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Gimli Jun 19, 2021 @ 2:26pm
Tips for a new player?
I'm in my starting sector. So far I've built two small mining ships and currently have captains flying them around and collecting Iron. I feel so lost, there's so much to do.

Edit: I have the Black Market DLC as well. Can I be a bad guy and get by okay if I wanted to?
Last edited by Gimli; Jun 19, 2021 @ 2:28pm
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Originally posted by freezetrain:
If you want a free ship with a captain, just take the drone and go away from your ship in any direction. Keep hopping sectors till the mission / quest appears. Complete the quest in the specified sector with the Adventurer and Lady Adventurous is yours, captain and all.

The trouble, of course, is if you happen upon a pirate infested sector. Might lose a drone. Easily done again. Once you go far enough, free ship and captain. Just keep the upkeep in mind.

In the beginning, you're stuck with mining lasers, usually. The efficiency is poor. They take a long time to digest deposits. They're a time suck. R-mining lasers are better, but they are often not in the starting sector. I usually follow the gates and work my way toward the center. If your radar can't see where the gate goes, you can fly through it. Otherwise, it may be faster to just jump to the sector at the other end of the gate line. Once you get close enough to the center (it's not very far for R-mining lasers), you will come across an equipment dock that sells them.

R-mining lasers require a cargo bay. You don't need a huge one at the start. If they fill up too fast, add more space. You can send the ships to refine the ore at a resource depot. This early in the game, your wait time is likely a few seconds or maybe a minute or two. For big hauls (millions of ore), you're looking at wait times of over 10 minutes. When my big miner fills up, the wait's near 30 minutes. Bigger bays can probably have bigger wait times. Figure out what's tolerable for you. You don't have to wait for them to be full to refine. You also don't need to make the ship sit there during refining. Once docked and ore offloaded, you can send it to mine again. You'll get messages about pickup in the chat window along with the sector coordinates. Send any ship, order to refine resources (even if that ship has none) and it will pick up the refined resources.

This can keep a big ship with a 10+ min wait time from twiddling thumbs for all that time.

One of the first things I do for cash is get to R-mining lasers and sell ore. Save up enough, claim an ansteroid, and found a mine. Ice mine cash flow is so low compared to the others. Zinc puts out decent amounts, even in places with low prices. For me, anyway. But that mine is like $14 mil, plus you have to add cargo bay. If you want faster production, assembly blocks. The first mine is the slowest. They get faster. Once you get a few, it's just credits upon credits. No hustling to sectors trading, checking prices, and all that. Course, if you have the red trading system upgrade, that gets a lot easier.

Trading is easier in the early game if you buy from a station and have some place in mind to sell - someplace you know isn't full. Course, it's a disappointment when the place you're heading to is full and won't buy.

You'll find delivery missions at various stations. These can help you explore the galaxy, earn a little money, and gain reputation with factions.

If you can wait a while for selling ore, wait for a resource depot to give a quest / mission about being low on stock. It pays more, but you'll often need several thousand of the resource. One depot asked me for 12k and I had like 1400 at the time, lol. Sometimes you can do them, sometimes not.

Pirates have system upgrade drops, weapons, and other stuff. If you fend off pirate attacks (get some hits in before a faction destroys them, save a ship in a distress call, or something similar), you can get paid and boost reputation with a nearby faction. Early game, depending on difficulty, this is easier said than done.

If the pirates tear you up, stick to the civilized sectors. Get your cash up and build better ships. Be able to pay your crews. Maybe buy some weapons or system upgrades since you can't get them off the pirates yet. When you can take the pirates, you can salvage their ships, pick up their loot drops, and get better gear. Lots of times, the pirates have better weapon drops than what's at the equipment depot.

Xsotan fleets are kind of optional early game. There are plenty of NPCs saying what to do if you want them to pass on by or if you want to throw down with them.

The pirate boss SWOKS has all kinds of fun stuff. He's no push over in the early area. Worst that can happen is you lose and have to rebuild a ship with a token or credits. Let's put it this way, if you struggle with the pirates that attack civilized sectors or the ones out on distress calls, leave SWOKS alone. The NPCs will give clues about how to find SWOKS when you want to hunt him.

SWOKS has a system upgrade to boost how many weapons your ship can use at one time. Before you go out past titanium sectors, that is helpful to pick up.

Oh, also, early area is mostly iron. At some point, your ship is going to want power. Solar arrays just won't cut it. You'll need to be in Titanium before you can get your ship up to par.

So, kind of get a feel for it, check the stats of faction cruisers and pirate ships that attack (hull, firepower, etc.). This will give you an idea of where they are at. You'll want to be above the pirate nuisance fleets that attack sectors before venturing out too far from civilized sectors.

In the early game, use your drone to explore hidden mass sectors. You never know when a fleet of 10 pirate ships is sitting around some asteroids waiting for a small ship to appear. You don't want that.

After a while, you'll have a ship that can handle 1 pirate ship, 2 pirate ships, and so on. Eventually, you'll have this feeling that nothing in this area can affect your ships. They fire, your HP stays full, you fire, their HP drops rapidly. Ah, the joy of that moment.

Don't be afraid to lose a ship. Try something. It might not work. At least you'll know. The game gives you a token for free. After that, you gotta pay for another one or pay the reconstruct / repair fee. it sounds brutal, but for early ships with low stats, it's not that bad.

I was dreadfully afraid of being blown up. I tried Veteran and pirate ships kept attacking the sector before I had anything going. Blew me up a lot. Sometimes, the only way to know if your ship's got what it takes is throw it into the mix and find out. Rebuilding / reconstructing can be unpleasant, but you can still learn a lot.

PS, if you're hunting SWOKS, I think you have to be piloting the ship. If you command a ship to go hunt for that boss, it may not show up.

Things like to attack the player's sector.
I've had ships in other sectors w/ zero attacks. Whatever I am piloting, that's where the pirates / etc. appear. I can hop to a civilized sector to do a deal with a drone and hello pirates. The key factor is the attacks go where the player is located. So far, for me. Various playthroughs, hours upon hours, I've let this game run overnight while I slept (be in an area where you are the top of the food chain if you try that) ... not once has a ship been attacked in a sector other than the player.

Now, I got a warning in one sector, incoming fleet of nasties. I hop out before they arrive. Guess where nasties appear? That's right, with me! If you wanna leave hostile incoming fleets in the dust, jump after they appear.

The gear gets better with rarity (radar, object detector, and on and on). That'll improve over time. Hunting for claimable asteroids? You can see them on the f9 map. Look for the ones that look like they are several asteroids mashed together. You can click it on the f9 view, then fly to it. You must be within ... oh, what was it ... 0.2 km ... and then you can interact with it for options (claim, sell).

I like to build the little bay and assembly on the surface somewhere, then encase it in thin stone blocks. Few ships early game can destroy it. Closer to the galaxy, ships can start to make issues. If I remember correctly, you can go to build menu and modify the entire structure. Double its size and see how it fares. LOL.

I have a mine design I use over and over. From iron territory to xanion, most ships don't do much damage against stone. Enemies don't seem to turn on their mining lasers, ha ha ha. But out in Xanion, they can and do cut through the tiny blocks. Making the whole thing bigger helps.

Nothing like waking up after a night's sleep to the repair dock and a drone thinking 'how'd they wipe out my entire fleet?' It happens. Use tokens, rebuild, buy new tokens, go smash pirates in sector. Wait, that's just me isn't it?

Have fun. Game's got a lot.
Build a passive cash flow and you'll be cruising as far as credits go. Some folks like the factories, assembly lines, stations and all that. Personally, my computer bogs down with all those shuttles, it takes me hours to set up all the deliver here, buy from there paths, and it's just a lot of work. I get more money, less hassle, with mines. Lots of mines. Stone mines that I set and forget.

Now, if you're into stations, don't be afraid to make it look like a mine. Get it to where you want, pull up a saved stone design, and plant that station. All the traders need is a dock. And it's not going anywhere, so I've found stone is a cheap way to keep the station alive during various pirate attacks. You can always beef up its size, add more stone, or shields.

Anyway, the first tier stations require no inputs. They just make stuff. Say you're in a sector with a lot of farms, plant growing type operations. Do they have water and energy cells? If not, setting up one of those should do pretty well. And you don't need trinium hangars or xanion transporters. Traders will buy it from you as long as that box is selected to sell to others.

The transporters don't take much. A tiny block is fine. I had trouble one time with pirates, etc. in the Xanion areas. Couldn't quite deal with them. Couldn't really afford the weapons and couldn't smash the pirates to get their weapons.

Wanted to make mining carriers to speed up mining. Needed the transporter. What to do? I sent a fast ship with short cooldowns to push as hard and as fast as I could into the xanion areas. Found a resource depot. Bought all they had. Went back to the earlier area. Outfitted all ships with the transporter bock. Mining carriers up and running. Built up some cash, got better weapons, founded another mine or two, started the advance to new areas.


Sorry if long winded, I'm up too late.

PS: Beware distress calls. Some are real - expect multiple ships in distress from multiple hostiles. Some are ... fake. Expect 10+ pirate ships. Can always check with a drone first.
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Showing 1-15 of 16 comments
The Pollie Jun 19, 2021 @ 6:04pm 
Use blank hulls for the exterior skin and hulls for the interior. You can then hide the blank hulls and transform the interior hulls into whatever you need once the shape is outlined.

Cargo blocks are more effective the larger they are. One large cargo block will outperform six smaller ones that equal the same volume and grid size.

Progressing toward the universal core will net you greater resources and better materials to work with.
#1
Shurenai Jun 19, 2021 @ 6:32pm 
Originally posted by The Pollie:
Use blank hulls for the exterior skin and hulls for the interior. You can then hide the blank hulls and transform the interior hulls into whatever you need once the shape is outlined.

Cargo blocks are more effective the larger they are. One large cargo block will outperform six smaller ones that equal the same volume and grid size.

Progressing toward the universal core will net you greater resources and better materials to work with.
This also works with reversing the hull types. You also can use whatever you want on the exterior, and fill the interior/anything you want to later replace with Framework; Or the various Stone types.

Ultimately, the goal here is to make sure you have space on the interior even if you may not know how you want it laid out yet, so that you can design your exterior. Maybe as you were designing, you put in generators but at the end, you didnt have enough power- Just replace some of that framework/stone/etc with generator blocks and voila. Want some more cargo space? Replace. Etc.
#2
The Pollie Jun 19, 2021 @ 6:36pm 
I generally recommend against using framework blocks. They're extremely lightweight and give you a false impression of how weighty the ship really will be once pressed into production.
#3
KaneNOD Jun 19, 2021 @ 7:15pm 
Don't play this game with mods until you finish all main and secondary missions. Reason: you will break the real fun of the main story of the game and you will not complete the achievements on Steam.
#4
BelChris666 Jun 19, 2021 @ 8:33pm 
R mine turrets are way more efficient.

Mine lasers can harvest one material above their level. one of the first goals you should have as you move in to the center is get new lasers from equipment decks.
Last edited by BelChris666; Jun 19, 2021 @ 8:34pm
#5
Gimli Jun 19, 2021 @ 8:59pm 
Originally posted by BelChris666:
R mine turrets are way more efficient.

Mine lasers can harvest one material above their level. one of the first goals you should have as you move in to the center is get new lasers from equipment decks.

Thanks for that tip!
#6
MineVoid Jun 19, 2021 @ 9:53pm 
Eventually you can have fighters. They can help you mine, salvage, and even fight. You can eventually fill them with boarders and take over other ships. The ship's health you're trying to take over has to be at 30% I believe before you can board.

You can build your own fighters. You gotta build one at a fighter factory. Make a squad for it in your hangar tab, and then drag it to blueprint square. This will destroy the fighter but as long as you have the materials, your ship will produce the fighters. Having assemblers on your ship will allow your ship to produce fighters much quicker. The bigger the block, the quicker your ship will produce them.

You also need a transporter block on your ship to pick up ores, scrap, or anything else your fighters pick up.
#7
Loki McNeil Jun 20, 2021 @ 3:46am 
Unless you have a specific ship design in mind, I wouldn't worry too much about blocking your ship out. I have many ship designs and each one is a patch work of slapped together blocks with armored exteriors. As ship needs grow, the armor is replaced and new parts added. Once the mass of blocks fails to appease me, I tend to start over.

As for obtaining crews? You will have a harder time finding crews as the badguy as your rep with factions will be negative for attacking them and you likely will always be on the run. Further, other pirate factions will likely still try and kill you. Then there are the aliens, they too are a threat. So there is little benefit of being a bad guy, a pirate. This very well maybe why the vocal minority want to do away with crews on the ships entirely, so to be freed to play without consequence to their actions.

As for gaining better resources? Just head to the center where you'll find the resources. The greater number of mining ships you have early on, yields better resource results, but more micro managing. So depending upon your play style, you may want to keep fewer ships that you must always be upgrading.

Personally, I found building my ships from the start with size 3, rather than 1 or 2, works out the best. It'll be more expensive upfront, but they end up with better stats and can fit more processing power that yields greater number of weapons. I would avoid using more than 3 mining lasers and or more than 1 salvager. Reserve as many slots for weapons that mix anti-shields and pure damage. NPC shields seem to become stronger the closer you get to the center, or my fleet of six ships are in need of significant refits (omicron damage ranging from 1 to 3k).
#8
Chaoslink Jun 20, 2021 @ 7:53am 
Early on, resources and cash are your most important priorities. Your first chunks of credits should come from exploring. Use a radar upgrade to scout for hidden mass sectors, the yellow blips, head into those. Be wary as pirates will be active in these areas and there will be no faction forces to assist you. You might find an object detector very useful doing this as well, to tell you if something valuable is near.

Look for large asteroids. These won’t be the shiny iron ones for mining, just large irregular ones that you can claim. Get within 0.2km and you should be able to interact with them. Claim it and sell it to the nearby faction. The reward is credits and reputation. The higher the reputation you have, the more they pay but the less reputation gain you get. If they really hate you, you’ll get tons of rep but very little money.

In addition to these asteroids, you can find hidden caches, small containers that can be looted for one or two turrets or upgrades and a stack of credits. This is probably the most reliable way of getting higher rarity items aside from buying them early on.

Don’t worry about rushing to the middle or anything. Take your time. You’ll want to slowly make your way towards the center of the galaxy, but understand that things will get harder as you go and you’ll want to be prepared.
#9
Gimli Jun 20, 2021 @ 8:20am 
Originally posted by Chaoslink:
Early on, resources and cash are your most important priorities. Your first chunks of credits should come from exploring. Use a radar upgrade to scout for hidden mass sectors, the yellow blips, head into those. Be wary as pirates will be active in these areas and there will be no faction forces to assist you. You might find an object detector very useful doing this as well, to tell you if something valuable is near.

Look for large asteroids. These won’t be the shiny iron ones for mining, just large irregular ones that you can claim. Get within 0.2km and you should be able to interact with them. Claim it and sell it to the nearby faction. The reward is credits and reputation. The higher the reputation you have, the more they pay but the less reputation gain you get. If they really hate you, you’ll get tons of rep but very little money.

In addition to these asteroids, you can find hidden caches, small containers that can be looted for one or two turrets or upgrades and a stack of credits. This is probably the most reliable way of getting higher rarity items aside from buying them early on.

Don’t worry about rushing to the middle or anything. Take your time. You’ll want to slowly make your way towards the center of the galaxy, but understand that things will get harder as you go and you’ll want to be prepared.

Thanks for the info. Can pirates also attack my captain's ships when they aren't in the same sector as me?
#10
BelChris666 Jun 20, 2021 @ 9:20am 
YES, Your ships CAN be attacked f you are not in direct control of the ship and in another sector.
#11
Gimli Jun 20, 2021 @ 9:26am 
Originally posted by BelChris666:
YES, Your ships CAN be attacked f you are not in direct control of the ship and in another sector.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

Makes sense though.
Last edited by Gimli; Jun 20, 2021 @ 9:26am
#12
Gimli Jun 20, 2021 @ 10:05am 
Hey btw what the hell is up with these large fields of cargo crates just floating around?
#13
BelChris666 Jun 20, 2021 @ 10:08am 
You can open them and steal stuff but will piss off the owner. If you have an object detector system it will highlight the good ones.
#14
Chaoslink Jun 20, 2021 @ 10:42am 
While your ships can be attacked, it’s typically only when you send them to a sector with hostiles there already. The random pirate attacks or Xsotan invasions are linked to the player sector.
#15
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Date Posted: Jun 19, 2021 @ 2:26pm
Posts: 16

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