defense = 3s. Against the BB they hit on 2s. The Scouts hit on 3 + 1 -3 = 1s against all enemy ships (Always hit on 1 versus BBs). Red deals 7 x 0.3 + 2 x 0.2 = 2.3 hits against BC/CA and 7 x 0.2 + 2 x 0.1 = 1.6 against BB. Obviously Red will shoot at the BB last.
• Round 1: There could be an argument whether Blue should shoot at the Scouts or the Cruisers. Cruisers need two hits to die, which removes 0.3 hits (or 1.5), while Scouts take one hit and remove 0.1. Let's assume that the Scouts are not even there and shoot at the Cuisers.
  • Blue's BB and BC shoot at Red's CAs dealing 2 x 0.3 = 0.6 hits.
  • Red's CAs (higher tactics) shoot next at the BC dealing 7 x 0.3 = 2.1 hits killing it.
  • Blue's CAs shoot at Red's CAs dealing 5 x 0.2 = 1 hit, for a total of 1.6 hits.
  • Red's Scouts shoot at Blue's CAs dealing 0.1 x 2 = 0.2 hits.
• On average Red deals more damage, while having roughly equal total hit points. On average Red should win this battle. This battle was fought on table 257774002, where the 7 CAs + 2 SC won. Blue lost both Scouts and a CA, while Red lost a BC and 2 CAs before retreating.

Ship Types

These are the ships you are able to build during a game, if you have the ship technology to do so:

Standard ships

• SY: Ship Yards (4 tokens per player)
• Base: Base (2 tokens per player)
• SC: Scouts (5 tokens per player)
• DD: Destroyers (4 tokens per player)
• CA: Cruisers (4 tokens per player)
• BC: Battle Cruisers (4 tokens per player)
• BB: Battleships (4 tokens per player)
• DN: Dreadnaughts (2 tokens per player)

Civilian ships

These ship don't have any combat strength:

• Decoy: Decoy (2 tokens per player)
• Miner: Miner (2 tokens per player)
• CO: Colony ship (15 tokens per player)

Advanced ships

Spaceship types introduced in the Advanced Rules, all but MS require special technology to build:

• CV: Carriers (4 tokens per player)
• F: Fighters (8 tokens per player)
• R: Raiders (4 tokens per player)
• SW: Minesweepers (3 tokens per player)
• Mines: Deployed mines* (5 tokens per player)
• MS: civilian MS Pipeline (20 tokens per player)

Some tips on ships and fleets

Bigger is not always better.

• Size 1 (SC, DD) can be destroyed with a lucky shot, which reduces their survaibility. However they are cheap and with some technology can be effective raiders or be used to gather intel. Or increase the number of shots hits in a mixed fleet, remember that 1 is always an impact.
• Size 2 (CA, BC) is usually a good middle point, because they can be removed from the front line when damaged (screened) or retire when the odds are against them. In a normal game you will likely produce many of these ships.
• Size 3 (BB, DN) are heavy armored ships that need 3 hits to be destroyed. Even with the big numbers thay have, they still fire only once per round, which reduces heavily their effectivity in combat, if not supported by a fleet with lesser ships. They also have an extra oportunity cost in the flexibilty of smaller ships, as they can be in more places. If this is not enough to discourage you to overinvest on these technological terrros, they are vulnerable to fleets with some lucky small ships hitting on 1.
• Bases: They also shot once per round but the improvement of technology and lack of movement usually obsoletes them by late middle game. It's more important on defense, specially on places where your enemies need to go through.

Usually the best fleet is a mix of different types of ships covering their weaknesses.

Regarding advance ships, you need to think of them as the unexpected. Once in play they are usually easy to counter (CV&F vs SC, R vs DD) but counter them requires time and some technological investment and new ships which can provide some extra surprise turns to hit the killing blow.

All exploration tokens in the game

When you are exploring, is important to understand what can be found in the different areas.

The deep space Markers (white border) [rule 2.1] are listed below:

• 10 Nebula Markers
• 3 Supernova Markers
• 14 Mineral-10 Markers
• 5 Lost in Space Markers
• 3 Doomsday Machine Markers
• 26 Danger! Markers
• 10 Black Hole Markers (total 12-14 for 2-4 players)
• 3 Warp Point-1 Markers
• 3 Warp Point-2 Markers
• 3 Space Wreck Markers
• 10 Asteroids Markers
• 12 Barren planet Markers: Abydos, Ada, Aries, Arrakis, Babbage, Centauri, Cobol, Cygni, Deneb, Gath, Romulus, Rukbat

The ones actually appearing in your game can vary depending on number of players and rules, as they are picked up randomly until the board is filled, however you can consider these as the maximum available when deciding to explore a new white marker.

Blue player

• 1 Home planet [rule 2.1]
• 8 Planet system: Andromeda, Bethel, Eden, Odyssey, Orion, Prometheus, Rigel, Vulcan
• 1 Barren Planet Marker Blue system: Polaris
• 2 Nebulaes
• 2 Asteroids
• 1 Black Hole
• 11 Mineral 5 Marker

Yellow player

• Home planet [rule 2.1]
• 8 Planet system: Arcturus, Aslak, Benden, Haldir, Tempe, Valhalla, Vega, Xi
• 1 Barren Planet Marker Yellow system: Draconis
• 2 Nebulaes
• 2 Asteroids
• 1 Black Hole
• 11 Mineral 5 Marker

Green player

• Home planet [rule 2.1]
• 8 Planet system: Bajor, Castor, Dakara, Eccles, Kronos, Pleiades, Pollux, Sirius
• 1 Barren Planet Marker Green system: Hoth
• 2 Nebulaes
• 2 Asteroids
• 1 Black Hole
• 11 Mineral 5 Marker

Red player

• Home planet [rule 2.1]
• 8 Planet system: Anthares, Athos, Cerberus, Essen, Fionn, Omicron, Sheldon, Vortigern
• 1 Barren Planet Marker Red system: Anyon
• 2 Nebulaes
• 2 Asteroids
• 1 Black Hole
• 11 Mineral 5 Marker