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Space Domination AKA Stardart

One of my favorite games from the 90s.

Space Domination: A modern release of stardart: http://www.spacedomination.org/index.php/play/

Build Ticks

Build ticks are 10 seconds, measured with a stopwatch.

Races

It depends on if you need to maximize your acceleration into the game, your fleet power, your total build capacity, or your fleet retention. Raw score bonuses are the best long term, but fleet combat can make or break the game, heavily favoring Avarians.

  • Human gets a bonus stardart, can help you win
  • Master24: They can double score darts if it lands on their phenomenon or stellurae

  • Bonus, 1/3 chance of scoring extra dart on owned phenomenon and stellurae.

  • Avarian get to bring station in fleet, very OP for combat and max fleet size
  • Zorestians get -20% decay, I think it means they start at world decay? Solid but can be supplemented by worlds instead.
  • Makluvians - best merchant world build, best build speed, if you need to max that, probably best acceleration in the game.

Quick Facts

From manual: https://www.spacedomination.org/index.php/the-galaxy/

World Population

The population regulates what and how many global facilities you can build as well as how fast building goes.

Industry used to be 4x population. Is it still true?

Home Worlds

According to player "sunny" humans are sector 0, i think every game. North Northeast of OE. I am in sector 5, west of OE. Clockwise from OE increases sector

Home World – Rich Planets supporting high industry

Technical: 150 population (2250 industry max) Starting with Refinery, 3 of all minerals. If the home world is from your own race you will get a declaration of planets/phenomenon from the owner. This declaration can be seen on the Settings page of the Login Screen, as it can change depending on galaxy size.

World Moods

Worlds can revolt if happiness goes below some threshold, destroying industry. I assume this reduces pollution increasing happiness, so it will equilibrate naturally.

  • Angry: None
  • Annoyed: Merchant
  • Content: Merchant and Beacon
  • Happy: Merchant, Beacon, and Blaster
  • Ecstatic: No limitations (Stardock)

World Colors

  • Blue with Orange Border - Old Earth

Old Earth Technical: 200 population (3000 industry max) Starting with refinery, 3 of all minerals. Old Earth will start with Star Darts based on the number of worlds in the game. If taken you will get a percentage of planets/phenomenon from the owner of the planet. You can see the current set ratio on the Settings page of the login screen.

  • BrightOrange - Core, rich worlds around Old Earth

Core Worlds Technical: 100 population (1500 industry max) Starting with Refinery, 3 of all minerals.

  • Purple - Merchant - population/30 + 1 merchants
  • Maroon - Beacon - population/8 + 1 beacons
  • Orange - Stardock - population/40 + 1 stardocks

  • Red - Blaster - population/50 + 1 blasters

  • Orange-red - Rich, 50% more build points

  • Magenta - Poor, 50% less build points
  • White - Normal, standard
  • Orange Textured - Large - +20% Population, +1 all minerals
  • Blue-Purple - Small - -20% Population

  • Grey Smooth - Toxic - -60% Population, low industry

  • Grey Textured - 2x faster industry build

  • Blue - Sloops - 3 Pladesium
  • Khaki - Frigates - 3 Frelenium
  • Aqua - Corsairs - 3 Calastium
  • Green - Stations - 3 Stenterium
  • Red with Orange Stripe - Ranger - 3 S

World Minerals

Generation seems random with bonuses or guarantees for special worlds.

  • 1 == 0.5x
  • 2 == 1.0x
  • 3 == 1.5x

chiisana (player) says: 1 = 1/2 speed; 2 = full speed; 3 = twice(?) as fast Master24: 1.5x

The world minerals start with the same letter as their ship except slooP and Pladesium.

If you have none of a given mineral, you cannot build the corresponding ship, and if you have 3 of it you can build that ship at a quicker rate.

Do the high mineral worlds correspond to the colored worlds above? What is a normal world's minerals? Rich world? Large world?

Notes: - this Large world has 2 of all minerals and 3 of 2 minerals... which? - this merchant world has 3 revidium/ranger and holds 4 merchants max - merchant world with 1 revidium, 2 pladesium, 3 merchant max

  • Pladesium: Sloops
  • Calastium: Corsairs
  • Frelenium: Frigates
  • Stenterium: Stations
  • Revidium: Rangers

World Industry * Happiness

] Mightymo: Happiness will increase over time, And it works by percent

  • Industry influences pollution as a % of total industry.
  • Happiness increases over time
  • Planets in home sector will be happier, home sector is the same sector as your race's homeworld.

Anomalies

  • Blue = slower
  • Green = faster

Early Strategy

Fleet

Fleet ECM is an important factor, so emphasize rangers.

Fleets have a max size, but you won't hit it until you are harvesting worlds for fleets.

Worlds

Cannot afford much early on, so really need to pump fleet build up! Stardock is a goal. So is stellurae, but not yet attainable.

Rangers are highly preferred thanks to their attack speed and ECM.

To build stations? It is relevant once you hit max world fleet. You need the ecm for defense against other players as well. I think it's definitely worth it.

Modern Strategy

Blaster worlds seem very highly powered, assuming they are a fleet multiplier. If the fleet limit is normal, then blaster is the endgame. Blaster is also useful at all stages since it augments fleet power at peak non/attrition, increasing conquest speed. However, every non-merchant world will increase fleet harvesting times.

Riffing on the classic strategy, we want to avoid pollution, so avoid building industry. It won't matter compared to merchants and stardocks.

I think early stardocks are very useful to half the fleet attrition with a cost of only 10 global facilities.

I also think that a template build based on fleet composition is the best option, stick to the long game.

Questions
  • Can I have 1 of each facility available on each planet? That is fantastic.
  • What is sector? Can I use it to get to richer worlds? How is it better than distance from Old Earth?
  • The population regulates what and how many global facilities you can build as well as how fast building goes.
  • How much industry per pollution, how does pollution impact happiness?
  • Is the max fleet size still present?
  • Is industry with refinery worth it? It is a local facility.
  • Note the tradeoff is that stellurae is now a local facility. Since Stellurae doesn't interfere with Merchant/Stardock strategy it may actually be worth it instead of industry+refinery.

Classic Strategy

focus on building tons of merchants so you can harvest your worlds. Ignore everything else. Fleet build balance is based exclusively on max fleet size.

Eventually your fleet attrition will be high, then start balancing in Stardocks.

Build some beacons early as you want to reap the benefits of fast travel early. Sometimes you need to remove beacons to avoid navigation problems.

Avoid stardarts.

Global Facilities

  1. Classic: focus on building tons of merchants so you can harvest your worlds. Ignore everything else.

Merchants

thedudeabides: Currently getting 7.77/37 increase - Master24: Yup, some races have added / decreased per merchant

  • `(7.98*.95)/38 == 0.2% world build increase per Merchant, that's subtracting the human bonus and allowing for floating points...

Factory

[9:08 PM] thedudeabides: what are the technicals for factory? [9:11 PM] Master24: 50% extra build points for the industry built

Blasters

Blasters are a fleet bonus.

Blaster cutoffs:

[7:19 PM] thedudeabides: how many blasters to get above level 0
7:25 PM] Master24: Blasters:
Level 0 100%
10-24 1 105%
25-49 2 110%
50-74 3 115%
75-99 4 120%
100-149 5 125%
150-199 6 130%
200-249 7 135%
250-299 8 140%
300-399 9 145%
400-499 10 150%
500-624 11 155%
625-749 12 160%
750-874 13 165%
875-999 14 170%
1000-1199 15 175%
1200-1399 16 180%
1400-1599 17 185%
1600-1799 18 190%
1800-1999 19 195%
2000+ 20 200%

World Setup Ideas

Early Merchant Growth

Early Fleet Building

Should I build a short string of 10 factory core with full industry for fleets? I think so! Will have to manage it when it revolts. It is +50% industry, so move in a bit before investing.

Strafing worlds

What's the easiest way to get 10k guns? Probably 10 worlds with 50% industry.

Note that with 500 industry or 500 build, the worlds can easily finish merchant in about 2 minutes, so I think it is more efficient to set industry, then set merchant and leave. Industry takes 100 industry, so it might be good to kick start. Does population count towards build points? With 100 population, 1 industry per tick, so 500/6== 83 minutes to 500 industry.

Target 90+ population worlds with a fleet about 8k-15k. The cutoff is to get 4 merchants.

  • 50 industry
  • all merchants
  • up to 50% industry - dont wait on it to complete...
  • build ships for 3 resource, then 2 build if no 3, 1 build if no 2 or 3...
    • repeat, prioritize rangers solo early
  • NO beacons early, 10 gave me like 1% increase in speed.
  • Can get them once a few hundred merchants make building them 1-2 ticks.

Note: 74 pop blaster world gave 12 blasters...absolutely huge. chiisana says try to get over 25 blasters at the beginning with 1-2 blaster worlds and some normal worlds.

Notes & Anecdata

  • chiisana: I personally like to do 30% industry, amenity, fly away and come back to it much later
  • Storage attrition rollover tells you your build poins basically. Once you get to the storage of required - build points, you will complete the build next pulse with 0 attrition. Not fully validated.
  • Sunny or someone says: 80k guns for a core world to be safe, 20k guns for a dart, you can roll over homeworlds with 120k guns
  • Had a beacon world at 6000w-OE with 2 merchant, 4 beacon 34 pop
  • Industry seems to be 10x population. Not sure how pollution is calculated from industry...
  • A merchant world with 20 popl, 200 industry, severe pollution, ecstatic population, 3 revidium, no local facility, and 4 merchant facilities just gave me 800 guns of rangers
  • 6180 seems to be the limit around my local... the old game used to increase the universe size if there were more players in the previous game.
  • I found a beacon world around 5000 out from Old Earth and it had only 1 beacon. I guess it is +1 to +3 or something and this one natively had 0?
  • I just found a normal planet with 2 merchants allowed. I don't know why.
    • It also has 30 pop, 300 industry
  • An early large world that I added full industry+factory to is Happy and producing several hundred guns after a wait. Even though pollution is severe, happiness is only very slowly going down, making it worth it for early harvest.
    • TAKEAWAY: focus on large worlds early
  • Worlds used to become more populated as approaching Old Earth, still true? If so focus on going that direction, as population affects global facilities on special worlds.
  • Large world with max industry and a factory is losing happiness to pollution, but at the beginning I can't build enough "storage" build for a refinery to reduce pollution so I will try an amenity facility to keep them happy... but I can't seem to get to 8000 either, I may abandon the world and try some without industry to get fleet build up.
  • Looks like merchants increase world build by a percentage, is it flat per merchant? That makes it kind of interesting rather than a flat value, since world build can be quite low without industry or factories. So this incentivizes me to build industry and factories.

Scores

  • "cap" - my cap - when your score accumulates to its full potential.
  • The required score to win goes down 1% every 4 hours.
  • Homeworlds are a good way to boost scores.
  • Getting a homeworld is about 2.95% of total points when capped.

Strategies

Attacking Others

  1. You can reduce their global garrison power by ganking mech and stardock worlds where industry == 10x population. Spiral out from OE and follow a route that is working.
  2. It's easy to gank someone's merch if they are all in a row, but hard to collect guns if they are not. I think it might be better to have a guns place near OE then merch hunting via gates.

Player Strategies & Alliances

  • chiisani and waffle are brothers and ganged up on Sunny.
  • Gawdawful seems to target merchants very heavily
  • if people keep grudges, change names

Misc Strategy Notes

  • What about scumming/traveling for good worlds? Then the enemies cant follow your line and you have a facilities multiplier. Especially effective if you have a low attrition fleet... like stardarts, but then combat is slow... This 80 pop merch world has 16 merchant capacity. Wild.
  • I can build merchants without command at 500 build. Base build is pop+ind. What is the minimum threshold build to build a merchant? 830/2+83 aka 83 pop planet is 498 build which is fine... how about 60 pop? 60+600/2 == 360 is that enough for merchant?

  • A 90 population stardock world yields 15 stardocks. But have to get happiness up... I will try amenity on Icelu at 1859 north of OE

  • Move into the 90 pop worlds early and build 4 merchants per world and optimize the queue, build 50% industry.

  • Once you can build refinery, about 1500 gross build (incl factories), do 100% industry. Basically the tradeoff is pop vs command build if you build full industry.
    • You could build factory to build refinery with only 66% otherwise required population.... but it's too slow
  • Somehow Sunny has 147 merch with 48 worlds... must be cherry picking in the inner system. Chiisana says worlds x 4 == merch worlds early on is reasonable.
  • The gates are a single large circuit predetermined. The size scales with galaxy size. The loop is apparently often about 30 gates.
  • Gates can be used to get to a home sector, get closer to OE for better worlds, or scum a certain kind of world, but those worlds are also more discoverable by playeers.