Petera1289 concept guide

Introduction

For those looking for a step by step hand holding guide, I strongly recommend the Sezoia starting guide translated from Spanish despite a few items I disagree with (eg warp drives on miners early on). This guide is intended more of conceptual briefing that will highlight common points of confusion that afflicts new players and those (like me) that bring with them preconceptions from “similar” games.

The first concept that catches out new players because of the difference to most similar games is that improving your tech does nothing for existing equipment regardless of where or what it is.

A second concept that catches new players out is their status. Everyone starts in “protectorate” status which costs them half of all Prestige (VP) earned but prevents a lot of bad stuff happening, including attacks by other players. Players can also surrender in a war to go back to protectorate status and this costs them ALL of their accumulated prestige. There are also several NPC factions which can be manipulated but mainly serve to trigger event missions. It doesn’t usually hurt to be at war with the “Independents” faction and inactive (quitter) players but the other NPC factions will retaliate in various ways. Being at war with another player naturally depends on both player’s orders but does mean your units will fight if they are together and not under orders to do something else.

The other important thing to understand about Zero-G Commander is there are many inter-related threads for players to juggle as the game has few hard limits. This flexibility on limits is exemplified by bases, colonys and research laboratories which are the key functions of the game:-

There are no limits to the number of colonies a player can control but each Planemo (planetary mass object) can only have one colony, regardless of the owner.

While there are limits to the total number of bases that can be on any planemo, depending on the type of planemo, there is no absolute limit to the total number of bases a player can own. Instead the cost of maintaining the basses just continues to grow until it is uneconomical. In many ways ships and fleets follow the same limits as bases.

A player is free to install large numbers of research laboratories in bases but there is a hard limit on the number that can be active at any time. This redundancy has two costs as space on each base is limited and maintenance has to be paid for each laboratory regardless.

Note that there are technologies to increase the number of laboratories that can operate and the economical limit on the number of bases or fleets which are separate to the technologies governing the capabilities of individual bases or laboratories and the equipment individual ships in a fleet can incorporate.

Understanding Bases and Colonies

Colonies are the civil population a player controls to provide taxes and manpower recruiting depending on what the player sets for each individual colony. There is also the ability to set tariffs on each colony’s consumer goods purchases providing a second but less reliable tax revenue stream. A colony can be expanded by adding more habitats but when more than two habitats are installed there is a penalty to local happiness. It is possible to play without owning a colony but earning “credits” will be even more of a concern than normal.

Bases are where a player’s facilities such as planetary mines, research laboratorys and space shipyards are installed (not in the colony). Instead of a hard limit there is a maintenance cost penalty for exceeding the player’s current capacity. This capacity is determined by the players “Colonial Administration” research level and the size of the base. Most bases cost 2-3 “CAC” while each level of Colonial Administration technology provides an additional 5 points of CAC capacity.

If the total CAC cost of a players bases exceeds their CAC capacity, the total maintenance cost is increased proportionately eg if your CAC capacity is 10 but the bases cost 12 CAC, your total maintenance will be 120% of normal. This information, including the adjusted maintenance cost, is shown at the bottom of the bases screen.

Note that the basic maintenance cost of a base (or ship or troop unit) depends on its components.

Important Points

• If you lose your last base you are out of the game – this also applies to players you are attacking. Exactly what happens to any remaining colonies (and fleets) is situation dependent.

• Planets have different colony “habitat” requirements which are each researched separately.

• Bases can be upgraded by installing new ones from that base’s cargo bay over the original

• Colonies are NOT upgraded the same way as bases. Installing a new habitat adds its capabilities to the existing ones rather than replacing it.

• Both bases and colony habitats have capability levels that can be researched. Thus a “Core III” base is generally similar to a Core base but with more space and structural strength (hit points)

• Base and (colony) Habitat capability level research has no effect on the Colonial Administration Capability

Understanding ships and fleets

Players can design their own ships for a variety of roles and there is no limit to the number of ships a player can own. There is however a limit on the number of designs a player can have prepared which does NOT affect existing ships. The important limit is the number of Fleets a player can operate before the extra maintenance cost starts to become prohibitive. This limit can be increased by researching Fleet Logistics and the penalties for exceeding the fleet limits are calculated the same way as they are for Bases.

Important Points

• Fleets must contain at least one ship

• Fleets can be merged, split, reorganised etc whenever they are not doing something (assigned a mission).

• Regardless of what is selected when the ship is started by the shipyard, a new fleet will be created if there is no fleet at the shipyard for it to join. If another fleet is at the base when it completes, the ship will probably join it.

• Your Production Centre can produce components for ships but it is the shipyard that creates ships including missing components. Having the components available makes the creation faster.

• Ships can be upgraded to a new ‘design’ at a shipyard but all of the new components must be in storage at the base holding the shipyard.

• There is no real benefit to having spare power or life support capacity just because the ship has newer versions of these systems but there is a slightly higher resource cost.

• Fleets can be assigned AI behaviours for each of 3 common situations eg a combat fleet might be suicidally aggressive in combat but a mining fleet can be ordered to hide when idle or there is a nearby battle

Research and research facilities

There is a large range of technologies to research and many of them form prerequisite chains which are fortunately fairly linear. Many of the technologies release new “modules” for use in ships or bases.

While there is no limit to the number of the various types of Research Centres a player can build, a player’s “Laboratory Network” tech level restricts the number that can be active at any time with the rest just draining money from your pocket.

Research Centres can become more effective in 2 ways … either by specializing or just being “advanced”.

Important points

• Installing more research centres provides redundancy NOT more research.

• Research centres have to be installed/uninstalled etc on a base.

• Location is irrelevant, the Research Centre works just as well hidden in deep space as at your capital.