Manual for Noobies 02: The Basics This section of the FAQ will describe the basics of playing the game. If you’ve already been playing for a few days and understand Action Points, what buildings do what, and what the capabilities are of each spaceship, you may still want to read the last two parts of this section – Fleet Control and Experience – before going on to the next section. 02a – Action Points & Resources So, you just started playing, and you’re wondering “What the heck are these Action Point thingies, and how do I get more?” Space Conquest is played using Action Points. Every action you perform, from building buildings or spaceships to attacking an enemy empire, costs a certain number of action points. If you’re a non-paying player of the game, you earn 1 Action Pont (AP) every 10 minutes. If you’re a paying member of the game (see the section 04a – Donations... for information on becoming a paying member) you earn 2AP every 10 minutes, plus 3 Minerals and 1 Power. Which brings us to the basic resources used in the game: minerals and power. You get Minerals in one of three ways – mining, winning battles (whether you’re attacking or defending), or by donating to Peter (see last paragraph!). Power is created each 1AP by your Power Plants (see building descriptions below) or looted from enemies you successfully attack and contained by your Power Storage (ditto). Everything you build has a cost in Minerals (mins) and/or Power. 02b - Rounds So, what’s to stop the experienced players who already know how to play the game from getting up to the top of the rankings and staying there forever? The game is played in defined Rounds, rather than on an ongoing basis. Rounds typically last 2 weeks. At the beginning of each round, every player is reset to be completely equal. Every player has 0 Experience Points (see below), 400AP to start with, and a very bare-bones home world. So – if you just joined, and the current round ends in another few days, don’t despair!!! Practice the skills described in this FAQ until the end of this round, and know that whoever is in the #1 spot on the leader board right now will be on no better than equal footing at the start of the next round! At the end of the round, the player with the highest score is deemed the Empire Winner, and the Federation (see the next section) with the highest combined score is deemed the Federation Winner. The Empire Winner gets a ^ tacked onto their Empire name, then Federation Winners each get a *. 02c – Buildings Your buildings, usually referred to collectively as your Home World, determine how your fleet will develop. The following table lists all the buildings, their purpose, and their costs in mins and power. +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ | Building | Costs | Description | +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ | Building | 10 mins | You can build 1 building per AP | | Plant (BP) | 10 power | every 10 of these you own. | +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ | Spaceship | 10 mins | You get 3 spaceship parts per AP | | Plant (SP) | 10 power | for every 1 of these you own. | +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ | Power | 20 mins | You generate 1 power unit per AP | | Plant (PP) | 0 power | for every 1 of these you own. | +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ | Power | 3 mins | You can contain 10 power units | | Storage (PS) | 0 power | for every 1 of these you own. | +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ | Space | 5 mins | You can house 3 spaceships for | | Ports (SPP) | 5 power | every 1 of these that you own. | +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ | Fleet Command | 10 mins | You can efficiently command 20 | | Centers (FC) | 10 power | spaceships for every 1 of these. | +---------------+-----------+----------------------------------+ Special Notes some building types: Building Plants – Your homeworld itself counts as 10 of these. Therefore, if you have 0 BP, you can still build 1 building per AP. Power Storage – Any power you generate or loot that does not fit into the PS you own is lost and gone forever. Fleet Command Centers – Similar to Building Plants, your homeworld itself counts as 1 of these. So, if you have 0 Fleet Command Centers, you have the capacity to command up to 20 ships. Fleet Command Centers will be covered in much more depth in the section 03: Intro to Good Runs(TM). 02d – Spaceships Your spaceships are what you use to attack your enemies and defend your homeworld (and, in the case of the harvester, something you use to supplement your mineral income). The following table lists the costs and capabilities of each spaceship. Their individual strengths and weaknesses will be covered in depth in the section 03: Intro to Good Runs(TM). +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Spaceship | Cost | Capabilities | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Harvester | Varies: Each | Generates 5-10 mins every 1 | | | 1 costs more | AP. | | | than the last | | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Fighter | 1 spaceship part | Attack = 1 | | | 2 minerals | Defense = 1 | | | 1 power | | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Destroyer | 1 spaceship part | Attack = 1 | | | 4 minerals | Defense = 3 | | | 2 power | | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Cruiser | 2 spaceship parts| Attack = 3 | | | 6 minerals | Defense = 3 | | | 3 power | | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Bomber | 3 spaceship parts| Attack = 7 | | | 8 minerals | Defense = 1 | | | 4 power | | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Shielder | 3 spaceship parts| Attack = 2 | | | 8 minerals | Defense = 6 | | | 4 power | | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Star | 4 spaceship parts| Attack = 5 | | Destroyer | 11 minerals | Defense = 5 | | | 5 power | | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Torpedo | 2 spaceship parts| Attack = 4 | | | 2 minerals | Torpedoes will destroy enemy| | | 5 power | mine grids – 1 torp:1 mine | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ | Mine | 3 spaceship parts| When you are attacked, some | | Grid | 5 minerals | of your minegrids will blow | | | 10 power | up, hurting your attacker | +-------------+------------------+-----------------------------+ 02e – Battle & Experience So, now that you’ve built up yourself a small homeworld and a fleet, you want to go out there and do some damage, right? Well, here are the basic mechanics of how battle works in Space Conquest. First of all, you get into a battle in one of 2 ways. You can either attack your enemies, or wait until they attack you. Ideally, you’ll attack several times then build up a defense and wait a while to be attacked yourself. Take a look at the Space Conquest Empire List. Specifically, look at the columns labeled Score and A. The Score is, obviously enough, each empire’s score. This score is determined by the amount of mins and power they have on hand, the number and type of buildings their home world has, and the number and type of ships they have. You can attack any empire whose score is between one half of your score and three times your score. Target choice will be an important part of section 03: Intro to Good Runs(TM). The basic mechanics of battle go something like this: If the defender has mine grids, any torpedoes that the attacker has will first attack the mine grids. Each torpedo will destroy exactly one mine grid. After that, if there are any mine grids left, a percentage of them explode, destroying some of the attacking ships. At this point, the attack value (see the spaceships table above) of the attacking ships (including any remaining torpedoes) is added up, and the defend value of all the defending ships is added up. The two numbers are compared. Now, here’s where it gets a little controversial. 95% of the time, whichever score is higher (defense or attack) wins the battle. But – there’s a 5% chance that the lower score will win. This sometimes creates situations where an attacker will lose his or her entire fleet, yet still win the battle. Finally, the damage. The defense score determines just how many attackers were destroyed in the attack, and the attack score determines how many defenders were destroyed. If the attacker was the winner, the attacker also gets to bomb the defender’s home world, destroying some number of the defender’s buildings. The winner then salvages the destroyed ships and/or buildings for mins. Battle is also how you earn experience points. Every time you battle, you earn experience points for the ships you destroy. You earn these experience points at the rate of 1 point for every normal ship you destroy, 2 points for every federation ship you destroy. Unlike mins, you earn these experience points regardless of whether or not you win the battle. “What good are experience points,” you may ask? The more experience points you have, the more damage your ships will do in combat. Also, if you have significantly more experience than your opponent does, you’ll tend to lose less ships in battle as well. ================================================================ 03: Intro to Good Runs(TM) This section of the FAQ will provide pointers for getting more out of your runs. It’s stated several times in this section, but I’ll say it again here: Action Points are precious. You want to use them as wisely as you can – the main focus of this part of the FAQ will be how to use your AP more efficiently when running. 03a – Buildings revisited So, now you know the basics of building a home world. So where do you go from there? Well, remember that Fleet Control number we talked about back in Section 02c – Buildings? When you’re running, you want to keep that number at 100% at all times. Remember our discussion on Fleet Control Centers and Spaceship Ports: each Control Center can command up to 20 ships, while each Port can house up to 3 ships. Now, to be mineral and AP efficient, you really don’t want to build any more buildings than you need. So aim for exactly 3 ships for every Port and exactly 20 ships for every Control Center. Now, we’re going to do a little math. (I’ll keep it simple, promise!!!) If you have 3 Control Centers, you can control 60 ships (3*20=60). If you have 20 Ports, you can house 60 ships (20*3=60). This is a Good Combination(TM). Whenever you build Control Centers and Ports, you should try to build some multiple of 20 Ports and 3 Control Centers. This way, once you build the spaceships to fill up those Ports you will have exactly 100% Fleet Control. It’s also very important to note – extra Fleet Control Centers do not provide any benefit. In fact, it actually hurts to have more Fleet Control Centers than you need. So, if you have a fleet of 2000 ships, make sure you have exactly 99 control centers, no more, no less! (2000/20 = 100, your home world acts as your first control center, so you only need the other 99) Now, to do this in the most AP-efficient manner, it would be great to be able to build some multiple of 23 ships per AP, wouldn’t it? This way, you can spend less AP building, and preserve more for attacking! Remember, for each 10 Building Plants you can build 1 building per turn. Now, if you do the math here, that means you want to have some multiple of 230 Building Plants in your home world (actually, 10 less than a multiple of 230, since your HW acts as 10 Building Plants itself, remember?). With 220 Building Plants, you can build 20 SPP and 3 CC in one AP. When you’re attacking, you will regularly lose ships. Very early in a round, you may only lose 10-20 fighters per attack. Towards the end of the round, that can increase to the thousands!!! So it’s a good thing to have enough Spaceship Plants on hand to replace your losses from each attack in a single AP. Early in the round, when you’re only losing 10-20 fighters per attack, it’s safe to have only 10 or so Spaceship Plants on hand. As the round progresses, however, you’ll want to increase this significantly. Also remember that space ships cost you power! You may have the mins available, and sufficient spaceships on hand to rebuild your fleet – but do you have enough power? Ditto for buildings – you have your 220 Building Plants so you can build 23 buildings in one AP – but will you have enough power to build them for more than 1 or 2 AP? Take a look at how many buildings you’re set up to build in 1AP, and make sure that you have at least enough Power Plants to generate the power to build those buildings too. If you have a 220 Building Plant setup, make sure you have at least 130 Power Plants (generate 100 power for 20 Ports, 30 power for 3 Control Centers). The power you’ll need to rebuild your losses is slightly less critical, however. Remember, you’re going to spend AP to attack an enemy – for each AP spent attacking, your Power Plants continue to generate more power for you. Chance are good that, if you have enough power plants to support your building construction, you’ll have enough to cover rebuilding your fleet losses. Just make sure you have Power Storage on hand!!! Each Power Storage can hold 10 power units, so it’s safe to have a 1:1 or even a 2:1 ratio of power plants to power storage. The one reason you may want to have significantly more power plants is torpedoes, which are covered in more detail below. 03b – Spaceships revisited So, you’ve got your home world started, and you’re ready to start doing some damage. What’s a good fleet make-up, you ask? Opinions on this vary widely. I’ll try to make this strictly a mathematical discussion, but there is a healthy amount of my opinion in here, so interpret as you will! When you attack an enemy or are attacked by an enemy, your fighters are the first thing to get blown up. As long as you have fighters left in your fleet, none of your other, more expensive ships will be destroyed. Once you have lost all your fighters, all your other ships will start taking damage at roughly the same rate. This basically means that, if someone attacks you and destroys all your fighters, then the next attack will destroy some percentage of each of your other types of ships – the same percentage, regardless of the type of ship. As you can already see, it’s a Good Thing(TM) to have lots of fighters in place to protect your more expensive ships!!! Now, as you get into the other ships, opinions vary. Most players stay away from Cruisers and Destroyers. The Destroyer is basically a weaker Shielder, and the Cruiser is basically a weaker Star Destroyer. The Destroyer is exactly half as strong in Attack and Defense as the Shielder, and is half the cost in minerals and power. At first glance, this makes them sound roughly equivalent. But remember – you need to have Ports and Control Centers to house and support them. So, you could build twice as many Destroyers as Shielders for the same cost and have a fleet with exactly the same attack and defense score. However, you’d have to build twice as many Ports and Control Centers, which makes the Destroyer-based fleet more expensive in the long run. Destroyers can be good for defense in the first few days of a round, but they quickly become min and power wasters. Cruisers are similar to Destroyers. They cost just a bit more than half of their bigger brother, the Star Destroyer, and are a bit more than half as strong. But again, once you figure in the cost of the extra Ports and Control Centers, you quickly find that the Star Destroyer is the less expensive and more powerful alternative. Bombers and Shielders are the workhorses of most Space Conquest fleets. Bombers specialize in attack, while shielders specialize in defense. Bombers have a slight advantage over shielders, since their Attack value of 7 beats shielders’ defense value of 6. So when you attack an enemy, if you have roughly the same number of bombers as they have shielders, you’re almost assured a win. Star Destroyers are the big boys. These guys are expensive, and they’re good overall ships. However, since they don’t specialize, they’re weaker in attack than bombers and weaker in defense than shielders. However, they’re stronger in defense than bombers and stronger in offense than shielders, so they’re a decent trade-off. Their extreme expense, however, should limit them to only being useful late in a round. Keep in mind, all ships (and all buildings for that matter) have a score value attached to them. As a general rule, the bigger the Ship or Building, the more points it’s worth. So, if you want to raise your score quickly in order to attack a high scoring target, it’s good to build as many big ships (generally Star Destroyers) as you can. And always remember to have a large fighter screen to protect your expensive ships. The more expensive ships you have (also referred to as money ships) the more fighters you’ll want to protect them. Overall, most people will make their runs with a mix of fighters and bombers – usually 2-3 times as many fighters as bombers. This is a pretty good mix, and can yield good results. 03c – Target choice, 101 Now, remember back in Section 02e – Battle & Experience when we mentioned that you can attack any empire that is at least half your score and no more than three times your score? Logic deems that the easy wins are the folks whose score is lower than yours. However, there’s much more to be gained by attacking those higher than you. Also logically, it’s more expensive in AP to attack those lower than you than it is to attack those above you. Targets that are your score and just a little bit under will cost 10AP to attack. Targets that are 3x your score will only cost 3AP to attack, while those half your size might cost 28 or 29AP to attack. So, you just signed on for a run, and just got done rebuilding your home world and fleet. Remember the first rule – Attack Attack Attack – almost everyone else is following it too, returning to your home world after a couple days to find a smoking ruin is the rule, not the exception. So don’t get discouraged when it happens! Alright, back on track again. You just rebuilt and are ready to make your run. Do you have mins in reserve? Do you have enough to rebuild the fighters you’re likely to lose in 2 or 3 failed attacks? No? Then it’s safe to attack a target relatively near you. By relatively near you, I mean those targets that cost between 9 and 12AP. Make two or three such attacks, rebuilding your losses between each attack. This should give you a decent reserve of minerals. Alternately, if you are a member of a federation (see section 03f – Federation basics) and the federation has mins and power in its coffers, you could always borrow some to cover your losses, and save the AP you would have spent attacking these targets. Now, once you have that reserve in place, pick out a target that costs 6-8AP to attack. Check the Galactic Reports link and the chat window to see if that player is online – online players are much harder to defeat, as I’ll describe below. The closer you can stay to a 6AP target, the better. Attack that target – but know in advance that you will most likely lose, so make sure you have a sufficient fighter screen to go along with your bombers. For an added edge, throw in as many torpedoes as you can build in 3-5AP (this is where large numbers of Power Plants can come in handy, since large numbers of torpedoes can cost large amounts of power). Now, rebuild your losses and hit the target again. Repeat this until the target costs more than 12 or 13AP for you to attack. Once the target costs more than 12 or 13AP to attack, build your fleet and Home World a little bigger, take a look at the empire list, and choose a new 6-8AP target. If you have enough mins to handle more than 3 losses, go ahead and try out a 3-6AP target (though you should approach all 3AP targets with extreme caution and a LOT of fighters!!!!). The reason this tactic works is this: when you first attack your enemy, chances are good that his or her Fleet Control rating is at 100%, just like yours should be. If the player is not online, they don’t have a chance to rebuild after your first attack, while you do. So, on the second attack you’ll still have a Fleet Control Rating of 100%, while theirs is likely closer to 90%. After 2 or 3 attacks, your target’s Fleet Control Rating will be at or near 70%, and your Rating of 100% will allow your fleet, which may have a lower Attack value than your target’s Defense value, to win. It will also let you get several attacks in on the same target while not spending excessive amounts of AP. In those several attacks, you’ll likely destroy a lot of enemy ships, boosting your experience and earning you a lot of minerals in the process. 03d – How and when to wrap up a run So, now you know how to build an efficient home world, how to build an effective attacking fleet, how to choose your targets, and how to stick to them until you’ve gotten all you need from them. So, when do you stop? Well, you’ve noticed the little link that says Bonus AP (Votes), while you’re playing, right? Check this link out when you start a round. You can follow each one of these links and submit votes for Space Conquest. Each of these votes earns you 5 bonus AP, up to a total possible of 100 per day. You can make some of the votes once per hour, some once per day, once per week, once per month, and so on. So, look at the link and see how many are available to you before you start your run. Don’t take them before you run! Just make sure you have enough available to get you at least another 50-60AP at the end of your run. Once you’ve built your home world and taken down a few targets, chances are you’ll be out of AP. If not, keep going until you are out of AP! Now that you have no AP left, go back to that Bonus AP links, and vote your little heart out! Once you’re done voting, hopefully you have at least 60AP on hand. If you have more, go ahead and make a few more attacks. If you don’t have any bonus AP available when you make your run, make sure you stop attacking enemies when you have 50-60AP left. At this point, if you’re a member of a federation, your first step should be to return to your federation at least as many minerals as you borrowed to start your run. This donation will cost 5AP. It might be a good idea to donate as many of your bombers as you can (see the rules for federation fleet donations below) to your federation to assist your fed-mates in their runs and to allow you to replace some of those bombers in your own fleet with shielders. Now, spend those minerals and power that you have left over from your run. Your main goal is to get even more fighters than you ran with and to get as many shielders as you can afford. This will help you to defend your home world for a little longer. Also, the longer you can keep a large number of shielders alive, the more enemy ships you can destroy in the process, thus earning you more experience as you get attacked. And now, the hardest lesson to learn when you get started in Space Conquest. When you’re out of AP or you’re done building your defenses, walk away from the game for a day or two. Sign in to make your votes and get your bonus AP, but make no moves in the game until you have at least 300AP again. You max out at 500AP – if you have the patience to wait for 500AP, you will be rewarded with a much more lengthy and profitable run. But running with anything less than 300AP, except in a few extreme exceptions, is a waste of time! 03e – Federation Basics I mentioned Federations a few times so far, now I’ll get into a brief explanation of federations. This will cover only the basics – federation tactics, at least for the time being, are beyond the scope of this manual! When your score reaches 10,000, you can choose to start a federation. At any time, regardless of your score, you can apply for membership to an existing federation. There are at least a few players in the game who like to run n00b federations, using those federations to teach the n00bs game tactics and generally being helpful. If you get a chance to get into one such federation, jump at it! So what exactly is a federation, you’re probably asking. Well, a federation is a group of 1-5 players (yes, a federation can and regularly does consist of just a single player) who band together to help each other out. They can help each other out by sharing resources and by sharing ships. Each federation has its own coffers, which can hold up to 10,000 minerals and 10,000 power at any given time. The leader of a federation is able to hand those resources out to any member of the federation. All members of a federation get to vote for the leader of the federation. For this reason, most federations choose to not vote for a leader. This means that all players can donate resources to the coffers. It also means that any player in need of the resources can vote for themselves to become leader, take the resources they need, then vote again for None as their leader. This way the members of the federation don’t have to wait for the leader to sign on when they need resources. Each federation also has a federation fleet. This fleet is shared by all members of the federation in attack and in defense. This federation fleet automatically goes with you in attacking and defending – there’s nothing you need to do to use it. And the federation fleet takes no damage until all of your normal fleet has been destroyed. The rules regarding donations to the fleet have varied recently. You can donate up to 20% of each of your ship types (ie, if you have 100 fighters and 100 bombers, you can donate up to 20 fighters and 20 bombers, but not just 40 fighters). Also, there’s a 10% “tax” on all mineral and power donations – so if you donate 1,000 minerals to the federation, only 900 actually get there, while some shady intergalactic government takes the other 100, never to be seen again! For the moment, there is one additional wrinkle to federation donations: You must donate 1 ship for every 10 minerals or power you donate to the fed. However, this doesn’t work the opposite way – you can still donate as many ships as you want without donating minerals or power. ================================================================ 04 – Miscellaneous Information This section of the FAQ will contain any miscellaneous information that may be useful to folks new to Space Conquest, or even those with a few rounds under their belts. 04a – Donations to Space Conquest / Peter Lindstrom Peter Lindstrom runs Space Conquest and all the other PLIT.DK games in what amounts to his spare time. The guy has put in a lot of work to these games, and doesn’t require anybody to pay to get access to them. However, he does provide some significant benefits in all his games to those among us who choose to make donations. Even if you don’t feel you need the bonus, if you’ve got the money burning a hole in your pocket, consider throwing Peter a bone! It’ll all go back to helping to make this, and the other PLIT.DK games, a great experience for us all – not to mention help fund development of other new games. So, the following are the donation options: US $21 registers you for 3 months US $36 registers you for 6 months US $60 registers you for 1 year US $240 registers you for 10 years The bonuses this gets you are mentioned earlier in this manual, but I’ll repeat them here. Instead of only 1AP every 10 minutes, you’ll earn 2AP every 10 minutes, plus 3 minerals and 1 power. You’ll also gain access to Space Conquest Tournament, which is an absolutely insane version of Space Conquest. In Tournament, you earn 25AP every 10 minutes, with a maximum of 5000AP. The rounds only last 1 week, and some of the rules are a little different. It’s a neat sandbox to try out different strategies, and a neat way to see what a fleet with hundreds of thousands of ships looks like, firsthand!