The Sirius Coalition - An AAR about a Human Empire

[impact]

Hello everyone,
This will be my first AAR, so bear with me.
There is not much to tell yet, but as the game develops, I am going to post screenshots and reports of what happened.

Here is my game setup.

Galaxy: Irregular, Standard Size (700 Stars)
Independent Alien Life: Normal
Expansion: Starting
Aggression: Normal
Research Speed: Very Slow
Space Creatures: Normal
Pirates: Normal

Home System: Normal
Size: Starting
Tech Level: Basic
Race: Human
Government: Democracy
Starting Location: Edge

4 Other Races
Race: Random
Government: Random
Size: Starting
Tech Level: Basic
Home System: Normal
Proximity: Distant
Allow independent colonies to form new empires

Victory Conditions: None (Sandbox)

AI Controls: Tax Rates, Ship Design
AI Suggests: Ship Building, Attacks Against Enemies

[Okim]

700 stars for only 5 races? This AAR will definitely be full of combat action reports

[HsojVvad]

Looking forward to reading your upcoming posts. With pictures too, that will help alot.

[impact]

1. Shots Fired - Beginning the Game and Fighting Off Pirates

The first thing I do in every game is setting the Construction Ships to manual control, so that they don't start building Mines and Bases by themselves, causing my economy to suffer or even crash. This however requires me to keep a close eye on my Expansion Planner at all times, because I will have to provide my empire with resources manually.
Every other ship stays on auto control, even the military ships, so that they can patrol my systems.
Before anything else now, I pause the game, build 5 exploration ships, a colony ship and crash my habitation research whenever possible, so I can get the next level colony module as soon as I can.
Resuming the game, the AI suggests building a bunch of military ships. I accept the suggestion and keep an eye on my Spaceport. Every ship the AI suggested will be set to manual and will form the 1st Fleet. I will use it to react to threats the AI ignores and to take out pirate bases later on.



It doesn't take too long for the first pirate ship to appear and go for one of my mining stations. As my 1st Fleet is still under construction, I decide to pay this pirate faction to leave me alone for a while. The ship stops the attack, but stays where it is, still threatening the station.

At this point, the AI wants me to build a Resupply Ship. I decline the suggestion.
Even though Resupply Ships are very powerful military ships, especially in the beginning, they cost a lot of maintenance. Also, considering that I only have one colony so far, I will hardly need a Resupply Station yet.



Another pirate faction decides to drop in on me. This time however, I see no need to pay them off with valuable credits, as one of my destroyers is already on location and the crew seems eager to get their hands dirty.
The battle goes well for me, and when one of my escorts drops out of hyperspace to get a piece of the action, the pirate frigate turns and runs.
My destroyer crew is persistent and follows the frigate into hyperspace, while my escort stays behind and watches over the station. Soon after another short skirmish between the destroyer and the pirate frigate however, my crew looses the enemy ship in another chase through hyperspace.



My 1st Fleet is complete now and ready to go. My exploration ships have located one of the pirate bases. It belongs to the faction I payed off to leave me alone. But as that contract is running out right at that moment, I don't hesitate long and send out my ships.
In my own system, a pirate frigate and an escort have resumed attacks on my assets in two different locations. As the AI doesn't react to it and my main fleet is on an attack mission, I am giving manual orders, my destroyer going for the pirate frigate and my frigate going for the pirate escort.



Meanwhile, the 1st Fleet drops out of hyperspace around the pirate hideout and almost instantly pulverizes the guarding escort. Then they turn on the base itself, and it doesn't take too long for my ships to blow it to pieces.
Seeing what I did to their buddies, the other pirate faction then quickly decides to surrender and join my empire.

With the immediate pirate threat around my home system now eliminated, I am free to expand a little bit without having to worry about protecting my assets so much.
In the future I will spare you the details of confrontations with pirate factions, except for when they become interesting or important for some reason. [;)]

[Gertjan]

[&o] Very cool screens! I like these aars that are heavy on pictures and strategy advise!

Question: why do you crash your habitation research whenever possible to get the next colony module?
Q2: Why dont you like mines etc? Dont you need the fuel? Doesnt the AI do a good job in automating the base construction?

[impact]

Thanks
As for your Questions:

1. Getting to the next level colony module is not terribly expensive and it allows you to build colonies on a broader range of planets. You shouldn't expand too quickly, especially in the beginning (as it is a very sure way to kill your economy), but usually, whenever I get the chance, I grab a planet with at least one luxury resource on it. If you can colonize a broader range of planet, the chances for you to find a potential colony with ruins and/or luxury resources get higher, which is good. They make the best colonies.

2. It's not exactly that I don't like mines, I am just careful when it comes to building them, as their maintenance can kill your economy very quickly. The AI tends to overbuild mines, especially on strategic resources. When you have a big building project going on, your demands rise and the AI seems to react to it. However, you don't always have a huge building project going on, thus once you are done, your demands will fall again, but then you are stuck with all those mines the AI built.

However, as mines are civilian, I am not exactly sure if you pay maintenance for them. The maintenance for them is showing up on all the related screens though.
So, I guess it's mostly just how I learned to play - putting constructors on auto leaves control over economy to the AI, and I like to manage that myself. Especially as the AI doesn't just build mines. It's building research stations too, for example.

[impact]

Expanding the Empire

Screenshots are posted below the text referring to them from now on.

Even after doing some scouting, most of my potential colonies show no or very few resources that are hardly valuable. Needing to expand, I swallow the bitter pill and send out colonizers anyway to get a few colonies early in the game, so they can provide me with the additional income I will require to expand later.
At this point, my empire has four colonies and I need to wait for them to develop.




Having no potential colonies with luxury resources around, I decided to build a few mines to get access to them and let my colonies grow.
You can see that due to my recent expansion, demand for luxury goods is high and supply is low, and the list of my current resource locations shows that most of the mines I built are to get luxury resources to my colonies.




These are the four colonies I established. You can see that while taxes on my homeworld are quite high, relief is near as my second colony slowly starts turning some profit.
You may notice the Ice Planet I have colonized there. At some point, I found an abandoned colony ship (sorry, forgot the screenshot). The species on board was native to ice planets and having them in my empire reduced my troop maintenance costs by 25%, which doesn't mean much right now, but later in the game it will be a huge advantage.




After finishing the research on my new colony module, my options start getting far more interesting as you can see.
At this point, I start sending out colony ships bit by bit to all worlds that hold luxury resources, ruins and/or native populations. I try not to overdo it so my economy remains stable, but I can get quite greedy about acquiring new territory and resources...




This is what my empire looks like right now.
You can see that I expanded quite a bit, and there are still more colony ships on their way.
So far I haven't made any contact to other empires, but I had the opportunity to meet another pirate faction...and wiped them off the face of the universe. Another pirate faction has made contact by now and is asking me for money, but I haven't found their base yet and they seem quite far away, so they didn't attack me yet.
I have also taken the AI suggestions and built a few more explorers, military ships and quite a few spaceports (as you can see from how the traderoutes branch out).




Here is a list of my colonies. As you can see, my first four colonies have grown a bit, while the others are still young.
With 12 colonies and 3 more ships on their way, I will stop expansion for a while so my economy stays stable, but the income from my oldest colonies is a big help at the moment!




Here you can see a part of my current resource locations. As you will notice, I built mines and colonies on a lot of luxury goods.
With Gertjan's post in the back of my mind, I decided to build a few mines on fuel sources as well, to keep my fuel prices low.



This brings us up to date. While I am waiting for my last colony ships to arrive and my current colonies to develop, I am crashing Extractor-Research to get more resources into my growing empire. I will just crash it until I get the first improved versions of Gas-, Luxury- and General Mining Components, and this is expensive enough.

[Gertjan]

Interesting again. Q: Why do you crash research of extraction? Isnt it just better to let the AI take care off making sure that there is sufficient fuel? I think the maintenance costs are for the private sector. So you dont have to worry about it. And if there is oversupply, only the better, because you earn money from the ships that are constructed and you have cheap fuel costs.

[impact]

I tend to crash research of habitation and extraction early on so that I have more options for where I can expand to and I gain more resources, especially those I have a hard time finding. Also, the more resources the better: when encountering another empire, you can make a lot of money from trade agreements that way.
As for building mines: yes, the AI could take care of tapping new fuel sources and other resources, but I like to be in control of my economy.
Additionally, before the patch, when building too many mines, my economy tended to crash for some reason. So I got used to handling construction ships manually. I don't know if that changed now - I am trying it out with this game, not by letting the AI take over, but by building more mines than I usually do.
Another thing is: AI controlled constructors have a tendency to build all kinds of stuff, not just mines, and they build it all over the place. True, they build it where it would make sense, but when encountering another empire, building too close to it could cause trouble. And when building mines and being a bit careful about where you build them, it will be easier to defend your territory. The AI might tap into resources that become important to you but are far from your core worlds. When pirates or other empires raid those resource bases, they can cripple your economy. If you build your mines close to or behind your lines, raiding them will be much harder for your enemies.

[Gertjan]

THanks for the reply. What do you get from the extraction research actually?

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: impact
However, as mines are civilian, I am not exactly sure if you pay maintenance for them. The maintenance for them is showing up on all the related screens though.

The state (you) pays to build the mining station, but the private sector ultimately takes ownership and maintains it. Upkeep for those mining stations comes out of their revenues and ultimately affects private sector profit, which can end up being a drag on their expansion and shipbuilding. With that said, after the v1.02 economy fix taking manual control over construction is not as important, though I'm with you in that I prefer to handle construction myself in the early game - I automate it in the mid to late game.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: impact

Thanks
As for your Questions:

1. Getting to the next level colony module is not terribly expensive and it allows you to build colonies on a broader range of planets. You shouldn't expand too quickly, especially in the beginning (as it is a very sure way to kill your economy), but usually, whenever I get the chance, I grab a planet with at least one luxury resource on it. If you can colonize a broader range of planet, the chances for you to find a potential colony with ruins and/or luxury resources get higher, which is good. They make the best colonies.

2. It's not exactly that I don't like mines, I am just careful when it comes to building them, as their maintenance can kill your economy very quickly. The AI tends to overbuild mines, especially on strategic resources. When you have a big building project going on, your demands rise and the AI seems to react to it. However, you don't always have a huge building project going on, thus once you are done, your demands will fall again, but then you are stuck with all those mines the AI built.

However, as mines are civilian, I am not exactly sure if you pay maintenance for them. The maintenance for them is showing up on all the related screens though.
So, I guess it's mostly just how I learned to play - putting constructors on auto leaves control over economy to the AI, and I like to manage that myself. Especially as the AI doesn't just build mines. It's building research stations too, for example.

Great AAR! Love the screenies! I also am wondering about the constructors automating as my economy is now in the red I wonder if turning them off auto helps or not? So it looks like from what Erik is saying that it does not affect maintenance but does cost to build them?

Also what do you mean by crash research? I thought research was all automated?

[impact]

Thanks Erik
Tanaka, on your research screen you can see little bolts of lightning, right between progress bar and component name. If you click one of those, you "crash" research in that area.
It means that all research points go into that specific area until the project is finished. It also costs you money, depending on how complex and how far along the research is.
So if you are out to get a specific component, crashing research is what you do.

[freeboy]

erik, whats the biggest difference between this and SINS? This looks great by the way! [:D]

[Gertjan]

Sins is much more focused on ship combat and looks nice. DW has a much larger scale and is more like a tbs/4x game, but then much cooler