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Hello everybody! ShockPuppetz here, today we're gonna take a quick look at FreeOrion
We're playing on 0.4.2
this is the Final version of 0.4.2
and for those interested this is SVN 6030, which is
very very recent at the time of this recording
We are doing a quick overview of the game today. I've done some older videos,
a little while ago and
they are still relevant.
Today we're going to look at some of the different features of the game.
Lets quickly set things up. So i'm gonna go in single player
and leave everything as default. On this version we are able to set a seed,
enabling us to choose a random
generation for the galaxy. We are gonna leave it as 0 default
and we're gonna stay as the
Terran Imperium in beginner mode and leave everything else on default as
Human Species. Let's go in.
So what is FreeOrion? FreeOrion is a free Open Source game
it's completely free to play, it's in development and
has been in development for a while. It's a space strategy
and galactic conquest game which follows "4X"
similar to the old Master of Orion games in the sense that you need to send your
ships throughout the galaxy,
colonize different planets and engage with other other species that you encounter.
Straight away we can see that we've started here, we are the
green guys and we got our Home System here in the middle and we've got
a little icon showing our ships. We've got a large Terran planet to start
with and it's got a focus of industry - we can change the focus to research,
growth or there's also a protection but we'll stay on industry and we
are going to go through a few turns of the game today and have a quick look
at some of the things that have changed in this version
compared to some of the other previous versions
straightaway we can see that we've got a fleet orbiting here
and we've got
two scouts
a battle fleet and a colony fleet
the important thing to remember about all the ships is they have fuel. You
can see the scout fleets here
it's got some fuel drums - 4.0 - so they've got extended range on
them.
The other fleets have - 3.0 - so what we're going to do
is we are going to start by selecting a scout fleet and send him into one
of these unexplored areas. Gonna take 2 turns to get there.
Using the other scout,
and you can see here it is holding,
we're gonna send him out to this system here.
We've also got a battle fleet and a colony fleet. I'm not sending
colony out just yet so let's grab that battle fleet up
and do a quick explore down the bottom area.
All of our ships are moving, except for a colony, to explore some of these
systems nearby.
What we need to do is have a think about our research. See at
the top?
We've got our production,
research, and this is fleet count
and this is the census it's Human 20.0 and this one here is
our Empire Detection and that's important.
The Empire Detection strength will basically reveal
information about the systems that are nearby as well as it will help reveal
stealth
and hidden monsters and fleets around on the map which is very
important. There's a particular type of monster,
I think it's a Floater monster and is actually quite stealthy and he
could be hard to detect
and later on in the game when they start to come through
into the galaxy map
they can start attacking your fleets and if you don't have
adequate detection
you might actually not see they're attacking until it's too late and
fleets damaged.
Little things like that can happen
although it has been fixed up a little bit
they don't come into the galaxy for a few turns now.
So we're going to look at our research straight away.
Little red icons are showing us that we've got un-used production and
un-used research here.
Let's go to our research screen now,
here we are.
We can see immediately
this is a big,
huge! improvement on the previous research screen.
For those of you that are new to FreeOrion this might not look like too much,
you might say "hey this is a pretty standard research screen", well actually it
is very useful and it's been done really really well.
What we are seeing here
are the technologies that have been researched
and the ones that are available for research. You can customize this down the
bottom here.
We are seeing all the techs
at the moment, but for example 'self-defence'
we've researched that,
we start with that,
and you can see
it's been researched and these two other additional techs have been unlocked and
are available for research. We are currently generating 5.0
in research per turn.
So for example
'planetary garrison'
requires 10.0
and a 3 turn minimum
Double click that tech and it'll appear in the list on the left
and our research will be split up
over three turns. Do you see
at the bottom?
It says 10 RP,
and RP is research,
and 3 turns. So a 3 turn minimum
will equate to using
3.33 per turn
that's not actually equal to 5.0 so we've got a little bit unused and so
it's still showing red
"hey look look some of its being wasted" in fact 1.66. Makes sense
once you get used to it. It's not necessarily intuitive straight away but
just have a look at it
and it will make sense when you get used to how it all works.
For example,
'Active Radar' here, that's 100 RP
and a 5 turn minimum. It means we are making 5 but
IF we were making 100
you'd think "well it requires 100, so that's one turn". No, it's not
because it does have a 5 turn minimum
so would actually take 5 turns. We make 5 RP and we need 100 RP so
that'll be twenty turns, let's have a look.
Twenty turns on 'Active Radar' yes.
So that's how it works with Research. Now you can tell the difference
between
the technologies that have been completed and those yet to be done.
See this one here on the left? this 'Galactic Exploration' tech?
it's kind of lit up from the centre and its icon has a colour.
These ones here,
are kind of dulled down in colour and are a bit darker so you can
tell that they have not been completed yet. That can be a little bit
confusing when you've got nothing as a reference, for example the red one.
We don't have any reference of a completed one. I know that it
hasn't been completed yet
but we can not really tell.
There's no other way of picking it up because we've got no other color as our
reference whereas here we do.
We can see the difference in color between the two and same with the purple
but the red one no. All you need do is at the bottom where it says "Complete" just
turn that off.
That will bring up only the available technologies. I do that
myself, I do that on my play throughs and i find that
very helpful
for researching techs.
So what is a good tech to start with?
In previous versions of FreeOrion I used to get 'Active Radar' right away to
reveal the stealth monsters that go around and can attack you.
Although they've been coded in now
to not appear for quite a few turns so
that's not such of a problem. I like to get 'Mass Driver 2'
right away
it only takes a couple of turns to pick up,
2 turns in fact,
and it's going to increase the offensive capability of new ships that we can
design so I like to get 'Mass Driver 2'
and go from there.
You can see that because it requires 8 RP and we make 5 per turn
and it's got a minimum of 2 turns that means it's going to use 4RP.
Means we're gonna have 1RP left over,
because we're making 5 and it's using 4.
Go ahead and queue something else up, as many things as you
feel too good
for how you want
your
empire to grow.
I usually always start with 'Mass Driver 2'
Don't find things that are going to take too long. You can see that one is
60RP and this one is 60 as well.
Try to find something in the beginning that's going to be useful, look this
one here improves industry
so we might grab that, takes 7 turns - that's quite quick
and continue to enqueue technologies by double clicking or by shift click.
It's important to point out just how valuable tool tips are in
the game.
Pretty much everything has a tool tip when you hover over it or when
right-click. See when I right-click
the planet here?
it comes up with 'Rename' and 'Planet Suitability'. If we click 'Planet Suitability'
we see straight away that it's this planet here which is the home system is good
and its +20.0
Make sure to remember to move the mouse over the different features to see
the tool tips and to right-click on things
maybe to bring up additional menus
to help you understand exactly what's going on in the game. That's quite
important
and it really will help with what you're doing. Let's take a quick look
at production now you can see it's got some un-used production, you can click that
red one or you can click up here on the production tab.
Now our production screen has opened up. We can see that
these are producible items at our home system here
and there's a range of them. There's a couple of buildings, this one here
is Super Testers and we're gonna ignore that.
It says "switches the species of the planet to Super Testers"
"and it's for official testing purposes or for cheating only".
It's not a real feature, it's for developing the game. We're gonna ignore that.
'Evacuation' - this will remove the population from this planet over several
turns if there are suitable alternate planets available with the same species
and sufficient extra capacity the population will move there.
So that's Evacuation, we're gonna ignore that.
What we're gonna do is enqueue a couple of scout ships.
Lets enqueue 3
just for starters.
We're making 10.5
in our production of course, and its being distributed across our production here in
the production screen.
We are no longer wasting any of our production because we've got enough
things in queue to ensure we use it all.
Ok, so,
let's skip some turns now and go for a bit of an explore.
This is Turn 2 and we're getting a Situation Report telling us what has
happened.
It's telling us that one of our scout fleets has arrived in a new system.
You can see it's here.
The scout fleet has arrived,
and this is the system.
Left-clicking highlights it, now we can see the planet here. We've got a colony ship
waiting here but are either planets any good for our species?
Well,
we don't know.
A quick right click on the planet will bring up 'Planet Suitability'. Just
left-click
and we can see this one here is a medium terran planet and for humans it's good,
+ 9.0 so that's quite a desirable planet for our species
whereas the Gas Giant, if we bring out the suitability,
is uninhabitable 0.0, humans don't like Gas Giants of course.
We're gonna select our Colony Fleet and right-click to send it out to colonize
the planet here in the system we've just explored. You can see other fleets
are continuing their movement
into these other Unexplored systems.
With this scout fleet here that's Holding, let's send him out up here
to further continue the exploration of the galaxy.
We're gonna move on to turn 3.
Ok, a lot has happened. There's a bunch of messages straight away.
telling us that our various fleets have arrived at different systems, which they have,
our colony ship has arrived here,
our scout fleet has arrived here. You can see our scout fleet that we sent up here has been
destroyed, it says "Combat has occurred" at that system
and you can see our scout is no longer there. See the red dot?
This is a Monster. A left-click shows us the type of Monster, it's a Sentry.
We can see he's go 0 fuel, he's not going anywhere.
The Sentry is gonna hang out in that system and he's got 11.0 in damage that he
can do
and 35.0 in structural points. If we have a look at our
battle fleet
you can see the battle fleet that we start with has 6.0
and 10 yeah? That's 6 damage and 10 structure (health).
In a conflict of course it's quite likely that our battle fleet would be
destroyed, we're gonna need something a bit stronger to go up there and
take out those monsters before we can get past that system
or colonize the planets in it. If we have a look at it
just by left-clicking,
we can see the different planet types that are available. There's a Medium Ocean
and it's got a special on this one, it increases the maximum population if inhabited
by a Lithic species.
And then gives us some
different things there. It also says of when a planet with
"High-Energy Metaloids" is focussed on growth, all connected planets
with a Lithic species receive the same bonus etc.
the various planets can provide different bonuses and benefits if youre
playing as certain races / species that can take advantage of that and
there are other kinds of benefits as well. Lets look at this system here,
this is a Large Terran planet,
Planet Suitability is good, + 12.0, that's actually quite desirable
and it's got an eccentric orbit. So the infrastructure on the planet is
decreased by 20
which is not good
but research is increased by 3.0 which is good.
Quite an interesting special to have on a planet there. What we're gonna do
is select our scout fleet. You can see some more monsters around, this one is
also a Sentry.
Over here we've got a Drone Factory. He's got 0.0 fuel so he's not
going anywhere.
He's doing 5.0 damage, he's got 1000 in structure points which is a lot!
He's got some Monsters, which are Drones, and these guys do have fuel.
You can see the 3 points of fuel there.
And they're doing a bit less damage and a lot less structure, 4.0 in damage
and 20.0 in structure.
the Drones will be able to move around and harass ships throughout
the galaxy.
Taking out the Drone Factory
will stop that from happening.
Let's look at these other Monsters, looks like these are all Sentry types
and the Drone Factory with a couple of Drones.
That's basically the gist of the game.
You'll encounter other Empires as you go,
and let's just quickly colonize our planet. All we've done is select the system
and the 'Colonize' button is available because we've got a Colony fleet here and its a planet type
that we can colonize. We're going to left-click that
and that sets it up for colonization. Lets go Next Turn.
And straight away we get a message that
it has been colonized.
We produced a new scout ship here, we got a message for that as well.
Bear in mind to use Tool Tips to full effect, and to use right-click to bring up
different information about different things. Of course the Pedia is available
in the game,
it's very useful and it will provide a range of different information about
what's going on
and it's good to refer to as we've go. You can of course design your own ships
We should have... let's have a look at our research quickly...
we do.
We've got Mass Driver 2 so if we were to design a new ship, lets choose a
basic medium hull by double clicking.
Now you can see here
it's go external slots, two of them, these are the cross or X
shaped slots,
and one internal slot.
So on the external slots
you can see here Mass Driver 2 which we've researched
we could go ahead and put 2 of those on.
Or,
we could go ahead and put some standard armour on.
You can design your own ships that you want, we're going to put 2 of Mass Driver 2,
and with the internal slot
it's only early days of course but we've got an
extra fuel tank
and a colony pod. If we wanted
a bit of a Scout we could put this
fuel tank here.
Of course a Scout would take advantage of the Optical scanner.
So you know something like this
would probably be a bit better for a Scout.
It depends, you can customize as you please. If you wanted something that was a bit offensive
you'd go a bit like that,
then you might put extra fuel on.
You'd give it a name.
Let's just call it,
for the purpose of this,
Ship 1.
Very unimaginative, and click on "Confirm New Design". If we go into
production now,
we can see 'Ship 1' is available,
gonna take 7 turns to build and that ship will have more
damage output. You can see with the two Mass Drivers
"Total attack damage" is at 8.0 yeah?
Structure is at 10.0, damage is at 8.0 and fuel capacity is at 4.0. When we compare that
with the battleship that we start with, the Battle Fleet we start with,
it's at 6.0
So having the Mass Driver mark 2 has increased that a little bit. Structure is same,
we didn't do anything for that and
of course this has 3.0 in fuel
whereas the ship we just designed has 4.0. Quite a bit more,
a third more actually because we did add that extra fuel tank in. So, that's basically a
quick overview of FreeOrion, the latest version, i hope you have
fun playing it! Check out the website
I'll put the website and other links in the description, if you have any
questions just leave a comment below
Ok, that's it from me!
I'll see you next time!