These tips apply to almost every gamemode and should be generally helpful for newer players.

• In singleplayer you can pause/speed-up the game via control buttons at the top left or by using comma/period.
  
  
• You can make action groups like most RTS games, via CTRL + 1-9. Pressing the number key again will select the units.
  You can also press F1-5 to select your squads.
  
  
• Right-clicking a nanomorph unit in the build menu, orders the number of robots you need to morph it. (They recently added a tooltip for this too)
  
  
• Shift clicking will order 10x of a robot.
  This also works with right clicking to order robots for a morph but will order the amount for 5x units.
  
  
• Almost everything uses energy, including production/defensive structures and even unit weapons when they recharge. This can get especially costly with faction-lab units.
  
  
• Build more than one factory, factories are what lets you build up your army.
  More lets you build units faster or replenish losses quickly. Rarely will one factory be enough.
  
  
• Brigadiers prioritise terrain for terraforming closet to them, if you need to terraform far away it's best to send them over. This applies when repairing terrain damage from weapons too.
  
  
• Some units can damage ground/terrain which damages structures over time.
  If affected by this yourself you need a brigadier to repair the terrain damage.
  
  
• Some units benefit from force attacking the terrain by pressing A and selecting the position. Howitzers are one which damages terrain and denies expansion as you cannot build on non-flat ground.

Energy Cores are the most commonly misused or misplaced part of the game but also the most important to learn. Cores are what generate your energy and what you must place your buildings around to ensure they're powered. The Frame also produces energy when 'installed' but cannot move without connection to a Core.

Cores generate energy based on the terraformed area their energy field covers and NOT how many you build, therefore spreading them out as far as possible without losing the ability to link the perimeter or otherwise defend them is essential to ensure you don't fall behind on income.

This image or similar has been shared around for years and is generally the best layout with the least wasted space between overlapping energy fields.

The idea is to create a circle of 9 around your frame and then circles of 6 around each core.

This covers the most space, the most efficiently without overlapping too much, thereby saving you energy in build costs and time whilst maximising income.



The cost of keeping the Perimeter up is 10 energy per second, per energy core. So use it sparingly and try not to use the global version unless you really need to as a large base can drain your energy by 100s a second if you enable all of them at once and end up stalling your economy.

Build Masters cost 20 energy per 'energy packet' they release, these can also be shot down by certain weapons such as lasers which will prevent construction progressing and consume the energy. So be careful where you position them, if the packets are crossing the map they may be intercepted.

Usually it's worth converting all but 1 BM to Brigadiers early on so as to not stall your economy and allow you to quickly terraform new land to build cores on at the start.

Generally you want to aim for an energy income of at least 40+ otherwise you will struggle to keep up. If you get over 60, you're probably already winning at that point or fighting a poor opponent.

The unit limit can be changed by editing a gamefile, this will need to be done by everyone playing otherwise you will not be able to play together or encounter issues.

The steps to do so are detailed in a guide by another user on the original game's steam page here.

Alternatively, I have created a mod for Legate Edition which you can simply drag and drop in to your mod folder to have 4x the population limit in both campaigns. You can download it here[drive.proton.me]