Some thoughts about priority points while making new captain

[koles]

There are some things I was thinking about

First at all - I wonder your favorite start game style - and by that I mean your starting ship.
I'm asking about ship, because starting ship is something that sooner or later you will change, and you will change it for better one (same with contracts to faster obtaining favorite full crew - but they will shows up instantly when crew get propper talents).

Anyway, placing ship higher on priority list give us more option of starting ship, but it cost us a skill and atribute points - which cannot be raised like buying new and better ship.
So from my perspective, playing on hard+ difficulty where enemy have advantage, I always put skills and atributes on top of priority list - and that gives max 260$ for starting ship - which prevents me to use [un]locked ships - making them more a unusefull trophy rather than interesting advantage in long term gameplay.


What do you guys think about more options for tight D or E ship budget?
Personally I think its perfect place for not_so_easy to obtain achivements. How about you?

[MTKnife]

For some captain jobs, I place ship priority high: for example, a Smuggler captain won't benefit much from any particular skill bonus, and starting out with the Aeturnum Vindex and its speed (which also aids escape) can generate an amount of cash and reputation in the early game that allows me to get a bigger crew faster, thus making up for any skills the captain personally lacks.

That being said, I'm all for more options at lower priority levels for different playstyles.

[Aimstrong]

On impossible I usually go as follows:
Longbolt(C)| Skills (A)| Attributes (B)| (D)Fixer, FDF | nonCC Commander (E)
Favorite playsyle: farming pirates + BH missions
Longbolt => Vengeance => SBC 1(space combat) + add 1 hauler ship + 1 Explorer ship (sell Longbolt + Vengeance)
I don't value starting contacts(+2) that much to go with a (D) or (E) ship(even if the 4th Contact can be the nice Prince type).
late game 4 CC officers each with either 3 CC jobs each.

As for adding more ships always in favor of.

[brentaur]

I usually play on hard. I alternate Attributes and Skills at A and B, set contacts to C, Experience D, and Ship E. The Juror is pretty good at escaping and can be built into a very effective boarder, and I always focus on building a bad-ass combat crew right away. I've only ever pushed Ship higher to get unlocks or test the starting ships. Long game Captain potential wins for me. Everything except attributes and skills can be achieved through gameplay. Someday I'll take a serious run at higher difficulties and will likely need to change this approach up.

Start game style is easy missions, a little legal trading, building up starting contacts (fixer and weapons dealer for the gear are top priority), ship upgrades to improve ability to run from fights. I usually do at least some of Faen's missions for the payouts and definitely make the run to see the High Prince/ss and start building up rep with them. I stay away from anything likely to require ship combat for a good long while, as it's just too dangerous to be worth it until i get a better ship kitted out or am well into the mid-game.

[sallowjoe]

A: Attributes or Skills
B: Attributes or Skills
C: Contacts
D: Experience or Ship
E: Experience or Ship

The variance between A and B depends on whether my captain is more combat focused. Attributes for combat, skills otherwise. I will usually use my captain in some combat though, so I might have a Spy captain with 10 Electronics/10 Pistols/3 Evasion or something like that who boards for intel, which means I still want decent attributes.

The variance between D and E depends on whether my starting class is something I only put one point into.

For example, I would only ever take one smuggler level on a captain for the ship defense bonus you get for starting as smuggler. I put no more level ups in it, but if you start with XP @ 2 it would put me at level 2 Smuggler which is annoying. Likewise, sometimes I take Zealot or Military Officer and only want the first tier talents/starting stat bonuses.

Since I find it not hard to ~quickly get a few million running missions to buy a good ship, or more contacts from talents, I would never gimp my captain in skill/attributes. And the first 5 levels of XP are nothing.

The exception to all of this would be if I were going for specific unlocks, but I ignore unlocks. I got a few early on but don't ever use them because I have a weirdness about using something not available to all players from the start, they feel a bit too cheat codey to me.

[10scorpion19]

I usually set my ship priority either in A or B. I prefer hostile gameplay attacking ships at will so I pretty much require a ship that is meant for combat and is able to take a couple of hits.