Corsair build

[Seswatha]

I think it's currently the strongest money making build in the earlygame (artifact hunter may outscale it later but it needs much more time to get going) that also doubles as an extremely strong space combat build, which works just fine on impossible.

The main idea is picking a faction you don't like and farming their ships (and independents) for salvage by utilizing blockade. Your rep will go over -1000, but it doesn't really matter, you're not making any friends in that faction. Don't touch ships of the other factions unless you want to fight with the whole galaxy though.

Captain

Captain needs to give you a much needed earlygame boost for space combat, otherwise you won't go far. You don't want to be hit at all, and the way to go about it is maximizing your pilot pool maximum as well as having overwhelming command and tactics scores.

Job: Military officer (for inspiring)

Skills: Tactics 10, Command 10, Intimidate 3 (or w/e, maybe doctor as it's usually a problem)

Stats S/Q/F/C/W/R 14/14/20/26/14/26 or 14/14/20/30/14/30

Ship Scout Cutter or Aeternum Vindex. Vindex is much better but you can get away with the cutter if you really want these 8 stat points. You'll likely want to upgrade from the cutter later.

Contacts: Military Commander and whatever you like

The full build will be Military Officer 11 (for Incite victory)/Pirate 2/Commander rest

Make a few of your other officers Pirates 2 for corsair's eye and put the rest of their levels into Commander for maximizing tactics and command, although military officer can also be interesting. Try to promote crew with tactics and command bonuses into officers. Alta Mesa seems to be getting these bonuses more often. Note that you don't want to swap the military ship and bounty hunter cards as you kill them for salvage too.

Get at least a couple of mechanics for their scavenger talent to increase profits. You'd want at least one engineer too (use military commander for that if needed).

Do some quests first and get some pilot assist modules going ASAP (swap weapons locker). Get a good weapon layout that works for you (with cheap weapons). Otherwise it's the standard evasion stacking strategy, get as many defense talents (evasive maneuvers, steady hands etc) as possible and fight from the optimal range.

You should be getting ~25k for a destroyed ship which is really nice for a reward in a minigame (and ideally taking no damage in return). Try not to overextend first, you need talents for combat, but once you have enough you can be doing this non stop. Focus on upgrading your ship.

The final layout can look like this, take note of skill pools and command/tactics:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1498511437

This is a fully upgraded Vindex 5 years in.

[Outlaw2044]

Yep, this is what I do.

[nephilimnexus]

No matter what build I do, I always take an initial contact that offers engineer recruits and stack four of them on my ship. With four port maintenance talents to cycle through I almost never have to actually pay for repairs, and it saves time, too.

[Drunk-Side Jedi]

Something you might want to try, Cory has said that the traits of your starting crew are tied to your starting job choice. When I started Explorer I noticed I had four crew members with Scavenger to increase my exploration finds by 40%.

I bet Vulture is tied to Pirate.

[Seswatha]

I think both profession and starting faction influence crew traits, I've seen a decent number of Vultures in non Pirate Steel Song starts. Pirate may be tied to Bandit which is bad, but overall it's worth experimenting more with this stuff. I just don't like Pirate's starting traits at all, they're both pretty useless. It's not like any of them are complete gamechangers, Inspiring is like ~7 extra command on average while leveling which is all in all a minor thing, but it's something.

Speaking of Engineers, I'm not sure you need that many with this build as you don't get hit at all, plus you can get extra repairs from active talents in combat, but having an engineer and a couple of mechanics is rather useful.

Your most desired job is Pilot, expect needing at least 8 early on to even hit the 100% mark. You might be replacing some of them later as you level up.

[jonassi]

Out of curiosity, why the Vindex over other ship options in B priority?

[Seswatha]

High speed & agility (very important for combat), high armor and shields, 5 officers which is a lot for a M2400 ship, scout bridge takes 1 small slot and gives you some skill pools + 3 officer slots which is amazingly efficient.

For example, Guardian interceptor has low shields and armor, meaning it would be taking more damage when hit and risking casualties unless you spend slots and mass on improving them, plus it would need a ton more pilot modules to reach the same evasion as Vindex, but it can't really fit that much more.

[Xuande]

Originally posted by Drunk-Side Jedi:

Something you might want to try, Cory has said that the traits of your starting crew are tied to your starting job choice. When I started Explorer I noticed I had four crew members with Scavenger to increase my exploration finds by 40%.

I bet Vulture is tied to Pirate.

Can verify that in my earlier Pirate runs, Vulture was pretty common.