Bounty hunters! D:

[Zekvich]

Well I have begun to face bounty hunters and I need some help with dealing with them, my current strategy is mass retreat because there weapons, ships and cloaked units completely outclass mine, how can I stop them getting me? will they always chase me now?

I have the game set to medium difficulty with medium bounty hunters but with a large map btw.

I'm also around level 25-28 with a medium ship and two smalls, almost have enough black boxes to get a large ship but the bounty hunters make things unbearable with there large ships.

[disulfiram]

You could go to any base of theirs and pay your bounty.
Or stay on the edge of the map until you have leveled enough. It's matter of time before you are able to crush them.

[Zekvich]

oh i didnt know you could visit the base without being attacked :) that shuld solve it thanks though what do you mean the edge of the map? how far do they actually chase you :)

[disulfiram]

They only chase you in the system they have base in, and any adjacent systems. But their level system dependent. So you are lvl 20 in system lvl 10 and they attack, you will probably fight them off. But if you are lvl 20 in system lvl 30 you better run.

[Zekvich]

okay it looks like i will have to leave the system for now then and return when i am stronger to get the part from the store. The hunters seem to be a much higher level than the others in the star though so I should probably fight them when I have my large ship and deck it out. Thanks again. :)

[Sentient_Toaster]

Even if they hate you, once you visit them at their base you can also reduce your bounty and earn their respect by winning the arena battles they offer, not just by directly paying off their bounty.

Destroying the base will also earn their respect, but if you're having trouble with their raids you probably will have some issues taking down their bases. I've trashed only one so far, and it had ~2500 shields + 8000 hull. :D (For my part, I controlled my Right Hook and had two AI-controlled Colts, all based around Disrupter Cannons. RH carried one grav missile launcher to help deal with ships. )

There's also some mission types which increase your Bounty Hunter respect rather than trashing it... but it's much easier to lower it by trashing blockades and the like.

[Exparte]

Go to one of thier bases and do some Arena events. You earn respect which lowers your bounty. Earn enough respect and they become your friends which means they show up in battle and assist you instead of attacking you. You also earn rez and even specialists from doing these events. You never really need to pay your bounty if you do arena events once you get a high bounty. Spread the events out over the course of your game so you don't waste the respect opportunities!

[Sentient_Toaster]

...but, if you don't fight them, it's harder to get Brute blueprints. :D

[Exparte]

There will be zombie Brutes later on, fairly common too I might add. Also, you could let them spawn as your friend, start fighting UTA or Civs or zombies, then back stab them when they are half dead! I sniped several "friendly" ships that way. I figured I'm supposed to be a pirate so I should exploit the opportunity. Just wait until you feel equipped to handle them if you want to kill them as hostiles.

[Zekvich]

ok so i'm around level 34 now and I have managed to get a good few bounty ships which are pretty strong however my threat is extreme all the time meaning I have to go to stars 10 levels lower than me otherwise I get obliterated, is it even worth gaining rep with them since all other missions will give me bounty added? It does seem odd that I cannot kill the same level as me though considering I have shield boosters, double turrets, laser cannons etc, mainly yellow equipment and moving on to red but the bounty hunters always have loads of drones, cloaked ships and grav missles but equal ships to me. Oh I also came across my first crew launching ship which almost insta killed me :o 600ish shield, 600 hull and level 2 armour plates don't seem to cut it for defence.

Not come across zombies yet other than the first one in the missions but surely they won't be as strong as these bounty hunters right? Having to go farm rez at a mining base after every attack is so boring even if it does only take 10 mins or so to get 2.5k.

To add to this I cannot use many strong weapons at once and tend to use lots of power + slots to power a single or 2 weapons otherwise I run out of energy really fast, is there a way to upgrade the core other than story missions and the reactor level up?

Thanks again.

[disulfiram]

I actually payed my bounty a few times before I could defeat the.

Something you might find useful. Got to science bases and buy data with goons. If you don't have goons, but have rez, go buy goons at colony bases first. If you don't have rez, mine some first. I don't know if this helps level up early game but at lvl 100+ is really helping a lot to move things faster :)

[Zekvich]

Sounds like a good plan, I tried a similar thing earlier in the game but the stations only had around 10-30 data, goons or rez on them at a time but it might be a lot better now at this stage of the game so i'll take a look at that as what I am currently doing is trying to buy all the equipment I can which has helped a lot but now I am too low level for potential upgrades :)

[Zekvich]

I ended up paying the bounty off and making the rez back with their arena so it's all good now but wow I never knew how strong the small ships could be, using 2 even though I now have a bigger hangar and they just speed around the place wrecking other ships and when they die it's only 30 rez to replace ^_^