Suggested Moon Building Order

[The Gibbon]

you could always have tried it

take what you have there to the limit, and then add an extra 1k to see what happens

I personally have had over 1M total resources on my moon at one point without having built any storage...

[Weird Al]

I tried it and it works. I had to have over 100k resources on it to upgrade the lunar base to level 3.

[The Gibbon]

I suppose that although Ive pointed out the usual "Extreme" builds, Ive not really covered the way im personally building my moon up. Below is my progress and what I intend to do, (I may be wrong, but I feel that my build allows for limited offensive capabilities quickly, as well as speed in construction of buildings on the moon) :

lol.
Ive not had my moon long, so its development sucks
here was my order (nb. my build order has not followed any of the builds shown above in this topic, but is instead a mix that satisfies my personal requirements):

Empty 0/1
lunar1 1/4
RF1 2/4
RF2 3/4
lunar2 4/7
RF3 5/7
Phalanx1 6/7
Lunar3 7/10
Phalanx2 8/10
RF4 9/10
Lunar4 10/13
Phalanx3 11/13 Once I have phalanx 3 I am happy to start building defenses.
Shipyard1 12/13
Lunar5 13/16

I felt that building the RF early helped my build sensor and lunar bases quicker for a faster progression...
I intend to do this next:


Phalanx4 14/16 This is my current goal for pahalanx as I dont currently raid beyond the distance it covers
Shipyard2 15/16
Lunar6 16/19
Shipyard3 17/19
Shipyard4 18/19
Lunar7 19/22
Shipyard5 20/22
Shipyard6 21/22
...

depending on how much resource I am able to procure through raids, I may end up building more robotics factories instead to speed up the production of lunar bases... (aka this build list is provisional )

[cappachino558]

That will take quite a long time.

[The Gibbon]

hmmm... actually, Ive decided that I need defense a bit more than I need the phalanx right now...
so when my moon stops building rocket launchers (word of advice, dont set 500 rocket launchers building with only a lvl 1 shipyard) I will go into vacation mode, and then when I come back I will build like this

Shipyard2 14/16
Shipyard3 15/16
Lunar6 16/19
Shipyard4 17/19
Shipyard5 18/19
Lunar7 19/22
Shipyard6 20/22


then im undecided which way to go:

Shipyard7___________Phalanx4 21/22
Lunar8_____________Lunar 8 22/25
Shipyard8__________Shipyard7 23/25
Phalanx4___________Shipyard8 24/25

[cappachino558]

I just got my new moon and I'm going to follow the pattern at the beginning of the post very closely.

[Weird Al]

When I got my moon, I followed it very closely in the begining, but when things started getting expensive, I strayed off a little bit.

[Vertweeler]

I just got my first moon yesterday and I think I am going to follow the gibbon's strategy as it balances out the offense and the defense.

[ehud]

the only change I made was that if the resc. required for more lunar bases becomes too expensive, you can demolish a robot factory to make space for another phalanx without having to build another lunar base...

I did this because this was during our war with HellZa, and resc. were kind of tight...

[cappachino558]

Yea. But without a nice robotics factory, it will take forever to build.

[The Gibbon]

oh... I think it was since I came up with my strategy that they changed the rules for IPMs

to be honest, my plan is no longer as good as it once was
IPMs can now target lunar defenses.... so unless you just want a small shield dome on there, I probably wouldnt bother with anything defense wise.

I now have 18/19 fields built on.
Lunar base lvl 6
Phalanx lvl 5

and though I may deconstruct them....
robotics lvl 4
shipyard lvl 3.


I will write up a proper construction plan with reasons when I have time.

[The Gibbon]

ok... as promised, I will now write out the way I would build my moon now that IPMs are allowed to hit moons!

1st, I would like to remind you all of the "Offensive build" that I displayed in my original post...
If you have any plans to develop your moon, then this is really the only way to do it that makes sense! If you want defenses, you should build them on planets... its generally much more efficient

Empty Moon(0/1 fields used)
Lunar Base level 1 (1/4 fields used)
Robotics Factory level 1 (2/4 fields used)
Phalanx level 1 (3/4 fields used)
Lunar Base level 2 (4/7 fields used)
Robotics Factory level 2 (5/7 fields used)
Phalanx level 2 (6/7 fields used)
Lunar Base level 3 (7/10 fields used)
Robotics Factory level 3 (8/10 fields used)
Phalanx level 3 (9/10 fields used)
Lunar Base level 4 (10/13 fields used)
Robotics Factory level 4 (11/13 fields used)
Phalanx level 4 (12/13 fields used)

As I stated previously, my prefered build would differ from this somewhat as I get impatient with long building times, and so I would build the Robotics factories earlier! (Incidentally, I am currently in the process of destroying my shipyards for a better phalanx ability )

Empty 0/1
lunar1 1/4
RF1 2/4
RF2 3/4
lunar2 4/7
RF3 5/7
Phalanx1 6/7
Lunar3 7/10
Phalanx2 8/10
RF4 9/10
Lunar4 10/13
Phalanx3 11/13 Once I have phalanx 3 I am happy to start building defenses.
Phalanx4 12/13
Lunar5 13/16
Phalanx5 14/16
Phalanx6 15/16
Lunar6 16/19
Phalanx7 17/19
Phalanx8 18/19
Lunar7 19/22

By this point, there is no need for anything except perhaps a jumpgate, and the lunar base is required only for that.
Though you may choose to build more robotics factories, in the build, and thus require the extra space... its up to you

[Weird Al]

I've got a question about moons. Why does the size of a moon matter? I know the size matters on moon destruction missions, but besides that, why does it matter?

[The Gibbon]

1. Moon Size and Fields

Now that you have a moon you need to be aware of its size and max field spaces, this can be worked out using the following formula
(moonsize/1000) ^2

The size of the moon is totally random. A successful 1% chance could give a size of 5632km while a 13% could give 1200km. The exception is a successful 20% chance, this will ALWAYS give a moon of at least 8000km.

Moons start with one free field, this means that you need to build a Lunar Base first, when this is complete you will be given another 3 fields (using 1/4). If you want to expand a decent amount then you need to reserve one of these fields for the next Lunar Base, leaving 2 spare fields.

so essentially a 20% moonshot will always create >8000km which implies a 64 field moon
and anything less than 4000km moon is absolutely useless for building on (In my opinion)

[Weird Al]

Ok, thanks for the answer.