Tips for playing GOF 2 Full HD

[what]

This is just my playing style but it works for me. Hopefully you will agree.

I aways want the best ship I can get before I start the main questline. That usually requires money. The best way to earn money in the early game is mining. While I find the mining mini-game rapidly tiring at least it makes sense. The best ore is titanium and that is most available in the more dangerous locations so instead I concentrated on Orichalzine or Hypanium and didn't leave the first location until I had 100K in credits. Then I started upgrading all my systems as best I could while continuing to mine. The original ship doesn't have much storage so upgrade the compression device first.

Don't worry about combat or weapons beyond getting a good shield as every time you go to a station you automatically are fixed. Don't attack pirates as that gives you a bad reputation with their faction. Don't bother to install a tractor beam as capturing loot from fallen ships also gives you a bad reputation. You don't need it for mining or trading. If a pirate starts shooting at you, don't run away, fly at it and circle behind it. This will give your shield time to recover and then you can boost for the space station. Steering nozzels also are not important if you aren't fighting. You also don't need secondary weapons unless you really want to engage in combat. So ship equipment I would prioritize is shield, compression, mining laser, scanner, and booster

The two best ways to make money are trading and crafting, but not trading as you would expect.

The margins on trade goods are very poor so travelling from port to port buying and selling doesn't work. However, almost every station has someone in the space lounge offering a premium for certain items. Feel free to turn them down and ask again, again, and again. They will respond with a different desired product and # of items each time. You can usually get a 100% markup on items this way. Of course you need valuable items to sell to get the best result. I recommend that you only carry rare animals, rare plants, organs, vossk organs, buskart, collectible items, and implants. you can find rare animals, plants, and implants in Terran space at the top of the map, but the rest tends toward the bottom more dangerous area. I travelled to every station in every star system and noted the best stations for each item. You should try to keep at least 20 of each as the offers are never over 20 tons and the best results are from large numbers in a sale. How much you carry will depend on your storage capacity.

while you are travelling around you should also note stations that have large quantities of commodities for crafting. You get blueprints from sellers in the space lounge. They drop very rarely so hitting all the stations in a system is a very good idea. Blueprints usually provide the best versions of equipment (shield, cloak, secondary weapons). The very best is the Kahador drive as it takes about 20K (you mine all the ores yourself although you might want to purchase the cores) and you sell it for 400K. It does take tons of equipment to make so extra storage beyond what you are using for your high ticket trading items is needed. However you only get the Kahador drive after you've really started the campaign so my next option is the Rhoda Blackhole and the Hnookk which both have modest requirements to make and lots of profit when you sell. It will depend on which blueprints drop for you.

By the time I had had upgraded to the Anaan ship and maxed out my weapons and equipment I was 10th level and had about 6M in credits. I also had about 8 blueprints including the upgrade to the jet missile "intellijet" which was very easy to make and provided 10 units a crafting. Time to start the campaign in ernest.

Since the campaign is combat heavy you might want to change to the Veteran as it seems to me to be the best bang for the buck in armor, cargo, # of primary weapons, # of secondary weapons, and oh so important equipment slots. with the Anaan I had to do a lot of swapping of equipment depending on the mission, but it was key in rapidly improving my credit total. Money isn't that important once you max out your ship, weapons, and equipment but I'd still keep hitting the space lounge for blueprints.

Shields recovery so much faster than armor gets repaired as the improved version of the repair bot isn't in the game as yet (dlc not expected).

I always use weapons with the greatest range but also need close up ones so I do a mix of laser and auto cannon or such, with the intellijet as 2ndary backup.

still in the early part of the campaign but I can go through a wormhole and not expect to die which greatly improves my enjoyment of the game. Good luck captains.

[lamer]

Thanks for the tips!

[what]

You are welcome. The main storyline is very short. I finished it in a matter of hours, while still buying and selling in the star lounges. All the more reason to do the mining, buying and selling, and upgrading before starting the main storyline.