How do you get the stuff for Imperial Navy Rep?

[BoogieMan]

Space battles are getting more challenging but I can't upgrade my ship because I've yet to find enough stuff to gain even level 1 imperial navy reputation. I have the profit factor to get a number of items, but it's useless until that rep gets up.

[Daliena]

Unfortunately, welcome to a catch-22. The stuff comes from space battles (with some very rare exceptions like the crashed drukhari ship in act 1 you can find on Rykad Majoris).

Also worth bearing in mind, whatever space loot you have doesn't automatically get put in your cargo holds, you'll need to hunt it down in your inventory and move it there for sale.

[Sparhawk122]

The xeno loot from battles needs to be manually moved from your inventory to your cargo. Then you can trade that in for reputation.

[BoogieMan]

Yeah, I've been moving it but it isn't high enough to reach level 1 yet.

[Daliena]

I believe it's down to getting new ship skills via levels to try and provide a power boost, and maybe visiting Dargonus (I think it was?) and bringing it into your empire where a project you can build there provides a cannon fodder ally in space combat, then veeeeery carefully clearing out space battles that are actually doable until you can improve your gear some.

[Tyran]

I'm 35 hours in, fully explored about 20 systems and so far I've found 3 or 4 winnable voidship battles (on unfair). Even after manually adding the trophies to cargo I only have about half the navy reputation needed for just the first level. I have 3 more potential battles on the map which I've avoided for now because it's either turn 1 or turn 2 death, game difficulty setting appears to be affecting this. Battles seem to be extremely rare and already scaled to the point they're not doable on unfair without upgrades. Might have to resort to torpedo kiting but this seems kind of messed up progression wise.

[JustaGamer]

It's more or less gated by the story. Just keep going until you reach the RT's home planet, there is a project that give you 5000+ rep. After that things keep rolling in.

It's like the Crusade system in WoTL, try to farm ship stuffs early is like trying to farm soldier in act 2, you can but it's painfully slow and it only become viable after Drezen. Same thing here, the ship stuffs only really open up after you reach Janus.

[Brock Savage]

Originally posted by Sparhawk122:

The xeno loot from battles needs to be manually moved from your inventory to your cargo. Then you can trade that in for reputation.

Damn dude, I am in chapter 2 and just did this. I had an extra 17,500 rep sitting in there!

[Shadowkire]

As others have said, the best thing you can do is head for Dragonus as soon as you can, and build the 2 upgrades that give Imperial Navy rep. One of them also gives you an escort frigate for all your void battles.

The escort and the upgardes you can get from the navy at that point should make all the Act 2 battles winnable.

[I'm A Distraction!]

I've won every space battle I've run into currently on Core difficulty (don't think the difficulty changes space battles though, does it?) some are harder than others but doable. Hell, even the one where you have four destroyed and a light cruiser and need to pop them off in ~4-5 turns.

You can get decent equipment from the battles you win, upgrade your ship's hull whenever you can, and be smart with the weapon zones and movements. You should always try to get off at least one macro canon, one forward canon, and your Lance each turn, and that should be enough to focus fire one destroyer down.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

You get the rep by doing certain projects that give huge Navy Rep that is the only way you need like 76k rep points to max it out.

but eventually ship combat comes down to abusing torpedo cheese

even the best weapons in the game you wont be able to finish a ship combat story event going toe to toe. and you cant out maneuver them. You can only let them chase you while you launch torpedoes and they eat it

[watcherzero]

The optional battles at the start of Act 2 are pretty hard whereas the main storyline ones are really easy, its possibly worth just advancing the story a bit and coming back to those battles later.

[HandyVac]

The rewards from space battles get automatically added to your inventory, not your cargo, so you'll need to open the inventory screen and manually move them to cargo before you can sell them to the navy trader.

[HandyVac]

I'm in chapter 2 and have only fought about a dozen space battles, so perhaps they get harder later on?

But I haven't met a battle I couldn't win yet (normal difficulty), and I'm currently at reputation 4 with the navy trader just from selling the loot from those battles.

[HandyVac]

One thing I'm not sure about is: do you get the same rewards if the enemy escapes as if you kill them?

So far I've been chasing down and finishing off fleeing enemies as often as i can manage, on general principal, because they attached me first! But is it possible that you just don't get any reward if they manage to jump away instead of dying? I don't know.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by HandyVac:

I'm in chapter 2 and have only fought about a dozen space battles, so perhaps they get harder later on?

But I haven't met a battle I couldn't win yet (normal difficulty), and I'm currently at reputation 4 with the navy trader just from selling the loot from those battles.

One of the story mandatory combats in Act has you fighting like a 400 ship that sends out 4 bomber squadrons a turn and just the bomber squadrons can kill you.

You also fight 1 other large imperium style ship even when you are max ship level and all gold top tier ship gear you cant win against the ship head on head unless you get lucky rolls.

you got to cheese every combat after Act 2 with torpedoes. sure random pirates and enemies that have nothing to do with the story you can just go and kill however you like.