The goal is to help you as a new player understand some of the fundamental parts of starting and playing a game of Distant Worlds: Universe.

The guide will try not to railroad you into one way to play, but instead show you the parts of the game you'll need to know in order to get started playing, and then I will expand on this need to know information with tips and ideas so you can start forming your own personal strategy and play style.

**Containes a minor early game spoiler**

When playing pre-warp you're basically just doing the same thing every time, just to the beat of a different drum.

So here's a list of what you need to do to get past it:

*SUGGESTION: You'll make a lot of money from your private sector near the start of the game after you build your first star port. I suggest setting colony tax to 0% so that you can maximize your growth during this early, slow portion of the game while you have a windfall of money coming in from early private sector ships being built at your space port.*

1. Build a space port, I personally like starting with a medium sized port but I have been known to go for a large one from time to time(For example if my race has a very high base happyness).

2. Build a construction ship. When this is complete build at least 1 mine somewhere, but don't stress over building more than a couple, a spot close to your home planet will get you going faster. The main reason for this is so that your private sector can take off and start paying you to do things you want them to do anyway.

3. Build explorer ships, 2 of them for times sake. After these are done send them to explore the planets in your system with ruins, you normally have 2 and they are indicated by a triangular icon that looks like 3 squares. One of these ruins will have warp tech, you can research it now.

4. Now start researching warp tech, and get hyperdrive tech either right after that or as soon as you can within reason, the hyper drive upgrade is a massive boost over the basic warp tech.

5. Once you unlock warp tech you're ready to start pushing out into the stars and doing your own personal strategy.

Now of course you'll have variations in this as you learn the game enough to know what kind of variations you might want, but you basically do those same 5 things in that same order as fast as you can when doing a pre-warp start.

What They Are:

Pirates are a seperate type of empire that have a whole different set of mechanics they play on, most of these revolve around being jerks. There are four different flavors of pirate:

Balanced: Jack of all trade, regular ol' pirates. They do a bit of everything.

Raiders: The vultures of the pirate world, the most aggresive to deal with. These are the guys who are good at boarding and stealing ships, raiding colonies, and basically just taking what they want.

Smugglers: The most passive pirates, they focus on smuggling around resources that others might need and setting up operations that might help their ability to smuggle. Don't mistake them for friendly, they'll happily go around messing up mining operations or anything else that might make their smuggling a more lucrative business.

Mercenaries: The most useful pirates to know, these are the guys that love to go out and do missions for empires, they're the ones who are good at attacking your enemies and defending your allies. For a price, of course, and lets hope someone doesn't pay them to attack you.

Protection Agreements:

So when you first start playing you'll soon meet your first group of pirates and they will attack you if you don't agree to pay them for "protection". Be aware that this is a mafia style protection and they're only agreeing not to attack you if you keep paying them every month, they won't actually protect you from anyone.

So when you first start out you need to watch for pirates, don't let them attack you and ask for an agreement if you can help it. They will ask for more money than they would of if you had asked for it yourself. What I'm saying here is you need to go into your diplomacy screen and talk to new factions of pirates as they find your system and make sure you set up and pay a protection agreement with them to avoid early game hardship. The price you pay is worth it compared to the alternative of being wiped out.

Some players have been reporting an issue recently with pirates breaking protection agreements very fast, it could be a bug, but since I have done many pre-warp starts without running into this issue I'll talk about what else it could be:

Sometimes a pirate faction will start close enough to you that they actually have an interest in your colony, that means they see you as a direct competetor and want to strong arm your population for more money than they'd get out of you(You being the state/government). You can tell if this is the case by opening the diplomacy window and looking at the negative relations factors that show up in the racial overview after selecting a faction/empire from the list.

Pirates are a vengeful sort, so you really only have one solid chance not to cross them. Breaking treaties, attacking them, getting caught doing spy missions against them, things like this will hurt your relations with them and after a certain point it can make dealing with them a real pain. This is where I believe a lot of the issues with pirates breaking their protection treaties comes from, if they don't like you then they're more likely to stab you in the back repeatedly so they can raid your empire and STILL extort you for money.

So just keep in mind that you should be the one on top of making sure you have protection agreements with new pirate factions before they strike you, not after.


What They're Good For:

Within the diplomacy screen you'll find options beyond just setting up a protection agreement, you can also:

Buy system maps, which will give you full detail of a random nearby star system.

Buy information on independent colonies: Expensive, but useful. Colonies that are independent means you can take them over or merg them into your empire without needing to found the colony yourself. If the colony is of a different race this opens up further possibilities such as enslaving them or bringing them into your empire to get their racial bonuses.

Buy information on intriguing discovery: Expensive, but can lead you to some incredibly useful locations within the galaxy, this covers anything that they've found that doesn't fall within a simple star map or planet.

Pirates can also be used as Mercenaries, to do this simply select a planet or structure that you wish involved in the mercenary contract and then right click it to open the drop down menu that contains the different jobs you can create:

Attack Mission: Tagging a planet or structure to be attacked will cause pirates to attack something on your behalf, this is expensive but allows you to use them to wage proxy wars against empires without taking a direct relation hit or needing to declare war yourself. You can also use this to get pirates to attack eachother.

Defense Mission: Tagging a planet or structure for a defense mission will cause pirates to defend it in order to get the reward, this will also cause pirates to attack eachother! So you can even use pirates to fight off other pirates.

Smuggling Mission: This will cause you to set a mission for pirates to smuggle a type of resource to your planet, you'll pay them extra cash for this resource. The downside to this is that it takes income away from your private sector by reducing the supply/demand situation of the resource you need.

Alliance: At the end of protection agreements if a pirate faction likes you enough they may offer to ally themselves to you. This means they'll actually protect you from things, it's the true protection agreement. It's when the pirate faction stops being something you nervously put up with and starts being an actual boon and ally to your empire.

Explorer Ships:

Once you've unlocked warp tech, and eventually hyperdrive tech, you're going to be able to move out into new star systems across the galaxy, but what does that mean you might ask, what should I be doing, and why does everything seem so empty?

Well, the answer to every one of those questions is luckily the same, explorer ships! Knowledge is power and these guys are your eyes and ears.

Once you build them they will set themselves to automated mode and scout out the areas around your starting system and more. When an explorer ship enters a new system it gets basic info on that system, after that they will move to scan each planet to see what's going on down there, what kind of resources it has that you could use, and if there are any ruins.

Ruins:

Ruins are alien structures and locations that have survived from dark ages of the past, searching these ruins could give you all sorts of things, from valuable rewards, dangerous traps, story/lore information, a lot of nothing, or... well... lets just say there are also some very dangerous things out there you could accidently stumble across.

What Now?

You've got your explorers out there looking and you'll start to come across resources you might need, new planets you could colonize, other pirate and non-pirate empires, basically just more KNOWLEDGE of the galaxy outside your own star system.

Now that you have this map knowledge you can actually start deciding what to do. Do you work on getting colonization going?(You need to research a tech for this if you started pre-warp) Maybe you want to start working on getting your spies trained by sending them out to steal maps from other empires, maybe you want to start building relations to get an alliance going, or maybe you want to expand toward a race of like-minded individuals in an attempt to create trade between your two empires. Maybe you just want to kill everything that's not you so you start pumping money into military ships and and war technology. It's all up to you at this point.


Overview:

Every race is different and has different victory conditions, but for the sake of getting started just focus on getting the stuff around you explored, and then trying to colonize some extra planets of your own. Use the colony planner(Button at the top part of the UI, far left) to help you with managing this.

There is a very important foundational mechanic you need to understand about the economy, it's that your empire is actually split into two seperate parts:

The Private Sector:

Indicated by ships and structures with a dotted/broken outline around them, this is where all the money in your empire usually starts. These are your civillians and their personally owned enterprises. You normally have to build a mine somewhere in your starter system for them to get started but after that they take care of many things on their own.

They will use your space ports to buy their own ships, they will pay for your construction ships to build mines for them to make profit off of, they will ferry around the various resources your empire needs to where it needs it, and more.

As stated before they will typically have most of your Empires money in their pockets, but you can get it from them in a number of ways:

1. Taxes: Taxing colonies to various degrees will drain the private sectors income and make it your income. This is an important part of the game due to it being different from how a lot of other games handle it. Instead of just setting your taxes as high as you can without angering your population there are actually strategies revolving around 0% tax, or low taxes, so that your private sector gets lots of pocket money for itself. More money in the private sector means they can spend more of it to build mines, mining ships, transports, cargo ships, etc.

2. Ship building: When the private sector uses your space port to build their own ships, they'll actually pay you for it, which drains their money and gives it to you.

3. Retrofiting: When you research new technology and unlock new compenents for ships(Such as shields or warp drives) the private sector will pay you to have their old ships upgraded with the new technology at one of your space ports.

4. Mines: When the private sector wants to build a new mine on a planet they will pay for the mine and pay for one of your construction ships to actually build it.

5. Commerce Centers: There is a line of technology within High Tech that allows you to build commerce centers on your space ports, your civilians and other traders will then use these centers and you'll be paid for their use.


The State:

This is the government, it's basically who YOU are, and it's indicated by solid lines surrounding a ship or structure. You will take care of maintence for military ships, space stations, and basically anything that doesn't fall within the private sector. You keep your people protected and happy and they'll do their jobs for your empire, you tick them off enough and a full out civil war could split your empire in half.

If at any time you want to check out a breakdown of the cash or unit situation within the state or the private sector just check the empire overview screen. It's the button top and center of the UI, looks like a flag.

Management:

-You don't need to build mines everywhere, ask yourself, especially so in the early game - do you currently need that resource(s), and if so - can you defend that mine from yet more pirates?

-Use the colony planner(Far left of top UI) to see your resource situation, use it to determine what's important for your empire, what you already have sources of, and what you risk running out of.

-Look for cost effective mining spots. A planet with a single low yield gas or mineral you can get elsewhere will probably cost you money in the long term.

-A suggested rule of thumb from before the Universe expansion was to not put a mine on a planet with less than around 110-120% total resources.

-Early resource priorities tend to be Caslon, Chromium, steel, and silicon followed by any other strategic resource nearby.

-Luxury resources are, after all, luxuries and are not of major importance early game. Pay attention to the strategic resources first if you want to avoid risking stunting your empires growth or bottlenecking yourself.

-While it might be time consuming - looking at what your early tech components need to be built will help you know exactly what resources are of top priority to you.

-Luxury resources will start to shine once you've got 10 or so different types being mined, your colonies will get a nice happyness boost so its well worth it to pay attention to these.

-Be aware that using pirates to fill gaps via smuggling missions is a double edged sword - you're giving the pirates money and raising prices and that is going to eat into your private sector income (which is where the bulk of your money will come from).

-Since the universe expansion it seems asteroids now have good percentages of many basic resources, so if you're low on something such as gold, iridium, etc., check the box that shows asteroids on the expansion planner and you might find a good source.


Supply and Demand:

The private sector makes money based on things like supply and demand of resources they mine for your empire. Then all your money comes from them through taxes, them building ships at your ports, and other such things. But they do have their own seperate cash that isn't yours.

So that means you can attack enemy mines, or hire pirates to do it via proxy, you can try to forge a monopoly on one resource so the prices of it skyrocket across the galaxy and people have to trade you for it, giving your private sector huge amounts of cash that you can take from them.

Then you have fuel based resources that effect more than money, if you can choke an empire out of these you can literally starve them of fuel and freeze their ships out of mobility.

[WIP]


The Benefits of Reduced Taxes:

-Your people will just love not being taxed and will procreate like mad bunnies raising your pop growth at least into the late teens/low twenties depending on your race.

-The bulk of your cash will come from the cash generated by the private sector, meaning any money you dont tax from your private sector will be kept within the private sector allowing them to build more ships, especially mining ships as they will see the need to fill strategic resource gaps for profit and go for it. They will also be building these new ships at your stations - thus paying you for the privilege and you get the untaxed money back that way as well.

-Pirates look at your income rate before demanding money from you, so an added benefit to dropping your tax rate will be pirates will see a smaller income (if any) and ask for less than if you were taxing your colony to the hilt.

General Tips

-Quickly researching weapons, armour and shields will allow you to protect your fledgling private sector from pirates and other threats.

-Resupply ships can be deployed on gas giants or other fuel sources to mine and refuel nearby ships. This will let you send fleets far from your planets and have a refueling source without going all the way home. It's best used as a sort of beachhead for long distance wars.

-The AI follows the same rules as the player and does not cheat, so strategies that involve hiding structures or colonies with fog of war or building hidden mining operations or stations are viable.

-Proximity sensors and long range sensors(much wider detection range) May pick up your hidden structures if they are too close to where enemy ships with the sensors installed are.

-Energy collector components allow ships to remain static without draining fuel, this only works in "systems". A nebula or Supernova and so on is considered a system for that purpose as well. This means building in the middle of deep space will require a constant fuel source.

-Another possible strategy is to build a powerful defensive platform on your home world that lures in pirates to attack only for them to get completely destroyed. Instead of paying them off you put your money into something they cannot overcome in the early game.

Here is a list of some popular mods that enhance the game in a variety of ways. Such as improving the UI, adding races, adding new Graphics, or adding new sounds.

But first here is a video to help you install mods for Distant Worlds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k91pf5yepnw

Distant Worlds Extended: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

18 new races for Distant Worlds set in the Distant Worlds universe bringing the race total to 40. Each with their own unique flavour, flags, dialog text, victory conditions, strengths, weaknesses.
Each race has been balanced with countless hours of play testing, this mod does not create a new race that will dominate all your games but they do bring with them their own challenges.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3141149

Distant Worlds Extended / AI Improvment: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Contains: Distant Worlds Extended Races mod + AI Improvment mod, or just the AI improvment mod.

This mod makes the AI play better and it redoes most default ship designs used by you and the AI to more effective versions. The AI also has better priority and choice making skills.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3647528


Stuff and Bits UI Mod: GRAPHICAL ONLY

- New Cursors
- Replaced alot of the the stuff from gem mod should almost all be gone now
- Plague Icons redone
- The whole UI should be completely replaced, (by me and alot of stuff from the GEM mod)
- Messages too
- Character badges updated
- Planets come mainly from several mods with a couple from me, (mainly continental), and all have been replaced
- All Facility Pictures replaced
- All new Planetary Landscapes
- All new resource icons
- Eve component mod included
- and probably other stuff I have forgot to mention

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3631278

Alternative Race Portraits for DWU & Extended: Personal Preference

This gives the races better art, IMO, this one is pretty subjective but I prefer it.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4031313

Sound effects mod: Personal Preference

Enhances the basic sounds in the game.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3050750

I'd like to thank the following people personally for helping with information within the guide:

jRides: For information in the mining and resource section, among others.

relnu: For information about energy collectors and sensors.

Ob1ivion: For a nice tip on asteroids and the colony planner.

Jumbik: For the information in the modding section.

GC13: For suggesting I let players know how much the 0% colony tax can help their growth when they don't really need any income early on.

nephilimnexus, for suggesting I mention how effective it can be to build defensive platforms and just let pirates kill themselves trying to take you.