One-Eyed Willy’s Guide to a good game of Planets

[Steve Andrews, 2005][1]

Everything here isn’t strictly true and should always be

seen in the context of an actual game. As Egg Shen would say: take what

you want and leave the rest:)

1. Start of game

• Max factories.
• Max mines.
• Raise engine technology to level 10.
• Lower tax rate to 0%.
• Do not waste resources on defence posts or starbase defence.

2. What to build

• Always use tech 10 engines, except for ships you intend to tow.
• Use only tech 2 or tech 5 beams, except for mine sweeping ships.
• Use only tech 5 or tech 10 torpedoes.
• LDSF’s are the freighter of choice.

3. Colonising the cluster

• NEVER set the mission to Colonize! This dismantles your ship at the

  planet. Instead beam down colonists.

• Always have ships expanding your borders. Set the mission to Beam Up

  Fuel and drop off 1 clan at every world you come to.

• Follow these ships with others which drop off enough colonists, supplies

  and MC to establish a proper colony.

• On rubbish planets drop 1 clan to act as a listening post.

• On planets you want to mine drop 200 clans max. 100 clans is a good

  number unless there are a LOT of minerals underground.

• On planets with natives drop enough to maximise the tax or, in the case of

  Bovinoids, the amount of supplies generated.

• The number of supplies and MC to drop is tricky. Play the long game

  and don’t bankrupt yourself is my advice.

• The type of native government is very important. Anything worse than

  Feudal is poor for taxation.

• If the temperature is above 15 or below 85 you can effectively ignore it.

  If it falls in the extremes be aware of population limits!

4. Managing your economy

• Fuel is paramount. If possible make your ships travel with as little

  fuel as possible to complete their missions, anything which increases mass

  wastes fuel.

• Early on don’t tax your homeworld since this maximises population growth.

5. Conflict

• To initiate a fight a ship must EITHER: have the race of the other

  ship/planet set as it’s primary enemy and/or have it’s mission set to KILL.

• For planets to initiate a fight they must use friendly codes of “ATT” or “NUK”.

• For ship v ship combat to occur the ships must not have the same friendly

  codes. If the friendly codes are the same the ships will not fight.

• Minesweep to detect minefields. Be aware you can lay a minefield to

  destroy a minefield.

• Don’t lay 1 large field, lay several overlapping fields.

• Even high planetary defences are useless against anything larger than a

  scout. If you are going to maximise the defence of your starbase make

  sure it has at least 40 fighters otherwise most capital ships will win against

  it.

• Simulate all expected battles before committing to an attack

[1]: http://salin.org