Space: A Quick Play Guide

If you are one of those brave souls who just HATE reading through a long boring manual and believe that the best way to learn is through experience, then this Quick Play Guide is for you!

However, you don't want to look like a complete idiot, so you still want some minimal instructions. That's what you'll fine here. Realize of course that if you wish to master the game of Space, it will take time, effort, study to come to grips with all the subtleties. If youre in a real hurry, just read the bold text and figure out the rest later ;-) Unless specified, this guide assumes you are playing a Standard Galaxy.

Before The Galaxy Starts

DONT BUILD ANY SHIPS! Your starting economy cannot support much and if you build ships too soon, you will not be able to build much else, and die. Your starting scouts are sufficient for now, unless you are unlucky enough to be attacked by someone else who DID build ships. Then your goal is to outlast them.
For Death Match Galaxies: BUILD LOTS OF SHIPS! Your starting scouts are nearly worthless. You have enough money to be building ships on all planets at the start!
Explore nearby planets. The small map in the lower left hand corner of the index page shows the current extent of your known galaxy. Clicking on this will show a larger version of the map and hovering the mouse over each dot will tell you its name. Go to the "move fleet" page and send your scouts to explore these planets! If you are using Internet Explorer, you can also open the main map, which gives a better feel for the galaxy. We are working on a cross-browser version of the main map. (you can also use Firefox with the IETab plugin)
Have patience! If you see these words, "Galaxy #20 can not start until 8 more players sign up" then the game has not started yet. You will get an email once the required number of players have joined the galaxy and it can start. If you see this, "Galaxy #20 will start in 24 hours" it means that enough players have signed up, and the galaxy will start soon. Until the galaxy starts, your ships will not move and your buildings will not build! Space is not a speed game. Time moves ahead one tick per hour, once the galaxy has started. To those who have never played it, the beginning of a Standard game might seem downright dull. It is not. It is the beginning of a buildup that will be crazy before its done. If you are playing a Death Match the action will start quicker, but you also need to know what you are doing.
Construct some Megapoli on your homeworld. This is done from the Empire -> Buildings page. Your homeworld starts with more Jobs then people to do them, and building megapoli will increase population growth so you can fill them. Once efficiency reaches 100% mix in other economic building types such as Ore Mines and Factories. Your goal is to balance jobs and workers. You can build 10 buildings per tick per planet. When you have time, read more on Space Economics in the manual.
Choose your next research Topic. Go to the Research page and pick what your next research topic will be. Your first topic is chosen for you, based on race. For standard galaxies you must focus on economic growth at the start, so choose a topic such as Economics, Ore Mining, or Production.

After The Galaxy Starts

Colonize some planets. Once your ships have reached those grey colored systems, they will turn a friendly blue, meaning you control them. Visit the Buildings page again and you will notice those new planets of yours are available in your list of planets for colonization. The closer the habitability of the planet to 100%, the cheaper it will be to colonize it. In general it is a good idea to colonize the planet with the best habitability first, though there are exceptions. The ore rating of the planet and size should also be considered. Planets with high ore ratings will produce more Ore per Ore Mine, while all planets will give the same Production per Factory. Habitability also effects output. Choose your starting buildings with care. A good starting template is 15 mines or factories, one scanner, one shield, 35 megapoli, and 48 bioformers. Read elsewhere to figure out why.
Go exploring again. Colonizing a planet will reveal more planets. These might be grey (uninhabited) or yellow (owned by someone else) Send your ships to claim uninhabited planets, and send them to scout (use scouting orders) ones that are owned.
Make an ally. Space is a team game. You must have allies to survive or win. Don't attack your neighbors immediately, try to ally with them. Having an ally allows you to pool your ships for defense, trade resources, and even trade un-colonized planets. You can have up to three allies. Visit the Alliance -> Alliance Options page. Listed there you will see anyone you can ally with, and any alliance offers you have received. You can only offer an alliance to someone you border. It is normal to have no neighbors in the early hours of the game, so do not despair if there is no one in your ally list to begin with.
Keep Building. Your first money goal is to increase your ore and prod income to 180 ore/prod per tick, which will allow you to build on three 100% habitability planets at once without loosing money. At the beginning of a galaxy, only spend your money on colonies and buildings. Spend until you have nothing left! Build Build Build!
Running out of money? Then vote for Space! clicking on the voting links on the Index Page will give you a little ore and production, and give us a little advertizing. If you have clicked all the links, or have purchased Basic Membership Hours, you will also receive a bonus at Midnight Eastern Time.

Resources

There are three major resources in Space (credits, ore and production) and two minor ones (research and bioforming). Most building types produce one of these resources as "tax revenue" so long as you have the population to man them. Each structure takes 5,000 colonists to operate (except scanners, shield generators, and minefields). So if you have 50,000 colonists, 10 mines and 5 factories you actually are operating all those buildings at 66% efficiency - they need 75,000 colonists for full utilization and you have 50,000.

The only exception to this is megapoli. These structures not only house the living quarters for your populace, but also hold all the service sector jobs in your economy. Workers are automatically assigned to production buildings if there are open jobs there. Left over workers stay in megapoli and take up service sector jobs that generate a nice amount of extra credits in tax revenue.

Mines and factories are your first goal because ore and production determine what you can build. Cash is probably next as you will need to maintain the buildings and ships that you make. Research is valuable in the long term. Bioformers are only necessary on worlds with less than 100% habitability and the bioforming units produced in each system are only applicable in that system.

Research

Space features thirteen different technologies, which you can increase to further benefit your empire. Each species starts play with several levels of research already completed in each technology field (see elsewhere in the manual for species briefs).

Every hour your research labs add to your base of knowledge. If you want to increase the speed you are researching at then build more research labs. However, if a given star system has too many buildings and not enough population, than your labs will operate at reduced efficiency.

Each level you gain gives a fixed increase in capability over and above any species advantage you may have. However, the costs to gain each new level increase somewhat exponentially. This cost increases as level of technology desired grows and also with the total number of technology levels you possess.

Ship-Based Technologies

Beams: Increases the damage done by your beam weapons 10%.
Engines: Increases FTL travel speed by 10%, provides fighter evasion and helps

Fighters: Increases the damage done by your fighters 10%
Hull: Increases hull by 10%.
Missiles: Increases the damage done by your missiles 10%.
Sensors: Improves weapon accuracy by 10% and your star systems ability to detect

Shields: Increases shields by 10%.
Stealth: Renders your ship 10% less detectable and provides beam evasion. Will

Planet-Based Technologies:

Nanotechnology and Ship Design: Increases the speed of your bioformers and also
Economics: Increases cash revenue from megapoli by 4%, reduces upkeep by 1%, and decreases the trading costs on the Toag market.
Mining: Increases mine productivity by 4% and reduces ship ore costs by 1%
Production: Improves factory production by 4% and reduces ship production cost by 1%.
Research: Increases research rates by 5% and does not increase costs for total

Ship Design

There are three ways to design a ship using the ship design page (Fleet -> Build Starship). The easy way is to pull down a ship hull from class (such as scout, destroyer, etc.), a type from category (light, medium, heavy) and then type in the name of your ship. Once this is done, click on one of buttons in the next row (labeled beam, mixed or missile). Clicking beams will generate a ship that uses beam weapons for armament. Mixed will generate a ship design that uses a mixture of beam and missiles for weapons. And, we will leave it to your imagination what the missiles button does.

At this point you should have a ship design completed. There will be numbers in the far right boxes for ore and production which you will need to pay in order to begin building the ship. You will also see a time to finish the ship, which is how long you will wait after you build it. And, a maintenance cost which is how many credits you will owe each day to keep the ship. If any of these fields are zero, then you probably did not fill out one of the previous steps. To start your ship building you only need to click the Build button in the lower left of the form. We don't recommend doing this just yet until you completely finish this guide.

Now lets look at the next level of complexity - a semi custom ship. You can select a new ship class, type and name just for variety. Once more click on beams, mixed or missiles to generate your basic design. Now lets take a look at the two columns of select boxes on the left of the form. The left most column modifies the technology level of each device on your ship and is the feature we are concerned with right now.

Depending on your species, and how far along you are in research, you can change the technology level on each component. Higher tech levels cost more in terms of production, ore and upkeep, but they also work more efficiently than low tech devices. Selecting a higher tech level may or may not improve you ship because the change was not big enough to cause an overall improvement in that area. Rest assured that If it does not cause an improvement for a given design, it will also not cost more to build. Adjust the tech levels up and down on your practice ship to get a feel for how things work.

We can design completely custom ship by once again selecting a new class, type and name. Then click the clear button on the lower left side to remove any technology and slot settings from previous designs. This time we will discuss the slots column to the immediate right of the technology level column we were just using. This column controls how many ship slots we want to allocate to a particular device. Larger ships have more (and bigger) slots than smaller ship classes, but this is not always an advantage. For example, small ships tend to have high levels of stealth or speed for low cost.

You can make a ship pretty much anyway you want by adjusting the tech level and number of slots for your design. The designer will not let you use too many slots nor to choose a technology level you do not possess at the time. If you have allocated all your slots and want to add some more devices, just reduce some slots you have already selected and you will then be able to add more slots again elsewhere.

One thing to warn you about, the ship designer will let you design a ship that does not work very well. For example, a scout ship with NO engines. Charitably speaking this could be used as a small star base I suppose. A good way to tell how your designs stack up is to compare them to the ones you can generate via the beam/mixed/missile buttons which are intended to be average designs.

Summary

Well, that's about it for this Quick Play Guide. For more information, you should refer to the complete manual and the numerous websites maintained by some of the Space players themselves. Good Luck!

Updated 3/28/2009

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