SFC2 is a game about building an empire and then taking other people's things. However you end up playing it, three jobs drive everything:
- Build up your planets so they produce resources.
- Spend those resources on ships, defenses and research.
- Send your fleet out to take resources off other targets and wreck their ships.
This guide walks a brand new account through the first day. If you played the old game, the opening is very different now and several names have changed, so it is worth reading anyway.
What you start with
Your account is not empty. A new player in a fresh universe is handed:
| Planet | One homeworld with 163 fields |
|---|---|
| Resources | 25,000 ore, 12,500 crystal, 5,000 hydrogen |
| Buildings | Capitol 2, Shipyard 3, Research Lab 1 |
| Research | Energy Tech 3, Jet Drive 3 |
| Ships | 2x Artemis Class Fighter, 2x Hermes Class Probe, 1x Atlas Class Cargo |
| Fleet slots | 1 |
| Storage | 100,000 of each resource |
What you do not have is a single mine or power plant. The planet gives you a small trickle on its own, 40 ore an hour and 20 crystal an hour and no hydrogen at all. Fixing that is job one.
Newbie Protection is on. Nobody can attack you and you cannot attack anyone until you have spent enough resources. There is more on that near the bottom of this page.
Finding your way around
Everything runs off the row of links under the resource bar. If you came from the old game, three names moved: Home is now Overview, Options is now Settings, and Scans is now the Oracle, which does a completely different job.
The More menu at the right end of the nav holds Quests, Calculator, Store, Forum, Wiki, Leaders, Notes, Settings and Support. If you use one of them a lot you can pull it into the top row from Settings.
Step 1: get your Atlas moving
Click Missions. Missions are canned raids against targets that are not real players. They cost nothing but time, your ships always come home, and they are the fastest resources you can get on day one.
Five are open the moment you sign up:
| Mission | Ships needed | Time | Typical haul |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raid an Unguarded Ore Mine | 1x Atlas | 1:00 | ~200 ore |
| Raid an Unguarded Crystal Mine | 1x Atlas | 1:16 | ~140 crystal |
| Raid An Abandoned Hydrogen Tank | 1x Atlas | 1:26 | ~130 hydrogen |
| Raid an Ore Mine | 1x Artemis, 1x Atlas | 1:30 | ~400 ore |
| Haul Cargo (daily) | 1x Atlas | 50:00 | ~4,000 ore, ~4,000 crystal, ~1,200 hydrogen |
The Time column is the whole round trip, out and back, not one leg. Put the number of runs in the box, or leave it at 1, and press Start. Two things are worth knowing right away:
- You have one fleet slot, so one mission at a time. A.I. Tech is what fixes that, see Step 5.
- Haul Cargo is a daily. It ties your Atlas up for 50 minutes and pays about 4,000 ore, 4,000 crystal and 1,200 hydrogen. Nothing else available on day one is close. Start it every day.
The red Secret Mission box at the top of the page is a different animal. It builds an NPC enemy base scaled to your current strength and sends your fleet through a wormhole to fight it. That is a real battle and you can lose ships. Leave it until you have some fighters, then read Secret Missions.
Step 2: mines and power
Open Buildings. Mines, the power plant and the rest of the buildings all live on this one page. The four that matter on day one sit at the top.
| Building | Level 1 cost | Level 1 gives | Energy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ore Mine | 60 ore, 15 crystal | +66 ore/hr | -11/hr |
| Crystal Mine | 48 ore, 24 crystal | +44 crystal/hr | -11/hr |
| Hydrogen Synthesizer | 225 ore, 75 crystal | +30 hydrogen/hr | -22/hr |
| Solar Array | 75 ore, 30 crystal | - | +22/hr |
Every mine burns energy and the Solar Array is the only thing that makes it early on. Watch the Energy panel in the left sidebar. While Used sits below the total, everything runs at full rate. Go over and every mine on the planet slows down by the same fraction, so a planet sitting at 120 of 100 produces at 83%. Keep the Solar Array a step ahead.
Each row also has a Capacity dropdown. Turning a mine down to 50% cuts its output and its energy draw by the same amount, which is a cheap way to keep the lights on if you overbuild.
Hydrogen is the odd one out. The Hydrogen Synthesizer is the only building whose output depends on how cold the planet is, so a cold colony will out-produce a hot homeworld on hydrogen at the same level.
Step 3: a first day build order
25,000 ore goes a long way at these prices. Build in a rotation rather than maxing one mine:
- Ore Mine 1
- Solar Array 1
- Crystal Mine 1
- Ore Mine 2
- Solar Array 2
- Crystal Mine 2
- Hydrogen Synthesizer 1
- Solar Array 3
- Ore Mine 3
- Crystal Mine 3
- Solar Array 4
- Hydrogen Synthesizer 2
Then keep the same rotation going: two mine levels, then a Solar Array level, and a Hydrogen Synthesizer level every third or fourth pass.
A good target for the end of day one is Ore Mine 8, Crystal Mine 6, Hydrogen Synthesizer 4, Solar Array 9. That is about 11,700 ore and 4,200 crystal all in, sits at 397 of 425 energy, and produces roughly 1,070 ore, 440 crystal and 160 hydrogen an hour.
By the end of the first week aim for Ore Mine 10, Crystal Mine 8, Hydrogen Synthesizer 5, Solar Array 11: around 26,000 ore and 9,500 crystal spent, producing roughly 1,600 ore, 700 crystal and 220 hydrogen an hour. Notice that by then the Solar Array costs more than all three mines together. That is normal, and it is why people eventually switch to a Nuclear Power Plant.
Every level of Capitol cuts the build time of everything else on the planet. You start at Capitol 2. There is no rush while mine levels take seconds, but it becomes the thing that sets your pace once jobs run for hours.
Step 4: reading the Overview
Overview is your dashboard. Anything running on the current planet shows up here.
Fleet jobs show as two bars, one for the trip out and one for the trip back. Building jobs get their own panel. Anything with less than five minutes left can be finished on the spot with Complete (Free); above five minutes the same button costs credits.
The panel on the left is the planet itself: coordinates, temperature range, fields used out of the total, fleet slots in use, and whether Newbie Protection and Diplomacy Mode are on. The All Planets tab at the top right shows the same thing for every planet you own at once, which is where you will live once you have colonies.
Step 5: research
Open Research. A level 1 Research Lab opens four technologies.
Take A.I. Tech first. Every level gives you one more fleet slot, and level 1 costs 400 crystal and 600 hydrogen and takes six minutes. Going from one fleet to two doubles how many missions you can have out. Push it to 2 or 3 early and everything else gets easier.
After that, Research Lab 2 is the gate that matters. It costs 400 ore, 800 crystal and 400 hydrogen, and it opens Armor Tech (which unlocks the Raid a Crystal Mine mission) and Pulse Drive (which is on the road to your first colony). Research Lab 3 opens Espionage Tech, which you need before you can build any more Hermes Class Probes.
Research is player-wide, not per planet. You research something once and every planet you own has it.
Step 6: ships
Your Shipyard already sits at level 3, so unlike the old game it is not empty when you first open it.
Four units are buildable at signup: the Artemis Class Fighter, the Atlas Class Cargo, the Zagreus Class Recycler and the Helios Class Solar Satellite. The Genesis Solar Satellite and the Shadow Probe are also listed but they are bought with credits, not resources.
Do not rush ships on day one. Mines pay you every hour forever, ships only pay when you fly them. Once you do have spare resources:
- A second Atlas Class Cargo pairs with A.I. Tech 1 so both fleet slots can run cargo missions. Stacking extra Atlases into one mission does not raise the payout unless the payout is larger than one Atlas can carry, which is 5,000 units.
- A Zagreus Class Recycler opens the Collect Nearby Debris Field mission, worth roughly 850 ore and 1,000 crystal for a ten minute run.
- Helios Class Solar Satellites are a cheap way to add energy without spending fields, and they are worth more on a hot planet. On a 66C homeworld each one is 36 energy an hour. They are also stationary and easy to kill in a raid, so they are not a substitute for the Solar Array.
- Artemis Class Fighters are what you will attack with later, and they are cheap. There is no hurry while newbie protection is on.
Step 7: your first colony
You can hold up to 10 planets. A colony is the single biggest jump in production you will ever make, because it is an entire second set of mines.
To colonize you need a Gaia Class Colony Ship, and that needs Shipyard 4 and Pulse Drive 3 (Pulse Drive itself needs Research Lab 2). Build the ship, open Galaxy, find an empty slot and send it there. The Gaia Peace Project walks through the whole run step by step.
Which slot you pick matters. Slots 1 to 3 run hot and are cramped. Slots 4 to 9 have the most fields. Slots 13 to 15 are the coldest, which is where the Hydrogen Synthesizer does its best work. A fresh colony arrives with nothing on it, so plan on repeating Steps 2 and 3 there.
Quests pay for a lot of this
The Quests page lives in the More menu and it is easy to miss. It is a long list of objectives you were going to complete anyway: build a Crystal Mine, get a Solar Array to level 3, produce 200 ore an hour.
There are 286 of them across five tabs and the early ones pay a few hundred of each resource apiece. Check the page after every few builds and press Claim Reward on anything marked ready. None of it costs you anything.
The Get Lucky link in the nav is the other free thing. You get a draw token now and then and the draw pays resources or credits.
Newbie protection, and what happens when it ends
Protection runs off Resources Spent Points (RSP), the running total of everything you have spent on buildings, ships, defenses and research. It is also the number the Leaders board ranks you on.
- Under 750 RSP you are a newbie. Nobody can attack you and you cannot attack anyone.
- Past 750 you are in the game. You can attack, and be attacked by, anyone whose RSP is within a factor of five of yours.
- Once both sides are over 25,000 RSP the ratio stops applying and anyone that size or larger is fair game, in both directions.
750 RSP is not much. The day one build order above sails straight past it. When protection drops, read Fleet / Resource Saving before you go to bed. Ships parked on a planet are exactly what raiders come for, and a fleet that is in the air cannot be touched.
Two settings exist if you want to be left alone. Diplomacy Mode makes you unattackable, but you cannot attack either and your production drops to 75% (and lower as you grow). It takes 24 hours to switch on and 24 hours to switch off, and you need more than 100 RSP to turn it on at all. Vacation Mode freezes the account outright. Both live in Settings.
For resources specifically the cheap answer is a Resource Den. Anything sitting in it cannot be plundered.
Where to go from here
- Keep running missions. Every new ship and technology opens more of them, and they scale a long way up. Plunder Distant Enemy Base pays 24,000 ore, 15,000 crystal and 13,000 hydrogen for one run.
- Raid other players. Once you can, this beats missions by a wide margin and carries real risk. Spy first with a Hermes Class Probe, read the espionage report, and only send what you can afford to lose. Start with Attack and Combat.
- Turtle. Some players make almost everything from mining. They rush colonies, cover them in defense so raiders bounce, and keep enough cargo ships around to move resources out of the way when someone big shows up. See the Defensive strategy guide.
- Join an alliance. Shared intel, group attacks and a forum of people who have already made every mistake you are about to. See Community.
Where you go from here is up to you.
Comments
In the section FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND, the last sentence is awkwardly written:
“If you use one of them a lot you can pull it into the top row from Settings.”
It would be better if it said “If you use one of these categories a lot then you can set it to be in the top menu bar via Navigation in Settings.”
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