"Katya who?" or: How to Travel the Galaxy and Acquire Multiple Alien Warships Without Ever Dealing with the Free Worlds

This guide offers a step by step walkthrough on acquiring all sorts of exotic technology before you even begin the main story, with the ultimate goal of laughing at the Navy as their pitiful human cruisers are dabbed on by your end-game super ships.

What is this guide?

Note: This guide was written using the latest Continuous build (as of the time of writing, build 2021-04-15.) These builds are accessed through ESLauncher 2, which can be found here.[github.com]The guide is fully up to date with Steam release 0.9.13.

THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Endless Sky has a masterfully crafted main story that serves as a guide for newer players and helps them get acquainted with the game's universe, setting, and mechanics, eventually culminating in the player obtaining a jump drive and meeting alien races. However, ES also gives experienced players the ability to completely ignore this story and start exploring the universe immediately after starting a new save. This guide will teach you how.

Prerequisites

For starters, you will need about 6-10 million credits, depending on how masochistic you are. Everything in this guide can be done with a Manta (4.9M for the hull, ~1.1M set aside for upgrades,) but for the sake of your sanity I highly recommend an Osprey (8.457M for the hull, ~1.5M set aside for upgrades,) and this guide will be written as such.

You can outfit your shiny new warship in any way you see fit, but make sure to follow these guidelines:

1. Full compliment of plasma cannons. Both the Manta and the Osprey can mount 4 of them.
   
2. At least one upgrade to your shield. You'll need it.
   
3. Enough energy generation to sustain your weapon fire indefinitely.
   
4. At least 20 cargo space.

For example,

Acquiring your first jump drive: The longer, more beneficial, and moderately less painful way

Part 1: Space Rodents

So, you've just spent the better part of 10 million credits on buying and kitting out an Osprey. You must be ready for anything, right? Wrong.

Your next step is getting to Hai space to take advantage of their superior squirrel technology and get their storyline started for some extra credits. Hai space is (relatively) easy to get to from human space; all you need to do is locate the Ultima Thule system and traverse the wormhole found within. Ultima Thule is located above and slightly to the right of Ruticulus, your starting system. You will have to fly through a few pirate systems, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem in an Osprey.

After entering the wormhole, you'll be spit out in Waypoint, which is just one short jump away from Hai space. After landing on Hai Home to begin the Hai plot, explore some of the sectors to the north and replace your ugly, inefficient human technology with glorious Hai equipment. In particular, I would recommend upgrading your shields, generators and engines. Make sure you have at least 1 outfit space available for one of these bad boys, though:

This cheap little stone is absolutely mandatory and will be your ticket to greatness. Finish up your purchases and prepare for the next leg of your journey.

Part 2: Space Chads

With your shiny new hybrid Osprey, you're now ready to meet the Remnant. Head back through the wormhole into human space, and make the short trip to Ingot in the Tania Australis. Next, ensure that you have at least 500 fuel capacity or a ramscoop. When you're ready, make your way to the nearby Terminus system. Use your Quantum Keystone to take the red wormhole halfway across the universe and navigate to Arculus, where you will land on Viminal to begin the Remnant storyline.


The Remnant storyline will begin with you being asked to pursue and destroy a crippled Korath ship in Remnant space. Locate the ship, and initiate my patented Korath fighting technique. This technique, known as BPCC, will allow you to disable and defeat Korath ships that would normally obliterate you in a standard engagement. BPCC, put simply, means

(B)ackpedal - After pissing off the Korath ship, immediately start flying in the opposite direction. If done right, the Korath ship will only fire its repulsor beams at you, which will indefinitely keep you out of range of its other weapons.

(P)lasma - Bombard that lizard with everything you have, making slight thruster adjustments where necessary to prevent it from firing its grab-strikes. With your 4 plasma cannons constantly bombarding it, the Korath ship will overheat before its repulsors manage to kill you, and you can then properly disable and board it.

(C)hase - Sometimes the Korath ship will randomly decide that it's done fighting for the day and start flying away from you. If this occurs, wait a few seconds until you're out of grab-strike range and then start flying towards it. When you get close enough it will aggro again and you can resume BPCC from the B stage.

(C)ry - This technique isn't 100% consistent, and sometimes the enemy AI will perform incredibly baffling maneuvers that will swiftly result in your death. The important thing is not to lose hope. I have successfully used this technique in a Manta, so you can do it in an Osprey.

Proper utilization of BPCC looks like this:

Once you've disabled the Korath ship, make sure to board it and steal its damaged jump drive for a later Remnant quest. If you have the cargo space, I'd also recommend taking out and storing systems cores and heat shunts, as these are extremely useful outfits you can (at first) only acquire through raiding Korath ships.

Part 3: The Heist

Follow the Remnant storyline until you're asked to join planetary defense ships to defend against a Korath invasion. This will be your time to shine. While you can lead one of the Raiders away from the battle and perform BPCC, you'll find that your Remnant allies are more than capable of dealing with the invaders, and luckily for you they are very careful to disable instead of kill them. The best method, especially in your relatively weak Osprey, is to hang on the sidelines until the Remnant ships disable all of the Korath Raiders and then board one of them when the fighting stops. From there, just pluck out its jump drive and install it in your Osprey through one of the nearby outfitters. Don't take too long, though, since once the Remnant ships neutralize all the Raiders they will begin to board and destroy them.

Congratulations, you're now the proud owner of a jump drive!

Acquiring your first jump drive: The extremely fast yet incredibly tedious and painful way

So you just finished reading the guide and thought, "Nah, that sounds boring and would take too long. I want to get a jump drive immediately!" Well, lucky for you, it's possible, albeit very tedious.

After outfitting your ship to the specifications of this guide's Prerequisites section, you can head straight to the Durax system in pirate space.

This system borders Korath Exile space, and as such occasionally gets visits from marauding Raiders. The system also sees pirate and syndicate traffic, so prepare for

• Pirates attacking you
  
• Pirates attacking the Raider
  
• Syndicate attacking the Raider (they don't even bother disabling it, they just blow it up)
  
• Syndicate and pirates fighting and blowing up the Raider in the crossfire
  
• The raider attacking syndicate or pirates instead of you and getting itself killed
  
• All of the above at the same time

Now, assuming you manage to get the Raider alone, BPCC still applies. However, you will now be dealing with a fully equipped Korath Raider and its two support fighters in an under-equipped Osprey. If the raider starts firing its grab strikes, you will go down very quickly. If you do manage to disable it, however, you simply board it, steal its jump drive, and begin your adventure. You'll still want to do many of the things I talked about in the previous section, but now you have the freedom to do them and more in any order you please.

Accruing Capital: The "Milk the Birds" Method

So Much to Buy, So Few Credits

You now have a shiny new jump drive and access to all sorts of alien ships and equipment. However, you've probably noticed by now that that kind of tech doesn't come cheap. The net cost of purchasing and kitting out humanity's finest warship doesn't even come close to covering the base model of a single Remnant scout, and the Wanderer ships (and their outfits) are even worse. Even after progressing a fair amount through the Remnant storyline, you'll probably only be sitting on around 10-15 million credits at most. Fear not, though. If you have a net worth of at least 13 million credits, you're ready to make millions.

The Coalition: Space Fascists with Great Tech

Take whatever scrap heap you're flying over to Coalition space. I'd normally include a picture of their systems, but the Coalition control an enormous and easy to find territory. Just keep travelling Southwest until you pop into one of their systems. From there, start doing Job Board missions for them. You will occasionally be offered premade flavor missions upon landing on their planets, but you can safely ignore most of these. Keep taking missions from each planet's Board until you get promoted to the rank of honorary citizen and are allowed to buy their ships and outfits. Then, sell everything you own and purchase a Spire.

The Kimek Spire: Better than Printing Money

The Spire is one of the best transports in the game, rivaled only by the Bactrian and the Emerald Sword in terms of bunk capacity. You'll want to stuff as many bunks in yours as possible, and give it at least 8 fuel pods. You can completely ignore useless subsystems like weapons and shields; you won't need those where you're going. You should eventually end up with something like this:

You can minmax it even more using tech from other races, but the upgrades you can perform at a Coalition outfitter are more than sufficient for you to start making bank.

The Wanderer Federal Reserve

If you haven't done so already, cozy up to Wanderers. Progressing their storyline to the point where they give you an outfit license is preferable, but for the purposes of making money you just need access to their job boards. Once you've done so, take your Spire to any Wanderer planet and start accepting transport missions. Wanderers pay extreme amounts of money for very easy and quick transport jobs, and the layout of their systems means you can often stack multiple jobs on a single planet. For example,


On average the jobs pay anywhere from 300-900k, but you'll occasionally see mega jobs that will net you upwards of 1.5 million.

In 40 or so minutes I was able to make over 50 million credits, and that's counting the outfit depreciation on my Spire. With this method, you'll be able to afford anything in the galaxy in no time at all. Once you've achieved sufficient funding, you can retire your Spire and purchase whatever alien warship your heart desires (I would personally recommend the Albatross.)

So, What's Next?

By now, you're a multi millionaire with a ship that can atomize human craft just by looking at them. However, improvements can still be made. I'd recommend getting the Wanderer Outfit license if you haven't already so you can outfit your ships with Sunbeams and White/Blue Sun reactors, and exploring the Kor Sestor and Mereti systems to see if you can bag yourself a Model 512 or Kar Ik Vot 349 to use as a new flagship. From there, you'll be fully equipped to breeze through pretty much any storyline in the game, but you can go even further. Amass a fleet of Automata. Capture a Quarg ship. Deliver medical supplies to the Free Worlds in an Arfecta. The world's your oyster, and you now have the tools to give said oyster a brutal, painful death in whatever way you see fit.

Credits

Me - Making the guide
MZ - Making the game
Endless Sky Discord[discord.com] - Putting up with me

[Sirus]

Sadly I don't believe your BPCC technique works any longer - I don't know if plasma cannon range got nerfed or if grabber range got buffed, but the grabbers significantly outrange both plasma cannons and repulsor beams now (more than double the range of plasma cannons). As a result, the "disabled" Korath ships in Remnant space can easily out-DPS a lone Osprey using this setup. You're unlikely to outright die, but you get disabled long before the Korath overheats and then it flees to another system, resetting your work.

[BooMSelectA77]

*Spoiler alert* big money

If you get to the wanderers and want to make stupid money, start stacking up deep rivers and moving cargo. I once had 2000 of them and I was making over 300 mil in just a few jumps.

[IG_100_Magnaguard]

That's an understandable position, considering that fascism is actually surprisingly vague in its definitions when it comes to details. It's true that the Coalition has a monopoly of force, but that's something that's just as true of totalitarian governments as it is of fascist ones; any government that centralizes power to that kind of extent is going to want to ensure that they stay in complete control, since without it they risk rebellion and collapse. The real defining factor of fascism is the strength-based ideology and the rabid nationalism (something which the Coalition doesn't really have, since they're actually quite open to cooperation and diplomatic interactions with species other than the Quarg, and appear to have a neutral to positive view of other nations by default).

[SteelSirokos]

I considered them to be a fascist government because they hold a complete and utter monopoly of force and seem to be highly focused on maintaining that monopoly under the pretense of remaining vigilant against further Quarg aggression, but you might be right.

[IG_100_Magnaguard]

This is a great guide, but I feel like I should point out something. At one point, the guide calls the Coalition fascists (probably in jest, but still). The Coalition are certainly not a just government/society, but they are better described as totalitarian; their ideology is not directly strength focused. For a textbook example of fascists in Endless Sky, take a look at the Unfettered Hai; their "strength justifies everything" approach is exactly what characterizes fascism at its core. Admittedly, this does not matter much, I just felt like mentioning it.

[Mondhase Fay]

These are also purchased in Coalition space, but might have been added in more recent updates.

[Mondhase Fay]

Now why would you buy 8 fuel pods which take up 64 outfit space, when you could buy two Fuel Modules and get the same bonus, in 38 outfit space?

[BooMSelectA77]

While you are in wanderer space doing missions, you can start doing cargo runs with deep rivers. I would take out the biggest loan I could, buy as many deep rivers as I could, deck out their engines and then run cargo. In a few hours I had a character with over a billion credits. Once I started hitting 8000 deep rivers my game was getting very laggy.

[SpamIam]

You can get Raiders in Polaris outside Shangala.

Or go capture Pirates, all the pirates. Buy a Starliner. Capture more pirates. Sell for money in the Free Worlds or Fringe world Shipyards
Remember Lasers treat Pirates better for capturing than projectile weapons which tend to have bullets in the air when targets are disabled and kill them off.

Parked over a planet, near a shipyard your fleet will keep getting bigger and bigger, Mind the maintence costs.

On the other hand. You have a starliner. Those Colonist jobs pay 500,000 to 2.5 million in human space. So every time you go to thin the fleet of fragile Sparrowhawks or Clippers to concentrate on medium and large warships, check your job market. The jobs will fill your fleet, then when they intrude on your capturing volume? Go on a road trip and cash in 5-15 million, and use it to buy and park a nice new Starliner in the region you are farming pirates.
Only unpark when the crew jobs start getting backed up.

[Joneydew the Skele]

I cant get BBPC to work, i think there was a change that makes it impossible