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Post by fallen on May 6, 2018 19:49:49 GMT -5
Great to hear! Each play style is different with different types of crew, contact, talent and component requirements. You'll need to find the right contacts to sell Intel just as you need to find the right place to sell them. A veteran Steam player posted this a few weeks back, this was his Explorer's stash on a wild zone about 5 AU away from the Smuggler he had Rep'd up with for Ironclad Black Market access. Whenever he needed a few hundred thousand credits, he made a Black Market run. It's easy to write off professions. I would suggest if they don't appeal to you, write them off and try some other things. In time, you'll get a tighter handle on the mechanics and come back and find them fun I think.
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athios
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Post by athios on May 15, 2018 0:08:12 GMT -5
Holy moly that's a lot of Xeno artifacts! XD
This thread does bring up a good point. Is it reasonable to expect a new player to intuit or quickly pick up enough about the game mechanics to thrive as an Explorer? If the answer isn't a resounding yes, might want to reconsider having it as one of the four default templates... A new player might get frustrated and just quit playing altogether.
Regarding point (a), a possible solution is to have all 4 Operations buttons displayed at all planets, with the non-applicable Operations greyed out. If you hover over the grey button, it would explain why it's not available at this planet. This would give new players a simple hint, and not inconvenience veteran players.
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athios
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Post by athios on May 15, 2018 0:25:34 GMT -5
daveal , regarding where you can sell the Xeno artifacts, there's something you need to understand. Trade Law = Legality = what you are allowed to buy from or sell on that specific settlement. Trade Law is set by the local Prince(ss) however they want to run their world. If it's illegal, it doesn't matter what kind of a big shot you are, you can't trade them the Trade Exchange. The other type of controlled product are Restricted Goods, where trading is limited to Star Traders who hold Faction-issued Trade Permits (TP), which come in 4 levels. Higher TP goods have higher base cost and bigger profit margins, but the permits themselves require you to have good Reputation with a high Influence Contact. If you get can access to the Black Market, then you can buy/sell Restricted Goods without the relevant TP, even if it's illegal goods on that planet. Note that Black Market access also comes in 4 levels, equivalent to the TPs. So for example you'd need to reach a Black Market 4 in order buy/sell TP4 goods.
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athios
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Post by athios on May 15, 2018 0:33:15 GMT -5
I don't understand the spice hall window all the time. See: imgur.com/Honan7l (have not figured out how to make "insert image" work on this board) Why is the pay button greyed out, and showing zero crew? I have money. I thought that there was a limit to how many times you could click the button in a row, but if that is the problem, then how do I know? And what is the computation behind it? This happens pretty often, so I could save a game, but probably you know. Lack of available spice. See the title of any spice hall screen, "0 Spice and Entertainment Available" Doctor has a similar counter. In the screenshot, you still see "Spice" in yellow text next to each listed low morale crew member. It might be helpful in this case to change the text to "No more Spice available" so new players are more aware of this. The counter on the top right isn't very apparent unless you already know what to look for.
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athios
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Post by athios on May 15, 2018 1:02:49 GMT -5
(h): I tried starting with two contacts so that they would be closer. Yes, that worked and I could hire *one* exo scout. But when I went back a year later to get a second one, the contact's influence was zero, so I was not able to hire any. I did four straight missions for her without doing anything else; after two missions her influence was up to 5 (but 10 is required to hire), and after the next two, her influence was -1. I have no idea how to affect that, so as far as I can tell, hiring exo scouts is just impossible in that map. Regarding your Retired Exo-Scout contact always spawning very far away, I think this might have to do with your order of contact choice during captain creation. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe you can only have 4 starting contacts in your starting quadrant. Any additional contacts that you pick after the first four will be far away. Maybe trying picking Retired Exo-Scout first, and see if that works? If this is wrong info, I'll remove it. Regarding contact influence, there are many other reasons why their influence will drop, even if you are working for them. For example, if their Faction loses a Conflict, if there had been a local Civil Unrest or Blockade rumor, or another contact (whom you may or may not know) has been trying to hinder your contact. My advise is if you want more Recruits, get them relatively early on while the political waters are fairly calm in early game. Setting Contacts higher up in the Priority List during captain creation can also give them a boost.
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Post by contributor on May 15, 2018 3:49:46 GMT -5
Actually athios I think you might be mistaken about Black Markets respecting the legality of the zone. I haven't played in awhile, but I'm 90% sure that they don't and if I'm reading the wiki correctly it confirms that. startraders.gamepedia.com/Black_MarketIf you can't sell artifacts in a black market it probably has to do with not getting high enough access level which requires high enough rep with the sponsoring contact and/or certain talents that will help get better access. Also worth noting is that there are occasionally faction zones with a Trade Law of 2. So if you have an L4 Permit you can sell them in those faction exchanges. Those zones are pretty rare though.
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Post by contributor on May 15, 2018 4:02:50 GMT -5
One thought is that some of this info, about where and how to sell artifacts, could be included in the consult officers button in wild zones. I don't know how many people use those or if they would find it there, but it would make some sense that, since that is where you will find most artifacts, there would be something pointing you in the right direction there.
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athios
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Post by athios on May 15, 2018 9:35:10 GMT -5
contributor, thanks for pointing that out. It was probably my wrong impressions from early alpha before things were fully fleshed out, and I haven't been keeping up with the developments since I've never really delved into playing a Smuggler. Maybe I should try that next.
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Post by daveal on May 15, 2018 9:37:23 GMT -5
Regarding your Retired Exo-Scout contact always spawning very far away, I think this might have to do with your order of contact choice during captain creation. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe you can only have 4 starting contacts in your starting quadrant. Any additional contacts that you pick after the first four will be far away. Maybe trying picking Retired Exo-Scout first, and see if that works? If this is wrong info, I'll remove it. Thanks for the various suggestions! Can anybody confirm or deny that the order you pick the contacts in the creation screen controls their distance? Good point. In another game, after ten years as a merchant I had a good list of contacts, so I decided to hire some specialist crew. I tried at least 4-5 contacts who could offer them. But, every single one of them had some problem. Some had negative influence, which is harder to fix. The others had zero personal rep, and their missions were all multi-multi-jump (like 3+2+5 jump) for one rep bump. I gave up trying and just went with empty officer/crew berths.
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athios
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Post by athios on May 15, 2018 11:07:11 GMT -5
Good point. In another game, after ten years as a merchant I had a good list of contacts, so I decided to hire some specialist crew. I tried at least 4-5 contacts who could offer them. But, every single one of them had some problem. Some had negative influence, which is harder to fix. The others had zero personal rep, and their missions were all multi-multi-jump (like 3+2+5 jump) for one rep bump. I gave up trying and just went with empty officer/crew berths. Look for one that will buy Intel. That's an easy way to quickly gain Personal Rep and boost their Influence as well.
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Post by drspendlove on May 15, 2018 11:08:35 GMT -5
Intel is king for influence. Rare Trade Goods is a secondary route to accomplish the same.
You can also try to use some trading talents the merchant has to boost personal reputation with some contacts that you're just a little shy of where you need to be with.
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Post by daveal on May 15, 2018 19:37:55 GMT -5
Can anybody confirm or deny that the order you pick the contacts in the creation screen controls their distance? Based on a small sample set (one new game) that does "seem" correct. In the template summary screen, the contacts are shown in order. For 6 contacts, the first four were of my faction in my starting system, and the last two were foreign and in some other system. Confirmation from the devs if possible would be nice, and then I hope we can have a mention of this in the wiki somewhere. The last two contacts may be far off, which is important, since they cannot play any role in the early game.
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Post by fallen on May 15, 2018 20:17:01 GMT -5
Yes, this is in fact the case. I was just working on the display for this yesterday so that it can be clear in the game. While having it on the wiki would be great, it shouldn't be needed.
The first step was to list "up to 3 foreign factions" in the template builder for contacts.
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athios
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Post by athios on May 15, 2018 21:00:44 GMT -5
(h): it seems very hard to get exo scouts for your crew... That makes it really hard to get any as crew and give them a chance to level. I tried starting with two contacts so that they would be closer. Yes, that worked and I could hire *one* exo scout... I have no idea how to affect that, so as far as I can tell, hiring exo scouts is just impossible in that map. It just occurred to me that you're probably over-relying on Contacts to get these recruits that seem very important to your game plan. Remember that you start the game with (depending on which ship you choose) 3-4 other starting Officers, possibly with one spare slot once you buy another Officer Cabin. If you are aiming to bump your ship's Explore dice pool or get extra reroll talents, you can get one or multiple of your Officers to take up Explorer as a second/third job. Doctor/Exo-Scout can be a powerful combat ally as well. You can also promote one of your starting Soldiers to an Officer and get her Exo-Scout as second job.
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Post by daveal on May 15, 2018 23:19:31 GMT -5
It just occurred to me that you're probably over-relying on Contacts to get these recruits that seem very important to your game plan. I was probably overcompensating. Earlier in the thread, I had put one explorer contact late in my list and I only wanted to give one officer slot to explorer. Since the explorer contact wound up seven jumps away, my explore dice pool was small and there wasn't any way to grow it. This seems like a common beginner problem which cannot happen with spying or patrolling, since the key talents for this are on every pilot and gunner. It is easy (I would even say "necessary") to have four gunners with supremacy of firepower for patrolling. I still feel that if you want to start out the game as an explorer because that sounds cool, you will have a very hard time. Hopefully the TB can adjust this. I don't think it is just me. In the game I mentioned more recently, I put the explorer contact first and since he was in my starting system, I immediately grabbed two exo-scout crew to replace the starting soldiers. This way, they could level up naturally and they would be at least medium level before I had to do any exploring. That worked much better. So far that crew is only into the early twenties. I haven't found that much benefit to having primary and secondary jobs over level 11, so I have started picking up explorer or exo-scout as the third job.
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