Guides

Research: 1 level of housing: so you can get the free levels from missions
rest pure commercial
 

Terrans rely on commercial infrastructure to make money for them. Other goods and minerals are best bought from the market; you will lose money if you try to make this yourself.

Money is made by having a high land size and good research level, the more of these that you have, the more you will make.

Research: 1 level of housing: so you can get the free levels from missions
rest pure commercial. The reason for this is that the cost of running Terran ships once built is high, if you have a high income you can maintain more ships without losing money.

It’s probably best to research all of your ships first, this may take a morning (if on RT) but it will make things a lot easier when you are starting. If you do not, you will be easily beaten in battle as you won’t have the range of ships that is ideally required.

 Also remember to explore using your scouts for the first 40 planets or so. Keep any planets over 800 land size and make clusters of them, the more land you have the more money you can make. Build enough housing to provide labor for you available land and build mainly commercial. Build enough agriculture so you can feed your population without having to buy from the market. Remember though, if you have no food your people will starve and die!

 As you by now will have researched all technology you will be able to cluster planets together. One advantage of this is called strip-mining. Mining ore from planets and selling it on the market for $10,000 per unit can make you a very nice pile of credits in no time. By clustering 5 planets together you can remove the ore from them much faster. Posting can take up to 2 hours to sell on the market so be patient!

  Terrans have a great per turn income. The second best there is for the races. They need this income because their ships also have some of the highest upkeep. Terran ships have about the
same upkeep as A Miner ships.

Ships: Terrans have one of the best ship selections in the game. A wide variety of ships with various attacks and weaknesses. They also have a large list of missile ships. The P class or Photon class ships are pure missile attack. This is handy for attacking guardians whose ships are notoriously weak vs. missile. Terran ships selection makes them good for attacking any race though. Also are ok in the defense department.

When looking for empires to attack look at how many planets they have. 1 planet adds 1000 to their power, so if they have a power of 20,000 (or close to it) with 20 planets this means that they have no ships and are defenseless....attack them!

Stacking-Herc , nirvana , tyr , p. thor , p. zeus , first 3 are good to take out guards next 2 are good to take out borlley , all the t class and F class are good mid to lower stack, c class also good mid to lower stacks queens will take out star bases and hercs , fodder is good mid to lower stacks , everything other than those are good lower stacks , star bases are good to get unenslaved without coming out of dp, battle at 0 - 500,000 pr use 2 to 5 stacks , above 500,000 pr use 6 - 10 stacks , build so most of pr is in top 1-2 stacks below 500k and first 3-4 stacks above 500k. Not 1 fleet well work on all races so as you go look at how your battles and ships do against others, it’s also good to get to know the defense and offence mod for your ships.

The Aspha Miners have a few weaknesses. One is their 50% negative modifier to Agriculture yield. This means you get only 50% of the food you’re supposed to get. Your population will starve and your loyalty will go down if you let this problem persist.

Other than that, Aspha Miners have a 95% to taxes from Commercial. This means you have a penalty to the amount of credits you get selling your goods to your population. It seems that Aspha Miner population like huge discounts on their goods! You are not recommended to waste time on Commercial infrastructure.

Aspha Miners also have a 95% to credits earned when you plunder a colony. The Terrans also have a slight negative penalty but an A.Miner’s penalty will reduce the amount even further, sometimes earning you only a couple of hundred credits. Sometimes it’s a good idea to cluster all your colonies with low total land then plunder them to make sure you use less turns.

Yet there are the good sides.

The Aspha Miners are very efficient industrialist with a very high bonus (+200%) to their industry. It is thus highly recommended that you focus your beginning infrastructure in Industry. Industry, of course, requires Raw Materials to produce the finished Consumer Goods so building some Agriculture to produce Raw Materials is recommended. The Aspha need a whole lot less Consumer Goods anyway compared with the Terrans.

Aspha Miner populations also pay an insane amount of tax to you.  With a bonus of 150% to tax given at every turn it more than makes up for the abysmal profit from the sale of goods. It must be either gratitude from the cheap Consumer Goods.

Aspha Miners have a +1000% to Mineral Extraction. This means, taking your home world as an example, that 1 turn will produce 11 Terran Metals. This amount varies according to planet count of your colony. A Cluster Level 1 that produces Red Crystals will extract on an average 51 Red Crystals per turn. This is in fact 10 times faster than Terrans. Please note that constructing Mining infrastructure does not affect this.

It is up to you to determine what you build on your planet but I would recommend Housing, Industry and/or Agriculture.

Research

For infrastructure research you can begin with balancing your Agriculture penalty to ensure your population has food. Now you have two paths.

Choice one is to focus on the tax given by your population. This means you need a huge population on your colonies. Thus it is advised to research Housing and Agriculture because more people need more food. This tactic ensures that your turn income is almost that of a Terran.

Choice two is to play the Market. This interesting tactic involves researching mainly in your Industry. This will ensure that you will get tons of Consumer Goods per turn. I will elaborate more on this later.

Don’t bother with Commercial because no matter what you do you’re just wasting turns. You might want to research Mining but bear in mind that only the research, not the buildings on the colonies, increases the amount of minerals as well as ore extracted.

As for ships you should do the basics mineral research. Now note that you do not have scouts. This is bad since all you have is an M.Hal that provides 1 scanner rating! Now that will put a damper on exploration for a while. I would suggest this research path, in order:

Starship Engineering

Sensor Engineering

Seeker Scout

With this you can start exploring for planets with your first scout.

Now, we move on to the most interesting part of being an A.Miner.

The Market

The market is where the Aspha Miners rule! Whatever tactic you choose you still have a part in the market. (To get to the Market look at the bar at the left side of your screen. Click on the Market option. A list of sellable items should be displayed along with their prices, quantity for sale as well as the amount of that item in your warehouse.)

While Terrans get their credits through Commerce you get credits through selling in the Market.

Now if you chose to focus on Industry you’ll be pleased to see that there are many opportunities in the Market. If you did what I recommended you should have a considerable amount of Consumer Goods.

One race needs the Consumer Goods. This happens to be the Terrans. With Consumer Goods their credit income per turn will skyrocket. Thus many Terrans still commute to the Market to buy some supplies.

Now to sell Consumer Goods click on the item. You will then be shown the Consumer Goods section, a section you will spend quite some time in J. As I said before your population only pays you around 1 credit per goods sold. Thus no matter how much you sell your Consumer Goods (Recommended 3 – 4 credits) you will still get a profit.

You should by now know how to sell your goods.

If you don’t like Consumer Goods, never fear because you still have your minerals to trade. As I said before, you will extract a lot of minerals per turn so you can have a significant stockpile of them by some time. If you have some to spare, which is most likely, you can sell them in the Market. The price is up to you to decide.

Here’s a small tip. Focus on extracting only a narrow range of minerals e.g. 2 or 3. This is to ensure that you can get more of that type of mineral from your planets. Here is an example.

Player A has 3 Cluster Level 1s that produce, respectively, Rutile, Red Crystals and White Crystals.

Player B has 3 Cluster Level 1s that produce solely Terran Metal.

Player A would extract, per turn, 55 Rutile, 55 Red Crystals and 55 White Crystals while Player B will produce 165 Terran Metal. (This is excluding the home world.)

Player A now has a variety of minerals to while Player B has only ONE mineral to sell. One advantage to Player A’s tactic is that he can gauge the Market and find the minerals he can sell at a very profitable price but Player B is forced to sell his mineral at whatever price the Market currently has to stay on top. One disadvantage to Player A’s tactic is that he has a very small quantity of minerals for his own use while Player B has a ton of minerals to use and sell.

It’s your choice what you want to follow.

Combat and Defense

It is unadvisable for A.Miners to strike out at others at the early stages of the game. Being a peaceful race, as well as a ‘slow’ one, the Aspha have a tendency to develop their ships at a much slower rate. Requiring much research, these ships are a pain to research and require much patience. Yet all that patience pays off in the end.

The Aspha Miners have exceptional defense ships. For the early stages you can get to research a specialty of the Aspha Miners: The M.Lakko Starbase. Fairly easy to research and the most readily available starbase of any race the M.Lakko is very easy to build, requiring a little of each mineral (except Strafez Organism), and has a decent hull.

One plus of using the M.Lakko is its range: 15. This holds the record for longest range in the game and is the best quality of the M.Lakko. With that range it can even beat the Terran P.Thor. As you know the defender or attacker with the highest range attacks first so the M.Lakko always goes first. Its Defense Modifiers are equally good since it is weak to kinetic attacks and resistant to the rest.

The downside of the M.Lakko is its very high Power Rating and cost. It will take a bunch of credits to construct a group of these starbases and their high PR would usually mean you’d be an easier target.

As for offensive ships, the Aspha Miners lack a suitable ship in the beginning to make a decent attack. The weakness of the Aspha ships, namely their weak damage and very weak armor can make it hard in the initial stages to get a good attack out. The Aspha Miner ships have one common weakness: Energy, Chemical and Missle attacks. Most attacks of these types are effective against various Aspha ships.

There are some exceptions though. The M.Chlorite and the M.Epidote are two very good ships to have. With a range of 9 they can outrange most of the other ships out there. They are also the highest range attack ships in the Aspha Miner arsenal. The M.Chlorite is especially good since it loses most of the weaknesses leaving it only susceptible to energy type attacks and good against missle type attacks. Still they cannot attack back once they are hit so it is best to pair them up with the M.Epidote, which can take significantly more punishment. Basically these two ships are mirror images of each other, one high in offense and the other high in defense.

Much later more advanced ship will be available to your arsenal and it will be easier to attack after that. Ships like the A.Aragonite are good intermediate level ships since it is resistant to all the previous weaknesses but is weak against kinetic type attacks, a deviance from the classic Aspha Miner ship resistance. But since very little ships do kinetic damage anyway, especially between the Terran and Marauders, this doesn’t pose quite a problem.

Please note the low range among all the Aspha Miner ships (excluding the M.Lakko of course) it is most probable that their ships will attack second so proper stacking is recommended among Aspha Miners. Many Aspha Miners have fallen due to aggressive and reckless attacks.

This is just the basics of playing the Aspha Miner race. In due time you’ll begin to get a hang of things as well as have access to the Aspha Miners’ greatest ships. Remember though to finish the missions as you go along.

Marauder is an offense race. The only way u want to make a money is by attacking and plundering others planets. The bigger the planets, the more money u will get.

Special ability
Ships have very low upkeep

Empire death
Bankcrupcy - when unable to repay debt
Dies when no colonies left

Only research housing to add more population to your planet and more income when plundering.

Things to research when u start as marauder:
1. cluster Lvl 1 (do it when u start as a marauder!! So, u can plunder 5 planets in only 5 turns rather than 25 turns.it will save u all the turns u will need in attacking)
2. all marauder hull
3. destroyer,cruiser and battleship
4. converte and frigate (u can skip this process and do it after the 7th research if u r eager to try the strongest ship,d.angel)
5. advanced engineering
6. d.friggate, d.destroyer and d.cruiser *note: u will not get d.destroyer but u will get d.battleship. stephen’s typing mistake
7.colony cluster lvl 2 (I am pretty sure u will get lots of C1 by now)
8. all the genetic and try to get queens as soon as possible. U may need it to destroy Hercules
9.all the composite hull, light frigate
10. Cyril alloy, all the Cyril hull, Cyril destroyer and Cyril cruiser
11. F class engineering, F class frigate and destroyer
12. finally, cluster Lvl 3. It is time to kick some a** :).

*note: before u start to embark your fantastic journey, I recommend research housing until Lvl 20 before u face the real challenge of spacefed.

i actually liked to use a combination of the tiger and pike around any pr as they are very effective and throwing in a couple of pyth and d.angel wont be bad, use the f.sword against fodder but apart from that i advise you use the marauder ships apart from of course the queen vs the herc :) also look for a guy at 5 planets and at 5500pr, normally he has no ships and that will give you 3 border planets which if attacked you cant die.

Guardians

Reasearch: Pure Housing

Guardians have negative racial modifires to all stats. But they use no food. Since they use no food you can build pure housing and make money off taxes. Since you only reasearch one infrastructure and build one infrastructure, you maximize credits this way. The draw back to this is population also adds to power rating and you will have a very high base power, therefor will not be as effictive battling at lower powers and will be more effective at the highest powers. The higher the power the better when battling with Guardians. Guardians have the lowest income in the game.

Ships: Guardian ships have the largest hull in the game. Their ships also have the highest power. They can build power faster than any other race but have a primary weakness. Missle. Guardian ships are notoriousl weak vs. missle attack. With all the missle ships terrans have they are constant pray to them. Also with using pure housing they are also a target for Marauders since a Marauder won`t have to change infrastructure for plundering. A Maruader can make very good money off of plundering Guardian planets. Guardian ships have the highest cost to produce them but very low upkeep to maintain them.

All areas of research cluster and Ships MUST be completed. - note Act 2, mission 4, gives you the K Class Destroyer research. there is a bug and it does not work, simply message a admin and he will give you the 25,000 turns free. Unfortunately the K Class Cruiser must be researched the hard way.
When researching infrastructure only research housing nothing else.
Consumer Goods are optional but only buy them when you have level 65+ housing.
Making cash early > cluster and stripmine C1`s and sell, this will allow you to have money for ships early on and is a excellent tactic all the way through your gardian days.
Do not go broke or into debt. as you will die.
When scouting for new planets only 825+ land barrens must be kept.
minimum C1 = 4,400+
minimum C2 = 22,000+
Keep c3`s :)
Also, a very good tactic that i use, is make a large C2 and then hunt down several u.larges and draw cash.
EVERYTHING else MUST be plundered > unless you are going for pure planet count.
Before leaving DP all empires MUST HAVE at least 3 border planets above their clusters.
Attacking you should normally go on Careful, or normal. Use aggressive at your own risk.
you must be extremely patient with your guardian empire, it takes a long time to make a lot of money and your gonna need it.

Viral can make money either with commercial or Housing. Either way they should reasearch pure. A Viral making money from taxes with housing will make more then one using Commercial. Though commercial is a more stable income then housing. Tax Virals income is dependant on food prices. The higher the food market the less they make. If the food market goes to high they may not make enough to pay for the food. Viral must infect planets to use them.
Note: Viral cannot use U class planets because they cannot infect them.
Viral won`t make as much as a Terran or A miner no matter which way you do your reasearch.

Ships: Viral ships are few. They have a starbase, a scout, and a destroyer. But cause of the lack of ships Viral can capture ships and can Reverse Engineer 3 ships from the Terran, 3 ships from the A Miner, and 3 ships from the Marauder races. Reverse Engineering ships allows a Viral to build the ship and adds it to their ship list. The drawback to this is Viral dosn`t make as much income as Terran or A Miner but has to pay the upkeep for their ships. The advantage is they Can use the low upkeep Marauder ships which have incredibaly low upkeep. But basing a Viral fleet soly on Maruader ships is not taking full advantage of the Viral and will not lead to as many victories since unlike the Marauder which has a full ship list of low upkeep ships Viral will only have the 3.


Final Note: U Class planets cannot be assimalated by Collective or Infected by Viral because assimilating and infecting planets changes a planet`s class and would allow a large land U class planet to be clustered.