Your First Three Turns of SuperNova

[Hobknob]

This is the second of four threads on SuperNova, along with Getting Started: Setup, How to Organize It All, and Expanding Your Empire (Turns 3-10+). For more info on the game, see the SuperNova summary and links posted by Raven. This post details reading your first turn.

Your initial turn sheet arrives with a mind-boggling amount of information in those (roughly) 35 pages. Don't panic: you don't need it all, and reading it gets much easier as you go. Here's how to sort it for the first time.

Page 1: The due date and your remaining balance are the important details here. Don't be fooled by the prominent, colored graph of your racial modifiers: they don't change (until you access advanced technologies), and they have little impact on your turn planning (for a good while).

p2-3: A scan of your home System. One planet is your homeworld, and the others you can access without going through a Warp gate. Your colonists will prefer planets similar to your homeworld, particularly in atmosphere. See How to Organize It All for tips on recording the key details.

You'll also get a PMAP of terrain features and an ORB of your homeworld. The former is mostly for flavor, though future PMAPs can help you fine-tune colonization strategies for other worlds. An ORB tells you what empires have a presence there: you do!

The GEO survey is more valuable, listing resources available on your homeworld. See How to Organize It All.

Next is an ANZ, information about a resource or technology. These will come up automatically as you research new things. Then there's a description of your Bastion defense installation, which you can skip over.

Then there are about 15 pages detailing technology your empire has at start and can research. You can skip all of this - with one exception - to access the info any time from the excellent SuperNova Wiki. I actually made a copy of the pdf and edited out all these pages, along with several of the final pages (Ship Design Report, Force Battle Plan, Installations Report, and Research), since none are needed for your first turns.

The one important page here lists your Imperial Advisor Report, including four useful details, only one of which you need here: your Excess Power, available for new installations. There's other useful info here, including your number of Stripmining Complexes, your Industrial Capacity (roughly 100,000,000 - on the right side, more about this below), and the Legendary Characters on your homeworld, but these are more easily read elsewhere. Stripmining Complexes and Industrial Capacity are repeated in the Colony Report, and there's a Character Report.


Then your pdf says bit about researchable items, then comes your Fleet Report. You really just need the Fleet Number and number of ships, but here's how to read the whole thing.



Fleet #101 ('101' is how you'll identify it for orders), named '101st Recon Group,' in your home system of Galactica in orbit over planet 3 (and not at a WarpPoint). Ignore the Rules of Engagement and other items on the far right for now. It has 73,500 fuel (and room for 84,000 total). It can Jump through Warp Point gates and has 2 Action Points each turn; future ships you build will mostly have 1 Action point, at least for awhile. There are 8 ships in this fleet, of the Pathfinder type (in the broad category of an 'Express Boat,' which you can ignore). Key info: 8 ships in fleet 101, at Galactica-3.

Next is an Army Report - ignore it - and a Colony Report. Take your number of Industrial Complexes and multiply by 25 to get your Industrial Capacity. That's the figure of 100,000,000 or so from the Imperial Advisor Report. You'll use that number in planning, along with the total of 1,000 times your number of Stripmining Complexes.


On your homeworld of Galactica-3, you currently have orders to produce 5 things each turn. 'Tooled' means 'repeat this every turn.' 5050 is the number of your population group on Galactica-3. When you colonize another world, it will have its own Pop Group number. The numbers 510-550 are the order in which these get made. If you add, say, Lumber, you can assign it to your production queue at number 20 or 320 or 400, so it gets made before any of these, or 600 or 7000 or the like and it will get made after. Note that there are two ways to produce things, from your queue and through installations like Iron Mines and Gas Refineries. More on that in How to Organize It All.

Next is the list of items in your Imperial Stockpiles. You'll have millions of Construction Materials, used to make new installations, and millions of Raw Resources, used to produce things in the queue pictured above.

Then comes your Shipyard Report, where you'll have several Pathfinders awaiting production. If you have only one Shipyard Slip, only one can be made per turn. You can add more Slips later.

Warp Points Surveyed will list all the Warp Points in your home system, gateways to further worlds. The relevant info is the WP number listed first, on the left-hand side. Then it lists your home system, where they are all located, along with the places to which they connect. These are adjacent star systems for you to explore.

Ignore the Diplomacy Report for now, which will be blank until you make Alliances.

Under the Character Report, you see your Legendary Characters, all of whom need names. The exception is your leader, named in your Setup Sheet.

You can skip the next parts of the Ship Design Report, Force Battle Plan, Installations Report, and Research. Researchable Items can be useful in planning, along with the information available at the SuperNova Wiki.

Taken together, these the key parts of your first turn report are the

• Scan of your home System on p.2-3
  
• GEO survey of your homeworld
  
• Imperial Advisor Report listing of Excess Power
  
• Fleet Numbers and the number of ships in each fleet
  
• Colony Report with your number of Stripmining Complexes, and your Industrial Capacity
  
• Industrial Production Report, listing what you make each turn
  

That's it. Get those six pieces of information and you're ready to plan orders!

Just a couple of additions here.  
- Each industry is good for 250, not 25 as reported above.
- The colorful graph is the related to your lifeform choices.  The bars are proportional so you can't compare bar length between empires unless you have a known quantity to establish a baseline.  While this is good to know, it is also of little value at this point as noted above.
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