Game time, speed.

[jameskuyper]

I'm brand new to this game, and therefore playing at the lowest difficulty level. There's two main things that trouble me right now.

1. My contracts keep expiring before I've had time to complete them. In the most extreme case, this happened before I even left the port at which I accepted the contract. I would guess that I'm spending too much time collecting information and making decisions. Is there some way that I can do so with the clock stopped? I suspect that the clock is stopped while I'm examining my status. However, the clock seems to be running while I am in the Urban or Wild areas.
This is one of the reasons I normally prefer turn-based games over real-time ones. If my character has months, days, or even hours to make a decision, why should I have to make the decision for him in a matter of minutes?

2. How can I figure out how long it will take my ship to get somewhere? The only speed indicators seem to be "slow", "medium", and "fast". How does that translate into AU/week, or whatever the appropriate speed units are?

[Tenebrous Pirate]

While in port, your actions do take time. Just visiting the exchange, palace, etc, all takes time. Buying spice in the hall, or selling artifacts at the exchange also takes time. There is no way around this. Just do everything you need to do, then start taking contracts.

Also, try to take more than one contract, in the same general area of space. Unless you are trying for one of the awards for completing contracts, rejecting a bunch of them won'y hurt you. Just use the status button next to reject, hit the cargo button, then hit the map button, if you want to get a good idea of where things are.

Just be sure to pay attention to the types of contracts, so that you don't take one you can't do. If your tactics are below 10, you won't want to do surveilence. If you aren't a combat class, you won't want to do bounty hunting.

Finally, pay attention to which factions you will piss off by completing any given contract. This is very important.

I hope that helps. Cheers!

[absimiliard]

I'm guessing there's a misperception taking place, because this IS a turn-based game.

I'll tackle the second question first, because it's less speculative. The listed ship speed is only in play in combat. For movement on the map it's 1 week per AU traveled, so, move a square spend a week. Pretty straightforward. No ships move faster, or slower, than that to my knowledge. (If I'm wrong I will mention Cory here in the hopes that he'll catch his name in a forum search and correct me)

The first question is trickier. You don't use up in-game time sitting on a world thinking things over. However there are actions you can take on a planet that DO use up game-time, many of them, most of them in fact. Buying/selling, repairs, ship-upgrades, recruiting, entertaining, successful spice-buys (one that increase morale), and plenty of others all use up time. The time varies depending on the action and your character and the planet, in other words "on too many factors for us to easily categorize."

I suspect you probably took the contract, most likely an early-game contract for something very nearby. (and probably a delivery contract as those tend to be fairly short-term in terms of time allowed to complete) I'm going to guess that you then did some stuff, like trading or fixing up your ship, and those things resulted in spending enough time that the contract expired.

Mind you, the above is pure speculation. (but I'll bet I'm right)

Helpful hint: Make taking a contract be the last thing you do in a port. Only go over contracts when your ship is fixed up, full of crew, fueled, and is pretty much ready to take off. This will help cut down on the time in port that you spend after taking the contract.

-abs

[captain nemo]

I agree !! as a newer player to the game. Do everything you need to do first, buy/sell, see the doc, check rumors. Then look at the contracts ( use the status button There if you need to ) when you accept one the next thing you should be doing is getting in your ship & getting the heck out of there.

[sebastian]

if ur trying for quick contracts, buy fuel get contracts and scedaddle

[jameskuyper]

Jun 3, 2011 9:57:20 GMT -5 absimiliard said:

I'm guessing there's a misperception taking place, because this IS a turn-based game.

I'll tackle the second question first, because it's less speculative. The listed ship speed is only in play in combat. For movement on the map it's 1 week per AU traveled, so, move a square spend a week. Pretty straightforward. No ships move faster, or slower, than that to my knowledge. (If I'm wrong I will mention Cory here in the hopes that he'll catch his name in a forum search and correct me)

www.corytrese.com/games/startraders/StarTradersRPG.htm#LinkTarget_921, says:

> The Sail helps with accurate Torpedoes, main map Ship movement and evasion in combat.

I assumed that "main map" was the map where you do navigation. From what you're saying, that would be incorrect.

Jun 3, 2011 9:57:20 GMT -5 absimiliard said:

The first question is trickier. You don't use up in-game time sitting on a world thinking things over. However there are actions you can take on a planet that DO use up game-time, many of them, most of them in fact. Buying/selling, repairs, ship-upgrades, recruiting, entertaining, successful spice-buys (one that increase morale), and plenty of others all use up time. The time varies depending on the action and your character and the planet, in other words "on too many factors for us to easily categorize."

I suspect you probably took the contract, most likely an early-game contract for something very nearby. (and probably a delivery contract as those tend to be fairly short-term in terms of time allowed to complete) I'm going to guess that you then did some stuff, like trading or fixing up your ship, and those things resulted in spending enough time that the contract expired.

Mind you, the above is pure speculation. (but I'll bet I'm right)

You are, in every detail. It was a contract which I picked up on De Vailtos Prime for delivery of a message to Aro Prime.

Jun 3, 2011 9:57:20 GMT -5 absimiliard said:

Helpful hint: Make taking a contract be the last thing you do in a port. Only go over contracts when your ship is fixed up, full of crew, fueled, and is pretty much ready to take off. This will help cut down on the time in port that you spend after taking the contract.
-abs

That makes sense, but it's a bit inconvenient. I'd like to use information about the contract when making my decisions about the immediate future course of my spacecraft. That, in turn, could affect which goods i want to carry, and which ones I want to sell. If money is tight, the costs of some things I might want to do to prepare for a trip in a given direction might preclude spending money on other things. In short, I'd prefer to not make any irreversible decisions until after I know which contracts I'm accepting. However, there's not many things less reversible than the passage of time [at least, not in a game that provides no mechanism for saving the game, playing, and then restoring from the save]. Thanks for your information!

[jameskuyper]

Jun 3, 2011 9:51:42 GMT -5 Tenebrous Pirate said:

While in port, your actions do take time. Just visiting the exchange, palace, etc, all takes time. Buying spice in the hall, or selling artifacts at the exchange also takes time. There is no way around this. Just do everything you need to do, then start taking contracts.

Now that I understand what's going on, I see that this is indeed turn-based game, but less obviously so than the others that I'm familiar with.
In the games I'm normally thinking about when I call them "turn-based", there's usually a button or something that you press when you're ready for the next turn to go forward. You can do anything you want to during one turn, but nothing else happens untill you press that button.

Jun 3, 2011 9:51:42 GMT -5 Tenebrous Pirate said:

Also, try to take more than one contract, in the same general area of space. Unless you are trying for one of the awards for completing contracts, rejecting a bunch of them won'y hurt you. Just use the status button next to reject, hit the cargo button, then hit the map button, if you want to get a good idea of where things are.

Just be sure to pay attention to the types of contracts, so that you don't take one you can't do. If your tactics are below 10, you won't want to do surveilence. If you aren't a combat class, you won't want to do bounty hunting.

Finally, pay attention to which factions you will piss off by completing any given contract. This is very important.

Oddly enough, I have all of those aspects of the game well in hand. though I've made quite a few mistakes along the way. At one point I got stuck on a planet belonging to a faction involved in a Trade Embargo and a Spy battle, with no water, and lots of damage to be repaired, and the only way I could afford to pay for everything I needed before I moved to my next destination was to sell just about all of my cargo, including a bunch of records. I didn't realize the mistake I'd made until I saw the "toasts" coming up to remind me, but by that time I didn't have any choice in the matter.
I only recently discovered how to find out what awards are available, but there don't seem to be any which have any in-game meaning when playing at the lowest difficulty level, as I'm currently doing.

[oldalchemist]

Sometimes, you've got to buy water and piss off some folks for a little while. Remember, you can still take missions for factions that don't like you as long as you can still get into the Spice Hall.

Sometimes, if you need water, it's best just to pirate an independent merchant and whistle innocently.

[taatuu25]

The higher the so called 'speed'is the amount of water fuwl used in general.

[Cory Trese]

interesting concept -- we could add a pilot + speed test to skip turns from time to time, in effect, making travel faster for some ships. concept would be easy to implement, have wide reaching effects on game play and difficulty.