|
I don't think the storyline is a trap at all. It's hard to stay afloat during it if you're really new to the game, but otherwise it's no big deal. Also, one of the biggest things to learn about the game, in my opinion, is reputation management. You need to get yourself to a place where you can stay neutral or mildly positive with most factions. You're gonna want stuff like rep loss mitigation talents, and talents that let you avoid fights. Eventually you'll get to a point where you're slowly building rep with basically everyone just by doing normal poo poo, and will only have like a couple of serious enemies.
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2018 19:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 16:00 |
|
|
Phlegmish posted:That makes sense. If you have positive rep with someone it's probably easy to keep it in the green because you can just hail them every now and then. You need to keep your ship upgraded, the enemies scale surprisingly quickly. Try to focus primarily on either weapons and armor (probably the most expensive route), board chance and weapon locker (will still need some shield/armor) or just running away (it's totally legit to get into the combat mini-game and then just bail). You'll be sticking with your starting ship for a long time, I normally play mission-heavy and I'm generally looking at getting my second during the early Third Age, which is one of the later stages of the game at the current phase of development. Just the Frontier Liner or something similar can carry you a long way. Make sure also, for combat, that you're getting the right talents. Anything with +defense or +evade is really good, as is anything that helps you close distance if you want to board. Bounty Hunters (recruitable from the arbiter) have a nice talent that lets you board at range 5 if you're fighting a mission target, which can help.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2018 17:51
|
|
|
I know it's not great in terms of fuel economy but I can't ever resist the Raptor Class as my second ship. Reasonable speed and a lot of slots for me to get all the event characters as officers. I have a sickness. And that sickness is collecting dudes. Also: xeno ships are indeed bullshit, and are the reason why level 12 navigators for Skip off The Void are so important.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2018 17:47
|
|
|
Phlegmish posted:Destroyed my first xeno ship a few days ago. Hell yes, get wrecked. The plague is the last part of the main story right now.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2018 22:13
|
|
|
Synthbuttrange posted:Are there more starts or does it always do the Highwind Station / Valencia Faenstory? Always that. But there are three different branches to that story.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2019 01:32
|
|
|
Brendan Rodgers posted:Starting to get how to play this and loving it even more, just unlocked the Galtak Freighter. What else should i try to get that is easy to unlock? A lot of the unlocks are pretty easy, but only if you have a dedicated build and really shoot for it from the beginning.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2019 20:08
|
|
|
habituallyred posted:One of the plots does have something to do with Indies and the rep you lose for utterly destroying them. Valencia There must be more branching than I thought because that path always has me being friends with the indies.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2019 22:50
|
|
|
Vasler posted:I've been playing this game on beginner with some pretty terrible (I think) builds and so far I'm having a good time. Buying a new ship is a late mid to early late game activity, I would say. In general none of them are really straight upgrades, they fulfill certain purposes. If you want to be a generalist, a lot of the starting ships (Frontier Liner, Galtak Freighter, Paladin Cruiser) are actually pretty solid. You can upgrade to one of the huge mega-expensive ones to stick with the generalist theme, but they're really expensive to run and very slow. Otherwise you need to figure out what you want to do with the ship and buy accordingly. In my opinion its often worth it to buy a small fleet of ships that you can swap out based on specific needs. The 5000 series ships are good for this because they mostly have pretty similar crew requirements.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2019 02:07
|
|
|
Xeno Hunter also has a recruit improvement talent.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2019 15:07
|
|
|
Fighters seem pretty interesting. Haven't play with them much yet but it seems like you can launch boarding craft to basically just get extra boarding attempts, crew don't get tied up from being on the shuttle - even the pilot. Wing Commando also seems like a very cool and strong job, so long as you're boarding I feel like it's a lot better than a plain swordsman, has some very strong talents including almost straight up better versions of some of the ones swordsmen previously had a near-monopoly on, like riposting, I guess at the expense of evasion.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2019 02:00
|
|
|
Sylphosaurus posted:I just started to play this game and itīs really goddamn overwhelming at the first glance. Iīve had a quick look at some LPīs of this game and read this thread but since the game seems to be updated quite frequently I just want to know what is a good character to go for my first playthough (or until I meet my horrible demise)? Note that this is not like "the best captain", but it's one that is a sort of generically capable build that is decent at enough things to get you through the intro quests and get your feet under you. A: Experience (a class like diplomat, military officer, merchant will help a lot with rep management, which is one of the trickiest things early on) B: Attributes (its easier to create a non-combat captain, so I'd say pump WIS and CHA mostly - if you really want to send your captain into fights DEX and WIS) C: Ship (take either the Paladin Cruiser or the Frontier Liner, both of which are good all-rounder ships) D: Skills (pick up some stuff that will help you with whatever playstyle you want to focus on - if you see yourself as more of a diplomat or trader negotiate and intimidation are good, command and tactics are basically always useful, explore if you want to be an explorer) E: Contacts (any contact that offers introductions is helpful here) Start as De Valtos, Cadar, Moklumnue, Rychart or Zenrin because the others get fairly irritating starting locations on the default map.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2020 23:13
|
|
|
Glenn Quebec posted:I cannot imagine wasting my A slot on experience Yeah me either, but for your first run having the most experienced crew possible is the least "oh god what's happening".
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2020 03:25
|
|
|
I think y'all are kidding yourselves if you think there's going to be an ending. They've been pretty explicit about wanting this to be a sandbox experience and they've said they don't even see any of the major vignettes as constituting a main story anyway. If curing the plague or beating the Jyeeta didn't do it for you, well...
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2020 02:02
|
|
|
If you're quick you can do the Faen quest and the Arbiter's stuff. I don't think having a single faction pissed off at you is usually that big of a deal, gives you someone to do piracy on if you're into that. There are some factions it can be a pain in the rear end for with future storylines, admittedly. Not great to piss of Steel Song, Cadar, Zenrin, Moklemnue or Thulun. Which I realise is quite a lot of the factions, but. Not following the Arbiter mission does kind of screw you out of one of the major storylines later on (dissension and consolidation) as well, as a note. No penalty for not following up on the Faen stuff, except for being locked out of several mutually exclusive achievements. It really does spread you very thin though. Spying is almost completely worthless in this game and you end up having to do a fair bit of it, especially in Zette's path, which is incredibly annoying since you should not spec for spying at all under any circumstances (a single spy crew member for Unauthorized Access if you're going boarding heavy is totally worth it though). quote:E: Even after two+ years starting officer generation is so loving bad. At least they made the crew default to "sort by job". Still insufficient control over galaxy generation, the personal/faction reputation still a PITA to manage, Roaring Barrels still the best crew combat by a country mile an AU, the introductory quest tree path-dependents you like a motherfucker: I remember why I love/hate this game so much... Roaring barrels looks great but it eventually falls off really hard because it forces you to use a snubber and putting a rifle user on the front lines is usually a terrible idea by end game. The first two ranks pretty much have to use swords if you're against the Jyeeta.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2020 02:31
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:Anyone tried the scientific intel economy and science careers introduced last week? I am this close to dipping my toes into this game again. They're not bad. Racking up intel is pretty easy at higher levels. It ends up being less effort to acquire than regular intel but there are far fewer contacts that will buy it. Since the main benefit of selling info is rep gain rather than cash, this does end up being kind of limited, but the opportunity cost is so low unless you have a tiny ship and can't spare the bunk for a scientist that you might as well. I could also see see Scientist captain being a fairly solid starting job as an alternative to explorer. Honestly it's hardly game-changing, it just makes things that were already very good ways to make money (exploring, hunting xeno, scavenging) even better.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2020 18:48
|
|
|
And by "having some combat specialists", I mean... it's often a good idea to make some or most of your officers into those specialists. Ordinary crewmen will do okay in combat for a while but eventually they will start to struggle, especially against big late game targets. In particular, your starting doctor is a solid candidate for being made into a combat officer. Give them the jobs Combat Medic and Swordsman or Pistoleer. Focus on these over doctor for level ups. Very useful to have a competent healer in combat situations.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2021 00:28
|
|
|
I always get incredibly frustrated trying to cram in as many officers as I want so I will be very happy to increase the officer capacity of ships.
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2021 21:14
|
|
|
And then to actually do ship combat you'll probably want to set up one of two strategies: boarding or disabling with missiles (you can also focus on blowing ships up but it's about a billion times less lucrative). I'm going to just write up one here because it's the one I use most often and also I got bored. Boarding Focus: Probably, imo, the strongest long-term strategy for anything except xenos, and even then only really struggles against the very late game Jyeeta Xeno. Has the advantage that your boarding crew will gain massive piles of XP and be well placed to deal with crew combat on missions or from cards. You will probably want most of your officers to be specced for crew combat (and maybe even your captain) if you go this route, so its less great on tiny ships. Carries some additional risk: obviously to the crew you send to board, but also if you can't board any enemy ship because you haven't kept up with the level curve you're pretty much hosed and need to escape. The idea is to close as quickly as possible and spam boarding talents to cripple the enemy ship. In theory boarding is kind of a crapshoot because you aren't guaranteed to be able to sabotage anything important unless you have a fast ship and roll well. In practice it barely matters because you can just do it over and over again, and it gets easier every time you do it. Even a single "Demoralize Crew" (one of the two default boarding victory actions) will significantly decrease an enemy ship's ability to hit you, and with talents you can get even better results. And generally you should be demoralizing. Skip sabotage unless the component you roll is really juicy (like the bridge, engines, or a gun that keeps hitting you) until after you've gotten your major talents off. After a couple of boardings you'll have mostly killed anyone who can actually fight and you'll start chewing through pilots, electronics techs etc. These combats are both very easy (letting you heal up your guys if you want) and also significantly reduce the enemy ship's capabilities. Eventually you'll have stacked so much damage over time on the enemy that you can just sit there and let them cook for a few rounds while they can't do anything to touch you. Alternately, keep boarding and you'll kill the captain or get the opportunity to sabotage the bridge or the engines, and you'll win. Talents Two types of talents are important for this strategy: ones that let you close quickly and safely, and ones that do a lot of damage when you win a boarding combat. Note that boarding talents can normally only be used by the boarding crew, but once you get to range 1 anyone can use one. This is important because a lot of the best ones are bit from jobs you would want to carry on combat crew. To close: Boarding Assault (Gunner) or Blood Game (Bounty Hunter): Let you board at Range 3 (or 4-5 in a mission for Bounty Hunter). This is huge and you'll want to have at least a couple of these available. Saves you a couple of rounds of being shot at before you can do some damage. Evasive Maneuvers (Pilot), Wild Flying (Pilot), Forward Thrusters (Pilot), Barrel Roll (Pirate), Vigilant Scanners (E. Tech): You should probably be using these the first couple of rounds. Boosting your defense for a couple of rounds keeps you safe until you can start boarding. Twitch Surge (Pilot): Extremely important. You'll sometimes be up against ships that are just straight up faster than yours and this will be the only way to close enough to launch your first Boarding Assault. Flash Charge (Navigator): Similar to Twitch Surge, but you do it before combat even starts and it burns fuel and damages your engines. This is actually a really good deal against tough looking enemies that will be able to screen you with massive amounts of fire before you can close, like battleships and xeno. After boarding: Thrown Wrench (Mechanic): in a league of its own, majorly cripples an enemy ship's ability to act against you. Launchpad Spike (Wing Commando), Behind Enemy Lines (Wing Commando): Really helpful against late game threats. Carriers (especially Xeno carriers) can be a pain in the rear end and stopping them from being able to launch craft is really useful. Similarly, end game xeno guns are extremely powerful and being able to shut one down will help your survivability immensely. Cold Blooded Threats (Bounty Hunter), Ferocious Crossfire (Soldier): Do direct health or morale damage to the enemy. This is pretty ineffective early on, but once the enemy have taken some damage it can easily knock out a couple of enemy crew. Hota-Core Shells (Shock Trooper): Equivalent of above but for ship components. This can be REALLY strong if the enemy ship has taken a few hits. DoT Talents: There's a lot of these and they're all great. Will do crew, component or morale damage per turn. Let you cook ships. Instakill Talents: Less strong than you'd think. They're okay openers I guess. Even the one you get at Assassin 15 that kills officers is a little underwhelming, enemy officers often don't add that much value to their ships. Unauthorized Access (Spy): Special mention for this talent even if it doesn't help you win. Intel is always helpful to have and this talent generates a ton of it. Combat Crew Combat crew builds are a whole Thing that get very complicated and are beyond the scope of what you need to consistently win at crew combat in ship battles, which are the easiest types of crew combats. It's hard to gently caress this up too badly really. Just try to run a somewhat balanced team, and where you're using officers make sure at least 2 of their jobs are combat jobs. Getting good stats on your combat crew can be a significant boost to their effectiveness. Use recruiting talents to get better stats, and recruit from a faction that specializes in that job if you can. Only one character can activate an "on init" talent per round of combat so be selective when choosing those. Backups are helpful. Ship Building There are some things that are generally true about good ships in Star Traders and those things are also true about boarding focused ships. Get the best weapon locker you can, and focus on Defense Matrices and Pilot Assist Modules to make yourself very difficult to hit. You can mostly ignore weapons. It doesn't hurt to have like a single long range weapon you can pop at enemies and a couple of autocannons to shred the enemy ship with while you're boarding and to shoot down fighters, but that's all you need.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2021 21:24
|
|
|
Yeah you should be surrendering more often than not early game.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2021 18:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 16:00 |
|
|
Working against Indies isn't entirely without negatives. Killing indies in combat is more likely to give your combat crew drinking problems, PTSD, etc than regular fighting.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2024 23:25
|
|