ST: INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR CHALLENGE

[Fenikso]

I am done! Captain "Contractor VIII." has completed the challenge on Guildmaster Contractor level!





Score:
Time: 8175 turns = 1825 x 2 = 3650
Money: 2,281,939$ = 2282
Completed contracts: 100 = 5000
Failed contracts: 0 = 0

Score total: 10932

Fun facts

• The captain who completed the challenge was the first who survived Lvl 6. The number is not exact, it is more like 28th captain. Somewhere around nr.20 I kind of lost track of the dead captains and started over.
• I now understand how important it is for my Impossible strategy to reject like 95% of the contracts.
• I have finally unlocked Ships of Honor II!
• I took Military Officer to be able to track bounty hunting mission targets. I never really needed it, nobody ran from me ever and I did not need to run either.
• I captured Jango Class during the challenge, but bought Rychart Flagship. It probably lowered my score, but seriously? Finishing this challenge without proper ship?
• I sometimes took two or three contracts at once. And every time regretted it.
• I found that starting with Pilot 1 and Serpent's Tooth = W-F madness.
• I also found that mutiny is overrated .
• I did not encounter any Aliens.
• I have completed 100 contract but taken 99. A glitch?

BTW: I do not mind to have my score compared to other Master Contractors. I do not think it is going to be much easier on Crazy and there is probably not going to be enough competition .

[contributor]

Wow very impressive and very good score. That could beat a lot of the master level scores, but hopefully not mine!

[Lesleyr]

Fenikso Contratulations!I am awed. Not a single failed contract, WOW!

[Fenikso]

Lesleyr - Thanks! Well, a lot of contracts in the beginning were more of luck then anything. And some times later it was very, very, very close .

[Lesleyr]

My Master Contractor challenge is over: 68 contracts completed,maximum number of failures, $860 000.At least I can't have a minus score!Total score is 0.

[athios]

Congrats, Fenikso!
Very impressive. I wonder if I'll be able to get that far...

[contributor]

Well Johnny Carbo Jr. my second contractor has finished the challenge. I don't know if his score will win, but I think he will set the time record.



I failed two and had one set of passengers executed. That doesn't actually show up as a fail, but I'll count it as one any ways. That was a little goof up, along with one of my other expirations. Apparently I hit "Done" instead of "Destroy" and let one of my marks walk away with his life. I didn't realize it till I did the next contract and my autopilot reset to the previous mission, but there wasn't enough time to get back to it.

So my score is:
Time: 10,000 - 4025 = 5975 x 2 = 11,950
Money 303,003 / 1000 = 303
Completed contracts: 100 x 50 = 5,000
Failed contracts: 3 x 1000 = -3,000
For a grand total of 14,253

My strategy was to keep my level low. My captain finished at a whopping level 3 and I never purchased a single ship. I actually captured a Vegas Class on my first kill contract and never needed anything else (any bonus points for never purchasing a ship?). I just upgraded it and kept going. Upgrades were an Omni-Stealth Array, Weapons Cabinet, both the Engine Upgrades and hybrid upgrade that got me crew, cargo and armor. I boosted my strength to 40 and always carried 25 weapons and had a Pilot, Templar and Military Officer. So when guns didn't work I could always board and normally kill the captain in a turn or two.

I only had negative rep with Rychart, everyone else was 11 to 75. I only really traded once when there was a metal shortage on the Javat home world. That got me 176,000 after I upgraded my ship and served to keep my ship repaired. My max contract was probably worth only 14,000.

[slayernz]

Fenikso, WOW .. simply WOW.

Also, well done contributor too! I can't believe how fast you managed to do the challenge (in turns that is) - you excelled at the original premise 100 contracts in 100 years! Surprised your money is so low though. I'm sitting at about $600k after about 20 contracts!

My captain is still chugging along and was doing really well until he hit a frickin cargo delivery mission to a faction he had royally pissed off. There is no chance that he can complete the contract because the exchange is blocked off! Very rude if you ask me

[Fenikso]

Aug 14, 2013 13:16:36 GMT -5 Lesleyr said:

My Master Contractor challenge is over: 68 contracts completed,maximum number of failures, $860 000.At least I can't have a minus score!

Still very impressive! Go ahead and count your score. I would say that this challenge on Crazy is harder than playing "vanilla" Impossible.

[Fenikso]

Aug 14, 2013 17:37:01 GMT -5 contributor said:

For a grand total of 14,253

Well played, Sir, well played! Good strategy and great result.

[slayernz]

Finally finished the challenge as of 6 minutes ago!

Turns left (10000 - 7577) x 2 = 4846
+ 100 contracts x 50 = 5000
+ Cash (4796000 / 1000) = 4796
- Contracts failed (1 x 1000) = -1000

Total score 13,642

The stupid failed contract was because I got a cargo delivery to a faction that thought I was a terrorist. That's so rude!


Captain Merc got to level 31, but left 154XP unallocated just because he didn't have time to worry about leveling up.

Pilot >2x level
Tactics just under 1x level
Warrior = 1 (hahaha)

No mutinies, no boarding or being boarded, no surrender.

I did destroy one less ship after victory than Fenikso, but looted more

[athios]

Joey Jo-Jo Jr. Shabadoo has finally completed the challenge on Crazy. Man, it was almost painful not doing any trading or looting (and I failed to resist on several occasions). Had rank and permits for almost all factions, so only had to deal with pesky indy pirates. Didn't see any Alien. I noticed that Syndicate Core frequently gave close-proximity contracts? I think I only received about 5 cargo delivery contracts, and luckily they weren't that difficult.

First fail: accidentally killed target
Second fail: accidentally killed target while my thumb was covering up their ship stats (notice a trend here?)
Third fail: accidentally killed a high-level target by one-hit destroying their 18 hull 

One and only semi-expire: kept using predator tracking array to reroll cos the target was always super high level (like 10 above me), unfortunately didn't notice time passing by... oddly enough, I did manage to complete that contract after seeing the expire message, so it was logged as both Completed and Expired.

Score:
Time: 5271 turns = (10000 - 5271) x 2 = 9458
Money: $2,952,606 = 2952
Completed contracts: 101 = 5050
Failed contracts: 4 = -4000
TOTAL = 13,460

It was an interesting experience, I discovered a really nice ship, but man I never wanna do that again, LOL~

Attachments:

[Lesleyr]

Seeing there is still a little time and my ego is still bruised from not making 100 contracts, Venatrix has signed up for Apprentice Contractor level. So far she has completed 48 contracts and failed 4. (Stardock closes due to rumour, my crew STILL can't shoot straight and I forgot I had a contract)Been chased by aliens once and now flies Pride of De Valtos.

[contributor]

Athios, very nice score, Johnny Carbo Jr. is just barely hanging in there. You did it fast, especially for not keeping your level artificially low.

Go Venatrix go!

[johndramey]

Nice to see everyone finishing up. I'm about 3/4s of the way done with my challenge and I have no real idea how I'll stack up. Should be fun! I want to point out that I have kept my starter ship (Tempus Fugit) the whole challenge, so that's gotta be worth some kind of bragging point huh? haha. Very, very fun challenge slayernz. The ST challenges are lots of fun.