Advice for 800 victorious battles award?

[jango1]

Is there a play style you'd suggest to speed up progress toward this award?

I got a pirate captain pursuing this on Hard. He's pretty dominant with Gun bunny--wins fights undamaged. Progress is so slow though since I don't turn hostile in encounters very often.

I'm Rank 20 with Cadar and De Valtos so I don't attack their ships except for Pirates. In fact I'm so cautious not to lose rep and permits that I pretty much only attack pirates and independents... which is what I'm doing wrong I think.

So my question is, what's a good strategy to have more hostile encounters in such a way that rep and permit loss isn't prohibitively problematic? Like, how to minimize the damage.

[geoklng]

Exploit spy wars against a faction where you have high rep. spy as long as possible, rebuy rank and death warrant and sell your records back. Attack any and all ships of the faction you are spying against during the surveillance. You will generate enough records to offset the lost rep. Things go even faster when that faction is also involved in a trade or solar war. personally, i attack any ship that can give additional XP: merchants during trade wars, military vessels during solar wars if i do not have a very rank with the faction. I avoid having very high rank with factions i do not intend to buy a flagship from. Since only Cadar and de Valtos have Flagships worth the effort, buy one from each and start killing everything in sight

[ntsheep]

Don't die till 801.

[jango1]

Thanks for the sound advice.

Does selling records during Spy War cost you your Ranks with the other faction if you're at level 20? Does high ranks grant any other rep immunities other than against trade Embargos? Also do you just buy your flagships and then let your rep crumble with Cadar/Devaltos or do you maintain it?

Also wondering if going criminal with a faction to attract hostile bounty encounters is worth it...

[Cory Trese]

Probably the most direct route is Patrol and picking 800 Ships you can defeat. You'll need to do Contracts or exploit Trade features to fund this operation. Pirate-Explorer + Patrol is another way.

[jango1]

I'm not sure why, but I very rarely find ships by patrolling. Like 6 to 12 attempts per each success. I get more encounters by flying up and down the green 'roads' in the southwest Steel Space and the north east clan space.

What factors boost Patrol success? I target planets with high Exchange ratings (AFAIK Exchange level dictates the amount of ship traffic?). How do the other planet ratings impact patrol and/or the intensity and composition of ship traffic?

Any 'player side' factors influence patrol? All I saw in the help file was that Wisdom factors into patrol.

I am continually amazed by how dynamic the Quadrant model is in terms of the ripple effects of rumors and conflicts. I wouldn't be surprised if conflict or 'traders exploiting local populace' rumors impacted traffic/patrol.

I'm ashamed to admit it up I'm not spending much of my XP since Hard isn't too menacing and it will take a long time to get to 800 victories. Cory, my level of dread of dying at like 700 victories is ... compelling game design. I'm at 321 victories now.

Just more context: I'm a level 15 Pirate flying an Omega Cruiser in the year 230.47 AE.

[slayernz]

Cory Trese, patrol is actually not as effective as picking out a few choice space lanes and killing anything that moves within them. The reason being is
1) your fuel consumption is significantly higher when patrolling compared to flying in green lanes
2) you always seem to get sail damage so you get less and less fuel efficient as you progress.


Obviously I attack Steel Song, so flying anywhere in the south-west and west of the map will get you a lot of kills for very little fuel cost

Flying between Hydri-Thulon Prime (4,-7) and Ursae-Thulun (6,-5) gets you a ton of Thulun encounters.


I'm still a gun-bunny ... so I believe so long as you keep your pilot and tactics up, and have a ship with 2EHr, you should be sweet right up to Insane level. Impossible level is always a mixed bag, so you can't just be a rampant slaughter on that difficulty level. I can 100% confirm though that high pilot, good tactics and a decent ship will make you untouchable in Crazy level. My current captain has 1,720 successful hostile encounters without a single loss.

[jango1]

Yeah the high pilot/Tactics/Ehr route is more than sufficient for Hard which is the 800 victory unlock. So it's a grindfest that I'm trying to accelerate. I only get like 10 victories per real life hour of game play so I gotta be missing something.

Do you go negative rep with Steel and never look back? I thought a warrant with one clan made the other clans cut your rep more for the rest of your life. So I 'conflict' hop, alternating between target factions to keep rep positive--much more time consuming than just going desporado extremeo.

Also are there any super productive, high traffic lanes for independents and/or Pirates? Whenever I cross the red space between Cadar Capital and either Tenneth or Rychart Prime I seem to get above average numbers of indie rat encounters.

Honestly all this powergame gimmick stuff feels like a desecration of such a damn good game. I want to just rampage rep-be-damned but 800/1117 victories is just such an incredibly high number that I doubt I'd ever make it. I made a boarding MO to get the Hard Alien Hunter award. Maybe I'll be more reckless with him...

God I love this game! Star Traders 2 can't come soon enough!

[slayernz]

Oh jango1 - I hope you don't have high stealth or anything that decreases deep space encounters. I did some quick tests over the holiday break flying from Devaltos Prime (1,1) to Zu Chong-Zhi (26,29) and back again. That was a 74AU round trip. I tried flying with:
* no cargo (hidden WF with WF tank)
- Test 1 = 17 encounters
- Test 2 = 18 encounters

* full WF (230 units of WF)
- Test 1 = 15 encounters
- Test 2 = 17 encounters

* 200 Artifacts
- Test 1 = 19 encounters
- Test 2 = 17 encounters

* 200 Weapons
- Test 1 = 13 encounters
- Test 2 = 13 encounters

* 200 Electronics
- Test 1 = 17 encounters
- Test 2 = 18 encounters

* 200 Records
- Test 1 = 21 encounters
- Test 2 = 24 encounters

This was all done around turn 40,000ish and with 34 stealth.

I know that having lower stealth does increase encounters (although haven't tested the impact), but this is offset by the fact you get more encounters as the game goes by. It took 2-3 minutes per 74AU run, although admittedly I didn't stop and kill every ship in every encounter (only killed Steel Song ships or those ships that didn't like me ignoring them). That can get you 500 encounters per hour

Oh ... and for steel song, I really don't care what my RP is with steel song. my captain is smiling as his rep is -49112 with steel song

Red zones are where you get more independent encounters - but you also chew through more fuel than in green zones. Also, focusing on independents all the time does have an impact on crew morale. Better solution is to allow your RP with 1-2 factions to go south and don't worry about it.

[jango1]

Thanks for putting in the research! I LOLed when I saw that 200 Weapons got the lowest encounters--guess you scared them off!

I can't believe that I only just noticed that defeating Indie ships hurt morale--I thought it was just contracts against Indies.

My stealth is low so that's not a problem. It's really just overly cautious rep management. I get plenty of encounters but I acknowledge them rather than fight.

My new MO boarding captain is doing well (just got the Alien Hive award!). I'll start attacking with him and go hooligan with his rep. I just traded in my Jango1 for a Javelin that I'll add crew upgrades to. Hack and slash time!

[slayernz]

Jango1 is an okay ship - but the "Jango Class" is way better ... it's one of those legendary ships that you almost always have to try and get when you find it

[jango1]

Is that the fat green and white Jango that starts appearing around the same time as the Jango1? That's the 15/30/30 H/E/S ship if I'm not mistaken. It's decent but it didn't stand out to me. Or are you talking about a third type of Jango?

Personally I've never bought one of the grand man'o'war ships with 100+ crew. I've always had Fast/Quick gun bunny ships. I'm keen to try my boarding captain in one of those larger flagships.

I upgraded my new Javelin Class but it's getting 0.70 water-fuel in green zones which is kind of a buzz kill. 104 crew with 14 Intimate might not be enough (17 pilot 18/38/38 H/E/S... freaking 20 Armor lolz).

[poryg]

There are still a couple of questions unanswered.
Selling records during spy wars doesn't hurt your rank. Only rep. You don't even lose rank for just having negative reputation as long as you avoid hostile encounters. However, with huge rank you are more susceptible to losing the rank due to alliance violations (i.e. Hostile encounters with ships in alliance with the faction and contracts against allies.)
From what I have read though, the only problem here was your mindset. Like in many Sim dating games, even here it counts that losing several relationship points doesn't mean the end of the world. So actually you just need to not be afraid to lose rep. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be afraid to lose it all, but the spy and solar wars are a mighty rep and exp source.
Last advice, having a huge rank with everyone is impractical. It cuts the buy and sell prices tremendously, so it's harder to make any profits through merchandise. It protects you from trade embargoes, but if you have 1600 rep, losing 400 to a trade embargo doesn't hurt you at all (okay, you lose trade permit, but that is just pocket money)

[xdesperado]

Kill everything that isn't one of your friendly factions.
Your a pirate so act like one, they aren't flying the flag of your home faction or another your trying to keep positive reply with they are fair game.
Keep stealth low, higher your stealth gets the lower your encounter rates.
Spend your XP, no reason to sit on it, if your a gun bunny get pilot to 200% level and tactics to 100% level and keep them there.
Always make sure your pilot rating is at least equal to Hull size or you'll not be as effective in combat and with fuel efficiency.
My current MO captain playing on Insane hasn't been overly aggressive so far, but at level 23 has 144 kills, positive Rep with all 3 clans, and several custom design ships all fully upgraded.
At this point an encounter with Xeno is about only thing that really worries me and I'll fly anywhere in quadrant with full hold of whatever(over 200 on largest ships).

[athios]

Focus on your objective. All other side goals that you have should be secondary concerns. As long as you have 1-2 factions that can provide safe havens and repairs when needed, you can blast all other factions to bits. Aside from keeping your stealth low, remember to also avoid ship upgrades that decrease encounters.

Final advice is don't get arrogant. I had a level 69 captain on Insane that I completed unlocks for 800 wins, 10 mill creds, Alien Flagship, Elite Space Hive. Then I bored, and reckless. Kept chasing Aliens, which by itself was fine, but I got killed by a Javat bounty hunter right after an encounter with an Alien. (I was only 74 wins away from the 1117 unlock. Sigh...) If you are getting bored, go play another captain and try to unlock something else. Then come back when you are ready to make progress.