Das's tech selections here are oriented towards military. He obviously want's to mix it with the pirates. This may be fun but IMHO it's not optimal. You can just pay off the pirates and they will leave you alone. This has two big advantages: 1. Your private sector does not suffer pirate interdiction and this accelerates your growth by maximising throughput of luxuries. Luxuries improve either pop growth or economic development and the two together is what jacks up your state tax income. Pirates can and will harass your private sector assets which will slow down delivery of resources and even if you succeed in defending against them you can't stop them doing that. 2. You do not have to research military techs until you meet a proper AI opponent. This enables you to research a) the four techs required for a resort base on your home world b) the techs to improve your scanners so your exploration ships find more stuff from each object they scan and c) better fuel cells (and maybe warp drives) to enable exploration ships to stay out surveying for longer before heading home for a refuel straight away out of the gate. I've found the scanning tech is massively beneficial, it's the first thing I go for after Skip Drive. It enables you to get roughly double the number of resources from your home system and the same from each new system explored following getting proper warp drives. This has a colossal effect on the growth and development of your home world and therefore your tax income from it. It also means your private sector will need more ships and can afford to pay you for them which really helps with the bank balance. Furthermore it means you expand more slowly in territory terms which means it takes longer before you run into an opponent empire which is advantageous at the beginning of the game. Of course taking on the pirates has it's advantages too, you can capture their (initially) more powerful ships (get ion weapons to disable them and boarding pods to capture them) which you can either use yourself or scrap them to discover new techs for free. However this early military leg up comes at a considerable economic cost so my policy is to pay off all pirates until such time as my exploration ships find their bases. Then I switch to rushing military research, build a kick arse fleet and wipe them off the face of the galaxy. By that time I can afford to I find because all the luxuries coming into my home world are generating much, much more tax income than the relative pittance required to pay off the pirates, the extra happiness enabling a somewhat higher tax rate etc. Furthermore I will probably have found some new research station locations by then too which means I can crash through early military research very quickly.
I'm a builder by nature, so I lean more to gregor's start too. I go further though. Develop my economy as a priority while paying off the pirates, then I start buying lower-prices system info from them which boosts relations (with the not too antagonistic ones) and before terribly long I have diplomatic relations with them that eliminate the payments. I don't push scanning as hard, I let mining stations flesh out the hidden resources over time while I explore further out. My research path is anything to boost economy (and research) along with more advanced warp (and anything to improve exploration ship efficiency: fuel cells, crew, reactors, engines) and then boost scanning to speed up the exploration process. With a solid economy, can pump out exploration ship and let numbers make up for lower-tech scanning (until I get to scanners in research.) I also ran some tests (but only with humans, not sure results will be the same for all races) on optimal tax strategy at start. I found 15% tax and 100% dumped into population growth boosted the economy the best. Extra spending on research is wasted in early game as you just don't have anything to spend it on until you have more scientists and research stations. The higher tax also mean I run positive cash flow before the cash from shipbuilding for civilians, trade, etc. Oh, and as an aside, I run almost no automation. I think I leave management of resources stocks on auto. I also redesign all ships immediately stripping off weapons from civilian ships and non-combat state ships (explorers, construction ships, etc.) and only add in shields and armor once those are researched. Keeps costs lower and really don't need (or want) weapons at the start. Don't want those ships sticking around to shoot back at aggressors. I strip down the starting spaceport too. Since I am paying off pirates, don't need defenses for a good while. Usually find some derelicts along the way to give me SOME defenses are home colony.
I agree with that. In the last game my home system caslon resource could not be found because basic exploration tech didn't gave enough survey level on gas giant. I had to rush exploration technology just to find caslon.
@@MatteoDT If you know there is more to be found at a planet, you can just build a mining station anyways, even if there is no resource found yet. This will slowly explore the planet without the need for an exploration vessel.
33:08 Not that it matters but you were looking at the available components list top left, the components assigned to the ship were in the bottom left column. Gotta love brain farts/streamer brain haha. Thanks for these tutorials, even somewhat comfortable in the game there's still so much depth to it not to mention a lot of changes since release.
Another tip is there's almost always a research opportunity on your home world's moon. For this reason at game start as soon as my initial exploration ship is finished I manually order it to survey the moon immediately. As soon as my first construction ship is finished I switch off it's automation (to stop it doing something else) and move it next to the planet or space port so that I can order it to build a research station on the moon the moment the survey is complete and it can load up the materials and get the job done ASAP. This will double or triple your research rate the moment the research station is completed. It's important to remember to turn the construction ship's AI back on, you can do that at the same time you order the research station build, it won't cancel the existing manual order.
The optimal Pre Warp start is to immedietly redesign the space port to have 2 construction slots and build it before your construction ship. Research Skip Drive, basic medical and basic recreation systems then research labs... Set Empire Fundings on manual and maximise Colony Growth, set Colony Automation on Manual and keep it balanced between positive cashflow and maximum growth rate You build 3-5 exploration ships and 2-3 construction ships and pay off the pirates This way you will have the highest growth rate
I've never found playing less optimally prevents me from being in the same place by year 50 into game. Optimization doesn't have to be the only goal. Sometimes, a better goal is to succeed with your own understanding of the game. It creates outcomes that are better aligned to your own playstyle. Of course if that's is your playstyle, then mote power to you, but personally, I find optimization rather than broad engagement boring.
Your mining ships can do most of the lifting early on, no need for more than 1 construction ship at that time. Depending on the situation more research might be more important than pop growth.. You can also save that spaceport for much later and/ or design custom bases that will bridge a gap. You basically just optimized your own playstyle and might keep yourself from exploring other ways. No offense intended.
Very nice video. I might like to add, regarding to the pirates, that IF you decide to pay them off, you get several distinct advantages. 1234gregor already covered most of them but I would also like to add that you can 1. Trade them for research (if it is enabled). Honestly, the amount of years you can shave off of research by just straight up buying it from them is very good, especially in a strong economic situation where you are dealing with a lot of influx of money with no immediate sinks and no other diplomatic relations. Considering the number of these factions you will encounter throughout a game, and the fact that they all start more advanced than you, that's a pretty sweet deal. 2. As you start to expand your empire, having pirates who are friendly to you patrolling around and doing their thing is pretty good since they wont be shy in attacking others who don't pay them. I also see they sometimes "burrow" vessels from my own faction, but always civilian ships. Which has the benefit of bumping my income even more since the private economy will try to buy replacements (albeit you sometimes lose the resources being carried over by the said civilian ship). 3. Last point is that i never encountered a start, not even on max difficulty, and with max aggression where i could not just simply buy my way in with them, and incorporate them extremely fast and easy, since activelly paying their initial protection tax boosts their ratings of you, coupled with whatever rating boost you may get from trading locations/tech. The time from Protection to Non-Aggression is very small. And from there you can Military refuel them. Anyway that's that. thx for the content
Excellent. You are one of my favorite people to watch when it comes to explaining games. Are you a teacher? I would love to have had you as a history teacher.
I've been trying to learn better to play this fir ages, with over 1000 hrs of stellaris. Your video about the difference between the two was already a big help!
Excellent tutorial videos Das... and some really great posts in the comments... virtually guides in themselves... which I have copied into a text file for reference
This has been my hardest part getting into the game vs. stellaris because it seems like I have nothing to do. I better understand the idea now, though.
I was concerned this game would be too complex however after watching your videos I dived in last night and really enjoyed it. It's actually not that difficult to play, in fact I find it easier to play than Stellaris. I really appreciate your point that it's a simulation that you can simply tweak if you wish. Apart from the economy I've been pretty hands on. One great thing was that I paid off the first pirates who then joined my faction giving me control of all their stuff. Idk if that is normal? But it felt great and expanded everything. On simulation, have you ever played the submarine games like Silent Hunter and more recently Uboat; some of the most intense and thrilling games I've ever played.
Great tutorials, thanks! Looks like just my kind of game, where you can choose what to manage. Glad I waited for Aurora update though! I have only 8 cores, but 64gb Ram, so that presumably restricts me to 1500 systems, according to the tooltip? That seems a lot though.
Distant worlds 1 I found that pirates were get out of jail free card to get a missing construction resource saving about half the games early (and aiding early colony development). Not sure how DW2 covers that as there are a lot of resource types needed
Leftmost column in tech tree doesn't cost you anything. You can remove them from the queue if you want. Can with others also, but the cash isn't refunded. It stays paid though. It's not the survey ships finding those hidden resources on the home planet, it's the colony itself (or maybe both combined at this stage.) Mining stations do surveying too.
You can. It's just expensive. Most fleet tactics involving cooperative ship designs aren't much more useful until the mid game. The exception is boarding fleets
I tend to redesign the spaceports because no docking bays and only one construction on them. I am not sure dock ports what they do, help to produce money to the commerce centre or not. Also, many times the auto design need to check because of energy. Tend to design not enough energy for the warp drives or not enough static energy. Also the asteroid feild slow down the explore so i resarch the resource scanner very early.
I really hate the aspect of the game that when you explore a system you "own" and your bland territory color claimed it, DW1 you had to colonize a system and more people in that system more your borders were growing, in DW2 the galaxy map borders are totally focked.
I'll be covering this in a future episode but it is actually still the same mechanic - just shown differently. Pop and Development push out the borders but now you either own or don't own a system. So what you see on the map is the ownership border rather than the circle.
Das's tech selections here are oriented towards military. He obviously want's to mix it with the pirates. This may be fun but IMHO it's not optimal. You can just pay off the pirates and they will leave you alone. This has two big advantages:
1. Your private sector does not suffer pirate interdiction and this accelerates your growth by maximising throughput of luxuries. Luxuries improve either pop growth or economic development and the two together is what jacks up your state tax income. Pirates can and will harass your private sector assets which will slow down delivery of resources and even if you succeed in defending against them you can't stop them doing that.
2. You do not have to research military techs until you meet a proper AI opponent. This enables you to research a) the four techs required for a resort base on your home world b) the techs to improve your scanners so your exploration ships find more stuff from each object they scan and c) better fuel cells (and maybe warp drives) to enable exploration ships to stay out surveying for longer before heading home for a refuel straight away out of the gate.
I've found the scanning tech is massively beneficial, it's the first thing I go for after Skip Drive. It enables you to get roughly double the number of resources from your home system and the same from each new system explored following getting proper warp drives. This has a colossal effect on the growth and development of your home world and therefore your tax income from it. It also means your private sector will need more ships and can afford to pay you for them which really helps with the bank balance. Furthermore it means you expand more slowly in territory terms which means it takes longer before you run into an opponent empire which is advantageous at the beginning of the game.
Of course taking on the pirates has it's advantages too, you can capture their (initially) more powerful ships (get ion weapons to disable them and boarding pods to capture them) which you can either use yourself or scrap them to discover new techs for free. However this early military leg up comes at a considerable economic cost so my policy is to pay off all pirates until such time as my exploration ships find their bases. Then I switch to rushing military research, build a kick arse fleet and wipe them off the face of the galaxy.
By that time I can afford to I find because all the luxuries coming into my home world are generating much, much more tax income than the relative pittance required to pay off the pirates, the extra happiness enabling a somewhat higher tax rate etc. Furthermore I will probably have found some new research station locations by then too which means I can crash through early military research very quickly.
Great post. It isn't the way I like to play - but I love that it shows a different path. :)
I'm a builder by nature, so I lean more to gregor's start too. I go further though. Develop my economy as a priority while paying off the pirates, then I start buying lower-prices system info from them which boosts relations (with the not too antagonistic ones) and before terribly long I have diplomatic relations with them that eliminate the payments. I don't push scanning as hard, I let mining stations flesh out the hidden resources over time while I explore further out. My research path is anything to boost economy (and research) along with more advanced warp (and anything to improve exploration ship efficiency: fuel cells, crew, reactors, engines) and then boost scanning to speed up the exploration process. With a solid economy, can pump out exploration ship and let numbers make up for lower-tech scanning (until I get to scanners in research.)
I also ran some tests (but only with humans, not sure results will be the same for all races) on optimal tax strategy at start. I found 15% tax and 100% dumped into population growth boosted the economy the best. Extra spending on research is wasted in early game as you just don't have anything to spend it on until you have more scientists and research stations. The higher tax also mean I run positive cash flow before the cash from shipbuilding for civilians, trade, etc.
Oh, and as an aside, I run almost no automation. I think I leave management of resources stocks on auto.
I also redesign all ships immediately stripping off weapons from civilian ships and non-combat state ships (explorers, construction ships, etc.) and only add in shields and armor once those are researched. Keeps costs lower and really don't need (or want) weapons at the start. Don't want those ships sticking around to shoot back at aggressors. I strip down the starting spaceport too. Since I am paying off pirates, don't need defenses for a good while. Usually find some derelicts along the way to give me SOME defenses are home colony.
Yeah definitely one of the things that shows off how rich a game is by not forcing you down a specific or min/maxed path.
I agree with that. In the last game my home system caslon resource could not be found because basic exploration tech didn't gave enough survey level on gas giant. I had to rush exploration technology just to find caslon.
@@MatteoDT If you know there is more to be found at a planet, you can just build a mining station anyways, even if there is no resource found yet. This will slowly explore the planet without the need for an exploration vessel.
33:08 Not that it matters but you were looking at the available components list top left, the components assigned to the ship were in the bottom left column. Gotta love brain farts/streamer brain haha.
Thanks for these tutorials, even somewhat comfortable in the game there's still so much depth to it not to mention a lot of changes since release.
You can tell he rarely designs his own ships 😆
Another tip is there's almost always a research opportunity on your home world's moon. For this reason at game start as soon as my initial exploration ship is finished I manually order it to survey the moon immediately. As soon as my first construction ship is finished I switch off it's automation (to stop it doing something else) and move it next to the planet or space port so that I can order it to build a research station on the moon the moment the survey is complete and it can load up the materials and get the job done ASAP. This will double or triple your research rate the moment the research station is completed. It's important to remember to turn the construction ship's AI back on, you can do that at the same time you order the research station build, it won't cancel the existing manual order.
The optimal Pre Warp start is to immedietly redesign the space port to have 2 construction slots and build it before your construction ship. Research Skip Drive, basic medical and basic recreation systems then research labs... Set Empire Fundings on manual and maximise Colony Growth, set Colony Automation on Manual and keep it balanced between positive cashflow and maximum growth rate
You build 3-5 exploration ships and 2-3 construction ships and pay off the pirates
This way you will have the highest growth rate
I've never found playing less optimally prevents me from being in the same place by year 50 into game. Optimization doesn't have to be the only goal. Sometimes, a better goal is to succeed with your own understanding of the game. It creates outcomes that are better aligned to your own playstyle. Of course if that's is your playstyle, then mote power to you, but personally, I find optimization rather than broad engagement boring.
Your mining ships can do most of the lifting early on, no need for more than 1 construction ship at that time. Depending on the situation more research might be more important than pop growth.. You can also save that spaceport for much later and/ or design custom bases that will bridge a gap.
You basically just optimized your own playstyle and might keep yourself from exploring other ways. No offense intended.
Very nice video. I might like to add, regarding to the pirates, that IF you decide to pay them off, you get several distinct advantages. 1234gregor already covered most of them but I would also like to add that you can
1. Trade them for research (if it is enabled). Honestly, the amount of years you can shave off of research by just straight up buying it from them is very good, especially in a strong economic situation where you are dealing with a lot of influx of money with no immediate sinks and no other diplomatic relations. Considering the number of these factions you will encounter throughout a game, and the fact that they all start more advanced than you, that's a pretty sweet deal.
2. As you start to expand your empire, having pirates who are friendly to you patrolling around and doing their thing is pretty good since they wont be shy in attacking others who don't pay them. I also see they sometimes "burrow" vessels from my own faction, but always civilian ships. Which has the benefit of bumping my income even more since the private economy will try to buy replacements (albeit you sometimes lose the resources being carried over by the said civilian ship).
3. Last point is that i never encountered a start, not even on max difficulty, and with max aggression where i could not just simply buy my way in with them, and incorporate them extremely fast and easy, since activelly paying their initial protection tax boosts their ratings of you, coupled with whatever rating boost you may get from trading locations/tech. The time from Protection to Non-Aggression is very small. And from there you can Military refuel them.
Anyway that's that. thx for the content
Excellent. You are one of my favorite people to watch when it comes to explaining games. Are you a teacher? I would love to have had you as a history teacher.
Your DW2 content is always insightful. Thank you.
I've been trying to learn better to play this fir ages, with over 1000 hrs of stellaris. Your video about the difference between the two was already a big help!
Alright! Keep these videos coming! Love more information to help me play better
I've got a fair few recorded now so hopefully one per day. :)
@@DasTactic That tooo slow :) What i will looking until the DLC :)
Excellent tutorial videos Das... and some really great posts in the comments... virtually guides in themselves... which I have copied into a text file for reference
Please made video specific for nebula clouds & ion shield
What upgrade can pass each nebula color
This has been my hardest part getting into the game vs. stellaris because it seems like I have nothing to do. I better understand the idea now, though.
I was concerned this game would be too complex however after watching your videos I dived in last night and really enjoyed it. It's actually not that difficult to play, in fact I find it easier to play than Stellaris. I really appreciate your point that it's a simulation that you can simply tweak if you wish. Apart from the economy I've been pretty hands on. One great thing was that I paid off the first pirates who then joined my faction giving me control of all their stuff. Idk if that is normal? But it felt great and expanded everything.
On simulation, have you ever played the submarine games like Silent Hunter and more recently Uboat; some of the most intense and thrilling games I've ever played.
Thanks for those videos!
Very helpful DW content!
Great tutorials, thanks! Looks like just my kind of game, where you can choose what to manage. Glad I waited for Aurora update though! I have only 8 cores, but 64gb Ram, so that presumably restricts me to 1500 systems, according to the tooltip? That seems a lot though.
Distant worlds 1 I found that pirates were get out of jail free card to get a missing construction resource saving about half the games early (and aiding early colony development). Not sure how DW2 covers that as there are a lot of resource types needed
How did you change the view angle. It doesnt work in my game?
Very helpful. Thank you.
Leftmost column in tech tree doesn't cost you anything. You can remove them from the queue if you want. Can with others also, but the cash isn't refunded. It stays paid though.
It's not the survey ships finding those hidden resources on the home planet, it's the colony itself (or maybe both combined at this stage.) Mining stations do surveying too.
Any chance of getting how to build your own ships/bases efficiently at some point? Thank you.
Hey i know im really late to this but why not use escort ships as point defence, basically Aerial denial or some sort of supporting role
You can. It's just expensive. Most fleet tactics involving cooperative ship designs aren't much more useful until the mid game. The exception is boarding fleets
I tend to redesign the spaceports because no docking bays and only one construction on them. I am not sure dock ports what they do, help to produce money to the commerce centre or not. Also, many times the auto design need to check because of energy. Tend to design not enough energy for the warp drives or not enough static energy. Also the asteroid feild slow down the explore so i resarch the resource scanner very early.
So what components should my spaceport have?
@@omni_0101 Dock, construction 2x, commerce center, med, recreation, later i tend to add fighter bays. But i not use them as deffense base
Thankyou
I really hate the aspect of the game that when you explore a system you "own" and your bland territory color claimed it, DW1 you had to colonize a system and more people in that system more your borders were growing, in DW2 the galaxy map borders are totally focked.
I'll be covering this in a future episode but it is actually still the same mechanic - just shown differently. Pop and Development push out the borders but now you either own or don't own a system. So what you see on the map is the ownership border rather than the circle.
400 hours and dont get the camera-angle button...
Olle ^^
Thank you xD