[Q] Survival 101 - What do you do first ?

[Caesar]

Hey guys.
Lets assume you play survival mode and you start with only your rescue ship.
What are the first steps you do to actually survive ?
I know not much about this game, only the basics after playing some creative mode, that's why I am asking.
Anyone can give me like a brief description or step by step guide about what you do first, as in what ressources are most important, what do you build first and those things ?

Thanks, every answer is much appreciated.

EDIT:
By the way, I would like to start from scratch and build everything up myself, thats why I was asking specifly about the rescue ship scenario.
I know there's easy start 1 and 2 or even platform for example, but I don't want that.
I want to start with the less possible and as far as I know that's with the rescue ship.

Thanks again.

[Dagothra]

Step 1: Using the hand drill and its ore detector function, find some uranium and mine it.
Step 2: Place said uranium in your ships refinery. It will process and auto-load the reactor.
Step 3: SAVE YOUR LOCATION TO GPS!!!!!
Step 4: Do whatever you feel like while assured that A) You won't die from lack of power and B) You won't get lost in the endless reaches of space

[Solipsicon]

If you want to build as much by yourself as possible, start with the "lone survivor" scenario. You have less options than with the rescue ship.

1: Turn off all of your station's systems, so that they don't draw power. All of them.
2: Save your location with gps coordinates.
3: Search for uranium in your suit.
4: Save the uranium gps coordinates.
5: Turn on the refinery and refine the uranium you collect. Repeat until you have a few hours of fuel with the refinery running.
6: Mine and salvage what you have around the station (except for the refinery, assembler, and control seat) so that you can get a cockpit with 6 thrusters, a mining drill, a gyroscope, and a reactor.
7: You're all set!

[NekoiNemo]

1) Fly toward biggest asteroid and turn off power.
2) Begin mining for resources (preferably - iron and uranium) for basic needs.
3) Monitor incoming cargo ships, when you see either Mining Carriage, Private Sail or Business Shipment - that's your cue.
4) Raid them with bare hands (piece of cake for those 3 ships) and fly them toward your ship.
Carriage only has turrets on one side of it, so go from the opposite and disable reactors (conveniently placed on the opposite from the turrets side). For Civilian type ships - approach them from the front where turrets wouldn't see you because of the solar panels. Disable panels and batteries (and generators), but don't go out of cover
5) Get raw materials from carriages and solar panels from civilian ships, build a basic platform with rotatable (rotor) solar panel array, direct it toward the sun, build a battery or two.
6) All set - you have infinite (but low) power and some basic resources and parts.
7 aka Bonus) Construct smallish disassembler ship and recycle your trophies.

[Caesar]

Thanks for the answers so far.
Is there a way to see how much hours of fuel I've left for the station ?
I don't understand these whole fuel or electricity.
And how does those batterys work ?

[Dagothra]

When you are in the control station or cockpit of any station/ship, the HUD displays your fuel time remaining in the lower right corner panel.

Reactors burn uranium to create electricity for all blocks attached to them. To get that fuel, you have to mine uranium ore, place that ore in a working refinery, then move the refined uranium ingots to the reactor. (All done manually, unless you hook up conveyors to the ports and allow it to do so automatically)

Solar panels provide a very small amount of electricity, but if you can get it aimed at the sun right (through use of rotors as mentioned above), it's an infiinite source of power.

Batteries, when set to recharge, absord all excess electrical power from the station/ship and store it. You can either set them to discharge excess power automatically or wait and discharge it manually if you ever have a shortage for some reason.

[EvilVictor]

Here's an old tutorial but it should give you a really solid start to the survival mode. You can safely skip the first few minutes as he explains the menus if you're comfortable there.

http://youtu.be/oM8JbHyJRMo

[Caesar]

Thanks guys.
Looking forward to hear more.
So far really hepled me out.

[Hoochfox]

1: Shut off or reduce area/intensity of gravity field.
2: Strip gravity generator for parts and/or hand mine materials to build 1 large drill.
3: Stick a drill on your rescue ship's butt, feeding directly into conveyor system. Add arc furnace when possible for extra efficiency.
4: Gather resources with your butt drill, especially a reasonable (~10+ hours) cache of Uranium.
5: Create station, cannibalizing non-essential ship parts.
6: Once you have a powered station with either a med station or a control station (go with the control station), a refinery and optionally an arc furnace, salvage as much of the rescue ship as you care to. Special attention to thruster components, which otherwise require disgusting quantities of the most aggravating material in the game. Also, empty reactor before dismantling, or get ready for a big surprise.

[Caesar]

Whats an arc furnace used for ?
Or whats the difference between the refinery and the arc furnace ?

[NekoiNemo]

Originally posted by Caesar:

Whats an arc furnace used for ?
Or whats the difference between the refinery and the arc furnace ?

It can only process iron and some other material, but it's faster and a lot cheaper that refinery. Think of it as a makeshift processing solution for the a early game.

[Johnald P. Redham]

Grind most of the ship down and merge it into station when you find your first mining site, turn off your thrusters.

Enjoy a week's breathing room.

[Caesar]

Thanks so far guys.
I think there's more to know though.
Anymore tips ?

[SKaREO]

I'm thinking of writing a survival guide for this game once I become more experienced with it, but I'll give you some tips that's I've learned the hard way. I play this game online at the [24/7] Transcend Conquest servers. Conquest mod forces players to find an asteroid to build a base on before they can build more large ships. The starter ship has basic supplies to build a small base with a medical bay, beacon, refinery, assembler and reactor.

1. Find a roid that you will call home. Build the Refinery, Assembler, Reactor, Medical Bay, & Beacon, the most basic starter base. If you don't have the supplies, empty the contents of your starter ship and begin to salvage it for the parts. Adjust the range of your beacon so that it is as far as you like, but if you play online with others, they will see this beacon also so maybe lower it to 1000m or so. GPS this location as your homebase, this will be your hub in the dark skies. You want to find Uranium for fuel and Magnesium for ammunition as soon as possible so that you can build turrets to defend your vulnerable base.

2. After establishing your starter base, you need a small mining ship with a Landing Gear, Cockpit, Gyroscope, 2 Small Reactors. An Antenna, Ore Detector, Spotlight, Drill, 2 Medium Contaners, a Connector at the back on a Conveyer system. 2 Forward thrusters, 1 of each other direction, and finish it off with some light armor.

3. Fly from roid-to-roid searching for all the mineral ores you will need to refine. Take 10-20K units of each ore into your cargohold and GPS each location with the names of the ore you found there for future reference. After you've found all the ores you'll need, head back home and start refining the ores into building materials.

4. Queue up producion on your assembler. To build a large ship that serves as a forward operating base on mining operations, you will need a large amount of building materials. 1,000's of steel plates, construction components, and small steel tubes. 100's of thruster components, computers, motors, metal grids, large tubes. Various other supplies includ bulletproof glass, medical supplies, radio communications, etc. It should take you several hours to build your first command ship.

My first command ship: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=403067416

5. Now that you have a mining ship that connects to your command ship, you will need to expand to more asteroids. Find a nearby asteroid and build your second base. Between the two bases, setup an Antenna relay (Antenna, 2 Turrets, 4 Solar Panels, and a Battery) that will serve as a bridge for communications between the two bases. Now you will be able to remotely control your bases as long as you are within broadcasting range of your antenna relay.

From here you will be able to amass a large amount of supplies, and build a formidable defensive structure that spans across several thousand kilometers. Your ultimate goal is up to you, but in conquest, the only goal is PVP and destroy your enemies asteroid bases, hack them and assume control of them. Add them to your communications relay and conquer the galaxy with an Iron Fist.

Good luck!

[Konather]

what i did on my VERY FIRST SURVIVAL was...

1. I went to the nearest asteroid(this was before the exploration mode update) and got out of my respawn ship to get uranium (about a day's worth of uranium should do).

2. I then started building a mining ship by canableizing the respawn ship. I made the mining ship out of heavy armor because i knew i wasn't a very good pilot, but light armor would be more practical and cheaper.

3. after mining for enough resouces and refining them in the refinery i started work on a large ship instead of a station to be my base of operations. if you have cargo ships turned on then getting one of those would be very good especially one with alot of solar panels.

4. once you have alot of uranium (100+ is a good number) you can start building what ever you want. a base of operations with at least one regualr antennas and a few laser antennas would probably be useful although i havn't tried them yet.

5. this base will serve as a resource collection point and a place for you to controll drones you build.

hope this helped

[andigogo]

when you go on piratecarrier and want salvage other ships. build a small ship with: big cargo, deassembler on left side, welder on right side, 6 thruster and you can destroy the other ships, collect the things in the cargopod and use it to create your new ship or base... When this is finished and you have all, build the medical station on your baseship or stationary base!! if you die can you respawn in the medical station...