What to Colonise, And Why
You colonise for
1. Simple
territory
To deny resources to others, by being there first. For this
reason, it is a good idea to settle 1 colonist or crewman from exploring ships
on any planet you can reach. Then you can claim it is yours. Often this will
frighten other players away, as they do not want to start wars they are not
ready for. It is generally a good idea to establish borders a long way away
from your homeworld - it gives you a buffer warning zone if an enemy fleet
draws near. If someone refuses to accept a border and wipes out your 1-man
bases, it is little loss, and you have learnt there is an aggressive
neighbour to keep an eye on.
However! Whilst it is worthwhile dropping 1 colonist or crewman on a world you pass, if you have nothing else. (As this at least stops nervous players from
claiming the world if they see you have a "base" there)...
The minimum
size of a colony which you intend to grow, (for example to farm) is probably
50 people.
(Semi-interesting maths? ----Because the maximum number of supplies that factories can make is
the square root of (2 x population), per turn. So you need 50 colonists to
make 10 supplies a turn, and thus build farms at max allowed
rate.)
And you need 100 colonists to run a single mine.
2. Natives
Natives pay taxes and can be
useful in other ways. If you see natives on a planet, it moves up the
priority list for establishing a colony. Apart from Amorphs, you can gather
natives with just a 1-man colony. Once they have migrated into your base
from the planet's surface, they can be shipped elsewhere in Native Pods
(base Pods screen, if you build a pod launcher.) It is generally a good idea
to ship these home to your core worlds rather than leave them vulnerable to
attack and capture on your fringe. That way the taxes are generated where
you want them, etc.
For a more detailed description about Natives take a look at
www.furfur.demon.co.uk/geop/v4startup.htm#natives
Summary...
Best type overall: Amorphs, because
they generate lots of contraband Spice and thus cash. Downside: you need to
use about 100,000 colonists per base on an amorph world to replace people
eaten by Amorphous Worms each turn (think of the film/book "Dune").
Next best:
Amphibians, who produce free weapons; and Ghipsoids, who produce free
engines. These can be any tech level up to level 20, so they can give you a
real advantage at the start of a game. And some of those high tech weapons
are normally incredibly expensive and use loads of minerals.
One other
type of native stands out as Bad: Chupanoids. Try not to collect
these!
Natives don't join your bases every turn. Once SOME have joined a
base, the others begin pouring in, maybe 10% of the planet's population per
turn. There are some tricks to entice them in. You will find Amorphs
join much faster if you have a bit of Spice in the base. Ghips won't
join at all unless you have some Kierra Crystals. You can "seed" bases
with a native pod to get a starting population of, say, Bovinoids who
entice other Bovinoids on a planet in.
3. "Contraband"
Contraband
is probably a confusing misnomer. Some planets have abundant natural
resources: Spice; Kierra Crystals, Illegal Music CDs, etc. these can be
gathered by colonists, and either shipped elsewhere in a Gold Pod, or sold
on the spot. The price of "contraband" fluctuates slightly throughout the
game. You can hoard it and sell it when the price is high. You can even BUY
it (up to 10,000 units of each type per base per turn) when you think the
price is low to sell it later. Many players leverage this into their main
source of income after a dozen turns or so.
You need lots of colonists in
a base to gather contraband at full rate. If you have less than 400,000 they
will only gather a fraction of the contraband per turn. You don't gather
contraband every turn - it is pretty random - a normal race has a 1 in 4
chance of gathering SOME every turn on each base. It depends on the race's
"Psi" rating.
Planets with thousands of contraband are one of the most
important type of planet to settle and loot.
For more info on Contraband look at
www.furfur.demon.co.uk/geop/v4startup.htm#contraband
4. Minerals and
fuel
Important in most games. But don't worry about severe lack of minerals
in an average game until turn 50. I would tend to look for particularly
rich mineral worlds and build up to 99 mines on them over the course of
a few turns, this reduces the number of planets you need to worry about
defending. [There's no point building more than 99 - mine efficiency
falls sharply above 100 mines.] You may have to import food if they are
unfarmable. Send the minerals / ore home in pods or ships. Each mine
will need 100 colonists to operate. I also tend to build 10 mines per
world near my core, and send the occasional freighter round them to pick
up stuff.
Mines produce ore and smelt it into metal. You used to have
to build smelters too, but they are essentially obsolete now.
5. Special purposes
You
need a couple of worlds apart from your homeworld for specialised purposes.
This one may need a bit of explaining:
- You will want to train up crew,
troops and HG in large numbers. The best way to do this is by building
50-200 training centres (!) on one world near your homeworld. This many
training centres cuts the breeding rate dramatically so building them on
your HW is a bad idea. Put a population of, say, 400,000 colonists on this
world and they will rapidly get trained up. They can be sent home in ships
or pods as required. You will need to supply this world with plenty of food
so it should be farmable.
- You may be a race which can use
prisoners. Don't build prison mines / camps, which generate cash, on your
homeworld as the prisoners sometimes riot and destroy things. Put them on
nearby useless worlds.
- You will get short of food in mid game. Farm
anything you can.
other stuff....
Pods
Pods are described
in Tim Wisseman's Help files at
http://www.vgaplanets.com/v4doc/podcmd.htm
What
Tim's help files don't mention is that Pod Launchers are a cheap, low tech
structure which can be easily set up on colonies. They fling pods of
minerals, natives etc at a slow, constant speed into space for 25mc per
shot. They are an excellent way to strip peripheral worlds of stuff, but a
pod is reasonably visible and is like an arrow pointing at its waypoint:
"Hey! I'm shipping ore to an important world here!" or "Hey! I am sending
colonists out from this direction!" They make it easy to track down an enemy
homeworld.
Some people (like me) like Pods and use them a lot; others
prefer to move stuff with ships. I like them because I never have enough
ships. Also pod launching can be semi automated with some Minister
functions.
Another use for pods is: if you have a strong world near enemy
ones, you can launch assault pods at enemy worlds and land troops and maybe
take over their base. Of course, they'll probably have several turns to see
the slow pods coming but it is sometimes worth a go.
Ground
Assault
This is a technique for capturing enemy bases (complete with natives,
structures, minerals and, hopefully, prisoners). It consists, in short,
of landing troops and high guard and maybe "mechs" on an enemy world,
and they set up a base. Two enemy bases on the same planet will fight if
either is set to something other than "Peaceful".
When doing this, one
problem is that your ships will destroy the enemy base unless you switch
"Attack Ground" OFF on your ships. It is best to use them for killing enemy
ships etc in orbit.
This is such a complex subject, and not a situation which
is likely to occur in the early stages of a game, that I will not cover it
here. If you want to know more, I suggest you read:
The official Help
files (the on line version is more up to date)
http://www.vgaplanets.com/v4doc/startf.htm
also
www.furfur.demon.co.uk/geop/vgap4combat.htm#groundassaults
- I tried to make this simple, and it has a nice explanatory diagram.
www.furfur.demon.co.uk/geop/gcexplain.doc
- a fairly technical explanation by David Bandy.
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