Aug 7th 2014, 14:53:58
You need to be good at finding excellent early targets (good or lucky - better lucky).
On that assumption do indies up to about 400 acres (you are going to keep most of these). Now just start building labs until you have about 600 or 700. Now you must show your grabbing skills because you want to grab on a shoestring for a short time so as to get to about 2k acres at which point it is worth starting to tech.
If things go well you will eke out enough money (one turret sale, then cash from getting the csites up) to fund building. Lucky cash from a grab or two can help. But if things don't go so great it is no disaster. You just do some tech turns earlier. It is a bit of a pain teching a dozen turns or two off a tech per turn of under 200 but I find it doesn't really matter too much. The Indies keep you going and you soon enough turn the corner.
Bpt depends on how ambitious you are and (to a lesser extent) whether you plan a switch to MBR at some point (don't, by the way, on Express). The higher your ambitions and the higher the number of csites you are going to build the easier this sort of start up is (because turns spent on csites generate cash to fund your lab building).
Reading the early tech market is also critical (and hit or miss). But heh, you are a techer so I don't have to talk market.
On that assumption do indies up to about 400 acres (you are going to keep most of these). Now just start building labs until you have about 600 or 700. Now you must show your grabbing skills because you want to grab on a shoestring for a short time so as to get to about 2k acres at which point it is worth starting to tech.
If things go well you will eke out enough money (one turret sale, then cash from getting the csites up) to fund building. Lucky cash from a grab or two can help. But if things don't go so great it is no disaster. You just do some tech turns earlier. It is a bit of a pain teching a dozen turns or two off a tech per turn of under 200 but I find it doesn't really matter too much. The Indies keep you going and you soon enough turn the corner.
Bpt depends on how ambitious you are and (to a lesser extent) whether you plan a switch to MBR at some point (don't, by the way, on Express). The higher your ambitions and the higher the number of csites you are going to build the easier this sort of start up is (because turns spent on csites generate cash to fund your lab building).
Reading the early tech market is also critical (and hit or miss). But heh, you are a techer so I don't have to talk market.