Preferred starting strategies

[Shoober]

How do you guys like to start out a new game? How do you spend those precious early years?

[The Haney]

I spend most of my time restarting this ridiculous RNG process. Not sure why character creation is essentially a roguelike when the rest of the game very specifically is not.

The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cherry-on-top is that once you actually HAVE a character you like, after all of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you then have to waste a year for every ship you look at.

The bones of the game are obviously excellent, and I can't wait to see how the game evolves, but if I had to nitpick *one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing* it's this intensely annoying character creation process.

Anyway. Enough griping; to your question.

My first steps so far in all of my runs is to gather up enough cash via on-station jobs to:

* Buy a full set of basic power tools, chargers, and a good toolbox.
* Buy a salvage license

Then I go salvaging until I can:

* Buy an EVA suit, laser, and dolly. I'll check to see if there's any investigate-death jobs I can do simultaneously. The EVA suit may or may not be skipped/come earlier depending on my starter ship/chargen choices.

At that point, I'm pretty much set. It's just exponential expansion past that point, and I keep going until I'm bored and start over.

[Shenji]

Hacking skill is my top priority, since you can find a lot of valuable contents in PDAs and Nav consoles in derelicts, and you can just sell them at the same price(as for now) to the official trader or black market. Then EVA operation skill(less work efficiency penalty when in pressure suit or EVA suit).
Construction skill is best for install/uninstall parts faster. Mechanical skills are also good to get for repair/restore things around, make trade profit much better. Money is not much important since you can do as many as possible courier gigs when you start your career.
You can also get these skills in Seek Adventures section if you know what to do, makes the progress much faster. Though I didn't notice any difference between young and elder characters.
Stay away from jail!

[The Haney]

Originally posted by Shenji:

Though I didn't notice any difference between young and elder characters.

You very rapidly start to accumulate negative traits as you age. Especially in your 30's you start stocking up on really nasty stuff.

[Shenji]

I think some traits are just placeholders maybe. Not long ago I got a 35 yo one and feels nothing wrong. Currently my character is 29 and 'middle aged' and works like mule (didn't sleep for 3 days and everything looks fine). Maybe some negative effects will be added into future updates.

[Agent Lonergan]

I was a complete noob that knew nothing of Ostranauts or Neo Scavenger, had no starting strategy and just winged it with the coffin start. Hacked a few doors on the stations and sold everything I could steal, got fined a couple of times as didn't want to go to jail. It's great going into a game blind and working things out

[Shoober]

Originally posted by Agent Lonergan:

I was a complete noob that knew nothing of Ostranauts or Neo Scavenger, had no starting strategy and just winged it with the coffin start. Hacked a few doors on the stations and sold everything I could steal, got fined a couple of times as didn't want to go to jail. It's great going into a game blind and working things out

Yeah this has been my strategy mostly because I don't know which skills and traits are even worth developing

[Bystandard]

I spend all my time training construction ship construction and mechanical construction. I drive slow(~75-250 kms) and my ship is nearly 100% when I dock at Kleg full of 100 repaired booty 1st trip. No starter cash only the $98($99 if your lucky) and my return is 25k All my repairs/installs are 10X or better.
Of course Ill only take the dream and my 1st click is adventure looking for +hacking +genius or I restart

[tritton82]

> Get Myself a Nice Face
> Spend a year adding the Smoker Trait
> Adventure until I'm about 30-35, by that time I should have the following skills:
- Electrical & Mechanical Engineering
- Hacking
- Armed and Unarmed Melee
- Tough
- EVA Suit Operation
- Also about ~$6,000 cash
- Also have the Fixer as a contact
- As many social friends as I can get
> Pick a ship, I'm not usually too fussed on what I start with, they're all good.
> Clear out starting room, I ain't ever going back there.
> Grab Welder and knife from the 'Install Me' wiring room.
> Grab Secret Crowbar from the switch room below the starting room
> Buy myself a backpack, upgraded toolbox, maybe harness pants if the supplies kiosk has them, if not oh well!
> Access ship, use files pda app to pull files off Nav Console
> Head to Old Emporium, sell files to fixer
> Check out Ship Broker in Commercial for likely derelicts
> Buy Salvage License if I've got the scratch, or just head out for some extra-legal salvaging.
> ???
> Profit!

[Walach]

I'm gonna be honest and say that, to me, the difference between removing negative traits, having skills, etc, or just starting at age 18, is very minor.

If there's one thing that is really felt, then I'd say it's the EVA suit operation one. It about doubles the time you need to finish tasks. Nothing else comes close, not even the Micro-G negative trait (a trait I don't feel does much neither).

I tried playing both with all the default negative traits and without and I haven't noticed much difference at all.

As an example, based only on memory and no evidence, this is how it feels in one situation:
With negative traits: gets Drowsy at 1 and a half day of work.
Without negative traits: gets Drowsy at 2 days of work.

To me, as this game uses real life days, it's barely noticeable because you'll be done with most crucial stuff within the first day. Having to rest half a day earlier is already so far into the game that you should have all the money needed to pay any debt (if you still got one that is) and the docking fees (which currently seems bugged as they don't apply per-hour anymore in my experience as of the latest patch .17) for days in a row without any work done in-between.

Oh, and I don't recommend doing any events in the character creation as even if you get the most important skill (EVA suit operation) you will still train it up within 2-3 days in-game. You even train it while asleep. Though that might be a bug.

Instead, if you really want to be sure, then spend one year to remove the Micro-G negative trait. That's it, well, maybe have that Hacking skill if you want as learning it in-game can be a annoying task of finding stuff to "reset access" on.

But all this is from someone already familiar with the game. The posts above are all great if you've never played the game before and feels as lost as a derelict 10.000km away. :P

EDIT: I also agree that the character creation is very annoying, even more so that restarting it isn't as simple as one click, no, you have to go through several (2?) loading screens.

[Shoober]

Originally posted by Walach:

If there's one thing that is really felt, then I'd say it's the EVA suit operation one. It about doubles the time you need to finish tasks.

dang yo, this is the kind of information i was curious about. it genuinely feels like using my ingame time is more efficient than blowing through years for peanuts in the creator

[Walach]

Originally posted by Shoober:

Originally posted by Walach:

If there's one thing that is really felt, then I'd say it's the EVA suit operation one. It about doubles the time you need to finish tasks.

dang yo, this is the kind of information i was curious about. it genuinely feels like using my ingame time is more efficient than blowing through years for peanuts in the creator

Just to make it clear: I meant that NOT having the EVA Suit Operation will double the time to finish tasks. I kinda butchered the earlier attempt to explain it. Sorry if it was hard to read!

But yeah, I'd recommend to only use the character creation to gain traits you can't gain in-game (which is a little weird). All skills (which aren't social ones) can be gained in-game in less than 2-3 days of just playing the game like normal so no need to use a year of character creation to gain any of them. That's why I believe the time to train them should be increased by about 100 times, making it be trained over the course of about a year of in-game play.

The picks I take at character creation most of the time is:
1 year to remove Micro-G negative trait.
1 year to remove the Immunosupressent (or what the name was) negative trait.
1 year to remove the Vision Impaired negative trait.
1 year to gain the Beautiful trait.

Then I redo everything above something like 10-50 times until I get the choice of getting the worst ship in the game (box-sled with no o2). This is the worst part of the creation. The good thing is that you can still change your characters looks in the middle of a message, like gaining the ship you want so I don't bother changing my character's looks before I know I'll get the start I want.

[WiseArkAngel]

Sometimes seeking adventure can get you more money than you can in a year of honest work, but it's hit or miss in that regard. You can also pick up decent skills. For example, troubleshooting the thruster on your work station will not only get you piloting skill, but also a pretty decent nest egg from impressing your manager.