Victory over Narvidian Harvester!

[redartrats]

Woohoo! Today, for the first time, I managed to defeat a Narvidian Harvester, one of those nasty things that usually just squishes my Captain like a bug against a windshield and wipes him off the plane of existence.

It was a heated battle between Resilient Cruiser and Lvl:115 Narvidian Harvester, and the initial torp attacks against it failed to acquire the target. Guns at mid range also missed. With boarding inevitable, I decided to preemptively board the Narv instead of letting them board me, and thus commenced a nerve-wracking exchange of duels, in which my captain initially dealt a hefty blow against the enemy, but then began to fail to do much damage while the enemy swiftly wiped out a big chunk of my crew. Fortunately, my Captain has Warrior skill at 80, and eventually despite great losses of crew, the message popped up: "Turn #19 Resilient Cruiser's attack party boarded Narvidian Harvester and inflicted 4 damage suffering 4 hits in the fighting... the enemy Captain was wounded in a Duel... and KILLED!" WOOHOO!!!!

I know this probably is just a small deal for you alien-hunting pros... but this was my first time winning against a significantly dangerous Alien ship, and man does it feel good!

[fallen]

redartrats - that's a huge milestone, congrats. Now, rush to a nearby prime world and visit the doctor, repair that hull, and recruit some new crew dogs! Don't let yourself die after something that awesome!

[redartrats]

Yep, done all that, now ready to go trawling over that dead planet again. It took visits to 4 planets to regain the crew I'd lost. I guess news travels fast about my Captain having taken up Alien hunting, and less volunteers are willing to sign up for a potentially fatal job.

[Cory Trese]

Congrats!

[fallen]

Jun 7, 2016 0:09:34 GMT -5 redartrats said:

Yep, done all that, now ready to go trawling over that dead planet again. It took visits to 4 planets to regain the crew I'd lost. I guess news travels fast about my Captain having taken up Alien hunting, and less volunteers are willing to sign up for a potentially fatal job.

Lol, yes ... I am sure the scars, missing limbs, and obviously PTSD crew don't help encourage new recruits either

[redartrats]

It's funny, I used to play many Explorer captains, and during exploration they often suffer things like losing limbs, losing an eye, etc.. Funny thing is, sometimes they can lose more than 2 eyes or two legs before they visit the doctor, which makes one wonder how many limbs they have. Perhaps they are actually 17-legged, 5-eyed aliens themselves, not humans? Either that, or they have a stash of bionic eyes/arms/legs stowed in their cabins for such occasions.

[fallen]

[poryg]

Jun 7, 2016 10:30:16 GMT -5 redartrats said:

It's funny, I used to play many Explorer captains, and during exploration they often suffer things like losing limbs, losing an eye, etc.. Funny thing is, sometimes they can lose more than 2 eyes or two legs before they visit the doctor, which makes one wonder how many limbs they have. Perhaps they are actually 17-legged, 5-eyed aliens themselves, not humans? Either that, or they have a stash of bionic eyes/arms/legs stowed in their cabins for such occasions.

No, you got it wrong. But to make it understandable, imagine this.
You find a Narvidian eye... Such a nice eye, you must have it... And you lose it! That is just so saddening... You just have to pick up a razor and cut your wrist so that you feel better...

[redartrats]

Whew! After trawling several dead planets (and burning up countless full tanks of water-fuel) and killing a series of low-level Aliens, I encountered another high-level (lvl:119) Narvidian Harvester. It seems that my captain has improved a lot with the XP points he's been accumulating; even though the battle was hard, he held the upper hand throughout, and soon the narv's engines were down to 5, crew down to 3 (from 250), and the enemy captain lies dead at my feet. Comparatively, I only lost 26 crew among my 140. All in all, the battle went far better than expected. Hooray!

An aside, I've been encountering a number of hive ships, but only ever caught up to one, which I destroyed, earning the first hive award. Now trying to earn the second award (capture), but can't seem to catch up with these super high-level superfast ships. Any tips on how to improve my chances of catching one? Improve pilot skill? I tried torping but it never acquires target.

[athios]

Congrats redartrats! I also fought and won against my first Narvidian Harvester just this afternoon.

For Hives:
Finding them - completely random. No point patrolling anywhere specific.
(see startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/4360/stop-me-hive for some info)

Defeating them - in the beginning they always try to run. Fast/Quick ship highly recommended. You will also need high stealth (if Torping) and/or high Pilot to keep it within range while you try to engage it in battle. Can't remember for sure, but I think once you board them, they won't try to run. Either that, or destroy enough of their sails and engines so they can't get away. From my experience, it's really the luck of the draw: if you encounter one that's relatively low level, it's trivial to defeat; but if it's a super-high level one... good luck.

[redartrats]

I think patrolling dead planets does increase the chances of encountering a hive. I've played this Captain for a very long time, and have only encountered at most 1 hive throughout his long career, until I started trolling for Aliens by patrolling dead planets. Then within the past 2 days I've encountered several hives, always over dead planets, and managed to even defeat one of them. So my problem isn't really with finding the hives -- they do seem to be more frequent over dead planets, but still so rare that a lot of patience is needed to find them.

But my problem is how to catch up to one of them when I do find them. So far, out of the 10 or so hives I've encountered, I've only managed to catch up to 1.

[athios]

Hmm... That's interesting. Maybe Cory has changed the code since his initial post.

redartrats, what's your level and stat distribution?

[redartrats]

athios My Captain has advanced several levels now, and I don't remember exactly what his stats were. But the current level is 59, with 1/70/1/58/15/90/10 skills, 10/59/70/90 stats. Pilot was a lot lower, maybe around 60 or so, as I've been raising it in the hopes of catching up with a hive ship eventually. But it's now 794.11AE and based on what I read in this forum the chances of a hive encounter is probably very very low now. Patrolling dead planets is now turning up less and less Aliens. I may have to try with a new captain if I can't find anymore Aliens/hives.

[athios]

Jul 13, 2013 3:25:00 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

v5.1.1 - 7/13/2013
- Spice Hives Count as Aliens for Rumors
* When Aliens are increased, so are Hives. The rareness was cool but then I put in Awards, so, there you go.

Ah, you are correct. Apparently it was changed a few weeks after Cory's previous post I linked to above.

From several of the threads based around stats, most senior players recommend 150-200% your level, so you may want to bump yours up. But yeah, 794AE is pretty late in the game...

[redartrats]

Is there somewhere that summarizes what happens as game time progresses? I've seen allusions on this forum but haven't really found anything concrete. Are Aliens supposed to get rarer as game time advances? What else changes?