I bought this game several months ago and played about 3 solo games. I never got into the campaign part (maybe I will soon).

Anyway I stopped playing for a few reasons. One was it would take about a week of playing to finish even a small galaxy. It seemed most of my time was spent clicking the end turn button and waiting on the next tech I would research.

One major problem I had was that I am really not into ship design, so I didn't design any. Not knowing what I was doing I researched most defenses, but only lazars for weapons. I wanted the best lazars in the game. Well no new ship designs were coming up and I realized (after a long time) that I had to do research in other weapons to 'unlock' the pre-built ships. Well dang, I wish I had known this or had some list of exactly what's needed to get a certain ship.

I played the game expecting to see these great space battles. But the battles were few and far between, and when they did occur they were very one-sided. In my last game I choose that conquest was the only victory condition, thinking that show me some big space battles. However, all it did was make the game last forever.

I guess my questions are these:

Is there a list of what's needed somewhere for each ship design?

How can you set up large space battles?

Can you start the game with some research already learned to speed things along?

Thanks!