Totally counts as a unique title if I’m using it as a reference to a group of lions.
The sit-rep!
If you think it looks like I’m getting close to Dark Blue, you’re incredibly right…I just took one of his stars from him. It was lightly defended, and I snagged it from his underdeveloped ass. Actually, the star North of that (over in his Eastern flank) is weak, too. That worries me, because I’m guessing his main cluster of stars is going to pose a tough nut to crack.
There is literally nothing else out of the ordinary. Consolidating all over the place, still beefing up Economy and Industry. Weapons are levelled up, and I’m back to researching Speed again.
One thing I noticed…you can bring up a report screen for every other player in the game and see their Industry, Economy and Science levels, as well as their development level in each of the 4 research areas. Anyway, I had been neglecting to do that, focusing instead on total number of stars controlled. If you bring that window up, Orange and I are actually closer than we appear from the map.
He has 18 more ships than me. I lead him by 1 fleet, but I’m actually not as spread out as that looks…at least 3 ‘fleets’ actually consist of detached Carriers traveling my production centers and picking up new ships as reinforcements. I have more Economy and Industry, he has more Science. My Weapons tech is better, and we’re tied elsewhere. Now, this proves two things. One, he really doesn’t possess the raw combat power to threaten me for the moment. Two, nobody else thinks he poses an immediate threat to them, either.
If he was posing a threat to a lot of the other players, they’d be sending him tech and cash (you can send anyone in the game cash for nothing, with a minimum of $25) to try to buy him off and focus his attention elsewhere. If he had extra cash, he’d have spent it on more Economy, Industry and Science.
Finally, I realized that you might all have the impression that the map shots are of the main map in the game. That’s actually the Minimap. The main map has a bit more detail, as this shot will show.
There’s the heart of my space empire. Under every star, you’ll see 3 numbers…those represent the Economy, Industry and Science levels of that star. If there’s a number under that one, it’s a total ship count totalling fleets at the planet and any garrison ships there. Those sort of jet looking symbols are fleets. The number under the symbol is the number of ships present. Stars with a coloured ring are controlled by that player. Stars with a grey ring are neutral. Under some stars, I can see the development numbers and fleet counts, while others are question marks. That comes down to Scanning range. For any star close enough that I can see its dev levels, I can click on it and see its Natural Resource rating.
One other thing I’ve started doing is logging in a few times a day for a minute or two at a time. I only get money and new ships once every 24 hours, but the fleets travel in real time. So if they reach a new star, rather than wait there for my next payment turn, I can log in and give them a new objective. It makes sweeping up newly built reserve ships a lot faster.
Finally, while my opening skirmish with Dark Blue represents the first combat of the game (so far as I’m aware…I actually don’t know if my Events log will track combat between other players), shit’s about to get real in a hurry. Yellow is almost at the point where the only path to expansion will be war. Red has a few stars left in the deep South, but then he’s out of area. And Orange HAS to go after someone in a hurry…it probably will be Green.
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