The Ten-Seven Guide

(copied from E-Space Society, great write up.)

This is the Ten-Seven Guide. The goal of this guide is to help the new player attain ten bases in seven days. A proper start can help you enjoy the most out of your Astro Empire experience. The first week is important for three reasons. Players are immune to attack. This allows you to focus on building your infrastructure rather than balance infrastructure with defenses. With this, a proper initial infrastructure allows you to build defenses and continue to improve your infrastructure when the protection wears off. Finally, new accounts are “upgraded” for the first week, giving you full advantage of the five queue slots.

On this page…

• Astro Picking
• Activity Guide
  • Construction
  • Research
  • Production
  • Trade Routes
• Defenses on Day Six

Many players are unable to pay to play, and a well-managed first week gives you an excellent start to enjoy free game play. The first three days are crucial as you are racing to build your first outpost ship so you can build other bases. This guide should keep you very cash-poor as you struggle to bootstrap your experience.

To put this guide into perspective, Ben Wilson recently ran through it on Alpha and documented his progress and findings in A Ten Seven Diary.

Astro Picking

As this is a bootstrap guide, it does not get into a detailed discussion of which astros to pick. Instead, it instructs you to target specific astros and orbits. Your first astro should be a Rocky or Crater astro. Generally, if you plan on playing a free account, you will prefer a Planet. However, the first astro appears to always be a moon. If you are an upgraded player, you will prefer moons. You should prefer Slot 2 (CXX:XX:XX:2X) orbits for Fertility and Solar Energy benefits, followed by Slot 1 orbits. Avoid other orbits unless you have a high-value astro.¹ Be prepared to restart your account to get a preferred base.

In the Advanced Base Guide, there is a greater discussion on which astros to select. The key to success in Astro Empires is specializing bases and optimizing those specializations. When planning your overall base specialization, remember that your first base will be a joint Production-Research base. This base is Research specialized because you have built several Research Labs to conduct critical research. This base is Production specialized because the astro is likely not one of the optimal astros for Research. By putting a dual focus on this first base, you ensure none of your efforts are wasted. Remember the adage “haste makes waste” when planning your bases.²

This table suggests an order for selecting and building bases during your first week. Feel free to vary the order based on your local astropography. The astro type order is based on preference—preferred to acceptable starting from the left.

Building your bases too close together is a very bad idea. It allows larger rivals to pick them off in rapid succession. Therefore, try not to have more than one base in a region. Defensively speaking, your bases need to be self-sufficient. But, that begins in Day Six. The closest your bases should be is in adjacent regions, but even that risks your bases being attacked in short order by a dedicated opponent.

Activity Guide

Once you’ve picked your base, it is time to start building. Remember, time is essential in the first day. You want to ensure your queues are full and no time is lost. When filling your queues, you will want to balance your activities. For example, when building a Metal Refinery or Robotics Factory, pick the less expensive structure. This is the cost-effective approach to construction. This section discusses construction objectives, research objectives and production objectives.

Construction

When you get your base going, quickly build Metal Refineries. I suggest building four Metal Refineries before anything else. Unfortunately, you will run out of Population and Energy, which means you’ll need to build an Urban Structure and another Solar Plant. Throughout this guide, I assume you will plan your queue to include Population and Energy expansion. Usually, the queues will limit your selections based on resource shortages. Initially, you will only be building Solar Plants.³ You will only start building the more advanced Plants (e.g. Fusion or Antimatter) when the cost of this core Plant becomes prohibitive (in space or price). That is, when it is cheaper to build a Fusion Plant instead of a Solar Plant, build a Fusion Plant.

Once you’ve built the fourth Metal Refinery, build one Research Lab. When that is built, start researching Computer. Then, build a Shipyard and Spaceport, in that order. Once those are built, build the fifth Metal Refinery. Once these first structures are built, you will want to balance your queue to meet the daily objectives shown in the table below.⁴ meeting the Day 1 goals ensures your second day will be profitable. That is, once you have Robotics Factories, start building them even if the production values are lower. They are cheaper and therefore more cost-effective.

Research Labs only for the first base and any Research Bases. Crystal Mines are only built on Commerce astros with Crystal 2 or Crystal 3

The table above shows your targets for each of the first days. In all likelihood, there will be a financial crunch when building these structures. Here, Queues are your friends as you can go do other things (such as sleep) while the base constructs.

As each base is built, you will want to focus on the same three-day Construction goals, except you will not want to build Research Labs. The Advanced Base Guide shares minimum construction goals. While being mindful of those goals, remember that you will have to build your Research Labs and Crystal Mines to achieve the more advanced structures and a prosperous economy.

Day Six is when you start to focus on defenses, so ensure each base has one Shipyard built by Day Six. On day Six, stop all activity that prevents you from building 100 Fighters and one of your best-level
turrets on each of your bases.

Research

Once you have your first Research Lab built, you will want to start research. The table below shows the end-of-day goals for research. It is essential to build enough Research Labs to support researching the higher technologies. For example, if you cannot research a technology during its target day, you are behind in your construction. The parenthetical number describes the number of research labs you need to research that tech. Start by researching Energy, then add Computer and alternate between the two techs until you satisfy the Computer-2 objective.

Computer

Computer-2 unlocks Robotics Factories. Computer-6 unlocks Command Centers. Computer-10 allows fleets on all your bases.

Energy

Energy-2 unlocks Laser. Energy-6 unlocks Fusion Plants and Stellar Drives. Energy-8 unlocks Warp Drive. Energy-10 unlocks Shielding

Stellar Drive

Stellar-4 unlocks Warp Drive (with Energy-8).

Warp Drive

Warp-1 unlocks Scout Ships (SS) and Outpost Ships (OS).

Laser

Laser-4 (with Energy-6) unlocks Plasma, which allows Cruisers (with Armour-10 and Shielding-2) and Plasma Turrets (with Armour-6).

Armour

Armour-4 unlocks …

Production

For shorter safe periods (e.g. 3 days), all bases will need to construct a Shipyard and produce a fighter sooner to avoid scout taps. Ben Wilson prefers to use Corvettes for scout ships.

With Warp Drive researched, you can build Scout Ships (SS) and Outpost Ships (OS). Build a Scout then an Outpost Ship. As soon as the Scout is built (40 cr.), dispatch it to a neighboring Region to see if there is a good Commerce base. By the time the Outpost Ship is finished, you should have found a suitable second base. Keep the Scout searching so you can successfully build one base in a region. Beyond pumping out Outpost Ships and a couple Scouts, that is all you should need for Production.

An alternative to Scout Ships are Corvettes. They are slower, but they are cheaper and offensive. So, building two Corvettes and employing them in a scout role is an excellent way to explore your area and find valuable astros earlier.

Trade Routes

One other way to help your bases is to start establishing trade routes quickly. Spaceport-5 allows two trade routes. During the first week, you should probably focus on trading with yourself. These routes are inexpensive and generate a slight amount of income. Trading with yourself consumes two trade routes, but their low cost in the beginning allows you to earn some quick capital. As you emerge from the first week, start pushing for distant, unique trade routes.

Defenses on Day Six

Day Six is D-Day. “D” is for Defense. Starting in Day Six may reduce the likelihood of the tenth base by Day Seven. However, the goal is also not to become somebody’s pillage farm. Start building fighters, a few at a time. The goal by Day Seven is 100 fighters. With your earlier bases, build a total of 10 Shipyards. This enables Cruiser production. Once you have 100 fighters, build 10 Cruisers. Then, build two of your highest level turrets. Do not waste your time on Destroyers or Frigates. The motive is explained in greater detail when we discuss efficient fleet strategy.

1. If you start on a Crystalline astro, keep it and plan to have your first base morph into a Commerce base after you get past the first week.
2. Although not recommended, if your first astro is optimal for research, then it will be your first purely Research astro. If it is a Crystalline astro, then obviously shift the base’s focus to Commercen and slowly retire your Labs. Adjust your base composition accordingly.
3. You build Solar Plants because you were smart enough to pick the right astro, where Gas Plants are not cost-/space- effective.
4. Balance means you load structures in your queue in order of their cost. The least expensive structure is added next, with preference to Metal Refineries and Robotics Factories. This ensures structures are finished in the most cost-efficient manner possible.