"Jeez, wish I knew that..."

[ucla_vince]

lol

yeah, me too... I didn't realize until my 3rd or 4th game that starbases could be built anywhere... I kept being dissapointed by the fact that there were never any resources to build on near Sol...

I don't think the instructions were very clear about that.

And as for auto-survey, it will automaticly go to the nearest anomoly if any are visible, if not, you have to tell it where to go, and you can get to that options screen by pressing the "I" button inb the little panel on the bottom of the screen when you have a ship selected.

I'm #3 in the Apolyton empire!

[Biggles]

When loading settlers or soldiers on a transport, if you left click on the arrows, you can then use the mouse wheel to precisely and smoothly set the numbers.

It works with setting the values during trading,selling or buying.

[Felch]

I find something new every game. Just this last game I realized how to tell total culture numbers in each sector, by clicking a little button near the mini map.

[Ray K]

I thing I found out later was what those three buttons on the diplomacy screen (right under the graphic) did.

They give you information on the civ you are dealing with. Very useful.

[Harry Seldon]

I kind of knew what they did but never factored in the value of the information. I kept giving great tech to a minor civ and couldn't understand why the Altarians, my mortal enemy, kept catching my pace in research. I finally opened the Relations screen and saw my minor civ had Close relations with the Altarians. D'oh!

[dr. blackclove]

My biggest discovery in this past game was that when you have multiple planets you can colonize in a system and you build a colony ship there, if you click on another planet in the system it will automatically SPLIT your population. I made the mistake of colonizing a class 13 planet in the same system as one of my really nice ones... OUCH!!

I also realized that the survey ship makes a pretty good warship even in the early stage of the game. I squished the Altarians by killing their flagship and a bunch of colony ships. More colonies for me

[Felch]

Those little buttons in the diplomacy screen are really a cool little feature. Does the information expand through espionage?

[LotC]

I win!

I believe I take the prize for the biggest oversight. Just today, 3 weeks after buying the game, I found the little arrows on the planet screen sort list.

Of course, being a stubbornly proud know-it-all, I will blame this on poor UI design.

[Mannamagnus]

Auto survey: press A
And yes it took me also two games to find out that you can build starbases anywhere.