Post by ayra on Nov 20, 2015 10:32:24 GMT -5
I first started by failing horribly. Then I read the instruction manual, and still failed horribly.
After a few more tries, I managed to get an extremely good run going on Demanding. I had a good start, fell down to complete disaster (130 credits left, 3 crew members total, heavily damaged ship and 6 wounds on my captain) and still managed to recover. I had a great ship, a full fanatical crew, over an hundred thousands in the bank, multiple military ranks with all the Syndicates, as well as trade permits and death warrants with all of them. And then I encountered a pirate, blah blah Rychard Syndicate on both lines, surrender as usual since I got positive relations and a trade permit, and bam. My captain's executed... That was a mighty disappointing game over to say the least. So. Here's my list of questions I gathered from that playthrough:
- Is it possible for a pirate ship to be flying fake colors? I assume that it's most likely my fault and that I misread something and it was actually a Steel Song pirate ship in Rychard's space, but I'd like to make sure that's the case and not a game mechanism. In other words, I'd like to know if it's always safe to surrender to a pirate ship that comes from a faction you have a trade permit with and positive relations.
- Is there a way to re-read the little messages that sometime appear for a split second on the bottom when you enter a spaceport? I never get a chance to actually read them completely, and sometime I really would like to know what happened. For example, a good part of my downward spiral (before the miraculous recovery) started when I had an extremely lucrative cargo mission around 50 AU away to De Valto prime. I normally didn't take cargo missions (especially at extreme distances), but the time length was very long and the monetary gain was definitively worth it. The travel was difficult (two failed bounty hunting contracts on the way, and one unusually nasty encounter with a bounty hunter that caused a lot of damage), and when I got there, a little message flashed by at the bottom. Something about the Exchange getting closed because of something... I had around 50 weeks spare for the quest, but the exchange never got opened again (at least not within the 50 weeks) and I failed the quest and missed all the money I sorely needed to get back on my feet. If I could have actually read the message, maybe I'd have figured out if there was something I could have done to reopen the Exchange?
- How does the Military Officer special surveillance ability works exactly? My understanding from the manual is that if you do a successful Surveillance check, you can choose to fight the enemy target, or reroll its faction and if it escapes you get an additional chance to catch it. However, all I managed to get through Surveillance (after many, many failures every time even after raising the appropriate stat very high) is a message that says "You have successfully gathered information about your target", and that's it. What does that information give me?
- What's the point of torpedoes? Unlike guns, your torpedo damage is not affected by your amount of torpedo or anything else (I think?) so you can't increase it. Since they are only useful at extreme range, you can fire a torpedo at the enemy and hit them, but they just escape on the same turn and you just lost an hefty amount of money for no gain. Even if it comes to a fight, it doesn't help you capture an enemy ship, just blow it up. I rarely found myself in a situation where I wanted to blow up a ship instead of disable it. My super awesome ship I captured had only 2 torpedo slots (it's only drawback) and I honestly didn't find myself missing them at all.
- Is there any way to increase your odds of finding smuggling/trading ships? Cadar (my starting faction) got into a Trade War very early with Steel Song and I tried to find Steel Song trade ships to attack. Patrolling either on or close to Steel Song planets only net me warships and pirates (even before I became hostile to them), and never trading ships. I randomly came across some Steel Song trade ships, but I didn't see any rhyme or reason for these encounters. It was only chance that let me find those.
- Do conflicts between factions ever end? My game very quickly into an all-out brawl of the Syndicates versus the Clans, but none of the conflicts ever changed or got resolved. I didn't mind since I was a military officer and basically took a "pirate every non-warship clan vessel" approach later on.
- I know that you can get "free" records during a Spy War if you surveillance an enemy system, and you get massive relationship points for selling those to a faction. Does something like that apply in a Solar War or the knife-fight-thing-I-don't-recall-the-name-off?
Thanks!
After a few more tries, I managed to get an extremely good run going on Demanding. I had a good start, fell down to complete disaster (130 credits left, 3 crew members total, heavily damaged ship and 6 wounds on my captain) and still managed to recover. I had a great ship, a full fanatical crew, over an hundred thousands in the bank, multiple military ranks with all the Syndicates, as well as trade permits and death warrants with all of them. And then I encountered a pirate, blah blah Rychard Syndicate on both lines, surrender as usual since I got positive relations and a trade permit, and bam. My captain's executed... That was a mighty disappointing game over to say the least. So. Here's my list of questions I gathered from that playthrough:
- Is it possible for a pirate ship to be flying fake colors? I assume that it's most likely my fault and that I misread something and it was actually a Steel Song pirate ship in Rychard's space, but I'd like to make sure that's the case and not a game mechanism. In other words, I'd like to know if it's always safe to surrender to a pirate ship that comes from a faction you have a trade permit with and positive relations.
- Is there a way to re-read the little messages that sometime appear for a split second on the bottom when you enter a spaceport? I never get a chance to actually read them completely, and sometime I really would like to know what happened. For example, a good part of my downward spiral (before the miraculous recovery) started when I had an extremely lucrative cargo mission around 50 AU away to De Valto prime. I normally didn't take cargo missions (especially at extreme distances), but the time length was very long and the monetary gain was definitively worth it. The travel was difficult (two failed bounty hunting contracts on the way, and one unusually nasty encounter with a bounty hunter that caused a lot of damage), and when I got there, a little message flashed by at the bottom. Something about the Exchange getting closed because of something... I had around 50 weeks spare for the quest, but the exchange never got opened again (at least not within the 50 weeks) and I failed the quest and missed all the money I sorely needed to get back on my feet. If I could have actually read the message, maybe I'd have figured out if there was something I could have done to reopen the Exchange?
- How does the Military Officer special surveillance ability works exactly? My understanding from the manual is that if you do a successful Surveillance check, you can choose to fight the enemy target, or reroll its faction and if it escapes you get an additional chance to catch it. However, all I managed to get through Surveillance (after many, many failures every time even after raising the appropriate stat very high) is a message that says "You have successfully gathered information about your target", and that's it. What does that information give me?
- What's the point of torpedoes? Unlike guns, your torpedo damage is not affected by your amount of torpedo or anything else (I think?) so you can't increase it. Since they are only useful at extreme range, you can fire a torpedo at the enemy and hit them, but they just escape on the same turn and you just lost an hefty amount of money for no gain. Even if it comes to a fight, it doesn't help you capture an enemy ship, just blow it up. I rarely found myself in a situation where I wanted to blow up a ship instead of disable it. My super awesome ship I captured had only 2 torpedo slots (it's only drawback) and I honestly didn't find myself missing them at all.
- Is there any way to increase your odds of finding smuggling/trading ships? Cadar (my starting faction) got into a Trade War very early with Steel Song and I tried to find Steel Song trade ships to attack. Patrolling either on or close to Steel Song planets only net me warships and pirates (even before I became hostile to them), and never trading ships. I randomly came across some Steel Song trade ships, but I didn't see any rhyme or reason for these encounters. It was only chance that let me find those.
- Do conflicts between factions ever end? My game very quickly into an all-out brawl of the Syndicates versus the Clans, but none of the conflicts ever changed or got resolved. I didn't mind since I was a military officer and basically took a "pirate every non-warship clan vessel" approach later on.
- I know that you can get "free" records during a Spy War if you surveillance an enemy system, and you get massive relationship points for selling those to a faction. Does something like that apply in a Solar War or the knife-fight-thing-I-don't-recall-the-name-off?
Thanks!
lol