I really like to learn all the units before i go into battle against things. Will there be a single player sandbox mode?
There will be, yes. For now, the best way to do sandbox is create a large planet (whatever your system can handle) with just a single AI. Just a little air defense should keep you safe enough, and give you plenty of time to play around with units, build as big of an economy as you want, and learn the systems.
To expand a little on garat's post: Build an air factory as your first factory. It's lathes only use about a mexes worth of metal to build things, so as much as you can practically go "pgen>mex x3>pgen>air fact>mex" and start building fighters like mad, you might wanna invest econ into some land fabbers to assist it. Also, set a patrol path out of the air factory in a big circle. I only found out about patrol commands working/are chainable from factories recently, and it has made things A LOT easier for defending against the AI. Pretty soon you'll have a large circle of fighters all round where you wanna be! Another trick I have yet to try, is scouting out the AI location, then setting the fighter patrol around it. Contain the AI instead of defending against it????!???!
I would imagine you are still defending against it. You are just cutting out an overly generous unfair section of the pie for yourself right off the bat, leaving the AI the single bite he started with. It is like you go out scouting for the AI, parimeter it in with fighters, and say "I call dibs on this half"... this... especially... large.... half.......
Here is an interesting way to get sandbox mode in latest build. Choose lvl1-2 metal planet with just one ai, and keep trying to generate games over and over until you get one where this happens...
Just tested this, and as much as you need to set the patrol route a little wide to avoid a lot of figher deaths (like 3/4 of the way to the horizon of a scale 3 planet from center of ai base) this does work really awesome. especially if you have like 6 air factories all producing fighters ring o' death Nothing gets out alive I never thought to maybe reduce down the patrol path later, but the scale 3 gave me more than enough playground, so I didn't bother
