Survival and Strategy tips (GUIDE)

[japp_02]

SURVIVAL AND STRATEGY
This is a follow-up of my 'Combat tips' guide that deals with strategy and tactics in the game.
You will learn more about:
- Why survival is prime in this game
- How you best deal with Aliens
- How your reputation is important


I. SURVIVAL

This game is first about survival because you need to go around all sort of dangers in order to keep your ship and crew healthy. You will need both RESSOURCES and CREDITS. Only gathering ressources without trading anything will not get you very far, just because common ressources will not yield very much for your ship. So mixing in business with aliens will get you credits that you can use to repair, refuel and get important upgrades for your ship, or buy medecines for your crew.

This section about survival will be rather long, I will speak about how to treat your ressources, what to do on starports to save credits, the importance of your Jump Fuel (Exotic Matter that is converted from gathered minerals) and about refueling techniques.

1) DEALING WITH RESSOURCES:

First the most important: all ressources except gazes are LIMITED. Collect them once in some place and they will NOT RESPAWN, not even after leaving the system and returning. This is true for all planet ressources and asteroid fields. Gazes can always be collected from Gaz Giants due to their large quantity.
The same is true for special locations that are not cities like ship wrecks or special biotopes on planets: you have 1 chance to visit them, after this you cannot longer collect anything out of them.
Planetary cities and starports are different as they allow you endless resupply and business (as long as your reputation is ok)
Limited ressources means: You cannot play this game like a sandbox, you always need to think ahead and make strategic and tactical choices. That's also the signature of a good rogue-like game.

There are 3 categories of ressources: common, uncommon and rare. All 3 are increasingly worth more in credits and yield more for your ship hull and tanks. Generally always use common ressources for your ship and do not sell them (not worth it, except maybe minerals), while if possible you always collect and KEEP rare ressources for trading, this is the way to make credits fast to buy important things.

Collect common gazes to refuel when you get low on fuel, but always know how far away the next starport is where you will always refuel when your fuel is low so it's worthwile. Some ship types that you chose at the start will cost less to refuel at stations, if they have smaller tanks they will cost less.
Collect and store uncommon and rare gazes for trading, only refuel your ship with them when you start to become critical on fuel (less than 30% without starport nearby).

2) ON STARPORTS:

First, carefully look in the galaxy map and plan ahead for docking at starports, because not all of them have shipyards to buy upgrades, not all of them will offer you to restock your fuel or do repairs, and most painfully: not all of them have a shop to buy important things like medecines for your crew. It's very important to stay close to some starport that will fit your needs in the short term.

Always refuel and repair at starports. The price is always the same unaware of how low on fuel you are and how much damaged your ship is. So better refuel at a starport when your fuel is really low, so you get the most milage out of your ship and you save credits. The same for repair: if only as few as 10% of a system is damaged, then it's not worth repairing, wait until it gets more damaged, except if an expensive upgrade is already 50% destroyed: then pay for repair because another damage may get it destroyed and you must re-buy it at full price which is much more expensive, and worse: you may not find it anymore.

NEVER restock your jump fuel on starports: it's too expensive and you can easily get it for free (see jump fuel in the next section).

3) SURVIVAL, THE BIG PICTURE

You may easily run out of credits in this game, and this is where it starts to get difficult, if short on credits you would need to do more quests, don't forget that mining ressources alone will NOT be enough for you to survive and get back home, it also depends on how far away you are from Earth, your objective. So you have to be very choosy for what you spend your credits, also watch out for the gate costs to a new nebula, this is a bill you will have to pay for sure, also it gets expensive if the race that offers the gate is enemy to you!

As a general rule: If you have a lot of credits and lots of ressources, a ideal situation that you will rarely face, then make your journey home as FAST as possible, you don't have to do much blah blah with an Alien or accept quests unless this is really necessary. The shorter your number of jumps, the less damage you will take, and you could easily spend your money for repairs at stations. But yes, you guess it, to be in such a situation you also need to get very lucky during the game :)


4) HOW TO DEAL WITH JUMP FUEL (EXOTIC MATTER)

While it's obvious that you will watch your normal fuel level (refilled with gazes or on starports) it's easy and deadly to forget about your JUMP FUEL. You must ALWAYS ANTICIPATE its level because if you enter in a system without minerals, without starport and without adequate sun to orbit, then you are DOOMED and stranded in space if you are out of jump fuel unless a lucky ship will help you.
You can refill for free your jump fuel tanks by orbiting suns, but this will be dangerous because of more or less intense radiation.
In all cases you get a radiation warning in form of a progress bar, as long as the bar stays low (below the middle) you should be safe, plan your orbit so that you stay only for little time in the orbit ring, then the radiation bar will only be high for a short time. Be sure not to waste too much fuel while getting into orbit, the right technique is to enter an eccentric orbit that will only pass the orbit ring for a short time then sling-shotting your ship away from the sun and then returning to the same partial orbit. Let the gravity do its job and use thrusters as little as possible to make slight trajectory corrections.
On brown or white dwarfs with very little radiation you can even enter a permanent orbit close to the ring limit, but only do this if the radiation is really low, not going over the middle of the radiation warning bar. Your tanks will then fill very fast.

Is it better to use your minerals to refuel, or should you sell them? That's tricky to answer because you may sell them for a high price, but then you must chose to orbit suns to get fuel and your crew may bet burned, so you need to buy medicines which are not cheap and also not so easy to find. Never think in terms of profit when selling ressources.
I would for sure use the common minerals to refuel and also use the uncommon and rare ones if my crew is already injured. Never let one of your crew go to 4 injuries without the possiblitly of healing him because the next slightest injury will get him killed!

Exposure to higher radiation will use up your hull, slowly but surely, for that reason use the galaxy map to chose the best star canditates that emmit only lower radiation.
Except Black Holes and Pulsars which are really dangerous, all other stars can be partially orbited to scoop jump fuel, generally white and brown dwarfs are safer, and better chose smaller ones, but what counts in any situation is the level of your radiation bar, if it stays too long on the high side then crew will burn and system damages can occur, there is also some RNG involved. With pulsars you are gambling, also they will emmit radiation pulses all over the system but it's too low to burn the crew unless you get near the pulsar. With Black Holes you need to BOOST away immediately otherwise you get sucked in and guess, you die. Also you cannot stay long in a black hole system because the radiation will spread ALL OVER THE PLACE and system damages and burns can occur anytime, even far away from the body, you should really have a good reason to enter such systems!

Beware that the radiation for all these bodies can be higher or lower depending on the overall radiation level marked in the Sector information. If this info labels 'high radiation', then expect even brown and white dwarfs to be more dangerous!


II. SPEAKING WITH ALIENS AND TRADING

Trading:
When docking on a starport or meeting any individual ship you will be ready to trade your goods (Services > Merchand). The problem is you don't know what a specific item is worth. So do this: Offer your item for an incredible high price, the alien will obviously refuse but he will also make you another offer for the same item so you get an idea of what it's worth if you add about 50% on top of his offer. NEVER just accept an offer as is, but ALWAYS NEGOCIATE a higher price, don't even be afraid of asking the double or triple price, if your client refuses you can still reduce it. Sometimes aliens will get tired from too much trading and tell you something like 'come later' or 'enough for today...', if so, the trick is to offer them something cheap for free (a common metal or mineral), this will often give you 2 more trade runs. Repeat if necessary.

Speaking and small-talk:
Aliens can be impatient or not suggestive for speaking with you very long, so you better do the important things first. Most important is trading your goods to get credits, asking for 'Work' in order to maybe get quests that will reward you with credits and then showing to the alien important items that are stocked in your ship lab to know more about them. But beware, some aliens will not like what they see and your reputation may drop!
Other talk options should only be done AFTER all this, go through all options if you can, also when asking to 'tell' about other alien races you get a chance to know about the relationships between them. Generally you should not 'praise' or 'insult' because this can easily get you in trouble or lower your REP (praising can be missunderstood as a sign of weakness or simply meaning the exact opposite for the alien, and needless to say: insulting is not the best way to present yourself if your ship is weak.)


III. YOUR REPUTATION WITH ALIENS

You have to know quickly who the enemies of an alien race are, because you need to use this to your advantage. Avoid to have the lowest reputation with an alien. If you have the lowest REP marked in red in your database, then these aliens will attack you ON SIGHT and you have no chance to speak with them anymore. This can get you doomed if your ship is not strong enough and you lack ressources to keep it strong. Also enemies are very difficult to evade during system navigation, and even if you succeed it costs you tons of ressources that will run out soon. Evading ships is almost as bad as entering combat with them (read more about this in my 'Combat Tips').

To resolve the big trouble of constant attacks from alien ships, you can make their enemies angry so your REP with them will improve. Just going out of red REP is enough as they won't attack you for no reason anymore, except the Raxact, but be glad that these pirates are the easiest to defeat. Btw, you can get allied with the Raxact, and this has some advantages...
To make your alien REP worse for getting their enemies REP up, the easiest way is to chose some dialogues that will obset them, show them things they don't like, praise another race they don't like, but beware of insulting them directly because this could lead straight to combat. Another easy way is to mine ressources on their planets when they have a city there, your REP will go down for sure. Then of course, just attack their ships if you are strong enough, this will for sure lower the rep and increase the rep of their enemies. Combat is fun and useful especially if you have the LOCUST SWARM upgrade that lets you pick-up important debris and goodies after combat, but generally avoid combat if you can do your journey faster, don't forget that your objectve is to get back to Earth and all ressources are limited...The faster you travel by skipping trouble, the less hull and system damages you will inccur and the better your chances to return home.

Most of these options to make a REP change are difficult to realize, so avoid having a red REP with aliens, try to balance your actions with aliens carefully!

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I'm not yet 100% sure if the last section (Your Reputation with Aliens) is so helpful as it should, I still have to test how you can 'catch up' your reputation once it is red, and even if this is possible in any case, so read this with some salt on it...

Have fun with TLJH :)

[Sotnik]

Thank you very much, a good guide you made.

The most unobvious things to me are crew skills and weapon characteristics. If you could share your experience or give a link to another guide, this would be much appreciated too.

Also I wonder if there is a connection between the difficulty of stars and planets and their resources/anomalies quality.

[japp_02]

There is a very good guide in the Guide section here. There is also an excellent Wiki, but beware of spoilers!
Crew skills: Anyone of the crew candidates has some kind of speciality that will help you in the game, especially when it comes to comment / transform some objects you find. In your ship lab, select an object, watch what they say and hower you mouse over them, you will see what they can do. Also listen to their random comments, it's useful sometimes.

As for a connection, no, you can find common ressources on deadly planets or rare ones on easy planets and quite the contrary.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by japp_02:

There is a very good guide in the Guide section here. There is also an excellent Wiki, but beware of spoilers!
Crew skills: Anyone of the crew candidates has some kind of speciality that will help you in the game, especially when it comes to comment / transform some objects you find. In your ship lab, select an object, watch what they say and hower you mouse over them, you will see what they can do. Also listen to their random comments, it's useful sometimes.

As for a connection, no, you can find common ressources on deadly planets or rare ones on easy planets and quite the contrary.

Unfortunately, all these sources are limited.

As far as I noticed, crew skills influence lab activities, exploration challanges and maybe diplomacy. The problem is that it is hard to understand the exact impact unless you go through many same situations with different crews. For example, I've read that Simon is better in diplomacy. Does it mean prices? Or quest rewards? Or gathering information? Or is it just about specific races while other crew members are better at commutication with other aliens? Or does it help to succeed in encounters with hostile natives in ruins?

[japp_02]

Don't attach too much importance to the crew, except maybe for Malcom which is probably the best pilot (to a little extend). I don't feel 'big' differences in the crew that would result in higher rewards or credits or so. The choice of the ship and lander is much more important IMO, but here there is no strong/weak ship, a good aspect will be balanced with some negatives (cheap refuel, but small tank; Good Drilling but poor hull for the lander etc.)
The game will be hard whatever you choose and the alien reactions won't change because of your crew I think.

[Wrzlprnft]

i agree, while the success chance in some things like siobah in ruins or i think the engineer in a wreckage (with the closed door) is slightly different, there are now absolutely un-obvious hidden things. they do have their own reactions, and some enable new interactions rather than hidden bonuses

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by Wrzlprnft:

i agree, while the success chance in some things like siobah in ruins or i think the engineer in a wreckage (with the closed door) is slightly different, there are now absolutely un-obvious hidden things. they do have their own reactions, and some enable new interactions rather than hidden bonuses

I read somewhere that Siobah is better in Ruins, but then found out that technitians are usually more capable. Coincedences?

[Doktor Klenk]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by Wrzlprnft:

i agree, while the success chance in some things like siobah in ruins or i think the engineer in a wreckage (with the closed door) is slightly different, there are now absolutely un-obvious hidden things. they do have their own reactions, and some enable new interactions rather than hidden bonuses

I read somewhere that Siobah is better in Ruins, but then found out that technitians are usually more capable. Coincedences?

Depends on which kind of ruin you are facing. For Avulco ruins your statement is mostly valid, because those are stuffed with technology - for most other ruin types unfortunately not... for Tchansu definitively not.
Overall Shioban is the best bet when exploring ruins - simply because you don`t know what type of ruin it will be. Ok....one can get back to the ship and switch the pilot according to the ruin, but where would be the fun in that? Also damaging the lander during second try is likely possible.

[[BRE] Léonard "le Fol"]

I haven't read, sorry I have not the time now, but in case anyone wants to play remember that the way you get out of "separate instances" like space ports or rock belts is gonna be the same you gonna be once out: so if you remember where you need to go after you get out (for fuel saving this is VERY important and also for threat management) of the mining phase or out of a market purchasing time, you will be favored by such memory as you will find the ship ALREADY oriented as you want it to go.
So remember the direction u need to go and point your ship relatively to how the rock belt or the shop was and the system (it's very easy) and you will reap benefit from it.