Syndicate Rychart - Zealot's Logbook

[Feuerleitsystem]

The Logbook of Dagobert Duke
Zealot on Impossible

57.4 AE, Rychart Prime
Landed the Danti Cautela nearby the city. Haven't seen so many houses in my entire live, god I'm soo excited. Soon found the spice hall and catched a few rumours but nothing worthy. Got a single contract delivery to Cadar Pavonis. Had to sell my weapons for fuel. Delivered dad’s message to the Palace and directly headed to sector 2,5.

57.14 AE, Cadar Pavonis
Spooky place. Nobody bothered to talk to me and the contracts they offered on the bill-board were just dirty work, executing some convicted criminals in hiding. Bah! I only kill enemies of Rychart. Got at least a minor messenger assignment to Aro Prime. Hope the fee covers the fuel costs at least.

57.20 AE, Aro Prime
Backwater planet. Feel almost at home. Nobody in the spice hall, the “palace” abandoned too. Lets buy the last 5 barrels of water in the so-called exchange. Washed my hands and took off to Cadar Prime.

57.36 AE, Cadar Prime
Trade ban on Cadar by Thulun and Javat. No sense in making enemies, that I never met. Just bought the minimum fuel to get to Syndicate Core. Enough to become Troublemaker with the Clans though.

57.42 AE, Syndicate Core
God god, never seen such city! Opportunities are rich, will run some messages to the surrounding planets.

58.26 AE, Syndicate Core
Kashmire De Valtos himself delivered my Trade permit.

59.3 AE, Xeen Prime
Bought a Pardon Letter, some of DeValtos business didn't find their approval. No further contracts apart from “find-and-destroy-missions”. Looks like they haven’t seen my ship, otherwise they would refrain from offering me those.

59.33 AE, Syndicate Core
Back here. The guys really like me or why else should they offer me to become part of their military? Well, if it helps keeping their dogs at bay. The new uniform suits me well, showed up in all places to let everybody know. Got my hands on some pretty cheap Titan components in the ship yard. The monkey in the contract agency also had some fine offers: Deliveries to Epsilon Indie, to Javat Prime (well, have to stop there for fueling anyways) and to Baza Prime. Alltogether promising more money than I could dream of. Wonder where the catch is?

59.40 AE, Baza Prime
Not much to do here, not even enough fuel to fill up. At least I was able to pick up another delivery to somewhere near behind Epsilon Indie! Fortune favors the bold.

60.9 AE, Javat Prime
Got news today that Rychart nullified my trade permit. All I did, was buying water fuel. Feeling disappointed, but primarily I have to keep my ship and crew running. I’m sure things will settle back in Rychard Prime. Let’s focus on the tasks at hand: Epsilon Indie!

60.24 AE, Sector 15,0
Delivered the last contract without any further incidence. All of a sudden 90k bucks on account and no drinks and hookers around! Either back to Epsilon or straight to Javat Prime, both not very promising. I’ll give Xenox a shot.

60.43 AE, Xenox
Uh, what a welcome. Could buy a Trade permit, think money makes me look better. Before bringing the money to the brothel, I have the ship yard repair the pirate's scratches and install the water fuel tank on sale.

...tbc

[Feuerleitsystem]

After I made the financial breakthrough a somewhat routine established. Me running solely transport assignments of goods and persons, whereas the ladder caused the biggest difficulties. From the earnings, I always calculated a good bribing to stay in good terms with everybody, but I won't bore you with details.

63.48 AE, De Valtos Prime
Got promoted to De Valtos Trooper (2nd rank). I feel honored and hope some Rychart spies see, what I'm really worth. Relationship to my home fraction hasn't really improved.

65.3 AE, near Corouaari
Today I experienced my first hostile encounter with Clan Javat Pirates, which turned into a serious freaking bloody bloodshed. Unfortunately it was mostly my blood, spilling out of my stomach after a nasty needler shot. We were forced to surrender and I thought I would really die. The Danti Cautela is as ragged as me. And all they looted was water-fuel, good lord make it start boiling in their heads.

65.19 AE, Corouaari
The doctor and the ship yard teared a good chunk from my wallet. For that I could almost afford a new ship, maybe a not so bad idea to pursue.

72.8 AE, near Remcoole
What the hell came over me? No trade permit for Cadar, the hold full of electronics and steering right towards a Cadarian Port. Honestly it was pure greed and trust in my luck, I couldn’t resist a surplus on the last fringe planet and dreamt of quick money. For that, we payed dearly. All my cargo lost, a deep stabbing wound in my right shoulder and a considerable loss of reputation with Cadar and its f**** trade allies.

73.15 AE, near Salveria
The injuries from my last encounter not dried off yet , we ran across a Steel Song Pirate today and could not shake him off. Heard my first mate cursing something like “...shit hits the fan.”. He definitely has a point and we definitely need a better ship.

76.49 AE, Rychart Prime
I've been on a good-will tour lately, throwing my hard earned money into throats of countless despotes and wannabes, and was finally steering back home. I was really looking forward to after what felt an eternity set foot on my home planet, when the Rychart Heavy Frigate stopped me in orbit. I had no contraband loaded and so lighthearted stopped by, awaiting a mere routine check. The heavy armed troopers took me and my crew completely off-guard. We were arrested, after terribly beaten up, and half of our load and account got confiscated. Lost trade and bounty hunter license. God has a tough left hook.

With hindsight, I acted like a stubborn rookie and I swore myself an oath to never let that happen again. After we got released from prison some months later, 30 weeks to be precise, we continued our business ever more determined aiming for a better ship.

77.1 AE, Cadar Prime
The last weeks we spent focussing on Cadar business, thus getting rewarded with first the trade permit, then military rank and... finally a new ship! It was love at first sight, when I’ve been showed around the ship yard. I am now the proud owner of a Kaazar Class craft.

79.43 AE, Galantia
The love with Cadar faded away, with it the Trade permit. But my ship is still beautiful, bought her a water-fuel tank and Titan components today. She is now like a shark, enduring and deadly. Can’t wait for the next pirate to show up!

86.10 AE, Roavin
The last weeks were pretty uneventful. I returned to Rychart prove my worth as a true patriot. Soon after I received my well earned and long overdue Trade permit and Ranks with Rychart. Today I met a capable veteran who joined our staff to teach my crew some art of war.

95.22 AE, De Valtos Prime
Met a redhead girl tonight and she turned out to be not just an eye-catcher but also very skilled in engineering. After some drinks and gamey talk I soon showed her my ship and my captain. She liked the ladder, but talked me into buying a new ship. That’s how I got the Assassin Class and my first female officer.

97.41 AE, Northpine Camp
Equipped the Assassin with the obligatory water-fuel tank, still searching for the precious Titan Components. I’m confident in building a strong beast and we all are dying to take revenge for the earlier humiliations we endured. So far we have avoided real battles in fear of annihilation, but now we are perfectly prepared.

[

101.17 AE, near Salveria
This is the day we evolved from prey to predator! De Valtos transferred $125,000 for hammering a wanted criminal. We were sooo devastating, our ship didn’t even get a single scratch. As soon Syndicate Rychart enters a Solar War I, being a rank 4 Legionnaire now, am more than ready to answer the call of duty and beat the crap out of blockade our enemies!

101.48 AE, somewhere in the fringe
Cruising with a brand new Assassin Class, which now wears a fancy predator painting, through the endless space. Testosterone, tank and bank account full to overflowing. Competent officers and highly motivated crew beside me... life is just so easy.

Hey! See the signature on the radar? It's a Thulun ship way off their territory and its definitely no merchant. Hurraayyy!!

[Feuerleitsystem]

[reserved for later posts]

[whitegauntlet]

Nice job. That must have taken a while to write.

[fallen]

great post! awesome journal, fun read.

[Feuerleitsystem]

story update, see 2nd post

[Cory Trese]

getting better and better. greed and lust are a common issue for me too. all to often ... I hear a rumor of a shortage just on the other side of enemy space and ...

[Cory Trese]

u should post the full stat/skill screenshot

[Feuerleitsystem]

May 9, 2012 15:48:12 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

u should post the full stat/skill screenshot

Yea stupid me, its too late now. Apart from Explore, which I didn't trained at all, and Negiotate, which was a gap filler, I maxed out every skill according to the physical statistics. That would make at this stage:

Explorer	Pilot	Negotiate	Tactics	Stealth	Warrior	Intimidate
1	17	~8	13	18	10	10

[shallowthought]

Not bad at all. As a comparison between difficulty levels, I was playing with a similar strategy to this (edit: on crazy) and made it to about 2 million cash for similar experience levels. Impossible is certainly a bitch.

[phantombudgie]

I tend to proiritise Pilot and Tactics over Stealth. Am I being foolish?

[shallowthought]

I tend to boost pilot to max first for fuel, then stealth so as not to get hit by torps when running from pilots. Overall, I keep pilot/stealth 2 levels above everything else, ignore explorer/negotiate and just level everything up equally. Seems to do the job fairly well and gives you a well rounded captain.

[Feuerleitsystem]

From what I read in the skill descriptions, the quickness attributes are essential for surviving. Whereas I consider stealth even more important than piloting (under the assumption it not only helps evading torps but also gunfire).

Charisma is also useful, with Intimidation decreasing fuel consumption (haven't figured out yet, if piloting or intimidation has the bigger impact) and negotiate has been underestimated by me so far. Charisma might become useless later in the game, when the consumption tends to zero (is that even possible on impossible? :-)) and money exists in abundance.

Warrior/Strength as a one skill trait is relatively expensive and in my eyes only makes sense, if your combat strategy involves boarding rather than gun down the engines (or if mutinities occur more often ;D).

Wisdom is also expensive at least for my playstyle, as I usually drop explore unless I'm playing Explorer or Smuggler. And just for tactics to improve gun's accuracy and the MO and Zealots special abilities... mhm, I don't know.


...so for my next captain, which I plan to be a Steel Song bounty hunter for close quarter combat, I'll put more weight on quickness, second strength and third charisma.

[shallowthought]

It's mainly meant to be pilot for green sectors, intimidate for red to keep fuel use down, but you can get by by just boosting one of them way up. I tend to go for pilot first and surrender at the start when you don't have enough cash for fuel, let alone repairs. I reckon it works out cheaper in the long run a lot of the time.

I find in the harder difficulties, later on in the game, you get boarded a lot and for taking out higher level opponents boarding and ramming is the only realistic way (both of you sitting, shooting for 200 turns without a hit... just board/ram and see how that goes). I'll keep strength/warrior up with the other stats, and once I get a decent ship I'll install some upgrades to help with boarding/ram. Tactics is also used in boarding (also explore/harvest) so keeping that up as well is not as expensive compared with only using guns.

Personally I never put any points into negotiate, by the time you get it high enough to make a difference, you'll have plenty of cash anyway so why bother?

Finally, steel song? wtf?

[Feuerleitsystem]

May 10, 2012 18:04:00 GMT -5 shallowthought said:

...

Finally, steel song? wtf?

I never read a pro-Steel post in this forum, and thats where my sympathy for underdogs, or call it sense of justice, kicks in. I also wonder how Steel Song was meant to be played (roleplaygamewise... nice word, does it exist in english?).

By thinking more about it, I get the picture of a Samurai, who traditionally wears his steel blade when facing the sidearms of his foes. To some this seems stupid, but to him it is the purest and most respectable form of fight.

A german proverb says Viel Feind, viel Ehr!, might translate as The more danger, the more honor