Early Access Gameplay - How to play as of v0.793...

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Balthagor
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Early Access Gameplay - How to play as of v0.793...

Post by Balthagor »

Big thanks all our players who bought during early access and have provided us feedback. Since EA began, we've posted 27 fast track updates in 13 months and the game has evolved enormously since that first version.

Thanks to those updates, it's now possible to play the Tutorial Chapter 1 to learn much of the game basics. Chapter 2 is in progress and we will have a total of 4 by full release.There is still no manual and some of the game feedback is still missing, so this thread is intended to fill in any of the bigger gaps that could affect gameplay. Much of this is covered in the tutorial.

The Basics

- Change between planet/system/galaxy level with the up arrow symbol, top left. Double click or right click to go down.
- Control game speed by increasing/decreasing the value in the top left or click on the speed bars to go directly to a speed.
- Your faction symbol is in the top left. Click it to come back to your system or your planet when your camera is elsewhere in the galaxy. Hold over this faction to see what type of atmosphere your race breathes and what resource they use for food.
- Your faction begins with a bit of military on planet and in space. Look for the reserves in the Command department. Select units and Right Click a destination to move.
- Early ships are "system bound", not FTL, cannot leave the system
- To visit other systems, research FTL technology. Your minister will start researching the relevant technologies unless you lock them out. Double click a tech to see details about the technology. Bottom centre shows long term tech goals related to the current tech.
- FTL ships require 100% FTL charge before they can make a jump. Charge rate is faster when closer to the star.
- FLT ships that are jumping must "spin up" their drive. This takes a short amount of time. Shooting or moving will interrupt this order.
- FTL ships will arrive at a random point in the system unless an FTL Beacon has been deployed. Survey and Engineering units can deploy a beacon as an advanced order (CTRL+Right Click)
- Units don't need to be researched separately. Completing a technology automatically grants you the related designs for your regions.
- Transport ships can be given an advanced order to "drop" to planet level (CTRL+Right Click)
- Colony ships can be given an advanced order to "colonize" a planet, but only if the atmosphere is breathable by your faction
- You cannot visit/open/go down to a planet you haven't surveyed. Place a ship in orbit to survey.
- You need a spaceport built on a planet to trade with Merchant AI or with other players
- Engineers can build space docks around a planet to claim it. This consumes the engineer.

The Economy
- The balance for the Energy resource is rather punishing at this time, pending some balance review. To compensate, lock it, set rationing as harsh as possible (25% of demand) and import from the Merchant AI.
- Through research you can unlock facilities to build around gas giants and lava moons to harvest extra ore and energy. Build a space dock first to claim the location.

Advanced Tips
- To easily select a unit from anywhere, put it in a battlegroup. With a unit selected, Hotkey <CTRL+1> will create the group. Hotkey <CTRL+SHIFT+1> will add to a group. Hotkey <1> will recall it. Groups 0-9 match up with the keyboard numbers.
- You can give priorities to your home planet or colony governor. You can access a popup from the bottom left of the main UI, the red eyeball icon. Some of these may still act strangely and there will be more in the future as we bring more features online.
- In the land department, there is a system for setting Nav Points. These are to help players pin places of interest. You can use CTRL+number to use number groups on map locations which will also create a nav point in your list
- In the right click menu, there are controls accessible for systems and planets to set governor behaviour, these screens are being redesigned and will go through changes over the next few versions.

As you play, if there is something that still seems unclear, please post a thread or reach out to the community on our discord channel. Multiplayer has also been tested and supports up to 10 players at this time since there are only 10 factions.
Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com
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