Space Empires - eXplore, X, X, X

Space Empires is called a "four ex" (or Liza Minnelli) game, as you will both soon discover. The first X stands for exploration.

Being EEDE fans, we know something of exploration. It means that you really out to check out every place on the map, and preferably before the other side does. The goal in Space Empires is similar, except that anything you discover is immediately known to other players (so don't go exploring near their empire, or you do them a big favour).

Near space is pretty benign. It has your home world,
20 good markers (9 planets and 11 minerals),
4 bad markers (2 asteroids and two nebula) and one ugly (black hole)

Exploring is really simple: move a combat ship into an unexplored hex. At the end of the turn, flip over the counter to see what you have found.

The Good

The key thing you want to find when exploring is planets, and when you find them you want to colonise them, so you need to have colony ships near your explorers. The next best thing to find are minerals or space wrecks. I'll explain how awesome they are in two articles time, but for now believe me when I say you want some miners near your explorers.

The Bad

You might find asteroids and nebula. Economically, these are useless, but like the moutains and forests in EEDE, they will channel action around them.

The Ugly

Some things you will find are really bad:

• Supernova forces the explores to retreat (whence they came) and the hex becomes unusable
• Lost in Space shifts you one space in any direction the alien on your right chooses
• Black Holes destroy 30% of the ships in the exploration party
• Danger destroys 100% of the ships in the exploration party
• Doomsday Machines - after destroying your ships, it will then attack your colonies, but it is in the optional rules. I don't think we need these.

Only combat ships can explore; no miners, colony ships or decoys, though they may be escorted in. However, you would be a loony to use a Dreadnaught to explore.

Things you find in deep space:
better and worse

Science or Suicide

This is the challenge of our generation facing climate change. It is also the two possible strategies for exploring in Space Empires.

The suicide approach is to explore with scouts. They are cheap to build and always let you know what they find as they die. Then there is the science approach. If you research Exploration, then each cruiser you build (you also need ship size 3 researched for cruisers, but I can't see anyone winning the game without at least this level of research) can flip over an adjacent unexplored marker.

Quality or quantity?

At first glance, the cruiser approach is economic madness. For the cost of 12 for a cruiser and 15 for Exploration technology, you can afford 4 scouts and have change left over. The four scouts could probably explore 16 hexes in the time the cruiser has looked at 4-5. However, on reflection, you realise that each time a scout is destroyed, the replacement has a long trip back to the front, all the while EATING BAKED BEANS. Further, in the end game, you can bring your cruisers back to a base, upgrade them and have quite a reasonable war fleet.

I think this is something you would just try.

Next Issue

In the next article, I will discuss eXpansion.

Comments

[PythonMagus]

Ref article 2 of the Climate Change Convention, single references to Climate Change are permitted in non Climate Change articles.

However, I am so pleased that someone has noticed a sentence half way through one of my articles. I fear sometimes that unless the article contains an explicit reference to ducks, only the first sentence is read.

[Paul]

OK, that is you climate change debate reference for the next 30 days!