Final Frontier Tips and Tricks

[Inky]

Final Frontier is packed with new and different ideas, some of which aren't obvious to new players -- and maybe not even after several games.


Starbasing: Starbases are a wonderfully cool idea, but how they work can be tricky. Starbases are indestructable (*), securing territory and resources.

*: I've never seen the AI take a Starbase out. They aren't that easy to kill for a human player, but there are ways to do it, but OTOH a human would be able to defend them better than the AI does.

Starbases on Strike: You'll face this if you get another Civ to capitulate, or establish a permanent alliance. All of your starbases will lose their cultural borders, and thus, you'll lose all your resources. Don't worry, they come back the next turn. Consider this a bit of political chaos in FF. You can't avoid it. You need to take it into consideration though, and take steps to recover on the next turn.

First, reestablish any trades you wish to renew. It can be easy to forget that and lose some income or other resources. Second, go over all of your high population star systems which lost productive population due to unhappiness, if you lost happiness resources.


Starbases can exist within the borders of another Civ. If you build a starbase near the border, cultural expansion can engulf it. Starbase culture doesn't count against that generated by a star system. The starbase will work fine, with two exceptions. First, as it is no longer in friendly territory, you can't upgrade it, nor upgrade units at it (and it heals slower). Second, and more serious, if your units get kicked out of the territory of the Civ which has enveloped it, the starbase and all of its cargo - missiles and squadrons - are lost. If you have a starbase enveloped in enemy territory, then make peace, it is instantly destroyed. If you are at peace with open borders then declare war, it is likewise destroyed.


Starbases have a cultural border of 5 x 5 squares. But they have a generally larger range with their bombardment attack. This attack is blocked by asteroids in its line of sight. However, the AI doesn't seem to suffer from this vision problem, so take care near AI starbases.

Starbases can't steal territory (assuming you're using the current patch and post-patch files). If you build one near another civ's territory, you won't get any of their squares when you complete it.


Starbases work under a deficit spending program. You must have the money to pay for one starbase -- the current one being built -- before you can start building one. You don't pay for it, however, until it finishes construction. It takes eight turns to complete the starbase, and if you don't have enough money, you'll go into the red -- deficit, triggering a unit strike and generally messing with your economy and plans.

You can start several starbases at once, with only the funds needed to build one of them. So if you start 10 starbases at 200 each, and have only 200 in the treasury, you'll need to come up with another 2000 within 8 turns or suffer. Plan ahead, know how much you can make per turn, and you can get your starbases done while you generate the cash needed to pay for them.

Starbase price is progressive. It goes up as the game goes on.

Starbases are worker projects, and if the construction ship is destroyed or moves away, you can go back to it and finish the job. If you were one turn from finishing and your construction ship buys it, it will only take one turn for the next one to do the job. This can be important if you're building starbases to defend a hostile frontier, and can't keep them alive for the entire 8 turns.

AI starbases are almost invariably placed to grab resources, which means they are in asteroid belts. That means +50% defense, on a unit which is already tough. But the AI can't use squadrons on them, nor does it tend to stack units with them for defense.

As the asteroids block the field of fire, the ideal starbase location is a one-square "island" of asteroids. You get the defense bonus with no reduction in field of fire. The next best combat position is in open space, with no obstructions. Neither site is generally ideal for resource grabbing. If you happen to have a resource located in a one-square island (or even two), it will make a fine defense site.

In the early game, starbases are so expensive you'll only want to use them for resource grabbing. If you have a choice, though, place them on the outer edge of asteroid fields, and facing toward a competitor, so they can shoot at attackers.

 

[Inky]

Pirate Defense:

Space Pirates are a significant hazard in FF, much more so if you have raging barbarians on. Defending against them is much like defending against barbarians in the epic game. Except in FF, the fog of war is much larger in extent, is almost impossible to eliminate, and pirates get units as tough -- or tougher -- than yours.

The first line of defense is squadrons. A few in your empire can locate and kill early pirates. Spot them at a distance, kill them before they come close.

Expanding cultural borders is also critical. You can use your warp/jump lanes to move and hunt pirates, while they must move slowly in your territory.

Active defense -- hunting down the pirates and destroying them -- is generally better than passive, but you must have at least one planetary defense ship in each system to stave off a direct attack. PDS, needed for defense in any case, are good enough to kill pirates when supported by squadrons. Destroyers, especially in the early game, are good for speed and flexibility.

Starbases establish more territory where pirates can't appear, and can kill any which come in range, plus offer bases for squadrons. If you have a system plagued by pirates -- especially raging barbarians with hordes of battleships -- you may need to build a starbase close to the system for defense.

 

[Inky]

AI Exploits and Weaknesses:

The AI can't do some things in FF, and you can take advantage of that. Or not, if you want to play fair.

First, the AI can't use carriers. This is a result of its inability to rebase squadrons (and missiles AFAIK) to anything other than cities/star systems. It might be able to load them if the carrier (or cruiser) is in a system, but it is, at this time, unable to rebase to them. Thus, you'll never see AI carriers.

The AI can't use them because, in essence, it has no clue how to use "land-based" carrier units. All units in FF are land units, not ships.

This is a big advantage on the attack, as carriers are a key unit to take defended star systems and starbases.

The AI can use squadrons and missiles. It isn't as smart as a human in relocating them. You can concentrate your squadron from all over the map, and overwhelm the relatively local forces the AI uses.

The AI does use stealth ships, and scouts, but doesn't use stealth ships aggressively, and doesn't deploy scouts to spot stealth raiders. The AI might pop a construction or colony ship out with poor or no guards near its territory, but won't clip your warp lines all over, while you can do that.


The AI (and pirates for that matter) won't pillage warp links which are outside of anyone's territory. You can have even a lowly scout ship rip up warp connections between systems, outside of competitor's borders, and they'll do nothing about it except rebuild them.


I consider the use of carriers part of the game, and figure that the AI's lack of use of them is just tactical weakness on their part. They can defend against carriers with squadron defenses and fleets.

But the warp link pillaging is a significant AI weakness. Your stealth ships can rip all links around the rival capital, and they'll do little to rebuild them, and nothing to stop you. It is rather like taking advantage of an idiot, and unfair.

 

[Inky]

Upgrading: The short answer is "not worth the price."

The longer answer is that upgrades should be avoided unless you can't get a newly built unit of the current generation to the system, or need every unit you can get there immediately at full power. Consider the price tag of the upgrade vs. the maintenance cost of the unit. Are you going to consume the unit - use it and lose it in combat - before you spend the upgrade cost in maintenance?

In FF, a few cases justify upgrading:

Frontier Planetary Defense Ships, in threatened systems. If you can't rush a new one there, upgrading may be the best way to defend.

Units at the front whose role is vital. For example, destroyers vs. higher level squadrons, when you have few of them. Invasion ships vs. tough defenders, squadrons, especially fighters, vs. higher grade enemies, and such.

Even so, if you can get a new unit built there in time, you're usually best off expending the older, low tech unit. You might want to keep some 10 xp units to upgrade, but you can build new ones easier in the later game.

Starbases are a special case. They are always built as alpha - original - generation units, regardless of your current tech. You can only get the higher level starbases via upgrades. If you have a starbase which is going to fight hard and often, and is facing higher tech opponents (especially omega battleships), upgrade them.

Missiles and squadrons, because they move around easily and are generally expendable units, shouldn't be upgraded in most cases. Just send them to another front where their lower tech won't matter, or use them up in suicide attacks.

Promoted fighter squadrons are special, however. Since squadrons only gain experience through victorious combat, keeping them around is nice for space superiority.

 

[Old_Philosopher]

These are some great tips, Inky. Thank you for taking the time to post these; I'm sure they will help a lot of those who fumble around in their first game or three in FF, as I did. Great work!

 

[Inky]

Starbasing 2: Resources

In order to secure resources, which rarely appear near enough to star systems to control early in the game, you must build starbases. They give cultural control to a 5x5 square, two in each direction. When placing early starbases, you can turn the grid on to help determine which site will grab the most with one starbase.

Final Frontier has 8 resources. The health and happiness resources are most important in the early game, where the lack of both will limit growth. These are your top priority, and you should try to get all four as soon as possible.

The strategic resources are worth having, so get them when you can. Go first for hydrogen and oil, as you'll be building a lot of light units and squadrons early in the game. Titanium tends to be rare, so grab it too, as it helps to build the most expensive ships. Iron helps with invasions, but isn't essential for defense. Warmongers will want it of course.

Uranium isn't worth much early in the game, which makes it especially good for trading. The AI will pay well for it even though it is useless until Doomsday Weapon.


Starbases make missiles, one every 15 turns. This may not sound like much, but you can supply all your missile needs forever once you make enough bases. You never need to actually build anti-ship missiles.

You can't (currently) rebase missiles to a starbase. But a starbase may be able to keep the missiles it has built. It looks to me as though the missiles must appear within cultural borders, so a starbase inside anyone's cultural borders gets to keep them (not its own starbase borders, but influence from a star system).

If you have a starbase which keeps its missiles, you may want to leave them there, because you can't put them back.

The missiles may also appear in a nearby system belonging to someone else, if you have open borders. You can rebase these missiles, just like any others, to wherever you need them.


A starbase has no ability to move or directly attack, but it does have a powerful bombardment attack. You can base four squadrons there, and also may have missiles. It has no direct anti-squadron defense on its own, and thus is vulnerable to squadron attacks. It is otherwise very hard to kill.

Because it has the medic promotions, it can heal a lot of damage every turn. But it doesn't heal if you use it to attack, so when facing a determined enemy, you'll need to use squadrons or other units to counterattack while the starbase heals.

 

[Inky]

Exploiting The Planets:

Final Frontier has a unique structure to its "cities." Instead of using the squares on the map as workplaces, it has planets -- from 3 to 7 per Star System. The population works the planets, with the closest available immediately, and the further ones requiring culture (influence) expansion to use.

In a new colony, the population will start on the best planet (generally, the best one for food production). With only one populated planet, you can control production from the main game screen. But once you are using more than one planet, you'll want to go the city screen in order to change the active building planet, and possibly move population between planets.

There are three general categories for types of production. First, and simplest, are system-level builds. These include all units, wealth, research, and influence, plus a few buildings which can only be built one per system. You don't need to check the city screen, as it doesn't matter what planet is active. System level buildings include the capital ship and squadron factories, star fortress and squadron defense.

Next are the planetary buildings which affect the whole system, but which can be built only one per planet. These are cumulative within the system. A system with 5 planets could have 5 of them. The cost is progressive -- each installation of a given type will cost more than the last. The cumulative bonus makes them worth this cost. One Interplanetary Beacon gives +2 Influence and +15%, but five of them give +10 and +75%. Really spectacular are the buildings like the bank which gives +25%, and can be supplemented by other buildings with the same bonus (spaceport and stellar market). 5 banks + 5 spaceports + 5 markets (only +20%) yield +350% cash output.

Last are the buildings which only improve one planet: Nutrition Centers, Mining, Maglev and Commercial Satellites, plus Habitation Systems. The cost for these is cumulative, but the benefit is not. Because of that, build them on the planets where they'll give the most value first. That is generally the highest population potential planets.

The cumulative bonus is critical to success. Planets with more planets are much more valuable. It can be expensive to take full avantage of a system with 7 planets, but its output can dwarf that of several smaller systems.

There are seven different planet types, and they come in three sizes (1-3). Habitation Systems can boost the population capacity by one. The planet's image on the map shows both its size and type.

Its orbital location is also shown. Planets outside the cultural area of a system can't be used.

Planets have three production ratines -- in order, food, hammers, and commerce. This production is per point of population using that planet. So an "Earth" planet with 3 1 2 production and 3 population yields 9 food, 3 hammers and 6 commerce.

A high food -- 2 or 3 -- is essential in the inner ring in order to get decent growth for new colonies. However, the first planet colonized gets a free Nutrition and Mining unit, and thus will never be totally without productivity.

Evaluating planets and systems on the map, when choosing which to colonize, can be tricky looking just by eye. You can find info on uncolonized planets by double-clicking on them when you don't have a colony ship selected. You'll see every planet, sorted in order by influence rings.

One quick way to evaluate systems is to add up the population numbers of all the planets, and all in the inner ring. The types of planets also matter, but generally, more planets and more population potential is better in the long run than few planets of high value. In the early game, larger high-output worlds do pay off better sooner, but without more space to expand, the system will be limited long-term.

When exploring, you can station ships in systems you plan to colonize. This gives you a defender, lets you see if pirates are in the area, and lets you know if someone else "jumps your claim," by colonizing the system before your colony ship gets there. Sending out colony ships blind, even with an escort, is risky. Scout ships, while vital for early game exploration, remain useful as spotters during the colonization phase.

The seven types of planets:
Earth: 3 1 2
Golden: 2 2 1
Water (Ice): 2 0 3

The above three have atmosphere "halos" around them. They are good food producers. You need one of these in order to sustain growth, and several in order to have a high population.

Mars (Red) 1 2 3
Jupiter (Yellow) 1 1 6
Moon (Grey) 0 3 3
Blue 0 2 5

I don't think that rings mean anything, but I could be wrong. There are other graphics for improvements on the planets, which will make populated worlds change appearance.

 

[Inky]

Upgrades are limited by location. I didn't notice it in every game, but I realized that sometimes I can't upgrade a unit even though it is within my cultural borders. I did some experiments to figure out this.

Squadrons require a squadron factory, and capital ships require a capital shipyard in order to upgrade as well as to build them. The factory/shipyard must be in the star system closest to the unit you wish to upgrade. If you are within the cultural border of the system which contains that, it is obvious and easy to figure out if you can upgrade.

If your unit is within the cultural border of a starbase, it may be upgradeable even at a huge distance from the home territory if the nearest system has the building. Conversely, a starbase which is close to home but is closer to a system without the building can't upgrade.

 

[Inky]

BTS Carrier protection: This applies to all BTS games, not just FF. A carrier unit -- in FF a carrier or cruiser -- which is loaded isn't eligible as a defender against an attack, unless there are only loaded carrier units present. So if you have a destroyer and a loaded cruiser together, the cruiser will not defend, even though it is stronger.

Carrier ships, which are quite wimpy in FF, are thus protected by the escorting ships, and can't be eliminated without wiping out the escorts. This means that -- as in epic BTS -- you can be risky in deploying carriers, as long as some escorts will survive to take enemy fire before you can escape/counterattack.

 

[Inky]

Wow! Look at the pretty colors! A Doomsday missile makes a wonderful light show. I think that the weapon's visual effects are spectacular. Unfortunately, I don't actually like to use them, nor see them used by an enemy.

In FF, the Doomsday missile is like a nuke, but its effects are permanent. This makes it much more devastating. You cannot undo the permanent damage.

It has three effects. The first, and simplest, is a massive bombardment attack against all units in a radius of one around the blast. Expect to lose many and have the survivors significantly damaged.

The second is the destruction of the 'best planet' if used against a star system. One planet is reduced to population zero, and appears as a bright ball of flaming gases. The system can still be owned and used even if all planets are destroyed -- the population doesn't disappear instantly, and culture doesn't go away at all -- but there will be no productivity - no food, commerce, or (perhaps) hammers. I'm not sure if you don't still get a free hammer anyway. In any case, it is pretty much worthless except as a cultural influence base.

The last effect is cool, but generally bad and is what makes the things not worth using if you want to keep territory. In the blast area, rather than fallout you may get new radiation clouds. This will destroy resource extractors, and render any resources affected unavailable for the rest of the game, as construction ships can't enter radiation.

This last effect might be useful to close a pathway between existing radiation clouds, thus making an impenetrable barrier. The AI rarely tries to go through them.

But their presence would also block you from travelling as well. Construction ships can't even enter.

The AI can use Doomsday missiles, as it can use antiship missiles. It doesn't seem to load them on cruisers, though, which limits it to targets within range of one of their systems. They can and will attack starbases and fleets within that range, but I don't believe they will fire one on their own territory. You can do so if you wish, but the environmental damage is a serious deterrent to their use.

 

[thelebk]

wow really good stuff...

 

[Frostyboy]

Great Articles. Better to know all the stuff in advance.

But the 3.0 original FF game is full of flaws, and graphical not finished regarding icons and such. Too many icons (and sounds) used from normal civ.

What patch is out now by the way? Does it fix aesthetical issues as well, or just game mechanics? (Perhaps not the right thread to ask, but all answers appreciated )

 

[Inky]

The 3.13 BTS patch plus the post-patch fix stickied at the top here is what is current.

Additional sounds, graphics, etc., would entail a different scope to the project. It was scaled to fit on the BTS disc, which obviously limited things like that. It wouldn't be impossible for someone else to create more, but I don't know that Jon has time to do anything like that with it.

More patching will require another BTS patch, I believe, as some things can't be fixed without working with the BTS code directly.

One general issue, which may affect a lot of mods, is that the AI seems to have a problem with land units acting as carriers. It does fine with them as sea units, but the dual-mode (land attack/defend and carry) operation on land seems to confuse the AI.

FF does have a lot of beautiful graphics, so it sure wouldn't hurt to have more of them.

 

[A_Hamster]

One general issue, which may affect a lot of mods, is that the AI seems to have a problem with land units acting as carriers. It does fine with them as sea units, but the dual-mode (land attack/defend and carry) operation on land seems to confuse the AI.

It does effect other mods. I'm playing the Fall from Heaven II mod (the fan one, not Age of Ice) and there are certain land units which can carry Hawks for scouting purposes. Very useful, but the AI can't use them right. So the AI civs have all these Recon units running around without Hawks, and presumably getting them eaten by Bears or slain by Undead since the land-based carrier concept is too complex for the existing algorithm.

Similarly, when I was playing Final Frontier about two weeks ago I noticed the same problem with AI Carriers and Cruisers. Also, how the AI would hoard Anti-Ship missles in the system you were attacking, but not use them. Haven't had a chance to try the game now that I've patched it.

FF does have a lot of beautiful graphics, so it sure wouldn't hurt to have more of them.

*Nod* Have you seen some of the recent ones contributed by fans in the Download DB? Most are for standard Civ, but one or two had FF-sized variants.

Before my download problems were fixed, I was enjoying FF, and was thinking about modding it, so I needed a few new ship types. I wanted to add Battlecruisers as a poor man's battleship (which they sort of were in real life) and Mine Sweepers and Minelayers (the existence of minefields would make Scouts more useful). Somebody else suggested units like Marine boarding parties and Assault Shuttles, which is an idea I like. However, now that the download problems are over, and I have been able to download FfH II (which is why I bought BtS), such plans will be on hold. Still have my notes though, so I can get back to them eventually. (By that time the proposed B5 FF mod will probably be up and I won't have to do any modding! )