Beyond Earth Beginner Strategy Guide

[Buster's Uncle]

...We need one.  sisko?  We need content that's the sort of thing someone who just got BE will google for.  This thread title alone is gonna raise our lurker hits in BE significantly.  Blanek?  Geo?

Any bright person who has played the game could do this - copiously illustrated a plus, but not required.  I will be happy to lend a hand as editor for increased English fluency, so no excuse for you furriners.

A post here, promoted to Front Page, posted to Articles and possibly our Wiki - and I think we could suddenly find our BE a going concern...


(Why didn't I think of this for SMACX?  Gotta post something in TOE now.)

[Geo]

Not me. I'm no strategist.

[Buster's Uncle]

You know a lot more than someone just unwrapping the game...

[Buster's Uncle]

So here's what just I wrote in the thread for the SMACX version of the same thing, still looking for input/help.  I don't know enough about BE(RT) to even begin to make intelligent suggestions, but maybe those better informed will find this inspiring anyway:

I dug this up early in the week http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=16547.0 to post somewhere else, and it cannot be a coincidence that I came up with the idea in the OP a day or two later.  For those of you not clicking the link, a little one-sheet of chess rules I whipped together about ten years ago called How To Play Chess turned out to be very popular, linked all over creation from a little website for a small chess club in an obscure NC town.  Kinda figure it was the title, y'now? -Also that I did a good job.

So maybe the ball will begin rolling if I free-associate a few things I reckon ought to go in the aforementioned SMACX guide for beginners.


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Read this guide through and then play the game a few times on citizen difficulty, not trying particularly hard to win, but trying things and exploring the world and how stuff works.  Then read the guide again - it'll make a lot more sense after you've fooled around with the game at some length.  There is no substitute for just playing.

There's a lot to assimilate in SMACX as you open it for the first time; all of us were intimidated.  You can do it.  The tour is on by default - leave it on and read it until you've got this stuff down.

F1 is the keyboard shortcut to the Planetary Datalinks.  Read that sucker, piecemeal as you go or in full, but refer to it frequently.  An edited and corrected version is available for download here: [link the GooglyBoogly/ete  Comprehensive Datalinks Update]

Talk about 4x.  eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.  Explain each and elaborate.

Talk some basics about units, the unit workshop, facilities, growth, and I dunno; this is for beginners, so can't cover everything.  Encouraging them to look at the game info recourses and play and learn the way the rest of us did is the most useful advice in here, I bet.

Some breakdown of the factions - strengths, weaknesses, the way Lal goes crazy a hundred turns in, basic play strategy  (builder, conqueror, and what-all else?) and which tend to work best for which faction...

Always colonize the Monsoon Jungle ASAP if you can.

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Suggest more ideas, pick apart mine, whatever.  Pick some point made and write it up a paragraph or two for the guide. 

We can do this, and I picture we go with the How To Play Chess model - a one-sheeter, front and back page, done up as a neat .pdf (I got somebody who will do that part if I've typed up and formatted the document) suitable for printing off as a sort of cheat sheet to have in hand.  I'll put the old site banner logo on the top, (bottom for a version to share with other online SMACX nexii, 'cause more polite/paletable for them) hyperlinked to AC2 - and search engines can read .pdfs, so we'll end up linked and reposted around the webs no matter what, our URL and that title spread all over the place.  That would be good for this community.

Thoughts?