Ordered Chaos: SoaSE

I think that, at some level, everyone enjoys a chaotic space battle.

When a person is in charge of that space battle, it is even more fun. Add smooth physics, pretty colors, and a soaring soundtrack, and it’s a really engaging and fun time (for the player, at least).

And yet, it’s become clear to me that in order to really crush my opponents, a bit more is required.

So let me lay it out:

• I’m creating an armada, first and foremost: I needed multitudinous resources to maintain such a large fleet, so…
• I made an effort to capture undefended asteroids first: The larger planets have more resources, yes, but they are always more heavily defended. For a player starting out, it makes more sense to capture the asteroids first. But how to defend those asteroids?
• Always capture the planet closest to the local star: I like to know when enemy players travel to my system, and the convenience of being able to top up my antimatter reactors so easily is a great bonus. Don’t make this your homeworld, and definitely invest in planetary shielding. You’ll thank me later.

Then what?

Anything I feel like!

I like to build my shipyards in the middle of my system: Not too far out, and not too close to the star. This makes it faster to deploy units to the battlefront, while making it harder for an enemy to penetrate far enough to destroy that capability.

I build my super weapons as far back as possible: The incredible speed of the projectiles makes the distances and phase lanes between planets a moot point, so it makes sense to build these as far into your system as possible.