So you got your brand new planet and are ready to get into space warfare, great!
what we have to know for starters is what strategy we are going to use, this guide will focus on 4 player+ games, 1v1 and 3 players is another story and your mileage may vary with 4 player games but let's get started.

Tech is the best thing, it will allow you to use all the fancy buildings and their abilities to your advantage and thus we have to focus on it this is why in 99% of games your first priority is to research quantumm computing
this will make your cities research faster.

anyways after that out of our mind for some turns we need to start developing our economy so we can build faster and maintain our energy needs, for that reason you want to focus on power plants and mines, locate your medium and big cities first to start planning your grid, an easy way to identify them is by their number of connectors
then we want to start placing stuff
at the first turn you will only be able to afford this, you'll have stock remaining for a railgun but don't be tempted, if you fire early you will probably hit an empty spot of your enemy and even if you hit something you will do minimal damage, these resources are better spent growing our economy for now

our goal now is to fill city slots when possible, this is because the more connections a city has, the faster it grows and we need that to increase our science output, keep in mind cities don't have to be connected between them, as long as the slot is populated it counts, here I interconnected the cities to save early materials not having to build another solar plant but it's not neccesary

Be mindful to include mining upgrades as soon as possible because these cost half a mine but produce 75% which is good
for now the planet material reducer upgrade is not needed so we can maximize our growth but don't wait too much, or you'll lose many resources, I recommend around turn 5 or 6 to apply these
make sure to balance your economy, having around 1k more materials produced than energy

Now that you got quantumm computing start the science institute in your biggest city and if your second is big enough also there, this will boost your science production a lot and you'll get technologies faster
now let's go to advanced signal processing and after unlocking it use the active radar scan on your 2 biggest cities for even more science!!

in this step you have 3 options each with their pros and cons and you have to decide which one works best for this match, note that chosing a bad option won't get you killed but you can be at a disadvantage for some turns.

The science rush
research experimental matter control and slap 2 electromagnetic jammin for a ton of science and 2 rare material synthesis for a ton of materials

pros: faster research means you have better stuff before your enemies and your material income will be high
cons: you may be targeted by someone and lose your edge pretty quickly

The weapons rush
Get your weapon of choice, rails laser or missiles and hit others with them,if you use lasers or missiles get some intel to be able to see stuff!!, mind that MIRVS in the default ruleset are very bad and you should never use them, coils are fine but bad for an early weapon
pros: you can halt your enemy growth giving you a huge boost, if someone attacks you, you can defend easily
cons: someone else may develop science or economy faster without you doing something and getting an edge over you, you can gain early enemies

The defense man
to counter random rails and grow more unlock kinetic defense and place it on your cities, this will give you protection against early rails and also make your cities grow faster, if you do this make sure that your defense covers the entire city or you won't get the growth bonus
if you think your enemy will go for lasers or missiles unlock the data security hub and place 4 or 5 with the counter intel upgrade, this will make it very difficult for early attacks to hit your cities directly
pros: you become resilient to random attacks and become a less desirable target, you get a city bonus and unlock projects earlier
cons: you will lag in science and if someone really wants to damage you they'll find a way

Economy is the gathering of resources and production of energy, a strong economy means you can do more on a given turn so it's a priority.

At first you want to get at least 2 rare material syntesis projects but 3 and 4 is also good to massively increase your material production to 10k or more, you'll deplete your planet quickly but it's worth because your enemies may have material in the planet but you'll have it in your pocked ready to be used instantly, while your planet is mined out also build solar plants with the upgrades but don't get energy projects yet
after the planet is depleted sell your mines and you'll have around 20k or even 40k materials in stock, then focus on your power, unlock the SSTAR project
and give it to your cities to produce 8k energy at the very least and ideally 10k+, don't overdo it though because excess energy are wasted resources so be careful, if you have a lot of weapons and a strong defense grid an amount even higher than 20k may be needed

with energy almost always you'll want solar plants, if space is low you can use floating plants but be mindful of their reduced HP, Nuclear plants only use them if you really need the power NOW, or if you don't have materials in your planet or if you need the extra connections ,otherwise don't use them

No matter what you choose you'll need weapons at some point so here is what you want to do

Rails
with rails you have 2 options, you can use them as your main weapon to deal huge amounts of damage but you need some research to do it or you can go for a cheaper route which will allow you to deal some damage while focusing your research on something else

Cheap rails

Fully invested rails

Pros:
-Fairly low research costs
-HUGE AoE in fully invested rails, if you spam enough you can easily destroy 20+ buildings in one turn and overwhelm your enemy
-The giant AoE can hit buildings even if they are defended when landing outside of the defense radius
-No need for intel so you can fire and almost certainly you'll damage a lot of stuff

Cons:
-Can't be aimed, if you need to destroy something in particular then tough luck, you'll have to pray to hit the right thing

Missiles
missiles allow you to hit specific buildings and deal decent damage they also are fairly easy to research and don't need upgrades to be great, if you want your missiles to be harder to destroy you can give them the HP upgrades but it's not neccesary if your defense grid is fine, you can also make your missiles hit harder cities or buildings but many times you want the flexibility to hit both so the upgrades are up to you

Pros:
-Low research needed
-Can target specific buildings
-Deal decent damage to buildings and cities

Cons:
-Need intel to be useful
-If an enemy has a strong economy they can make strong defenses and recover quickly

Lasers
lasers can only be blocked by shield defenses and have pinpoint accuracy, they deal okay damage and are the easiest to aim, with upgrades they work the same as missiles, you can choose to upgrade them but that's up to your strategy

Pros:
-No need to take gravity into account
-You need a specific defense to block them

Cons:
-The thing that you want to hit may not be in the laser sight
-Shield defenses have a 100% laser block success
-Very little AoE

Coilguns:
Coils deal high damage and when upgraded can easily overwhelm a defense grid, but need high research amounts to be upgraded

Coil upgrades
you can make other upgrades work but most times you'll want heavy weight projectiles and dual shot support to overwhelm your enemies with their numbers

Pros:
-When in numbers deal massive damage
-Enemies need extreme defense grids to be able to defend upgraded coils

Cons:
-High research cost
-one conenctor comapred to rails

MIRVS
99.9999999% of time MIRVS are not worth your science and materials, they require huge amounts of science, deal low damage, and require huge amounts of materials, don't bother with them at all

Generally a good ofense is better than a good defense but you can choose to be a campy boy, just remember that any defense can be penetrated with enough firepower

Defending railguns
because of the huge radius of railguns the best way is to use the kinetic increased radius upgrade to cover your planet, if your economy is strong (at least 8k energy left for defenses at the action phase) you can try the probability upgrade but rember if your economy weakens you won't be able to afford these anymore







otherwise go to the HP+ upgrade so the few projectiles that hit don't destroy them


what we want is to maximize the area covered to prevent the huge AoE from hitting us, it's okay if we leave a little space between the defenses because it's very unlikely for rails to land in these
some rails will go through but if you get hit by one or two projectiles in each building they'll rarely destroy something

Defending coils
the setup above works okay for non upgraded coils, but if you know your enemy is preparing a coil army there is a way to defend, what you want to do is give your kinetics the following upgrades
and give many layers of protection to the area you want to defend, at least 3


this is because coils don't have a large AoE but their huge numbers and damage means they'll go through a regular grid easily, you could theorically use the probability upgrade but you'll need a god economy to sustain that, at least 24k energy just for the coils alone, not counitng building new stuff or firing your own weapons!! which is not really feasible

Defending missiles
missiles have medium AoE but if they can't hit a target directly they won't deal a lot of damage, normally you only want to protect cities and superweapons, but if an area is important and your enemies use a lot of missiles you can use the same grid as the railguns
however unlike the kinetics you can't leave any space between your defenses or a missile could easily target that area, also remember to protect the power plants powering the defenses too!

To defend a city you can use either an ion with the proability upgrade or two overlapping ions
however be careful with the second approach because it may reveal your city if the enemy has enough intel to see your ion defenses but not enough to see the city itself, you can reduce the likehood of this with the stealth upgrade
you can also use the positions above to trick your enemy into thinking a city is there but in reality nothing is and they may waste some laser shots on an empty space.
you can also use the same formations above to spot enemy cities even without enough intel!

Defending lasers
same as missiles you normally only want to defend against lasers your cities, but if you need to defend other buildings you only need to cover the buildings this is because lasers have tiny AoE and an open spot is useless if nothing is there, you can also protect your data security hubs with shields which are common targets for lasers because they prevent your enemy from seeing your buildings

Here is a common shield formation, take note that the hole doesn't matter because nothing is there so lasers don't do any harm if they are aimed there



Defending superweapons
Unfortunately for now the only way to defend superweapons is a project that is bugged and doesn't do anything!, so literally the only way to defend solar laser or asteroids is to not get hit in the first place, for the solar laser high counter intel numbers is your only defense and for asteroids you'll have to destroy the building in your enemy's planet

to target some weapons and to know what your enemy is doing you'll need intel, to prevent your enemies from doing that you need coutnerintel

intel is a number and each building needs an amount of intel to be seen, the image below shows the number

you will need 5 to see the economy, 10 for intel buildings and supeweapons, 15 for normal weapons and defenses, 20 for population numbers and mines, 25 for the tech tree and research capacity, 30 for big cities, 35 for power plants, 40 for medium cities and 45 for small cities, a regular telescope will give you 8 intel which means you'll need for example 8 telescopes to be able to see a big city, each building can have a different intel rating, for example, if you give the double energy upgrade to a solar plant its intel rating will be 25 instead of the usual 35, however if instead you give it the stealth+ upgrade to your solar plant its intel rating will be 50 so it will be twice as hard to spot, these upgrades are up to you, normally not required.

Another thing is the counter intel % modifier which unlike intel is not a flat number but a percentage that is multiplied to each building, for example if you have 50% counterintel then each building gets a 1.5 boost to its rating so our 25 intel rating plant will get an additional 12, a regular 35 intel plant will get an additional 17, and the hidden 50 intel plant will get an additional 25, so the higher the intel rating, the more beneficial our counter intel % modifier becomes, to increase this number you use data security hubs and city projects.

something weird about the numbers is that if you want to make intel and counterintel is better to use the opposite upgrade, for example: if you want to produce more intel than counterintel then build telescopes with the counter intel upgrade and if you want more counter intel than intel build data security hubs with the intel upgrade, really depends on what you want to accomplish, if you use railguns for example intel won't be important at first so focus on counterintel, if you have a strong defense then you can focus more on intel.

City projects give you some abilites and perks that are otherwise impossible to obtain here is a list of all projects and their usefulness


The green projects are the good ones and should be used almost always

The yellow projects are situational and you may use them or not

The red projects are just bad and you should never use them

The defense projects don't do anything literally so yeah don't use them

The science projects should be used early for a science boost

The population growth projects are alright if nothing else is neccesary but the science needed to unlock them makes them unactractive, you won't use them most of the time

The only good energy project is SSTAR the others are just bad, you should start using SSTAR after your planet has been depleted or is about to deplete to not hinder your material production

Same with material projects, only rare material synthesis is worth, use it to deplete your planet quickly

The intel and counterintel that give +50% are good, stacking them with many buildings can give you insane numbers like 500 intel or +3800% counter intel, the others that give a flat value are only good if you are low on a value and are desperate to get it, i.e. late game when intel and counter intel buildings are destroyed

The weapons projects are very situational to increase your damage, generally you want the population projects to finish enemies faster, however these use slots that could be better used somewhere else and the others only last 1 turn making them very inconsistent

Project stacking is a very powerful technique that you should use to your advantage, for example SSTAR gives a 30% global increase but if you build SSTAR on your 5 cities then you get
1.3^5 = 3.7 or 270% increase in power capacity which is insane if used right, this also applies to other projects that give a % global increase

some weapons can be targeted to a certain place, these usually have small or minuscule AoE but you can use them to target important enemy buildings, like power plants and super weapons

our main target is cities not only because that is the end objective but cities also provide valuable resources like science and project slots, if you damage cities you will also halt their progression and reduce their abilites, if cities can't be targetted because you don't have enough intel or they are well protected then we move to secondary targets which is what your enemy uses to win, if they have kinetics that block your railguns then target them so in the next round you can destroy them, if they have a superweapon then it's wise to get rid of it, if they have lot's of coutnerintel then target the data security hubs and you can also reduce their intel by targetting telescopes.

there are 3 ways of targeting, the first is directly which is pretty straightfoward but the other 2 can cause more damage if used right


If your enemy has this formation of many buildigns powered by a single power plant and there are no other plants nearby for backup power then targetting this plant will make the 3 missiles go offline for 1 turn just destroying one building,










if the enemy has many plants spread as backups then target key buildings like the extremes in this chain, if done right and if your enemy isn't careful you can make go offline many buildings like mines giving you a huge advantage for that turn





Remember that missiles can still hit buildings just at the edge of an ion defense so if you have enough you can destroy a building even if it's fully covered

Getting a super weapon early can give you an edge if done right and depending on your strategy is what you want to choose, if you have lasers and missiles as your targetting weapons then asteroids are a good complement, however if you have railspam or coilspam then the soalr laser will allow you to finish the cities and the nuclear missile is in a middle ground, deals a wider area of damage but you need intel to use it,

The upgrades you want for your supers most of the time are the HP and the HP+ upgrades for a massive 900HP which makes it impossible to destroy them with a single hit, even an upgraded solar laser!, you can also try increasing the stealth to make it harder to be targetted or increase its damage

Solar laser
Complement of: rails and coilguns
Pros:
-Unblockable
-Massive damage with pinpoint accuracy
-Destroys almost all buildings in a single hit
Cons:
-Needs intel
-Can be blocked by the sun, random planets or your target may be at the night side of the enemy planet

Asteroids
Complement of: missiles
Pros:
-Unblockable
-Massive damage to cities
-Penetrates heavy defense grids
-doesn't need intel

Cons:
-Slow travel
-Very RNG, can deal almost or even no damage to an enemy
-Inconsistent

Nuclear missile
Complement of: lasers
Pros:
-Destroys non HP upgraded buildings inside its big AoE
-Can hit anywhere in the enemy planet
-Leaves annoying radiation

Cons:
-Needs intel
-Can be blocked with ion defenses
-Needs to account for gravity

You will notice that your buildings get damaged as you play and if your economy is strong you may be tempted to repair everything however you should try to repair everything manually if you have the time to analyze if it's worth, because repairing always cost half of the building no matter how much damage was dealt then it's only economically feasible to repair buildings when under 50% HP but for example if your 900HP superwapon was damaged with 200 then even though it has more than 50% HP if you know your enemy will focus it or shoot it with a solar laser then it may be a good idea to repair it to not lose it the next turn, if you don't have time then the repair <50% button does an alright job.

as your resources are depleted and you don't have material anymore it's time to sell stuff that is not essential or wasted, for example if you can't fire all your weapons because your power generated is low then you can sell some, if you produce too much energy for what you have then sell some power plants, if your asteroids don't deal a lot of damage because the enemy planet is mostly empty then sell them to invest in some lasers for example.

our goal at this stage is to focus as much as possible on cities to get enemies out

This guide should be used as starting point but not as the abolute truth, once you get comfortable you can try different strategies, other combinations or build orders, if you would like to play with other skilled players you can join our discord https://discord.gg/CSwj5TF