Tips for people just starting out

[Grumpy Old Guy]

So I'm not an expert at the game by any means and Ive just started playing it but I have managed to wrack up about ten million so far and its not been hard at all. First thing you have to do is progress in the story enough to get the warp drive. It doesn't really matter how you play in the first sector you can't really do much there so just get the warp drive ASAP and get to the second system.

Once you get there you need to have some credits saved up, enough to buy the tenhausen (spelling?) which is one of the better ships for cheap. Find the merchant's guild as soon as you can and start doing merchant guild quests. These missions are great for money, if you go to the super dangerous systems they pay stupid good money and you don't actually have to kill anything to complete them. Skip missions that require you to go out and find 20 of a specific thing, it just takes too long unless you are willing to exploit the game by exiting and entering over and over again to get what you need.

Things to buy upgrade wise: you are aiming for speed and survivability, you don't really need weapons at all to do these missions so focus on the guild hold upgrades, the null gravity booster which has a longer burn time and is fantastic for avoiding those pesky ambushes, and the strongest sheild/hull/deflector you can afford. You want to get the barricuda as soon as you can as it's the fastest ship in the game. Once you have that ship, with at least mark 4 engines, thrusters, and warp drives, you can outrun anything. I've not switched over from it yet and while it doesn't have much fire power it's so fast it never really comes into play. Just run from everything while you do the guild drops and the cargo hauls. Once you get to a high level with the merchant guild it starts giving missions that are worth over a million each. This makes it much easier to make money when you still have a fragile ship.

Above all, don't try this if you arn't in a fast ship with a really good booster, you can't outfight these ambushes without serious firepower and in the beginning you won't have it, but if you do it right you won't need it.

[Dinkelsen]

In the very beginning, mining can be a good source of money. Buy a mining laser mk1 and look for an ice field. Pulse scan to find minable resources and let the lasers fly. In ice fields you can find water, tachyon salts and meteoric diamonds which are all very valuable resources. Of course you will also find metallic ore which is next to worthless. Do not mine rocky asteroids as they do not drop as valuable things as ice. Ice can be found inside blue and blue-green nebulas, sometimes missions are within ice fields.

[BK201]

Nice tips!

[whitedeamon]

Reputation advice not mentioned anywhere in-game:

going from hostile to neutreal or neutral to friendly with a faction will give a serious rep hit with that faction's enemies (I think -100?)

While friendly with a faction Your effective rep will be capped at hostile with it's enemies (cartel vs. citizens and militia)
The rep will still be calculated normally in the background, so once You go from friendly to neutral with that faction, the enemy faction will be on the computed terms with You.

To keep everyone neutral, make sure You have high neutral rep (close to friendly) with the faction opposed to those You want to get from hostile to neutral, i.e. keep militia and citizens close to friendly, but neutral (see above!), then do the cartel missions to get neutral with them. The rep hit will keep You in the neutral, so You do not get another rep hit with the cartel when going back to neutral with militia/civs.

While Friendly, a kill of this factions ship gives a -10 hit, while neutral it's -5, while hostile it seems to be -1. Fighters do not count at all, just blast them.


Merc advice:

Mercs stay with You till You die and cross over system borders. To get some serious firepower for relatively cheap, sneak into a MK VI or MK V selling system (the map accessed by pressing "shift" in the system Map says "extreme risk") and get a merc there. For ~70 - ~100K You get firepower carrying You through the first half of the game easily.
Also, Garris is cheap and good in the first system (below 2K cost, survived to MK III systems for me.)
Mercs regenerate all health when docking. When they die, they are lost.


General Mission advice:

Enemies scale with Your equipment. More precisely, it seems, with the highest Mark You are carrying. Do not buy a Mark IV shield for Your otherwise MK II Tenhousen, the spawns will eat You.

In reverse, this makes "very hard" missions easy if You do them the right way. Hauling "beware of interception"-missions are easy while You are weak and fast, as the enemies are not as strong, but the pay can be awesome.
"Keep these three ships alive", especially for the pirates are easy when You are weak and the difficulty is high, as the ships You protect seem to scale with mission difficulty, the attackers with Your strength. You and Your tenhousen will "have to protect" three heavily armed black-gates from some low-level frigs. Yay. Money and Rep and possibly Cargo for free.

Skip all other escort missions, they are long and difficult and annoying. Especially everything that says "escort XY from place A to place B"

Missions (mainly militia) that send You to kill Organ harvesters/pure water reservoirs drop these ressources when the targets are destroyed. You can sell them. (In case of organs, first check the system's outsider and cartel stations where they can be sold at all!)

Missions telling You to scan merchants for contrabant can put You in contact with up to four (!) merchants for the sell/rob (see below) exploit.


Intended and unintended exploits:

sell/rob exploit: You can hail a trader in range (and at warp if You are fast enough to catch them) by pressing Ctrl, ask "care to do business?" and sell them some of Your cargo. If You only carry one type of cargo, best be a large number of expensive ressources like tachyon salts, pure water or meteoric diamonds, they will offer to buy it at a good price. After the business is concluded, tell them to drop their cargo. Either You get it back with some other stuff they carry (no rep hit!) or they turn hostile, and You can get it back by killing them. Repeat with next trader. Result: Loads of money.
( stolen from [OTG] Idemus steamcommunity.com/app/290300/discussions/0/483368526575406623/ )
Issues: All nearby traders/milita turn hostile if one of them does not comply, and compliance seems to depend on Your shipsize/equipment-MK-class compared to theirs, so always start with the weakes merchant ships.
If You need to kill a merchant who complies You can do so - they do not turn hostile, no matter how much You shoot at them. If You want to target them as hostile, just hail again and chose the "time to die" option.

You can exit the game after buying commodities from a station and leaving, then continue and stocks will be back up. Infinite Stock, yay!

You can exit the game without save by pressing Ctrl-shift-esc to enter Your task manager, switch to process tab and chose the rebel galaxy process. End it. Restart and You are at Your last save before the emergency exit.
Usefull for some missions as the missions spawns (especially the ships You have to protect) are generated (it seems?) when You enter the mission area. So, roll a bad setup? Quit and repeat.


Broadside advice:

While there is a lot of discussion on Neutron beams vs. cannons, my personal advice: cannons can be spammed shamelessly (beams too I read, tried, was disappointed, never used them again, other commenters please?) - only accuracy suffers. So go close to a big ship and just keep shooting as soon as You can - lots of damage, most projectiles will hit anyway.

Broadsides can hit fighters. Especially those switched off by EMP Flak.


Scavenging advice:

Junkfields in high level systems often contain cargo containers (use pulse scan to find them under "detected valuables") - they might contain high level equipment, good for You or Your purse... depending on wether You want to use it or not. Just try to keep out of range of the locals. Especially Greel are nasty while trying to sneak through the danger zones.


Combat advice:

Big ships can barely hit You when You approach them from behind. Get good turrets and stay behind them. If Your DPS is high enough to penetrate their shield regeneration You can take down any ship that way. Beware of drone-missiles - slow moving shooting-star looking things, they do insane damage. Better to take them on Your deflectors.

Mining lasers have relatively short range (improves with Mark rating) but are the only beams that easily smash shields (somewhat strange, hum) and are insanely effective combat weapons. Don't let the name fool You!


General purpose advice:

You can target friendlies, especially fighter-type friendlies like mining tugs by scanning (tab) and switching to them as targets, or circling them in turret aim mode and pressing "z" (seems to work on the same button on German keyboards, at least on mine...)

Same for targetting cargo drops to tractor in or destroy them if they are too bothersome.


Mining advice:

You can scan asteroids while in turret mode to see what they may drop.

Fault tracker places red marks on an asteroid. Roughly hitting in the center (seem to be circles) is enough to usually quadruple yield.

You can not cycle between different beam weapons. If You have a single mining laser installed, all other beams are counting as mining lasers for mining purposes, so don't worry about the red and green beams cutting the 'roid, the yield will be fine.



Hum. My two cents for now. Hope it helps, looked for these infos for quite some time in these forums.

Also:

Common sense advice: This game is awesome and made by two enthusiasts who seemingly just want to make the games they love, so support it by making as much noise as possible and recomending it to anyone who might be interested. These guys really deserve it, and don't be too critical of the details at times - they seem to be adressed quite quickly anyways!

[Fraggoth]

That is an AWESOME post, whitedeamon.

One quick question I have regarding EMP Flak: can EMP Flak destroy incoming missiles? I'm not sure one way or the other, because it might just be that I need to get accustomed to my current ship's (Ooooooooo BARRACUDA!) Secondary firing pattern - I might just be missing the missiles, as it were.

[BK201]

Bravo whitedeamon, nice post. Regarding broadside I agree with cannon over beam in big ships.

@Fraggoth I don't think EMP Flak destroy missiles/torpedoes, not that I notice anyway

[whitedeamon]

To my knowledge and scavenged info from the forums flak and flak turrets can intercept missiles, EMP flak can not. Own experience matches with that.

[mcqueen]

The best general advice I can give...and I'm sure I'm pretty much repeating SOME of what has already been said...is to play within the system you are in. Grind it out until you level all your gear up, starting with defensive measures. Speed and maneuverablility are essential defenses early on and become great offensive tools as you develope your tactics. Weapons systems all have advantages and disadvantages and a lot of that can be enhanced or mitigated by your play style and tactics. Jumping ahead for better gear is risky business. :D Once you're geared up the next system will likely start out difficult again as you meet higher level opponents so be prepared. I usually don't move up until I'm satsified I can handle anything the current system throws at me.

[Fraggoth]

Oh, here's a little trick:

You know how in order to go into warp you have to wait a while, going from Thrusters -> Sublight -> Warp ?

Well, you can actually bypass 2/3rds of that by bopping into your Map, then hopping out and holding your "Engage Warp" key as the camera zooms in. Note that you'll still have to be outside the pull of any Stellar Mass nearby, and the same applies if there are nearby hostiles. It also won't work if your engines have been afflicted with Ye Olde Leech Effect, but that's only natural.

Other than that, though, you'll be able to circumvent a bunch of the tedious acceleration process and start popping into Warp that much sooner!

[Thanatos]

F

Originally posted by whitedeamon:

To my knowledge and scavenged info from the forums flak and flak turrets can intercept missiles, EMP flak can not. Own experience matches with that.

Are you sure about flak turrets? The description is there for the secondary, but not the turret version. Can anyone confirm/refute?