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Nektu posted:Yea, same happened to me too just yesterday :/ Yeah- but even on low difficulties the slow ramp-up of enemy ship power feels like if you take one huge L, you're going to lose enough money/crew/etc that you can't really dig your way out of the hole if you were already struggling enough to lose a fight. Anyway after sleeping on it rather than just vague complaints I'm going to try to give people a better idea of what's going so wrong. Here's where I'm at in 217.45 (turn 4000-ish) on Normal difficulty, and pretty well about to just abandon the run. Maybe if I post enough people can tell me in more detail why things are going so horrifically wrong no matter what I do. First, my ship:  A few upgrades but not a whole bunch. I have a few hundred k now but I have no idea what best to even spend it on. I love the huge fuel tank but there's probably something better to put there (another cargo bay 2?) The weapons I put at the knee where they're as good as I can get them without having to spend >100k per weapon, and I've got them spread out in range so that I can theoretically always be shooting as I try to rumble into boarding range so I can start stabbing people. Defenses: Gosh, I dunno. I have a deflector array 2, a warhammer hyperwarp drive, one of my officer cabins are reinforced, and that's really it- you can see the armor and shield ratings. Speed and agility are both 19 which I guess is horrible because I basically struggle hard to either close range with ... anyone, and it generally takes me 4-5+ tries to escape even using twitch surge, so every time I get a fight I don't surrender/negotiate out of my ship is blasted half to scrap metal and I'm losing multiple crew either to just dying or fleeing when I limp to port from how badly I get wrecked, and I have to spend enough money fixing/healing that I don't really manage... much of any long term building so I end up behind the curve fairly fast. I do have a level 5 locker! It... rarely helps in ship combat because I can't usually get to boarding range- even boarding assault range- without my ship being a flaming wreck, if ever. Crew's no great shakes either:   The combat doctor is the only reason I had been able to cling onto crew fights with my fingernails; all but 1 level is in combat medic, and all she does is spam healing talents from the huge amount of damage I tend to limp into fights with while three others try to kill their way out of holes. (Hi Kober! You can see I'm trying to get that mission done. He's almost ready.) Now, behold the true form of the destroyer:  Lower leveled pirate, same speed, weaker hull, armor, and shield. The ship report- which I for some reason can't screenshot- tells me I'm better at everything but engine agility at close range. Should be cake, right? I win this fight *less than half* the time. If I can get to boarding, I am in good shape, because I can just bury him in swords and rifles and slowly chew through his crew before he blows my hull to pieces. Generally I just get shot apart though- despite the ship report, his weapons hit SIGNIFICANTLY harder than mine, and he's significantly more accurate than I am, every time. So I think the ship report is a lying liar that lies. The talents I can bring to bear:  (Not pictured: 1 use of devastating shot and 1 use of boarding assault)Twitch surge always puts me at 4 after the first turn, and then it's a gamble on whether or not I can drag myself to range 3 before he either just dances back to five and leisurely torpedoes me to hell or I just get shot up so badly I can't really effectively fly anymore. Which is more or less half the time. So I'm just kind of lost as to what I'm doing and the game doesn't really feel like it gives me enough feedback to know what it is I'm doing wrong, which is one of the two things that I hate hate hate in game design along with the feeling of having my time wasted. Despite how much I should love this game, it is slamming both of those irritating buttons at warp speed- if I forget to manually save every freaking time I touch a planet, I will be wasting LOTS of time because a majority of deep space encounters are I Lose buttons, and I have no way to figure out why without going hat in hand to a thread like this and begging from help. I like hard games just fine- I play Nethack, for godsakes, and both Spelunkies- but there's fun-hard and annoying-hard and this game has staked out a seat at table #2 so far.
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Jan 1, 2022 16:01
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Might be a case of missing specialization. Do you want to make big bucks trading? Add that third cargo hold and stack engine/talents/maybe ship components that let you escape confrontations more easily. Remove weapons. Want to take ships by boarding (which is very powerful)? Pop a defensive talent first, dont fire (you need a certain amount of unused reactor points to even be able to change distance), add talents that increase you chance to change distance, esp. use that talent that allows you to start boarding from range 3. Also spec your officers into 2 combat jobs + 1 ship job for this, and get talents that you can use to actually do damage after a successful boarding action). This post has a great summary regarding boarding: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3856470&perpage=40&pagenumber=12#post520181157 Want to fight straight up? No idea, never did that.
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Jan 1, 2022 16:25
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Having a big tactics pool is really important in ship combat- to the point where it's worthwhile to find a way to get mil officer crew to get it. The most likely culprit for getting dunked on in ship combat is insufficient tactics. Tactics affects range changes and attacks, so if i were to think about it for the next run, getting a contact for recruiting them would be a priority if i'm doing ship combat.
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Jan 1, 2022 16:37
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Panzeh posted:Having a big tactics pool is really important in ship combat- to the point where it's worthwhile to find a way to get mil officer crew to get it. The most likely culprit for getting dunked on in ship combat is insufficient tactics. Tactics affects range changes and attacks, so if i were to think about it for the next run, getting a contact for recruiting them would be a priority if i'm doing ship combat. So this is good and helpful info! The basic mechanics (like having to keep 4 (or sometimes depending on engine 3) reactor points to change range, that I understand and get because the game tells me that pretty clearly and straight up. Things like this: okay! good! So is... is 31 [35] tactics GOOD for this level and part of the game? Hell if I know because there's no feedback other than "well, you suck, and it could be any of these dozen obfuscated behind the scenes mechanics".
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Jan 1, 2022 16:43
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The main complaint I have with this game is that dice pools are terrible for generating fun odds and you're almost always either in an unwinnable state or an autowin state past the very early game. The hint I have for ship combat - pick your range and stick to it. The starter ships have weapons for all ranges but that is dumb. You want one set of guns and as many boosting modules as you can get. Your ship's skill pool is limited by how many components it has and those are very very important. You want to max out the strong die for whatever range you're fighting at. https://startraders.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_Combat Notably, you will notice that electronics is god stat early game because it governs defense and retreating, you will want to note what your electronics cap is both really low and overcapped, you will get a huge bang for your buck by upgrading components that give you more electronics. Generally, if you ever get to 200% staffing on a set of skills, you will want to upgrade components for those skills. Upgrade components - it's a big deal. Tactics and command are special in that they don't get capped by ship components so you can stack those infinitely but that just means late game you want tons of extra commander/military officer crew chilling on the ship. The same goes for crew combat, there's a good steam guide on that, but the general idea is that defending against swords is blades + parry as their strong die. This means that late game xenos will rip apart gunners in the front line because gunners don't have blades + parry and they can't instant kill xenos. So you need two tank swordsman officers focused on raising the blades skill to have a chance. Edit: in ship combat in particular you should be able to see what die the enemy is rolling, if your enemy has a lot more strong die on you, you're probably in a dead man walking state WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 1, 2022 |
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Jan 1, 2022 17:28
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WarpedLichen posted:The main complaint I have with this game is that dice pools are terrible for generating fun odds and you're almost always either in an unwinnable state or an autowin state past the very early game. OK I am going down the rabbit hole, and quote:Further Note: The Gunnery pool part of this formula can have some VERY counter intuitive ramifications. 
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Jan 1, 2022 17:39
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Yeah getting commamder/zealot/mil officer crew is extremely powerful. I make sure all my officers have one of those and have 4 of those on my crew and right now, barely anything can hit me. The most powerful ship combat strat appears to be copious middle management.
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Jan 1, 2022 17:55
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I always get Flashbacks or Combat Nerves on my captain or combat medic (or on both). Which means I have to hunt around for someone to heal it. I can't find a contact to do it in my latest game. None of my contacts can introduce me to one. So annoying. I think picking up those traits should be a bit less common. Edit. An while later I got a gestalt explorer from E-Techs listening post. Had to run quite a few missions for that contact but got it healed in the end. So it is just an annoyance I guess. Hryme fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Apr 9, 2022 12:48
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Thinking of trying this out again. I played a while ago but was just constantly getting wrecked as I had no idea what to specialize in and kept on clicking on stuff that sounded cool. Turns out it's a bad idea to spy or smuggle without any experience and exploration involves actual combat  Anyways, are there any consequences for ignoring the main quest? Or is it something I should be prioritizing for newbie friendly missions?
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Jun 7, 2022 16:53
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Fruits of the sea posted:Thinking of trying this out again. I played a while ago but was just constantly getting wrecked as I had no idea what to specialize in and kept on clicking on stuff that sounded cool. Turns out it's a bad idea to spy or smuggle without any experience and exploration involves actual combat The first main quest is funnily enough the opposite of newbie friendly, they actively recommend you to steer away from it. It has a lot of forced ship and crew combat which will kill you if you're not prepared. Newbie friendly approach is stick to trading/quests until you have a warchest built up. The arbiter questline is much friendlier in comparison as well. In general there are few timed era quests that will give you cool rep bonuses and contacts but nothing that important. There are vignettes that pop up around that give you the best crew combat gear, those are worth keeping an eye out for.
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Jun 7, 2022 17:09
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WarpedLichen posted:The first main quest is funnily enough the opposite of newbie friendly, they actively recommend you to steer away from it. It has a lot of forced ship and crew combat which will kill you if you're not prepared. Nice, thanks. I've just been running some missions and doing planet exploration and trading on the side for a bit. Is there a search function for planets? I would love to be able to find a location by its name as well as search for the nearest planet types (industrial, luxury etc).
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Jun 7, 2022 20:57
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Fruits of the sea posted:Nice, thanks. I've just been running some missions and doing planet exploration and trading on the side for a bit. i think so, yeah the main quest also tanks your rep with a bunch of factions, which generally leads to you running out of fuel because noone will let you dock - you need to manage your rep quite carefully.
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Jun 7, 2022 21:25
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Fruits of the sea posted:Nice, thanks. I've just been running some missions and doing planet exploration and trading on the side for a bit. Yeah, there's a planet filter in the map screen - its a good idea to find a planet with high starport and military values because those are the only places some top tier engines and weapons can be found. The thing to keep an eye out on more than type is to look out for low trade law planets - those let you buy/sell the more expensive commodities without expensive licenses. Indie planets tend to have low trade law so you can shuttle all sorts of goodies through them that you wouldn't be able to otherwise.
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Jun 7, 2022 22:26
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The main quest only makes one faction your mortal enemy, which is good. You want somebody you can pick on for fuel in transit or whatever. More than one or two enemies is no good. The trick with the main quest if you don't have spying/crew combat or ship combat on lock is to stick with the ruler of the house. He gives you courier jobs that pay well but eat up a lot of time pissing off the mortal enemy. The kids you can work for as the second part of the main quest are willing to see you die for their fleeting advantage. The son wants you to hunt ships down as a bounty hunter. The blonde daughter starts out with some simple smuggling, but quickly decides to hitch a ride and fight incoming bounty hunter ships. The other daughter starts out with some tricky spy work, followed by a crew boss battle.
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Jun 8, 2022 06:36
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The enemy has allies is the trouble, and you get a lot of slopover
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Jun 8, 2022 08:35
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WarpedLichen posted:Yeah, there's a planet filter in the map screen - its a good idea to find a planet with high starport and military values because those are the only places some top tier engines and weapons can be found. Ahh nice, I was wondering how I was supposed to sell all the illegal crud I have stashed from exploring. This thread is 100x more helpful than the wiki. I'm actually really getting into the game this time around. Although I still think the start is overtuned. I get that the player is supposed to start from scratch but in practice that means paying a grind tax before engaging in the fun gameplay.
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Jun 8, 2022 11:39
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Fruits of the sea posted:Ahh nice, I was wondering how I was supposed to sell all the illegal crud I have stashed from exploring. Yeah. I still (and thank you to the goon who gave me a very long, helpful PM the last time I was moaning about how difficult this game is if you don't *really* get down into the fiddly mechanical weeds) struggle because I WANT to like this game about 100x more than I've ever been able to actually like it. Like I adore the idea, and enough parts of the game are fun that I keep giving it another try, and then it keeps on chasing me away with difficulty spikes and unexplained complex interacting systems and I just get more and more frustrated.
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Jun 8, 2022 12:33
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It doesn't help that the only way to get the meta-progression is to play on hard difficulty because the game doesn't register achievements in anything below that. And hard is ironman, which is a very punishing way to play for a new player just trying to unlock the bigger trade ship.
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Jun 8, 2022 12:39
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I complain, but I also play the poo poo out of the Egosoft X games which have an equal amount of impenetrable bullshit so maybe I'm just a masochist
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Jun 8, 2022 13:29
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Demiurge4 posted:It doesn't help that the only way to get the meta-progression is to play on hard difficulty because the game doesn't register achievements in anything below that. And hard is ironman, which is a very punishing way to play for a new player just trying to unlock the bigger trade ship. You can unlock Galtek Freighter pretty easily. But yes, I completely agree. It'd be one thing if I could bring progress across from PC, but as it is it is my number one complaint about this game.
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Jun 8, 2022 14:38
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Does using Steam Achievement Manager or similar also give in-game unlocks? Because if so that'd be a game changer for me. And if you look at what proportion of people who play the game actually get those achievements, it's minuscule, so this isn't just an issue for a small number of casuals.
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Jun 8, 2022 15:01
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Unless it's been changed in the last few years, SAM worked for the unlocks.
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Jun 8, 2022 15:02
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Or you could play the modded version, without mods. That gives you all of the unlocks. Not sure if that is supported off of steam though.
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Jun 8, 2022 21:09
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Hey, Nextfest has a demo for Cyber Knights, Treese Brother's next full release. Just leaving that out here since I imagine fellow veteran poop haulers would be interested.
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Jun 20, 2023 12:15
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ZearothK posted:Hey, Nextfest has a demo for Cyber Knights, Treese Brother's next full release. Just leaving that out here since I imagine fellow veteran poop haulers would be interested. Oh hey, the demo's out! Gonna try it come the weekend to be sure!
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Jun 20, 2023 12:17
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Cyber Knights demo is pretty good, if limited in what you get to do. It's also gotten at least 2 patches already, because it's a Trese Brothers game.  Trese Brothers, Introversion, and Klei are pretty much the only devs where "early access" isn't a big red flag, imo.
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Jun 23, 2023 16:13
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It looks like Cyber knights is finally out in EA. I’m working through an extensive backlog, else I’d pick it up. Anyone grab a copy, or playing it? Seems very shadowrun-y
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Oct 17, 2023 18:36
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Posting the launch trailer here, bought it, will be a bit until I can play it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTDNvYqTsI
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Oct 17, 2023 18:40
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Star Traders: Frontiers is still going strong, it's been getting a lot of update releases after Cyber Knights came out, the latest just hit the other day: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/335620/view/3887233545929039392?l=english quote:v3.3.75 - 12/15/2023 iOS and Android are just a couple updates behind Steam now, there was a bit of a block with Apple for a while and that's been figured out for the most part - lots of cool relic gear from salvage in the last few updates.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:35
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Sometimes I wish they would slow down or finish up the updates. All the frequent additions make it so that guides are typically out of date. This game feels really hard to get into because of how complex it is.
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Dec 18, 2023 09:01
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Sometimes I wish they would slow down or finish up the updates. All the frequent additions make it so that guides are typically out of date. This game feels really hard to get into because of how complex it is. The core of the game's still stable since they added in small craft a while back, most of the updates these days focus on higher end captain things like endgame ship components, fixing bugs, and rank 15 talents for jobs. There's also a bunch of Steam guides that are published recently that have a solid core - you don't need to follow them step by step and they still have a lot of good information on certain specific builds, like this recent one for legitimate merchanting without using rare trade goods: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110793982 Pretty much the big things to suss out are how the dice work and what skills contribute to checks and ways to save time on missions and you can sandbox pretty effectively any specialization you want.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:02
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is the desktop interface better now? it felt really clumsy the last time I tried it, with no tooltips on icons and things not being clickable the way I expected
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Dec 18, 2023 19:07
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Also that if you follow the breadcrumb quest exclusively you will eventually die, penniless and a long way from home
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Dec 18, 2023 19:40
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Subjunctive posted:is the desktop interface better now? it felt really clumsy the last time I tried it, with no tooltips on icons and things not being clickable the way I expected I play on both and I like the desktop interface a little better than mobile because you can hover over stuff for tooltips instead of long pressing. It is a lot of information to take in at once even though everything is labeled and does what it says on the tin. Left click to select, right to confirm waypoints, middle mouse to back out is pretty intuitive. sebmojo posted:Also that if you follow the breadcrumb quest exclusively you will eventually die, penniless and a long way from home This part's absolutely true because the breadcrumb quest makes a huge enemy out of the other faction and if you don't mitigate that rep loss or prepare for angry bounty hunters there will be huge combats.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:44
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It's a very dark souls learn by doing aspect and is kind of cool, but yeah. The big thing for me was not being able to buy fuel.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:51
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the last two updates posted:v3.3.77 - 12/21/2023 Steam and mobile are in sync again, which is nice for gaming on the go. The ship components they're adding in on the high end are pretty interesting for midgame play because they can really take the edge of the rough parts about a specialized ship - My current Hard mode run needed a better ship before Xeno showed up and I went with a Strikecarrier which is a real fuel guzzler with a Warhammer engine - it only had about 35 AU range base and some quadrants spawn 70 AU wide. The medium fuel tank was a great investment, bringing up the range to 60 AU and letting me cruise around the galaxy in a solid midgame tanky hull and run back and forth completing plot missions to get to the next era. Only problem was doing the plot missions got me away from the other missions I had going on so I had to daisy chain a bunch of overdue missions before they expired and I'd take a rep hit, so I mitigated the rep losses by replacing the small craft launch bay with a giant medical bay and giving out free medical care to factions whose systems I was marauding and spying in. sebmojo posted:It's a very dark souls learn by doing aspect and is kind of cool, but yeah. The big thing for me was not being able to buy fuel. You can top off fuel tanks by exploring or getting lucky on the patrol/blockade card games, or there was one case where there was a salvage rumor up and I was out of cash and fuel and went through a bunch of xeno crew combats with an all star wing commando captain to scrape up resources to sell to top back off. If you're bold you can also win a ship combat and steal their fuel and that's key to a pirate playthrough because there'll be big chunks of space you can't refuel due to reputation hits. You can also fly around with no fuel in a pinch for a little bit - it guzzles morale and will quickly lead to a mutiny and it comes up from time to time when using the talent to flee a ship combat at the cost of hyperwarp drive damage and a jump of fuel
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Jan 1, 2024 17:41
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40 Proof Listerine posted:Left click to select, right to confirm waypoints, middle mouse to back out is pretty intuitive. Middle-click for anything is unintuitive IMO, but hopefully I can rebind that because clicking a mouse wheel sucks. I shall try it, thank you.
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Jan 8, 2024 21:58
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Also someone has been posting a ton of new detailed how-to-get-started guides in the Steam Guides section which are pretty useful. Just sort by Most Recent and you'll see them all. The latest has a trick which completely breaks the game! It's a random map seed that sets the faction Faen is at war with to Independent, so you can do all the Faen quests without pissing anyone off.
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Jan 18, 2024 20:58
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Lum_ posted:Also someone has been posting a ton of new detailed how-to-get-started guides in the Steam Guides section which are pretty useful. Just sort by Most Recent and you'll see them all. This trick is funnier if you're aggressive with making new Contacts you can meet Aetaan Char and work for her like a normal Contact so Indie Aetaan Char is a really funny prospect. Steam version's up to 3.3.85 and mobile's on 3.3.83, lots of new components and tweaks - new Medium slot Torpedos were crucial in winning versus the Jyeeta Xeno incursion era in my latest run and in .85 new small Lances and Medium Gravcannons round out aggressive ship options at ranges 3 to 1. If folks hadn't tried a run yet with the small craft, it's easier to make them work than it sounds especially since a bunch of midgame ships come equipped with good Hangars and Launch Bays - the revamped Leo Battlecruiser for Thulun faction is a great light carrier to supplement a gun strategy and the Javat Mortifor Carrier comes pre-upgraded with a nice Large Gravcannon to support a Interdictor+Shuttle combo. 40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Jan 20, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 03:54
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40 Proof Listerine posted:This trick is funnier if you're aggressive with making new Contacts you can ||…||. Not how spoilers work on SA, alas
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Jan 19, 2024 22:48
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