Like I saw that you can eventually build ringworlds and death star things. I can't even understand how to upgrade the ships that I have with newly researched technologies let alone get that far in the game.

[quote]Like I saw that you can eventually build ringworlds and death star things. I can't even understand how to upgrade the ships that I have with newly researched technologies let alone get that far in the game.[/quote] If your ships are set up correctly, you shouldn't even have to manage that as most technologies are sidegrades rather than upgrades. I have all my ships set to automatically retrofit when they get 3 versions out of date (that's an AI setting on the ship itself) and set my blueprints list manager to upgrade my ships every 2 levels of improvement over their current version (you'll find that setting in the blueprint list window). If you gain new technologies that you'd like to install ... that should've already been covered in the tutorial. If it still mystifies: Try grabbing a module from the parts list and dropping it onto the blueprint just to see what happens. Ship building is very intricate in Star Ruler as almost everything is inter-relative. The 'core' of a ship is built out of its power system(s) and control system(s) however so I'd advise to always start with those, decide on your engines, and then do the rest. There's a lot to learn if you're new to the damage system and how things are ordered -- but once you start seeing how it all works it should just 'click'. As for proceeding beyond ship customization straight to victory: There are a number of great strategy guides available on the Star Ruler forums -- they're too long to post here however.

So for example "new" technologies such as ftl drives need to be manually added to blue prints but then once they are added to the blue print the ships that are made from that blue print will automatically upgrade themselves to the highest level researched? Another question, say for example I have already made a decent amount of cruisers, but then I research lasers and add that to the blueprint (basically like they show you in the tutorial) do all of the cruisers built prior to the creation of that new cruiser blue print automatically change and get the new layout (meaning with the laser)? Or do you have to manually tell them to add it, or are you just stuck with a bunch of old crappy ships by the late game?

Yes, they'll auto-upgrade so long as they have the Automatically Retrofit order. In order to do so, they need to be not in combat and without a manually given order (e.g. "move here") and nearby either a station with a construction bay or a planet. Then, they'll pick the nearest planet and dock themselves in it to retrofit. Retrofitting costs 50% of the difference between the old version and the new version of the ship's price to perform and, when complete, the ship will pop out of the station/planet with the new design.

That's one of my problems actually with getting used to the game, the automatic orders and the UI that you use to cancel or add them to the queue. Say for example i want to have an entire fleet set to auto retrofit, if I right click the lead ship in the fleet and then in the auto automation tab simply click on the automatically retrofit do I have to remove all other auto orders before they will retrofit? Meaning does retrofit have to be the only thing in the queue? Obviously these are very basic questions but the ship design, management, and automatic orders have really been the most difficult things for me to grasp in the game.

Usually better to set all that up in the Blueprint for those ships. In their blueprint, under AI Settings, you'll find all the commands that you could assign them in realtime and all their behavior settings (such as what ships they should prefer to fire on). The game's set up to basically try and get all your strategic and tactical decisions before the ships actually commit to combat by setting all that up in advance with the ship blueprint -- doing all that in realtime would be asking too much of anyone I think, especially with all the other things you have to juggle in realtime (newtonian motion, groups and targeting orders, the research system and your economy, etc.). The Automation Orders is more a cycle than a 'locked loop'. Whenever the ship is Idle it'll go through Orders like Automatically Retrofit or 'Fetch Fuel'. You don't have to remove all the other orders; they can get in the way however.

After flipping through Blind Minds forums last night and looking through the help you've been giving me, the problem is how I've been going about the game. I just start up a new galaxy using all of the base blueprints, I think that before I start a game I should actually create my own blueprints (and command behavior) and use the import/export blueprint feature before I get everything underway. Also if you are the Firgof who is a developer of the game I'm very impressed with how involved you've been with supporting players of your game. While searching around last night I saw you posting in almost every thread I was reading. Hell you seem to have created an account here yesterday simply to answer my questions. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Yes, I am the same Firgof. A lot of people get stuck with using the game's standard blueprints and so they don't tend to learn the hidden complexities and strategies of the game that come from observing how designs and their systems work together. If you'd like a quick look at how some people build and strategize their designs (and a gateway into the insight that they have) I'd advise checking out some of the more novel ship designs posted on our website by other players. [url=http://starruler.blind-mind.com/designs/view/44]This one, in particular, demonstrates a good exploit of the ship designing system.[/url] Soon, you'll be creating Chaff ships which hurl metal boxes into space which confuse the targeting systems of enemy craft, building stations that detonate into copies of themselves that re-colonize the planets they're orbiting, and building Battle-planets and Anti-matter Bombs. :P