Solar Expats: Late-Game Guide

1. What the late game is about

The Mid-Game Guide is about growth: turning one colony into six. By turn 250 or so the land rush is mostly over. The belt is settled, the giants are contested, and every faction has a shape. The late game is about the finish: who gets over a line first, and who stops them.

There are three lines. How often each one decides an AI-only game, by table size:

Small tables leave room for the slow roads: a duel's VP target is 115, so a trader can build a Sovereignty lead or a scientist a telescope before anyone gets there. At big tables somebody usually reaches the (lower) VP target first. But every road is open at every size, and each one needs a different late game.

2. Reading the race

Three panels tell you where everyone stands:

• Opponents (top left): each faction's Victory Points against the target.
• Earth Influence (top right): everyone's influence against the 200 a Sovereignty Charter needs.
• Science (under it): everyone's science data and findings, and any Lens telescope under way, with how far along it is.

The game itself measures each faction's progress as the best of three fractions: VP over the target, influence over 200, and science (60% of the way once you hold the data a telescope needs, the rest as the telescope is built). Two things follow from it:

• Catch-up. The leader's colonies collect normally; everyone behind collects up to 50% more sunlight and ore, in proportion to the gap. If the leader is 80% of the way and you are 50%, your colonies collect 15% more. A runaway lead shrinks unless you keep pushing, yours included.
• The leader pays more. At the market the faction closest to winning gets the worse end of every price, up to double, and an AI won't sell to a buyer far enough ahead of it at all. Late in the game, buy what you need while you're still behind.

3. Closing out a Victory Points win

The last ten or twenty VP are the hardest, because the cheap worlds are gone. Where they come from now:

• The outer worlds. Saturn is worth 15, Uranus 20, Neptune 22, Pluto 25, Haumea 26 and Makemake 27: one of them is two belt colonies. They need the fusion economy and Heavy Freighters from the Mid-Game Guide, and a Colony Ship takes 35 turns or more to get there, so launch it long before you need the points.
• Stations on worlds you already hold. A station adds a quarter of its planet's VP, rounded down (2 at Mars, 3 at Ceres, 6 at Pluto), takes 15 turns and needs no trip: the colony beside it pays for it. Late in the game this is often the fastest VP there is.
• First visits are permanent: +2 for the inner system and the belt, +3 beyond it. A scout that never reached Haumea or Makemake still has 6 VP to collect.
• Conquest. A captured colony starts at half its planet's VP and pacifies to 85% over 50 turns, and its old owner loses the whole value. Taking a rival's Pluto colony gives you 12 VP at once (21 once pacified) and costs them 25: a 37-point swing between the two of you, and the only VP that also slows a rival down.

Keep the yards running to the end. A Colony Ship launched at turn 380 to a world 30 turns away is a colony at 410, in time for most games. And watch your defences: a colony lost in the last fifty turns is VP you probably can't replace.

4. Holding a Sovereignty lead

The Mid-Game Guide covers how a Sovereignty Charter works. The late game turns on two of its rules.

• The 25-point lead. You need 200 influence and a lead of 25 over the next faction. That cuts both ways: a rival who keeps its own influence within 25 of yours blocks your Charter without fighting you, and you can block theirs the same way. In a duel against a trading faction, a few loads of silicon delivered to Earth can be worth more than a colony.
• War is ruinous. Destroying a ship in combat multiplies your influence decay by five for 10 turns: 7.5% a turn instead of 1.5%. Held at 200, that is about 15 influence lost a turn, and ten turns of it take you below 100. A Sovereignty player near the line should let its escorts drive raiders off rather than chase kills.

Influence from outside Earth deliveries helps late, when every point counts:

• Findings: the first faction to finish a world's research project gets 3 influence for an inner world, 4 in the belt, 6 at the giants and 8 beyond.
• Reaver bounties: the UN pays 5 influence for each Reaver raider destroyed and 10 for the last raider of a nest (section 7).
• UN missions and Trade Charters, as in the mid-game.

Among the AI factions, the Free Traders and Solar Dynamics are the ones that play for a Charter. Watch their influence bars from about turn 200.

5. The science road: the Lens telescope

The New Player Guide explains the telescope: the Sun's gravitational focus starting about 550 AU out, and why a telescope there could photograph a planet around another star. In the game, its launch wins. Here is how to get there, and how to survive the 60 turns it takes.

Gathering the data

To start a telescope you need, at the same time:

• studies (a finding or a confirming study) in three of the four groups of worlds: inner worlds, the belt, the giants and their moons, beyond Saturn;
• a finished Station to build it at.

Data comes from two places. A first finding pays 40 data at an inner world, 50 in the belt, 70 at the giants and 90 beyond (a confirming study 15–25). A Research Lab (300 / 60 / 120, 8 turns, up to 2 per colony) makes 2 data every turn, and studies its own world as if a ship were in orbit. Labs are the engine: six colonies with two labs each make 24 data a turn, 1,800 in 75 turns. Every finding in the game together is worth about 1,300, so findings alone never get you there. (The Deep Sky Institute gets a quarter more data from both, and studies a quarter faster.)

Before you start

A telescope costs 4,000 energy, 1,500 iron, 2,500 silicon and 600 water, paid as it goes. Each turn of work needs the payments to be at least that far along; when they fall behind, the work waits. It takes what it needs from the station's stores first, then from your colonies, each of which keeps a settler's worth back (1,000 E, 300 Fe, 200 Si, 100 W). So:

• Stock the station first. It holds up to 10,000 energy, 2,000 iron, 1,500 silicon and 1,000 water. Fill it with Transfer (R) before you start and the telescope runs for a long time without stalling. Silicon is the usual bottleneck.
• Choose the station for defence, not convenience. Every faction is told the turn you start, at half way and ten turns from launch. Pick a station far from aggressive rivals, with a colony beside it (it pays first) and, if you can, a Military Outpost (+20% attack and +25% defence for your ships there).
• Expect your growth to slow. Your colonies' surplus goes to the telescope, so settlers and upgrades come slower while it builds.

Holding it for 60 turns

A blockade is how rivals fight a telescope. Warships are weighed: a Battlestar counts 3, a Destroyer 1, a Scout a quarter. If the rival warships in your station's orbit outweigh yours there, the work slows by their extra share of their own weight: three Destroyers against your two, a third slower. A tie goes to you.

• Without war, a blockade can slow the work by at most half.
• At war with you at that world, they can stop it outright, though your station fires on their ships every turn they stay.
• If the station is captured or destroyed, the telescope is lost. Your data is kept, and you can start again from the beginning at another finished Station.

What the AI rivals do when you start one:

• They set out once your telescope is 10–40% built, the most aggressive first (the Defense Force at about 15%, Titan at about 25%, the rest at 30–35%; each game's temperament moves these a little). Half their warships go; past 40%, all but one.
• At normal difficulty the Defense Force arrives at war. Titan does in most duels, about half the time at four or five players and seldom at a full table, as its temperament falls. The others come under a truce, which only slows you, until your telescope passes 40%; then they come at war too.
• If most of your fleet sits at the telescope (60% of your warship weight or more), their Battlestars raid your colonies that have no ships at them. Each colony they take is VP lost and a colony that no longer pays for the telescope.
• An AI that expects to win before your telescope launches doesn't bother with it.

6. Stopping a rival who is about to win

A VP leader

• Take its colonies. Every capture costs it the planet's full VP and gives you half, rising to 85%. Its frontier colonies are usually the lightly guarded ones (the AI garrisons by the threat it sees nearby).
• Destroy a station and its owner loses that station's VP.
• Race it. Catch-up already gives every trailing faction up to 50% more from its colonies; a leader a few VP short is often easier to beat to the line than to stop.

A Sovereignty leader

• Stay within 25. Deliver ore to Earth yourself (E) and its Charter can't happen, however high it climbs.
• Cut its deliveries. Influence decays every turn, so a faction that stops shipping falls back fast. Lurk on the approach to its busiest colony (Q) and raid the freighters heading for Earth.

A telescope

• Blockade it. Park warships in its station's orbit that outweigh the guards there. Under a truce that slows it by up to half.
• Go to war there to stop it. Choose war when you arrive; or, if you chose a truce, wait out its 12 turns and then attack anything of theirs there (an attack at a claimed world with no pact is a declaration of war). The station will fire on you every turn.
• Raid the colonies that pay for it, especially if its owner has pulled its fleet home.
• Take the station (bombard with K, two or three Battlestars, then board with G) and the telescope is gone.

7. Late-game dangers

• Reavers. From turn 120, Reaver nests appear at Uranus and beyond (up to two in a game). Every 30 turns a nest raids a colony within 25 AU, plundering 40 of each resource per raider per turn for 12 turns. A nest starts with 2 raiders and grows to 4 as the game goes on. The UN pays a bounty in influence for each raider you destroy (section 4).
• Lane raiders. Pirates lurk on the approaches to busy worlds. Late in the game a convoy (Shift+Y) for a loaded Heavy Freighter or a Colony Ship is cheap insurance, and a picket (Y) covers a yard's lanes.
• The giants' contest. A faction holding two worlds in Jupiter's system has the others racing, raiding and refusing to trade with it; that pressure lasts all game.
• Repossession. A conquest the UN hasn't yet recognised (below 75% pacified, about 36 turns) can be retaken lawfully by its old owner, even during a truce. A late capture needs a garrison until then.

8. The time limit

If nobody wins by turn 1200 (100 years), the faction furthest along any road wins: the best of its VP against the target, its influence against 200, and its science progress. The final standings show all three. In practice it almost never comes to that: 3 games in 4,600 AI-only games ran out the clock.

9. Things to try

• In a four-player game, build two Research Labs in every colony from turn 150. When do you reach 1,800 data, and how does your colony count compare with a game without labs?
• Start a telescope with the station stocked to the brim, then another with it empty. How many turns does each take?
• Blockade a rival's telescope under a truce, then at war. How much faster does the war stop it, and what does the station's fire cost you?
• Play a duel against the Free Traders and keep your influence within 25 of theirs. How long can you hold off their Charter, and what does it cost your VP race?
• Take a rival's outer colony late in the game and hold it for 50 turns. How much VP did the swing win you?
• Build a station beside every colony you hold. How many VP do the stations add, and how many turns did it take?