Killswitch PAGA

Killswitch's Player Advancement Guide and Advice

FIRST STEPS

• 1) Colonies are your bread and butter. Don't get carried away with research until you have several colonies. Without their help you will never have enough resources to research.

• 2) Don't overlook your daily missions. As you go up research expedition tech at every level you get a new daily.

• 3) All colonies need cargo ships. My rule is at least one cargo per colony you have.

• 4) Keep your AI tech level equal to the number of colonies you have. AI Tech determines the number of fleet you can have doing stuff at the same time.

• 5) Espionage Tech is your friend. If they can't see what you have, they stop attacking you. (normally)

• 6) Build, build, then build some more. Don't waste resources on defenses or ships while you're still in Newbie protection. Build your mines up to about level 14, build colony ships, and in your spare time build research techs.

• 7) Fortify only 1 planet. You don't need a great defense on every colony, only on the one where you're going to keep all your resources. Later in the game, you're going to have to store up 160K, 320K or even more to get the high level techs. So make one fortress and leave the rest of your planets bare.

• 8) Spread out. An easy way to get resources is to plunder inactives in your system. If all of your colonies are in the same system, you have farther to go to reach inactives AND there are fewer planets open in your system to be populated by others. I like to spread 1-3 systems apart.

• 9) Don't spread out too much.

• 10) Talk to your neighbors. Send messages to active players in all of your systems. Invite them to join us, or at least Buddy them. You'll find out who the aggressors are, and who the friendlies are. Plus, you can trade intel with them.

• 11) You need mine droids. Make sure you have as many mine droid as each mine will let you have.

• 12) The cost of upgrading mines pays for itself in higher output quickly, up to about level 12, when it starts getting steep. I'd say keep your mine levels – ore and crystal -- about even. You need hydro to build colony ships; you need crystal to pay for tech research, and you need ore to build ships.

• 13) As soon as you can build the Poseidon and Atlas, build yourself a small (5-ship) fleet and raid inactive players. Anybody with an (i) by their name. You'll get more from them than you will from running missions, even though it's more dangerous.

• 14) Run Missions. I have been building Artemis and Apollo Class fighters so I can do not only the Guarded mine runs but the Destroy Artemis and Raid Atlas runs and that has paid off hugely over me waiting for my mining to come up with it.

FLEET SAVING

If you're going to be away from the game for, say, 12 hours, then send your fleet and your resources somewhere timed to arrive 12 hours later, when you can get back to the game. (That means your real life now will be enslaved to this game, but hey...) The benefits are: if someone probes while you're gone, they won't see anything of value; and if they attack, they won't take anything of value.

To slow down your fleet, change your speed from 100% down to whatever. The elapsed time changes with it.

The best ship for fleet/resource saving is the Dionysus harvester. When leaving for the night, just set the duration for half the time you will be gone. For longer times use a planet in your system, for shorter times target the planet it is deployed to. For when being attacked you can target your own planet and set the duration for just after the attack and you can harvest anything your planetary defenses kill while saving both resources and fleets. I have at least 1 Harvester and 2 large cargo ships on every planet.

Don't do what I did and not have enough cargo space to carry off all your resources when you fleet save. Every colony should have enough cargo ships to haul off everything on the planet.

COLONIES & PLANETS

• 1) To colonize a planet, you need to build a Gaia ship. Check the Tech tree to see what technology you need to research. A Gaia costs 10k ore 20k crystal 10k hydro, which is pretty expensive early in the game. When you settle your colony on a planet, the Gaia is consumed. That means you have to build a new Gaia for every planet you colonize. You can colonize a maximum of 8 planets (plus your homeworld).

• 2) Picking a planet:

-- Planets closer to the sun produce more energy but less of everything else. -- Planets farthest from the sun produce more hydrogen but less energy. Plant #15 produces the most hydrogen. -- Planets 4, 5, 6 statistically have the best chance of being big in size. But size is randomly determined when you settle a planet. -- If you settle a planet and its size is too small, you can disband your colony and recolonize the same planet. It will give you a different field size (although not necessarily bigger.) -- Anything under 80 fields is too small to keep, IMHO. I've got an 80-field planet, and it maxed out with level 15 ore, crystal and solar, level 11 hydrogen, and bare minimum on everything else. It's good for mining, no more.

• 3) When you colonize a planet, you should always look at the size before you start building anything. I ended up with a planet that had only 40 spaces (very bad luck) and built a bunch before I realized.

• 4) When using the Helios Class Solar Satellite to power your planet, planets closer to the sun produce more than planets farther away. For example, on planet #1 I get 44/hr energy yet at planet #12 I get 22/hr energy.

• 5) Whenever I launch a colony ship, I send an Atlas and/or Dio harvester with it, as well as a couple thousand of each resource. Then, once the planet is colonized, I have enough resources to start building on it right away, as well as ships to transport/fleet-save resources.

• 6) All a new colony really needs is about 10k extra ore to become self-supporting. Add some extra crystal as well to build up a hydro producer. Build all mines to level 5, first ore and crystal (alternate building each so they are at same level,) then later build up hydro. You won't need more than 5 hydro mine levels until you get ore and crystal to level 15. Build Solar arrays as needed. When you get to around level 12 solar array, start building nuclear power plants and then build whichever is more efficient for you. See the section on Energy.

You won't need to bother with any fleets orbiting your colony until your mines reach level 10 or more. There won't be enough resources on the planet to make it worth raiding, but if your worried about that, keep a fighter and enouch cargo ships to resource save while your gone.

• 7) Every planet should have at a minimum (in addition to mines and energy producers): Capitol 2, Shipyard 4, Factory 1.

• 8) Only your homeworld should be built higher than this. That is the planet you will be doing your research from. Your homeworld is where you will be transporting any extra resources to from your colonies. After all that is the purpose of colonies - produce resources for researching tech. At some point you may build up your shipyard on a 2nd planet to help build ships faster.

ADVANCED

• 1) The goal of all of this -- colonies, mines, raiding -- is to fund research. Always keep 1 colony, probably your homeworld, researching something, if you can. Ultimately, technology wins the game.

• 2) You can click on the building name to get detailed information on that building type and it lets you teardown a building if you don't want it anymore. You DO NOT get resources back.

• 3) My one friend who is #32 leaves his 9th planet as a 'mobile' base- when they go to war he colonizes in that new Galaxy to launch his attacks and doesn’t develop it at all

ENERGY

There are three ways to power your mines: solar array, Helios satellite, and nuclear plant. Solar is best early, Helios is better mid-game, and nuclear is better as you mature.

Solar power gets progressively expensive. Helios are vulnerable to attack. Both depend on proximity to the sun. So nuclear makes sense:

• On planets far from the sun (like slots 14, 15, 16)
• On planets likely to be attacked (like your homeworld)
• On planets where you've built high levels of solar array (like level 16)
• After you’ve researched Energy Tech Level 5.

What I like to do is build ore and crystal mines up to around level 15 using a combination of solar and Helios, then build hydro up to around level 15 using nuclear power. The hydro loss to the nuclear plant is offset by the increased hydrogen production.

The efficiency of Nuclear Power Plants DECREASES with each level of the plant until Energy Tech Level 5. After Energy Tech Level 5, efficiency IMPROVES with each level of the plant.

PLAYERS AND LEVELS

So how do you know if you are still in the newbie part of this game?

• 1) Go to the leaders board and select 'resources spent'. This will give you your build points. Under 100 is the first level of newbie protection, where you can't be attacked at all. After that, the next cut of is 5000, where there's a limit on bigger players attacking you.

• 2) Click on the Galaxy view to see your status relative to your neighbors.

- If another player has (n) by his name, he is a newbie and you can’t attack him. - If he has a (N) by his name (capital N), he is too high-level for you. He can’t attack you. - And if he has (i) by his name, he is fair game. Party on!

DEFENSES

How soon and how much should you build defenses? I wouldn't worry too much about defenses yet. Focus on your production of resources.

I went with the low defenses on most of my worlds- most of them run mines which I try to get to at least Lvl 10s; twice a day I do transport runs to clear them of resources. My main planet and secondary planet have decoy and large decoys but even with the rows of guns on them my one friend currently ranked #32 told me it would still be ripped up easy by a stronger player. So I have a 'banking' fleet that carries all my wealth around until I want it dropped off and spent.

ATTACKS

If you are being attacked:

On your planets, one of them will have a red triangle with an '!' in the middle. If you look at the fleets list, it gives the time left till the attack goes off. You can fleet save even with 1 second left. An attack can take anywhere from a half-hour to a half-day to arrive, depending on how far away your enemy is from your planet. During that time, your attacked planet has a big red exclamation point over it. And during that time, you can build defenses, fleet-save, call for help, wring your hands (unless, of course, he attacks at 5 a.m. while you're asleep. Then you're screwed. Ahem.)

The actual attack, however, lasts a couple of seconds.

One way to know whether an attack might be coming is espionage probes. If someone probes you, especially repeatedly, he's sizing you up. Good players probe before they launch and probe once more just before they arrive.

Finally, when the attack is about 15 minutes away from your planet, fleet-save everything you've got, shut down your production, and message the attacker (politely) that he won't get anything. Often he'll call off his attack because it's not worth losing ships if he can't get any resources.

If you are the attacker:

• 1) You can rob a colony of a maximum of half its resources. So send enough cargo ships (Atlas and Hercules) to carry half a planet’s resources. Hercules are better than Atlas in an attack, because they can absorb more damage.

• 2) Always probe your target first. Send a Hermes Probe ship on an Espionage missoin. You’ll find out how much resources the colony has, plus what its defenses are.

• 3) A few minutes before your attack fleet arrives, probe the target again. The player might have brought in more ships to defend himself, and you might need to recall your attack fleet.

FAQs

• Q) Does any resources that I get on other worlds auto add in to my resources to build from my homeworld, or do I need to transport them to my homeworld first?

• a) You will need to transport. Hercules are the fastest and carry the most until you reach Pulse 5. Then the Atlas is the fastest.

Once you've got your colonies planted and your mining levels built up to at least Level 12, then you'll need to start shipping resources homeward. Plan on 4-5 Atlas or 2 Hercules to make transport runs twice a day to your homeworld, because believe me, higher level research is EXPENSIVE. Especially Warp drive. You'll need all 8 colonies producing at maximum to save up enough for Warp 4-5-6. Forget building combat ships, but build plenty of cargo ships, so if someone attacks you, you can load up resources and dodge him. And you'll need AI tech equal to the number of colonies you have, so you can have plenty of fleets flying at the same time.

• Q) Why build a Capitol on a colony?

• a) Capitol level 2 is required to build the shipyard, which is required to build solar satellites and defenses.

• Q) How do you decide when the right time to start colonizing another world is?

• a) Three conditions:

1) I must have enough resources to build the colony ship and the colony. At first, I had to wait a day or 2 to have the resources. Later, resources aren't the problem. 2) I need the time (my time) to build up the colony, as it takes a couple of hours to get to the colony buildings to a point where it takes half an hour to level up a mine or the solar array. 3) I need a planet to colonize.

• Q) Any thoughts on how to get more hydrogen faster? I seem to waste a TON of time trying to get Hydrogen and all I have is that one mission that gives 65 hydrogen each time only.

• a) Build up the level of your Hydrogen mines. Or raid idle (i) players. Or trade with someone.

• Q) I probed an inactive player in my area but when I went to send an Atlas to harvest the resources it said I needed I a Dionysus recycler to harvest a debris field. Should I have told to deploy or transport instead or do I need the Dionysus Recycler to get the resources from it?

• a) Two different things. Dionysus harvest debris floating around a planet, while Atlas (like Hercules, its big brother) plunders resources from a colony.

-- To harvest: On the Galaxy screen, to harvest debris click on the blue Harvest button next to the debris. It'll bring up your fleet screen. Only send your Dio. -- To plunder: On the Galaxy screen, to plunder resources click on the blue Attack button next to the planet. It looks like a shield. It'll bring up the same fleet screen. Send your cargo ships, and some some fighter escorts if the colony has defense. But don't send your harvester.

• Q) how do you know if someone has probed you? Does it show up in your messages?

• a) It should show up in your messages with the subject: Espionage detected. It will tell you from what planet you were probed.

• Q) So what does it mean if the numbers that show your rank next to your name are different colors? so far I have seen the majority are in gray but then I have recently seen one in green and another in red?

• a) The colors represent your chances in a fight against the person (and are based on rank). Someone around the same rank as you will appear close to white, someone that is higher rank will be red (and the shade will vary based on the difference in rank), lower ranked will be green (again, the color intensity indicates the difference in rank at a quick glance), and people you can't attack (noob mode) are in grey