This is another in Random Tips of Absolute Newbies, it concerns survival. In "real" games, as opposed to those in which one is merely playing to play, the first, and most important tip, is to planet build. You need a well shielded Citadel as your Fortress. Your planet should be in a dead end Sector off the beaten path. You know you chose correctly if way down near the end game you are the only player to have traded at the nearest port. Do not make the mistake of leaving a trail of toll begging fighters, or defensive ones which lead to your door. If your area is getting too much interest, depending on where you are in your building, you might want to abandon this planet and if it is only at a level one or two Citidel. Evils will take a planet as close to completion of Level 3, (Quasar cannon) as they can.
They will watch, note that you have a Level 2 and will capture it. This means that you, who have spent days ferrying colonists are about to learn the meaning of waste of time. Evil will invade a Level 2, capture it, do what he can to get it to Level 3 so as to blow YOU up. Shrouding your planet with 1000 fighters is a waste. Leave the fighters on the planet, save one or two as beacons, but don't expose your power. If photon torpedos are operational, sending one in to paralyse your fighters, arriving, landing and capturing your planet is what Evil will do. Fighters on a planet can't be touched by photons. If there are no photon torpedos, it's a matter of Evil arriving, attacking and decimating your fighters. As Evils don't planet build, they steal credits and buy fighters, so 1k is nothing to them. When you have a Volcanic planet, build it to a Level 3, and set your quasar cannons to fire in the Sector.
The only purpose of a Volcanic is to produce fuel for the cannon. Set it to protect the Sector. Depending on how much fuel...if you're Volcanic has 500k units, 10% is enough. If it has less, you want it higher. On your Mountainous or Earth Type, set Sector Level to around 10% and the Atmospheric at 30%. If you don't have a lot of fuel, or no Volcanic planet playing security guard, set nothing for the Sector. Let the fool come in, try to land and be blasted to bits by setting the Atmospheric level to 30%. This means a player looks, sees a planet, a couple of fighters, enters, nothing happens, he attacks the fighters, goes to land, and is podded. Being podded means he loses his ship, his fighters, a lot of points, and has to get to the Space Station to buy something else.
Pods take Six Turns to warp; pretty expensive on low turn games. This is one of the reasons why you want to play low turns; on unlimited turns, you pod a player he gets home or to Star Dock and comes back fast; too fast for your planet to produce. If you lost 30% of 100k fuel destroying a player, that means you only have 70k left, and the next shot will be 21k. This means Evil can buy a Scout and a Well shielded ship, have the Scout tow the ship into the sector. The Scout is blown with the 21k, meaning there is only about 49k left, so the next 30% will be less that 15k and that strong ship might be able to survive it, land and capture. Hence, in low turn games, the podded player shouldn't even have enough turns to get to Star Dock.
