This Quick FAQ was written by phlegm573 on Jul 21 2014. It has been copied and posted by me, LordUther, with his permission. There have been a few minor edits as needed. Many thanks to him for this very handy getting started guide, as well as for permission to post it here!

A) As usual, your goal in the typical custom game is the usual 4X thing: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate until you are the last remaining player. Or players, if allied victory is on.

A) The strategy map is indeed turned-based. However, combat resolution occurs in real-time in a separate battle screen. If you've ever played a Total War game, you might know what I'm talking about.

A) The best map style for a newb is probably "Disk." It's mostly 2D and therefore easy to understand even if you aren't used to the interface. (Do NOT use the actual 2D map -- it is buggy and doesn't work properly!) The first four players start at the edge of the map, so I wouldn't play with more than 4 sides. Keep the stars under 100 (80-90 for 4 players, 50 or less for a duel), set random events to 0, and leave the rest at default. Set your opponents to "Easy" which reduces their economic output to 50% of yours.

A) Go with either Human or Tark as they have the most straightforward FTL (movement) system. Humans use nodes (like the warp lanes in Sins) and Tarks use good ol' regular warp drive. Both sides' ships are fairly solid, and they research at a decent clip without having to worry about any weirdness.

A) By far, Zuul. It isn't even close. Avoid this race until you are a veteran!

A) The colored dots are unexplored systems. As you explore them, they change into icons representing the planet. Each star has exactly one planet, conveniently enough. Your homeworld is marked with a "star" icon in your color; other colonies will get a different, smaller icon. You start with no ships and no research, and 50,000 cash if you used the default settings. Look around the map by holding down the right button. Refocus onto a different star by left double click, or middle click. Scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

A) First, select your homeworld. Then hit "Build." A list of the default ships will pop up. For tarks, stick with making tankers: they refuel themselves as they go and therefore have massive range. Humans cannot refuel at all mid-flight and therefore will be using the "extended range" ships a lot as well. These cannot refuel themselves, but often can make longer jumps that your tankers cannot. When you find a colonizable world, obviously you will need colonizer ships. As ships are built, they are automatically put in fleets. Click and drag ships out of the default fleet to split them off into new fleets. Non-tanker ships, especially colonizers, should have at least one tanker (often more) in their fleet to help them reach their destination. If you try to move your fleet but the destination is red instead of green, that means it's out of range and you need more tankers in the fleet.

A) SotS has an extremely simple way of looking at planets, which is either good or bad depending on your point of view. Planets have only 3 values: Size, climate, and resources. More size means more max population which is good. More resources means said population can make more build points per turn which is good, both for your economy and for building ships. Climate closer to what your race wants means it's cheaper to colonize. This last bit is very important -- new colonies incur a per-turn cost estimated when you click on a planet. You want to keep this under 20,000 for a new colony early in the game or else these colony upkeep costs can leave you with no money going to your bank account or to research. Colonizing a planet with 50,000 upkeep is a very common newb mistake. Skip it and return to it later.

A) NO!!! That is the OTHER common newb mistake. New colonies need LOTS of colonizer ships! More colonizers means more starting population and more infrastructure, both of which help your colony grow. The harsher the climate, the more colonizers you will want. For an ideal planet under 5,000 cost, 3-4 colonizers is plenty. For 20,000, you'll want 8-10.

Find the research button. You do know where it is, right? Good! Notice that the research tree is extremely broad in this game. It isn't nearly as deep as Sins or GalCiv, but it is much wider. You have to keep rotating it to look around. Here are the first techs you will want to get: a) Waldo units, which give your economy a boost which in turn helps research, moneymaking AND ship building. b) Pulsed fission, which increases your speed and your fuel range, the latter which is so very important for humans. c) Gene manipulation, giving you an increase to your pop growth and which is a precursor to: d) Suspended animation, giving a boost to colonists per colonizer. After that, you'll probably want to go for an early weapon tech, usually green lasers, sometimes VRF. Your ultimate goal is to research "Fusion" to access tier 2 tech, but that is way out of your range at first.

A) Green means money into your treasury. Whenever you build a ship, the money is deducted from your bank account INSTANTLY which means it is easy to go into the red if you are not careful. NEVER have a negative bank balance! Yellow means your research -- keep this high, but not high enough where you're starving off your bank balance (ideally, bank balance should be above 5M). Blue is ship upkeep which is negligible during the early game, but which can get away from you later if you build too many ships without expanding. Grey is colony upkeep -- even a single 50,000 upkeep world can have this gobble up a third or more of your pie chart which will cripple your economy.

A) Now, your ships can use that planet for refueling. But you also want to grow your new planet. You have two little sliders for your planet: Terraform, and Infrastructure. Infrastructure is the percentage that multiplies your population's outpot, so that 5.05 infrastructure means your generate just 5.05% of your population's potential. The worse the planet's climate, the more you have to terraform (to reduce its negative income, and eventually turn it positive), whereas if your planet is near-ideal, you can favor infrastructure. Also note that your planet's output number is red initially. This means you have maxxed out on infrastructure that your population is using, at least temporarily. As the population grows they can use more of the existing infrastructure until they can use 100% -- or even more. (your homeworld gets an infrastructure of 200%!) Keep checking in on your little world and adjust the sliders as needed. Keep a couple extended range or, better yet, "armor" ships in orbit for early defense. It's also a good idea to "overharvest," at least at first.

A) Because initially, it's just costing you 1 point a turn. That is almost nothing when your resource value is like 5,000 or whatever. A few turns of -1 overharvest can give your initial terraforming efforts a real boost, which in turn gets your planet completed a few turns sooner, ready to start pumping out ships or else helping with your income/research. Just be sure and turn it off before you're ripping 50 or 100 off your resource base per turn.

A) At first, you cannot even communicate with other players unless they are of your own race. (To change this, research the race's language in your tech tree. level 1 lets you speak, level 2 lets you form NAP/Alliance treaties.) Also, unlike other games, all empires begin the game in a state of WAR! Your scout tankers or extended-range ships will eventually run into the enemy. They are poorly equipped, but so are the enemy's scouts. Go to the battle screen and play around as the pathetic ships pew-pew at each other with their little gauss cannons. Don't worry -- the enemy is not yet in a position to menace your homeworld. Until you know better, I would stick with giving your ships the "close" command (second from the right command button) and let them figure it out. Incidentally, pairing an extended-range ship with your tanker can help you win fights against enemy solo tankers, if that is important to you. If you find an enemy planet, your tanker will die unless you were lucky enough to find a newly colonized, undefended world. In that case, head to the planet and shoot at it until it dies!

Eventually, you are going to design and build warships to crush your enemy underfoot. Before you can even think about that, you'll need cruisers, unlocked with orbital foundries, and a command ship, unlocked with battle computers. Point defense, unlocked with VRF, is a must-have for planetary assault, and you are probably going to want some more weapons as well. But that is for another guide. In the meantime, welcome to one of the best and most overlooked 4X games made!