Your starting frigates are best used for exploration early on, but can sometimes be worth scrapping at your colony if you need BC for an event or leader.
Defend your colonies – especially on the periphery of your empire – to avoid being the target of an aggressive neighbor.
Design a better Frigate quickly and try to produce a few. They will be effective for quite a while.
Do not stack all your forces together, especially after you make contact with other empires. This will allow you to better defend against potential raids.
Ship leaders are a good asset and you will want at least one with you in combat.
Frigates make for lousy exploration ships, however, you can send them to nearby systems in the early game in order to determine where to focus your remote exploration efforts.
To invade a rival’s colonies, you will need to build assault ships. Build one of the Garrison buildings (unlocked by Garrison techs in the Defenses research field) to unlock the ability to construct them.
Keep your military potent and do not neglect it. If you wait to increase your military until after you meet the other empires it may be too late.
Missiles have great accuracy, but limited ammo, and are susceptible to enemy PD. Be sure to add enough ammo and use mods to increase their versatility.
Spread out your hull types and create a mixed fleet. If you go with larger hulls only, you will not have the numbers to counter an aggressive opponent early on.
Bomb Racks can be researched and equipped on your ships to destroy enemy colonies or soften them before invading.
Adding a ship leader to the fleet escorting your survey ships will allow the leader to gain XP from discoveries made together.
Ship components will miniaturize as you research higher level weapon and defense techs. Older weapons will unlock new mods and remain usable longer than you might expect.
Orbital stations are well armed and can be quite potent defenders. When larger orbital stations are researched, your star bases will be automatically upgraded.
Space Monster Offspring can be easily handled by most starbases as long as you’ve also researched a few weapons technologies.
Space Monsters can do a lot of damage and can often regenerate. Focus on damage and range to deal with them before they can close-in and strike.
Ships need to be refit to take advantage of new armor or shields. Take note of your design’s space usage as it may be time to make other adjustments as well.
Refitting a ship is done within the colony view and requires an orbital station be built. If available, the refit button in the construction area will be lit up.
Faster engines benefit more than just ship speed. Missile and strike craft speed, as well as Max Maneuverability Level, is dependent on your engine tech.
Engines are automatically upgraded on all your ships when researched. There is no need to refit to take advantage of them.
Maneuverability Level can be adjusted in the top right of a ship’s design. It increases combat speed, ship attack, ship defense, and max rotation.
Beam, Kinetic, and Missile weapons all benefit from different ship designs and tech choices. It may be best not to focus on all 3.
Some weapons have very specific purposes. Wurtzite Cannon for instance has high damage but very poor accuracy at range. It’s worth reading each weapon’s description for details.
The Heavy mod for weapons is costly, but greatly increases damage and range. It is highly useful on both kinetic and beam weapons.
The No-range dissipation mod for beams ensures they do maximum damage at any distance. If you don’t plan to get in close, consider using this mod.
The Auto-fire mod greatly increases the damage of kinetics, but requires a high ship attack. To best use it, focus on targeting techs, battle sensors, leaders, and high rank ships.
The strike craft from your Fighter Bays and Bomber Bays will only be as strong as your PD weapon, missile, armor, and engine technologies.
Knowing when to overload your weapons, shields, or engines in combat is key. Exploring how each of them work can help you devise a strategy.
Combat animations can be sped up in combat by clicking the ‘Fast animations’ button.
Auto-Combat in tactical combat option allows you to watch the AI play both sides in a battle. Use this for longer battles or when you don’t want to use auto-resolve to speed things up.
Ship leaders with the Ordnance skill add missile ammo to their assigned ship. Try giving them a unique design for their ship with less ammo and more weapons.
Ship leaders with the Explorer skill are better at finding things in ruins. Combine them with a survey ship for the highest chance to find something of value.
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.
This guide is focused on how to accelerate early game growth. It is specifically intended to aid a new player in acclimating to the ISG universe. The guide is a […]
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