The Solorian Unity - Guide

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[edit] Overview

  • The Solorian Unity is a very strong fast growing race that is designed to be 100% independent of other races.
  • You have no (big) weakness and can fight any race well.

[edit] Strengths

  • The highest growth race of all races - money will not be a problem.
  • Labor Camp - even more money.
  • You will be able to farm any world you land enough colonists, so food will not be a problem. (Very wide farming range: 50-100. Therefore about half the planets in the game can be farmed without even needing to do any terraforming.)
  • Every 500,000 colonists auto-terraform the planet in a favourable climate for farming. (Each 500,000 increases the climate by 1 each turn. 10,000,000 colonists would increase the climate by 20 points per turn and so on).
  • Every 10,000,000 colonists create a free base shield during combat. (This cannot be disabled by Spy Attacks, fighter wings or the Rebel Ground Assault device).
  • The Corona will give you the most mineral of all races, and extremly fast. (It mines as fast as the Evil Empires tech 10 Slayer and is available at hull tech level 4 and 35 times cheaper!)
  • All type of mines (except the web) for a powerful defense (or offense).
  • Long-range powerful attack - Stellar Matter Launcher, similar to the Robot Gun Zero.
  • Unlimited free fuel.
  • Ground base chunnel.
  • Nobody can have your ship plans, and nobody can build your ship hulls.
  • Good fighters.
  • Very good ground assault units.
  • High Troop and High Guard training rate.
  • Very high Colonist, Crew, Troop and High Guard combat strength. (Combined with your high growth rate this means you should never lose due to rush tactics early in the game)
  • Hyp cargo ships with pod bays.
  • Fast warp ships.
  • Warships with both HYP and fast warp speed.
  • You can't be assimilated by the Borg - your people die in the process.
  • You don't fear the Robot. Their insectoid nest won't work on you.
  • The most dangerous Privateer ship device won't work on you (Siren HAARP).
  • The Draconian Solar Gamma Ray does not affect you either (see Talk).

[edit] Growth Rate

The Solorians' growth rate depends on the star heat (formula). They can have a very high growth rate at high heat stars (20% of Blue Giant stars give a 17.1% to 17.7%). Because of that they have a low resource point allocation and can not turn on Tank-O-Tronic cloning exotic techs (Host 194) to counterbalance the high growth rate.
Only play on maps that have a fair spread of green, red and (especially) blue stars to choose from.
The Solorians tend to have big bases on high heat worlds to maximize the growth. Although the farming range is quite wide, food is very likely to become a bottleneck in your growth.

Note: In the first 5 turns any planet with more than 10,000 Solorians will change its star type to 'Green Binary', so take care not to chunnel to a Red or Blue Giant during that period! Read more about this

[edit] Laser Mine Drilling

The Corona Class Orbital Miner drills a massive 10,000 unmined ore per turn instead of the normal 1,000. Furthermore it has a Ground Base Chunneler ship device.

  • Form a 1 colonist base.
  • Suck a planet dry of ore.
  • Chunnel the base back to your homeworld.

[edit] Military

  • Good troop strength/conversion rates.
  • Free Base Shield during enemy attack if there are 10 million colonists in a base (this leaves them vulnerable to World Crusher Missile attacks from 100ly, and other super weapons).
  • Can create a new base on an asteroid. When a planet explodes and turns into an asteroid field, any existing base will be destroyed.

[edit] Stellar Matter Launcher

With a combination of the Stellar Targeter ship device and Stellar Matter Launcher base structure, your can fire up to a range of six times the star heat of the planet the launcher is on. Enemy ships that are within a 20 LY radius of each other will be damaged from an exploding ball of stellar matter. All free-floating (undocked) fighter wings inside the explosion will be destroyed.

[edit] Weaknesses

  • Homeworld begins the game with a base shield, but Solorians cannot use the standard base shields since host 93. (But it will protect from WCM).
  • Solorian have their own special base shield but need a minimum of 10,000,000 colonists on a base to have it.
  • The Solorian pods have a speed of 0LY.
  • The Solorian work in enemy camps (like 99% of all other races).
  • Some Solarian ships have an extremely high warp drag factor.
  • Their growth rate is affected by the map - not many map have start with 91 start heat or more. The maximum starheat on normal map is 94.
  • Short on fuel until the tech level 5 Solar Collection Array can be built to generate fuel for new Solorian ships- whithout it ships need (lose) a few turns to fill their tanks, before being able to move.
  • Very small fuel tanks- most ships have around 100 fuel capacity. This means you need hyper drive engine tech level 9, before you can make a 2-way trip using HYP.
  • No swarming hulls.
  • You can't have any other races ship plans.
  • You can't build any other races ship hulls.

[edit] Pods

The Solorian pods have a speed of 0LY and cannot be increased by Pod Kicker Exotic Techs. This means you have to rely on your ships to transport them. As the ship list includes hyperjumping ships with Pod Bays, this isn't too much of a problem, but it does require a lot of micromanagement to move material around.

[edit] Minerals

The Solorians have no Mineral Mines. So the only way of gaining metals are by using the Laser Mining Drill, Alchemy, or trading.
Fuel is handled seperately for the Solorians (see ships).

[edit] Mineral Farming

This is an alternative to pumping out supplies for the Eclipse Class Starbase to transmute. Alchemy continuously draws on resources that might otherwise be spent on more offensive objectives. This method requires only a startup cost (a spare Corona) and several turns of setup, though it will likely produce less minerals per turn.

  • Find a world with a positive Delta Stress. Low values (1-5) are only for those desperately in need of minerals, while high values (>10) make it easy to justify the expense. Wealthy Solorians could write off the Corona as a negligible cost, making use of any and all such worlds.
  • Use the Laser Mining Drill to steadily increase the HD stress up into the 800 point range. The planet must have more than 100kt of unmined metal ore for the drill to raise HD Stress, so you may have to turn it off every other turn until the planet is generating that each turn. Remember to have your Scalar Wave Damper turned off while doing this, as that will substantially increase the time it will take. Feel free to drop a crew and the metal to the planet and chunnel it home when the stockpile warrants it.
  • Turn on the damper while keeping up with the drilling. When the HD stress approaches 930 or so, turn the drill off for a turn or two, letting the damper work. Once back towards 800 stress, turn the Drill back on. Continue chunneling home the metal as it accumulates. You might want to dock a Life Pod to the Corona and set it to transfer crew to replace those leaving with the chunneled bases.
  • NOTE: This is not an early game option. Tying up a starting Corona for up to 20 turns is NOT advised.
  • NOTE: Later in the game, start-up time tends to be greatly reduced, as the delta stress has already been steadily increasing the HD stress the entire game.

[edit] Ships

(ordered by hull tech level)

Tech Hull Role Hyper Drive Class
1 M2 Flare Class Scout Support L1
2 Spectrum Class Freighter Support -
3 Prominence Class Cruiser Warship, Tower -
4 Corona Class Orbital Miner Support,Warship -
4 Solar Wind Class Freighter Support L2
5 Solar Collection Array Starbase,Support -
6 Eclipse Class Starbase Starbase, Warship -
7 Pulsar Class Warcruiser Warship L2
10 Nexus Class Warstar Warship L3
10 Solar Ragnarock Device Go BOOM! -
  • The Solorian ships are rather expensive but have a good list of ship devices, including three kinds of minefield dropper ship devices.
  • Superweapon: Anti-Matter Maul.
  • Solorian ships captured by non-Solorians begin to degrade immediately, which require constant repair or they will be destroyed. The ship's log will contain a message, "This ship is on FIRE!!!" and take 20% hull damage per turn. (This doesn't affect ships captured by the The Crystal Assembly. This may be a bug).

[edit] Fuel

Solorian ships do not use Neutronium as fuel. Instead, their ships gather fuel from star heat when ending the turn over a star/planet. The amount of fuel gathered depends on the hull and the heat. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage:

  • Solorians have unlimited amounts fuel. However the amount they can get access to in time is limited. Most of their travel will be from star to star to let the ships refuel and not normally out in deep space. This allows an opponent to predict the position of ships to some extent, which is always a big disadvantage.
  • Solorian fuel cannot be stolen from Solorian ships and is meant to disappear when a Solorian ship is captured.
  • Fuel cannot be traded with other races, including allies.

The fuel gathering formula is:

  • Fuel = 1/90 * HullMass * StarHeat

This also works for alien hulls. The Solar Collection Array gathers 9 times this amount !!

[edit] Shields

Solorian ships take half shield drain from ordnance using weapons, but double shield drain from non-ordnance using weapons (Crystal Shields behave just the other way around).


[edit] Alien Hulls

  • Solorians cannot build alien hulls.
  • Solorians cannot own any other race's ships (including Crystals) without taking damage while crew or troops are on board. The damage ranges from 10 to 40% hull damage per turn.
  • Beam off all crew and troops during the turn and no damage will be done. High guard and colonist guests do not seem to cause damage.
  • Captured non-Solorian hulls gather fuel in the same manner as all other Solorian ships, except that the Solar Collection Array will NOT transfer fuel to them.
There are circumstances in which you can easily move certain alien hulls almost normally and fear no damage. The optimal hull would be one with small crew quarters, a hyperdrive and a pod bay. The Falcon Class is ideal, and easy to capture in combat (IF you can engage it in combat). Dock a Life Pod with enough crew to fill the hull's crew quarters many times over and set it to transfer crew. Movement must end over a planet or next to a ship with enough empty crew capacity to accept all the hull's crew. The crew will transfer at the beginning of the turn, the ship can move normally, and the crew will be off the ship before damage is dealt.
  • Solorian ships captured by non-Solorians begin to degrade immediately, which require constant repair or they will be destroyed. The ship's log will contain a message, "This ship is on FIRE!!!" and take 20% hull damage per turn. (This doesn't affect ships captured by the The Crystal Assembly. This may be a bug). Host 195

[edit] Fighters

The Solorian Unity has very efficient fighters - for Space Combat. Never allow your fighters to participate in Ground Combat. They will be wiped out with little-to-no gain.

Solorians are one of the best fighter base races in the game (despite being a superweapon based race) due to these reasons:

1) 9\0\1 fighter wings. The Quasar has an incredible missile strength of 900 and a base missile accuracy of 120%. This is supposed to be countered by its extremely low missile range of 10 and only being able to fire once since it carries only 1 ord.
2) Type 2 Fusions are the best anti-fighter fighter in the game. They have an extreme beam range (450), base beam accuracy (90%), evasive bonus (65%) and combat quickness (110). Fusions can fire continuously due to their extremely powerful generators (25). However the real reason that they are the best anti-fighter fighter is their cost (only 40mc each!). Compared to a colonial Viper (which is intended to be the best anti-fighter fighter) it has over twice the beam range (allowing it to fire at the Viper more often than it can be fired at), superior beam accuracy (Vipers "only" have 80%), a superior evasive bonus (Vipers "only" have 30%) and superior generator power (Viper generators supply 15). Due to the Vipers good armour it usually takes twice as many Fusions together to defeat a Viper wing. However Fusions cost much less than Vipers do (110mc each) and a Solorian will be able to afford almost three times as many fighters as a Colonial will even before you consider that the Solorian will be making more money than the Colonial until very late in the game.
The final nail in the coffin is that Fusions are immune to enemy missiles. Anyone hoping to overcome their overpowering beam strength with clever use of missiles will find their dreams crushed.
3) Stellar Matter Launchers can destroy free floating wings with a single hit at very long range. They can be Ground Chunneled into and out of position and can destroy carriers and anti-fighter frigates too if close enough.
  • Due to their low travel range Solorian fighters usually have to be carried by Pulsars in relatively small wings of size 50 or less. This does not impede Solorians much because since they have very long beam and missile ranges it is almost always better to have many small wings than one large wing to cover more space during combat.
  • It is very simple to dock several size 50 wings together to create a big wing if one is really necessary (just carry a lot of size 50 wings to within 25 lightyears of the enemy and then dock them together).
  • Solorian fighters are terrible in ground combat but this is not really a weakness since Solorians have good ground assault units anyway.

[edit] Natives

  • Native happiness is capped at 100. This makes a Public Space Port not as useful. The native happiness can get higher when two bases merge from a Ground Chunnel.
  • All Natives have a +15% chance of joining the Solorians.
  • Ghipsoldals don't require Kerria Crystals to join, but it still helps
    • 850kt Kerria needed for 100% join chance
    • 1000 Ghipsoldals take 1 kt of Kerria when joining the base (if any is available).
  • Wild Amorphous Worms on a surface of a planet will not join a Solorian base on the same planet (PSI > 80).

[edit] Native Gathering

Since the Solorians don't have a Native Dust Off device, they have to gather natives by way of bases. You can use your Flare to find natives using the Bioscanner then drop 1 troop and 1 food at a base. Using troops is better than colonists since with troops you will at least have some defense against someone else trying to take your natives. Since the Flare has a max guest quarters for 10 and a cargo hold of 10, you can do this 10 times. If you want to continue doing this then pick up some more food on the surface of a planet that you hop over and drop 3 crew out of the 4 that you have. Using bases to gather natives has the side effect of having a chance to block the Native Dust Off of other races. If you find that you will be spending a while at a planet due to refueling needs then you may want to transport 3 of your crew and all of your guests into the base so that they can attempt to grow and make some more colonists for you to continue on your native gathering.

Later, you can use one of these methods to get the natives back to your homeworld.

[edit] Worm Farming

While unable to gather Amorphous Worms safely into bases unless you use PSP, you need not totally avoid planets with them. Selling Lerchin Spices, after all, can be quite lucrative. To find the minimum population needed to outgrow the Worm depredations, use the following formula.

Where C = Needed Colonists Population, W = wild Worms on planet and G = Growth Rate: C = W / (300 * G)

Losses to worms is actually a remarkably low number, less than 350 colonists per 100,000 Worms. A growth rate of 2.6% (at starheat 30), only requires 13,000 colonists to make up such losses. If the planet is suitable for farming, then you will likely have much more than the minimum needed. A population of 500,000 might even be considered. That will steadily increase the planet’s climate to 100 and thus maximize the worms' own growth rate which in turn will increase Spice production.

Amorphous Worms grow faster, produce more spice and have a higher maximum poulation when outside a base. The same high Psi rating that prevents worms joining Solorian bases directly will let the base gather spice very quickly from the planet as the Worms produce it.

[edit] Diplomacy

The Solorians are designed as a "go at it alone" type of race, so their needs from others are not great. In fact, in the area of trade, the Solorians have very little to offer, and very little to gain. You can always help a friend out with mining from space, while less efficient, it is much faster when done by your Coronas. There is only one exception to this (see Allies below). As the leader of the Solorians, your best bet is to step into the equation as the stronger party. You can always offer your muscle, either to the gain or detriment of those you engage in diplomacy with.

The Solorians cannot mine Neutronium, so they usually end up with large reserves of it in the planet. This can make a good bargaining chip for trading with other races.

They don't have the Mineral Mine base structure, so Reptilians are practically useless to them (except for the taxes that they generate) and can be another bargaining chip.

They can't tame Amorphous Worms due to their high PSI rating, so you could trade the location of these natives to other players.

[edit] Allies

  • Crystals are by far the best. With any other race you only gain a friend and what general resources they can give you. But with the Crystals, you get an extremely strong synergy in a well organized alliance. The benefits of the HD stress you can easily create offer massive benefits for both races. Both races enjoy the same climate range.
  • When released, the IMT will be ideal allies. You should end up with massive stockpiles of Duranium and Tritanium (maybe Moly too, but keep that). The IMT can transform that metal into MC, which is the primary limiting factor of the Solorian.

[edit] Enemies

  • Crystals are by far the worst. The Crystals can shut down your chunnels, they can cause massive feedback all with their X-Field device.
  • Privateers have a hard time against the Solorians. They cannot steal your fuel, nor can they abduct your crew using the Siren HAARP ship device. The Gravitonic Minefields you can lay starting on turn 1 make them think twice to come close (hopefully as they could steal your highly valuable food). The happiness drop and the food stealing is before the ground chunnel.
  • Being immune to the Robot's Insectoid Nest makes them a much smaller threat for you. Just prevent them from getting their Eye of Madagon near your homeworld, destroying your highly valuable food.

[edit] Strategy

They are 2 main early strat, go for your Planet Tech Level 6 Stellar Matter Launcher as fast as possible, or go for your hull tech (ships). You will not (normally) have the money to do both at once.

[edit] Stellar Matter Launcher Strat

[edit] Hull tech Strat

You should still raise your planet tech to 2, like for almost all races, to get your pod launcher. You will need it to move Natives, and you will collect them using your M2 Flare Class Scout. As Solorian you will gather all natives very fast with your base only 1 Personnel is needed, except the amorphous which you can't collect. Than you focus on hull tech until tech 7 is reached. The Pulsar is your main warship- it will replace the Prominence. Be sure to have HYP tech 9 before you reach Pulsar, and you need to raise the engine and or the HYP tech too.

  • You also need to get the minimum "Early War tech" Large Weapon 4, Small weapon 2, Point Defense 3, Shield 6
  • You should also raise Generator to tech 6, but only if not slowing the above primary tech.

EARLY GAME

    • Raise Planet tech to 2
    • Raise all cheap tech
    • Try to raise Hull tech every turn up to 7 (Pulsar)
    • Raise HYP to 9 (Warhop)
    • Raise Engine to 10
    • Raise Small weapon to 2
    • PD to 3 (flake)
    • Large to 4
    • Shield to 6 or 7
    • Generator to 6

MIDDLE GAME

    • Raise Planet tech to 6 Stellar Matter Launcher
    • Raise Hull to 10
    • Raise HYP to 10
    • Raise Engine to 20
    • Raise Small weapon to 2
    • Raise PD to 7 (turbo laser)
    • Raise Large weapon to 10
    • Raise Shield to 9
    • Raise Generator to 6

LATE GAME

  • Max all tech, but stop at Super weapon tech 4 (Anti-Matter Maul on your nexus)

[edit] General Tips

  • You should still raise your planet tech to 2, like for almost all races, to get your pod launcher. But you absolutely need it early (turn 3) to be able to launch a few life pod with 10,001 colonists to make Star Type Change at Start of planets near you.
    • Remember that you will need to use your beginning ships to move the pods.
  • Do not Ground Chunnel your HW to good star heat planets until turn 6.
  • Send as many Flare as you can, using all the starting HYP engines in storage- do not put fast engines on them.
  • As soon as you have the hull tech 3 Prominence, downgrade the engines on one (or two) of your starting Coronas (with an Outfit Pod with 8 free slow low tech engines in storage), and put some cheap engines you have in storage - their speed does not matter as they will be towed by the warp 105 Prominence. You will have 8 engines which is enough for up to 4 Prominence, but you may want to save some for your Spectrum or Solar Wind.
  • As soon you reach hull tech 5, build at least 1 Solar Collection Array, and build them in orbit around high star heat planets. You could Ground Chunnel a ship yard to build them in key spot on the map, but for now 1 or 2 at your HW should be enough.

[edit] See also

Retrieved from "http://planets4.hood-net.org/wiki/index.php/The_Solorian_Unity_-_Guide"
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