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Post by Robb on Oct 16, 2013 21:53:44 GMT -5
I had quite a few captains die early on but now I got one on a roll. I think I'm going to need to up my pace though.
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Post by contributor on Oct 17, 2013 2:00:15 GMT -5
Robb, really sorry about the losing your captain. I've come to expect that occasionally but it's especially painful during a challenge, when you don't get to bring your captain all the way to the finish line. It happened to me in the Pirate challenge and I think it was a Narvidian Stalker or was it a Predator that got me. I think one of those is the incarnation of Cory Trese and the other fallen. How many good captains have those two polished off?
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Post by contributor on Oct 17, 2013 2:07:24 GMT -5
slayernz well played! I think your hatred for Steel Song might be your downfall. I'm on track to get higher positive rep, but I don't know about negative rep with anybody. A lot of it depends on what conflicts appear. In general I'm not prioritizing anyone for special hatred, just going with the conflicts that appear. For the most part they've been somewhat consistent which is really key for this challenge. It strikes me that everyone's games will not be equal and if you get bad luck on the conflicts it will be hard to win. Maybe next time you want to run the "True Hater Challenge" it would basically be the opposite of this one. Faction X killed your parents before your eyes and took your little sister off to the prince's harem, now it's time for bloody revenge. Sink your rep as low as you can with them.
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Post by slayernz on Oct 17, 2013 2:35:04 GMT -5
Yeah, I know ... I probably spent a little too long over a certain SS Planet. I certainly helped reduce the population to a few microbes, but it didn't boost my rep with the big D as much. I'm hoping my fellow De Valtite takes De Valtos to unassailable lead  |
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Post by contributor on Oct 17, 2013 3:37:28 GMT -5
I was mulling over what to do in the case of no conflicts going on, which is obviously the fastest way to gain rep with your faction. I came up with a few pretty obvious ideas.
1) Do contracts. It boosts your rep slightly with your faction, but most importantly, successful contracts can spawn new conflicts which might be in your favor.
2) Just blockade somebody and pillage restricted goods. You do get points for lower rep and you'll hopefully have a hold full of rep boosting goods to sell back to your faction. This is especially good if your faction is in a trade embargo as it will lower your rep even more with somebody else when you make the sale.
3) Go surveil somebody, anybody, and load up on records. Again it drops your rep with others and is a good consistent source of rep boosting goods that can be sold back to your home faction.
4) Go trade against any embargoes that are in place. This is a fast way to lower your rep with other factions, especially if there are shortages that generate big trades. This might be hard to do though since you probably have limited planets that will let you in to their exchanges, but if you got just the right conditions you could seriously sink your rep quickly.
Not sure what which one would lead to the greatest score gain. Probably "1" if it spawns a Solar War or Spy Battle. What other options are out there?
*Edit: Thought of a way to improve on #3. Go spy and then create a cache somewhere of all the records you're creating. Then, when your faction does get into a Spy Battle (preferably 2), go get all your records and sell them to your home faction. They'll know more than Google and your rep will reach new heights (and depths).
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prideofcadar
Curator
Find my pilot Harmony at the nearest Starport- or her ships, the Wings of Liberty. No Privateering.
Posts: 57
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Post by prideofcadar on Oct 17, 2013 5:43:52 GMT -5
We should have a follow up challenge.
CAaptain xyz has gotten himself into hot soup. Rescue his rep in the shortest time possible. Scored on finalvs initial rep. Challenge ends when 150 years are up or when all factions hit zero or above. Precondition: captain with <-122 rep with 4 or more factions.
This would be great.
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Post by HateSolstice on Oct 17, 2013 7:55:22 GMT -5
Finally killed my first alien, which I didn't realize what it was until the toast popped saying I unlocked that award. The alien was weaker than I was at the start of that run.
So, now I have more questions. Would you guys consider unlocks like the gravity fuel scoop to even be worth looking at? Because I am still not sure what kind of ship I want, or upgrades, for a Zealot.
Also, I must have done something wrong because in the last couple games I was getting negative rep with my home faction, and I triple checked conflicts and everything. Selling records, electronics and excess weapons should bolster my rep, not lower it. And I was doing my best to avoid killing allies. Any ideas?
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Post by contributor on Oct 17, 2013 9:34:02 GMT -5
Finally killed my first alien, which I didn't realize what it was until the toast popped saying I unlocked that award. The alien was weaker than I was at the start of that run. So, now I have more questions. Would you guys consider unlocks like the gravity fuel scoop to even be worth looking at? Because I am still not sure what kind of ship I want, or upgrades, for a Zealot. Also, I must have done something wrong because in the last couple games I was getting negative rep with my home faction, and I triple checked conflicts and everything. Selling records, electronics and excess weapons should bolster my rep, not lower it. And I was doing my best to avoid killing allies. Any ideas? For the negative rep thing I don't have great ideas. Are you taking contracts? It could be that the contracts are secretly against a faction that is allied with your faction? It's sort of frustrating. My home faction was allied with three others and in three contracts I lost three ranks because they were all against independents who were actually factions that I was allied with. As for the gravity water-fuel scoop, the challenge is actually the perfect place for it because it reduces your fuel consumption when in orbit around planets, such as when spying/blockading. I'm using it for the first time now and it seems to let me stay in orbit of Cadar Prime much longer. I've been known to completely cut off any ships coming into our out of the planet for up to a hundred weeks at a time, which of course leads to the Cadarians being more isolated from reality than ever before, but then again, it doesn't seem to be that big of a change for them. |
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Post by HateSolstice on Oct 17, 2013 12:09:34 GMT -5
Yeah, I think you might be right about the contracts thing. I was getting a lot of contracts against indies, but I am pretty sure ships weren't. I noticed that for several bounty contracts the targets ended up being the same faction as me.
That's good to know about the fuel scoop. There was another unlock similar but I forget what it's called. I just can never tell if i'm screwing myself by taking certain upgrades over others. Like, is it worth it to have both the fuel tank and weapon cabinet? Or does that hinder me in the long run?
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Post by slayernz on Oct 17, 2013 15:10:09 GMT -5
prideofcadar, When we did the first challenge, the object was to get the lowest reputation with all 6 factions at the same time. The lower the reputation, the more points you get. AFTER the challenge completed, Lurker and I had reputations of -thousands for each of the factions. I painstakingly worked to get reputations up of all 6 factions, and succeeded. So it's definitely possible, and surprisingly easy if you know how to manage the factional conflicts. -122 is too small a deficit.
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Post by HateSolstice on Oct 17, 2013 16:46:03 GMT -5
prideofcadar, When we did the first challenge, the object was to get the lowest reputation with all 6 factions at the same time. The lower the reputation, the more points you get. AFTER the challenge completed, Lurker and I had reputations of -thousands for each of the factions. I painstakingly worked to get reputations up of all 6 factions, and succeeded. So it's definitely possible, and surprisingly easy if you know how to manage the factional conflicts. -122 is too small a deficit. Wasn't there a cap on rep back in the early days? I seem to recall only being able to go so far in either direction on the rep scale. |
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Post by johndramey on Oct 17, 2013 17:22:21 GMT -5
So, silly little question for everyone here, what does "flying a ship with your faction's flag" exactly mean? Does that mean I can only buy rank ships? Cause man, getting up the ~300k I need to buy one with my starting ship is turning into a real challenge. I'm at the point now where I'm getting diminishing returns on any contracts I do simply due to the fact that I need to repair and/or refuel multiple times a contract now!
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Post by contributor on Oct 17, 2013 17:33:53 GMT -5
johndramey, sorry, not well explained. Your ship is flagged based on where you got it. So it means you can only buy at your faction ports, but you can buy any ship, rank or not.
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Post by johndramey on Oct 17, 2013 17:51:09 GMT -5
contributor Thank you, Jesus! haha. I was getting a little worried about my choice of SS, their rank ships are.... sub-par. There was one (the templar, I think) that seemed a little ok, but the rest weren't really my style. Time to go shopping!
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Post by slayernz on Oct 17, 2013 19:22:05 GMT -5
Hey John, note you can also shoot down a Steel Song ship if it is a good one ... taking it over with your crew (executing the old captain) is perfectly legit as you are still flying a ship that is flagged with your faction. In fact, I strongly recommend it as a quick way to upgrade your ship. Note, the strategy only really works well with Steel Song ships ...
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