I dunno if anyone else plays this game, but me and The_Tall_Stumpy_One have signed up to a realtime online game called X-Wars. i think Captain_Billly_Bacon also signed up to it.

You basically have to collect resources, (Pig-iron, Crystals, Orizin, Frubin, Frurozin, and Gold) build stuff, research technologies, trade, design and construct ships, defend your worlds, and even attack other players.

Annoyingly, whilst the game is in English (There are other-language servers though) there are random parts of the game in German or French on the main site.

Anyways, if anyone wants to check it out, this is the site:

X-Wars

Perhaps we could set up a BOTF2 alliance or something...

Just as a warning, we're signed up as Terrans, and are in Universe 2, Galaxy 3 - if you set anything different, you might not be able to meet us for a looong time, if not ever. (I'm not sure about exploring yet)

Don't let that be a restriction though, if you want to choose a different race or Galaxy, then so be it. Pleeeeease choose Universe 2 though! (We might not be able to meet each other if you choose Universe 1, although you CAN mine gold in Universe 1, but you can't for some reason in Universe 2)

guess I'll have to sign up....

Ill send you guys a message ingame i suppose.

I played a game quite like this before.

it was Earth 2024 (i think its taht year...)

i was unstoppable

Ok, i've set up an alliance now.

To join, all you have to do is (Once registered for the game) click on the alliance button on the left, then click search alliance.

Enter "BOTF2" in BOTH of the boxes (Obviously without the quote marks, it's NOT case sensitive) then click on search.

Our alliance should then show up. Click on the info button, then select to join the group. Don't worry about an application message, just write whatever random rubbish you can think of.

When I receive the request, i'll accept you into the alliance.

I hope people like the poem i've posted on our alliance page. I found it randomly whilst surfing on the internet.

i'm gonna check it out...i love mmos ^^

Eon_Janus, Janusi, welcome to the Alliance!

Just applied MOE

MOE you forgot to mention we have 2 accounts each, one for each email address! So we can produce even more resources and make our team bigger!

Quiet! Don't you wanna be more powerful than the others?!

Oops...I typed that outloud, didn't I?

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Welcome to the Alliance, Chris, Gaz and...Stumpy...

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Guys, follow the tips that the game gives you when you're building stuff - BUILD PIG-IRON AND CRYSTAL MINES! (The tips stop once you've reached about 300 points though)

Also, keep an eye on how much energy and how many building slots you have left - a lack of energy cripples your resource gathering and increases build time. A lack of building slots stops you from building stuff!

Trust me, it's worth listening to the tips in the long run. Don't bother with the other buildings until you need them.

damn frurizin...

need 2800 more for damn ship construction thingy...

lol

2 accounts each ehh?

hmmmmmmmm....

Meh, do it if you guys want to.

The original reason why I did it was coz I wanted to be able to pour the resources from the second account into my first one.

...But the game doesn't work like that.

You can't do it until you've built all the trade structure - by which time you don't really need the pathetic amount of resources that the second account is making...

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2800 Frurozin eh, Nemitor? It would take me about 8 hours to get that much, and i'm at level 13 production!

Feel sorry for ya, mate.

ughk... and i want some space ships so bad...

well, thats alright - I've got time.

I've never tried an online multiplayer thing, but I figure I'll give this a shot. Anyone got any idea as to when I can stop spending all of my resources trying to get resources and maybe actually get a ship or two finally?

well... its taken me 3 days of pure waiting, and now ive got 13 minutes left until i can make a ship. W00T!

It depends on the route you take in the game really.

To build stuff, you have to research for it. And I don't just mean research shipyards and you can automatically build ships.

You have to research different techs to different levels before different components of ships become available in the game - there are only 3 pre-defined shiptypes in the game, the rest you can make whatever you want!

As an example, to build the light fuselage for ships, you need Ship Construction level 2.

...But that only gives you the basic shell of the ship.

To build engines, you need to research either:

Nuclear-Thermal Engines level 1 for Nuclear-Thermal Engines
Ionization level 1 for Ion Booster
Ion Engine level 1 for Ion Engine
Hyperspeed Engine level 1 for Hyperspeed Engine*
Gravitation Engine level 1 for Gravitation Engine*

*Hyperspeed Engine and Gravitation Engines are Uber-advanced techs, so you won't be getting them anytime soon.


On top of that, you can decide if you want to give your ship Hull Plating, Shields, Defensive Teleporters, Weapons, Tactical Demolition Charges, (These basically turn your ship into the equivalent of the Cardassian Dreadnought missile) Cargo Capacity, Espionage Options, Camoflage, Colonisation Modules, and Communication Modules.

Every single one of the types of additions have their own reserach requirements - and each technology has it's own requirements before you can research them!

It takes a long time to build anything decent - but the more you upgrade your shipyard, the faster it will go, and the more you research, the more options you will have.

...But to do all that, you need resources. So build mines.

yeah... i thought inorder to be able to build a ship, i needed ship construciton lvl 2. that was a waste of money...

I'd recomend you concentrate building up your resources first coz, each time you level up it takes more and more. So youre getting more pig iron than your actually spending! But if you could get pig iron and crystals to level 10, that would be good. (im on about L20 pig iron and 18 crsytals)

Also you dont really need any ships at the start of the game either. Ive been playing for 2 weeks, and I havent built one yet. There's been no need, but i have been slowly building up my defenses. Building them early on is pointless as theyre weak, and its a waste of resources.

my ships happen to be quite cheap.

All I know is that I started about 3 days ago (Tuesday or Wednesday, can't remember for sure), my resource production is at 10/10/8/4/7, and it'll definitely be days before I have the ability to build a shipyard or trading post since first I'm going to have to build a level 6 nuclear plant and headquarters, plus I should probably consider upgrading my construction central at some point (how does that work, by the way, since the formula I've seen presented of total build time = unaltered build time * 1/construction cental level basically means that the higher the level the worse the bonus, unless they left something out of the formula?). I know the middle 8 was a waste of resources now, but it seems to me the whole point of doing a space exploration/conquest game is to actually GET OUT INTO SPACE. I wish I could at least get a look at some of the ship designs, options, "theoretical" designs, or whatever else while I'm sitting around waiting for everything to build.

As for my original question, so around what level would people recommend I switch from resource gathering to actual ship/defense production? Level 10 I don't think will work unless I go away for several days and let the resources build up, so I have to wait until 20? *yeesh*

Construction Centrals are a waste of time really. All they do is take a couple of minutes off the build times - the longer the build time is though, the greater the decrease is.

Considering it takes about 6 HOURS for each upgrade of the construction central, this is a really pathetic bonus. You need to upgrade it to build more advanced structures later on though...

Defense production is done on a SEPARATE screen - so you can build your defenses at the same time as building eg. a mine, and at the same time build ships (As long as you can afford it all though. )

Things do get expensive quickly in the game though. I know you're all itching to build stuff, but trust me, I wish I'd concentrated more on building mines when I started. And as Stumpy said, you get more "bonus" resources with each upgrade.

As an example, I currently have a level 16 pig-iron mine. If I upgrade it, I will produce an extra 111 pig-iron per hour.

If I was to upgrade it again, I would produce an additional 114 pig-iron. That's an increase of 3!

Ok, that might sound pathetic, but it all adds up.




Ask and ye shall recieve!



This is my current screen. I get asked which components I want to add in, which I specify in the boxes. The total cost is displayed near the top, and if there are any incompatibilities (Eg. systems use more energy than ship can produce) then the warning about selecting an engine type turns into a warning IN GERMAN stating so!

For some reason, parts of the game simply haven't been translated.

For this same reason, ignore the random symbols written in grey next to the engine types. They don't mean anything. The numbers are the amount of reasources needed to build that componenet, however.

Oh, and this'll probably be a big disappointment to you Ritter, but as far as I can tell, you don't get to SEE what your new model looks like.

this sucks. I made a fleet of planet scanners, and once they go and scan the planet, they vanish!

ahh... whatever.

Grr not happy. got attacked today for the 1st time! They stole about 8000 pig iron, 8000 crystals and 5000 of frubin i think. Plus i cant remember the defense i had for that account (if i had any at all) either, but now its zero.

Now its war. Soley concentraing on researches to get heavy laser! then they'll feel the wrath of stumpy! buwhahahaha

Thanks for letting us know, I feel happier now...that I am now concentrating on defense...

I've currently got 800 attack and 1040 Defense, but that's probably only enough to stop one cruiser in the game. I'm building more defense stuff now.

Actually im now just concentrating on getting mulitple ressearches open. Only have to level a few more things and i'll have it. then i'll go for defensive stuff. diont want to many resources in my account at one time.

Didnt realise there were other tabs in the 'Techs' till yesterday, so ive been building the wrong things really.


built my first fusion power plant today tho!

uh... yeah...

Im sending some scouting ships out currently. My entire defense is based on the fact that no one knows where I am.

oh yeah, is the maximum amount of pig iron 10000?

No you can save more. Upgrade the pig iron depot and then you can store 17500. upgrade again and its 24500, then 35000. then about 55750. thats what im on now. Its the same number for all 5 depots.

Also you can save upto 10000 of each resource in the xwars bank (if you upgrade this you can save even more)and what evers banked is safe from outsiders. only you can touch it.

sweet - thanks

i just went on a spending spree - im trying to research some hardcore weaponry, but it takes forever.

This is a "click and wait" type game?

yeah its all in real time, so you need patience when building things.

its good fun. i got MOE addictied and he got others on this site into it too!

I told Billy about it as well. I'm surprised he hasn't posted yet to be honest.

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If defense is taking too long to build, upgrade your defense station. That's like building Construction Centrals, except it's for military not economic purposes. You need to upgrade it to be able to build more advanced defenses like Planetary Shields and Missile Silos.

Level 1 stations take 54 minutes to build a Light Laser Battery, and a level 2 station takes 48 minutes 36 seconds to build them.

If you wanna improve your defenses, concentrate on researching Metallurgy, Nano Technology, Ionization, Energy Focusing, Tactical Warfare, and High Explosive Substances.

Upgrades are NOT automatic though - if you wanna upgrade your defenses after you've researched a new tech, you have to do it manually - and it costs resources, although this is generally a low amount, around 10 Iron/Crystals per Laser upgrade.

When you've ordered an upgrade to take place, ALL the defenses that are gonna be upgraded become inoperable until the upgrade is complete or has been cancelled - leaving you effectively defenseless. You've been warned!

It's therefore better to upgrade in "chunks" rather than all at once. It's also better if you wait until you've researched multiple technologies, rather than upgrading everything after you discover every new technology.

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Azhdeen, if you wanna join our alliance, just follow the instructions in my post on the first page.

uh... Matress... what kind of defenses do you currently have?