More Beginners' Tips of the Day -- Early Years

Most of David's tips are concerned with the game mechanics of how to run your race effectively so as to get the most out of it. Below are some additonal tips, many of which are concerned with arranging relations with other races to your best advantage. They are designed, like David's, to be given out one-by-one, and are numbered according to the suggested year of release (2400 being the year of the first m-files generated).

Additional Tip 2400: You Only Get One Chance To Make A First Impression.

When players are sending messages or looking at the scoreboard or Game Parameters screen, if they see 'Player 3' or '???Unknown Player???' it seems far more potentially threatening than it would be to see 'The Hamsters' (or whatever you have called your race) instead. As soon as the other players receive a message from you, your race name will appear in their files from then on. It is often a good idea to send a general 'To Everyone' message to achieve this, along the following lines:

"Greetings from the Hamsters. We are a peaceful people and most excited at the opportunities which warp drives have given us to increase our knowledge of the universe. We look forward to meeting and establishing friendly relations with our interstellar neighbours...etc..."

The idea is to present your race as one which is predisposed to be friendly and quite prepared to talk before resorting to less pleasant means of communication. You only get one chance to make a first impression.

Additional Tip 2401: They Are Out There Somewhere...

The sooner you find out where your neighbours are, the sooner you can start arranging borders, establishing tech/trading agreements, deciding who would make useful friends or attractive enemies, and so on. The easiest way to find out where they are is... ask them :) Unfortunately, few players are going to reveal the location of their homeworld to you unless you reveal something about the location of yours beforehand...

There are two schools of thought here. One is that you should reveal as little about your race as possible to the other players - playing them as some kind of silent, brooding menace. The other is that nearby races are going to find out where your homeworld is sooner rather than later anyway - and it is much better to already be engaged in some sort of meaningful dialogue with them before this happens. I tend toward the latter view. In my own experience, the shape which most games take is pretty much decided by year 10 - and it is those races which are talking to each other that do the shaping...

No point in giving too much away all at once, of course. It is probably best to use the Quadrant System (found on Bluebear's Player Aids page) and send out a 'To Everyone' message along the lines of :

"Greetings from the Hamsters! The Hamster Nestworld is situated in the Gamma Quadrant. We would like to contact all those other races living in the Gamma Quadrant – together with those races from other quadrants whose homeworlds are in close proximity to the Quadrant boundies – in order that 'spheres of influence' can be negotiated before any unfortunate incidents (which might make future negotiations more difficult) are allowed to occur.

In Friendship
Fluffy Hamster "

Those races that respond can be regarded as potential trading partners/friends/allies. Try to get a dialogue going and, if they are situated near to you, try to narrow down their location. [Each Quadrant can be divided into four sectors in the same way that the galaxy is divided into Quadrants, Alpha becoming Sector 1, Beta becoming Sector 2 and so on].

Those races which don't respond can be placed on your potential targets/enemies list...;-)

Additional Tip 2402: Those Blips On Your Scanners Say More Than You'd Think...

By now you may well be detecting the ships of other races on your scanners - especially if you took elec +75% start att 3 and/or have the No Advanced Scanners LRT - or be running across them while exploring planets. Follow their courses backwards and you might find their planet of origin. If two ships belonging to the same race seem to share the same planet of origin, this is probably their homeworld. (For this reason, it is always a good idea to hop between planets with your own ships wherever possible).

The speed, fleet # and mass of these ships can also reveal a lot about the owning race. See Bluebear's webpage containing the article First Contact!

Additional Tip 2403: We want our fair share...

The initial objective of all races should be to take - and control - their fair share of the galaxy. If you manage this, you will be in a position to take the next step towards greater things. If you don't, chances are you will be used as the next step towards greater things by some other race...

So, what is your fair share? This depends upon the size and density of the galaxy you are playing in (see the Playing Aids web page on this site for details of the number of stars in the various galaxy types) and the number of other players in the game. For example, say you are playing in a Medium-Normal galaxy as one of 8 races. From the Playing Aids page you will see this galaxy will hold a total of 288 planets. Dividing this by 8 gives 36, which means that control of 36 planets (including your beginning world(s)) should be your initial objective.

By 'control' I don't mean that each of these planets should be either occupied, remotely mined, or have armed ships in orbit. Just that nothing should be allowed to happen to any of these worlds without your prior agreement.

By calling up your race file you can get at least a rough idea of many of these planets should be habitable now, and how many will be habitable in the future. Say, for example, that your race's habitation range is identical to that of the canned race the Rabbitoids. Their original range is 1 in 9 (or roughly 4 out of the 36 planets resulting above). When you can terraform Gravity, Temperature and Radiation to +/-3% (by increasing your tech levels to 1 in Biotechnology, Propulsion, Energy and Weapons - widen each range by 3 clicks at step 4 of the Custom Race Wizard) this will be increased to 1 in 6, or 6 out of the 36 planets. When you can terraform everything to +/- 7, your hab range will be increased to 1 in 4 (9 out of these 36) and so on.

This gives you a rough idea of how many colonisers you will have to build - and when you'll have to build them.

Additional Tip 2404: Good Fences Make Good Neighbours...

Of those races which respond to your various messages, some will be neighbours whilst others will be a considerable distance away from you and/or separated from you by one or more intervening races. Where the latter are concerned, there is little you can do at this point other than establish and maintain friendly relations - but it is well worth the time and effort to do so. At some time in the future it is conceiveable that your intervening neighbours may prove to be hostile and, if this occurs, having a friendly race on the other side of them can be invaluable.

Where neighbouring races are concerned, the first priority should be to establish an interim border. Before making any border proposals to a neighbouring race (and this goes for any other sort of proposals too) always ask yourself "If I was playing this race, and recieved this proposal, would I give it favourable consideration?". If the answer you come to is 'No' (and make sure to be honest with yourself here;-) then alter the proposal until you can say 'Yes' to it. An agreement which one or other of the parties cannot ultimately live with is worse than no agreement at all. If you try to bamboozle your neighbours chances are that when they find out you will eventually find yourself at war with them - usually at the point when it is most inconvenient for you.

The main purpose in establishing borders is to give you time to explore and develop your share of the galaxy as effectively as possible - without having to spend early resources on armed ships to defend it. It is better to consider the border to delineate 'first exploration rights' - if the habitation ranges of your neighbour and yourself are sufficiently different, it will benefit both of you to trade inhospitable planets on your side of the interim border in return for habitable worlds on their side (once initial exploration and settlement is complete). Having said that, at least in the early stages it is better if your ships and theirs remain on the right side of the border, to avoid duplication of effort. Also, if a race knows your territory to contain attractive planets and you won't trade them over, the temptation to attack will increase as time goes on. If they don't know for sure whether your planets are attractive or not, however...

If your neighbour will not agree to keeping their scouts on their side of a border - or does not respond to your messages at all - it is often an idea to warn them that unauthorised vessels in your area of space are likely to be intercepted by your patrol vessels. If this still doesn't deter them, it may be necessary to actually build some patrol vessels;-). In the early stages of the game, scout hulls with your fastest engine and most powerful beam weapon (scanners are a needless expense on these vessels) should be enough to catch most interlopers. Most players accept scouts to be expendable, so early clashes of this nature should not sour future relations but merely emphasise that you do mean what you say.

Most border agreements also include a non-aggression pact element of some sort, often with a two to five year get-out clause.

Where incommunicative and/or uncooperative neighbours are concerned, your border with them should be where you concentrate your patrol vessels. Nothing is more annoying than an opportunistic race which grabs everything it can rather than negotiate with its neighbours. If such a race is annoying you, in all liklihood they are similarly annoying their other neighbours - so find out who these other neighbours are and start talking to them...

Additional Tip 2405: Useful Downloads - The Stars! Notebook and Planet Sniffer

The Stars! Notebook (which can be downloaded by following the link to The Stars Player) is an excellent tool for keeping track of your Stars! games. Here, you can note down all the interesting points you discover about your neighbours (with a view to finding out exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are) and keep a log of the game as it progresses. It also allows you to keep track of the total populations of neighbours (which can give some indication of their resource production) - though the better your scout coverage is, the more accurate this can be.

Your coverage can be improved considerably by exchanging .pla files (created from within your Stars! game by clicking on 'Report' => 'Dump to Text File' => 'Planet Information') with friendly races. A simple amendment to your Stars.ini file in windows (see the Read.me file which comes with the i-patch download for Stars!) allows .pla files to be numbered according to the creating player(.p1, .p2 etc), which saves these overwriting your own. It also allows grav, temp and rad levels to be noted, which is vital when using Planet Sniffer, below.

The 'View Map' function of the Notebook gives you a clear picture of the political shape of the galaxy (so far as you know it), especially if you turn on the 'Show Territories' option. (Note that this option does not work in stretched and/or mapped universe games - where the shape of the galaxy is changed by the host before play begins - and can cause problems in these circumstances). It also allows you draw on the map and create .vec files denoting proposed borders etc.

The 'View Planets' function allows you delete/amend information about certain planets (for example, your own colonies before sending information to another player) and then save the amended information as a different file. (If you do this, be sure to save your own Notebook file before you start making changes and Don't save upon leaving the program). This amended file can then be sent to friendly races and give them useful information about third parties without compromising your own security.

Another very useful tool, but only when you start to receive .p(n) files from other players, is the Planet Sniffer. This can be downloaded from here.

Planet Sniffer allows you to load in the hab ranges of your race and then see how habitable planets whose details you have received from other players will be for you. It is a great help in trading planets with other races and makes it totally unnecessary for neighbours to scout your territory directly (so long as you send them your own .p(n) files, of course).

The initial version contains all the help files regarding Planet Sniffer's use, and should be used initially to get some familiarity with the tool. The second version includes a map function, however, which is incredibly useful as it allows you to see which planets will be good for your race at a glance.

-- Paul Vernon Lydiate

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This page was updated on October 10, 1999

This page was created on October 7, 1999