The player begins the game with 2 scout ships and 1 colony ship and no knowledge of any outside systems.
The scouts should unquestionably sent out to survey the surrounding worlds first turn. In efficient play this will always happen first turn. It is hard to argue that any other course of action has any merit whatsoever.
The use of the colony ship, though, is more complex. It can either remain in the home system until the scouts find it a suitable place to colonize or it can be used as a scout ship itself. We'll get to those refinements later.
So. Send off your scouts, small or large. If you find only one habitable world within range, clearly that is where your colony ship should go. If you find two or more, then factor these into the decision as to which world to colonize first:
- worlds that can take more people are better;
- worlds that are Fertile are better;
- Rich habitable worlds are wonderful;
- Artifacts worlds are very good.
Ties or near ties may be decided by where your colony ship is right now, or which choice will open up more star systems for exploration. (It's also nice if your second world is just 3 or 4 parsecs from a few likely habitable stars; it gives you more choices for your third world, and you can get more colonists out that way later.)
Some players like their second world to concentrate on research, once it is full of factories, and they concentrate their home world on building colony ships - which makes Artifacts worlds very good second worlds.
Once you have landed your colony ship, transport some people from your home world to the new world. Natural population growth depends upon the number of people already on the planet; so it is very slow for a planet to grow from 2 people to 9. But if you send 7 people from your home world to the new world, it will take the home planet only about 3 turns to replace them. (In the 6 turn model the first delivery of colonists might be 16 people.) It can pay to send more than one delivery of colonists; planetary populations grow fastest when the planet is about half full.
If you're lucky enough to find a habitable Rich world within range, keep sending colonists til it is nearly full; this will be a ship-building world rather than a research world, and you want it ready to go ASAP. Same logic usually applies to Rich worlds you colonize later.
Keep your scout ships exploring - think about their courses so that they do not have to backtrack; they are very slow! This is the eXplore part of eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate.
Keep your home planet focused on building factories until the industry slider begins to report 'MAX' (unless you're playing Meklar, when getting to MAX takes forever - you need to colonize before then!); then consider diverting resources to other goals.
Do you need another scout ship? Build it just as your slider starts to MAX - then start work on the colony ship, if you have at least one more habitable planet in your (expanded) range.
Are you going to need to do some research to get anywhere? Go into the Tech screen and set all your research to Propulsion, Planetary, or (usually) some mix of both, depending whether you've scouted out habitable but remote worlds, or Barren/Tundra near by.
If you have close by habitable worlds, set most of your 'over max' resources to the colony ship and just seed one or two clicks into technology; if you do not, focus on the technology and leave starting the second colony ship until the relevant bulb is better than half full (at which point you can split your efforts so the colony ship is ready about the time you get your breakthrough.)
A factory takes at least 10 turns to pay back its investment. (20 if you count pollution.) A cloned colonist takes twice as long (unless you're a Klackon). What this means that if it's going to take more than 20 turns to build that colony ship (i.e. if you can only spare one or two clicks), don't start yet - keep investing in your production instead. You'll get the colony ship sooner by starting it later! If you've got more than twice as many factories as colonists, sink those one or two clicks into colonists for a few turns.
Once your second colony ship is ready, you can really begin the eXpand phase of the game - not that you're done exploring, especially not in a Large or Huge galaxy. Your third colony ship should not be nearly so long in coming!
As you send out more and more colony ships, transport colonists after them. Once your first worlds fill up, they can both donate a few colonists to each new world, with minimal, temporary impact on their own production. Although once it takes more than 10 turns to get out to the new world, you may be better leap-frogging colonists to the second generation colonies.
You will always have either Hydrogen fuel cells (range 4) or Deuterium (Range 5) available as your first propulsion tech. Whether, after that, you go for faster engines or greater range depends on what you're offered and whether you need that range boost to get to more habitable planets.
Your first Planetology tech might be Terraforming +10 (good if the planets you're colonizing are on the smaller side, or just because it's so cheap and will still be enough to unlock the next tier of planetology techs.) Or Controlled Barren Environment (good if you've scouted one, especially if it's Rich) or Improved Ecological Restoration, which will free up resources - a good choice when you have larger habitable planets to colonize. Your second Planetology tech will hopefully be Controlled Tundra Environment or Controlled Dead Environment. Larger galaxies won't be out of nice habitable planets when you research this second tech, but you might well be finding that you've colonized every non-hostile planet in easy reach. Building one or two ships for hostile planets may let you extend your range so you can get regular colony ships out to the nice planets.
Grab rich planets early. Colonise lesser planets later, and if you find there's a side of the galaxy that only you can reach, you'll want to mostly grab the planets between you and the AI first. (Dangling a scout ship over each of your new colonies can provide some protection against early invasion.)
Thus goes the eXpand phase.
Why would you use your first colony ship as a scout ship?
To better understand how to proceed it is helpful to discuss the cost of letting it sit in the home system and do nothing. It is not readily apparent, but there is a cost.
For a normal race like the Humans, on the impossible difficulty setting, the maintenance cost for the 3 starting ships is 23.5%. This means that nearly 1/4 of the entire production of the planet is being used to support the 3 ships that are currently in space.
If the player deleted all these ships, that would reduce right away to give the player productive use of the production base that is being wasted. The difference between an effective production of 76.5% (100% - 23.5%) and 100% is a gain of 30.7% (23.5% / 76.5% = ~30.7%).
These resources are not used equally by each of the 3 ships in the sky. Maintenance costs depend on the cost to put a ship in space. The cost to build one of these scout ships is 10 BC. The cost to build a Colony Ship is 590 BCs. That means 96.7% of the production wasted on ship maintenance is being used to support the colony ship (590 / (590 + 10 + 10) = ~96.7%).
Deleting the colony ship right away results in the support cost being reduced from 23.5% straight to 0.0% (because the cost becomes so small it rounds down rather than even rounding up to 0.1%).
The cost for letting the ship sit around and do nothing is then letting the 23.5% of resources it is consuming remain present, reducing the productivity of your entire empire by that much until something happens with it.
If you dismantle it right away you can only get back 1/4 of the cost to produce it, and eventually you do want to have more of these so you can expand your empire so you are 75% of the cost behind if you dismantle this one and build another one later.
The best use of the colony ship is generally to use it to colonize a second world as quickly as possible.
The question is then how it can be used as quickly as possible.
The two options are, again, (1) leaving it in space over the main colony until the scouts have sent in survey reports, or (2) to use it as an additional scout.
The way to decide is to guess what will happen in the future doing both options and then decide which is the most likely to have the best outcome.
The colony ship begins with a distance of 3 which means it can only go a distance of 3 away from the main colony. The map is generated randomly, but it is very likely that there will be only 1 or 2 planets within a range of 3 from the home world. There is a significant chance to be zero within that range and a very very slim chance to have 3 or more within range.
If there are none, it is almost unquestionably a good idea just to dismantle it and use the money from selling it for scrap metal to increase the rate of production of factories.
Note: In the higher difficulties, pro players will probably always quit the game and restart in a new galaxy with better prospects. The likelihood to win any game where there is zero planets within a range of 3 from the home world on Impossible difficulty is very very small for even expert players.
If there is only one colony ship within a range of 3 from the home planet there is essentially zero cost to sending the colony ship directly to it and using it as a scout for that system. If the information comes back that it is a habitable world, the colony ship can colonize it right away.
If the planet is a range of 3 away and you are using the plan to keep the colony ship in orbit over the colony and scout the planet with a regular scout and then send the colony ship later if it is habitable the time it takes for the scout to get there is 3 turns and then the colony ship is launched and another 3 turn wait is required.
Contrast that with 3 turns total if the colony ship scouts itself and then lands right away for a total of 3 turns.
The difference in costs between these 2 courses of action is 23.5% of planetary resources over 3 turns under the 6 turn strategy and not paying those costs in the 3 turn strategy.
That is a lot of resources to waste in the 6 turn strategy. The starting production of the home planet is between (impossible) 40 people x 0.5 BC = 20 BC + 30 factories x 1 = 30 = 50 BCs total and (simple) 10 extra people = 5 extra BCs = 55 BCs total.
Three turns of 23.5% worth of that total being wasted is 70.5% of one whole turn's production or a waste of 38.775 BCs = 38 BCs.
You gain 38 BCs worth of production by landing the colony ship 3 turns sooner. Since factories can be built for 10 BCs, that is 3.8 extra factories you are behind the 3 turn strategy if you use the 6 turn strategy and you will be producing 3.8 factories x 1 BC per turn = 3.8 BCs a turn less than them every turn until the 3 turn strategy maxes its total production. That could take dozens of turns amounting to hundreds of lost BCs in total production.
The price, then, to use the 6 turn strategy is hundreds of BCs you don't have that game and the loss of everything those BCs would have gotten you.
There is, however, a possibility where it is better to use the 6 turn strategy. If there are 2 planets within a range of 3 from your home world that are greater than a distance of 3 from each other AND you pick wrong about which world to send your colony ship to.
If this happens, your colony ship gets to the wrong system and then must depart from there to head to the right system. If the 2 colonies were on exactly opposite sides of the home world, the potential additional distance could be 6 turns, 3 to get back home and 3 to get to the other colony. That would result in keeping the ship in space 9 turns instead of 6 in the worst case.
If the 2 new planets are exactly a distance of 3 apart from each other there is no benefit to waiting and still a drawback for waiting if you would have picked right, so there is no reason not to send the colony ship right away to the most likely to be successful choice.
That narrow situation where there are 2 and they are at least a distance of 4 apart is the only case where it might make sense not to send the colony ship out as a scout on turn 1. However, reconsider if one of your nearest worlds is Orion. Having your first colony ship crushed by the Guardian is "restart game" time. Another concern is that if your colony ship finds an Artifacts planet, and you colonize it immediately, you do not get your free tech. However, if you scout an Artifacts planet with a colony ship, and say 'No' to the initial offer of colonization, then you get the tech as normal - and you can leave the ship there to colonize the planet the following turn.
Note also, using it as a scout also lets you use the scout that would have scouted that world to scout something else instead, allowing you to scout more worlds faster. This can be an advantage.
Note: It is entirely possible to skip this decision making process entirely, and most pros probably will. To do this, just save the game before you do anything, then use the colony ship as a scout, and if you were wrong then reload the save and send it to the right colony instead. There is absolutely no downside to doing this if it is within the realm of what you consider "ethical" play. Pros mostly play on the hardest difficulty setting and there is no room for getting a bad start. The penalty in an impossible game for getting a less than optimal start is having much less likelihood to win. This is not based on skill, just on a wrong guess. Many pros want the game to be decided by actual skill rather than a wrong guess on turn 1, so they will not have problems reloading the save in this manner.
Note also: The way that would bring the most skill into the game and take the most luck out of it would be if the designers had pre-scouted everything within a range of 3 for you before the game starts, but they didn't.
The SCOUT2 Ship[edit]
At the start of the game, if you enter the "Design" screen, it will present you with a ship design identical to the starting Scout ship.
You might not notice it, but that design is only 8 BC compared to the starting 10 BC "SCOUT" class.
Thus, you always want to build a "SCOUT2" class that is only 8 BC, as it is a 20% discount on scouts. For a specific amount of BC, you get 25% more scout ships.
The same holds true for the Colony Ship, if you create one by the editor, it is slightly cheaper than the predesigned one you start with. However, the savings on the Colony Ship is smaller percentage-wise, so it's not often done; you don't really get to get the ship a turn earlier if you do this, so the benefit there is minimal.
After using your first Colony Ship, you should spend a turn of your home planet's production into a batch of SCOUT2s. Using SCOUT2 instead of SCOUT usually lets you get one more scout in that batch. With this batch, you can spread out nearby worlds and discover them immediately instead of waiting for your starting two scouts to slowly move, a great boost in the early eXplore stage.
Further, since you have a small handful of scouts, you can often leave one of them at a star with a valuable planet while your other scouts go exploring. While the scout has no weapons, other unarmed ships, such as the starting scouts and colony ships of your opponents, will still retreat if you do not (just click Done instead of Retreat), so it is still useful as an initial deterrent against their expansion. If you're lucky, even armed early ships might be packing 2-pack nuclear missiles, and your scout has a chance to dodge both shots and make them retreat. Further, if you can manage to score an early Non-aggression Pact or get the AI to like you better than Neutral (such as by playing Humans or bribing them with techs), the alien empire may respect even just a single scout as a sort of "claim" to that star, and decide to expand elsewhere rather than risk relations with you, buying you even more time to build a colony ship or tech up to actually colonize it.
Note that in general the AI in the early game will prefer to expand into stars which it has scouted, so if you post a SCOUT or SCOUT2 at the edges of your extended range, you can not only turn back enemy scouts or colony ships, you deny knowledge of that star to the AI. The AI might then scout a different star far from you, and possibly near to another AI, which it can decide to colonize instead of the one where you have a SCOUT or SCOUT2 posted, which can trigger conflict between them (diverting their resources towards warships instead of colony ships) and give you a better chance of actually planting a colony and get greater power later on. Thus, the early use of a few handfuls of SCOUT2s is important at the highest difficulty levels.
The LR LASER Ship[edit]
Another early ship design is a Medium ship with Reserve Fuel Tanks and two Laser weapons, commonly called LR LASER since it is a long-range laser ship.
These will replace the SCOUT and SCOUT2 pickets that are currently posted on valuable worlds, so that they can go back to exploring. With enough of them, you can claim a valuable world even from aliens you have not met, as they may decide to not risk their early armed ships against yours and instead expand elsewhere. If you find an Artifacts or Rich or Ultra Rich world just outside your colonization range, you want to pour in multiple of these instead of on colony ships (and if those worlds are outside your colonization range, it may not make much point to build colony ships).
Research Trickling[edit]
The game rules regarding research contain a peculiarity: if you make an initial large investment in a tech, then afterwards provide a small trickle of research in that technology, you get a massive bonus in the trickle and end up paying less than half of RPs for the technology. You trade off taking more time, but getting some extra BCs you can spend (because you are spending only a trickle of research, you can spend your BCs elsewhere) in the meantime.
Usually you want to research Propulsion and Planetology early in the game. If you have the cheaper options in the tech tree (Improved Terraforming +10 and Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Range 4)), and those options make sense for your game (e.g. lots of small colonizable planets nearby, or colonizable planets at range 4), you can initially put all your available production of your two starting planets and focus it into the appropriate field for one turn, then return your homeworld to colony ship production or factories, and your second world to factories, plus a trickle of about 3 or so RPs starting with the next turn. This can get you a lot more research progress for a lower amount of BCs (but spread out over more turns), and the extra BCs can be spent on factories for future production or new colony ships for the planets that are reachable now.
More specifically, the amount of RPs already spent on the technology is measured, then 6% of that is computed. The part of the BCs allocated to that technology in each turn, that is less than the measured 6%, is multiplied by 3, before being converted into RP. For example, if you already have 100 BC into an early technology, if you invest only 6 BC per turn, it gets multiplied to 18 RPs. If instead you invest 12 BC per turn, 6 of that is multiplied (to 18) but the remaining 6 is not, and you get 24 RPs instead (only a 33% increase in research speed for a 100% increase in the amount you invested). Thus, it makes sense early in the game to do a single turn "burst" of research in a single technology, then trickle-research that technology after that, with most of the production going to factories and colony ships in the mean time. With this, you can get an early Range 4 tech at the same time you are building factories and colony ships at the homeworld, possibly even getting the Range 4 tech before you finish the colony ship that needs it.
Do note you need that initial one-turn burst of pure research in all your planets first, then trickle-research later. Don't just trickle-research immediately without that initial burst.
After the initial 50 to 100 turns of the land-grab part of yhe game, playing around with this is no longer worth the effort to micromanage the research, and you can just allocate to technology according to how much threat your neighbors are.
Early Research[edit]
Generally, the first field you want to focus on is Propulsion, for either the Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Range 4) or the Deuterium Fuel Cells (Range 5). In about 75% of games (unless you go Psilons) you won't have a choice in your initial range tech, but if you do get the lucky 25% where you have a choice, you probably want Range 4 unless you have few stars that are not bridgeable without Range 5. Trickle-research your initial range tech as described above; you want to keep building factories at your homeworld in the meantime, then build colony ships. If your second colony happens to give you access to more planets, or you have more than one good option within 3 parsecs of your homeworld, then build colony ships while trickle-researching the range tech in the backgroud, otherwise if you need range tech to get more planets, dedicate more of your available homeworld production to research.
Afterwards, you want to open Planetology. Usually Controlled Barren is not a good option since it rarely increases the number of new planets you can colonize, but if you find an Artifacts, Rich, or Ultra Rich Barren then it's your best option. Otherwise, the Terraforming +10 or the Improved Eco Restoration are usually better. The former in particular is unfairly cheap, and if you have a number of small worlds, can greatly increase your population (and therefore your early power). You often want Planetology since the second tier can get you Controlled Tundra or Controlled Dead or both, which often open up quite a few planets as colonization options.
Finally, head over to Construction. Improved Industrial Tech 9 is a fairly small boost in your rate of building factories (and you might have gotten most of your early factories already built by the time you finish researching this), and if you got Improved Eco Restoration from Planetology you might not find Reduced Industrial Waste quite as important, but do note that Construction techs not only increase the capacity of ship designs, they also miniaturize Reserve Fuel Tanks. If there are colonizable planets at range 6, and you were unlucky enough to not have Irridium Fuel Cells (Range 6) in your tree, you can instead get a few levels in Construction rather than try to research a tier 2 Propulsion tech and then Dotomite Crystals (Range 7), you spend less BCs researching up to tier 2 of Construction (Dotomite Crystals are a tier 3 tech, thus significantly more expensive than a tier 2 Construction tech), which can be enough, with a tier 2 Planetology tech, to cram a Reserve Fuel Cells and a Standard Colony Base into a Large hull; even with "just" Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Range 4) that design can reach up to Range 7. The design will probably not fit any weapons, so a few LR LASERs would be useful in escorting it.