The College of #grah: Everything I Know About Spore, I Learned in Grah

[Surelyfunke]

As requested, the 18 minute-long wall of text learnings about Space:

Surelyfunke:   i am losing interest in the space stage
Surelyfunke:   mostly because I am phailing
Surelyfunke:   secondly: space is too fucking huge
Pescado:   Hey, space is a tough place where wimps eat flaming plasma death.
Pescado:   Space is huge! That's the BEST part of space!
Pescado:   As everyone knows, space is big!
Surelyfunke:   I need more money for fuel!
Pescado:   How many games really impress upon you the utter bigness of space?
Pescado:   Uh...
Pescado:   Beardlyfunke, your homeworld gives free gasohol.
Pescado:   Try visiting there for the free repair and refuel sometime.
Surelyfunke:   I would take the return ticket straight back for free fuel, but my homesworld is being ravaged by raiders constantly
Pescado:   Outside of a fight, I never refuel anywhere else.
Pescado:   ....how constantly is "constantly"?
Surelyfunke:   a LOT
Pescado:   Are we playing the same game?
Surelyfunke:   3 empires are after my homeworld
Pescado:   Spodists?
Surelyfunke:   one of them is a spodist
Pescado:   Those Spodists are an unpleasant lot.
Pescado:   Klingons are also somewhat unpleasant at times.
Pescado:   But seriously, what did you do to those people to piss them off so badly?
Surelyfunke:   nothing
Surelyfunke:   oh,
Pescado:   If you have an upgraded hull and a minibomb, you can just invade them.
Surelyfunke:   I refuse to give in to their extortions
Pescado:   Oh, I never give them anything either.
Pescado:   Millions for defense, not a penny for tribute.
Surelyfunke:   I had over 1.5 milion just now
Pescado:   It does help to occasionally give the more unfriendly races a small gift, in advance, though.
Surelyfunke:   I think I lost most of it on bad terraforming
Pescado:   For only 100K, you get a +50 rel boost on Hard.
Pescado:   Spodists are pretty useless, though.
Pescado:   Whereas the Force Philosophy Klingons have commercial value.
Pescado:   And are thus easier to appease because they'll get a rel bonus for "Trading"...
Pescado:   Since you will regularly visit them to buy cheap turrets.
Pescado:   They sell the Planetary Uber Turrets for only 375K.
Pescado:   MUCH, MUCH LESS!
Pescado:   Weapons there are nearly always half-off compared to your own planets.
Surelyfunke:   I need uber turrets
Pescado:   When you consider that weapons can cost like a million bajillion dollars...
Pescado:   Half off is a GOOD DEAL!
Pescado:   Basically, never buy domestic.
Pescado:   There is always an alien that will sell you nearly anything at about half the price.
Pescado:   Not to mention buying from them gives you +trading, which makes them happier with you.
Pescado:   Try to do some easy terraforming (don't try to make your terraforming IMPORTANT, just terraform something cheaply and quickly)..
Pescado:   So that you can unlock the Megamaid tools, which are free to use..
Pescado:   And then heat/coldray next.
Pescado:   Once you have atmosphere and temperature tools that only use energy...
Pescado:   You can terraform any planet for free.
Pescado:   Try to avoid using the one-shot tools as long as you can.
Pescado:   In fact, you can jump-start this in the first mission they give you.
Pescado:   When you first start, they'll tell you to colonize that one planet (you don't necessarily have to colonize THAT one, since itw ill always be a lame red spice world, and thus produce nothing you can sell for profit)
Pescado:   But find some planets nearby that are short on "atmosphere"...
Pescado:   And then when the homeworld tells you to terraform...
Pescado:   Repeatedly misuse the tools.
Pescado:   Don't terraform that planet, or they'll stop giving you a new $1000 atmosphere generator.
Pescado:   (As the atmosphere generator costs MUCH MORE if you have to buy it elsewhere, this is a REAL STEAL!)
Pescado:   Once you have boosted your "Terra Wrangler" rank up so that you can unlock the Cloud Vacuum and Accumulator...
Pescado:   Buy those, and you can raise/lower atmosphere all you want...
Pescado:   And can do that to wrangle more planets until you have heatray/coldray.
Pescado:   You will also need a big enough cargo bay to hold your 12-18 terraforming samples.
Pescado:   It takes 18 terraforming samples to have a package capable of transforming a T0 planet to a T3 planet.
Pescado:   3 of each type of plant, 6 herbivores, 3 carnivores.
Pescado:   Each tier requires 1 of each plant, 2 herbivores, and a carnivore.
Pescado:   If you can spare 12 cargo bay slots, then you can bump a planet 2 tiers.
Pescado:   Once you have both the atmosphere tools and the temperature tools, you can terraform any planet.
Pescado:   (There are bonus tools at higher ranks of terra wrangler..
Pescado:   Like hot/cold cloud vacuum and hot-accumulator/airconditioner...
Pescado:   But those just adjust the atmosphere and temperature simultaneously.
Pescado:   Since you can already adjust either one singly using the basic 4-arrow tools...
Pescado:   You don't really NEED them.
Pescado:   The one-shot versions may be useful if you need them early on, but when you have all 4 basic directional tools that are energy-for-use only...
Pescado:   Well, energy is free.
Pescado:        You can alwys just refuel at home.
Pescado:   Tips on WOAR, on the other hand.
Pescado:   You need: At least a minibomb, Some hitpoints, possibly even a shield generator.
Tigerlilley:   TEXT WALL BREAK
Pescado:   Just run for the planet, pause the game and zoom in as close as it will let you...
Pescado:   Unpause to get to the next zoom stage, repeat, until you're on the surface.
Pescado:   DIVE! DIVE! DIVE
Pescado:   Then just fly over to the enemy city, and BOMB.
Pescado:   Until it blows up or they surrender.
Pescado:   Repair, refuel, repeat until you have disabled or destroyed all cities.
Pescado:   When you then press "Capture"...
Pescado:   All enemy ships start to retreat while the colony is yours.
Pescado:   But we're not gonna let them just run away, oh, no.
Pescado:   Chase them! KILL AS MANY AS YOU CAN BEFORE THEY ESCAPE!
Pescado:   beats up Stupidlilley.
Pescado:   Sometimes they drop loot when you frag them.
Pescado:   then patch up the colony and repeat the process.
Pescado:   Remember, fly in low and fast, like a fighter jet avoiding radar.
Pescado:   If you go in fast and low, you can be over the enemy city and likely bomb it flat before the turrets even lock on...
Pescado:   Allowing you to capture the city with all the turrets intact to be turned against them.
Pescado:   Try to drop your bombs such that they open a "hole" in the city hall ring, probably by destroying an entertainment building, as those are cheapest to replace....
Pescado:   And then the city should rapidly start to rack up surrender-meter.
Pescado:   If you are still alive, you can repair and return without ending the battle, if you are fast.
Pescado:   If you die, same story.
Pescado:   Remember, Aggressive Cat is Aggressive!

rohina has signed off IRC (Quit: SUDS!).

Pescado:   Woah.
Pescado:   The Butt was still alive?
Tigerlilley:   she was, yes
Tigerlilley:   dude
Tigerlilley:   you just talked for like, 20minutes straight
Tigerlilley:   and I read it all
Tigerlilley:   shows how much I get done at work
Tigerlilley:   I don't even HAVE THE GAME

[nekonoai]

If Pescado wrote game guides, I would "purchase" them.

[Zazazu]

Pescado:   Those Spodists are an unpleasant lot.

Understatement of the year. The ones who say things like "ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY GROX!" give me the creeps even worse.

Good terraforming tips, I've been finding that annoying and was hoping there were hidden reusables.

[rohina]

I love how SUDS is immortalised in Spore advices.

[Gus Smedstad]

I haven't found it necessary the second time around to abuse the terraforming tutorial mission.  Well, a little.  I colonzied a planet with Blue spice instead of the junky Red they suggest.  But after I had that up to T1 and made some money from it, I bought a replacement atmosphere generator (at Alien discount) and finished the original mission.  So I effectively "borrowed" a single atmosphere generator instead of milking it for unlimited near-free generators.

If you focus on building up a world that has a good color spice (Blue or better) to T3 with 3 cities, you'll get a ton of income early and won't have any trouble.  I did pay tribute to a couple of Spodist empires for a while, but got fed up with them and eliminated one of them.  I'm planning on wiping out the other when I return to that game.

It helps a lot to hire alien mercenaries.  The're often cheap, as little as 50,000 Sporebucks for a raid, and they'll keep the defensive fleets completely off your back while you bomb cities or ruin the ecology with a Cloud Generator.  Though it turns out this annoys your allies, they see something unethical about exterminating all life on a planet for some reason.

 - Gus

[Faizah]

Is there a list somewhere of what spices are good, and in what order? I've heard pink and purple are good, red sucks, everyone starts out red. (Though one of my home planets has a pink moon.) Don't waste your time on a red spice system, etc, etc.

[Gus Smedstad]

If you have them in your hold, it's obvious.  They're sorted in order of rarity.

As I recall, it's Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Pink, Purple.   I may have the placement of Pink incorrect.

Red's worth at least 10,000 each.
Yellow's worth at least 14,000 each.
Blue's worth at least 20,000.
Green and Pink are 30,000.
Purple is worth 40,000.

I may be off a bit on some of those, but I know I've gotten at least that much for each of them.

EDIT: I should add that the real problem with Red isn't that it's worth less than the other spices, it's that it's hard to find someone who will pay full price.  Lots of places have a glut of it and will only offer 1000 or less.

 - Gus

[Zazazu]

Once you have a little free money, it's totally worth it to just buy spice and trade in addition to what you can get from your colony. Paying $4k for blue spice is no big deal if you'll get $20k for it a couple of stars away. Buy it when it's cheap and sell it whenever you see a good buy price. It's all free money since you're going to be star-hopping anyway.

[Gus Smedstad]

True, unless you're getting near 99 anyway.  I've had occasions where I was carrying around 99 Blue spice produced by one of my colonies, and was having trouble finding some place that would pay a decent price.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

Target goals for unloading spice: As a rule, red and yellow spice have a target price of around $10K. Less is acceptable if you are in a hurry to dump it for some reason, 6K being acceptable for red, 8-9K being fine for yellow. Bluespice typically has a bottom price of around 10K, and 14K can be considered a good price for it. Greenspice, bottom dump price of about 10K, you should probably hold out for at least 20K, and peak values are around 40K. Pinkspice, around 12-15K is a lowball, 20-30K better. Purple, 15-20K is a low-end bulk price, and I have sold cargoes at 58K apiece before, for a real killing. It may be worth selling only PART of a purple load before you refill your hold just to hunt for that 58K.

[EsotericPolarBear]

After I "beat" the game with my first race, I just got that trainer that has a money mod on it that bases income off of how many colonies you have and then adds it to your account like civ stage rather than forcing me to system hop for trading any time I want to buy something.  It's a worthless time sink anyway and this ain't no MMO.

I'd feel differently if there were any logic at all applied to the prices and economies, but it's all purely random.

[Gus Smedstad]

I'd feel differently if there were any logic at all applied to the prices and economies, but it's all purely random.

That's not true.  It's fairly apparent that there's a supply and demand model in there.  If there's a local or nearby supply of the spice color in question, the price will be lower.  Selling repeatedly to the same colony also reduces price.   Consumption appears to be size related, because T1 colonies drop prices much faster than T3 colonies.

As I see it, much in Spore is governed by time cost, much like in the Sims.  There's a tradeoff in search and travel time vs. price you get for your spice.  Bypassing that is cutting some of the difficulty out of the game, and as I master the game, I want MOAR DIFFICULTY.

 - Gus

[EsotericPolarBear]

That's not true.  It's fairly apparent that there's a supply and demand model in there.  If there's a local or nearby supply of the spice color in question, the price will be lower.  Selling repeatedly to the same colony also reduces price.   Consumption appears to be size related, because T1 colonies drop prices much faster than T3 colonies.

Until I see some solid proof, I call BS.  That has not been my experience with it at all.  The only factor seems to be that planets that produce a particular spice will not buy it at max value.  But the colony in the same system will buy that spice at maximum cost.

Plus you can trade for profit within your own empire.  Explain that one.  I'm the emperor, GIVE ME MY MONIES!

As I see it, much in Spore is governed by time cost, much like in the Sims.  There's a tradeoff in search and travel time vs. price you get for your spice.  Bypassing that is cutting some of the difficulty out of the game, and as I master the game, I want MOAR DIFFICULTY.

 - Gus

Please, there's nothing difficult about system hopping and comparing numbers.  Unless you're just learning how to count to ten.

[Gus Smedstad]

That's just inexperience talking.  You haven't been paying attention, so you think it's random.  Play longer and note what systems buy at what prices.  Sell to a system and see what happens to the price over time.

There really is something to it.  In the last game I "won," I found that I had to go further and further afield to get decent prices.  It's not that comparing prices is difficult, it's that you have to weigh the time spent looking for a good price versus what else you could be accomplishing with the same time.  If nothing else, your colonies fill up with spice and you're losing the income from the spice they can't store.

It may be a tedious mechanic, but it's a real mechanic, and bypassing it is making the game easier and not merely cutting out busy work.

 - Gus

[Zazazu]

Plus you can trade for profit within your own empire.  Explain that one.  I'm the emperor, GIVE ME MY MONIES!

Of course you can trade for a profit within your own empire. Planet A doesn't have yellow spice, so of course they will pay more for it than red spice, which they have coming out their asses. And they do...but not nearly as much as Planet Zed out in the red-only boondocks does. Planet A will get yellow eventually without you. On Planet Zed, you're likely to get at or near max profit, while at Planet A you'll get the bottom of the range. I've noticed this working as it should in-game. Have I been keeping data? No. I suppose I can. *grumbles*

[J. M. Pescado]

Distance between planets seems not to matter. "Boondocksness" seems not to matter. In fact, the price is randomly generated, with a few caveats: A planet which PRODUCES a given spice will always pay only minimum price for that spice, which is pathetically low. The price of anything else can be random, ranging from SFA to "woah that's a lot", even for prices in the same system! I've hauled 30 purple spice from one planet to another planet right next to it in the same system, and netted the 58K price. There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason to the prices, as even arriving at a planet can generate a random price. I've saved, gone to a planet, pricechecked, tried a haggle for the system buyout, then reloaded to try to narrow the price down, and the prices were different when I called again. Basically, prices are totally random and made up on the spot when you visit a planet.

[EsotericPolarBear]

That's just inexperience talking.  You haven't been paying attention, so you think it's random.  Play longer and note what systems buy at what prices.  Sell to a system and see what happens to the price over time.

I made three runs to the same system at the same price.  It randomly sets the price every 10 minutes or so.  There's nothing more to it.  Seriously.

There really is something to it.  In the last game I "won," I found that I had to go further and further afield to get decent prices.  It's not that comparing prices is difficult, it's that you have to weigh the time spent looking for a good price versus what else you could be accomplishing with the same time.  If nothing else, your colonies fill up with spice and you're losing the income from the spice they can't store.

It may be a tedious mechanic, but it's a real mechanic, and bypassing it is making the game easier and not merely cutting out busy work.

 - Gus

You're imagining the depth.  It is not there.

Of course you can trade for a profit within your own empire. Planet A doesn't have yellow spice, so of course they will pay more for it than red spice, which they have coming out their asses. And they do...but not nearly as much as Planet Zed out in the red-only boondocks does. Planet A will get yellow eventually without you. On Planet Zed, you're likely to get at or near max profit, while at Planet A you'll get the bottom of the range. I've noticed this working as it should in-game. Have I been keeping data? No. I suppose I can. *grumbles*

I don't think you understand the concept of "Emperor".

[J. M. Pescado]

Technically, you're not even emperor, you're a space captain. And an emperor that goes around seizing the property of his subjects willy-nilly tends not to last very long.

[EsotericPolarBear]

Technically, you're not even emperor, you're a space captain.

I have the only space ship in the empire and I can reduce their lands to rubble at a whim.  I am a God-King.

And an emperor that goes around seizing the property of his subjects willy-nilly tends not to last very long.

Secret Police. 

[Zazazu]

Technically, you're not even emperor, you're a space captain.

I have the only space ship in the empire and I can reduce their lands to rubble at a whim.  I am a God-King.

We should be. I understand the concept of emperor. Apparently, the game does not. The one with the power is the one in charge. I have the big guns. Who do these critters think they are, ordering me about?

[Gus Smedstad]

On a lesser scale, I did see that in the Devolution Challenge.  I'd kill a bunch of the always-hostile types, and they backed down first to Unfriendly, and then they started to fear me.  I'd get near them and they'd go into a cowering posture.  Which is well done, I must say, programming that for creatures that can have any body shape must have been challenging.  Unfortunately, when I tried to get closer to them they'd run, and as a slug I couldn't catch them.  So no pushing that species into extinction.

 - Gus

[Zazazu]

Patience, grasshopper. I often start my creatures out with just one leg. Fast is not a word I'd use to describe them until maybe the third brain level. Wait for a bit and they will calm down and return to the nest. Then you can go at them again.

You don't need to sign your posts. We know who you are.

[jsalemi]

Yes, backing off and lurking in the woods where you can watch the nest is fun.   Fun to do it in Tribal, too -- just have a bunch waiting in the woods, send one out to raid the enemy's food, one or two of them chase, you pick them off.  Makes the mass invasion of the enemy home much easier after a while.
 

[Gus Smedstad]

Creatures actually move slower with one leg?  I had the impression that number of body parts didn't matter.  Just which foot type you chose.

 - Gus

[EsotericPolarBear]

Using stealth while standing in the nest is more fun.  Especially if you have a whole pack with you.  And can charge.