Post by naa123 on Sept 28, 2019 18:13:41 GMT -5
NOTE: this is my personal approach, there are others that work. This is a fairly safe approach to early game exploring which will make you enough money to get the gear and crew for mid game explore and xeno hunting.
1. Tactics and Explore are used in the explore card game. Command is always needed for ship ops and such, but can be assigned to something else as needed or per your play style
2. Contacts – these include some unlocks. Prospector is really key to get additional explorer crew. XH is nice to add early XH to your CC crew, but not vital. This set-up gives you 3 BM contacts in your zone, but makes you travel to get contacts. If doing this for unlock, put your key contacts in the first 3 slots so they proc in the starting zone.
3. Ship – you want to have a ship that you can add crew to early. Buying the larger barracks is key to adding explorers without losing ships crew and dice/ skills. You can use the Galtak if you want the extra cargo space. I like the Paladin for the larger fuel capacity. Selling 50-70 artifacts (if you add the Med Resource harvester) at a time works since that is what you find from one full explore loop through Brien and Orion.
4. Wisdom is used in the explore card game. This is a non-CC build, so other attributes are not key.
5. This build does 1-2 Years of missions at start so you can upgrade barracks, officer quarters, add explore components. At level 5 add explore skills to change/ remove bad cards.
6. Starting faction can vary – Javat is good because they have the best explore components. Alta Mesa because they are in one of the best quadrants to explore (default map). Mok is nice because they have several really good trade loops to help with adding income (default map)
Strategy
1. At the start, run missions (you should do both the Faen Story and contact missions) to build rep and gain money. After ~1 year you should have the Arbiter mission, and ~10 contact missions done which is enough to upgrade as described in #3. Your captain should be level 5, which allows for talents to remove risk cards.
2. For your starting officers, I recommend immediately taking one level in Commander (on your QM) to get the recruiting skill. Rest of the officers as follows –
a. Captain is Exp 15/ Scavenger 15/ XH for the non-CC XH skills or other as needed
b. Doc 11/ CM8/ Pistol (if you use your doc in CC), or doc 11/ CM1 (for 2nd doc skill save) then MO (for Command levels). Additional CM levels as needed
c. Eng 8/ Spy 15/ Mech – spying is helpful, extra mechanic skills to keep your ship going.
d. QM 11/ Cmdr 11/ 3rd as needed, or just max Cmdr for the command levels. Put your first job level into Cmdr, but then into QM until you get the Death Save talent at level 11 (Second Shadow). Pick-up Welcoming Conscription at level 8 if you will do SC
e. As you add officers you can add CC slots or additional Explore/ Scavenger positions. For CC a Soldier/ XH is great. The other option is a sword tank to help vs xeno. I usually have at least 2 officer CC – one XH, one Sword (or Swd/ BG). Use whatever your preferred build for these
3. Early goals are to upgrade barracks and add officer quarters. Then add crew – 2-3 new explorers at minimum – since you ran contact missions, you should get the explorers with a few levels. Which other crew to recruit is up to you… Recruit one crew every 3 weeks so you get the benefits of the Commander recruiting skill. My usual list is:
a. smuggler - good to sell the stuff you find exploring.
b. Spy - good as exploring will yield intel, which combined with orbital spying intel will help with influence and increasing rep for contacts that buy intel.
c. Doc for a 3rd skill save and 2nd Death Save (Level 5 Life Saver talent)
4. Next set of upgrades is wep locker then explore components (resource harvesters, crew and ship damage reduction). Explore will result in a fair amount of CC, even if you are trying to avoid it. There are a lot of pirate and scavenger encounters.
5. After 1.5 to 2 years, you should have your 30 crew completed, and your ship upgraded as mentioned above. At this point, you are ready to start exploring full time.
6. My preferred exploration quads are Brien and Orion. They are high danger/ high reward. When coupled with the Explorer Captain perk that increases possibility of finding artifacts… you will find a lot of artifacts in these zones. I average ~60 artifacts per loop. You can take these to Farfallen Rim and sell at Temple of Refuge – an Indie Orbital. This is an excellent source of income. You can also sell on black market for higher income if you have a contact in the appropriate zone (Orbital, Hi Tech, Lux Pop).
7. The general approach is to explore every wilderness zone. Sell what you can while moving between zones, but don’t go out of your way as it is better to have a full load of one good than a mix of items. If you need immediate income to repair and heal, then do it… but otherwise focus on exploring the two quadrants. Once done, gather your items and sell wherever you can get max profits. In addition to artifacts, you will start finding other RTGs… I suggest letting those accumulate until you can make a full load…
8. Make sure you stack talents to avoid SC and get SotV (skip off the void, level 11 Nav talent) ASAP. The early ship build does not have good escape stats, so stay friendly with everyone, and surrender if you have to.
9. By level 8, you should have enough card removal skills that you can search each zone and avoid any really bad outcome (like xeno). Important point – save your removal skills for the really bad stuff like xeno and double stacked pirates. Even for really good CC crew, those can end a run. If you have to, walk away and explore another zone rather than roll the dice with xeno cards in play.
10. At level 15 you will get the skill that lets you reroll all 5 cards, and you should have strong CC. At this point, fighting Pirates and xeno can be very rewarding… use your best judgement. I personally try to get the cards like Pirate guarding RTG as the combat is worth the reward.
11. When to buy a new ship is up to you. It will depend on how soon you want to add more components, or start building for SC, or to evade SC. You will make a lot of money exploring, especially with RTGs.
12. Once you have unlimited money, you can run multiple ships – one for explore, one for SC, etc. You can also build a pure cargo hauler. Nothing but cargo components so you can sell 400 RTG at one stop. You will need multiple copies of SotV, and make sure to always have enough fuel that you can use it.
What to do if you don’t have the unlocks used in the above?
The above guide uses many unlocks. If you don’t have all of them, you can work around it by following either of these paths
Option 1: This link is to an explorer guide from an early version of the game, read through this as it has some tips and tricks that will help if you don’t have the unlocks… since the unlocks didn’t exist when this guide was written.
startraders.gamepedia.com/Explorer_Guide
Option 2: Prospector unlock is really the only key unlock you need (IMO), as you really need to recruit additional explorers for a full-time explorer build. The unlock for Prospector is 50 explore missions on Hard in 5 years. This leaves little time to do missions.
I still suggest doing the easy “Proving your Charter” missions for the rep and quick money. You can probably get away with spending the first year doing missions, and finishing the initial Arbiter quest – as described above.
You will need to change your contacts based on what you have available. Scavengers are good if you don’t have explorers, so take the Fixer. Take contacts that sell weapons and armor – ex Merc, ex BH, Wep Dealer are all default available. Exo Scouts can fill in for XH in crew combat, so take Retired Explorer, or Gestalt Explorer. Pay attention as you add contacts during the game, you might add a Prospector. Another thing to watch for - sometimes contacts can add items, or recruit types that they don’t normally have, so periodically review your contatcs and what they offer.
Remember to focus on exploring. You need to press the “Explore” button 50 times. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is. Ironforge Abyss has 3 low danger zones and is the DeValtos starting zone, so choosing DV as your faction is an option for the unlock. Les Ecumes has 3 low danger zones and is the Thulun starting sector, so also an option. Sween Belt has the best concentration of low danger zones and is close to Les Ecumes and Ironforge, so makes a good target for this unlock.
You should also review the Unlock guides on the Forums and Wiki.
I can be contacted on Discord – Nick Alta (NickA#7301)
