How to get the Unlocks!

[Trese Brothers]

There has been lots of good discussion about the Unlocks and some players wondering how to get them. This thread is intended to be a place for captains to post tips and tricks on exactly how they went about getting any given achievement and its unlockable reward.

[Vndtta]

I've been working on the "defeat 10 ships" acheivement and I got bored of the card games to find ships to kill - so a cardless way to do this is just fly off in a random direction. Even with the recent balancing you still run into enemy ships pretty frequently. Closest I've been so far.

[WaKKO151]

Początkowo opublikowane przez prane.fuji:

"Ignore the Arbiter. Talk to every local Contact and do as many no-jump missions as you can -- the first year or so,"

This seems to be a really unfun and inorganic thing to have to do.
I suggest altering the unlock to make it accessable to people who pick slow ships and limited contracts, mainly make the challenges something accessable for most captain builds.

There's probably a more interesting way to engage players to take up challenges, that are instead based on long term character decisions.

Ignore the trade bans for a net reputation loss of X
Go 6 years without ship combat
or alternatively never retreat from battle in the First Story Era
etc.

Doing busy work hoping for RNG with a captain loadout you don't enjoy, is a regretable use of time.

I've been enjoying the game so far.
Thank you for developing the game, and be sure to give yourself time to rest on the road to completion.

No. Your suggestion amounts to make it easier for everyone. I don't think that is ever a good suggestion. If you want the unlock and are having trouble you can come here and get some advice. Otherwise, you don't want the unlock.

[Vndtta]

I hope we end up with a billion unlocks and acheivements, personally. Then everybody wins.

[Xuande]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Vendetta:

I hope we end up with a billion unlocks and acheivements, personally. Then everybody wins.

Still not winning over here with an uninstalled game.

Still waiting for the time there isn't mandatory 10+ hour timesinks for access to character/ship/crew creation.

Still used to enjoy playing with permadeath, without cheesing the imbalanced combat mechanics (remember pilot modules anyone? Or how you could freely board most ships because they didn't shoot until -2?). It isn't a difficulty issue. Its a time issue.

I want to play the singleplayer game the way I want to play it. Throwaway runs aren't fun. Forced interaction with lategame Story when I never play that deep, because I get bored once I've stabilized my economy, isn't fun.

I check back every few months just to make sure the two devs haven't changed their mind on this. ST:F is that good of a game. Just not quite good enough for mandatory timesinks.

[Trese Brothers]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Vendetta:

I hope we end up with a billion unlocks and acheivements, personally. Then everybody wins.

:D

[Goliathus]

I think First Blood is harder to get now that the opponent's ships are properly armed with solid weaponry. I tried Nirlem's plan twice and failed twice so I decided to formulate my own plan and I succeeded in achieving it by 211.40RE. Even better, my plan allows one to unlock First Blood, Warrior and Warmaster all in one single run -- and yes, the plan involves charging at every ship like a raging bull and boarding every mofo like an authentic renaissance pirate.

Why I go with a boarding plan?
- Prolonged ship battle doesn't work in the player's favor(or maybe I just suck donkey's balls with ship battle).
- Prolonged ship battle means more repair time(due to higher amount of damage to your ship on average) and more repair time means you have less time to find ships.
- Prolonged ship battle is more expensive, my plan only needs the best weapon locker you can afford while ship battle needs a lot of weapons, booster and so on for you to be effective. You need time to install the new parts too and you got limited time.
- Great combat ships are slow, and the easy target like smuggler can escape(With Nirlem's plan, I lost to pirate with better weaponry and I can't keep the smuggler in combat long enough to blow it up); faster ship might not be able to beat the tougher opponents. I think it relies too much on luck to be able to succeed with ship combat plan.

Captain's Template

Skills A
10 Blade, 10 Evasion, 3 Whatever

Ship B
Palace Interceptor(You will need to unlock it; or just find the fastest ship with okay hull)

Attributes C
Can't say I know the best split but I just maxed out the combat stats

Experience D
Pirate

Contacts
Whatever as long as you get mission

I have tried a ranged captain but it doesn't work as well because your frontline crew might be garbage. By making a melee captain, you make sure you have a frontline warrior that is near impossible to kill(my opponents miss him like 95% of the time with 10 Evasion; dude has elf-like reflexes) and you can have a higher win rate at the first few battles(which is the toughest). I start with Pirate because I agree with Nirlem, the talent of rerolling into a merchant is great. The traits are well-matched with our plan too. I use palace interceptor because it's the fastest ship out there -- not many ships can escape from it. The 1200 hull doesn't matter a lot because I can close in after losing like 300-400 at most.

Step 1: Customizing your crew
Captain - Start with Corsair's Eye, and goes into Swordsman Lv.1, pick up Sharp Counter and then goes hard into Zealot Lv.5 for Bloodletting Blow. I am sure there are better builds out there, so do how you want, but the idea is to build a close combat monster with all the combat skills.
(O)Doctor - Goes hard into Combat Medic, standard stuff.
(O)Engineer - I was lucky to get a high attributes Engineer and I went Soldier Lv.1 for Ferocity and then Sniper as much as I can. I like a very offensive sniper who can potentially one-shot someone with a piercing attack. My build is Ferocity, Bullet Trace and then Eagle Eye for maximum killing power. I understand many players like buffing, going into stealth and so on but I am a fan of starting a fight 4v3, then I goes into buffing. This means if I have 1-2 characters with a higher initiative, I try to pick off 1 enemy, sometime I get 2 before my opponent can crack back at me. I think cutting down their attacking opporturnity is more important than early buffing, personally.
(O)Hyperwarp Navigator - I couldn't care less about this officer so I went into Diplomat for the extra mission money(which is step 1). Every single credit counts toward my Weapon Locker.
(O)Quartermaster - I didn't know what to do with this one so I went with Quartermaster, Military Officer and Commander. I picked up Tactical Edge and use it as a backup boarding crew if needed.

Soldier, I went with a rifle/sniper(I like 2 snipers over rifle; again, killing them before they move is a thing for me) and a shotgunner for flexibility of setting up my boarding crew. Pistoleer and Swordsman are pretty standard build. For my ship combat talent I went with a lot of range change boost, some Bombardment and Targeting Lock(for nerfing my opponent's ship ability to hit me while I close in). My gunners are mostly Boarding Assault because I want to start boarding by range 3 and trigger the terrorize debuff to decrease their ship's accuracy. This ensures I take minimal ship damage per battle.

Step 2: Mission time
I start by doing the "grace period" missions from my contract in the first six months. I also escort the Arbiter so I can unlock the Prince for more missions. The target is to get a A3 Weapon Locker if possible, or at least a A2. I had faced a merchant with A4 while I only have A1, it's horrible. I am very positive I can win 10 ship battles within 18 months(and I did, in 1 year) so I spent the first six months earning money.

Step 3: Find Ships
After you have your Weapon Locker and whatever else you want, it's time to find ships. As it's a throwaway save, I don't care about rep or whatever so I patrol, blockade and spy on every world to search out which has multiple ship cards and do that. For the first three battles, it's best to look for easier targets like merchant and smugglers but later on, any ship will do.

Step 4: Battle
For the battle, I usually start with some Bombardment while closing into range. Or Targeting Lock if I am facing a fast ship with a non-battle captain, like a smuggler on a small ship. Once I am in range 4, I go Sharp Steering to close in to 3, and then it's Boarding Assault time. Keep closing in until range 1 and keep boarding till you massacre every mofo out there, or sabotage their engine or whatever. Once you have 2 terrorize debuff on, your opponent is very unlikely to hit you with any weapon so it's just boarding repeatedly until you kill off their crew. Most(maybe all?) ships also only have 1 battle crew. After that, it's easy picking. By the fifth ship or so, I am so leveled up(one pro of this boarding plan: your character levels up a lot, like I usually went back to spice hall two levels up; my combat crew is around level 10 while others are merely level 5 and 6) that I can kill everyone within 2 turns with full HP. Heck, I don't even have to use my Doctor/Combat Medic and I can still win with full life. Between the DOT and one-shot sniper, sometime I wipe my opponent on turn 1.

Step 5: Upgrade, Battle, Sleep, Repeat
After you have a Weapon Locker A5 and a well-trained combat crew, you can play with eyes closed(at least on Hard, I can; not sure about higher difficulties) and you will eventually get to 50 crew battles victories and 10 ship battle victories. I had 10 ship battle victories and 37 crew battle victories by 211.40RE.

[Trese Brothers]

@goliathus - great post! The AI changes in the last release did in fact make the early game enemy ships a bit OP under certain conditions. The next update will walk it back a little bit, but you strategy post is awesome!

[mountainamoeba]

@Golaithus - Thank you! This one had been vexing me. Had to watch those repair times, ignore the components I wasn't using, but this strategy works.

[andymcnish]

First Blood.

Did this one this morning - 18 kills in 1038 turns (just under 2 years),

You really only need to do two things.

Get a decent bonus in tactics (for the ship combat) and have lots of engineers for the talents that repair ship components after a successful combat (lvl 5) and when you dock (lvl 1). That means taking the military commander as your contact.

So as soon as I first land I get rid of the crew combat crew and a couple of e-techs.

I then run missions exclusively for the military commander until I can recruit lvl 6+ engineers. You can do this all in system in you get a move on in the first few hundred turns (remember you can get in system missions available to take after the first six months if you ask for missions in advance). It's worth spending the extra time for better rep rewards whilst you are running these usually.

The problem in killing 10 ships in 1040 turns (2 years) is the repair time, not outmatching the ships.


First - faction. I went Thulun for the repair time bonus.

I go the patrol method (which helps keep whatever planet you are above friendly for repairs, spice and doctoring etc.) and use the lvl 1 crew dog re-roll talent and the lvl 5 gunner 'remove patrol card' one as and when needed (although apart from xeno or crew death there isn't anything you care about really - I often found myself removing the missed turn event as I'm against the clock).

As for weapons I just take 2 of the highest level range 4 missile batteries I can afford and then update the range 5 missile as well. Stay at range 4 if possible. And use a shedload of gunnery/pilot ship combat skills.And ship combat HP and Morale boost talents if you can grab them.

I might take a spy or merchant down opportunistically earlier but it's about turn 700-800 when I park in orbit and start chaining the kills...

[ptirodaktill]

Macabre Harvest talent from Xeno hunter count toward Adventurer and master adventurer unlocks.
You can draw a normal Xeno card and press the harvest at the end of combat during exploaration.

[andu.vulcan]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ptirodaktill:

Macabre Harvest talent from Xeno hunter count toward Adventurer and master adventurer unlocks.
You can draw a normal Xeno card and press the harvest at the end of combat during exploaration.

Thanks for that tip. I managed to get 3 unlocks one after another with that one :D.

https://imgur.com/a/XN1DHDC

[Trese Brothers]

Wow, perfect timing :D

[tadpole johnnie]

So these unlocks haven't been mentioned yet (maybe because they're not super difficult), but I managed to get Faction Defender, Privateer, and Covert Operative on one planet, because my engine got knocked out while patrolling. If you start ship combat without an engine, it auto-concedes the fight, so you can just keep rerolling cards no problem.

[wilky]

OK, in case anyone is curious, here is the order that I encountered the story unlocks in my playthrough so far:

Faen court missions (I went with Vatborn Monster) - first few years
Coalition Founder - approx years 5-10
De Rivesh Legacy - encountered this pretty early, around year 15
Crowned Smuggler - encountered this a fair bit later, maybe year 30
Nikolai's Freedom - encountered while doing Crowned Smuggler (think both were pre-plague)
Plague Breaker was around years 32-33
Pit Fighter V - encountered this around year 36 (post-plague)
Call of the Strong - encountered this around year 42 (around the beginning of Coalition Dissension)
Jyeeta Brood Slayer - years 60-65

So for anyone hoping he FTF Commander is a quick unlock... yeah good luck.

EDIT: Also, just encountered the trigger for Wrathful Corsair very early into a fresh game, approx year 8. I didn't pursue it though because I wasn't playing on Hard at the time. Triggered when docking to refuel at an Orbital.

EDIT2: Just completed Wrathful Corsair on Hard at year 9. Encountered the merchant Tuko on some random population or luxury pop world upon landing.

EDIT3: Just encountered the contact Tuemette (who begins the Nikolai's Freedom quest) on a Moklumnue planet at year 12. This was after the end of the Faen Duel of Assassins, but before the founding of the Arbiter's coalition.

[wilky]

I finally unlocked the last achievement for 34/34, and I just made some revisions / clarifications to the Unlocks page on the Wiki. In particular, I added Pit Fighter V which was missing, but I can't remember what the reward was for completing this? Was it a weapon? Specialist gear?

The other main thing I did is I added more information about when (during which era) each unlock is available. I tried to pull this info from a combination of my own playthroughs, the info available on the individual mission pages on the Wiki, and a few forum posts by the dev. Maybe somebody double-check me?

https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Unlocks#Story_Unlocks