6.0, blueprints, early game, tedium, and collision

[MOK]

Re-installed to see if things have gotten better, to try playing a different way. An unexpected wrinkle just now emerged for me with regard to getting my first station started, something to mix up what I've otherwise repeated a few times in the past.

In all my prior runs, I end up using EMP bombs to hack blueprints. For me, this has been the only option I'd consider, since buying blueprints is prohibitive with early game income limitations. They don't pay themselves back until you possess many of them and put in a lot of time and effort, all amid risk. Credits spent on BP's could spent on the necessary subordinate ships and claytronics. So I pretty much never considered doing anything but stealing them - why would anyone do otherwise? No consideration about it, possibilities foreclosed, I just do the speedbump.

Which, btw, sucks because the station scanning and EMP process is repetitive and intensely unfun, IMO.

But this time was different: After two tries, the new collision system stopped me from getting close to signals in my suit, which is fine, it's a beta feature. I'm sure if I kept trying I'd get it done.

But this prompted me to pause and think about whether there are other viable approaches. Is the credits grind for blueprints really that bad? Perhaps I'm just bad at amassing those early credits. Or maybe, in fact, my skill and knowledge base is fine, and I'm I SUPPOSED to be stealing and selling ships? Or maybe the game's intended to have a very long period of scrabbling through low-reward missions before your first full functional factory?

So what I'm interested in is what multiple-run players do in their different play-throughs in the leadup to their first factory. What's your preferred way to acquire the blueprints? Do you have ways to ease this speedbump? If you purchase them, what's your method to finance all the pieces, support ship, and supplies needed before you're up to a functional factory?

Other than hijacking big ships. For me that feels too exploity.

[MOK]

By mining station, do you mean just Dock + storage, no processing? Or do you mean a refined metal station?

[Tin Pony]

Early game I've started collecting drops at certain border disputes. If the battles are big enough and long enough it's good credits. Can be used to get those early low-level BPs, and a couple mining ships.

[MOK]

Originally posted by Grumpy:

Originally posted by MOK:

By mining station, do you mean just Dock + storage, no processing? Or do you mean a refined metal station?

Yeah. Just add solid storage to HQ. Set it up to buy from your miners only. Than sell to everyone else..

I do this when I scale up, but prior to then it means you invest that limited cash on only miners for their ore hold, instead of container transport. You figure this is the more effective investment early, rather than traders?

One thing that's definitely good about this approach though - More leveled up pilots sooner.

[conrado.lacerda]

Get rep 10 with the PAR, equip a fighter with Burst Rays and buy 3 trade ships with around 20 marines each (the trader's equipment doesn't matter). Capture pirate destroyers without damaging their hulls (use the fighter to take out the destroyers' turrets) and sell them for a lot of profit (or keep them, your choice), which you can then use to buy blueprints or set mining operations etc. That's a very non-boring way of making money. :)

[blackphoenixx]

My typical starting strategy is getting the free Courier from NF2, the second free courier from starting the HAT questline and selling both to get my first M miner.

Then i use the miner myself to mine silicon (a low-skill pilot takes 20+ minutes for a load of silicon, if you mine it yourself you can do it in 2) and invest the proceeds into 3 more M miners which mine ore (since they're low skill it's more profitable).

After that it's an L miner and my first mining station, the M miners get assigned to trade for that one. Then i expand into more miners and mining stations while running easy missions for the trade guilds for pilot seminars to give to my L miner pilots.

An L miner with a 3-star pilot and green mods easily makes 2-4mil per hour if you don't make him jump sectors so you can basically double your passive income every 2-3 hours by just investing into more L miners and more mining stations + M miners to trade for them.

There's easily enough demand for raw resources that you can make 50+ mil per hour on that alone without even touching trading or production or waiting for hours for stations to build, you get great rep with all factions and keep the NPC economy supplied so they can stand up to the Xenon and you can buy ships from their shipyards without having to wait for materials.

And since L miners are pretty much immune to Khaak and your trading M miners get ignored by pirates it's very low maintenance as well.

[Rejected Spavvn]

Unstable Crystals and Spacefly Eggs can be obtained very easily in modest amounts by simply loitering near a spot where many mineral miners hang around, you need to be nearby for the drops to spawn but can have an NPC scout on repeat orders automatically collect them. An alternative and faster method with possibly even less work is available if you get any ship with L turrets; install L plasma (paranid is best for this, argon second, teladi if in a dire pinch) and set them to "mining", now take aim through a long and dense asteroid field, accelerate to about 30-50m/s, finally put something heavy on the cargo magnet button and go drink coffee and watch TV for an hour.

Smuggling is sometimes pretty lucrative early game as well, if you get any black market contact in Hatikvah's Choice I (don't mistakenly sell in H C III until you get a "mirage" chassimod for the ship) and if there's any spacefuel factory already in sector. You can set a repeat order to buy and sell full hauls of spacefuel in sector, no cops will pester the ship since that ware is entirely legal to Hat. Don't forget to hack the trade panels on the stations as soon as you stumble on any hacking tools dropped from battles, often jacks up the profit enough to make a clear difference.

[MOK]

Side note, how do I find the courier in NFII? I have highways turned off, so I can't rely on that to guide me to it.

So i'm getting a clear message that yall don't mind buying the blueprints? You prefer not to hack them, and consider this a better approach?

[conrado.lacerda]

Originally posted by MOK:

Side note, how do I find the courier in NFII? I have highways turned off, so I can't rely on that to guide me to it.

So i'm getting a clear message that yall don't mind buying the blueprints? You prefer not to hack them, and consider this a better approach?

It's to the northeast of the entrance, but VERY far away. Even with the highway, you go to its end and then travel a while farther.

As for blueprints, I find the economic game very enjoyable, I love business sims and such, and in the end I get the money to buy the blueprints quite quickly. Also, there's a natural progressions in their prices (blueprints for refined ware modules are the cheapest and so on, claytronics being the most expensive), and so it's not difficult to obtain them the "legit" way.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by MOK:

So i'm getting a clear message that yall don't mind buying the blueprints? You prefer not to hack them, and consider this a better approach?

It's mostly a matter of cost and how hard the module is to find.
For the expensive blueprints i EMP them, like claytronics, computronic substrate or habitats.
But for something like L storage that doesn't cost much and is a pain to find i just buy the blueprint from the faction rep.

Same for the food production & medical supply production. The blueprints for the entire production chain cost a few mil together and i'd rather pay that than go EMP 5 or 6 production modules for them.

[gerald2]

Originally posted by MOK:

Re-installed to see if things have gotten better, to try playing a different way. An unexpected wrinkle just now emerged for me with regard to getting my first station started, something to mix up what I've otherwise repeated a few times in the past.

In all my prior runs, I end up using EMP bombs to hack blueprints. For me, this has been the only option I'd consider, since buying blueprints is prohibitive with early game income limitations. They don't pay themselves back until you possess many of them and put in a lot of time and effort, all amid risk. Credits spent on BP's could spent on the necessary subordinate ships and claytronics. So I pretty much never considered doing anything but stealing them - why would anyone do otherwise? No consideration about it, possibilities foreclosed, I just do the speedbump.

Which, btw, sucks because the station scanning and EMP process is repetitive and intensely unfun, IMO.

But this time was different: After two tries, the new collision system stopped me from getting close to signals in my suit, which is fine, it's a beta feature. I'm sure if I kept trying I'd get it done.

But this prompted me to pause and think about whether there are other viable approaches. Is the credits grind for blueprints really that bad? Perhaps I'm just bad at amassing those early credits. Or maybe, in fact, my skill and knowledge base is fine, and I'm I SUPPOSED to be stealing and selling ships? Or maybe the game's intended to have a very long period of scrabbling through low-reward missions before your first full functional factory?

So what I'm interested in is what multiple-run players do in their different play-throughs in the leadup to their first factory. What's your preferred way to acquire the blueprints? Do you have ways to ease this speedbump? If you purchase them, what's your method to finance all the pieces, support ship, and supplies needed before you're up to a functional factory?

Other than hijacking big ships. For me that feels too exploity.

as for emp ,try placing em on big flat surfaces w/o protruding elements ,in such places they usually spawn properly .
as for me most frustrating was gathering those damn lodestones,sometime i get tons of em at other session roids spawn everything else lodestones.....i know they are buyable but its as random as damn arghnu beef :P or even worse

[bloodymonarch]

There's nothing exploity about being a pirate in a non drive-by way. I spend a good amount of time capturing my L size ships. There's nothing wrong with doing it so long as you do it the way you're supposed to.

Step One: Get a corvette and an S ship.

Step Two: Either put burst rays on the S or put Thermal Ds on the corvette. Which I go with depends on my starting rep and which rep would take longer to grind out. The other ship will have Pulse mk2 or something else for getting M ships to bail.

Step Three: Convince minotaur crews to bail, or take advantage of any other M ship with crew capacity I can convince to bail without getting in trouble with police. Nopileos' Fortune can allow you to acquire M miners, frigates, or freighters relatively safely.

Step Four: Fill the newly acquired M ships with marines. Send them to Nopileos' Fortune.

Step Five: Pirate the crap out of whatever L Miners you want using the ship with Burst Rays or Thermal Ds to take out the surface elements. They are the easiest to capture and most useful to get started making passive money. Train the marines up easy.

Step Six: While making passive income from my tactically acquired mining fleet, I go make friends with the Terran. Buy these production modules: Silicon, Metallic microlattice, computronics and the L size storage modules, plus the L 1 ship pier.

Step Seven: Build a station that has 5 of each production, a dock, a pier, and at least one of each L size storage in Asteroid Belt.

Step Eight: When the station is complete, stop my mining fleet and send them to work for the new Asteroid Belt station.

Step Nine: Build a terran energy production station in Mercury. Go board L freighters while it builds and keep them. Set the L freighters to repeat orders trade energy cells from your solar station to your asteroid belt once the station is built.

Step Ten: You will now have millions of credits coming in reliably from the Asteroid Belt station. Where you go from here is up to you.