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Post by d34thspawn on May 20, 2012 0:45:35 GMT -5
Hello,
I am loving the game, still learning about it. I don't know what it is but I can seem to make it more than 1-2k turns on challenging even, I can't die on normal but when I do the same strategy on any other difficulty I just can't survive. I have been starting as an explorer and travelling between the javat mining camp and trading at cadar can squeeze out a couple hundred k pretty quick buy a new ship and go pirating/exploring but eventually the game catches up to me and someone kicks my ass and I can't run away lol...I feel like I am missing something important, maybe its my ship? I was running the cadar battlecruiser with cargo crew weapons and sails upgrades...
Anyway just looking for some tips for the higher difficulty levels so I can survive!
Thanks in advance!
Tl:dr newbie sucks and should pay more attention to ship stats wants tips
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Post by phantombudgie on May 20, 2012 14:07:43 GMT -5
Even when playing as explorer, you need to keep your pilot and stealth skills high, or you'll never make it home with your loot.
You don't need to travel to Cadar planets to trade, you can just press "back" to go into orbit aroung JMC and then press "Urban" to go to the local exchange there, which saves you a load of fuel and time.
It's always tempting to buy a big ship which will take lots of damage, but you must keep an eye on your pilot skill. Once your pilot skill is more than the ship Hull size, no enemy (unless you're very unlucky) will be able to change range in battle and you can stay at whatever distance you want or run away. Big ships are more likely to be found by enemies, stay small until you can fight well (Tactics high).
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Post by slayernz on May 20, 2012 18:16:36 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum DS, cool that you're loving the game  Phantombudgie's advice is really good. 1) Focus on Pilot and Stealth to begin with. Pilot allows you to perform more effectively in combat (changing ranges, avoiding the enemy from advancing/retreating, etc). Also, it helps you manage larger hull sizes. Rule of thumb is ... keep Pilot + Intimidate above hull size. Once you've got to level 20+, you'll be able to get Pilot above hull and it'll be even better. Try and keep pilot above your level. IE, if you are level 21, your pilot skill should be at least 21. Stealth allows you to avoid detection in space, and dodge torp fire during combat. It also seems to help with gun fire as well. Initially it helps keeping your stealth skill up around your level, but after you hit level 20 or so, you can slow down on Stealth. you'll start noticing when it's too low because you'll start getting hit in combat. That won't happen in Challenging until you're probably in level 40+ Choosing the right ship upgrades is important - match your playing style to the upgrades. If you want to do exploring, have a ship that has good holds, reasonable crew, and is fuel efficient. By turn 1000 - 2000, you'll have enough money to own a second ship, so if you want to do some piracy, get a more combat-ready ship. In other words, don't take an explorer ship into battle - it'll only hurt. Since you're starting out as Javat, get a Javat Cutter as your first combat ship. You'll find that so long as you have reasonable Pilot, you'll be more successful as a pirate than you would be flying a Cadar battlecruiser. |
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Post by d34thspawn on May 21, 2012 1:56:06 GMT -5
Thanks for the help guys, that helped a heck of a lot actually, now I just can't figure out how to juggle rep with all the factions I do a couple things with one and all of a sudden my rep is way down with a few others, I am keeping an eye on the contracts making sure I am only doing them against independents and making sure unless I absolutely need fuel I don't break trade embargoes and trade wars.
does rep go down if you ignore/escape military vessels?
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Post by phantombudgie on May 21, 2012 14:14:52 GMT -5
Factions is the other major confusion until you get more used to the game.
Don't expect to be positive with every faction (until you're really experienced). I try to keep at least 3 or 4 positive reputations. Get into the habit of checking via your status screen for the faction conflicts. Every time you land.
It's especially easy to get caught out if you have lots of popup notifications happening, and the last one as you're landing is news about a new trade embargo. Trade embargo is really annoying for me, as you have to adapt your routes and strategy for a long time.
Getting positive rep is easy during spy battle or solar war. When your faction (e.g. Javat) is at war with your chosen foe (Steel Song) load up on Water-Fuel and go to a foe planet or even just a square in their green territory and spam the Blockade button (Surveillance for spy battle). Don't try this until you can fight off the angry swarm that will come after you (Pilot, Tactics at 15 or so should be enough). Planets tend to give you more success than empty space.
If you live, and had plenty of fuel, you just bought +100 or so with Javat and -100 with Steel Song (not to mention cash or valuable records). When a trade alliance comes along you can make up much of this negative rep by selling Artifacts, Weapons and Electronics to Javat. During Spy Battle, you also get even more positive rep when you sell the records back to Javat.
For me, I also find life far far easier for contracts if I never buy any Death Warrants.
p.s. I still don't fully understand what hapens with running away from various types of ships. I tend to ignore pirates of my own faction and fight those of others. Don't know if this is a good idea or not.
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Post by slayernz on May 21, 2012 18:03:02 GMT -5
A political officer is worth her weight in platinum ... at least until you get into the habit of checking faction conflicts on a regular basis. She will advise you if trading with a particular faction will cause negative RP with another faction due to a Trade Embargo conflict. She will even tell you who that other faction is. It's very useful to know who you want to be friendly with and who you don't care about - for example, if you don't like Steel Song, and Cadar and Steel Song are in a Trade Embargo, you won't get worried if you get warned at a Cadar exchange. Sure Steel Song RP will drop from any trade - but it's your right, nay, your duty to do that anyway. In terms of RP loss/gain during encounters ... I feel another table coming on .... | Type | Ship Faction | Allied Faction | War Faction | | Any ship - Acknowledge | No Change | No Change | No Change | | Any ship Attack | -RP | -RP | +RP | | Military - Ignore/Retreat | -RP | No Change | No Change | | Any non-Military - Ignore/Retreat | No Change | No Change | No Change | | Any Steel Song Ship | -RP | No Change | ++++RP |
Okay ... maybe that last row might not be 100% accurate ... To the question of how to avoid breaking trade embargoes because you are bingo fuel ... this is where the magic of caches comes into play. If you have reasonable cash (I'm talking as little as $100k), then it will pay for you to buy up holds of fuel, and caching them on various planets around the quadrant. If you can build up a couple of hundred units of fuel in strategic planet caches, then you can traverse enemy territory without fear that you'll run out of fuel. You'll also be able to avoid breaking the trade embargoes as well. Why $100k? Often if you have less than that, you're still in "survival" mode, lurching from planet to planet fearful that any large amount of damage may cause your bank balance to drop from "I can live on that" to "erk - here comes a mutiny". At this stage, any available funds should be used to buy up goods to sell on SHORTAGE rumors. So enough babble - what is are the most important things to learn about the game (in my opinion) ... 1) Ships, Fuel efficiency, when to acknowledge and when to run. If you aren't carrying restricted goods/records/contract goods, you can safely acknowledge/surrender to most ships - Exceptions: Pirates, and any ship where you are -20RP or so. REALLY never surrender or lose to a ship if you are -35RP or worse with a faction because they will KILL you 2) Skills and attributes. What does what to what Pilot, Stealth, then Tactics 3) Faction Conflicts - who you can trade with, and who will get pissed off Know that Trade Embargoes means you should generally avoid trading with these factions. Alliances means you should generally avoid attacking/blowing up ships of these factions. 4) Rumors - what to buy/sell and where to find officers, upgrades, and stuff If you want to make hundreds of thousands of credits within a couple of years, shortage rumors are essential! Start with non-restricted goods, and once you have a number of trade permits, go after the Artifact/Electronics/Weapons shortage rumors too. 5) Caches - stash stuff that you find in surplus ... and stash fuel too Also useful if you are exploring a planet for goodness. Instead of just loading up your cargo with goodies and flying off to an urban area, store your excesses in a cache and go back for more 6) Specialist ships - have multiple ships scattered around for good ... or for bad Multiple ships means that if you are blown up but manage to escape in a shuttle, you can go get a new ship of your own choosing (rather than forced to buy some crappy Space Truck from the nearest Star Port. Also - have ships that are geared up for hauling large cargo - and ships that are geared up for shooting up bad guys efficiently. Don't use the wrong ship in the wrong situation - it'd be like going into battle with a toothbrush! |
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Post by d34thspawn on May 22, 2012 4:26:51 GMT -5
Thanks again guys, with your tips I have made it further than before, at about 3500 turns now and level 14 which is sadly better than before appreciate it makes the game way more fun when I can do well |
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Post by slayernz on May 22, 2012 17:58:12 GMT -5
Yeah - dying every second turn sucks heapsly! Good luck and hopefully before you know it, you'll be hitting that retirement award!
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shallowthought
Exemplar
[ Patreon & Star Traders 2 Supporter ]
Posts: 382
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Post by shallowthought on May 23, 2012 7:39:41 GMT -5
On higher difficulties, you WILL be attacked and killed if you have -ve RP with any faction as enemy captains can be higher level than you. There are two ways to avoid this - pardons and escape shuttles. With pardons, solar/spy wars will be pretty expensive to take part in, but if you just stick to contracts it should easily be affordable. With escape shuttle, if you are attacked by someone better than you, you can just ram until your hull is destroyed and you take off in the shuttle. I wouldn't advise this unless you have a few extra ships sitting in dry dock or you have enough money to buy an new ship fast.
phantombudgie said "you just bought +100 or so with Javat and -100 with Steel Song" (for solar / spy wars), but actually you'll get +200/-100 rep, which means that if you are careful you can build up +ve rep with all factions.
In terms of ships, you get major fuel consumption bonuses when sails and engines reach 20 and 30, so I try to get at least 30 engines and sails on each of my second and later ships. Pride of javat is good for this but does require an unlock.
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Post by phantombudgie on May 23, 2012 14:49:36 GMT -5
phantombudgie said "you just bought +100 or so with Javat and -100 with Steel Song" (for solar / spy wars), but actually you'll get +200/-100 rep, which means that if you are careful you can build up +ve rep with all factions. Oops! At least I was partly right  What he said |
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Post by slayernz on May 23, 2012 17:29:26 GMT -5
Hey Shallowthought ...
FOR Surrender ... it all depends on how -ve your RP is.
If you are very minorly -ve (-1 to -5ish) there is no issue. It's effectively the same as at 0.
-6ish to -35ish, you will be arrested and imprisoned. You will be fined a chunk of money and you probably won't be allowed to visit America because you've had a criminal conviction.
-35 and below, you will be arrested, tried, convicted, and summarily executed.
IMPORTANT NOTE
The response is based on the RP as it would be after the encounter and not before the encounter. SO if you were -5RP, but carrying weapons, artifacts, some contraband and a few Rychart hats, the faction would start deducting RP for each offense. There is a possibility that after they do their deductions, they find you have -37RP and decide for the good of the nation, you should be executed.
So be aware of what you are carrying. Your neck would appreciate it.
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