How to get a leg up in the game... and have fun doing it.

[stevenav]

Okay, I hear a lot of people talking about how the game is a lot harder than they expected and it's scaring them off. Stop, take a breath, and relax. I'm gonna give you a hand here (I've played the game a LOT in the past, sometimes for hours just pirating for the hell of it. There is a lot of hidden stuff in the game and little details to get lost in. Everything from refueling cycles of stations, to hidden trades going on, to trade routes, to the offloading of cargo and onloading to stations. Everything actually works in hidden ways that you don't know about unless you look. And the key to all this iis a set of mods Start with uniGUI https://i-war2.com/downloads?task=download.send&id=115&catid=14&m=0 then get Future Trader https://i-war2.com/downloads?task=download.send&id=123&catid=14&m=0 multimod https://i-war2.com/downloads?task=download.send&id=8&catid=39&m=0 copy them all into your mods folder Which should be in your Steam folder\steamapps\common\Independence War 2 - Edge of Chaos folder (open mods and drop the zips right in.. Then open your control.ini file (whichever one you are using for your joystick or whatever, that's in your Independence War 2 - Edge of Chaos forlder in the configs folder. and drop in
[zzUniGUI.UniGUIToggle]
Keyboard, U, CTRL, ALT
Joystick1, JoyButton11

Okay, save the ini and start it up.

Okay, how to get through the first couple of missions. LEARN TO USE THE BOOST button, That button lets you exceed the speed limits when in a starport. If you are attacked or are fighting and you need to get away, hit that boost button and just fly away from your enemies. Most enemies in the game do not boost and you can even occationally outfly a missile or at least give your ship enough time to repair itself before you get hit with a missile again. Mobility is life in this game. Also do not stick around a starport where you are limited to 250 m/sec If you are stuck moving this slow you will die because you will be murdered by missiles. You simply will be. Learn to boost, move or die. You choose. Next, learn your weapons and how to use them, those quad light ldas... they are really freaking handy for nice short range stick and move combat and they track well. Use em.

Also learn how to group your weapons, This is important. If you can put mutliple of the same weapons in a cluster on your ship they'll all get grouped together and if you link them.. .even better you get to fire volley's of shots that overwhelm your opponents shields, knock em down, and break their ship into little pieces.

And here's where your mods come into play enable them. Go exploring and dock with stations then hit cntrl alt U and load future trader. You can now TRADE goods and not just pirate. This gives you a look under the hood at what is actually going on in the game that you can't see. The stations all do actual things. They are trading with each other, taking in ore, outputting goods, producing waste, even trading with each other. And there are secret things going on too. You can fly to some stations and even buy combat ships like the storm petrel and recover what you lost. You can buy ships components, different weapons buy weapons blueprints and manufacture your own stuff if you recycle or sell stuff. There's even a way to make a LOT of profit and free yourself almost completely from relaying on the story line to provide you what you want.

Case in point, I hate you start with a garbage class 1 cpu and garbade LDS drive, i can, for example, go to jimbobs in the Hoffler system and trade my way clockwise around the asteroid belt to end up with a cpu 3 active sensors 3 passive sensors3 advance heat sinks and a full load out of proper weapons in no time flat. Just be creative and watch prices and the trades you do.

If you do these basic things. you'lll prosper in the game. Go explore too. I once found that if I go to a certain research station at a certain time a cpu 5 would appear for sale... but only for a very short time. The programmers of the game hid stuff like this everywhere.

[schmatzler]

Thank you, this is solid advice! :)

[Sarxis]

Also, learn to use the TRI system to shunt power between the main three systems:

Propulsion
Weapons
Shields

By mastering this, you can increase firing rates when needed, increase engine power at the right time, or boost your shields to take some hard hits.

This is probably one of the most overlooked skills in this game. I have the controls for the TRI mapped to my joystick hat switch.