This is a Guide for those who are having trouble getting rich in space stage. It also provides some strategy on how to avoid the constant annoying attacks.

Okay... to start off... KEYWORD (and quite an obvious one) = SPICE

LOTS AND LOTS OF SPICE

So how do you get them?

Exploration is key.
Fly around your neighboring star systems looking for a "CIVILIZATION" planet. That means a planet that has got a dominant species in the Civ stage. These planets will ALMOST ALWAYS be T3 (you want a T3 colony because it grants you 3 colony slots which mean more spice).

(Keep in mind, when selecting your new planet, the Spice price chart: It goes Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink, Green, and Purple, with Red being the cheapest and Purple the most expensive (and rarest))

EDIT:
There is an "easy" abeit time-consuming way of getting a good colony, with good spice, close to your home planet. If you haven't visited a star system you can: 1) save your game, 2) visit the star system, 3) IF you believe the spices/planets within aren't that good, Exit to the Main Menu (without saving), 4) Reload your game, 5) Re-visit the star system again, 6) Repeat until you think you've got a good planet/spice configuration.
PS: Blue stars have the best spice (Blue, Green, Pink, Purple). Red stars usually only have Red and Yellow.

(credit: elavals)
(this has been confirmed by me... if only I knew this before...)

The objective here is to conquer this T3 planet and colonize it.

How?

If your ship has any set of "Bomb" ability (mini bomb and so on) this chore will be extremely easy.
If it doesn't, then I'm going to assume you at least have a "Laser" ability.

Hover over a city, any city, and start bombing or laser-ing that city's City Hall. Adjust your ships height so that the city's defenses can't touch you but you can keep firing down.

Sooner than later the city will turn into dust.

Keep doing this to the other cities in the planet until you have conquered everything. Take trips back to your home planet to refuel and repair between attacking one city and another if you feel it's necessary. And always try to take out cities that belong to different factions and not the same one.

Okay. So now that you've conquered your T3 planet and built 3 colonies in it with the optimum production/happiness setting (refer to screenshot), it's time to TRADE until you get amazingly bored (and/or rich). Your planet should be producing around 20 spice units – should be 30 with the spice storage upgrade.

Optimal Setting:
EDIT: 132 Production, +2 Happiness

(credit: JohnnyPie)

Find a trading partner near your new planet.
Look around your galaxy for a group of star systems that do not have easy access to the spice you're producing. That's where your best chances of finding a great deal lies.
Establishing trade routes between your planets and your allies DOES NOT help this cause. You will only be providing your spices for free (and getting theirs in return, but the benefit is minimal).

When selling your spice, you should already have a basis on the difference between getting ripped off on a deal and hitting the jackpot.

If you don't, this might help you out:
EDIT:
Red Spice:
Jackpot >> Anything upwards of $10000/u
Highest seen: $17000

Yellow Spice:
Jackpot >> Anything upwards of $15000/u
Highest seen: $22000

Blue Spice:
Jackpot >> Anything upwards of $22000/u
Highest seen: $26000

Pink Spice:
Jackpot >> Anything upwards of $30000/u
Highest I've seen: $54000
Highest seen: $56000

Green Spice:
Jackpot >> Anything upwards of $37000/u
Highest seen: $50600

Purple Spice:
Jackpot >> Anything upwards of $45000/u
Highest I’ve seen: $64000
Highest seen: $74500

(credit: defektiv, ryxeuclie, neunzehnisbest)

The Amazing Purple Money:


Now, I suggest selling in stacks of 99 always (that’s the max).
There’s a reason for this:
Your buyer won’t have the same demand for that color spice after you’ve sold a bunch of units, and so it’s best to sell in bunches of 99 to maximize profits and take advantage of his already high demand.
EDIT:
It has been reported by some players that selling in bunches of 30 or so is easier. Apparently it is easier to find buyers that will purchase your spice for more cash when you're selling in bunches of 30. That way you can sell 30, get 30 more, find another buyer easily, sell again, repeat.
I still believe though that selling in stacks of 99 is better; there may be less buyers out there with a good price, but once you find them it gets easier than selling in smaller stacks.

If you follow the aforementioned chart, you should be earning upwards of 1 million sporebucks per sale.

That’s in less than an hour of play if you’re selling Red spice and mere minutes if you’re selling Purple spice.

Selling The Pink:


A couple of additional pointers:

1) Artifacts are dumb and worthless. Sell them. They take up too much space and don’t go up much in value when you find another that belongs to the same set. They aren’t worth trying to complete.
2) When conquering/colonizing an enemy Space-Stage T3 planet, NEVER bribe an ally to help you… UNLESS it’s absolutely necessary. Why? Because if you convert the planet’s cities instead of destroying them (you will see a white flag above the hall), you can end up with a planet that has a lot more than 3 colonies… which leads to a LOT more spice for you. If you send your allies to help you out, there’s a very high risk that THEY will colonize the planet (and its colonies) and keep the spice for themselves.

Conquered Planet (40 Spice Capacity):


3) Your home planet is worthless. There, I said it. Now, let it rot, really. Who cares if it’s getting invaded? It gives you so little spice it’s almost not worth having. Go back in there when you feel like repairing your ONE colony (there’s no point in having more than one colony in your home planet… let the others die). Repairing your home planet is cheap anyway.
4) ALWAYS purchase spice from other species. They SELL FOR CHEAP. You can resell later for a lot more cash.

Avoiding getting raided every SECOND (my GOD how annoying this is):

First of all, I’m a carnivore, so I kill things right?
Well, yes, but oh… NOT IN SPACE.

Don’t make the same mistake I did when starting out.
I didn’t care about enemies, I wanted them dead.

Well, if you want to be attacked every second (okay, minute…) then that’s fine.
If you don’t however, you need to make ALLIES. Lots and lots of allies.

And creating alliances is easy. Just bribe them if you have the money, or complete missions for them if you’re poor.

If you already have enemies, the only way to get rid of the constant stupid attacks is to obliterate them.
It doesn’t matter if they only have one T0 planet in their empire, they will still bother you until you’ve dealt the finishing blow.

Killing them off though will be VERY HARD if you:
A) Don’t have money
B) Don’t have allies
C) Don’t have a good group of ships next to yours
D) Have a Starter’s spaceship with minimal upgrades.

However if the reasons above don’t apply to you, killing your enemies is easy.
Simply bribe your allies into attacking the enemies planets (avoid their capital… reason why was mentioned above).
Now take your small fleet to the planet you sent your allies to.
When you get there, ignore the enemy’s ships (they might be busy fighting your ally’s forces anyway) and focus on bombing the city’s hall. The enemy ships will flee when you destroy the city hall and the planet will be empty.
Do this to every small planet your enemy has, until you leave him with his capital. THEN attack the capital.

When you are left with no enemies, you will enjoy a time of PEACE (PAX ROMA-SPOREANA if you will…).
Well, mostly.
You will still need to save planets from eco disaster (but that happens like every half hour) and you’ll have some pirate raids (but they only steal some spice, so it’s okay not to care…) BUT you won’t have aliens attacking anything.

WHEN YOU GET RICH (and believe me, you will), invest in a little thing called UBER TURRET… It’s such an amazing thing… I love it, and always have like 7 or 8 of them with me.

Drop one of those on every planet you got a colony on and you will never have to defend it from anything EVER AGAIN. You won’t lose a SINGLE building.

Also, don’t buy those super Planet Bombs… You won’t need them. They’re expensive and by the time you unlock them, you’ll be powerful enough to colonize any enemy planet.

Have Fun

Additional pointless info:

EDIT:
Apparently, there is a money cap set to $99,999,999
So... no becoming a Billionsporinaire oh well...
(credit: stilldamom)

I play Spore on Hard… don’t know how much that influences this guide... It only means my spaceship has 2250 HP maxed out (against 9000+ in easier difficulty settings)... but other then that I think it makes no difference.

The buildings and the Zebra/Bee/Dog/Bird creature called Plukmen, along with its vehicles (spaceship, water, land, air) were all created by me.

The Buildings are part of a Chess-Set inspired pack and are available for download at my spore page.

I stopped following this “guide” after reaching 60 million sporebucks because I got very bored and wanted to explore (plus, there’s no way you can burn that much money in this game unless you buy a million Planet Bombs or purchase a bunch of systems – which I don’t recommend).

LINKS
My Spore Profile:
http://www.spore.com/view/profile/lucas182

doyoureadthis' Guide to the Galaxy
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/3071.page

Epci guide man, we should combine forces sometime with our guides, lol.
I love this guide though, awesome.

Unless one doesn't wish to be a warmonger.

To be honest I didnt read the guide, I already make bank, lol.

Thank you... I felt I needed to write this cause I (like many many others) was having so much trouble in Space with the attacks and the constant lack of money... only to realise just how easy this game really is. I mean, creature, tribe, cell and civ stage are, in a way, so easy that they don't prepare you for space.

Hopefully ppl will think twice before putting Spore on the shelf and waiting for a patch (I did)... the game is pretty fun

Yes, you are one of those smart people.
We need people like you around, lol.

There is an easy way to get good spice close to home. White stars tend to have a higer rate of having purple pink and blue. If u save then fly to one and it has nothing good just exit to main menu and reload. Most star systems have random planets the first time u visit, so u can just save and reload to rerandomize the star system. I did this to get 3 planets near my home planet which added to a total of 6 blue spice planets, 5 pink spice planets, and 3 purple spice planets. Same applies to a lot of things in space, if u lose a planet to pirates just reload and most likely they will never even visit that planet again.

elavals wrote:There is an easy way to get good spice close to home. White stars tend to have a higer rate of having purple pink and blue. If u save then fly to one and it has nothing good just exit to main menu and reload. Most star systems have random planets the first time u visit, so u can just save and reload to rerandomize the star system. I did this to get 3 planets near my home planet which added to a total of 6 blue spice planets, 5 pink spice planets, and 3 purple spice planets. Same applies to a lot of things in space, if u lose a planet to pirates just reload and most likely they will never even visit that planet again.

didn't know they were random.. lol

well, too little too late for me.
the 500 systems around my home planet, i have already visited so... yeah

i knew about the pirates thing though. i used that in the beginning

quite some observation skills you got

For the most part the guide is pretty good, however, I have done things a little bit differently and made a lot of money and a lot of friends.

I never fight with anyone, except pirates. I have 5 allied ships that follow me around and take out anything that bothers me. Biggest tip is make love, not war.

A few other tips, when setting up trade routes, try to make them with planets that have decent spices, ie; purple, green and pink. Then when they are tired of trading with you, you buy the system and voila! You have the perfect spice planet already set up. I don't usually care if it's T1 or not. It's not that hard to transform them once you get all the tools. Also, sometimes I even just do trade routes if I know they have a decent colot spice planet, whether transformed or not. Buying the system is always the best answer. If they get tired of trading with you and it's not a decent color spice, just end the trade route and make another with the same faction. Also, if you bid too low and want the system, end the trade route and start it back up, then buy it when they are tired, for a better offer.

Another thing I would suggest is NOT selling in batches of 99 as they tend to pay less for more. I usually sell in about 35-50 lots. The pay is higher and it's less work, more money, faster. I made over 60 mil in 2 days just goofing off and experimenting with terraforming.

Most important! Have fun! It's just a game...

Hope this helps!

stilldamom wrote:Another thing I would suggest is NOT selling in batches of 99 as they tend to pay less for more. I usually sell in about 35-50 lots. The pay is higher and it's less work, more money, faster. I made over 60 mil in 2 days just goofing off and experimenting with terraforming.

hmmm
can you confirm this? cuz im pretty 110% sure that whenever you sell lets say 30 units of spice to a planet, its buying price will then significantly drop for that same color spice (when you try to sell it again).
Thus selling 99 at once while the price is still high would make sense.

I dunno, it's simple economics really.

One other way to conquer a planet with a civ littered all over it is with planet creation tools. (Meteors/atmosphere tools) If you got the money, drop a few meteors on the planet, wait for it to go from T3 to T0 and everything dies. Then do the reverse to get it back to T3. Saves time having to go back and forth to home planet for repairs.

Question if you play on hard how do you find allys with ships that will stand there ground in a fight so far for me all the ships i get are crap and die in a few sec unless im fighting pirates. At the moment if i wanted i can have 4 ships with me and if i take them to attack another planet or defend a planet they die after the first or sec group of ships i find.

So at the moment i never ask for ships since when they die there race dislikes that lol. plus i can attack planets no matter there t-score or citys they have and the only down side is if its a home planet i might have to respawn(which i think if i die there should be a bit more of a concequence but who am i to complain about that lol). So i would like to know if theres some trick other then maybe geting allied with a warlike race.

Also I think the...

If u save then fly to one and it has nothing good just exit to main menu and reload.

is a form of cheating since it removes the difficulty level from easy/normal/hard to equal 'perfect for me' So shame on you

blackfrost2 wrote:Question if you play on hard how do you find allys with ships that will stand there ground in a fight so far for me all the ships i get are crap and die in a few sec unless im fighting pirates. At the moment if i wanted i can have 4 ships with me and if i take them to attack another planet or defend a planet they die after the first or sec group of ships i find.

So at the moment i never ask for ships since when they die there race dislikes that lol. plus i can attack planets no matter there t-score or citys they have and the only down side is if its a home planet i might have to respawn(which i think if i die there should be a bit more of a concequence but who am i to complain about that lol). So i would like to know if theres some trick other then maybe geting allied with a warlike race.

Also I think the...

If u save then fly to one and it has nothing good just exit to main menu and reload.

is a form of cheating since it removes the difficulty level from easy/normal/hard to equal 'perfect for me' So shame on you

You're right, the allied ships do suck. But they're not supposed to be that great, since they're so easily obtainable. Allied ships are meat shields really. If you think about it, your ship also sucks, especially in the beginning. The allied ships job is to take attention off you, so you dont die.

The biggest advantage of having allied ships, i think, is that when you go to a system zoomed out, enemy ships attack you, but you cant attack them. The allied ships take care of them for you. Also, when you're searching for an artifact on a yellow hue-ed planet, but get caught by pirates, the easiest way to kill them is to zoom back out and let your allies kill the pirate ships in the zoomed out view.

Also, losing your allies' ships wont lose you that much favor. just like abducting their citizens and stealing artifacts from their planets, it shouldn't stop you from using their services.

ankhkasek wrote:One other way to conquer a planet with a civ littered all over it is with planet creation tools. (Meteors/atmosphere tools) If you got the money, drop a few meteors on the planet, wait for it to go from T3 to T0 and everything dies. Then do the reverse to get it back to T3. Saves time having to go back and forth to home planet for repairs.

thats an alternate way. but if you think about it, by the time you get the advanced tools, you may have probably already unlocked the Mega Bomb (upgraded Mini Bomb). 3 drops on the city hall destroys a city. It may be less time consuming (although more dangerous) than terra forming a planet from T3 to T0 and back up again.

Also, I wouldnt recommend that if you want to convert a planet with more than 3 colonies.

Also, losing your allies' ships wont lose you that much favor. just like abducting their citizens and stealing artifacts from their planets, it shouldn't stop you from using their services.

LOL but my goal is to make and keep friends i dont like to cheat my friends lol

But for now i still wont use them since i dont need them and if i die its cause i was to lazy to warp home and repair lol (shamon)