Saturday, December 22, 2007

Space Invasion - Colonization

This is a follow up to my previous blog Space Invasion Fleets and Raiding Inactives.

In Space Invasion, Colonization basically means conquering and settling an empty planet and develop it and make it a part of your space empire. The game allows players up to 10 planets including our starting planet. You might be think that a galactic empire with 10 planets is small but don't be deceive by it. Even though players are limited to 10, there is more than enough activity that will occupy you for hours just defending and managing them.

To colonize a planet, we need to have the following technologies and research.

Weapons factory [Level 4]
Rocket engines [Level 8]

Once you have the requirements, you can go to your Weapons Factory and you will see that you can already build a Colony Ship. To build the ship you will need the resources listed below.

10,000 Pig iron
20.000 Metal
15.000 Kryptonite
8.000 Spice

Now that you have a colony ship, you are probably wondering where to send them. For new players, the most practical way to colonize a planet is to colonize one near you. There is nothing wrong on colonizing planet in another system or another galaxy. But having your first colony near your home planet means you can transfer resources faster between your planets and makes your development faster.

A newly colonized planet will have an initial resources of 1000 Pig Iron and 1000 Kryptonite. In addition, a colony ship can carry 5000 resources which will add up to the planet's initial resources. My advise is to carry metals and spice so that you can build a Fleet Base upon landing.

A colonized planet is considered good if it has 200 or more fields. Fields determines how far you can develop a planet. If you colonized a bad planet, I advise that you delete it since developing it would probably costly after 2 months when you finally decide to delete it. If you want to develop it still, don't develop it more than 10 levels.

Below is a list on how I personally rate a planet.

150 fields and below - Bad Planet (delete it)
199 fields and below - Still a bad Planet (delete it)
200 to 280 fields - Ideal Planet
280+ fields - Huge Planet

After acquiring your first ideal colony, you are probably tempted to colonize more planets in your system and use all your 10 planets slot. Resist the tempation. For now be contented with up to 3 planets until you reach 5000 points at least. Remember that you have to developed those colonies first and having lots of colonies early on the game will leave you too streched out to defend yourself.

The first thing to do once you settled down is to make Fleet Bases on those colonies and station some transporters. Higler level fleet bases means you can deploy more transporters to raid inactive planets. If you have a level 3 Fleet Base in your mother planet and 3 more at your first colony, that means you have doubled your resource gathering from inactives. Another 3 Fleet Base on your second colony means you have tripled it.

Your main focus after your first two colonization is to develop fleet bases and mines in those planets. You should also be focusing your research towards Diffusion Engines to gain access to Transmitter Ships and Shields for Small Shield Dome so that enemy Transporters can't steal your resources. You should place a mortar or two in each of your planets so you can shot down enemy spy probes.

Remember to review last week's blog on how to raid inactive planets by check this out Space Invasion Fleets and Raiding Inactives.

I will be giving another Colonization blog in the future and will cover in-depth strategies like raid colonies, planet deployment and selection, etc.


TIPS:
1) You can rename or delete a planet in your SETTINGS Link at the left navigation bar.
2) Don't colonize more than 4 planets in your system until you reach at least 5000 points or know what you are doing.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Space Invasion - Fleets and Raiding Inactives

Welcome back soldier. I'm glad you had made it for the first week. Please make sure to check out my previous blog "Space Invasion Strategy - The First Week" before proceeding.

The second week of the game is much more enjoyable than the first. Even though you are still limited in the actions you can still execute moves that will enable you to gather resources and expand much faster.

The initial focus of this period is to develop a small fleet to harvest resources from other planets. You need to a capability too to spy on Inactive planets. Depending on your luck or patience by the end of second week, you should be able to colonize your first planet.

Here is the list of what you need to develop.

Research Lab level 3 or better.
Fleet Base level 3 or better.
Weapons Technology level 2 or better.
Drive Research level 2.
Rocket Engines level 4.
Weapons Factory level 4.
Espionage level 2.

Once you have created/researched these, start making 2 Spy Probes and 3 Small Transports. Using the Spy Probes, you can scan inactive planets to check if they have resources or not. Spy Probes are fast and try to scan as many inactive planets near you.

If the scanned have sufficient resources and don't have any defensive structures like mortars or cannon, send 1-3 Small Transports to raid the planet. You can send 3 small transports in one planet at the same time or you can send them to 3 different planets. Keep doing this until you have enough resources to upgrade your researches so you can afford to build Large Transports. The minor raiding techniques you learn at this point will help you develop your own raid style in the future.

At this point, you might be tempted to create Small Fighters or planetary defenses. They would only be a waste of resources and won't help you much during this stage. Just build a few more small transports to help gathering resources at a faster rate.

To build large transports, you need the following Technologies.

Weapons Factory level 6.
Rocket Engines level 6.

Large Transport is faster than small ones and it can carry 30,000 resources. This is more or less equivalent to what your Pig Iron mine can produce in 24 hours. If you raided a planet with 30,000 resources, that means you have earned an equivalent of 1 day of resources that your mine can produce. Even though you are getting resources from other planets, it is advisable that you don't neglect building up your mines and Development Center.

At the end of the week, you are probably ready to colonize your own planet. You will learn about that in our next update.

During your second week, you are probably going to check your Space Invasion account every hour if you are raiding actively. You can still afford to go away from the keyboard and just come back when your transporters are back so you can build infrastractures or do researches.

TIPS:
1) Only attack inactive planets without defenses. You can attack active planets but you risk retaliation from the planet owner. You don't want that yet.
2) When retiring for the day, you can send your transporters to other galaxies to raid inactive planets so that you have extra resources when you come back the next day.
3) Powerful planets without defenses whether inactive or active can be raided even by a small transporter.

Space Invasion Strategy - The First Week

The first week of playing Space Invasion is probably the easiest and less time consuming of all. It's probably the most boring too. Just like any new character in an MMORPG, the actions you can do is very limited.

Your main goal during this period is to maximize your resource production. You need to bring your Pig Iron Mine and Kryptonite Mine to at least level 15. Your Blast Furnace and Spice Mine should be around level 10 too at the end of the week. Off course these factories won't run if you cannot power them up. So your Fusion Plant should be around level 15 too. Also at least try to bring your Development Center to level 3 so you can speed up the construction times.

At this stage you might be tempted to build up your Research Laboratory or create your Fleet. There is nothing wrong with that but I strongly advise that you don't build them yet since you will not have resources for the researches and you won't be able to build a decent fleet yet. Besides it will hinder your resource production from mines.

During this time, you are still under "Noob protection" from majority of players. You don't need to be online all the time since nobody will attack you yet. You can probably afford to login every 6-8 hours and won't lose much progress. Take note too that you can queue building construction.

Many players quit the game during the first day or week. Hopefully you can persevere and continue playing the game.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Space Invasion Overview






Before I start with my review, let me just point you to the official gamesite in order for you to learn more about it.

Click here for Space Invasion Help Page.
Click here for Space Invasion Wiki.
Click here for Space Invasion Website.


Space Invasion is a multiplayer online browser game. I find the game simple but complex at the same time. The interface are easy enough for me. The Researches, fleet management and resource management is quite complex.

I believe there are more than 200,000 registered players for this game and around 10,000 players online at any given time. I know it is not that big compared to your regular MMORPG but 10,000 players at any given time is like 1 full WOW/EQ2 server with tons of lag. Some MMORPG don't even have that many concurrent players during their peak hours.

The graphics for this game are mostly static images since it is a text base game. They are clear and concise which help ease the page loading times. They easily potray the things they want to describe. I find the text descriptions a bit lacking, it can be improve to help new players. The game's layout/frames are good and organize.

If there is one thing that is lacking in this game, I would say it's the content. The content is persistent but static. Mostly the players creates it by waging intergalactic war against other players or alliances. Hopefully, Bigpoint will make improvements for Space Invasion in the future that include some random events such as meteor showers, comet impacts and supernovas that will have various effects on planets/systems/galaxies.

The community for this game is not that vocal or visible. The official forums are helpful even though not many people are actively discussing the game there. The moderators take time to answer player questions.

The best thing that I consider right now for Space Invasion is that the game is free. The game don't offer premium services like other browser games. This is a big plus for all players since premium services offers an unfair advantage. The game is all ad-free, you won't encounter popups or banners. Recently Bigpoint added some ads that made a community uproar. The game maker remove it though to make a point that they listen to their subscribers.

My review ends here. I will be blogging about the gameplay next time and will give some sort of beginner's guide. Hopefully you stay tuned.

Till next time,

Gaiaplay