Miss Shen: first successful Impossible difficulty captain
Aug 2, 2016 0:29:33 GMT -5
Cory Trese likes this
Post by redartrats on Aug 2, 2016 0:29:33 GMT -5
Captain Miss Shen, on Impossible difficulty (yes, very lame pun, I know), was one of my first captains to survive past level 1 on this difficulty. She started out as a Cadar military officer, and after a few close shaves with death in the early years of her career decided to play it safe and be a cowardly delivery girl, politely declining assassination contracts and any unnecessarily risky ventures. Do not mistake her for a softie, though. Her primary survival tactic was to pinch pennies by refusing to buy water fuel. Thanks to her reading of the legends of one Captain Chui Ta, who had a reputation of not buying a single drop of WF in his entire career, she adopted a similar strategy. Her crew were expected to fly from one end of the Quadrant to the other end on nothing more than the bare drops of ice they had to collect from the hazardous deadly cold of deep space, themselves. Oh, they mutinied against this, all right. She did not falter. Not once did she succumb to their demands; she triumphed over every one of the 14 mutinies in her career. It was only later, after having acquired significant wealth (100K credits), that she began giving concessions in the form of luxury rations. Not buying WF in the initial game proved to be very effective, especially when contracts were paying ridiculously low amounts for unreasonably long distances. It allowed her to almost completely ignore WF efficiency and just focus on pacifying the crew just enough to reduce the frequency of mutinies.
She discovered that long-range contracts were quite profitable, and, without "wasting" credits on WF, more than enough to live on. She would take short-term contracts on the way to fill long-term contracts, as one of the ways of pacifying her crew. She was an imposing and intimidating captain, and could therefore drive her crew to work without WF for long periods of time before morale begins to deteriorate. Of course, during refuelling stops she would often also pacify them at the spice halls in order to prolong their patience.
Throughout her career she kept up good relations with the Syndicates, especially with her home faction of Cadar. Her reputation with the Clans was more spotty. At one time she was labelled a wanted criminal and was arrested 3 times. However, toward the end, her reputation with them recovered to the single digits on the positive, with only Thulun still being suspicious of her. However, she never did manage to purchase any Trade Permits from the Clans.
She managed to survive this way up to lvl 12, at 2015 turns and 217 experience, before a series of blunders (mainly overconfidence and failure to monitor the state of her health) led to her untimely demise at the hands of independent pirates. She had $262,144 credits to her name at the time of her death in 95.39AE. (An interesting coincidence, 262144 being exactly 2^18.) She had completed 50 contracts and failed 2, expiring another 5 due to spending too much time at the spice halls to pacify her frequently mutinous crew.
Overall, she did much better than I thought I could ever manage on Impossible difficulty. Funnily enough, the formula for success here seems remarkably similar to the strategy Captain Chui Ta adopted for the WF community challenge. Playing in this way, Impossible difficulty didn't feel that much worse than playing WF-less on Hard. Except perhaps the hostile encounters, which were always brutal even when the enemy captain was of significantly lower level.
She discovered that long-range contracts were quite profitable, and, without "wasting" credits on WF, more than enough to live on. She would take short-term contracts on the way to fill long-term contracts, as one of the ways of pacifying her crew. She was an imposing and intimidating captain, and could therefore drive her crew to work without WF for long periods of time before morale begins to deteriorate. Of course, during refuelling stops she would often also pacify them at the spice halls in order to prolong their patience.
Throughout her career she kept up good relations with the Syndicates, especially with her home faction of Cadar. Her reputation with the Clans was more spotty. At one time she was labelled a wanted criminal and was arrested 3 times. However, toward the end, her reputation with them recovered to the single digits on the positive, with only Thulun still being suspicious of her. However, she never did manage to purchase any Trade Permits from the Clans.
She managed to survive this way up to lvl 12, at 2015 turns and 217 experience, before a series of blunders (mainly overconfidence and failure to monitor the state of her health) led to her untimely demise at the hands of independent pirates. She had $262,144 credits to her name at the time of her death in 95.39AE. (An interesting coincidence, 262144 being exactly 2^18.) She had completed 50 contracts and failed 2, expiring another 5 due to spending too much time at the spice halls to pacify her frequently mutinous crew.
Overall, she did much better than I thought I could ever manage on Impossible difficulty. Funnily enough, the formula for success here seems remarkably similar to the strategy Captain Chui Ta adopted for the WF community challenge. Playing in this way, Impossible difficulty didn't feel that much worse than playing WF-less on Hard. Except perhaps the hostile encounters, which were always brutal even when the enemy captain was of significantly lower level.