Salendrak's Random Question Thread

[salendrak]

Greetings!

Just got the game about a week ago, already upgraded to elite, gave it a 5-star rating, and am loving it.

So far I've only played a Star Trader as a peaceful merchant up to level 17 on normal difficulty. Over $1.5 million credits, legendary hero w/ home faction, positive with everyone else. Have permits and rank with everyone, and have gotten a couple of different achievements. Next class I'm (unsuccessfully) trying is a Military Officer. Keep running out of credits, getting blown up, or generally failing, but will keep plugging away at it.

Anyways, I'm still trying to figure out all the game mechanics, so I thought I would open a thread to post all my random questions as they pop up.

First a couple of soft-balls:

1) Achievement Unlocks: When there is a difficulty requirement to unlock something, do you have to do it on the exact difficulty, or does a higher difficulty also give you the unlock?

2) Trade Permits: What are the specific activities and circumstances that can result it losing a trade permit? I haven't kept specific track of ways I've lost permits, but so far it seems like violating a trade embargo does it. Is this at all reputation based? What about blowing things up? Still trying to figure this one out specifically.

3) Spy Wars: I understand that selling records gives a reputation bonus, but does it matter where you do surveillance to get the records? Or does the act of running surveillance just cause negative reputation wherever you do it, as well as cause that faction to attack you?

4) Benefits versus consequences? My Star Trader tried really hard not to upset anyone, but I'm thinking my Military Officer won't be so lucky. Assuming I start fighting in wars, do the reputation benefits outweigh the reputation hits? If so, would it work to ping-pong between the sides and get a net increase with both factions involved in the war?

That's all for now, but I'm sure there will be more questions later.

Cheers!

[Cory Trese]

1 - stated difficulty or harder to unlock
2 - violation of trade embargo, interference with merchants, failure of delivery contracts
3 - the source of the records does not matter
4 - when I play military officer I try to keep 2 Factions positive (Cadar / Thulun for me.)

Everyone, I destroy, loot and pillage. Right now my fav guy is +1000 with both home factions and -2000 with everyone else

[slayernz]

Ak, I can't believe you actually support Thulun dogs in their quest for galactic kennel dominance. When I sabotaged the water-bowl factory on Bellix-Thullun I, I thought I would cripple their infrastructure for sure. Little did I realise that I needed to take out the toilet bowl factories in the galaxy too ...

[Cory Trese]

ahhh, excuse me while I go buff the Thulun Planetary Defense Forces.

What did you say you were calling that little rinky dink ship you terrorize the galaxy in?

The "Stench of Cadar" was it?

[slayernz]

I <cough> must confess that one of my ships uses a "Honor of Thulun" chassis, but only because I got a really good price for it and my Cadar compatriots agreed to help scrape the muck that is Thulun out of the ship.

It's fully upgraded with the best that Cadar can buy - purging the Thulun torps on Thulun ships was a little bit of irony - I needed to put the best torps into the ship and only Cadar brand is best.

And Cadari people don't smell. They just choose to believe that bathing is an inefficient use of water-fuel ... or crew facilities for that matter. Who needs a ship shower when you could have extra weapons racks and torp cradles fitted.

[salendrak]

I am appalled that you gentlemen would serve any but the noble houses. The syndicates can burn in toxic polluted radioactive magma wastelands for all I care!

My Military Officer seems to be doing well. I had a couple of early deaths, but the current guy is now lvl13 Expert Captain, flying a Scimitar ship of some sort that I captured. I think the key was waiting to go on the offensive against anyone until after I already had my permits/rank/edicts with my chosen factions, as well as buffed up combat skills.

Now I am flying around the galaxy shooting down syndicate scum with impunity ;D

[Cory Trese]

salendrak -- nice. It is a game for planning and managing numbers.

Going in "guns blazing" from the start will only yield painful, short careers.


The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

- Sun Tzu

[salendrak]

Back to random questions: In these types of games I like to make mental (and sometimes written) notes of general principles to play by. Kind of like keeping to they pirates code (which is really just a bunch of guidelines).

With stats, I get the impression that trying to be a jack of all trades and master of none will maybe get you to a mid-level career, but not much further. Several classes can probably completely ignore certain skills (my military officer hasn't put a single point into Explorer or Negotiate), but it seems like Pilot and Stealth are pretty much universally necessary. That sound about right?

Another thought: What's the deal with big, slow, clumsy ships? What circumstances would you ever want something that is slow with low agility? Looking at various ship lists I've found, it seems like there are plenty of other options with good stats but faster speed/agility. Or are they just in the game to be fodder for pirates/trade wars/solar wars/ etc?

[Cory Trese]

Fast / Quick ships take up a lot more fuel and suffer more critical hits.

Big slow and reliable, efficient and tough.

[salendrak]

Military Officer Contract Surveillance Special Ability: How do you use this? I've done surveillance at contact locations and gotten the toast about having gather information on the target, but other than that, where do I see the information that was gathered or how do I otherwise benefit from said information?

I've looked around all over in the interface but couldn't find anything...

[Cory Trese]

If you fail the Capture / Destroy Contract AFTER "Military Officer Contract Surveillance Special Ability" the Contract will remain active and you can repeat using "Military Officer Contract Surveillance Special Ability" or attempt the Contract again.

The BH has a similar, only faster and more easily accumulated "Contract Surveillance Special Ability."

[salendrak]

Ahhh, ok. I think I read a similar thread about this skill saying that if the target is in a beefy ship you don't want to fight, you can ignore (or otherwise retreat) and then try again later, hoping the target will be in something weaker. Thanks for the quick reply!

[Cory Trese]

yah that's correct like if they are riding with a bounty hunter in a jango class, you just acknowledge ... if you catch them in a shuttle, open fire =)

it can take several weeks. a cautious BH only takes 1 or 2 big contracts at a time because of the risk for edict loss, etc

[salendrak]

Aug 8, 2011 12:09:31 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Fast / Quick ships take up a lot more fuel and suffer more critical hits.

Big slow and reliable, efficient and tough.

Couple of ship related questions:

I think I read in the manual that engines are used to power the guns, among other things. If you have more guns than engines, does that mean the extra guns are basically useless? Or does more engines increase the effectiveness of the guns you have?

With hull sizes, does a bigger hull alone increase the frequency of random encounters while flying around the map, or is frequency of random encounters more affected by stealth, ship upgrades, and tastyc cargo?

As I understand it, bigger hulls help to reduce incoming damage (as does armor), but it also tends to result in slower, less agile ships. So big slow would be harder to kill, but also less able to run away when attacked. Hence a big/slow ship might be good for a military officer that only tends to fight targets that don't plan on running away anyways.

[salendrak]

Well, my military office just bit the space dust at level 25. At the time he was flying in friendly territory in a fully upgraded Behemoth class capital ship. I don't even remember what the ship was that attacked him, other than it being a Rychart warship of some sort. Battle seemed to be going fine, got into boarding range, and after two boards, suddenly all the ship stats dropped to zero, and he was executed. In-game text didn't give me any clue as to what actually happened - my crew was doing damage to them, but then the engines were gone

Early in his career he had decided to completely ignore faction reputation with all of the syndicates. Although he was a legendary hero with each noble house, he was an equally despised criminal with all of the syndicates. Perhaps that was part of his downfall.

Stat and skill-wise, here's what he had going for him (tips / suggestions / comments welcome!):

Charisma - 12
Wisdom - 15
Quickness - 40
Strength - 20

Explorer - 1
Pilot - 39
Negotiate - 1
Tactics - 15
Stealth - 22
Warrior - 20
Intimidate - 12

So yeah, really not sure what happened to lose that battle, but it was definitely a fun class / style to play. Perhaps next time I'll try to keep off the galaxy's most wanted list, and focus more on just contracts rather than indiscriminately killing all syndicate scum.