Easiest Way to Gain XP and Money and Reputation

[dumb]

(Subject to change if fueling rules change)

By far the easiest way to gain experience, money, and reputation at the same time... is, after turning in your first (starter) quest, at your home planet go the the palace and buy a trade permit. Then, no matter what class you are, head over to the nearest lvl 10 wilderness to "Explore". You may need to go through a few rounds of crew if you are not an "Explorer" to start. But once you get that first load, check the conflicts to see if you can get double (or triple) bonuses because of trade alliances.

If there are no problems, just go back and sell it and watch your money and reputation soar. Meanwhile, simply flying around to gain crew gives you plenty of XP.

The same principle applies for any of the factions. If you don't raise rep via trade alliances, just go to that faction, do a couple quests to have enough for a Trade Permit. Then go sell to them.

You can essentially "explore" your way to being Star Hero in every faction with a million Credits and a stupidly large ship by doing this. (Or course, there are more challenges at Insane and Impossible Difficulties because of fuel usage).

[jtwood]

This is the only way I play the game.

The biggest pitfall to it is that the spontaneous trade embargo can kill your rep if you're not vigilant in keeping an eye on the conflict screen.

[dumb]

To be sure... playing this way does seem a tad overpowered... it doesn't take long before you suddenly have 300 rep across the board. :/ But nevertheless... it is an easy way to get ahead.

[kaheidt]

Agreed. Except I have one additional suggestion. Maybe two, sort of. First, try to only contribute to trade alliance conflicts because usually you won't be pissing anybody off unless its from a different conflict.

Second, and more importantly, when you go to sell your artifacts, weapons, or electronics in order to get rep for contributing to the trade alliance, sell your items one at a time. From what I can tell, the rep and xp rewards are a flat increase per transaction and don't take into account the quantity being sold. So selling 20 artifacts one at a time will easily get your rep up enough to get 2 military promotions. You'll actually make more if you sell this way because the amount you get for selling will go up as your rep goes up. This same technique can apply to spy conflicts and selling records too.

One last secret third item. Once you've sold all your items that affect the trade alliance one at a time, buy the items that are in stock in the exchange if there are any, then sell those back one at a time too. The conflict reward doesn't care where you got the items from.

[jtwood]

Dec 15, 2010 1:23:06 GMT -5 kaheidt said:

The conflict reward doesn't care where you got the items from.

This is something I've always had a problem with, particularly concerning records.

During a Spy Battle, I could gains records by spying on Planet A and then "take sides in a spy battle" by selling those same records to Planet A. When I first participated in those actions, I assumed that the records would be tied to the house/clan that they were taken from and only valuable in that regard. Instead, it is as you pointed out: You can sell someone their own stuff and get credit for it.

[kaheidt]

Never thought about that, but I completely agree.

[Cory Trese]

these are not simple issues for the Game's database, but I am thinking about them now.

I will note that the game does give you a bonus for selling larger volumes of Artifacts, Records and Electronics at once.

I am thinking about it, the solution is just not simple due to compromises in the database. For example, we know when and how records were made, but not on what planet. originally we tracked all of that but it simple made trade run too slow, so I stopped. now i need the data.

sigh

[jtwood]

Dec 15, 2010 12:30:55 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

these are not simple issues for the Game's database, but I am thinking about them now.

I figured that was the case. I should just go ahead and say that I'm not a buffoon and realize that we're talking about a game on a mobile platform and not a desktop/console concoction. I expect things like this from pretty much every game I play on my phone.

[Cory Trese]

LOL. I was coming back to this thread to post about how I'm not a buffoon and really, I'm just trying to keep the lag out of the game =)

I think we're all non-buffoons and I appreciate your understanding and feedback more than you guys know.

[kaheidt]

Does the amount of xp and rep for a single transaction of 10 items equal the xp and rep for10 transactions of 1 item?

Are you thinking of tracking items by xy location, location name, or by faction? There's not that many factions, really, and you wouldn't need to keep this info at an individual item level. You would just need an array that holds a faction id and a count, then just have it use any counts that apply to the conflict by default during the transaction. Of course, i'm trying to give advice when I have no mobile app programming experience what so ever lol.

[Cory Trese]

"Does the amount of xp and rep for a single transaction of 10 items equal the xp and rep for10 transactions of 1 item?"

Yes, at least very very close. If you are selling 10 at a time you should actually do better.

Statistically it should be the same, with a slight bonus granted for every 5 sold. I suppose if you had 4 and you did it really fast you might be able to eek out a 10% or 15% statistical bonus in Rep points -- this is due to problems with Android Math.Random() function.

[Kelvin Zero]

In regards to records in game, I thought of them as not necessarily solely Faction records. I figured your ship technicians were scouring the Internet for credit card numbers, social security numbers, engaging in phishing scams, and infecting civilians' home computers with control bots. If effect you would be an evil Internet space pirate.

When you sold records, you were selling this information to people who would either use it for evil purposes or (if you sold it back to the faction you stole it from) they would use it to figure out how to protect their systems from further hacking. You would still get a positive reputation spike as you were helping shore up their Internet protection. Of course if you are caught hacking your faction's Internet you ought to get a negative rep hit.

[Cory Trese]

Kelvin,

Exactly =)

If you get the Records without "being caught" (failing the Stealth+Tactics check) you don't "Commit Crime" and get a net positive reputation.

If you are spying on some independents you are just selling out the little guy, and your overall "pirate reputation" may grow, but no specific Faction takes offense.

So, no one really asks WHERE the Records came from. I mean, you're a good Faction Guest, I'm sure they're not ... well, we won't ask =)

[jtwood]

Dec 15, 2010 22:57:01 GMT -5 Kelvin Zero said:

In regards to records in game, I thought of them as not necessarily solely Faction records. I figured your ship technicians were scouring the Internet for credit card numbers, social security numbers, engaging in phishing scams, and infecting civilians' home computers with control bots. If effect you would be an evil Internet space pirate.

When you sold records, you were selling this information to people who would either use it for evil purposes or (if you sold it back to the faction you stole it from) they would use it to figure out how to protect their systems from further hacking. You would still get a positive reputation spike as you were helping shore up their Internet protection. Of course if you are caught hacking your faction's Internet you ought to get a negative rep hit.

I'll take it! ;D

[kaheidt]

I can almost picture my captain approaching the desk of some space bureaucrat and handing over a manilla folder. The bureaucrat takes it, leans back in his nice leather chair, opens the folder up and starts flipping through the records. "Star, star, ship manifest, star, crew roster, ... ah excellent! Russian hookers! I'll give you 9000 credits for the whole lot, and I'll make sure the boys upstairs know where the juicy info came from." Then he spins his chair around and resumes reading the news on the internet, giving my captain a clear indication that the meeting is concluded and he should show himself out.