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Post by grävling on Mar 24, 2017 11:41:24 GMT -5
 Things are going extremely poorly for this miserable captain, whose expenses outstrip his income. I have taken to only paying the crew who have yellow messages for me, and spicing the rest, but I am at the point where I cannot even afford to spice everybody. I predict a nasty mutiny followed by decapitation, soon. (And indeed, so it happened. sigh. I survived the mutiny but bled to death on the way to the nearest hospital.) I wonder if there is anything I could have done to stop the economic hemmoraging. Should I have fired the crew that were due the most amount of money and replaced them with level-1 cheaper bodies? Should I have fired the ones that had the worst morale? And should this screen tell me more information about my crew, such as how long it has been since they were paid, and their current morale? I tried to keep my fighter sorts up to date in payment, hoping they wouldn't mutiny on me, but the strategy did not work. Indeed, does 'how long has it been since they have been paid' have particular significance when looking at morale changes, or if I keep my people well-spiced, can I forget about the fact that I haven't paid them in 6 months, because they are no more likely to mutiny than the people who haven't missed a payment, but really didn't like the two Rychart torpedoes we just took, etc. ? |
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athios
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Post by athios on Mar 24, 2017 12:36:16 GMT -5
Keep in mind that if you choose to only pay certain people, all the other people who didn't get paid will lose morale when that payment is made. Merchant Talent — Generosity will help mitigate this morale loss.
I agree that it would be helpful to have Low Morale warning text on the Pay Crew list to help decide who to pay. Maybe the text should be conditional, only showing up when you don't have enough creds to pay everyone?
I think Mutiny chance is triggered by <20 Morale. It's my speculation only, but I don't think "how long it's been since last paid" affects Mutiny chance directly.
Firing low morale crew that you can't afford to pay should be able to help you avoid mutiny, but is kneecapping yourself in the long run (to lose the higher level crew), so it's a tough choice. In the future, if you find yourself low on creds, just stop buying W-F and save those creds for spicing instead. In one game I had gone probably a game year without W-F for majority time (only buying enough to make Hyperwarp jumps) and didn't have significant issues. If you happen to have 2+ Trade Permits, you can just stay in the same zone and make enough creds from trading to get back to zero debt.
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Post by grävling on Mar 24, 2017 12:55:32 GMT -5
Keep in mind that if you choose to only pay certain people, all the other people who didn't get paid will lose morale when that payment is made. Merchant Talent — Generosity will help mitigate this morale loss. I have these problems mostly at game start. I will be long dead before any Merchant is high enough level to have that talent. Mine aren't that high-level. It's just that they are starter high-attribute people. Good replacement officers for when my initial lot get killed, but the idea is to live that long ... Ah, I only buy W/F to hyperjump anyway. Is there any advantage to buying it other times? If you have been reading startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/15473/33-bad-indy-world-generation you can see that getting any sort of trade permit at all has been a real problem for captains like the one above. It's really hard to support a A or B choice ship, with a pacifist captain who is uninterested in death warrants and who cannot get a trade permit, in the early days of the game. At least on hard and above. |
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Post by fallen on Mar 24, 2017 14:14:31 GMT -5
Play a smaller ship until you are capable of making the income required for a larger ship? It is definitely a big difficulty increase to play the larger ships. You have to pay far more crew members and find ways to make far more money
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Post by grävling on Mar 24, 2017 14:46:05 GMT -5
Play a smaller ship until you are capable of making the income required for a larger ship? It is definitely a big difficulty increase to play the larger ships. You have to pay far more crew members and find ways to make far more money Well, when the game goes live I will most certainly start with a smallish ship and then buy a bigger one when my finances makes it desirable, and staff it with the well-trained crew I will move from the small ship. But now I am living in a universe where the ship you buy is the one in which you will die. Today's problem is -- I want to play a bigger ship, and I am temporarily bored with bounty hunting, as I did that all day Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. And the repair and maintenance costs! Ghastly. |
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athios
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Post by athios on Mar 24, 2017 14:47:53 GMT -5
If you have been reading startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/15473/33-bad-indy-world-generation you can see that getting any sort of trade permit at all has been a real problem for captains like the one above. It's really hard to support a A or B choice ship, with a pacifist captain who is uninterested in death warrants and who cannot get a trade permit, in the early days of the game. At least on hard and above. If that is the main cause of your troubles, I'd advise to simply stop using that Map. Generate a new one, and keep making new captains until you start in a zone with an Indy planet (preferably Industrial, High Tech Industrial or Orbital). Since starting planet is random, it may take a few tries. Compared to what you're facing now, the difficulty will drop by 10-fold. That is, unless you are specifically trying to survive on that crappy Map as a challenge... |
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athios
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Post by athios on Mar 24, 2017 14:57:40 GMT -5
As to larger ships, they are actually quite manageable if you have good starting conditions. The key thing is realizing that you don't need to keep the entire starting crew or max out to capacity. Especially if you are playing pacifist, dumping all the fighters and pare down to about 20-22 crew is sufficient to get by in the beginning. Then as crew level up and gain more skill points, further dump unneeded people. You'll be fine with 100-110% skill pool as long as you have appropriate Roll-Save Talents. When you get to reasonable financial stability, then you can hire more people to support ship upgrades.
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Post by grävling on Mar 24, 2017 15:29:33 GMT -5
Yes, at my current level of expertise I can have any 2 of: Experience at E, Ship at B, not be a Bounty Hunter. But not all 3.  |
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athios
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Post by athios on Mar 24, 2017 15:56:50 GMT -5
It's kind of interesting. In STRPG, your starting class makes certain activities/operations easier or more profitable, but in general you can be reasonably successful at prospering doing a wide variety of things or play styles regardless of which class you pick.
When I started in the ST2 Alpha and just learning each of the Professions, I focused in only on the activities of what I thought they specialize in. Now, so many builds into Alpha, I find the starting Profession of the Captain really doesn't matter all that much (except deciding Fighter vs. Pacifist), and I can pretty much be reasonably successful at anything, since the Officers pick up the slack.
You should try being a Merchant some more. Having good trading expertise can help you with any captain. TP3 and >1 Indy supplier/buyer planet seems to be the key for infinite credits.
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Post by grävling on Mar 24, 2017 16:51:01 GMT -5
Well, I was particularly interested in learning how to Smuggle .... But yes, new map, Huge indie industrial world with an hyperwarp hole right beside it that goes to an indie Tradeway. Lots of cash now.
But all of this comes of reading the ship flavour text saying that the Fidelis Cutter was the preferred ship of Smugglers, or some such. I thought -- good. I want one of those, too then.
So now I am in the position where I can actually smuggle if I want to, but there is no need, because the Indie worlds don't care.
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