Unending Galaxy

Unending Galaxy

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Getting Started: The Basics
By Cian
A basic getting started guide for Unending Galaxy, walking you through a basic game and what you might start doing.
   
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Starting a New Game
The first thing you should do is play the tutorial, as it's helpful to be led through some things hands on and it teaches you quick how to use the gate system and other very important basics - but after that the first thing you have to do is start a new game.

As a side note, you need to activate any mods that you want to use with the launcher before you start a new game, as adding or removing mods will most likely not be save compatible. The full version of the game comes with a Bonus Ships mod that isn't activated by default, this adds a few new battleships - a Drath, Pirate, Human, and Titan Corp one. These ships are in general a bit better armed and faster but with weaker hulls.

The new game screen has 3 tabs - Map Selection, Starting Scenario, and Customize Faction.

Map Selection

Map Selection is where you pick your field of play for the entirity of that game. You can select from any of the available maps. Imperium is a nice large map if you want a lot of room without things being too dangerous. Swarm Hiveworld has lots of Swarm, pirate sectors, and unclaimed sectors if you want more of a challenging game (it's also a huge map). Checking the Reveal Map box lets you preview what a map looks like, but is a bit of a spoiler if you are wanting to have to explore on your own. You can also use the map generator to make your own map, but that's pretty straightforward and I won't be covering it here.

Revealed Map sets how much of the map is revealed at first. You can do starting sector only if you like to explore, colonized territory if you want to know about all the other major faction territory (except for AI Core and Swarm), and Everything if you prefer to have it all mapped out. You can also select whether you want fog of war on - with it off you can see exactly whats going on anywhere, with it on you only see if you have assets in that sector.

Start Sectors lets you randomize the starting sectors or leave them at map default.

Expansion determines how much of the map starts off claimed. You can go Map Default, 50%, or 100%. The factions will quickly begin claiming unclaimed territory as the game begins, so it just depends on how developed you want the economy to start as since it takes time for them to build all the factories and such.

Fleet Supply limits the max military power of a faction. Each ship uses supply depending on the strength of the ship, which is generated by colonies. You can leave it as no cap, which allows a faction to grow as strong as its controlled worlds, or set an arbitrary cap if you want to keep the bigger factions from overwhelming smaller ones. This applies to your faction too.

The other options are pretty straightforward. Pacing is as described- it affects the timing of production and how often factions adjust relations (go to war, peace, etc - lower pacing means slower decisions and slower production). Starting funds is just as it reads. Asteroids modifies the density of the mineable asteroids (presumably can affect performance a bit but I haven't noticed a diff). The two check boxes disables asteroid respawn, which would mean space would be mined out eventually; or disables swarm creatures if you don't like them as a faction.

Starting Scenario

This is where you select your game start and pick your character's name. This determines your starting situation. Ships, credits, reputation, location, etc.

Neutral Trader is a very basic start where you don't have much and have to build your way up. Nilith Trader, Asterian Explorer, and Sirak Mercenary are similar.

Then you have other Pilot ones like the Pirate starts and the Drath Deserter start. These give you a bit more resources, but have downsides like bad relations.

Lost Fleet and Human Magnate are both pre-empire building ones, with Lost Fleet giving you more starting resources. These are for you to start with everything you need to build but just shy of actually having anything.

Sirak Rebels and Rigellian Empire have you start as an existing empire, with stuff already built.

Customize Faction

This is where you fine tune your faction. You can override the default start and start as an empire, which gives you a prebuilt empire the size of which is depending on map settings. For instance, if you start as a Neutral Trader with the override on you will start in Independent Space but there will be a prebuilt empire owned by you elsewhere on the map.

You set your faction's name and ship/station prefix, and you select your tech group and traits.

Traits are all described well in-game. Bureaucracy is somewhat useful for being able to build a station in areas that are otherwise full, including other faction's space - but in general it's not too hard to capture some territory of your own and have plenty of station space. Looter is nice for getting loot more often as you hunt other ships and can be handy depending on playstyle. Weapon and shield expert are very useful in any fighting situation, but expensive point-wise.

The tech groups all have their unique flavors. AI Core is totally different and doesn't use any of the default stuff. Crystal and Organic have all of their own stuff except colonies. Ceridan and Pirate have their own special factories, but can use default shields weapons and colonies. And the rest can build all the default factories in addition to their unique ones.

You have the option to take the Independent tech group in addition to (or in place of) the core tech groups. This lets you build their ships and factories and use their shields and weapons and colonies. In general the independent ships aren't as good as the other faction's ships and most factions have good factories. So unless you're filling in a hole you don't really need this. For instance the Ceridan have no carriers normally, the Pirates have a crippled economy due to lack of regular stations, and you may want to use standard weapons if you don't like the Crystal or Organic ones.
Controls
Now you're sitting there, watching your little ships fly around, and trying to figure out what to do. If you have completed the tutorial you should know the basics of controlling your ships, but for reference I'll include some controls here to remind you. Note that you can remap these, but these are the defaults.
  • Z : Pause key. You probably want to do that right now so you can continue reading the guide.
  • WASD : Movement. Pretty standard, W and A are for accelerating and decelerating and SD for steering.
  • J : Jump key. Hit this to initiate a local jump, then click where you want to go. It takes a few seconds to complete the jump and a minute or so to recharge after a jump.
  • E : Interact key. This is what you use to buy or sell at a station, use a gate to travel, hail a targeted ship, loot a cargo container, or transfer cargo between owned ships.
  • Q : Scanner. Gives you info about a ship or station.
  • X : Ship setup menu of the ship you're currently controlling.
  • F1 : Empire manager. Go here to change policies or control your other ships remotely.
  • F2 : Galactic Map. Go here to see where quests are located (little red target on a sector) or just see where you are and plan your trip.
  • Tab : Sector map. AKA Local map.
  • F3 : Sector info panel. Shows stuff like what factories are present, how much free space for more factories there is (or isn't), what the colony produces or imports, etc.
  • C : Swaps control to the selected ship. If no ship is selected, this goes into free look mode. If multiple ships are selected, each press will cycle through the ones you have selected until none are left selected.
  • T : Puts camera on target. Much like C, this will put you in free camera mode if you hit it with no target. Camera follows them, but still retains AI control. Works on other faction's ships as well, but only useful without fog of war or with an asset nearby.
  • R : Reset camera. This will put you back at your current controlled ship.
  • Numpad - : Clear selection.
  • Numpad + : Select all ships in sector.
  • Ctrl Numpad + : Filter out all non-military ships from selection. So you would hit + then Ctrl + to get all military ships in sector.
  • F : Follow or Protect. This orders the selected ships to follow or protect the controlled ship.
  • K : Kill. This orders either the selected ships or any following ships to kill your current target, or brings up a crosshair to let you right click a target if you have no enemy selected.
  • P : Patrol. Orders ships to patrol the current sector.
  • H : Stop. Orders them to stop what they're doing.
  • Ctrl # : Replace # with a number key from 1-10 (0 being 10). Adds the selected ships to that control group. Press the number again without the Ctrl to select those ships. This makes managing ship groups much easier.
First Steps
Your first steps will depend on what start you picked and what your goals are. If you started as an empire, you can jump right into managing it. If you started with one of the starts that has a construction ship and money, you can get right to station building. For this guide we'll assume that you went with the really basic default Neutral Trader scenario.

So you're sitting in ISA territory with a Silverblade and a Tanker. The Silverblade is a pretty effective cruiser, and the Tanker is your average trading vessel. You'll be pretty poor right off, so your first step in pretty much any goal is going to involve making more money. First, how do you best utilize your trade ship?

Making Use of your Trader

Setting it up as a free trader could be a good option. To do that, you go into your asset list (F1, assets tab) and double click it. From here you go into the Automation tab and set it as a Free Trader. Then you set a home sector, a range, and decide whether you should blacklist pirate sectors and whether you should include gate travel. Including gate travel pretty much makes it a universe trader, since the gates lets it go anywhere. This will make it look for cheap wares, buy them, and sell them. It can be very profitable, and more than a bit dangerous (ship blown up with all your money invested in a hold full of expensive cargo? ouch). You can let your ship hire escorts, although they cost a bit and will eat at your profits.

A safer option (for your bank account, at least) would be to set it up as a mining ship. This can also be quite profitable. But first you need to give your ship the proper gear - you will have to track down a mining laser mk1 to fit onto your trader. You can find these in military bases and shipyards, but may not find it the first few you look depending on your luck. Once you have one on your trader (either by trading it to it, or controlling it before you buy it) you just go into the Equipment menu (X if you're in control, or through assets list) and double click the existing weapon to remove it, then d-click the mining beam. Then you can sell the old gun. Once that's done, setting it up as a miner is done much the same as you would a free trader, you just select Asteroid Miner instead. This is also dangerous for the ship, especially if you let them mine in pirate sectors; but is a bit safer for your pocketbook since the only investment at stake is the ship itself.

Other possible useful jobs are Scavenger - which is not so good for a trade ship (you want something fast to get in and get out, alternately something big enough like a battleship that won't be messed with as it loots) or Spacefly Hunter - more dangerous than asteroid miner due to where it has to go for space flies. You could also use your ship to manually trade and complete trade missions, which will be abundant in the early game. It depends if you want to set it and forget it while you play your Silverblade, or focus on your Tanker.

Now for your Silverblade

Your weapon loadout on the silverblade will be random, and probably not ideal. It still gets the job done, but the mixed loadout probably doesn't synergize. It's hard to aim beams and plasma together unless your target is immobile, for instance. Depending on what you want to do, you will want to pick up new weapons.

A few options for loadout:
  • Pick up some large mining lasers and go miner on your silverblade too. Your personal cargo hold is pretty lousy for this, but you could follow your cargo ship around and use your bigger mining beams to quickly pick up and transfer cargo to the miner.
  • Get beams. These are easy to aim and high damagers. Alphatech large beams are pretty nice. You'll shred anything you attack, but if you load nothing but them you will also burn through energy.
  • Get plasma launchers. The Positron Mk3s are even higher damaging than lasers and longer range, but harder to aim. A volley from these will wreck ships very quickly assuming you hit.
  • Use missiles. They deal less damage, but you don't have to aim. Javelins (an L size variant) pack a nice punch and use very little energy, but are slow and hard to hit fast ships like fighters with. FLAK missiles (S sized) are surprisingly good - decent damage, fast fire rate, and amazing tracking ability; although they use 3x the energy of the Javelins (still very little compared to the big guns). Auroras (an M size variant) come in in between the FLAK and the Javelin DPS wise, and might be a good compromise for you.

The heavy hitting Plasma weapons can wreck ships really quickly, but are difficult to aim at a moving target. The beams are easier to aim, but less range so you have to get closer. An issue with both of these weapons is shields are big energy drainers, so as soon as you take some damage your energy level will dip to nil and your DPS will go down with it. Missiles have an advantage here in that you can often stay out of range of other weapons, plus they use less energy if you are taking hits. Missiles downside is you have to target to fire them, so in a hectic situation with a bunch of fighters on you you can't just spray em down like you can with beams and plasma.

The Silverblade is in kind of a tough spot as your sole ship. A fleet of them would be one thing, but just one ship is pretty frail if you face any significant threat. It's not really fast enough to chase down and get in close range of most bounty targets, and not tough enough to stand up to the weapons fire of anything you can chase down. This means that you need something with range. So my personal recommendation is to get missiles.

Which type of missiles depends on what you want to hunt. You can make money bounty hunting, pirating, or hunting the Swarm for their loot.
  • Pirating it doesn't really matter. You just need to damage ships and then hail them to demand they surrender the cargo. Destroying them will likely destroy the cargo too.
  • If you intend to hunt Swarm, I suggest the Javelins for the added damage.
  • If you want to go bounty hunting, the FLAK missiles are amazing for their agility to chase down and hit a running target.

The Auroras will also get the job done of chasing down moving targets, and pack a bit more punch than the FLAK - but aren't as good for taking down fighters if it comes to that. The FLAK have an advantage of being super cheap if you're broke, and also of fitting on small fighters if you lose your silverblade and can't afford another cruiser.

Now What

So your trade ship is flying, and your cruiser is loaded out. Now you set about making that money.

If you're bounty hunting, you need to check the list of bounties. This is done at a military station or shipyard. Pick up some high paying ones, then check where they are on the map and fly to them. Also keep an eye out for ships with the [Wanted] tag, as this means they have a bounty.

If you intend to pirate trade ships, fly around and look for ships with valuable cargo. You can park near a factory that produces valuable cargo, or just hang out anywhere and scan passing ships. Demand they drop it - if they say no, shoot them a bit and ask again. Often they'll dump the cargo to get away. This can earn you a bounty with that faction, which will make bounty hunters come after you. Destroying them is worse than just demanding cargo, so if they keep refusing it might be better to look for a captain that's not so brave/stupid (they vary). Having more ships on your side makes them more likely to drop it, so in this case it wouldnt hurt to even bring your trade ship with you to both intimidate them more and carry the loot.

To hunt swarm you just need to find them. Go to a Swarm sector if you know of one. One contested by another faction is even better - let them do the killing. Kill, loot the remains, sell anywhere, and profit. Pretty straightforward.
Next Steps
Once you have some income coming in, you will want to reinvest to make more money.

More Ships

Having more ships is a great way to do this. Universe traders or miners are great money makers, so investing your hard earned profits in trade ships for this purpose is a good choice. Even if you lose a few, they will quickly pay for themselves - and you'll be at a net positive unless your ships are going into very dangerous space.

You can assign roles to multiple ships by shift clicking to select a group of ships in the assets list and modifying them all at once with the gear icon on the left. This will let you quickly set up your trader or miner ships, no matter how many you bought (most I have bought at once was 50, lol).

The Firewalker makes for a good trader, available from the Drath. It has the biggest cargo hold, nice speed, and sports the best equipment options (2 medium guns, 2 medium shields - decent pirate deterrant).

Alternatively, you could set up scavenger ships. Any of the cheap fighters are good for this. They don't technically even need guns if you want to cheap out on them, just give them shields and let them go. You will lose a few, but they can occasionally get some nice loot drops to sell.

Safer Trading

If you're having trouble with pirates blowing up your ships, you have some options.

Option 1 is to simply join their guild. This costs you money, potentially a lot of it, later down the line should you start claiming territory (you pay per sector you own in guild dues) but has the benefit of making it much less likely for you to be attacked.

Option 2 is to wipe them out. Once you have the money to afford a good battleship or two, you can start doing harder missions - like destroying pirate bases. This has the nice side effect of making that area of space much safer since the pirate ports where the pirate ships frequent are gone. Just be careful when you hit the station - once you do enough damage to make them hostile, every ship onboard will rush at you like bats out of hell. FLAK cannon arrays (XL weapon with a blast radius and rapid fire) are useful in this situation to quickly spray down incoming ships.

Stations

Another good option for income is to build stations. For this you need a dock builder, which will cost you nearly 2 million. So it's not a cheap investment, and probably secondary to getting your first battleship. But once you have one, you can build stations for extra income. Just make sure you protect your dock builder, as losing it to pirates would spoil your fun.

The first step of this involves setting your money management to allow station building. Go into the F1 Empire management screen, Empire tab, and transfer money from trading to either Military Building (for military stations like shipyards and bases) or Station Building (for all the other stations). Once done, you just have to select the dock builder, hit B for build or tap the build icon, pick a spot, and pick a station type.

You can either start claiming territory and get your own faction going (which can save you a fortune in future ship costs, since you can start building your own with a shipyard) or simply build non-military stations in other faction territory where there is space. F3 is a boon here to see what factories are present and if there is space for more. Mines are good for this, as ore and crystals are always in demand. Otherwise just look for opportunities. If you see stations having a shortage of something, you can likely make a profit filling in the gap. Once built and producing AI ships will trade with your station (assuming you allow it), or you can handle the cargo hauling yourself.

My Empire

If you go the Empire route, you can make use of the Automation controls if you want. This makes your faction act much the same as the other AI factions, and lets you do things other than empire management while your empire grows if you don't want to be a hands on leader.

You will want to claim colonies to increase your supply limit and to get the free ship part production going. To do this, build a military base or shipyard in any unclaimed planet sector (or a claimed one with no military base or shipyard to steal it, but the faction won't be too happy). You also want to get your ship part production going - either manually by building all the appropriate structures, or automatically (the AI does a decent job of prioritizing this). From there your economy will grow over time, and you can focus on threats - like other empires that want your claimed territory, or threats from pirate raids.

You will also have to deal with diplomacy. A quick tip about it: Send them money to make them like you, if they like you you can get non aggression pacts so that they won't attack you. Otherwise it comes down to if you border them and they want your territory, and your military might isn't big enough to defend it - they'll take it from you. But the nuances of diplomacy is a bit outside the scope of this guide.
Misc Tips
  • FLAK Missiles (S missiles) are great for taking out bounty targets from a distance. Mix in some Javelins (L) for more power if you want, but having at least one FLAK missile onboard to start damaging the target and have it engage you is a huge time saver for a bounty hunter. A full armament of FLAKs is good for most bounty targets though.

  • FLAK cannon arrays (XL guns) make great anti-carrier and anti-base guns, as they can chew through the fighter swarms with ease.

  • Bulldog ships (human fighter) are great cheap starter bounty ships. For a bit over 60k credits you can get one armed with FLAK missiles. These ships can quickly catch bounty targets, the 4 FLAKs on them can wipe out cruisers with a little work, and they can outfly anything except FLAK missiles (if someone targets you with those and you can't beat them quickly, jump away).

  • The Warg (human Battleship) makes a good first battleship if you have Bonus Ships enabled. It's reasonably fast, very well armed and shielded, and isn't that expensive. The Sirak Absolution is another good one, especially if you play without the bonus ships. It's even faster, agile, well armed, and has a good generator. The Pirate Manowar is pretty good too - a bit faster than the Sirak ship; but with one less gun, a weaker generator, and a smaller cargo hold. Other battleships are quite a bit slower

  • Spend extra money you get on Firewalker trading ships from the Drath. These make great universe traders and great mining ships.

  • Utilize battleships as universe traders once you can afford to buy them. They have cargo holds to rival the trade ships, and are much better protected so you won't be losing that hold full of expensive cargo very often. They also make good miners, especially since they can equip the large mining beams. The downside is you can get a fleet of trade ships for the price of one of these.

  • Saving up to buy a construction ship with a million to spare to build a shipyard is a good alternative to buying your first battleship and then saving more for the constructor, since you can start building your own battleships as soon as the construction ship gets done with your shipyard. Just make sure you don't get the constructor killed first.

  • When not in use building stations, construction ships make great asteroid miners. Huge cargo holds and room for the large mining beams.

  • Gates and Shipyards can only be built in Capital sectors. Every solar system has one, and often single systems scattered around will be Capitals too. Check for if a sector is listed as Capital on the map.

  • You can adjust who can enter your gates in your empire management screen, as well as who is allowed in your systems. You can also set pirates to always be hostile. This allows you to control who has access to your systems.
Thanks for reading!
I hope you have found this guide useful. I wrote it after seeing so many comments about the UI being bad, when it really isn't. I think the main issue is that people just aren't taking time to learn it. Once you know the hotkeys to do things, it's really quite intuitive to control a fleet of ships or just a single one. And the automation options let you micromanage as little or as much as you want.

This is still the first draft of this guide and I have no editor, so I'm sure there are typos and much room for improvement. I haven't taken the time to add any screenshots yet. Adding relevant screenshots is something I may do in the future.

If you see something I can improve, let me know in the comments!

Have fun!
4 Comments
falkon311 27 Feb, 2016 @ 8:10pm 
Ahh ok great thanks! So if choosing Human it'd be better to uncheck Independent and get some other perk- nice!

Thanks
Cian  [author] 27 Feb, 2016 @ 7:04pm 
Glad ya'll like it.

The Independent and Human tech groups aren't the same, but all the Independent group gets you as Human is the Independent ships. Not super useful unless you just like the independent ships and want to build your own.
falkon311 27 Feb, 2016 @ 11:14am 
Great guide! Quick question: When I choose Human the "Independent Tech" box is checked but in the races description is "Standard Tech Group etc etc" and the description for Independent Tech also mentions "Standard Tech".

Are these the same? Can I then uncheck "Independent Tech" when choosing the Human faction? If so.. I'll have to post on the forums about it as the dev needs to change that.

Thanks!
fattyfatfat03 22 Feb, 2016 @ 6:03pm 
This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you!