Planetary Invasion for REAL Men!

[Zazazu]

only real way to make money is through trading

Trade within your own empire. My own empire will give me 43k for pink spice, etc. Just have to pick the right planets.

best discounts only found in foreign markets

Very true. This is why I have the two friendly empires around.

only way to get more ships is to ally

Allied ships suck balls.

and they start you off right next to aggressive Spodists so you need to kiss their boots to avoid war.

Don't avoid it. Kill them. Uppity little things. Let's see how Spode fares against the all-powerful mega bomb!

while the friendly merchant empire next door happily gobbled up every single profitable system in sight, leaving me with red and yellow spice worlds, and two other empires much further away immediately declared war on me. So now I never bother to talk at all, just exterminate. Everything is either food or target practice.

I try to locate one pink, purple, or green spice world the moment I get my paws on a colony kit. After that, whatever. I'm either going to ally and trade, or kill & conquer. Who cares if the empire next door took all the green spice for 100 parsecs? It'll be mine in two minutes.

[Gus Smedstad]

Allied ships don't suck as much balls as you might think.  Since J.M. pointed out that they vary in strength depening on empire size, I've found allies from large empires to be handy.  Not great, and you have to repair them periodically, but handy.

I've not had any problems with Spodists once I mastered Space.  I've found it relatively easy to get them sweet on you early, which means they don't demand money and you don't have to kiss boots.  Warrior and Zealot races give you +10 relationship right off the bat if you threaten them in your initial contact instead of being mealy-mouthed.  Run one mission for them, sell them a few Spice / buy a few items, and pretty soon you're +50 and they're friendly.  Start a trade route and they're Green pretty quickly.

Once past the mid-game, you can use the Medium or Super Happy rays and get +50 relationship for the cost of some energy.

Going the other way, taking planets is fairly easy once you realize it's about nuking cities, not destroying ships or turrets.  Zoom along at maximum alititude for speed, and them zoom down to absolute minimum for the maximum damage and to avoid turret fire, let off a couple of bombs, and you're done.  T0's are always doable once you have the minimum bomb, T1's and T2's aren't that hard if you don't stick around for enemy retaliation, and homeworlds aren't hard once you have the shield.

Finding a claiming a couple of good-color Spice planets early is the key to prosperity, though you may want to stick to Wild planets initially if you're playing without the Terraforming Tutorial exploit.  It's also helpful to concentrate on getting 2-3 good colonies before contacting any aliens.  As J.M. pointed out, they don't start their own rapid expansion until you talk to at least one.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

Going the other way, taking planets is fairly easy once you realize it's about nuking cities, not destroying ships or turrets.  Zoom along at maximum alititude for speed, and them zoom down to absolute minimum for the maximum damage and to avoid turret fire, let off a couple of bombs, and you're done.  T0's are always doable once you have the minimum bomb, T1's and T2's aren't that hard if you don't stick around for enemy retaliation, and homeworlds aren't hard once you have the shield.

I can take homeworlds with nothing but a minibomb. Not even health upgrades, so all I have is a 300/450 hp junkmobile. I will post a video of the new improved invasionary technique the next time I play.

Finding a claiming a couple of good-color Spice planets early is the key to prosperity, though you may want to stick to Wild planets initially if you're playing without the Terraforming Tutorial exploit.  It's also helpful to concentrate on getting 2-3 good colonies before contacting any aliens.  As J.M. pointed out, they don't start their own rapid expansion until you talk to at least one.

Spice hunting tips: There remains no doubt in my mind now that the colors of spice you can find are directly correlated to the color of star: M stars always have practically nothing but red, with a little yellow spice. As you move up the spectral classes, you shift towards the higher-classes of spice. Red spice is favored at M stars, you start seeing more yellow and green going into K and G stars, and A and higher tends to be dominated by increasing amounts of bluespice over red/yellow. So if you want to find higher-classes of spice, search hotter stars.

[Dopp]

Every now and then though you will get a purple/pink spice planet in even a red star system, so there's some randomness involved.

[Gus Smedstad]

I can take homeworlds with nothing but a minibomb.

I am simply not that awesome.  However, I've found that I generally don't need to invade (unless playing by Ur-quan rules) until I've got a few upgrades.

I have noticed that 1. damage seems to depend on distance to target, and 2. there's a dead spot where the turrets won't fire on you if you're in the center and very low.  Sometimes you'll run into a planet with very tall city hall / building models, and you can't get into that dead zone because it's blocked.

As you move up the spectral classes, you shift towards the higher-classes of spice. Red spice is favored at M stars, you start seeing more yellow and green going into K and G stars, and A and higher tends to be dominated by increasing amounts of bluespice over red/yellow. So if you want to find higher-classes of spice, search hotter stars.

I started to say that they should have made G-class stars have more life but tend toward red spice, and put the less common spice on harder to terraform worlds at the ends of the spectrum.  But then I remembered that M stars are about 75% of the stars out there.  So if you're going to have a correlation, crappy spice should be around class M's.

I don't think I've ever seen a Wild planet with anything better than Green.  Pink and Purple always seem to be on blue or red orbit planets.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

I have noticed that 1. damage seems to depend on distance to target, and 2. there's a dead spot where the turrets won't fire on you if you're in the center and very low.  Sometimes you'll run into a planet with very tall city hall / building models, and you can't get into that dead zone because it's blocked.

1. False. Bombs deliver the same damage every time: 300 per a mini, 600 for a medium, 1800 for a mega.
2. I have found that the hoverbomb technique works better with the higher-classes of bomb. With the minibomb, it really has its own invasion strategy, since any attempt to bomb with precision will get you mauled by the defenders when attacking a homeworld. With this NEW technique, I can roll through 2 or 3 cities on just 450 HP before having to repair.

I started to say that they should have made G-class stars have more life but tend toward red spice, and put the less common spice on harder to terraform worlds at the ends of the spectrum.  But then I remembered that M stars are about 75% of the stars out there.  So if you're going to have a correlation, crappy spice should be around class M's.

I'm not saying "going to have" or how it SHOULD be. I'm saying that this is how it IS. Look over any large empire you've had, and check the spice types: Red/yellow spice is nearly always dominant at M and K stars, with G stars showing red/yellow/some green, and A and higher stars having blue where you'd normally find red/yellow, with a smattering of pink/purple/some green.

Interestingly, your homeworld is always G-class star. This was particularly amusing in the "slug" game where the timeline said I took some 20 billion years to reach space. The lifespan of a G-star is around 10 billion, making that impossible. It'd be funny if you could lose by taking so long that your star puffs up into a red giant and eats you.