Beginner Tips

Beginner Tips is one of the USI Text Guides. Variety of tips on different areas of Unnamed Space Idle for new and advanced players explaining the base mechanics and unveiling some efficiency advice to progress faster.

General advice: If you want something, focus on it! It’s better to split your time focusing on specific things one at a time than all your time doing everything poorly.

Core

Visit Core for detailed info on all of its elements.

• For weapons/shields, each level increases the damage/shields linearly while exponentially increasing in cost. Milestones are every 10 levels except for the last two milestones which are every 15. For utilities, the milestones are every 20.
• For milestone costs, consult the guide by NomiSaltium: USI Spreadsheet - Core - Google Sheets
• Weapons are physically located on the ship, so the turrets on top have slightly higher range.
• You can swap core milestones to squeeze out damage. For example, all milestones on laser boost, laser boosting, then swapping to damage.
• Tiers are a 250x damage/shields boost. It’s worth swapping unless you need a specific milestone.

Compute

Visit Compute for detailed info on all of its elements.

• Remember you can spend salvage!
  

Initially, 0.5*(8*levels+1)^(0.5) = effect. Compute challenge completions increases this exponent (from 0.5 to 0.52, etc)
If you cap both damage 1.1 and damage 1.25, the effect from damage 1.25 will be exactly 2.5x the effect from damage 1.1, despite investing 100x as much compute. So capping out previous tiers is always beneficial.

Here are the relative benefits from maxing out each tier, compared to the previous tiers–

1.1
1.25	(0.35)/0.1 = 3.5x damage/shields
2	(2.35)/0.35 = 6.72x damage/shields
4	(6.35)/2.35 = 2.70x damage/shields
10	(16.35)/(6.35) = 2.57x damage/shields

Compute effects are additive.
You can see compute contributions by hovering over damage in the core tab. Compute Cap+ increases the cap of previous tiers. The net effect is that the exponent is doubled, and tripled for Cap++. In practice, this makes overnight computing and compute challenges much stronger.

Synth

Visit Synth for detailed info on all of its elements.

• I like crew scaling delay, base production, damage, synth, warp speed, module slots, salvage, and shields, in roughly that order.
• It’s worth buying crew delay, base production and damage a tier above.
• It’s never worth buying vp gen/max until lategame.
• Special modules that work offline: Salvage Auto Collector (!)
• Special modules that don’t: Energy Void Auto Collector, Void Beacon, Automators

V Device

Visit V-Device for detailed info on all of its elements.

• If you click sector data, you can see the shards that drop in a sector, as well as what the shard looks like when maxed. You can also see the type of shard by its shape.
• Shard resonance increases the amount of shards that drop at a time.
• Flex shard II technically has a unique benefit. All other low-tier shards can be safely discarded. Some tier 7 shards are stronger than their tier 6 equivalents but lose position flexibility (research, base)
• You can swap damage shard location against hybrid waves. For example, against a hybrid boss, swapping from shields to armor/hull once the shields are down.

Ship Layouts

Visit Builds for detailed info on all of its elements.

Weapon advice

In general, you’re incentivized to focus on one weapon type (because of warp/synergies) but to have at least one of the other type (to have access to both laser boost and volley for bosses)

It’s also recommended to have a diversity of enemy counters (spam, ranged, phasing) so you can tackle warps as they shift in.

For shields, max bulk generators -> bulk generators + 2 deflectors.

Some common late game layouts

Lasers

2x gatling 1x beam 1x laser cannon-> 2x gatling, 1x beam, 1x laser cannon, 2x charge 100% boost uptime.

Kinetics

4x kinetic -> 2x kinetic, 2-4x bomb -> 2x missile, 2x kinetic, 2x bomb
Good against armor. Missiles and bombs really want upgrades though.
Higher tier kinetic cannons, even if you can’t upgrade them, can bail you out of timewall sectors.

Hybrid

1x any weapon of your preference, 1x beam 2x laser cannon -> 2x missiles 1x beam 1x laser cannon 2x charge -> 2x disruption 1x beam 1x laser cannon 2x charge 100% boost uptime + anti armor spam.

Base

Visit Bases for detailed info on all of its elements.

• Base challenge completions are very good, consider checking discord/wiki for layouts.
• Boosters are multiplicative, so having multiple boosters affect the same tile is very good.
• The best layouts will alternate boosters and income. A good heuristic for finding the best layout is to fill all squares with boosters, then figure out where to place income so as many boosters overlap in those squares. Income that drains usually requires two drain reducers minimum.
• The priority should be unlocking slots and improving base income.
• Upgrades improve income by 1.25x and boosters by 1.1x, while costs scale by 1.5x and boosters by 10x.

Challenges

Visit Challenges for detailed info on all of its elements.

Core computing

1x beam laser + rest laser cannons. Laser cannons on supportive routing + boosts + shield bonus, beam laser on mass focuser and damage.
This is now outdated– compute tiers give more salvage, and kinetic cannons with supportive routing are incredibly strong for compute challenge. Needs more info
Patch increased salvage gain, start stays the same?
(Remember to spend salvage/equip compute shard + battle shard/turn on reactor) Core 1: immediately
Core 2-3: Cruiser with lvl 95 beam laser (filling 1.1 cap+), 2x lvl 80 laser cannon support
Core 4: Heavy cruiser with lvl 110 beam laser (same as above, just wait more), 3x laser cannon support. (5 is possible with improved tracking farm)
Core 5-6: Destroyer with lvl 110 beam laser, 5x laser cannon support
Core 7-8: Destroyer with lvl 110 beam laser v2 (filling 1.1 cap+ cap+), 5x laser cannon support, 2x deflector shields.
Core 9: Requires “Salvage Redirection” on Cyber Specialist crew, for 1E27 salvage/sec. Farm improved tracking and salvage for 75-90 minutes in sector 4. 4.26E30 salvage is required for beam laser v3 lvl 70, 5x laser cannon v2, 2x deflectors.

Synth challenge

Max gatlings, one beam laser (if necessary), continuous generators.
Max damage/shield modules as far as reasonable, then materials. High level (infinite) sensors, alloys, processors are most bang for buck, in general. (Materials from best to worst available here: USI Synth and Compute Challenges - Google Sheets by Solanaceae)
Synth damage/shield upgrades bought with synth points work inside the challenge! (Remember to put on synth + flex shard, turn on reactor)
Synth 1: T2 infinite
Synth 2: T3 infinite
Synth 3: fourth synth slot
Synth 4: 2E10 synth speed (without synth util)
Synth 5: ~E20 synth speed, T7 infinite. Go sector 33B, make some combat enhancer module levels. Free halfway through T8/after mastery 2s

Power Hungry

Remember you can spend salvage! Reactor utility in particular gives 10x max VP. Lvl 1 or 2 Gatlings -> Disruption. A max gatling setup is about 10x max VP in damage, compare damage to sector enemies. Utilize void energy boost to sustain through boss damage.
(Remember to equip modules, power + flex shards, reactor util)
Power 1: reactor utility unlocked
Power 2: warp VP max MK2 maxed, aim for e12 max VP
Power 3: warp VP max MK3 maxed, aim for e16-17 max VP
Power 4: warp VP max MK4 maxed, aim for e22 max VP
Power 5: aim for e37 max VP (free after first crew masteries)

Base challenge

Check Base Challenge Guide.
Max gatlings (one beam laser for base carry 3), later disruption charges. Continuous generators.

Reactor

Visit Reactor for detailed info on all of its elements.

• Reactor scales logarithmically. (exponential cost for linear increase in benefit)
• A reactor challenge completion is roughly a 1.5x multiplicative modifier on reactor benefits.
• A quick way to buy upgrades is to enter the power hungry challenge and die over and over. (Usually right after completing one)
• Another way is to spam prestiges, since each prestige starts with a full reactor.

Research

• Pre-unbound research mostly comes from sector progression.
• You can unlock unbound research earlier than it becomes relevant– buyer beware.
• The scaling on research R invested is as follows:

Caption text

Salvage: (R/1E22)^(0.255)	VP Max: (R/1E22)^(0.301)	Shard: (R/1E22)^(0.097)
Synth: (R/1E24)^(0.079)	VP Gen: (R/1E24)^(0.255)	Research: (R/1E24)^(0.255)

You can use the exponents to estimate the impact of research modifiers. A 2x research multiplier corresponds to a 1.19x salvage, 1.056x synth multiplier, etc… However since research increases research the effect is actually slightly higher (1/(1-0.255) = R^1.342 as much, so actually 1.27x salvage, 1.076x synth when taken into account)

Warp Drive

Visit Warp Drive for detailed info on all of its elements.

Warp rewards increase by 1.1x each half-sector. Mathematically, to maximize total warp, you want to select lower difficulty warp locations before higher difficulty warp locations. Ideally, all warps should be roughly the same level. This is so you have a higher unique warp completions multiplier for the higher warp. (Repeating previously completed warp difficulties does not increase warp multiplier)

For a warp, you have time to do 4 half-sectors. This means to maximize a warp, you want to be about 125x as strong as the first warp. Edit: Now you have enough time to do 7 half-sectors, so plenty of time.

For the enemy spam warps, make sure you bring a counter! Otherwise you can lose time trying to kill all the enemies. Ditto with the ranged warps. For the warp tree, the priorities are synth, salvage, damage, warp, base, and “warp compute sync”. However, you mostly want to spend on upgrades that cost similarly. Reactor and research can mostly be ignored until it's cheap comparatively..

Note that upgrade costs scale differently. Most costs scale exponentially (usually 1.05x, 1.1x, or 1.2x, depending on the number of upgrades) The auto-warp AI upgrade ignores your current stats, allowing you to gain warp income even while too weak or while in challenges. This is only relevant much later on, though.

Crew

Visit Crew for detailed info on all of its elements.

Masteries should be short and sweet– the strategy being to to spend all your starting biosleeves on one crew re-printing them over and over.

For mastery upgrades, the recommendation is +3 starting biosleeves -> 30x prof -> 30x acumen -> 30x ingen -> 30x eng -> warp -> base -> +1 crew slot. When pushing a new max, for primary stats, it’s ‘optimal’ to bioprint 40+ levels above your previous max, and for secondary stats, it’s ‘optimal’ to bioprint 25+ levels above. In practice, since you want to push multiple levels above the max at a time, you might want to wait for 100+ levels above and 50+ levels above respectively.

For crew that have row 1 and row 2 upgrades that buff the same stat, it’s optimal to split points evenly between them. The row 3 crew abilities want them to specialize in one stat and not the other. Read them carefully to see whether they check their stats or the entire crew’s.

AI Points

Recommended AI purchases: Research Auto Select -> Auto Merge -> Smartcraft. Later, Auto Warp becomes necessary. Base Auto Upgrade doesn’t work offline, but is still worth purchasing.

Miscellaneous

If you want to enter a different sector than what you’ve chosen, you can go backwards to the previous sector then go forwards, you’ll get the choice again.

Check Unnamed Space Idle Achievements Guide. In particular, basic ship achievements are a good source of damage/shields.

Cheese

• Idling offline ignores your damage/shields, so you can idle in sectors that are too strong, and skimp on damage/shields.
• You can save and reload once a boss warning appears to remove the wave that appears before it.

By sandwich8 from official Unnamed Space Idle Discord.

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