Coasting vs. Challenging

[jango1]

After I started getting the basics down, I really got motivated to chase unlocks. It is a fun way to explore other classes and difficulties.

Now I'm facing very, very difficult awards (for me) centered on high numbers of victories/Ranks/contracts/looting. I'm having to use a play style that isn't quite as enjoyable. I miss my days lazily sipping coffee, feet up in the bridge, with a hold full of cargo that someone is short on

Did any other players find themselves in this position? What was your reaction? Nowadays do you coast on manageable difficulties or stay challenged?

(I was 2 Ranks short of 80 when I died over the weekend... technically my captain died but a small piece of me died with her :*( ... and her Templar, her bodyguard, and military officer--"hundreds of crew dead, worse still they've closed the Savegame!"

[fallen]

jango - interesting question! I find for a lot of the awards, it is best to start a Captain specifically to hunt that award. If its scored, they either go on to the halls of glory (coasting) or I retire them because they are so broken from the ordeal! Next to those saves, I keep my favorite story Captains who I've reveled in their legend and I am usually trying to coast along with ... until the xeno

[slayernz]

jango1 yes, some of my captain deaths took a while for me to get over. They become your "go-to" captain, and you fall into a sense of disbelief when they go from being untouchable to just plain dead

For your main discussion though - even if you weren't going for the unlocks, you shouldn't just be filling up your cargo hold with stuff waiting for a shortage situation to occur. Have you been using wilderness caches? They become essential for storing mountains of stock in case there is a shortage, or even more importantly, in case there is a trade embargo and you desperately need fuel.

Once you figure out the best planets for caching your loot, you're more inclined to go out and "acquire" more loot to fill your cargo hold. You do this by actively hunting for things to shoot down, ore more circumspectly, by doing contracts and running into non-friendly ships as a bonus.

Rule of thumb - be friendly to at least 1 syndicate and 1 house, but ideally around 3-4 factions should be your friends. You don't necessarily need to be friends with everyone (at least not until you get to harder difficulties), so have 1-3 factions that you can bring the pain to. Steel Song are always good for shooting at.

Active hunting mode ...
Pick a faction, any faction (maybe Steel Song, maybe even Steel Song) and target their ships for attacks. If you have really good pilot skill and some tactics points, you should be able to gun-bunny your way through lots. Looting the ships and then returning the loot to your cache is a sure-fire way to build up stocks. Also, you get to unlock the Doom Reaper I, II, & III awards (on demanding difficulty). If you play Hard difficulty, you can unlock the Privateer awards for looting too

Doing contracts mode ...
Pick up one or two contracts from friendly factions and complete them. You should get good money for contracts after a while - initially they are a bit low in terms of cash, but by the time you have good RP with that faction and the contract is distant (like 20-30+ AU away), you should be getting $100k per contract pretty regularly. Easy money for hauling a few passengers, or destroying another ship or blockading. Oh, and by the way, not only are you getting easy money and probable loot from ships you encounter on the way, but also you get the Contractor unlocks (assuming you don't fail or reject too many contracts).

So for me - don't necessarily focus on the unlock - focus on doing an activity that you want to figure out how to milk, and the unlocks should come as a matter of course. The great thing about it is that Cory Trese really thought about what would be good for the player to do to get the most out of the game, and made rewards for those actions. Sure there are rewards for extra stuff, but the majority of unlocks are for trying and doing new things that will benefit your gameplay in the longer run.

Oh oh oh ... and I don't recommend getting a single captain to do every single unlock. I have one captain that was going for it, but I got too frustrated with some of the super-long awards (like do 350 contracts!)

[jango1]

Dec 17, 2015 16:26:01 GMT -5 fallen said:

or I retire them because they are so broken from the ordeal

Excellent way to phrase that. "So broken" is how I feel after certain unlocks.. I have made several specialist captains just for an unlock. I'll never forget my first terror-filled sprint on Insane to get the Homeworld award. I like the variety of gameplay that ST offers though so I usually take a break from the captain and start a new one after recording my 'sploits.

@slayerz Right now I'm playing a spy on crazy. I didn't really target an unlock but just wanted to get a feel for the next higher difficulty. I'm everyone's friend and kind of unintentionally stumbled into the Rank and Honor unlocks (started DeVos, but I'm Legendary Steel Song, just the way the diplomacy crumbles

I do cache fuel and contraband for gearing up to spycade when I am a Spy,MO, or Zealot. I was surprised how even risky core planet sites haven't been looted. My merchants don't cache too too much though. I generally do short routes in the NW until I get a shortage rumor. My current merchant's skills are heavily skewed to negotiate/charisma so combat is... icky. It's a fun niche challenge though. Kinda wish there were awards noncombatants: Expert Coward: Successfully escape from 100 encounters, defeat fewer than 17, attack fewer than 47.

My pirate is more your speed though. Templar officer for close range engine gunning. I haven't been slowly growing a cache of trade goods though. I just sell the 'trash' that doesn't earn RP at the nearest planet. But saving it for a shortage might be a good idea once my cashflow is healthy.

I really like your contract advice. I've never been a big contractor so I never noticed that contract payouts get to be consistently $100K+. I've done some cross-quarant ones like that occasionally but I had no idea high rank/rep could make moderate contacts pay that much as well.

Truth be told I'm so picky that I have rejected too many contracts to get the awards. I'm always on the way somewhere and like, "Pffft, I ain't going way the hell over there, banging up my sails and burning gas in the redzones of hinter-space!"

I agree that Cory did an excellent job making sure the awards were part of the natural flow of the game. Without them I might never have left vanilla easy mode gameplay and never would have known the joys of zealotry.

My captains die so easily that variety is inevitable with all my restarts. How much do you stray from gun-bunny? Or do your captains live to a ripe old age so you aren't restarting too much?