turns out you can also spend all but $2 before you realise you need another carrier to reach your last outlying planet that said, i've only got one planet still to reach that i might be able to see others from, i have no idea where i am in relation to you guys so i may pick the send all your ships in one direction option. If I turn up on your doorstep unannounced i apologise.
Expand and bump up your economy on all your planets. Save cash for a cycle or two if you have to. Each level of economy gives you $10, so a planet with level 4 economy will produce $40 a cycle. You can increase this with banking, but that does not affect the base income from planets, it's just an additional $50 per level of banking research you have in total.
190 for me. It's 10 per level, and 50 per banking level. So, it's better to spread it out over planets to get the same effect, isn't it, Fuus? -_-
Early economy is how you win NP. Invest in that, and later on you'll have stacks of cash to pay for research (which is expensive), ramping up your industry to insane levels and warp gates. In the earlier game, I won probably because I maintained an economic lead the entire way through, even if I had less planets. This means that when I did go to war, I could fund huge jumps in ship production, and I also had piles of money to invest in an extensive warp gate system pretty early, so I could pull fleets from all over my planets, even those the furthest from the front line.
Most of my cash has gone on economy so far, but as I can't see any other stars the proud people of Yellowtopia think they're alone in the universe.
I can still only see the same 10 stars i could at the start, have i gone awry somewhere, or do i just really need to get a bunch of scanning/hyperspace research done?
Yep, something you can tell from in game. You'll have two circles surrounding a selected planet, which indicate your hyperspace and scan ranges. If a planet is outside this, you get nothing.
ok, cool. i take it as the hyperspace ring is initially larger i'd be better researching that rather than scanning in terms of trying to see other stars and work out where i am?
The hyperspace ring is larger simply due to the metrics of how the research levels relate to distance. Hyperspace is (off the top of my head) x+3 light years, whereas scanning is x+2. Each level of either adds 1 LY of distance. Personally, I'd push for hyperspace range first. You won't run in to other players in the initial expansion phases, and capturing a new planet at hyperspace tech 2-3 may bring new planets within scanning range.
yeah, that's my thoughts too. and it's not like i'm spreading my ships too thinly, as currently they have nowhere to go, so if i send 50-100 to the first planet i see, they can move on from there (is 50-100 excessive/not enough?).
50-100 is batshit for this early stage. My fleets were like, 10-15. That said, if you're constrained to a single system to advance to, then yes, go for it.
i figure if i send them out, depending on what they find they're not really expected to come back. I used a single fleet of 5 to grab the 4 stars i can see that weren't mine to start with, the rest of my ships were all really centralised 'til last night, i've moved them to the edge of my space in anticipation of seeing new stars pop up. of course odds are at least one of them is going to be sat miles away from the frontier when/if that happens. of course this might all just be me faffing because i currently have nowhere to go.
