Beginner's questions

[Duregar]

Hello,

I've been having an eye on this game for a very long time and finally decided to buy it. I'm having fun and I'm glad I've bought it.

Now onto the main part - I've looked for information about various things but it is quite spares and/or quite old. So I've decided to ask some questions here myself, currently mostly about character's stats / skills.

1. Are all weapon types (e.g. 2h melee, smgs etc.) viable? Or are some of those types currently not fit for later stages of the game?
   
   
2. How important is stat allocation (especially stats from levels) for overall character performance in combat? Can a character that has mostly points in e.g. intelligence and perception switch to somehow viably fight with melee weapons if desired so?
   
   
3. Is there any spreadsheet / other somehow concrete data of how each stat affects different aspects? E.g. Agility, Dexterity, Charisma and Intelligence are all described to affect initiative. But to what degree?
   
   
4. If I wanted to make a 2h/1h melee weapons character, what stats and at what ratio would it be best to increase?
   
   
5. Can you respec? The latest info I've managed to find about it is from over 1 year ago and the developer said there that I'll look into adding a free respec soon.
   
   
6. When just starting, Is it better to sell unnecessary items or to salvage them?

Apologies if I've missed any up-to-date answers to those question.

[rompier02]

Hi.
!) All weapons are viable. Dunno about later stage. Yet to experience. Enemies also use all weapons available to Player. Some will have accuracy fall off the nearer you are to the enemies.

2) Stats allocation depends on your build for that particular crew/Main. For example characters with high Intel & Per will not be a good Pugilists/2 H/ 1 H if one of their stat say Str is low. Still can but not good damage.

3) Dunno. Sorry . Better wait for ST to give an answer.

4) If it was me I'd go for STR/DEX/AGI/END/PER. Dunno about ratio sorry.

5) Yeah I read this too. To be fair I'll wait for a response.

6) I'd salvage everything. Some parts are very hard to spawn. Can't say the same for everyone.

Good luck.

[Duregar]

Thank you for the answers :)

Originally posted by rompier02:

4) If it was me I'd go for STR/DEX/AGI/END/PER. Dunno about ratio sorry.

Why Perception? Is it due to it affecting crit chance? it claims to affect it in the description, however I haven't seen increase in crit chance displayed in UI when raising Perception (though I've done very limited testing)

Originally posted by rompier02:

6) I'd salvage everything. Some parts are very hard to spawn. Can't say the same for everyone.

So both junk items and equipment that won't be used?

Also, here's what I've gathered from my limited testing when it comes to stats and weapons. Maybe someone will find this somehow basic information useful:

A. Melee

Hit chance - is increased only by one stat - Dexterity
Damage - is increased by Strength, Agility and Dexterity. The increase depends on the type of the weapon, and from the most impactful stat to the least one is as follows:

1. 2h weapons
   
   1. Strength
      
   2. Agility
      
   3. Dexterity
2. 1h weapons
   
   1. Agility
      
   2. Strength = Dexterity
3. Pugilism
   
   1. Agility
      
   2. Dexterity
      
   3. Strength

B. Ranged

Hit chance - is increased only by one stat - Perception
Damage - is increased by Perception, Dexterity and Strength (only Big Guns), in that order.

[JODEGAFUN]

Another tip, level up crafting, once you are able to craft rare items, you can build insane strong gear which fit every ground combat stile ore space combat stile

[reeldeal99]

Long ass post but I promise there are good tips here from my experience and from what I gathered from other players.

(first your questions)
1. All viable. Big Guns is OP. Get one member to use BG, and then collect 12-16 of them to keep inventory and all loaded so you don't need to reload during the combat and can just swap weapons (reload them after combat)...keep all types of the BG's to deal with resistances of enemies and combat situations, (I.E. flame Throwers are the close up weapon of choice). -- BG's though can crit for like 900Dmg and mh BG crew member is only lvl27...so they can get laughably OP. I would actually make 2 characters that use BG's, they are that good. -- Pugilism and 1H are good at "Crippling". This can be REALLY helpful as a crippled opponent loses AP points. A crippled enemy can never fire off their BG as they won't have enough AP. So 2 melee 2 BG? just a thought.

2. At this stage of the game dev/evolution intelligence has become less important. The higher it is, the faster skills increase...but they WILL increase eventually. If I could respec, I would stop at 50 intelligence. There are some additional benefits to Intelligence, and the game is still evolving but as it stands now, I have crafted gear w/ intelligence at +9 per item and it's only rare stuff, lvl 20 crafting crew member. Not to say crafting isn't a HUGE commitment but you can...eventually...make up for loss statz from level assignments with gear. For charisma, forget it, when crafting is high enough you can make a Charisma set of gear for better prices, and eventually Charisma checks in quests (assuming so).

Perception stat for range crew, Agility on melee and you won't be sorry. If you want ranged and melee, do some Grenade skills for your melee. Having a "Stunner" on the grenade is helpful. "Save Scum" in the Achmedius trade port, as there is an additional lvl1 weapons seller, regular weap seller, then "merchant" all have a chance to sell grenades.

3. See above comments, but I'll add when you are adding stat points you can watch the overall damage etc. adjust in the character window to get an idea of which skills are making the most difference.

4. Per above, spread it around with Agility and intelligence (until 50), then go full agility. Again, only my opinion.

5. Others have answered.

6. Salvage everything but epics and save those until you are basically MAX 100 salvage skill. Epic items are too precious to waste on adding experience, you want to actually recover the items and "learn" as much as you can about the new schematic. Salvage is a MASSIVE skill. I have save/scummed in trade ports to fill up my back pack countless times just to salvage my arse off and am still at lvl 76 on it. There are a LOT of schematics and I still haven't started salvaging the Ship equipment because it's soooooo expensive. So when I do, I wanna make sure my salvager is 100 skill for max efficiency.

Lastly, you didn't ask but here is a final tip and then a path to earn credits....

***Remember there is a "Repair/mechanic" slot/crew position on the ship. This member will auto repair your ship all the time for free, and, gain repair skill. Press "J" key in space to bring up the window to assign them. You will need a 5th crew member for the position.

***Don't hire any more crew than you have to. As you gain levels, the mercs you find will be higher starting skill level as well. So if you don't need them, then you will hire them and their skills will be lvl5 on 1HS, and if you hire them at level 30, it may be lvl 25.

***OK to earn $$$

Starter ship the Mace IS GOOD! Fight ships (incursions, or RED enemies) to get some initial $$$. If ship fighting is disorientating, just keep pressing the follow arrow to stay with your target. Also zoom out and then adjust for a top-down view.

Step 1: Fight ships to get enough $$$ to purchase better ship gear...only buy/keep looted Rare or better. You will waste precious $$$ in the beginning on basic or exceptional. When money allows, get full legendary in all slots except the ore refinery unless you have $$$ to burn. I'm unclear if character level effects chances of finding legendary items form merchants.

Step 2: After you have almost all rare gear...buy mining drones. Warp to hyper space and press "L" to get star map. Travel to star systems with 7+ planets. Before warping in, make sure you have BEACONS (buy at ship equip seller) place a beacon in hyper space using the pink arrow icon-thingy in lower left. You can also get access to pink arrow icon to place a beacon when you are close enough to a beacon inside the star system. Pink icon doesn't show up unless you can sue it, so it may not be there all the time.

2A. Scan all planets and launch the drones by clicking on node in mini map in upper right. Keep in mind you can stay in a star port or in hyper space and be left safe and alone and the drones will keep mining. Once you have 20 drones mining (keep them on "auto" not manual), and if you keep the game running all day and night-ish on your computer, you can earn 3-5mill credits just from mining each day. You can also run ground missions or do anything at all while the drones are mining. If you are in inventory (I think maybe), drone manager, character screen, star map, that's a full PAUSE and the drones will not be mining, so don't waste hours on nothing. B4 a ground mission make sure the drones are all mining for a while and don't all stop in the middle of your mission wasting precious time.

2B. Retrieve drones when "idle" and relaunch to a new node in star system or find a new one.

3. Optional, I keep a spreadsheet on all star systems I visit. #planets, faction, #of Good bases, # of evil/red bases, Asteroid field yes/no and if it's good (strong green bar), how many moons (maybe one day we can do something with them), names of all the star ports (Terminus, Grain & Greens etc.), then notes if I like the star system, like if it has a lot of ship fights, etc. I'm at 895 planets logged as of this writing....cauuussseeeeeee I'm a nerd. Spredsheet will be critical to know where you have and hav enot already mined with drones. You can zoom around hyper space to systems, drop beacon, not actually enter the system and beacon your brains out on many systems. Then if you are keeping record on spreadsheet you can find them in your beacon jump menu and know which to go to to have fresh nodes. Just scan at the time you enter to find.

4. Do missions and drone mining until you have all legendary ship gear. Save up enough money to purchase the Behemoth (Almost 300 Mill). Yeahhhhh that will take a bit.

4A. "Store" don't trade in the Pharris Mace and log/remember where you stored it at lol.

5. With Behemoth find one of those awesome (friendly/neutral) star systems with AField and strong green bar (and you will know because of your spreadsheet). Mine away (go to AF and then just click a floating rock to start mining). Then refine away. Legendary Refinery will have 87-88% efficacy, don't settle for less. Do this until you have filled up the Behemoth 2-3 times and refined.

6. Crafting - You need step #5 because you won't be able to craft a f**king thing until you have a WIDE variety of refined ore. If you haven't yet, you will also need to do the save/scum in a trade port to buy thousands of items and then salvage them so you have the parts needed as well...yyyeeeaaaahhhhh crafting is kinda a big deal and awesome in this game.

7. Do Missions and ship fights until you have found/learned epic schematics for everything you want.

8. Keep drone mining forever.

9. Continue on with RPG ST storyline which should be done soon, per the Dev. Give your children your UN/PW before you die as this game will still be awesome.

LASTLY, BUG AND SUPER IMPORTANT!!!!!! If you let the game sit for a few hours and then either zone or attempt to reload, the game can hang/crash. So ALWAYS leave in "options" auto save on, and F5/QS before every load. I have had mornings when I left the game running all night for drone mining, and then tried to warp into a system without saving (or having auto saving on) and the game crashed wasting 8 hours of time. I have had some success with opening hyper space and searching for a star system to sorta "wake up" the game so it will succeed on zoning/loading after a long pause.

GLuck!

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by reeltempting:

Long ass post but I promise there are good tips here from my experience and from what I gathered from other players.

(first your questions)
1. All viable. Big Guns is OP. Get one member to use BG, and then collect 12-16 of them to keep inventory and all loaded so you don't need to reload during the combat and can just swap weapons (reload them after combat)...keep all types of the BG's to deal with resistances of enemies and combat situations, (I.E. flame Throwers are the close up weapon of choice). -- BG's though can crit for like 900Dmg and mh BG crew member is only lvl27...so they can get laughably OP. I would actually make 2 characters that use BG's, they are that good. -- Pugilism and 1H are good at "Crippling". This can be REALLY helpful as a crippled opponent loses AP points. A crippled enemy can never fire off their BG as they won't have enough AP. So 2 melee 2 BG? just a thought.

2. At this stage of the game dev/evolution intelligence has become less important. The higher it is, the faster skills increase...but they WILL increase eventually. If I could respec, I would stop at 50 intelligence. There are some additional benefits to Intelligence, and the game is still evolving but as it stands now, I have crafted gear w/ intelligence at +9 per item and it's only rare stuff, lvl 20 crafting crew member. Not to say crafting isn't a HUGE commitment but you can...eventually...make up for loss statz from level assignments with gear. For charisma, forget it, when crafting is high enough you can make a Charisma set of gear for better prices, and eventually Charisma checks in quests (assuming so).

Perception stat for range crew, Agility on melee and you won't be sorry. If you want ranged and melee, do some Grenade skills for your melee. Having a "Stunner" on the grenade is helpful. "Save Scum" in the Achmedius trade port, as there is an additional lvl1 weapons seller, regular weap seller, then "merchant" all have a chance to sell grenades.

3. See above comments, but I'll add when you are adding stat points you can watch the overall damage etc. adjust in the character window to get an idea of which skills are making the most difference.

4. Per above, spread it around with Agility and intelligence (until 50), then go full agility. Again, only my opinion.

5. Others have answered.

6. Salvage everything but epics and save those until you are basically MAX 100 salvage skill. Epic items are too precious to waste on adding experience, you want to actually recover the items and "learn" as much as you can about the new schematic. Salvage is a MASSIVE skill. I have save/scummed in trade ports to fill up my back pack countless times just to salvage my arse off and am still at lvl 76 on it. There are a LOT of schematics and I still haven't started salvaging the Ship equipment because it's soooooo expensive. So when I do, I wanna make sure my salvager is 100 skill for max efficiency.

Lastly, you didn't ask but here is a final tip and then a path to earn credits....

***Remember there is a "Repair/mechanic" slot/crew position on the ship. This member will auto repair your ship all the time for free, and, gain repair skill. Press "J" key in space to bring up the window to assign them. You will need a 5th crew member for the position.

***Don't hire any more crew than you have to. As you gain levels, the mercs you find will be higher starting skill level as well. So if you don't need them, then you will hire them and their skills will be lvl5 on 1HS, and if you hire them at level 30, it may be lvl 25.

***OK to earn $$$

Starter ship the Mace IS GOOD! Fight ships (incursions, or RED enemies) to get some initial $$$. If ship fighting is disorientating, just keep pressing the follow arrow to stay with your target. Also zoom out and then adjust for a top-down view.

Step 1: Fight ships to get enough $$$ to purchase better ship gear...only buy/keep looted Rare or better. You will waste precious $$$ in the beginning on basic or exceptional. When money allows, get full legendary in all slots except the ore refinery unless you have $$$ to burn. I'm unclear if character level effects chances of finding legendary items form merchants.

Step 2: After you have almost all rare gear...buy mining drones. Warp to hyper space and press "L" to get star map. Travel to star systems with 7+ planets. Before warping in, make sure you have BEACONS (buy at ship equip seller) place a beacon in hyper space using the pink arrow icon-thingy in lower left. You can also get access to pink arrow icon to place a beacon when you are close enough to a beacon inside the star system. Pink icon doesn't show up unless you can sue it, so it may not be there all the time.

2A. Scan all planets and launch the drones by clicking on node in mini map in upper right. Keep in mind you can stay in a star port or in hyper space and be left safe and alone and the drones will keep mining. Once you have 20 drones mining (keep them on "auto" not manual), and if you keep the game running all day and night-ish on your computer, you can earn 3-5mill credits just from mining each day. You can also run ground missions or do anything at all while the drones are mining. If you are in inventory (I think maybe), drone manager, character screen, star map, that's a full PAUSE and the drones will not be mining, so don't waste hours on nothing. B4 a ground mission make sure the drones are all mining for a while and don't all stop in the middle of your mission wasting precious time.

2B. Retrieve drones when "idle" and relaunch to a new node in star system or find a new one.

3. Optional, I keep a spreadsheet on all star systems I visit. #planets, faction, #of Good bases, # of evil/red bases, Asteroid field yes/no and if it's good (strong green bar), how many moons (maybe one day we can do something with them), names of all the star ports (Terminus, Grain & Greens etc.), then notes if I like the star system, like if it has a lot of ship fights, etc. I'm at 895 planets logged as of this writing....cauuussseeeeeee I'm a nerd. Spredsheet will be critical to know where you have and hav enot already mined with drones. You can zoom around hyper space to systems, drop beacon, not actually enter the system and beacon your brains out on many systems. Then if you are keeping record on spreadsheet you can find them in your beacon jump menu and know which to go to to have fresh nodes. Just scan at the time you enter to find.

4. Do missions and drone mining until you have all legendary ship gear. Save up enough money to purchase the Behemoth (Almost 300 Mill). Yeahhhhh that will take a bit.

4A. "Store" don't trade in the Pharris Mace and log/remember where you stored it at lol.

5. With Behemoth find one of those awesome (friendly/neutral) star systems with AField and strong green bar (and you will know because of your spreadsheet). Mine away (go to AF and then just click a floating rock to start mining). Then refine away. Legendary Refinery will have 87-88% efficacy, don't settle for less. Do this until you have filled up the Behemoth 2-3 times and refined.

6. Crafting - You need step #5 because you won't be able to craft a f**king thing until you have a WIDE variety of refined ore. If you haven't yet, you will also need to do the save/scum in a trade port to buy thousands of items and then salvage them so you have the parts needed as well...yyyeeeaaaahhhhh crafting is kinda a big deal and awesome in this game.

7. Do Missions and ship fights until you have found/learned epic schematics for everything you want.

8. Keep drone mining forever.

9. Continue on with RPG ST storyline which should be done soon, per the Dev. Give your children your UN/PW before you die as this game will still be awesome.

LASTLY, BUG AND SUPER IMPORTANT!!!!!! If you let the game sit for a few hours and then either zone or attempt to reload, the game can hang/crash. So ALWAYS leave in "options" auto save on, and F5/QS before every load. I have had mornings when I left the game running all night for drone mining, and then tried to warp into a system without saving (or having auto saving on) and the game crashed wasting 8 hours of time. I have had some success with opening hyper space and searching for a star system to sorta "wake up" the game so it will succeed on zoning/loading after a long pause.

GLuck!

Once you get access to high lv crafting the fun starts. Big Guns with 5 rounds insted one shot? Check. Legendary armor with more than +10 on 3 attributes. Rifles with full auto with 3 slots for dmg up addons (legendary) ect. As crafting gives access both to top ship gear and ground combat gear it is the strongest, most grinding needed (to get the higher crafting shematics) skill in the game.

to 4.) Behemoth is not only good for mining, it has the by far strongest shield of all ships and 6 havy guns. And there are enough idiots around who come giving their stuff into your hands.

[izvon2017]

cheap ppl w/o crafting can do 4x pugilists with full agi and they are super viable on extreme. early on maybe you ll have some wtf what that moments on lev 5-7. from lev 9-10 you are unstoppable anyways. offhand slot can be anything for stats. on leg crafting anything is viable. running 2h-1h weapon is meh since why do you want any melee but pugilism. it wont pay out. 2h is too slow. 1h perks are ♥♥♥♥. while pugi specials and perks are absolute. its like wh40k but for melee. granted rocket heavy weapon shot can 1shot you early on. but its irrelevant to weapons you are using

[.:M3ssi@h:.]

Originally posted by reeltempting:

Long ass post but I promise there are good tips here from my experience and from what I gathered from other players.

GLuck!

I wanna thank you for this post sir extremently usefull information.

[Stellar Tactics]

Yes, very nice posts above. A lot of good info here.

[reignoterror]

New to the game also.

Originally posted by reeltempting:

4A. "Store" don't trade in the Pharris Mace and log/remember where you stored it at lol.

6. Crafting - You need step #5 because you won't be able to craft a f**king thing until you have a WIDE variety of refined ore. If you haven't yet, you will also need to do the save/scum in a trade port to buy thousands of items and then salvage them so you have the parts needed as well...yyyeeeaaaahhhhh crafting is kinda a big deal and awesome in this game.

Which mace is this and why save it? Think I already salvaged it. :(

Also while scum saving what items are you buy to salvage?

Thanks all for the awesome tips!