I'm truly amazed by this game but this is the third time I attempt to play it and the AI at normal just obliterates me. I managed to build a couple of 500 sized capital ships , and to bring fleet attack power to 300k, but then the AI comes up with huge ships and fleets with an attack power of 1.000.000!!! how am I supposed to get fleets this big and powerful??

I do my best to boost up my economy but get obliterated every time. Also, is there any way to become friends with the AI? they will at best sign trade treaties, but never ally.

juanfgs, I'm not especially brilliant at the combat side, or any of it really, but I can offer a couple of tips.

1. This game is unlike any other "4X" style in my experience, in that you will grow much faster if you don't rush out and grab planets in a huge rush. Explore, work out which planets you will be developing to high level, and focus entirely on just building the necessary support planets you need. Colonizing too many marginal outposts will leave you dragging, short of resources, while the AI empires outgrow you.

2. For the first game or three, I highly recommend setting starting conditions so an AI or two are on your team. This will give you support, as well as additional knowledge about the galaxy. You can also, I suppose, note how they are developing, and learn from their example (I admit, I never really did that).

3. When building a first capital ship, skip the smallest starting design - you'll want to build a heavy carrier fleet, and then you can be confident of having equal or superior firepower to the AI in the early running. Definitely use a mix of ships in the fleet, to handle most circumstances. I tend to pick racial advantages that ensure my starting picks aren't wasted on the little ones. Of course, with the numbers you are quoting, you're already well past this stage.

(I'm not talking about custom ship design here, since that's a huge, interesting topic in itself)

Regarding early expansion, I'm doing my best to level up my first world as fast as possible. However it's still not clear to me which criteria to use to pick my secondary developed worlds, I guess I should choose one with plenty space (to develop and build stuff).

I must clarify that I've managed to build some big ships (1.6 million in cost) using dry dock. In my latest game I also found out about hulls, which allow me to reduce the cost but using ore instead of ludicrous amounts of money (sadly it was really late in game and I didn't develop miners). I still can't find a way to get enough money fast to be able to outproduce the AI.

I've tried to colonize worlds with money resources, but they don't seem to make a dramatic impact in my economy. In my latest game I achieved by middle game a steady income of 1.6 million but by that time the hoonan empire started attacking my worlds.

Also design-wise, should I upgrade or scale the designs for support ships? should my main strength of my fleet come from support ships or from big capital ships?

Edit: Thanks a lot for taking time to answer!

tip 1; play teams, four player game should have you in team 1, some other race also in team 1 and the other races in their own teams so team 3 & 4 etc... goto game settings and untick allow serrender to break allies.

tip 2; class 2 worlds are good money but the first you want is a world with the red area... these worlds are your research worlds.

tip 3; don't leave your homeworld without people. build up one of the level 2 planets and send out units from there when ever you can as the homeworld pop is your main income.

tip 4, early days, grab one of the victory class ships off the forum and build them instead of the basic designs... these ships are cheap, have guns for killing remant ships and missiles for support | planet bashing.

tip 5, if you have spare cash but don't need stuff then build some ship and give them to your team mate to help him out.

tip 6, don't have more ships than you can pay for each turn, 1 victory destroy can kill a remant half again as big and three is a powerful force in the starting game but you must unlock better builds to keep that edge.

there is no (this = win) senario but basic good management rules apply... if the other players are in your back yard then you need to deal with now but if they are a ways off and plently of good planets around then they will not come around yet

As far as choosing which worlds to develop, I pick worlds with resources which scale (for example, bring one planet with FTL crystals up to level 5), and pay less attention to the available space (there are always floating continents to add). And then, of course, make use of proto-worlds and other means to push development of money (if that's your greatest need). Note which resources provide money pressure (electronics, for instance), and make sure they are being used by your major planets. But I suspect you are doing this already, to get as far as you have. But 1.6 million per budget cycle isn't that much, yet... be frugal with ship construction, focus on development and keep just 2 or 3 fleets until you are richer.

I find ore a nuisance to manage - it seems critical, but I'm just no good with it.

I use all custom designs for support ships, the stock ones are pretty poor. There are great ones available online, if you don't mind using someone else's creativity to your benefit! I'd have to look back at an old game for my usual ratio, but I definitely expect far more punch from the support ships. Watch supply levels carefully, and don't succumb to the temptation to use a ship that's poorly supplied - your losses will be terrible.

There's just so much depth to this game... hopefully someone else will pipe up with better tips, mine are quite obvious.

The rate of expansion differs greatly with different races. Some simply expand faster and better than others. Oko is one of the faster ones, because they can completely colonize a planet with just one ship rather than 20ish like human.

But human and hoonanm can just send ships, from planets to other planets. So it make your planets what colonizes other planets so the more planets you have the faster you can colonize.

The likes of nyli that use just one source to colonize, a mother ship, until you BUILD more sources will always expand less fast and get less money because mothersihps cost upkeep (except the ones given at start)
(which is why I play niyly with a mod that gives them 3 motherships in the start to make them expand faster)

..I actually learned this a bit too late myself xO, for me expansion is the problem I don't seem to use my time effectively and don't expand enough haha.

well whatever.

eh, on playing better.. one of the important thing to do is to have good ships, from Target arrow (10+ laser shots to kill it but1 torp to kill it)_ big 60-100 support ones.. Efficient effective etc, or just have lots of funny ones, it doesn't matter too much has long as it's better than the randomized AI's.
The design tab where others designs are shown is great..

I say go for Ixions if you want early defensive ships, the remnant shipyards that give out the 500 size ships that have no maintenance and lots of support are really useful.

Before starruler 2.0 The AI was surrender happy, if your military str was way above theirs they didn't fight back a tiny bit and tried to surrender a lot, this lead to easier less time consuming wins, but it also was a bit eh.. Less challenging and less fun battles. THe changes that after 2.0 made it so you have to do more to make them surrender than "just exist".

The way I did that before 2.0 was mainly support ships around planets and outposts! My ships are more effective (usually) than the AI's and have higher dps/hp. With an outpost in every system I had (admittedly it can get expensive) I got lots of def per turn and it built up quite an empire of support ships.. I got to millions of diplomacy str early on.

That essentially prevented them from attacking me haha, even if I didn't have a flagship over 200 out on the field.

After 2.00 that didn't have the same effect, they started attacking more, and surrendering less easily. Which is , honestly, a good thing P:. IT still helps greatly however, it delays them and makes them more likely to 'sue for peace' after defeats. As far as I am aware it seems to do that.

well that's something anyway~

Random comment-
I noticed that "the first" is probably what the superstructure hull was made for haha. They have plenty of ore and they are self sustaining and require hardly any upkeep in anything they do. So after a while of expanding the have millions of dollars much more easily I like it... Its' a better nily haa
(also with a network at every planet the diplomacy str skyrockets... if you have good satellites)

Well I followed some of the advice here, started with an allied AI. I played as Oko, my Ally was the Terrakin, agains the Mono and the Feyh. The Terrakin started a war (and started winning it) against the Feyh, which tried to convince me to sign a peace treaty since they were overwhelmed fast.

I still cannot manage to create fleets as big as the AI, and sadly on my last encounter against the mono (a sneak attack which I shamelessly save-scummed and reverted) I found that they had already outfitted their ships with a massive shield and torpedoes. which soaked up most of the damage, I sent three fleets and managed to obliterate it's support ships, but their capital ship wouldn't go down no matter what. It ended destroying my three fleets by itself. I reloaded the save and pretended it never happened :P

I also created a science world (albeit a little bit late) which boosted my research quite a lot. I'm managing to grow my economy, but not fast enough it seems. I was a little bit unlucky this time and economic resources were quite scarce in my part of the galaxy.

Also on a more colorful note I got early access to a cloaking device, so I had a little fun sneaking around my neighbors and stealing a couple of proto-planets from them. Probably the cloak is useless (does the AI attack if you steal stuff from their territory?) but I had fun thinking how puzzled would their scientist be lol.

So, I think that picking Oko was a step backwards (since I seem to have even worse ships than I did with the hoonan), but anyways I'm having a lot fun by picking the spoils of war from the Terrakin/Feyh conflict and doing crazy stuff around the galaxy.

Cool, the main point is have fun, even if you lose.

The way to get better is to continue playing and pick up the pieces when you get blown out of the water P:




As for oko finding designs for it can be a pain. (making them is fine) I know one guy who called all his stuff "organic" so you can search for that to get some neat designs.

I want to just search for sinew though, and get all ships made with sinew but you can't...

yes the Mono are a total war race that don't need food and water planets... they grow their empire very fast
so they would be a good team mate for any race that does need food | water
keep slugging!

Hi,
Found a few tips here. (edit: can't seem to post urls, well just add https :p)
://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=290853339
://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386168594

On a side note, it took me a few games to understand properly how economic development works.
Namely the fact that production is in large part done by civilian buildings, which are built automatically according to population and native / imported pressure.

Thanks for the guides!! I will check those out. Yes understanding pressure seems to be essential to being compentent at this game.

I finally managed to win a game! It was a fun ride, The oko fought the hardest part of the battle. I managed to participate in a couple of skirmishes against the First mostly resulting on phyrric victories from my part (but better than nothing) which caused the first to propose peace to me (and I think it helped the Oko to overcome the stalemate).

After managing to research and build some bigger ships, the hoonan declared war on me, I took advantage of a warp rift that took me 2 systems from their homeworld. I sent 3 of my veteran fleets and a huge destroyer I just built (pic attached). My fleets made short work of the hoonan forces wiping them out just in seconds.

One thing I couldn't really understand much is how resources work for the First, since I couldn't really make much use from the worlds that I conquered from them (they all had "base materials" which I don't know how to use)

This game is really fun :).

yes that first win is always a nice feeling... well done!

Pressure will build what is best for the planet but not necessary what is best for the EMPIRE... You have to step in sometimes.

Tip; a good building on larger production planets are warehouses... They store up unused production so when you need a new cruiser it can be rushed

When you conquer a planet from another race, take the time to look at its buildings or you may find yourself paying massive upkeeps for junk you don't need.

@kandjarou thanks for the guides but I don't see any problem making links... perhaps its your browser?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386168594

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=290853339

@juanfgsI, interesting design but why have rear firing lasers... Torpedoes have no fire restrictions so wouldn't they be better swapped with your lasers or does it need a bum defence because its slow to turn or something?

Well that's because I'm a noob lol. This is also an ingame tested design, I didn't use the sandbox (altought I should probably have done that) to test for turn/fire rate.

I found this AAR really good:

https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/star-ruler-2-a-beginners-attempt-to-conquer-the-galaxy/125503