Overwhelmed newb

[tylertoo]

I own the full (elite?) version.  I've started and stopped, started and stopped.  I'm overwhelmed and have no idea what sort of path to follow.  So I quit and play something else.

I get the basic mechanics, I love this open-world style of play.  But for my first serious run through, can anyone gently nudge me in a general direction?  What sort of things are best to start out doing?

[Brutus Aurelius]

Try playing on Basic or Normal.

Play as a non combat class, like the Merchant or Explorer.

Try to keep a good rep with at least 2 or 3 Factions at once, and buy Trade Permits.

Make sure to keep your Skills and Attributes up to maximize your abilities.

Have fun and welcome to the forum!

[slayernz]

Hey tylertoo,
Welcome to the forum and congrats on wanting to get the most out of ST! It's an awesome game and yes, not something that can be learned in a few minutes. That's the trade-off I guess ... easy to master and you'll get bored of it quick - hard to master, and you'll get frustrated, but hopefully will end up getting lots and lots out of it.

The best link to help you would be this one:
startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/4267/consolidated-list-information-players

It's got all the juicy good stuff collected from around the forum. Other than that, my own starting point for newbies is this:

1. Pick a captain that gives you good pilot/stealth/tactics right from the get-go, and start at a low difficulty level. You can always start a new captain at higher difficulty when you've learned more of the game. Pilot is one of the most critical skills that you can boost (and continue to boost). Starting with high Pilot is a real bonus. Stealth helps you avoid nasty encounters, and also help you evade enemies and the like, so that is why I recommend new players focus on those two stats at least at the beginning.

2. After going to your first planet, check out rumors in the spice hall and palace. What you're looking for is the "Shortage" rumor. This is where you are going to get some cash. Shortage rumors cause prices to be inflated to around 500% of their original values, so if you can buy 20 units of metal for $8000, and can sell it for $40000, you're going to be up $32000 before expenses (WF/repairs/etc). If you can find a bunch of shortage rumors and milk them early in the game, you can get some very quick and much-needed cash. NOTE, until you build up skills, don't do shortages related to restricted goods, that is, don't do Artifacts, Electronics, Weapons, and even Records. The first three goods need a trade permit, and unless you have one for each faction, there is a chance you'll get an encounter where they want to inspect and possibly confiscate your cargo. They also confiscate records (note to other captains, can you confirm this?)

3. When traveling between factions, surrender to all ships but pirates. Surrendering to pirates means they steal your cargo, and that's just annoying. Other ships (eg Military) will search your craft, but if you listened to #2, you won't get any issues and they'll let you go on your way.

4. Try to keep at least 3 factions friendly to you - preferably 4. You could go the whole hog and get all factions friendly with you but that's actually not optimal for long-term play. Nonetheless, you'll find that as you ascend the difficulty levels, you'll become more and more diplomatic and less trigger happy.

5. When levelling, try and keep your pilot skill to be at least 200% of your level ... but get it up to at least 15 as quickly as you can. After that, boost your stealth up to maybe 10 or so. If you find during encounters you are missing your targets a lot, then start boosting your Tactics, but you don't need to get carried away with Tactics. Pilot (for me) is THE skill to have high.

6. If you decide to do the boarding thing, start looking at Warrior. I don't know enough about boarding (although thanks to qbspy, I'm going to have to give it a go some day soon).

7. If you're doing contracts, be selective - pick the ones that make sense based on your friendly factions. You could even just do contracts against independents if you want.

8. When you get stuck at all - sing out to the community. With a little help, no situation or captain setup is too messy to fix.

9. Only focus on the awards/achievements once you are comfortable with the game itself. ... some people go chasing after the achievements and die a lot in the process. Dying reduces enjoyment quite a bit

10. When you do have enough cash, look at getting a ship with high sails to hull ratio (SHr) and possibly high engines to hull ratio (EHr) as well. a high SHr will lower your fuel consumption and a high EHr will help during combat when you want to change ranges.

Good luck ...

[qbspy]

It's always great to get top rate info from high class players. tylertoo make sure you pick a faction that interests you. Expect to pass on a few times, but remember you're riding a bull in space, never will be easy. When you're offered a contract, choose reject if the AU to travel is more than the credits paid in thousands. Try to pick your fights. Always carry weapons, unless you have no choice. Up your strength stat when ever your other stats are balanced, excepting your preferred stats of course. Only good PILOTs will survive. The more crew you have, the better. Always upgrade your ship, but never drop below 20,000 credits, unless you got no choice...buy pardons fast unless you want more enemies. If you're getting ahead, mix it up a little, to learn what happens. Officers are worth hiring. Can I recommend a profession? Captain bro...

[beverage]

I'll throw in a few little gems that once I figured them were very helpful:
Learn the coordinate system. Once you can easily visualize where (-1, +7) is you will begin choosing contracts that are easy to complete and start selecting several that you can easily chain together for maximum profit/xp and minimum risk.
Also avoid assassinate and capture jobs for the early game!
Do not be afraid to reject contracts!

Best of luck my good man.

[spacemonkey]

Oct 28, 2014 3:24:01 GMT -5 beverage said:

I'll throw in a few little gems that once I figured them were very helpful:
Learn the coordinate system. Once you can easily visualize where (-1, +7) is you will begin choosing contracts that are easy to complete and start selecting several that you can easily chain together for maximum profit/xp and minimum risk.
Also avoid assassinate and capture jobs for the early game!
Do not be afraid to reject contracts!

Best of luck my good man.

I second this, once I started to learn to Co-ords I had a much easier time starting out and building money, you generally want to avoid red space until you can travel through it efficiently

[tylertoo]

Now I'm even more overwhelmed .

Seriously, thanks all.  I've actually copied all of these suggestions into one giant crib sheet to have next to me while I give it a go.  Onward!

[Officer Genious]

Hey Tippecanoe (and tylertoo) , I believe you stopped in before? Hello again! Loving that name!

Anyway, everything slayernz said and all those posts about coordinates too, with the caveat that you should really just try to keep them around the same area (+,+ or -,+ or +,- or -,-). So long as I keep the right signs in the right place and around the same distance (-+5 AU), I'm typically good.

Never be afraid to take a bunch of courier contracts, and even a hardcore pirate enjoys getting rich off a good rumor every so often. I have a bounty hunter for exampe, and because my ship is a custom I'm trying to keep to lvl 10, I need well-paying, good rep capture/kill missions for me to go travel across the sector. When my preferred factions aren't fighting Assassin Duels, I roam for officers, shortage/surplus rumors and courier contracts. Even with no negotiation skill, I can make crazy money off just a single shortage rumor involving basic metal.

Speaking of which, I don't know what unlocks you have yet, but once you work through Easy-Normal try working up through the difficulties with a few challenges, like aiming for Rapid Rank I and Turn of the Dark Century. Those bonuses are REALLY nice to have later on, especially the Water-Fuel Tank Upgrade.

Depending on what you die to, consider a viable counter. Do you die because you can't torp a pirate with you mega-cruiser? Then you want help for a torping ship. Die because your guns do nothing at medium range? Talk to slayernz. Die because you get boarded like an airplane on a holiday weekend? We have boarder pros too. For an easy survival method, I'd suggest boarding, as it really doesn't require much investment.
You need just a few things, and it works on even Merchant classes...

1: Weapon Cabinet Upgrade (and the weapons to go in it. You can buy or board for them- sometimes I'll pick on smugglers with a merchant to get my weapons AND sell some goods.

2: Raise Warrior up to 15-25, at least 15 and increasing upward as you notice your crew taking more damage than usual. This seems like a high number, but warrior doesn't increase your level nearly as fast as the other skills do. Going straight for 15 Warrior might get you to level 2 or so, going for 25 might get you to level 3 or 4. The numbers are high enough to make life very uncomfortable for pirates thinking "Oh, smuggler-- KILL IT!".

3: Get a fast/fast ship (2*sails to hull, 2*engines to hull) and keep Pilot 2*your level. The best you have want is to have 2*crew to Engine+Sails, but with a high warrior skill you likely won't be taking much damage from anything but gun-nut Aliens. You can get away with 1.5*Engine+Sails if your Warrior is high enough, but don't count on it past Challenging.

4.

5: PROFIT!!!

[tylertoo]

Oct 28, 2014 9:33:17 GMT -5 Officer Genious said:

I believe you stopped in before?

Yes, I came upon the forum after trying ST4X, but then discovering ST RPG, and I posted trying to figure out how they differed.  I then bought the paid version of RPG and continually bounced off it as stated above.  Recently I backed the kickstarter for RPG2, so I figured, if I'm going to get the sequel, I'd better learn the first game!

Thanks for your tips as well.

[fallen]

tylertoo - welcome to the forum! You've come to the right place We hope you'll try some of our other games as well (there is a free version for all of them).

[slayernz]

Oct 28, 2014 9:33:17 GMT -5 Officer Genious said:

Anyway, everything slayernz said and all those posts about coordinates too, with the caveat that you should really just try to keep them around the same area (+,+ or -,+ or +,- or -,-). So long as I keep the right signs in the right place and around the same distance (-+5 AU), I'm typically good.

I was going cross-eyed for a minute there ... and kept seeing eyes in your +,+ or -,+, or ... and ended up thinking

   \|/
   o o
  ()V()
 --" "--
-------

Also, I don't gun bunny at medium range dear Officer Genious ... it's right up in front of their bridge where they can see me leaping around my bridge like a madcat! Having a ship with high EHr and high Pilot means they can see me, but they can't hit me I'm definitely testing the Boarder theory - I've got a captain fresh(ish) off the rack to see. Fresh for me though is umm level 22 on Crazy difficulty. Call me a paranoid cat, but I need a plan B and I know that my level 22 captain will be able to fly a shuttle and still kill most things, so if boarding fails, I can always resort to standard slaughter from afar

4. ?? ?

I LOVE #4 though, and it sums up the game. TRY Things. Seriously, if you wonder "What would happen if I did this" ... doooo it! Take the risk and it may pay off big time. If it doesn't, then you've learned something and that's awesome too.


In terms of the co-ordinates, it is standard (x,y).

If you are at (1,1)- which just so happens to be Devaltos Prime - and you need to go to (5,1), then that's just a matter of moving 4 AU east of your position.

If it's (-5,1), then you'd be going west by 6au (x coord changing through 0,-1,-2,-3,-4,-5)

Devaltos Prime is at the (1,1) position because they set things up and made the quadrant wealthy and wise! That, and they had the military might of Cadar to back their vision of the galaxy


When you're acquiring a ship, always ALWAYS have money spare. qbspy recommends $20k and I'm even more conservative where I require at least $100k spare after I buy a ship from the market or find one that looks particularly juicy in space. Note for taking ships in space, if you plan on doing it, make sure it's not too far away from a friendly space dock. There is nothing worse than jumping into a beat-up Jango, only to be taken out while trying to limp back to port with 1 engine.

[knowname]

Another overwhelmed noob here, how early is too early to take on Aliens in ships? I met one bout two levels ago and immediately ran away cuz I didn't recognize the flag and am regretting that decision now. I'm on basic, lvl 9 (or 12??) 20 on pilot and 20 on quickness, got 3 ships, Royal Liner (my fast, medium freighter 90 hold/ weapon cabinet), Heavy Lifter (my medium, quick first new ship so just basic upgrades just 60 hold but shes a monster in combat) and my newest baby- I forget, but basicaly heavy lifter specs but fast/ quick I will use her to hunt Alien scum. I think her crew compliment is only 50 (not upgraded) whereas my Royal Liner is 119! would the larger crew be better, I have military and templar officers so I fully expect to board plus the larger hold would allow for artifacts galore!

Whats the best tactic for Alien hunting should I follow certain rumors? should I bother with torp/ guns or just board? Am I already a badass alien killer I just don't know it??

[slayernz]

knowname welcome to the forum!!! Playing Basic or Normal difficulty gives you the awesome opportunity to go and do things that you really don't think you can survive from. See an Alien - go try and kill it. The worst thing that can happen is that you can get your ship pretty banged up and you'll "miraculously escape". The best outcome would be actually killing the Alien ... at the very least you'll know just how powerful they are compared to your captain, and hopefully understand where you may need to improve.

Level 10 with 20 pilot is pretty good. I'd not want your pilot to level ratio drop below this though (200% pilot to level minimum). Most aliens are the type where you probably need to look at boarding them in order to defeat them with any consistency. Boosting your warrior skill up (and Strength in general) will certainly help in this regard.

I must add my disclaimer here - I'm not actively hunting for Aliens - even with high level characters. I'm a gun bunny who doesn't like getting on an enemy deck until after my crew has washed all of the enemy remains out of the way. When I do encounter them, I have managed to gun-bunny them, but my pilot is often in the hundreds, or at the very least more than 250% of my level.

[knowname]

ok another question, I'd been keeping a close eye on my factions and Javat isn't at war/ allies with anybody, I've done nothing hostile to them yet my RP keeps slowly going down? I'd been watching it go down from negative 122 down to neg 130 it seems like 1 per encounter I ignore is there any way around this? If you lose 1 RP for ignoring them why not just blast them out of the sky? This doesn't make sence.

Is there a place you can look that tells you who is currently fighting who or allied with who or what? cuz I'm just not fast enough for those messages that flash by at the top.

I'd like to figure out how to get Javat to positive some time though... but how? if I can't be pardoned, can't go to jail (don't want to I know it's an option at this difficulty though), and they aren't fighting anybody either who I can gang up on :/

[knowname]

I'm blockading House Thule (for Rychart) and my Clan Javat went up from neg 130 to neg 127! I didn't even meet any Javat ships! how strange...