Good alignment is much easier to play, and has several advantages, such as the ISS (Imperial Star Ship) and the ability to Transwarp direct to fedspace. 95% of your turns (maybe more) need to be spent making money. Thats how you finance the other 5%, when you are invading planets and such. Your day-to-day ship should be chosen with money-making in mind. Good choices are the Merchant Freighter, Corp-Flagship, and the ISS. Horde turns. Turns can be translated into money made, colonists transported, etc. Don’t waste them.

As a good aligned trader, your common money-maker is paired port trading. Equ/Org (Equipment/Organics) pairs are best. Two ports in adjacent sectors where you can sell Equ/buy Org at one, and sell Org/buy Equ at the other. Move back and forth, trading in each sector, till one of the ports runs dry. Then move to another pair. Later in the game, once you have a planet with a level four (L4) citadel, you can make a lot more money every day.

With good alignment and 0-999 experience, you can stay overnight in fedspace with almost no risk as long as “Ships per fedspace sector” allows it. (Check the V-screen.) Too many ships will get you towed when Extern runs (but you are protected until then.) Carrying too many fighters, 99 or more, will also get you towed out during Extern. Next best after that is cloaking, and cloaking can be done anywhere (by any alignment.) Cloaks are not 100% safe: they can fail after 24 hours, they will cause an anomaly on a density scan, and while no one can attack you while you are cloaked, they can fill the sector with mines, offensive fighters, nav haz or simply fire a photon into the sector and decloak you.

By being careful where you stay at night (cloaking in low traffic areas, or using fedspace) and density scanning before you move (to avoid mines and such) you can stay alive, rarely, if ever, getting blown up.

As a “GOOD”, you want to get an ISS as soon as possible. To do that, you need 500 alignment points. Then ask for a commission at the Stardock. The federation will then increase your alignment to 1000, which means you are commissioned. One way to get the 500 alignment is to post rewards on evils in the Stardock. 1000 credits per 1 point of alignment gain. So you could move from 0 to 500 for 500k, then ask for a commission to reach 1000. Another way is to find a evil player that is willing and cross-pod with him With 1000 or higher alignment, you can buy an ISS. If you happen to get 1,000 or more alignment you are automatically commissioned without going to police head quarters.

What’s the most cost effective way to get good alignment?

(1) CROSS PODDING WITH AN EVIL PARTNER – cost varies Simply have your evil partner jump in a ship other then a scout with 0 shields and 0 fighters and hit him/her with 1 fig (NO MORE!) you can do this 2 times per day per player

(2) POST REWARDS ON EVIL PLAYERS – cr 1,000/al. pt. Not available to negatively aligned players. If the object of the bounty is locatable, reward money may be recouped almost immediately.

(3) PAY TAXES – cr 1,500/al. pt. Not available to negatively aligned players. Has no return and no possibility of recouping the money.

(4) BUILD PLANETS – cr 2,000/al. pt. Not available to negatively aligned players. Returns are you get to keep the planet. Hopefully, this was something you were planning on doing anyway, but it’s a long way to 500 alignment points doing this.

(5) KILL BAD GUYS – cost varies An evil trader or alien with -250 alignment and 200 fighters in a merchant will cost you about cr 400 / al. pt.

(6) UPGRADING PORTS – cr 5,000 /al. pt. This method can provide future returns if you can control the area around the port(s). It is also the most expensive.

Be careful not to log out of the game with a lot of credits on you. As a good, when you reenter the game, that will cause you to get taxed. It raises your alignment, but costs you the taxes. Alignment that way costs 1,500 per point, so bounties are cheaper. You can also raise it by attacking evil aliens, but that too is expensive and not recommended. Aliens are a distraction. Using your resources to attack them isn’t worthwhile, even if you capture their ships.

Once you have a commission and an ISS, you can Twarp (transwarp) direct to fedspace (sectors 1-10 and SD), or to any sector you’ve deployed a fighter. This can save a lot of turns. Twarp uses 3 fuel (from your holds) per sector distance. You can also blind Twarp, which is safe as long as the destination sector is completely empty. If it’s not, you get a shinny new escape pod. To do it safely, send an eprobe, and immediately Twarp to a completely empty sector. Avoid sectors with aliens, feds, or Ferrengi in the adjacent sectors shown by the eprobe, because right after you fire the probe (any time you pass a command prompt) they get an opportunity to move, you don’t want them moving into your destination sector! Also, be warned that limpets don’t show on eprobes, but will destroy you.

When you decide to build a planet (goods tend to do this fairly soon after getting the ISS) then find a tunnel or a bubble (a bubble is simply a connection of tunnels with 1 way in) find a dead end off that bubble or tunnel, a sector with no port, so you don’t have to worry about blocking a port report and someone coming to check it out.

Next thing to do is get yourself a planet. The only 3 planets worth much in the game are the H, O and L although some players build an earth type later on in the game for equipment production. I recommend that you start with an L class mountainous as your first planet, it makes more fighters per day per colonist then any other planet and it is a good producer of product in all categories, not the best in any but a good solid planet (see “Planets). As soon as you build your planet, move several loads of fuel ore onto it. (Remember your Twarp drive when doing this. And that’s what the fuel is for, too, as we go get colonists.) Calculate fuel needed to Twarp to sector 1, and back again. Starting with that much fuel on board, Twarp to 1, grab colonists, Twarp home and unload the colonists. Then grab fuel from the planet and repeat. Its recommended that you use a macro or helper program for this procedure (see “Helpers”). You generally want the colonists producing fuel at first. That provides fuel to go get more colonists, and on most planets it produces the maximum fighters per day.

Once you start building a planet , haul in as many colonists as you need to start citadel construction, then haul in any products needed. Don’t wait until your colonists can produce enough organic/equipment, haul it in. You want your construction to take as little time as possible. The day it reaches Level 1, start it working on Level 2. repeat this procedure until the planet reaches Level 6. If you have more turns, cash or corpies that can help repeat this process. This time try for an H or an O

You have just started your home sector or base once it is completed you will want to start moving out in the bubble or tunnel and start developing these sectors. Lets discuss bubble or tunnel development please keep in mind that as it is generally accepted that bubble development is a job of a good but you will notice that in this example you are also building for evil players as well.

Development of your bubble is the most important part of the game if you plan on winning or even being a force in the game. We have already discussed your base or home sector and that should be started and well under way before you start this procedure. Best case scenario is a bubble with around half of the sectors containing a xBB but for our example we will use a 12 sector bubble with 3 planets per sector max and 0 ports, not very likely depending on how your Sysop sets up the game. So all the ports in the bubble will need to be built. the planets listed are the H-O-L it isn’t important if you have an H and a L in every sector but its very important to have an oceanic in every sector, as organic farming is a big chunk of a goodie corps cash.

Note that the location of the home sector is determined by the # of buffer sectors, you want an invading enemy to have to go threw as much defense as possible to find you.

Home Sector
S-1 <—- Sector #
SBB <—- Port Type
L-H-O <—- Planets
|
|
S-2
SBB
H-O-L
|
|
S-7 S-3
SBB SBB To Open
H-O-L H-O-L Space
| | |
| | |
S-6 S-4 S-5 S-11 S-12 To Open
SBS———–SBB—–SBB—–SBB—–SSS—- Space
H-O-L / H-O-L |
| / |
| / To Open
S-8 S-9 S-10 Space
SBB SBB SBB
H-O-L H-O-L H-O-L

This bubble is only for an example all bubbles will be different but
building them is basically the same. The bubble when you first get it will
not look like this, you will have to build it up in stages the sector #’s
above represent the order in which you want to do this.

You will also notice that all but 1 sector have SBB ports (selling Fuel ore, buying Organics and buying Equipment) This is so you can sell your organics as well as have evils set up colts to SST. The reason for the single SBS port is because planets produce equipment slowly and you will need it for planet upgrades (even with evils).

Building the sectors in the bubble is pretty easy making the cash to do it however isn’t (that’s where a evil partner corp comes in handy). When you have the cash to start each new sector this is the formula you will want to follow early in the game;

first you will want to build the port, then you will want to move enough colonists to the planets to start or upgrade the citadels, then once all the planets citadels are started upgrading move all the colonists in the sector (up to 20 million) to fuel ore production on the L planet (once a planet citadel has started construction it is not necessary to leave the colonists on the planet for the amount of days for the upgrade) L planets produce the best amount of fighters per colonist while making fuel ore at an acceptable rate. While you are waiting for the port to finish construction you will want to colonize the sector with as many turns as possible (hopefully you have a full corp or a evil corp partner and can concentrate on colonizing)

If you have a 5 man good corp and non of you play evil (not recommended) you would want at least 2 of them colonizing full turns into the sector while the other members make cash. When the port finishes you should know the port regen your Sysop has set for the game upgrade the organics to a full 32,000 holds (this will be 3100 as new ports start at 1000) and then place the amount of colonists required to produce 32,000 organics over the port regen period on the O class planet in organics production. The formula for this is:

32,000 / the port regen = the amount needed to produce per day amount need per day * 2 = amount of colonists needed in organics production

Lets say for example you have a port regen of 4 days then the formula would look like this:

32,000 / 4 = 8,000 * 2 = 16,000

so with a 4 day regen you need 16,000 colonists in organics production in order to have 32,000 by the time the port reaches 100% and every 4 days you will get between 2.8 million and 3.3 million credits from the sale of organics (depending on the port)

Now you just need to continue building out sector by sector in order like the example bubble above, also note that the order in which you build #’s 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 doesn’t really matter the most important thing is building sectors 1 -5 in order and 11 and 12 last, the reason for this is the closer you are to a space lane the more likely your new home will be discovered (it will be discovered anyway you do it you just want to prolong it as long as possible)

You will notice that sectors 11 and 12 don’t have planets in them that is because they are the last sectors you will build up and if you make it through the first 10 sectors without being invaded they will be the stronghold front door. You will want to warp your bruiser planets in (H planets that you develop in sectors 1-10) the benefit of warping in door planets is you can decide the firing order of the planet quasars by the planet # which can prevent mothing (draining of fuel) by weaker ships. in a 3 planet sector setup you’d want the first planet to fire strong enough to destroy a small ship and planets 2 and 3 set to hit a stronger for ships with more then 5k figs, this makes the mothers pay a heavy price for draining your fuel, remember that atmospheric shots are the best for quasars and you don’t want to waste you fuel shooting off in the sector, just set it strong enough for them to feel a sting when they come in if they are really there to invade (1/4 of there fighters destroyed when they enter the sector is a good start, then set the atmospheric so if they land anywhere they leave the sector in a pod.

As you build up your sectors you will move the bulk of you defenses (fighters not on your ships) to the new “door” sector. Remember that fighters on a planet do *not* defend it (and are free for anyone who lands there) until the planet has a Level 2 citadel (see “Planets”). Keep them on your ship, or use them as sector defense. (Sector defense isn’t worth a lot, as a photon can bypass it, but its better than leaving them on a planet with a Level 1 citadel, or no citadel at all. And sector defense is better than leaving the planet undefended.)