Ship Building

[Captlen]

So I must be missing something, I want to build a bigger ship but finding the rare materials seems to be hit or miss. Traders want exorbitant amounts and exploration is limited to areas which are either barren of materials or are populated with hostile groups that will simply stomp my current ship into atoms. As soon as I think I have outfitted my ship to handle hostiles up comes elite enemies which swarm and the game becomes a run, heal, hit, run, heal, hit and hope for the best.

[refshop]

Originally posted by Captlen:

So I must be missing something, I want to build a bigger ship but finding the rare materials seems to be hit or miss. Traders want exorbitant amounts and exploration is limited to areas which are either barren of materials or are populated with hostile groups that will simply stomp my current ship into atoms. As soon as I think I have outfitted my ship to handle hostiles up comes elite enemies which swarm and the game becomes a run, heal, hit, run, heal, hit and hope for the best.

In certain areas Devout Battleships fight in pairs. so the run, heal, hit method is pretty much the only way. I try to lure just a single Devout ship to follow and blast it with rear facing fixed plasma guns from a range outside their lasers. Overall though, it seems the Devout Weapons Development Program has outpaced that of Starcom by a fair amount.

[Darkcircle]

mine asteroid fields....

[Xenomorph]

Mine asteroid fiels for a bit, farm those sectors with floating crates. You can get those expensive, hard to get materials by trading in the other, more common materials you may have tons of.
Note that some high end materials are really, really rare loot drops. Get used to the idea that you'll have to buy them. The ship editing process is lossless, you always get 100% of the materials back when deleting or moving things around. So you only have to buy those exorbitantly priced materials once :)

[akrael]

Farming the chariot wreckages repeatedly is also a good idea. Especially since these sometimes drop neutronium and etherine which are usually quite expensive on the market.

[DuckyTales]

Originally posted by Xenomorph:

Mine asteroid fiels for a bit, farm those sectors with floating crates. You can get those expensive, hard to get materials by trading in the other, more common materials you may have tons of.
Note that some high end materials are really, really rare loot drops. Get used to the idea that you'll have to buy them. The ship editing process is lossless, you always get 100% of the materials back when deleting or moving things around. So you only have to buy those exorbitantly priced materials once :)

so if i like delete my current light ship it will give me all the parts for it back including the etherine?

[ashjam360]

Yep - 100% reclamation.

[Joe Coffee]

OP: You already know some...or all of what I'm about to say. These are pointers.

Exploration and discovery with a ton of patience is essential. Part of the aspect of bigger/badder/better, you HAVE to "boldly go where no one ever has gone...before!". You have to poke the nose of your ship into nooks and crannies of this totally amazing universe. You have to be the explorer. There's no other way around it.

Reason being those little discoveries bring in a number of "discovery points" that you use to sink into a tech tree. Think of them as the blueprint plans for your ship. One of those paths leads to adding more "hexes" to your ship that allows you to cram more parts. Within that same general area is also the tech path to investing into bigger ship classes.

The other half may involve combat or finding things to blow up. Sometimes just taking the chaotic path of destroying hostile aliens will yield discoveries that you will tractor beam into your ship's hold. If you analyze these things, they also yield discovery points. Some of the parts compose a larger thing where if you find three similar items, like an alien tech, you can research back at Starcom base for that tech and put it on your ship.

Yes, there will be places you can't go, either because they're heavily patrolled by NPCs that can turn hostile on a dime (or are already hostile), or have some sort of requirement (i.e., you haven't found something essential). Hence - you DO have to "get out there".

Explore.
Destroy.
Gather.
Trade.

This is my second play through the game and I get it. I got stuck because I couldn't remember where to go. My ship simply wasn't powerful enough to take it to an area patrolled by neutrals (who didn't want me to scan or land on any planet in their territory) or enemies. I was about to put the game down and I don't remember what I did exactly, but I think I found a planet in an area I've been to before but didn't explore, which - like a domino - opened up chains of things I could now do. Which lead to more XP for my crew, tech points I could invest in, and "Skittles" (those glowing orbs left behind when blowing up ships). I went back to Starcom with hundreds of points, I had some alien tech that allowed me new parts to my ship (LOVE Havok), and after an upgrade cost (had to go actually back OUT there to find a merchant willing to trade with something I had a lot of - I think I converted my Aluminum (which was its bartering unit) into the ship class upgrade element I needed to give to Starcom for the new ship. And with some careful designs in mind, I built a pretty tough ship.

Now I'm at the point where I added missiles, shield, and a beam laser to my craft. I think it's a tough bird.

And, oh yeah. Save early. Safe often. That's also key, if things go sideways, which they do. And being super patient and going exploring, helps. And don't forget to look in the Void. Sometimes you find a derelict ship, some odd container, or thing waaaaay in-between regions that are worth exploration points.

[Soulsquest]

Astrometrics helps with drop rates and chances of getting an artifact. But your officer points can be really hard to come by early on.