Ostranauts Beginners guide

My goal with this guide was to help beginners figure out the things that took me way too long to learn. I'm mainly focused on building a ship, and how to use the fusion drive, but ive got some other tidbits here and there.

Intro

In honor of the release of version 0.14, I figured I’d write a more comprehensive guide to the game.

Couple of disclaimers:
1: I started writing this on the public beta for version early access 14. Things WILL change, but it should be enough to get you started.
2: I am by no means an expert at this game. I’m still learning new things. I’ll try to update this guide as I can.

I’m going to mention a couple of basics first because if you’re anything like me, any newbie is gonna jump straight to this guide:

1: Your character creation back-story is the most important thing. In my opinion, getting a ship free and clear (no debt) is one of the most beneficial things you can do. Go for the “coffin” or “the poker game.” There are a couple of guides to help you along that way that I’ll link here, but keep in mind they are old, and may be outdated.

2: READ THIS GUIDE ON THE ORDERS AND INSTALL SYSTEM.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2905477581

3: Read this guide on relationships.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990936503

Getting a nicer ship than your first ship.

Buy a Used ship. Head on over to the commercial district and go to the shipbroker Kiosk. It looks like this:

You can click the button to visit the ship and scope it out and make sure it’s what you want.


What do you mean you don’t have a million credits to spend on a ship right away. Man, since we are dealing with peasants here, Let’s look at some derelict ships.

Okay. Those are considerably more reasonable for your poor self. However, they will require considerable work to make habitable, and even more to make spaceworthy.

If you notice, it tells you the distance. That is an easy way to determine what derelicts are where on the NAVmap. Keep in mind, If you haven’t visited the ship, You may not have all the information available other than the price tag, However, If you use the price tag, It will help you figure out which ones are worth visiting.
Important: When buying a derelict, The value is calculated at time of purchase. If you INSTALL expensive things to the ship like fusion reactors, fix all the holes, ADD ROOMS, you will be charged more. DO NOT FIX THE DERELICT BEFORE BUYING IT. Unable to verify this claim I saw on another guide, still perform at your own risk.
 

Now you’re probably asking yourself: Why can’t I just steal a ship?

As far as I can tell, The “Used” ships for sale are docked at the station you cannot steal them even if you wanted to. The derelicts on the other hand, that is a possibility, however, If you steal a ship, derelict or steal the keys in the poker game, Every time you sit at the NAVconsole, You’ll get a warning about ‘unregistered users’ at the NAVconsole with a 10 (game) second countdown before you can use it. Depending on your flying skills, that could mean the difference between life and death. Slamming into another ship at 200 m/s isn’t fun because you had to wait for a countdown.

How am I supposed to make money?

Well, I don’t wanna be a thief, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to make money?

The best way I found to make the initial burst of cash is GigNexus. There are a couple of jobs that you can do. The most profitable of these is the “Investigate death” and “Security Recon” missions.



As you can see in the image above, all missions give a bonus for completing them quickly. In the image shown, you have 6 hours (game time) to complete the mission or you will fail it, but if you finish it faster, you will earn more money, in this case, if you finish it in 45 minutes you will get a payout of 34,411.63 credits.

So you have to do a little recon first. It says their last known location was on the “Basilisk” However, if you go to your NAVconsole, You won’t see an NPC controlled ship flying around named that. That’s cause they likely died on a derelict by that name. The gig also tells you that the “Basilisk” is 149.34 KM from your current location. Luckily, The Derelicts are pinged in the radar with a “*?” Find the one that is (close to) that distance from you currently. Click it and verify its distance.


This one is really close, but I have a feeling it’s not actually it. Keep in mind that you radar can only ping stuff it can see, If there was a ship on the far side of the planet that far, you wouldn’t see the “*?” on your radar.

What I like to do is make sure my ship is refueled, go over to the nexus and accept the mission undock and burn like hell towards the target. Dock with it, Find the dead body (keeping an eye out for anyone on the ship that may have been responsible for said dead body) and then burn like hell back.

I’ve got some starter money, what now?

Keep in mind; if you have a ship with a mortgage, you’ve got to pay that every shift. Don’t spend more than you take in. The gigs refresh every 24 game hours or so, but that still not that much. You also have to feed yourself. Onto what to do:

1: Legal Salvage.

Go and get a salvage license. Pull parts off. ??? Profit.
Keep in mind, You will get more money selling specialty parts to specialty vendors, Cargo pods to the cargo pod vendor. Shop around and see what components sell for the highest where.

2: Illegal salvage.
This is the same as above, but without the salvage license. The issue you may run into is the dealing with the authorities. That said, in my opinion, this is probably the best way to do this, especially once you get an EVA suit. If you’re really scared, turn off your transponder before docking to a derelict. Your friend in Mescaform can help you fence the illegal salvage. (You did read the relationships guide I told you about, right?)
You can also salvage a number of ships (evading the police) until you run out of space on yours, then buy the salvage license right before you want to sell your ill-gotten gains. This will give you a little bit more time to sell your next batch of components.

3: Theft of a derelict.

This is the same as option 2, but in reverse. There are some really good derelicts out there that are massive and have plenty of room. If you don’t care about the unregistered warning, go for it. At least you don’t have to deal with a mortgage, though you can’t sell the stolen ship. You may also get a hefty fine if you are found out.

4: Flipping ships.

Use option 1 or 2, buy a cheap ship and take parts off of a derelict ship and place on your legally owned cheap ship. After a while, its value will skyrocket, especially once it can hold atmo and has rooms. You can then use the ferry service to get back to your starter ship and rinse, repeat.

5: Try out the new Economy system.
You’ll need a cargo container for that and the ability to travel long distances in reasonable times, (fusion drive). I've got a section on that later on in this guide.

Types of loot and types of components.

Lets start by looking at your ship status:



By far, the most important component on your starter ship is your transponder. Without a transponder on your ship, you will be unable to dock to a station to get services and supplies. When installing one, be careful that you are putting it where you want it to be. These are ‘designed to be fragile,’ and have a very high chance of breaking when uninstalled to ‘prevent piracy,’ and it’s one of the only items that cannot be repaired. I’ve seen some people say its 4/5 chance of being breaking on uninstall. Save scumming is an option.

It’s a good idea if you can to go to the ship broker buy an extra or if you’re lucky, loot a backup. When you loot one, your transponder will not match your ship which can get you in trouble with the authorities, but at least you can dock.

Finally, the transponder is useless without an antenna. You can have multiple of these, so it’s a good idea to do that.


Next we will talk about the RCS Distributor, also called an RCS intake regulator. This is that thing that a N2 bottle sits under, and is labeled “Intake” on your right click menu. You can have as many of these as you want, Adding more just lets you store more N2 bottles to be used without you having to manually swap them out, contributes to your RCS "REmass" or REaction mass. With one of these, You don't need to have an individual air tank under each thruster input.

Of note as well, In an emergency, You can use ANY gas in a thruster or RCS distributor. N2 is just the cheapest.

Next you have a RCS Thruster, also seen in the previous image. You can put as many of these on your ship as you want, in any orientation, but you’ll find there is a sweet spot. Too many and you accelerate too much and black out, Too few and it will take you hours to get up to speed. On the bottom right side of your NAVconsole you’ll see “Maneuver Drive” with a throttle slider. At the top of the bar, all of your drive is used at max power, You can bring it down for slower, more precise maneuvers. On the bottom left of your NAV console, you’ll see an accelerometer. Even the fittest people will black out around 5G almost immediately without drugs to help combat it, so I like to use that as close to my max. Install or uninstall RCS till you hit those numbers. Next, Find out where 2G is on that slider, you should consider that your max continuous burn, finally, find 1G and consider that your happy place. Then play around with it and see what your character actually does. You’ll see them start to black out towards higher G Burns.

Batteries: This is a simple component and mostly self explanatory. I write this to give you a bit of advice. As of the writing of this guide, there is a bug limitation in the battery system that they only charge and draw from the “output” arrow (the plug connector when installing.) Additionally, the power system will only draw from and charge 4 batteries at a time (when using a fusion reactor). I believe you can have more than this and they will be used as needed, but you will start to see uneven charge levels, however I have not tested this.

What about building or restoring a ship?

So great: you found a derelict you want to restore. Here are the bullet points you need to do.

1: Check the ship for intruders. You may not be the only one on board. I have had situations where the intruder was stuck behind a broken door so I just waited for him to run out of O2 before removing that door, otherwise, be prepared for a fight. Again, your friend in Mescaform may help you with that.

2: Go around the ship and check the condition of various components. This is helped by the new 'condition view' that you can access with the X key by default. So just X-ray around and find gaps in the floor, note missing walls, in general decide if it’s easier to fix the ship or loot the ship. If a component is listed as ‘damaged,’ it will require more work to fix it as well as parts, etc.

3: Restore power. Use the powerVIS display mentioned in the earlier guides. Start at the batteries and add EMT conduit at each place the electricity stops. Usually, this will get you some lights and power for some air pumps.

4: Go and sit at the NAVconsole once it has power. Click on [Print Status.] This will give you an overview of all of your ship and any missing components. Don’t worry about the reactor, or any tanks other than RCS staring out, but again, your transponder is the most important thing. Without one you cannot dock to any stations.

5: Next I like to seal up the floors. Alternating between X-ray and normal view helps with finding gaps. You do not necessarily need floors under walls, however, it does make remodeling easier.

6: Check components on the exterior of the ship, or make sure you have a way outside without depressurizing your ship, such as a secondary airlock (two doors will work as an airlock, but they are completely manual, and your character is bad about closing doors behind themselves.) Again, X-ray is useful.

7: Add walls where they are missing.

8: Time to pressurize. It’s smart to do it in stages. The first thing you should do, especially if you’re restoring a derelict, is to walk around and double check the walls. There is a component called an air vent that you can manually close between rooms. It took me way too long to figure out that there was one I missed, so do another walk around to find them and close them as you pressurize each room one at a time. You’ll see a faint white cloud form where gas escapes, but you have to really be looking.

9: Now that you’ve got a pressurized ship, Go and start restoring components and installing missing components. There is a guide here on room types, which will boost the value of your ship. Useful if you want to flip it.

10: The solar system is your oyster. Keep in mind when building a ship, the next update will introduce fire mechanics, that you may want to think about when designing your ship, Fire can't travel in a vacuum and probably can’t get though walls that easy.

Feel free to check out this guide that is more or less the same as above, just more in depth. Thanks "Boner Storm"
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3041301396

Building your Fusion Reactor

Note: I’m still learning the fusion system at this point since it is a new mechanic. There is an in-game manual that you can access via the ESC menu at any time.


An important thing first: A Fusion drive is not a replacement for RCS. You cannot use fusion drives near planets or stations. If you look at your NAV console there is a button there that says “Show Zones No Wake Zones.”(I think this may only show once you have a fusion drive though.) Nobody wants hot plasma shooting at them, so they can only used them in deep space. If you’re just looking to loot local ships, A fusion reactor and all of the tanks and components adds a lot of mass that you might be served better without.


Let’s take a quick look at the control panel of a fusion core.


If you look at the bottom left of the panel, there is a nifty checklist of all of the items you will need!

Getting started building it: (images at end of section)
First things first, you will need the following (I’m referring to the loose components.)
2 “Field coil assemblies”
4 “IC Fusion Cores”

Additionally, You will need at least 1 of the following:
Core Pump †
Fusion grade Laser Capacitor **
Fusion Laser Array
Pellet Feeder Assembly
Cryo Distribution pump †
Reactor Fuel Regulator
MagnetoHydroDynamic (MHD) Generator
Liq He Canister
D2O Canister
Cryo Canister †

**A Word of warning on the Fusion Capacitor. It is essentially a mini battery that provides the initial ‘kick’ you need to get the reaction started. When I installed, it initially started draining my batteries really fast and would have left me stranded had I not also looted a battery from the same ship. My advice is to install this component at the station, then switch the reactor [PWR BUS] to [BATT] and wait till you stop seeing a significant drain on your batteries. (LAS CAP light displays READY) In the event the capacitor depletes your main battery bank you can always top off at the station. This will likely only be an issue if you have a small battery bank. You can have multiple lasers and capacitors, you need one capacitor for every two lasers.

† Technically not needed to start the fusion reaction, The core pump can be skipped by "opening the cycle slider in vacuum till vacuum is indicated" This will cause your ship to move however. The Cryo is used to maintain core temperature without manual monitoring and can be lowered by also opening the exhaust. Personally, I would not recommend running without Cryo. Explosions are bad.

You can also have multiple pellet feeders and fuel regulators. This also follows the one regulator can supply two feeders.

Having multiple lasers/feeders will allow you to use more fuel, therefore burn faster.



You will need a lot of space. The initial install of the field coils is first and you see an exclusion zone around it. You WILL need more space than even this image shows. Also note the center of the field coil cannot have a floor and must be exposed to space. Don’t worry; when installed it acts as its own floor.

When you place the first field coil, you will automatically go grab the second one.

Next install the reactor core. This must be placed over top of the field coils. Same as before, you will automatically go get the three remaining loose components.

The rest of the components will attach to the connection points that surround the reactor, and their arrangement does not matter other than that the reactor symbol must touch the reactor at that connection point, and the MHD needs power going over the power icon. Keep in mind you will not be able to ‘Step over’ most of these components, so for repairs you will need extra room to walk around.


Finally you will need to install the Helium, D2O and Cryo tanks. These also have a large exclusion zone, so make sure you have the space for them.

When you power on your Reactor, following the checklist, be sure to set the PWR BUS to CHRG. You'll see the 4 batteries (mentioned about the limitation of the batteries above) on the display as they charge.

A very important note:

When you shut down your reactor, the laser capacitor remains uncharged, and your core remains unpurged. Its good practice right after shutting it down to immediately switch it back to BATT, Purge your core and charge your LAS CAP. That way if you notice your batteries are getting dangerously low, its never too late to quickly restart it.

You can also start the reactor without Cryo or the field coils active, this will cause very high damage to your ABL wall, but you can switch to CHG and then enable these quickly in the event of very low power.

Its even better practice to keep one spare battery behind a power switch that is off that you can turn on in the event you go dark. Just remember to recharge it and then turn the switch off so it can keep acting as a backup.

The Fusion Torch Drive:

By this point you should already know how to use RCS and basic piloting, so I'm going to skip that and only talk about the differences with Fusion.


Your Flow is how fast the reaction is happening and also how much fuel you are using.
Your Cycle is how wide your exhaust is open from the fusion reaction chamber into space. The more open this is, the more your core temp will drop.
Your core temp should stay in the green.

The thrust limiter switch will allow you to do accelerate much faster but will also allow you do do things like increasing the flow to a point where you can overheat your reactor which WILL cause it to explode and, in the next release, cause fires.

The cycle thrust switch is what actually enables fusion propulsion rather than just using it to charge your batteries.

Piloting with Fusion

Adjust the Flow and the cycle sliders till you get your accelerometer where you want it. Keep in mind, Your fusion drive doesn't have to burn hard to be effective, and especially efficient. The wider you open those two sliders, the faster you can accelerate, but you are traveling sometimes multiple AU. Your goal is to slowly accelerate to a speed that is reasonable for how fast you want to get there, then coast with the reactor idling or even off. You can visualize what this will look like using the "Long range course plot" button.

Above is a fast burn. As you notice the Reactant used is in dark orange. That's because on my current ship I don't have enough reactant for that maneuver! However, It would only take me 68 Hours to arrive at Venus.


Above you see a more economical burn. However, You'll notice it will take me 275 hours (11 days) to get to Venus. If you bring enough food, water, Have a bed, This is a much cheaper way to travel, but if you are doing missions, some require a much faster turnaround than that. All of it is a balancing act. If you're doing cargo transport (I will describe later) There is a chance the prices of goods will change in the time that it takes you to arrive. You have to weigh the pros with the cons, figure out if you're willing to eat the cost of the Helium and Deuterium

Some notes about your reactor:

Your reactor has some resistance to overheating though ABLative Core liner which will have to be replaced even though routine use. You will see on the reactor control panel the ABL WALL light will start flashing at 50% health. Disengaging the safety will burn though those like noone's business. Keep a couple of wall replacements on hand for changing.

You can also turn off your Cryo switch at the reactor panel, so long as your reactor core temp stays in the green, (which in this case you can do by venting exhaust i.e. thrusting/open cycle,) It will save you the cost of the Cryo fluid. Save that for when you have more experience though. The last thing you need is exploding or dying of power loss in deep space due to your reactor going critical. Your reactor will make an alarm when the wall is failing or has failed.

The Economy using Cargo pods

This is a Cargo kiosk, located right next to the Airlock.

You can buy cargo pods here, or if you're lucky, you can find them on derelict ships.

There are three types of cargo pods, Climate Controlled, Radiation resistant, and specialty. They are all pretty much self explanatory, other than that specialty is both radiation resistant, and climate controlled. Certain goods require one or both protections in space. It may not matter if you're transporting furniture in the harsh temperatures of space, but I don't want my food being ruined by that.

Once you have a cargo pod, You access the in-system economy.



The first thing you may be drawn to is that having a visa (residency/citizenship) on a station will give you a discount. As I don't have that, I cant tell you how much that is, but it's something to keep in mind.

Your goal with any economy sim is to Buy Low, Sell High. You can see some places do not deal in certain goods, and are annotated by a grey dash. The station market in this image showing that furniture is selling in OKLG for 50% cheaper than the average price of the entire system.

So if we bought furniture at OKLG for $490.79 which is 50% lower than the system average (490.79 + 50% = $736.18) and then sold it at BCRS for 63% more than the system average (736.18 + 63% = $1199.98) or in other words, more than double the price PER UNIT. I expect to get corrected on my math somewhere, be kind 🥲

Mass Vs Value: Everything is a balancing act.

As I stated in the fusion section of the guide, Everything is a balancing act.

Each Cargo container can only contain one type of good, so as you can see, I've got an extra 10KG of space in the container that is unusable. Doesn't matter when you fill it close to the brim, but if you're buying control systems that go for $44,048 per unit, and you can only afford to buy one or two, may seem like a lot of wasted space. However, It is almost always more efficient for you to do high value, low mass. Keep in mind, you have to accelerate the mass away from where you buy, and decelerate the mass as you approach where you will sell.

Doing control systems would net me approximately a profit of $36,376 per unit going between KLEG and VNCA and I wouldn't need to push all that extra mass. However, VNCA requires atmospheric flight, and we haven't gotten rotors in this guide yet. Even still, going to VORB would get me $28,288 profit per unit.

One thing you want to do is also scope out a return trip. On my current save here, Nothing at VORB is selling for less than System average, so do I make a massive profit going there and head back empty handed? Maybe there are some missions worthwhile there? Remember, double of 1 is 2, but double of 100 is 200. The real math for you to do is a 10% increase on more expensive stuff, or a 50% increase on cheap stuff. That's something for you to work out on each trip.

Atmospheric Flight.

Section coming soon. Still need to acquire Rotors to test this out. Debating on restarting my save since the devs added an atmosphere to more two moons in the middle of a major version and I cant get that without a restart.

[Torkel]

Gold¨_ Sorries

[Torkel]

I´ve gotta aks you fellas. I finishes some God tier mission just taking the tram here and there, and suddenly o got paid 800K. I gotta belive its a bug if noen of yall got it.

[ulzgoroth]

I expect to get corrected on my math somewhere, be kind 🥲


Well, since you expect it...

50% lower than the system average, if the system average is 736.18, should mean 763.18 * (1 - 0.5) = 381.59

I am not familiar with this game system, but if the percentages and local price in the screenshot is what you have to go on and the system average is something you inferred, then the system average should be:
490.79 / (1 - 0.5) = 490.79 * 2 = 981.58 (sort of weird number - might be a flat 1000 though and the -50% actually being almost but not quite -51%?)

And if 981.58 is the reference price your +63% sell price would then be ~1599.97. Quite a lot better!


If you're buying at -B price and selling at +S price, the sell to buy ratio in general should be:
(1 + S) / (1 - B)
Which in this case is 1.63/0.5 = 3.26 (!)

[Aieonae]

Any update/recommendation on Venus approach specifically on docking to VORB?