Hey everyone, looking for some tips on what techs to research depending on race or any tips at all with techs. Last game I played, I was playing as the l1z1x mindnet, and the Winnu (3 teams of 2 with 5 players, I was the only person controlling 2), and feel a big reason for my loss was not knowing or sticking to what tech build would benefit me the most. Does anyone have tips and guides for all the races? There are some teams like the Naalu for example that would kick ass with cybernetics n advanced fighters, if playing them should I commit to such a build, or ignore it and go for warsuns?

So many questions >< ughhhh lol please help with any tips at all

Thanks- Isaac

L1z1x should go for "Assault cannon" and "Type 4 Drive" in my opinion. Their dreadnoughts are killers.
Same thing about Yassaril, since they got XRD Transporters in the beginning.

Mentak got fantastic starting techs to get War Sun in round 3, which is awesome.

Letnev can go both ways. Depending on what benefits more in his position.

Dunno about the rest since I haven't played them yet and don't have race cards in front of me atm.

My general tech strategy for all races is to tech to Hyper Metabolism as soon as I can. In my view, command counters are THE most important resource in the game. Without them, you can't do anything. The more you have, the more you can activate the board, execute strategy card secondaries, and even stall for time. Also, being able to cycle through your bad action cards and draw the better cards is a huge advantage. After getting hyper metabolish I usually go for Type IV Drive. Having that just opens up a ton of options from the faster movement.

One thing to look at is the fact that the two stage 2 tech objectives "5 in one color" "9 total" can be achieved by the above strategy if you also add in Enviro Compensator and Stasis Capsules.

Hmm seems still like there are far too many possibilities to put my fingers on a the best strategy, I see how hyper metabolism can be great, and type IV drive, but if Im going for something like type 4 should I completely forget about trying to get warsuns or something from the other side of the tree?

First off, technology is generally very expensive. Most races don't need more than 3 technologies in a given game. Some get by with just 1 technology. Generally speaking it is much more useful to build more units. Then again, if your galaxy has loads of resources, maybe you can afford Tech.

Hylar V, Enviro Compensators, Sarween Tools + XRD Transporters OR Stasis Capsules are good buys in most games for almost any races. The rest is predicated on the map, your neighbors, objectives and your race.

Some musings on the techs different races should buy:

Mentak
Go for Stasis Capsules early, and then Racial Tech on round 3 or 4. Depending on the board situation, you might reverse those. Stasis helps with the expansion bit, and the racial tech makes aggression really pay off. Mentak is a great race early, so you should be on the offensive right out of the gate. The longer you wait, the more people build fighters, which negates your racial precombat shots. Automated Defense Turrets is good for you as well to have more precombat shots. Do not get more than that - instead build more Cruisers and Destroyers.

L1z1x
Lots of options - depending on your planets either go for War Suns or Type IV Drive. Personally, I don't like Assault Cannons. If you like Dreadnoughts Type IV is a better buy. Ships that move 1 space are in the wrong place a lot of the time. Mobility is important in the late game, when board situations change rapidly and you need to react. Also Type IV makes you get XRD so you can maximize Cybernetics with fighters. If you have lots of resources or good trades, War Suns are always good - you can do well with L1z1x even if you ignore his Dreadnought abilities.

Norr
XRD Transporters and Automated Defence Turrets. Forget War Suns. Your Destroyers hit like some races' Cruisers! Build all your Destroyers as soon as possible, move out those PDS units in range of your neighbors and then steamroll them with your Carriers with Fighters.

Hacan
Go for War Suns. You can afford them. The strongest unit in the game, but not everyone can buy them with cash! And because you will have 3 space docks in your home system, by the time you get those Peace Orbs flyin', they'll have a nice escort. Like Mentak, you won't be disappointed by your racial technology if you acquire it early in the game. It pays for itself!

Winnu
Sarween Tools is often a good buy early, because your Home System is low on resources. Type IV Drive is good target for you, because you get XRD and Neural Motivator (which is good with your Racial Tech) on the way there. Hylar is good as well, because you'll probably be building lots of Cruisers. In any case, because Winnu is very weak early, I wouldn't go crazy on tech in the first 2 rounds.

Xxcha
Stasis Capsules is a good early buy because you start with 2 Cruisers. Stasis is underrated among new players IMO. Especially early in the game it is better than XRD because your GF carrying Cruiser are better at combat than Carriers without fighter support. You are a slow starter, so Sarween Tools will help you catch up. You already fight well with your -1 to opponents (Xxcha is the second best at war after Norr), so you don't have to spend resources on combat techs.

Muaat
Clearly all you need is Deep Space Cannon and you Racial Tech. And Magmus Reactor is more useful early, because then your second War Sun is cheaper.

Sol
XRD, Gen Synthesis and Hyper Metabolism. With those you'll maximize your race's potential: Strong Ground Forces and lots of them! Also, you have a good racial tech, especially if your neighbors have Deep Space Cannons or are building lots of mines.

Yin
This is tricky, because your starting fleet is strong but it doesn't go anywhere. I usually get XRD, but consider this: Get Stasis Capsules, you Racial Tech and then invade with 1 GF a planet with 4GF. If you succeed with both conversion rolls, you're fighting 3 against 2! Not going to happen, but man would that be cool

Jol-Nar
Pretty much all is fair game, but check this out: take the Trade Strategy Card in the first round and get 3TG. Then negotiate Technology to be played right away. Take Microtechnogy for free and buy Nanotechnology with 6 (the TGs from Trade and your home planets) resources. Voilá! All the planets you get in the game come to you refreshed!

Letnev
Literally, ALL YOU NEED IS XRD! Just build a second Space Dock in your Home System and start massing a fleet. You can build 10 units each time you activate your home system. You don't need technology. Just crush your neighbor when you're ready.

Yssaril
I haven't seen the RAW Yssaril played in a while, so I don't know much about them. They are overpowered out-of-the box, so I'm not really sure why they'd need tech. Probably Enviro Compensator because their Home System production capacity is just 4 at start. Then Hylar V, always a good tech. I'd probably leave it at that, because Yssaril can make up for a lot with their 20+ Action Cards.

Saar
The production beast of the bunch. Go for Enviro Compensators, Sarween Tools and Racial Tech. Build 3 Docks and 25+ fighters in your Home System, move them out in the second to last round and make hay with that stack! Remember to protect those docks carefully, EXCEPT at the end of the game! You don't need to build units after the game is over, after all.

Naalu
You always dream of Advanced Fighters, but let's face it: that tech is so deep in the tech tree that it's a lot smarter just to build units. Get Sarween early (and double dock your Home System!), then XRD and Cybernetics. You then have a nice fleet that packs a bunch. Your racial tech isn't too bad either.

In general I only go for tech when there are objectives I can claim for getting them. Hyper Metabolism and Nanotech are both really shiney and speed up your ability to do things, but most game changing techs take so long to get that the game is almost over by the time you can put them to good use.

Pick up techs can when you can afford to (whatever seems useful at the time) but focus on completing objectives over any long term tech planning.

If you do the math, Hypermetabolism is not worth it.* While command counters are a crux of the game, your turn by turn collection of them is only a small part of your cc income. Hyper has an average depth of 3.2, so we can expect most players to not reach it until turn 4 assuming one tech a turn after the first turn. By turn four you should have enough influence to buy two command counters every time Leadership is played. That means that hyper will move you from 4cc's per turn to 5cc/t not an impressive step up. Now let's suppose you got a useful tech instead: and were able to capture two more influence, then you've got your extra cc/t and a better fleet. Granted I've ignored the action card ability you get from Hyper metabolism which is almost as good a neural motivator's buff, but when you consider that getting Hypermetabolism involves also purchasing Gen synthesis (a largely worthless technology) and leads nowhere, it's just not worth it.

You want a tech that will save you cc's get XRD or Statsis Capsules, or Type IV Drive. All of those techs increase the flexibility of your fleet, allowing you to move ships and ground forces further with a single activation and thus with fewer activations and less use of Warfare's secondary to achieve the same ends. And that is savings I can get behind.

Most games you'll have the time and money to grab 5-7 technologies past your starting techs, you can take more, but it's rarely a good idea.* I'd say I've seen more players lose to over teching as I've seen games of TI.

This chart is very helpful for identifying technology targets for a specific race:

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*Unless you're the Jol Nar; then tech up like you are tomorrow.

Note: this post is written assuming the SE Strategy Cards

The Fist of Ferrum said:

? In my opinion this is very bad advice. Hypermetabolism is an extra 50% more command counters guaranteed every round. Leadership/Logistics will not always be selected. The ability to cycle through action cards every time you draw them is huge. Notice that the tech says "when you draw action cards" it does not say that this only occurs during the status phase. This means you can use it during the status phase, when using the primary of assembly, and the secondary of bureaucracy. That allows you to look at an addition 3 action cards that normally you would not.

Thinking that Genetic Synthesis is useless just is mind-boggling. Being able to hit 30% of the time versus 20% is a huge improvement to start with, but regenerating at home is a life saver. You always have a 60% chance that the ground forces you create will never die. This tech also nearly guarantees that you will never lose your home planets. I've been able to survive attacks on my home world when I started with 15 ground forces and he brought in 10 ground forces, 2 war suns, and they were equipped with x89 weapons. First the x89 kill everything. 10 of them regenerated. Then the bombardments killed 5, 4 regened. The tech is far from useless.

In my opinion Hyper Metabolism is 2nd best tech you can buy. The best is XRD transporters =))

First of all to buy it you need: enviro compensator or antimass deflectors and after that cybernetics and gen synthesis. All those tech are awesome!

1. Both enviro compensator and antimass deflectors are starting techs for most of the races.
2. Stasis capsules which go after enviro compensator can be a good tech to buy, since your carriers can now have 6 fighters on board and GF can stay safe with dreadnoughts or can be transported with fast cruisers.
3. Cybernetics is one of the best tech in the game since fighters are the most useful units out there.
4. Gen Synthesis is Cybernetics twin brother only for ground forces. Get 10 GF and this tech and you will not need any more GFs for the rest of the game.
5. Finally Hyper Metabolism. This thing makes pass Logistics Strategy card to another player since you don't really need it. You just buy 1-2 counters per turn with the secondary ability of logistics and still have plenty of counters. But that's not all - in addition they allow you to get rid of action cards! But not just to throw them away but to exchange them. Isn't this awesome?

Everybody has put in valuable advice. I can say for any faction in almost any game I always develop up to Sarween tools in that tech field.

While game can be won without War Suns, generally, I find most feel the need to have them. Getting your Warsun tech also gets you other very useful wartech along the way.

Besides building for War Suns, I find in few games that developing your tech for PDS systems is worth it.

Lastly, remember it is a game about achieving victory points. While it is nice to have super high tech, or massivly upgunned fleets, your tech really needs to enhance your ability to achieve your victory point objectives. And since that will change from game to game, experience is your best teacher.

KelRiever said:

Sarween is definitely popular around our table too, as a useful and low-level tech. I've never personally gone for War Suns, though, and those who have at our table usually find themselves the target of unnecessary retaliation as soon as build one. Myabe that's just our group dynamic, but building a war sun is akin to painting a giant target on yourself.

DavidG55311 said:

This struck me as odd. My group has always interpreted it as meaning only when you draw them during the normal sequence of the status phase. Is this really how others interpret the text of Hyper Metabolism?

For reference:

" During each Status Phase, you gain 1 additional Command Counter. In addition, before drawing Action Cards, you may discard 1 Action Card from your hand to draw 1 additional card. "

broken said:

Here is one of the examples that we used when we made our interpretation.

Maneuvering Jets (req. XRD Transporters)
Your opponents receive –1 to all PDS rolls targeting your ships or –2 If the PDS is firing from an adjacent system.
In addition you receive –1 to all your space mine rolls and your ships do not have to stop when entering an
ion storm.

The "In addition" in this example has absolutely nothing to do with the PDS firing ability of the technology.

Hypermetabolism has the exact same wording, so we can infer that the two statements have nothing to do with each other even though the two statements could be related.

Therefore, action cards can be cycled through whenever you are able to draw an action card.

What is vague about this interpretation is that there is numerous ways to say "draw an action card".

It is written as "draw" or "receive" and there might be a few others that I can't remember.

There's certainly nothing wrong with playing it that way if you all agree that is what it means, I was just taken aback because I had never even considered that. I have submitted it as a rule question, so we'll see what Corey says.

broken said:

I would always recommend playing this way. If someone has a question on the rules, come together as a group and decide how to proceed.

If it makes sense, keep using it.

If it doesn't make much sense now, use your interpretation and then after the game figure out the correct way.

DavidG55311 said:

I can't think of any other way to play, unless you are going to interrupt your game to submit a rules question and wait for it.

Hey broken, any answer from Corey yet?

No answer yet.

broken said:

Interrupt the game to wait for a ruling on rules? No way, that would be sacrilege.

When involved in points of dispute, it's best if the involved players are objectively looking at both points of view. If still unable to truly decide which way to go, these topics are best brushed aside with another means of resolution in order to allow the show to go on. Because, after all, it's the show that counts for the fun points and not the nit-picking over rules.

An on-the-fly dispute could be resolved by a majority rules type vote, rock-paper-scissors, even-odd die roll, whatever the group decides. Bribes with beer or vegetarian black-bean chili are not outside the realm of possibility.

The Hyper Metabolism technology reads:

"During each Status Phase, you gain 1 additional Command Counter. In addition, before drawing Action Cards, you may discard 1 Action Card from your hand to draw 1 additional card."

My group has always interpreted this as you are able to discard 1 Action Card from your hand to draw 1 additional card, only during the status phase (i.e. you aren't able to do it with the secondary of Bureaucracy or the primary of Assembly).

Recently someone mentioned that their group interpreted it more loosely, so the exceptions above wouldn't apply.

Which way should it be used?

Thanks for the follow-up. It helps to have friends in high places!