Frontier Liner Upgrades for a Merchant Captain w/ Goals

[tenbsmith]

I’m playing as a Merchant on Normal. My goals for this game are to mostly run missions and supplement my income with trading along the way. I’d like to be able to get by with trading when all available missions have poor return on investment.
--Many parsecs will be crossed trading and completing missions. I’d like to decrease maintenance costs like fuel, repair and, eventually, doctor.
--Combat is inevitable. I want to be able to flee or Torp my opponent into submission at my discretion.

The Frontier Liner starts the game with a weight of 4,200lbs and a max weight of 5,000lbs, leaving you 800lbs for upgrades without even thinking about upgrading your Mass Damper. 

Before I took my first mission I upgraded…
--Hellfire Torp (lvl 1)—To--Firestorm Torp (lvl 3).
--Cost: +65lbs. $2730.
--Stat Changes: +20 damage +4accuracy +1electric +2gun.
This inexpensive upgrade gives a nice bump in long-range combat.

Now, on turn 189, I’m planning on this upgrades very soon.
--Valliant Auto (lvl 1)—To—Scout Bridge (1op 4pilot 3nav 150lbs)
--Cost: +75lbs, $1750,
--Stat Changes: +4pilot +3nav -4gun +1officer
This upgrade increases my Pilot and Nav Ship Pools nicely for more Strong dice. I’m not too concerned about lowered Guns because that pool is relatively large (31) and will be increased with later weapons upgrades.
This upgrade allows me to have my 5th officer. The maximum number of officers for this ship is 5, so choose carefully. None of my officers will have crew combat jobs.

I want to maintain a cushion of $10,000-12,000, to cover expenses on long missions with deferred payments. I currently have $16,000. So, I’m going to earn some more money before I implement one of the following two upgrades.

1) Weapons upgrade:
A--Light Rail—To—Firestorm Torp. +65lbs. $2730. +1 Elec +3gun
B--Torp MK Alpha—To—Archangel Rail. +0lbs. $3510. +1ops -1 Elec
The two stock weapons—Light Rial and Torp MK Alpha—had limited upgrade options in their size category. This double upgrade crosses the weapons systems over into new size categories with more upgrade options.
In addition to the stats changes listed above, these upgrades also improve damage and accuracy.

2) Barracks upgrade:
Barracks 3–To--Barracks 5. +100lbs. $8160. +8crew
More crew means more dice. The upgrade to Barracks 5 is only $480 more than Barracks 4. I’m a bit concerned about the ongoing expenses associated with additional crew.

[fallen]

Feb 14, 2017 15:11:46 GMT -5 tenbsmith said:

Now, on turn 189, I’m planning on this upgrades very soon.
--Valliant Auto (lvl 1)—To—Scout Bridge (1op 4pilot 3nav 150lbs)
--Cost: +75lbs, $1750,
--Stat Changes: +4pilot +3nav -4gun +1officer
This upgrade increases my Pilot and Nav Ship Pools nicely for more Strong dice. I’m not too concerned about lowered Guns because that pool is relatively large (31) and will be increased with later weapons upgrades.
This upgrade allows me to have my 5th officer. The maximum number of officers for this ship is 5, so choose carefully. None of my officers will have crew combat jobs.

Worth mentioning that you can't do this in 1.0.23. You can only have one bridge.

[athios]

I was experimenting with this during the last build. I wouldn't go all Torps just in case your enemy successfully advances. Torps + Missiles (both work at range 4-5) will give you some flexibility. For maintaining range and escaping, Peak Velocity Matrix should be helpful. Other than the Scout Bridge, you'll want some Nav Assist Modules to boost your Nav rolls (important at long range).

Edit: Right, what Fallen said. You'd have to replace your Bridge with the Scout Bridge.

[fallen]

Instead, add other Boosters that raise Pilot & Nav.

[tenbsmith]

I'd like to add boosters and stuff, but don't think I have room. I want another officer's cabin and passenger's cabin.

[johndramey]

First off, good choice on the ship, tenbsmith. I'm a frontier liner man myself. I can't quite put my finger on why I like it so much more than the other ships, but I do.

When I'm merchanting around my goals are simple, to have a ship that holds a lot of cargo, is fuel efficient, and can get away from a fight.

That being said, my first upgrade is always a passenger cabin. Passenger missions are some of my favorite missions, and the play well with the concept of a merchant. You're transporting people along with your goods. Depending on the amount of passenger missions my contacts are doling out, I might get a second one.

After getting the passenger cabins, I almost always start building up capital and saving for a hyperwarp upgrade. I usually jump my ship up to a Hyperwarp 4E engine, as it lets me jump at a default cost of 20 WF. With talents and a well trained crew, I have my current jump cost down to 7 WF.

After that, I'll upgrade my defenses a bit. I'll usually dump all weapons except for two torpedoes (usually level 3, seems to be the most cost effective upgrade torp system early game) and a missile system. My strategy in combat is always, always, always cut-and-run, but if I can't get away for some reason I'll hang out at extreme range and pummel the enemy into submission. I've never actually been caught, but I like to think that 2 torpedoes and a missile will ruin anyone's day.

Then comes the fine tuning. I'll get another officer cabin (gotta have 5 officers, maaaaaan), upgrade some bits and bobs, and generally try to get as much navigation as possible on my ship. Reason for that is, unless I'm mistaken, navigation is the thing that gets you out of battles. There are other rolls involved, but navigation is one of them. After that, I usually go hog wild and just start upgrading the things I need (e.g. passenger cabin -> luxury cabin) and getting extra points into my heavy skills (usually navigation).

So, form me, my upgrade path usually looks like this.

1. Passenger Cabin
2. Upgrade hyperwarp
3. Defenses
4. Fine tuning
5. Upgrade components

[athios]

Can someone elaborate on how exactly the grade of Hyperwarp Engine affects W-F consumption during regular flight and hyperwarp jumps? Is it the grade itself making a different, or the better Nav dice rolls?

[johndramey]

Well, fallen or Cory will have to go into specifics, but as far as I understand the bigger your engines, the more mass you can push. If you are pushing less mass than your max, I'm guessing you save fuel.

Hyperwarp engines that have an "E" appended to them are "E"fficient engines, meaning they burn less fuel. The standard hyperwarp 3 engines use 22 wf to jump by default, while my 4E engines use 20 by default. Saving 2 doesn't seem all that much, but every cent helps and all that jazz.

[grävling]

I believe it is Pilot that gets you out of battles.

[athios]

Feb 14, 2017 20:14:33 GMT -5 grävling said:

I believe it is Pilot that gets you out of battles.

Feb 11, 2017 11:06:22 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Extreme & Long Range: Navigation, Tactics, Ship Speed, Command
Other Ranges: Pilot, Tactics, Ship Agile, Command

[johndramey]

This is an unrelated question, but does the max life support count for a ship include officers as well as crew? What about passengers/prisoners? Logically, it should, but that means that I really shouldn't upgrade the barracks on my frontier liner because it maxes out at 30 and 20 crew + 5 officers = 25. That leaves me with 5 people worth of life support left over, of which 2 are earmarked for possible passengers.

[Cory Trese]

Feb 14, 2017 20:40:09 GMT -5 johndramey said:

This is an unrelated question, but does the max life support count for a ship include officers as well as crew? What about passengers/prisoners? Logically, it should, but that means that I really shouldn't upgrade the barracks on my frontier liner because it maxes out at 30 and 20 crew + 5 officers = 25. That leaves me with 5 people worth of life support left over, of which 2 are earmarked for possible passengers.

At this point, that number intends to refer to non-officer crew. Cabins (passenger / officer) come with life support systems.

[xdesperado]

Feb 14, 2017 20:40:09 GMT -5 johndramey said:

This is an unrelated question, but does the max life support count for a ship include officers as well as crew? What about passengers/prisoners? Logically, it should, but that means that I really shouldn't upgrade the barracks on my frontier liner because it maxes out at 30 and 20 crew + 5 officers = 25. That leaves me with 5 people worth of life support left over, of which 2 are earmarked for possible passengers.

No max Life support just counts your regular crew, Captain, Officers, Passengers, Prisoners are all covered by their cabins/cells as far as life support goes.

By the way something I do with my Guardian Interceptor is swap the Deflector Array for a Barracks 2 then swap the Barracks 5 for a Barracks 2. This frees up a little mass for future upgrades, allows me to have up to 30 crew instead of 28 and even with a full 30 crew I can still see what kinds of crew are available for hire in spice hall so if I'm looking for specific types like a mechanic I know they are available without having to either fire someone or run with less than a max crew.

[Cory Trese]

The idea is that all ships have a number of "Large" components. In theory, you could turn a 5000 mass ship into a floating barracks.

We want to put tiers of crew sizes in, so that the player needs to upgrade their ship to have crew larger than the previous tier.

So you cannot just use a bunch of the same component to get up the next ship level.

[johndramey]

Very cool, that's a nice little work around that I hadn't even thought of.

I love how customizable the ships are in ST2. Tiering the ships is a good idea as well, as with the customizability the player has such a huge range in how he or she wants to build out the ships. I'm sure with just a little tweaking I could turn the frontier liner into a pretty good combat vessel.

I honestly like to keep my crew relatively low. With all of the crew (aside from my fighters, those poor buggers tend to bite the dust during exploration all too frequently) being pretty high level, I can get most of my stats up around 150% while minimizing overhead.