Free Game of the Week: The Space Game

[Funkodrom]

The Casual Collective have released their latest online game. The Space Game. It's a single player strategy game where you have to build structures in space, mine rocks and defend your base from pirates.

Quite a lot of fun!

[Lurker the Second]

Why anyone would waste time playing a space game is beyond me.

[Funko]

So you are enjoying it?

[MoSe]

do you advise starting with the just Speed Mining bonus mission first?

[Funko]

I did a few of the missions then tried some of the other modes.

[Fistandantilus]

Can't get past mission 6. At some point there are no more mother ships coming and i have no clue what to do

[Funko]

That sounds like a bug.

[Funko]

I just did that mission again fine.

[Fistandantilus]

How many waves are there?

[Funko]

5

[Oerdin]

Interesting game.

[Funko]

Last mission is very hard.

Suggestion for people with problems in missions is to reload the whole game rather than just restart the mission...

[Fistandantilus]

Originally posted by Funko
5

I get

5 motherships detected
5 motherships detected
5 motherships detected
5 motherships detected
5 motherships detected
10 motherships detected ?????

After that I'm left waiting forever...

[Funko]

I don't get 10 motherships detected!

[Fistandantilus]

Ok, made it.

Apparently if you take too long to kill the first waves a sixth one arrives and from then on you're screwed even if you kill them all.

Guess using repair stations was wrong

[Funko]

[MoSe]

still practising on the speed mining (only short playing windows between work, or I get scolded by the boss)

interesting fact:
a basic miner costs 45m to build, and mines 8m per minute, basic consumption 1 energy
you can now:
1. build two more
2. upgrade the one you have

1. spend 90m, mine 240mpm use 3e (total health 900 in case of attack)
2. spend 100m, mine 200mpm use 1e, health 500

so, they say in general is better to upgrade structure rather than build many basic ones.

in this case tho, it looks that spending 10% less minerals you mine 20% more and they're 80% harder to destroy, at the cost of a triple energy consumption

for energy stations it's different

building one new costs the same as one upgrade step
basic: 30% production 4e storage (H600)
Lev2: 70% prod 9e storage (H800)
2 basics: 60% prod 8e storage (H1200)

as claimed, when needed it's better to upgrade the first station

at first sight, what you spare by adding two more miners instead of upgrading your first one, is offset by what you need to spend to upgrade the station to meet the extra energy requirements of the 3

I'm trying to figure whether one station is enough to feed 3 miners without reducing their productivity because of energy shortage

[MoSe]

efficiency test on stations

basic (30% eff) produces ~100 energy in one minute
Lev2 (70% eff) produces ~240 epm

damn, I dried up the asteroid so the miners stopped consuming energy before the experiment was over


have to redo it all

[Funko]

[Funko]

I hadn't even realised you could upgrade the miners.

[Fistandantilus]

I did, in the last mission..

[Funko]

I think it might make the last mission more possible.

[MoSe]

OK

Stations:

basic 101epm
Lev2 235epm
Lev3 336epm

100% = 336epm
10% = 33.6epm
all fits

miners consume their nominal energy every 3 seconds
so a basic miner doing 80mpm, actually beams up minerals in bursts of 4m every 3 seconds consuming 20epm
an upgraded miner beams 10m every 3 seconds, making it 200 mpm at the same 20epm.

In theory a basic station copuld power 5 basic miners
The problem is that they might "flash" all at the same time, requiring 5e simultaneoulsy, while the basic station only stores 4

this causes delays in the operativity of more than 3 miners connected at the same stations reducing a bit their overall productivity

probably the best bid for the quickest startup, is thus to build 3 miners, then upgrade them, then upgrade the station before building more

of course, if you have only one station, the miners stop to get power while you upgrade it.
so it could be even better to build a second station before begginning to upgrade them, in order to always have at least one up

OTOH, reconsidering it all, 5 not optimally powered basic miners could still be better than 3 having energy available at any moment while the station wastes its excess as it can't stor it.


will have to run comparative tests

[MoSe]

one last catch:

as astros dry up you could avoid destroying stations to relocate them, as you can extend the reach of the existing ones using relays

but once the astros in range of a miner dry up, you have to recycle it and build a new one near a fresh asteroid

- you get back the full minerals spent to build a basic structure
- you only get back half of the extra m spent in upgrades

basic miner: spend 45, get back 45
upgr. miner: spend 145, get back 95 (lose 50)

as I said you don't need to recycle stations, but just in case

basic: spend 200, recycle 200
Lev2: spend 400, recycle 300, lose 100
Lev3: spend 600, recycle 400, lose 200

and Energy Stores
basic: spend 300, recycle 300
Lev2: spend 800, recycle ZERO, lose 800 (!)

so, upgrading a miner allows you to sap minerals quicker without running short of energy.
this can give you a head start expanding, but could cost you a bit in the long term should you need to relocate miners

[Fistandantilus]

Originally posted by Funko
I think it might make the last mission more possible.

I wouldn't know I'm getting slaughtered.

[MoSe]

SM (speed mining) startup tests

building a miner takes more energy than operating it

pause, place 4 miners
they come up after
10-16-23-30 seconds, 68m stored

place 4 miners one by one (wait till one is up before pausing and placing the next)
5-12-20-30 seconds, 76m stored

you only gain 8m for the slightly earlier operativity of the first 3

[Provost Harrison]

It looks like this thread has descended into numerical gibberish

[Funko]

Last mission I can survive until there are 3 minutes to go. That massive wave of yellow disk things at about 12 minutes is totally devastating.

[MoSe]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
It looks like this thread has descended into numerical gibberish

well, I'm anal, I enjoy analyzing over doing

If that annoys you so much, OK, I'll keep the tables for myself

thanks funko for pointing out the game

[Funko]

20 seconds. GAH!

[Funko]

No, your updates are useful MoSe.

[Fistandantilus]

Originally posted by Funko
Last mission I can survive until there are 3 minutes to go. That massive wave of yellow disk things at about 12 minutes is totally devastating.

Yeah, that's what kills me, haven't had much time to play though.

I'm going with a ~1000 minerals per minute setup, maybe I should try more? Problem is I end up depleting asteroids and expanding messes up with defensive placement...

[Funko]

Done! Woo.

[Funko]

I was getting ~ 3500 minerals per minute in the early game.

I think the secret is continued expansion, keeping your energy generators spread out, mix up your defensive structures.

Kind of like in WCIII, expand to a new area, build up a new base there.

Turtling gets you killed on that mission, when I succeeded I think I'd mined virtually every bit of every asteroid in the system.

[Oerdin]

I haven't really spent a lot of time on this only played a few times but the third mission seems A LOT harder then the second mission.

Edit: I just replayed the third round and it was surprisingly easy once you upgrade your miners.

[Oerdin]

Mission 6 is fucking hard.

[Oerdin]

Now on mission 9 the final mission.

[MDA]

I got 6 once I built a certain structure I didn't think there would be much use for.

Nine is just plain hard.

I can't seem to recover/reset my password for that site, which I guess is only a minor inconvenience.

[Funko]

This game really is disappointing in its longevity.

[JM^3]

Got to 9 with on yl aproblem with taht super mothership attack.

JM