![[Fed Battle]](../all/fedbattle3watermarked500.jpg "Feds meeting their match???")
| (You have just come from here - the Turn 2 page) The Feds - Turn 3 VCR Base HQ Ship Building Some Basic Hot Keys Enough Chat! - Ships Birds, turn 3 Tech Homeworld base Ships THE END - FOR NOW!!! The Feds - Turn 3
In Planets4.exe - from
the FILES menu, select game 1 (Testgame). Open the Feds turn |
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| Engines | because your ships need to move as fast as possible for obvious reasons. And it's cheap. |
| Hull | to build better ships to kill Birds with. |
| Planet | taking it to tech 2. You need to begin building "Pod Launchers" soon. |
| Point Defense | Useful and cheap. PD weapons are the ones that shoot down incoming fire and enemy fighters. |
| Large Weapons | For a forthcoming Bird Cull. |
| Generators | Fairly cheap (500mc) and moderately useful. Lets you use bigger weapons than your engines alone can power. |
| Shields | Keeps you alive longer. |
NEW STUFF: Now switch to the MINISTERS sub screen of "HQ". Select "Bases". From this, click the Build Farms (If Climate Supports) button.  If you now return to the Fed Base and look at the Struct screen, you'll see that there are 10 farms queued up to be built this turn. (If not, you probably overlooked clicking the red X on the base overview screen a few stages back.) Imagine being able to do that when you have an empire of 50 planets. What a time saver! I suggest you have a good look at the Ministers screen in HQ. You'll see there are all kinds of empire-wide orders you can issue: structure building, ship control, etc. SHIP BUILDINGThe intelligent thing to do now, would be to kill that dangerous enemy Wing (and ships). And the best way to do that, at this stage, would be with another Wing - because you can't yet build a ship which can take on that monster Wing.Tactics Digression Another option in a game with more players, would be to tell a player like the Evil Empire (EE), "I think the Bird homeworld is at x,y and he has stripped his HW defences to raid me. He's wide open." The EE can use hyperspace to drop in unexpectedly on people. There are ways of blocking hyperspace travel but not for all races, and not until you get to higher hull tech levels. The primary defence against the EE in the early game is the homeworld's fighters. The EE has a huge incentive to kill other players as soon as possible, because the EE starts out strong, then usually grows... but not as quickly as other races who breed faster... a compound interest effect occurs and the EE drop further and further behind everyone else. Unless they can find and knock out a few rivals early! But we're playing the Federation. And Captain Kirk was never known for acting logically. So instead, I'm going to show you how to build a ship. From the BASE overview screen, click the Ship subscreen. From here, hit SELECT HULL. (You can't miss it!) From here, select NOCTURNE CLASS DESTROYER. You may want to use the Holds / Power, Weapons and Specifications buttons to look at this ship's abilities. One to note is that under the "Specifications", Shield Power is shown as 400.  Now hit "OK". We jump to a new screen.  Click Small Weapons. A list of available weaponry appears - including the pulsed lasers we built last turn. Click on those several times, until the maximum (6) have been transferred to the middle part of this screen. For Large Weapons, select a couple of weapons and add them to the recipe. ( I used 2 Heavy Lasers (Olly)) For Point Defense, we have some free stuff - take say 3 holo decoys (these help against fighters) and an Intercept (no use at all against fighters, but quite good versus ships). Engines... pick an engine... some ships need several. They must all be the same type. ( I used a Lasno-1 (Olly)) Shields... now, remember that this ship's shield rating is 400? That's the max it can use. All shield names include a number (like Fleece S-30) indicating their power. Note that the client will allow you to put that expensive 3000 point shield on the Nocturne. What you will find, however, is that it will ONLY act like a 400 point shield in battle. ( I used a Fleece -S30 (Olly)) Armour : just click on the green arrow pointing left and the correct amount will get used from stock. I don't think it's particularly well displayed. Now click DONE, then BUILD SHIP in the next screen, to build the ship. Wahoo! Ship build order done ! A footnote about ship building is here. Some new controls to experiment with SOME BASIC HOT KEYSRange Finding Circles (Numeric - "0")Click on the Wing at your homeworld, making it the Hammer. It is composed of Io fighters, which have a speed (range) of 110 LY (Light Years). Let's see what's in range. Press the following key on the NUMERIC (square) keypad: "0". Circles, centred on the Wing, appear on the screen. (If not, maybe your NUM LOCK light is off?) These rings are "filtered" depending on how much the map is "zoomed in/out" Red rings are at 100LY intervals - as you zoom in further White rings at 10LY intervals will appear If you zoom in further - NO rings will appear (a bit sad that - bug maybe?) Centre Map Numeric ("5") Now click on another object, off to the side of the map, making it the Hammer object. And press "5" on the numeric keypad. See how the map jumps to centre on the new object? Map Zoom (Numeric +, -) Odd - these used to work - hmm 8) Ah. For some reason these are now on the numeric keypad only. Tim must have changed that in the last client upgrade. Ship Speed (Top Keyboard keys 1 - 9) Make one of your ships the hammer object. Try pressing the (non numeric) number keys, like 1 or 9. See how the speed jumps? The important one is 9, this sets speed to max. (don'f forget to leave the ship that way) ----------- Data Grid This is brought up by a button 10 to the right of "FILES" on the top toolbar  .I've used a screenshot from a more developed game to show you how you can list and compare lots of objects at once - in this case, I was looking to see how many ships the enemy had, and of what types.  Use the Type and Sort by selection tools to choose what to list... It looks REALLY scary at first but imagine the power of being able to organise all your bases by fuel, during a fuel shortage... or find out where that "lost" ship of yours is ("I know I have another destroyer, but the map is cluttered." You can find it on the datagrid and then jump to it by making it the hammer.) Basically it is a database, allowing you to do all the neat things spreadsheets are famed for, and allows you to list and organise just about every property of bases, ships, wings etc that you can think of. People are always thinking of new uses for it. There is even a way to export it to Excel, though of course it changes each turn. HOT KEY Digression OVER So - close all that - and select the Home World base again Let's review what orders we have given this Base. On the top toolbar click the "Pending Orders"  button. Clicking this shows you a summary of the important orders (not structure building) for the current hammer object. If you click on Ship Launch entry on the left of this screen, you will see the ship we just ordered built, described.  Note also that there is a "Delete" button. In VGAP4 you can undo any command. Very useful. Enough Chat! - SHIPSLet's deal out some "Fed Justice" to that enemy Bird Wing.RIGHT click on that Bird wing (red) and make it the Anvil. LEFT click on your own Wing (green) at your homeworld. Let's see if 50 Io fighters can kill 50 (or so) Bird fighters. Bring up the Fed Wing's Overview Screen. I believe Speed is alreay set to max (110). Click on Nav to switch to that screen. Click on the Intercept "Set" button. A "Quick Pick" screen pops up. See the bit on here where it says "lock onto anvil object"? If that shows the Bird wing, click "OK". Now let's set the Io fighters' attack options. Click on the ATTACK button to bring up their attack options screen. Turn OFF "Quick Strike and Run", Turn ON "Anti Fighter" and "Close to Point Blank". REASON: this will make the Ios better against the Bird fighters, whose weapons have a better range. The Ios are going to get more shots in if they try to close with the enemy. "Quick Strike" flybys would be better against ships. Now let's finish ordering the freighters around. Make Whoop Whoop Holler the Anvil, click on its Transfer screen. Tell it to Transfer to "the planet at the next waypoint" (Boring Planet). Onto Boring Planet, drop all remaining cash, colonists, supplies, food on board; and beam up all metals and fuel you can carry. Set the freighter's next waypoint (number 2) as your homeworld, by left-clicking the 
Waypoint 2 button on the top toolbar, then left-clicking on your
homeworld. We don't want to hang around this area when we suspect the
Birds lie dangerously close to or North.The other freighter (Assymetric Dog) down south has already been set up to transfer stuff to planet Mann when it arrives. But we may as well give it a second waypoint so it doesn't waste time on turn 4. Make Assymetric Dog the Hammer and click on the Waypoint 2 button on the top toolbar. Then left-click on the next planet, Mao 5, in that area (you may have to expand the map scale to see what you're doing). If the Nebula "Planned Obsolescence" survived the battle with the Birds, why not send it to the Bird homeworld (Wayne's World) to see what happens... select Planned Obsolescence and pull up its Nav screen. If it is set for Intercepting The Revenge Of The Birds - clear that - and it should revert to waypoint one - Wayne's World... That's the Feds done. Hit the FILES button, then MAKE TRN FILE. Birds, turn 3TECH(from the HQ button): you should have over 10k in your central account.Upgrade EVERYTHING except Superweapons and Hyperdrive, which are no use to you. You'll still have change left over. Let's try something new. From the HQ button you can also access a screen called EXOTIC TECH. Open that. Here we find a whole heap of things to waste excess money on. The reason these are here, is that at the end of the game you will have too much money(!). So there are some very expensive ways you can spend it to get an edge. The idea is that no matter how much money you have, you will never be able to afford all of these.  The Exotic Tech screen opens up on the "Pods Ships" subscreen. Click the button labelled "Agnomic Emitter A". This will boost your ships' shields - for all of your ships! If a boosted ship falls into enemy hands, they don't get this bonus: it only applies to ships you own. The cost is an initial one off payment of 1000mc and a "continuous payment" thereafter of 100mc / turn. The square button goes green if you click it, meaning the Exotic will be activated in the coming turn. If the round red button below was green, it would mean it is already active, and all you need to pay is the maintenance cost. If you scan through these sub screens you will see some mouth watering boosts. WARNING! Anyone who spends money on Exotic Techs this early in the game is probably wasting it. Why, you ask? Answer: because unlike normal techs, or structures, these are transitory investments which suck money up, need extra money to run them once they're bought, and don't produce an economic return. You can't afford them yet. The only exceptions - Exotic Techs worth paying for in the early game - are arguably Pod [speed] Kicker A and (after turn 20) Tank-O-Tronic A, because these help you grow your empire faster, and there is a lot of disagreement over whether even these are really worth it. Some of these Exotics take many turns to save up for, and if your economy takes a downturn you find a cascading effect as you cannot keep up the maintenance payments... so you lose more battles and territory... so you have less money to keep them going... in general, don't buy these until you need them. It is very nice to know your shields are boosted, but if you don't (normally) actually expect a fight for several turns, it is throwing money away. --- Homeworld base: AND make sure it IS the Homeworld screen !!!Overview screen: To the right of the "LOG" button, click the red X, so Ministers can auto-build stuff for you. In the Switches screen, turn the Government Centre down to 8,000mc. In the Struct screen, build a Pod Launcher and 10 farms. [Actually due to another cock up we don't have the planet tech needed for a pod launcher yet. no matter. Queue it anyway.] Build all the cities you can again - but keep supplies positive. Let's build a ship.Hit the Base's Ship button.Now hit SELECT HULL Select WHITE FALCON CLASS CRUISER / OK Small weapons: fit 6 pulsed lasers Large weapons: fit 1 particle cannon Point Defence: fit 2 Intercepts Generators: ignore Engines: fit two FTL5 warp drives Shield: Fit Fleece S30 Armour: fit as much as will fit on board (click the top green arrow once) Hit DONE Back to previous screen. Hit BUILD SHIP Now go to the Parts screen and queue up some weapons etc for building ships next turn... (I'm going to skip that because by the time you build that ship, on turn 5, this tutorial will have progressed beyond this level of detail and be discussing strategy.) Now click on planet Gieneh, NE of your homeworld. See how there is a new Base of yours there? Make that the hammer, openup its Structures screen, and build 10 farms, 10 mines and a pod launcher there. SHIPSShip LUMBERJACKSet this to Intercept (Nav screen) enemy Fed ship Whoop Whoop Holler! if you can see it. If not, just keep heading for Boring Planet, where it was last seen heading for. The idea is to destroy it. Ship DEAD PARROT Head for planet Shaddan. Idea is to end the turn at the same position as our Wing. That's because the Wing will run out of fuel en route south, but it will refuel off a ship if they end the turn at the same point. Wings (fighters) use so little fuel compared to a ship, the game engine ignores the fuel loss from the ship. Alternatively: Avoid suspected Fed homeworld Odonia by, say, 50LY (we know they live there because the ships we've seen have raditaed out from that general direction). The idea is to scout the enemy and see what's in this region, then maybe next turn prey on more freighters. Also, if they see our ship in the area, they will have to swing into defensive mode. Wing REVENGE OF THE BIRDS Head for planet Shaddan to refuel from our ship Dead Parrot Thats about done for the Birds! Go to the Files menu - make sure you MAKE TRN for both Feds and Birds! That was turn 3.... |
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