Satellite's and the New Player

[jasonbarron]

Getting back into this game after being so long is a bit overwhelming and I could use some advice on strategizing the early game. When I played at release I was able to get my first couple medium miners and traders purchased and staffed with a bit of crystal mining, and I set them to do their thing automatically while I continued on exploring and mapping the entire universe in a speedy little scout ship, dropping Advanced Satellite's on almost every station I came across, adding more miners and traders as I could and always just setting the them on auto.

So, now that I'm back in the game I'm finding that that former strategy isn't really feasible, mostly because NPC's don't really start out with the ability to do things automatically. My belief going into the new game was that a robust Advanced Satellite network covering the galaxy was a must, but since the miners/traders starting out require so much hands on time to get them where they can function on their own I don't see where I'll have time anytime soon to actually fly around mapping and dropping a network.

So, aside from asking for advice in general that you would offer a "new" player, I'm wondering on what you experienced players have to say about creating a large scale satellite network? Do you feel that they are a vital component of your trade network in the early stages of the game, and if so how much time do you devote to laying them down? Or should I be focusing on my player HQ story that the little boron dude gave me near the beginning and have been ignoring every since?

For my own personal sense of achievement and advancement I'm certainly in no hurry; I don't mind spending hundreds of hours grinding my way slowly to the top, I'm just concerned that I'm dithering about too much while the Xenon's get set to curb stomp the universe while I'm still piddling around getting almost nothing meaningful done.

Thanks in advance,

Clueless in Profit Center

[Ruges]

Satellite network is important if your going to trade goods. be in raw ore or finished products. However dumping a satellite at every station you come across is not very cost effective if your not going to buy or sell resources at that location.

So if your going to mine ore. your going to want satellites at refined metal plants. if your going to mine silicon your going to want the at silicon wafer stations. And the more of those stations you have a network at, the better prices your going to get for each miner you send out.

as far as dithering around. I would not worry about it much. If your worried about a certain faction. focuse on trading with them. IE keep an eye on there shipyards. look what resources the shipyards are low on and supply those resources. which means going down the chain. So if they are short on hull parts. setup a trader to only trade hull parts in that area. Then find the hullpart factory. Its going to need refined metals and a little bit of graphine. if it is short on one or the other. again supply a trader to supply that resource. Then if its refined metal for example find the refined metal factory and put a ore miner there to keep it supplied. Do this for every resource the shipyard needs. Even building your own supply factories if needed.

By doing this, it allows that faction to keep churning out as many ships as it needs to win which ever faction it is fighting.

[jasonbarron]

Sounds like solid advice, Ruges. I'll give that a shot.

[Sticky]

Originally posted by Ruges:

Satellite network is important if your going to trade goods. be in raw ore or finished products. However dumping a satellite at every station you come across is not very cost effective if your not going to buy or sell resources at that location.

So if your going to mine ore. your going to want satellites at refined metal plants. if your going to mine silicon your going to want the at silicon wafer stations. And the more of those stations you have a network at, the better prices your going to get for each miner you send out.

as far as dithering around. I would not worry about it much. If your worried about a certain faction. focuse on trading with them. IE keep an eye on there shipyards. look what resources the shipyards are low on and supply those resources. which means going down the chain. So if they are short on hull parts. setup a trader to only trade hull parts in that area. Then find the hullpart factory. Its going to need refined metals and a little bit of graphine. if it is short on one or the other. again supply a trader to supply that resource. Then if its refined metal for example find the refined metal factory and put a ore miner there to keep it supplied. Do this for every resource the shipyard needs. Even building your own supply factories if needed.

By doing this, it allows that faction to keep churning out as many ships as it needs to win which ever faction it is fighting.

I agree with Ruges, also you can use scout ships to explore to find more factories and use them to update Trade offers in sectors, Once you master giving a ship a long list of orders you can explore several sectors and update offers. After you give a ship a command, hold shift click on the next target area or sector and right click. That pops up the command list, pick something, and repeat.

Though Satellites will give you the offers in the affected area and allow you to see the traffic passing though.

[Sticky]

If you use Discord sometimes its easier to show you in a live stream. All are welcome. Here is the invite code: https://discord.gg/E6AMMC

[Chris]

While yes, the "Automine" command is now gated behind getting a pilot to 3 stars, there is still the "sector automine" command that is available to any pilot. Just plop them down in a sector that has both ore + a metal refinery & you should be fine to leave them alone, slowly building your credits & faction rep.

Satellite network is useful in the early-midgame & onward, but advanced sats cover a 75km radius sphere. You should be able to drop 1 sat that cover a cluster of stations; use the much cheaper regular satellite if you're only covering a single station.

Once you've gotten enough credits to hire a backup pilot for your starter ship, you can actually kill 2 birds with one stone: start hunting down "Marauder Minotaur" corvettes. Scan them to reveal that it's a disguised SCA ship & try to get the crew to bail. They're fairly easy to follow in a S sized ship, and have a fairly large blindspot directly behind them where the side-mounted turrets can't hit you. Force the crew to bail, then fly the ship to the nearest wharf/equipment yard. Strip the equipment down to the "Minimum Preset" which should net you close to 1M credits. You can then either equip the ship as an early trade freighter or just sell the chassis for ~600k credits. Either way, you've gotten some easy credits AND taken out a pirate that would potentially harass your trade ships. Eventually once you're flying a corvette, you can take the same tactics with "Plunderer" L sized ships. Equipment from those usually sells for ~12-14M, and the chassis goes for another ~4M.

At that point you should be able to outfit a scout fleet (I like the Dragon Raider from the Split DLC) with Advanced Satellites & use them to set up your sat network.

[lock]

Get your wharf started so you can have a place to put your goods that you should "drop" or the space popo will be chasing you and your ships and making your space life a spacemare.

[SpaceToast]

You really dont need sats at all, auto miners do just fine without them. Just set up explorers or reveal the stations on the map yourself and forget.

[Chris]

Originally posted by lock:

Get your wharf started so you can have a place to put your goods that you should "drop" or the space popo will be chasing you and your ships and making your space life a spacemare.

Actually yeah, wharf + the blueprints to make/equip a fighter ship for a nearby faction + staffing the wharf with a ship trader will return the investment within a couple hours. The initial investment of getting the rep + the ~124M to purchase the module blueprint is fairly steep, but it repays itself much faster than I expected.

[jasonbarron]

Thanks for all the awesome advice, everyone. It really helps to focus me in such a massive game world

[Lakarin]

Apparently if you deploy an advanced satellite, it gives trade data for the entire sector.

[iFrame]

Originally posted by Lakarin:

Apparently if you deploy an advanced satellite, it gives trade data for the entire sector.

For real? Didnt know that. Really hate sat spamming...