1. Green Lasers
2. Hammerhead command
3. A squadron CNC
4. Set the battle timer to 10 minutes so you have time to kill a silicoid queen as she runs away.

Silicoid Queens, Alien Derelicts, Colony traps, and the weaker version of alien wreckage can all be destroyed by a fleet of destroyers armed with green lasers and nothing else. Send 15 to 20 destroyers with a couple of squadron CNCs and simply hit pusuit. You'll lose a few ships, but you'll win.

With hardier races this can be done without a CNC, as the more you outnumber your opponent the more ships you spawn in. You will always outnumber a silicoid queen.

Ive seen so many posts in the discussions hating on early random encounters, this is the solution. Don't overthink it, just build and send this basic ass fleet.

If you're playing squishies like the liir you may have to send more ships.

So it isn't always viable to send a green laser destroyer fleet to every planet you want to colonise.

Your other early option for dealing with Colony Traps is to send one coloniser 2 turns before the rest of the fleet. When it lands you can use it to colonise the planet and trigger any traps.

Colony Traps are a one use thing, so you can clear the trap for the cost of one colony ship. You can even save money on it by not equipping suspended animation on the sacrificial ship.

1. Plasma cannons don't hurt infrastructure.
2. You will once again want the battle timer at 10 minutes.

This is annoying and slow but its the only method i know to easily capture that home planet with its full 200 infrastructure.

First, you build your combat fleet. Whatever you have that can defeat the opposing fleet.

Second, you build a fleet of ships armed with nothing but point defence & plasma cannons. Plasma cannons go in the heavy slot as well, heavy plasma will hurt infrastructure. This fleet must also contain at least one coloniser, as infrastructure will deplete each turn it remains uncolonised.

Third, you attack the planet with both fleets, making sure your actual combat fleet starts the fight. DO NOT approach the planet. The enemy ships will come for you in waves and you will kill them in waves. This is why we set the timer to 10 minutes, they need time to get to your fleet and die.

Once the enemy fleet has been destroyed you can recall your combat fleet and send in the Plasmas. These ships can then proceed to the planet and start bombarding. They will also have to destroy any satellites in orbit as you can't risk your combat fleet missing and hitting that sweet sweet infrastructure. You may have to repeat this process for a few turns, as plasma cannon take a while to kill an entire planetary population.

If the enemy happens to have heavy defence platforms you may be ♥♥♥♥♥♥. I suppose a fleet of plasma dreads might be able to clear them. Also you must destroy all satellites before glassing the planet, or you will not be able to colonise it next turn.

So you may find a prohibitive planet in your exploration phase. A planet so ♥♥♥♥ that even fully teched up you wouldn't colonise it. As planet so bereft of resources that it's barely even worth mining.

It doesn't matter, every alien ship that travels to that planet needs to die.

1. A planet that is inhospitable to your race may be perfect for the race net door.

2. Your enemy can only see what their scout report to them. kill the scout and you deny your opponent information, forcing them to build and then send another fleet if they really want to know.


In the early game this is key, and it isn't very hard to do. I'm not saying you should park a defence fleet at every planet.

The hiver or taarka can probably just park an ER there, as their ships are going to tank any enemy ERs that come along.

I like to park 2 armour destroyers at each of these planets. If they die to a Silicoid queen or Von Neumann attack so be it, that was not their purpose and now you know there's a queen there.
What they will do is shred any enemy scouts, as the AI seems to exclusively use ER destroyers for this purpose.

Bonus points if you add a scanner/jammer to these fleets, as this will allow them to keep the contents of that star hidden right up until the end of the game.

Dumbfire missiles are a weapon that a lot of people sleep on.

They are inaccurate and they will bounce off your opponents ships if they have even halfway decent armour.

HOWEVER dumbfire missiles automatically scale their damage based off your current warhead tech.
This means that you can build your ship, then upgrade its damage output whilst it is in the field.
Also, with a good enough roll, Antimatter warheads are available in Fission age. Dumbfire missiles are actually the highest DPS weapons available in Fission.

Humans need to rush. This means you will find the fleets you made 30 turns ago deep within enemy space, fighting ships that are 1 turn old. Being able to instantly upgrade their damage output is a huge advantage, as they can now hold their own against more modern enemies. I have used Dumbfire Missiles well into the mid game on several occasions, the money that would have gone to research instead going to just pumping out tons of these ships.

Hiver fleets will always arrive at an enemy 10 to 20 turns after they were built, so they gain a similar advantage to the humans here. I do feel like i get less luck with warhead techs as the Hiver though, i imagine their chances are lower.

Researching one level of language with the Zuul gives you access to the war section.

It's mostly useless. The deadnoughts in particular just end up with heavy guns and beams pointing sideways. It sounds good in theory but makes it harder to focus fire.

However the Humans and tarka get a cruiser mission section that has 3 heavy mounts on it, each facing forward.

There is a tech called Predictive Gunnery that gives you additional accuracy.

This command section plus 3 heavy fusion cannons makes for a very hard hitting and reasonably long ranged ship.

I've had great success with them in the mid game.

EDIT: Tuns out i'm wrong, the Tarka get two heavy mounts and 4 mediums. Still pretty strong.

This is largely optional but it does make a small difference.

When you colonise a planet you will dump some population and some infrastructure onto it.
You have access to 2 sliders, one to focus on infrastructure, the other on terraforming or climate hazard.

If your infrastructure is red then you don't have enough population to use what you already have.
if you've dumped a bunch of Biome Colonisers there then you'll have a lot more infrastructure than you can currently use.

To get the best bang for your buck you should devote all work to terraforming whenever your infrastructure is in the red. This will allow your population to grow faster and actually start using that infrastructure.

The downside is that you will then need to check that planet every few turns. When your infrastructure turns white, meaning you are now utilising all of it, you should turn up the infrastructure slider, because the more industrial output you have the quicker you will be able to terraform.

If you kill a Von Neumann Probe you will get visited by a Von Neumann Berserker or two a few turns later.

This is really, really bad news, as they will glass your entire planet unless you have a very strong mid to late game fleet in the system.
Even if you can defeat these, killing 4 of them will cause the game to spawn a Von Neumann Construct, which is a carbon copy of the Grand Menace the System Killer. This thing requires a HUGE fleet to destroy and will destroy every planet it attacks.

So don't kill the probes!

When attacked by a VN Probe you should enter manual battle and have your defending fleets hold position. The probe will send out little collection ships that you can safely destroy. The same green laser destroyer fleet used earlier will work against these collectors, but you should arrange them in a line formation 2 ships thick to provide overlapping fields of fire.

Simply kill the collector ships until the Probe stops spawning them or the battle timer runs out. If your battle timer is still set to 10 minutes hit control+page up a few times and go make a coffee.

And prepare to cry when an allied fleet helpfully destroys one that has decide to attack your planet.

Okay so this tip IS in all the other guides but you need to hear it.

Research Deep Scanners, research Jammers, and then then design a destroyer with each of these sections.

This ship MUST be on every planet you own/control & in every fleet you have.

Not only should it be in your fleet, it should be in your battle line. This ship will stop the planet shooting missiles at you while you make your approach and more importantly it will see any cloaked ships the enemy has. It will also allow you to fire beyond visual range with weapons that can do so. It will also reveal the composition of an enemy fleet headed your way.

On the strategic map they will prevent the enemy from knowing what forces you have stationed in your systems, forcing them to send scouts. If you've put pickets on each of these planets as recommended earlier these scouts will get killed and they still won't know.

Build them. Use them.

This can be used to cheese/cheat but it can also be used to convince the idiot AI that a Non Aggression pact whilst you are both being raided by the Zuul makes perfect sense.

It's very easy. The second you meet another race, go to the diplomacy screen and send them 1000 credits a turn for eternity. Everyone but the Zuul will really appreciate this.

Then you can either research Xenotech to the appropriate level and NAP them, or you can wait for them to offer you a NAP. This might take a few turns but eventually even angry people like the Taarka will accept a NAP. I have never gotten this to work on the Zuul and have never tried it AS the Zuul.

For 7000 credits a turn you can NAP the entire lobby (other than Zuul) and dedicate yourself to peaceful growth.

Some tricks include gateing every single planet as the Hiver, or just parking destroyer colonisers on every border planet and colonising them when they get glassed, because being friends with YOU does not make them friends with each other.

If you NAP everyone, you can be super efficient, focussing only on Infrastructure & trade and bee-lining for Antimatter. Its crazy how quickly your economy can take off when you don't need to worry about anything more threatening than a Silicoid Queen.
You can also be super inefficient and send colonisers to every planet you find, because your new friends won't punish you for overextending. Spend the first 100 turns with your entire budget going towards terraforming and then just explode with a giant economy.

The 1000 credits is an arbitrary number, i suspect this would work with 1 credit but i haven't tried. You can see in the below pic that i spent 10000 on one friend and 1000 on another, for the same result.

So this is essentially cheating, but since the options are there... well does it really count? (Yes)

In single player you can set the battle time from 60 seconds to 10 minutes whenever you want.

Setting it to 60 seconds and manually playing the battles will save your ass against a lot of the early game menaces. The Herald only has 60 seconds to drop your morale (10 minutes guarantees a rebellion), Slavers won't have time to drop their slave discs, Von Neuman probes can only get in one wave of collectors, less Asteroids will hit your planet, you get the point. Even the swarm will end up just sharing a planet with you, provided the base population is high enough when they arrive.
If you set the timer to 60 seconds you can play very risky and get away with having less defence fleets or over expanding.

Against the actual AI players you can hold a planet against a vastly superior fleet by simply manual battling each turn. Your opponents will spend most of the 60 seconds just reaching your planet and it will take them forever to actually raze it. In this time you can build and send a fleet to relieve the siege.

This is particularly filthy as the Hiver, as it allows you to expand without committing a full attack fleet to each gateship.
Send a giant wave of gateships with a cheap escort screen that has PD.
When you arrive, turn around and run.
Next turn you can deploy the gate.
Then you have to keep it alive for 60 seconds, mainly by putting your escorts in the way of enemy ships and blocking the Planet missiles.
And next turn you can Gate a proper Battle Fleet in.

This is obviously not how the game is meant to be played, but if an enemy fleet you didn't see coming is about to ruin your fun, well now you can claw it back.
This is a largely single player game after all.