officers with classes

[absimiliard]

Bears are evil.

Never, ever, go into teddy bear valley unless you know the runes that blow up the bears.

(oh, and watch out for the randomly flying hatchets too.)

Damn Evil Bears.

-abs

[oldalchemist]

Earth would be a Danger 1 planet, I assume. We lose plenty of miners here to accidents and we're not setting up temporary facilities from a ramshackle space freighter piloted by a Captain missing five ears.

[sebastian]

5 ears 4 feet abd 3 arms in my case. I am a mutant. God bless them flesh wounds.

[HateSolstice]

I was about to start a thread asking about the Explorer, but I'll just ask here instead.

What exactly does having the exploration skilled leveled up do if you're going to lose 90% of your crew on rank 4 planet every time you search for treasure? This is with a skill at least 3x the planet's difficulty and a scout officer.

Oh, and what luxury item does the scout need to be more useful?

It's getting rather annoying throwing bodies into those pits trying to fill them up. The galaxy only has so many hired hands that are willing to sign on with me, especially after "the accident".

[that1guy]

I'm with you. How much of a role does explorer points play. I had 20 explorer points with scout officer plus my class was an explorer and I still lose 85% of my crew in lvl 4 hazard planets on a regular basis.

[noesis]

HateSolstice, Scout officer needs "records" to be more useful. Other than that I don't explore much so don't know about the other questions.

[slayernz]

I've done lots of explorer captains and have found that yes, you'll still lose crew to traps and planetary hazards, but you do get some real benefits from being explorer, and some that I believe are true.

• You get better protection from personal injury. Sure you've just seen 82 crew go down those mincing blades of death, but you somehow managed to go through them unscathed
  
• Your caches get improved protection from thieving scum that try and steal your hard-earned loot. So you found most of the stuff from hidden caches you stumbled across, but it's yours now and they should just leave your stuff alone.
  

• You do seem to lose LESS crew over all than you would if you were non-explorer. In my own experience, I've found that I have to go supermarket shopping for new crew a lot less often as an explorer compared to if I did the same exploring activity in, say, a smuggler class.
  
• You do seem to find more loot as an explorer. You can also hit up a planet a few more times in a row to find stuff. If you did that as a non-explorer, you almost certainly (a) find nothing, and (b) see crew shredded.
  

For exploration, there are a number of planets you should visit on a regular basis (ranging from 2 - 6 hazard level), but treat those planets like you would farming plots. You don't over-explore one planet, because if you do, you'll get little reward for the same level of risk. In the top-left of the map, there is the planet Ghactllli (13, -9), just to the right of Xi Clan World that offers very good material. For that matter, Ihaca-3 (19,-9) is also useful. And of course, everyone knows of Tuscanae-Javat Mining (-2,-5).

Scout officers do save crew. I don't know what number of crew they save, but I've had it where something happened and 0 crew were killed (saved by the Scout officer). Also, I've had it where 76 of my crew died (saved by the Scout officer). Because I only had a crew of 80, I'm guessing really just us officers were saved, but you get that from time to time.

[oldalchemist]

Also, when a planet is 'empty,' it's pretty much a death trap. Once you hit mid-game, you pretty much need to watch rumor and just go to discovery planets because at least there's something to find there.

[HateSolstice]

What's the current fastest way gain XP for Explorers? Sometimes I seem to get a bunch just flying around, others I get nothing. Same for exploration.

Oh, is Harvesting covered by Explorer skills?

[captain nemo]

Oh, is Harvesting covered by Explorer skills?

Yes I believe it is. And that it's more dangerous to do than Exploring is.
Don't remember the exact reasons for it. Maybe someone else can add those.

[hellion7776]

this discussion has left out one very important factor in exploration
... Faction...

For example... When I land on the planet in my Cadar manufactured ship, step out of the lock in my big size 13 Cadar jump boots, with a legion of ripe and ready Cadar troopers at my beck and call... there isn't room for failure!

Remember what they say about Cadar Captains...
"He leads an army so massive it shakes the ground with its march, so vast it drinks the rivers dry."

For CADAR!!!

[shallowthought]

I think cory covered exploration skill in another thread. Basically, if the planet's "dry", crew will die, you'll get injured and you won't find much regardless of skills. On the other hand, if the planet's going through a "full" stage, the amount you can find is a function of your explorer skill and party size (possibly some other stats as well but these are the main ones). So a good explorer will pull off >100 artifacts in a single explore on a decent planet.

[shallowthought]

link to cory explaining exploration: startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=rules&thread=1539&post=20063

[prideofcadar]

May 1, 2012 10:12:46 GMT -5 shallowthought said:

I think cory covered exploration skill in another thread. Basically, if the planet's "dry", crew will die, you'll get injured and you won't find much regardless of skills. On the other hand, if the planet's going through a "full" stage, the amount you can find is a function of your explorer skill and party size (possibly some other stats as well but these are the main ones). So a good explorer will pull off >100 artifacts in a single explore on a decent planet.

Pleease do not remind me of the number of artifacts I left behind on the Citadel of the Dark Lord. -.- and don't even get me started on the weapons and Electronics.

[phantombudgie]

What rank, Explore and Intimidate level are you when you recover this much? I only ever got 60 or so items in total, on the good sites with the treasure-to-be-found rumors. Even after following Cory's advice and only sending the 70 crew I could control rather than a swarm of suicidal havoc...