I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
I pretty much did nothing but explore and salvage domain probes and survey ships with an occasional bounty or cargo transport.
I did choose the fast start with the Apogee cruise and got the three month stipend for doing the tutorial. I’m sure it’d be much harder with a non fast start.
I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
Check your Intel tab. Itll have various missions like exploring or bounties. Try to find a geographically clumped set and do them all. You can also sign on with a faction to get guaranteed money every month, more based on how much they like you. This opens you up to hostilities with other factions though
In my game, I did a bit of money-making by pirate hunting in the first star system and collected a couple of ships in salvage (a 2nd destroyer, a couple of frigates and some freighters), went to the second system to give the message to the station commander, then bought a Dram tanker and accepted a pair of survey missions that were roughly in a straight line out from the core systems. My first couple of skill points were invested in the "get more stuff when salvaging" skill so I could get more stuff when scavenging and stay out longer before having to run home. After one or two full cargo returns with a lot of planet surveys, I had enough to upgrade to a Colossus freighter and sold my smaller freighters since the Colossus was more efficient on fuel, supplies and crew per unit of cargo carried.
I got lucky and found an Apogee cruiser with no D-mods out in the field so that gave me enough firepower to take on some pirate bounties while also running around surveying everything in sight (my surveying equipment got to the point where it was 5 supplies spent for normal planets, 15 for very large or extremely dangerous planets, and maybe 50-75 for gas giants). As I started making more money, I sold off or mothballed some of my crappy starter ships, upgraded my tanker to the next class up, and now I'm flying with 3 Colossus freighters. During my surveying I found a good system with two habitable planets (unfortunately very far from the core) and made my first planet a farming/heavy industry planet, the second refining and commerce, then found a pretty good mining planet. I think the key to keeping your colonies doing well is to invest in the skills and/or get lucky finding good administrators, use AI cores as administrators or industry boosters (surely nothing can go wrong here!), and build up defenses for stability and raid prevention before your colony starts thriving. My build order is usually: defense batteries, industry #1, station (queued up immediately after industry #1), patrol base, waystation if you need accessibility bonus, upgrade batteries, industry #2 around here, upgrade station, upgrade spaceport.
Also, I found a blueprint for the Paragon so of course my Orbital Shipyard had to build one. That big boi is expensive to run but a true joy to operate.
(The Odyssey capship is a beast with some Flash Bombers. It feels like it could solo the T1 pirate stations)
Bombers are Eh on the Odyssey. The true power of the Odyssey is plasma cannons.
Is that default equipment? I looked at the gif on the wiki and I don't remember seeing high speed purple death balls. (Just the low speed purple death balls from the bombers)
I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
Check your Intel tab. Itll have various missions like exploring or bounties. Try to find a geographically clumped set and do them all. You can also sign on with a faction to get guaranteed money every month, more based on how much they like you. This opens you up to hostilities with other factions though
This may be a function of my high rep with independents, but I seem to find shipping work in bars pretty reliably. They're a nice start because they provide the cargo, and I then tend to start seeing cargo acquisition jobs pop up along the route.
Welp, scored me a mint condition Colossus freighter just sitting there in space. Don't mind if I do.
Definitely helps in the making-money department!
The tech-bro faction bars offer loans from time to time. The lower tiers require turning 200k into 300k, and that's quite feasible after deducting 50k for a Colossus.
(The Odyssey capship is a beast with some Flash Bombers. It feels like it could solo the T1 pirate stations)
Bombers are Eh on the Odyssey. The true power of the Odyssey is plasma cannons.
Is that default equipment? I looked at the gif on the wiki and I don't remember seeing high speed purple death balls. (Just the low speed purple death balls from the bombers)
Default equipment? I can tell you that flash bombers are 100% not default equipment.
(The Odyssey capship is a beast with some Flash Bombers. It feels like it could solo the T1 pirate stations)
Bombers are Eh on the Odyssey. The true power of the Odyssey is plasma cannons.
Is that default equipment? I looked at the gif on the wiki and I don't remember seeing high speed purple death balls. (Just the low speed purple death balls from the bombers)
Default equipment? I can tell you that flash bombers are 100% not default equipment.
No, the plasma cannons (they are not). Asking because I knew I had plenty of them in storage but the stock auto-fit either didn't grab them, or replaced them.
It gave me a Tachyon lance (25) and a high energy laser (20) instead; and a Cobra Bomber (15) which seems like a hat on a hat with the Flash Bombers but it's hard to test objectively. What do you use in the fighters bays with the PCs?
(The Odyssey capship is a beast with some Flash Bombers. It feels like it could solo the T1 pirate stations)
Bombers are Eh on the Odyssey. The true power of the Odyssey is plasma cannons.
Is that default equipment? I looked at the gif on the wiki and I don't remember seeing high speed purple death balls. (Just the low speed purple death balls from the bombers)
Default equipment? I can tell you that flash bombers are 100% not default equipment.
No, the plasma cannons (they are not). Asking because I knew I had plenty of them in storage but the stock auto-fit either didn't grab them, or replaced them.
It gave me a Tachyon lance (25) and a high energy laser (20) instead; and a Cobra Bomber (15) which seems like a hat on a hat with the Flash Bombers but it's hard to test objectively. What do you use in the fighters bays with the PCs?
So autofit picks up both based on what you have and default fits. The default fits on the Odyssey are, kinda bad. They dont tend to have PCs.
I like 2x Plasma Cannon, 1x Xyphos, 1x spark, empty small slots, 2 sabot launchers, 1 typhoon (in the front, subbing to 3 sabots is fine), 1 locust(or MIRV). Hardened shields, reinforced flux conduits, ITU, max vents and rest into caps
2x HIL 2x longbow is probably OK as is double tach but its so much more effective to use your fighters as PD and then slam damage than it is to try to use them offensively
Welp, scored me a mint condition Colossus freighter just sitting there in space. Don't mind if I do.
Also, 20 minutes before I picked that up, I happened to swoop past a battle going on - as it finished I saw a derelict show up, pulled the handbrake and did a U-turn to check it out.
It was a goddamn capital ship from one of the mod factions I added. Unfortunately it was way too banged up to be actually useful, but hey, totally worth it to hang around like a vulture hoping you can score something from battles.
Vulture operations are absolutely good times. I often end up with a c̱͕̪̝o͍̲̝̳͚̜̦m͏͇̲m̳̗̗̦̜̙͘i̴̺̼̤̠̳t̴t̳ee̥̦̣̩̫͢ ҉͙͕̟̖̬̲̮o̻̥͉͞f̭̗̘̳͡ [REDACTED]
It is worth noting that D-mod -damaged- ships, can be real handy to keep around. They're cheaper to field and maintain, and lots of the damage won't matter in practice.
The only dmods that cause me to immediately toss a ship are busted engines on something too slow to mod back up to par for my fleet composition.
Keeping a stable of salvaged ships is a great way to snowball your fleet, and they can be handy as acceptable losses in a pinch.
Yeah, was seriously considering keeping it, but one of the d-mods was extra supply cost, and I suspect they're already high upkeep off the bat - definitely not something I could support when I was still mostly with the starting fleet.
Vulture operations are absolutely good times. I often end up with a c̱͕̪̝o͍̲̝̳͚̜̦m͏͇̲m̳̗̗̦̜̙͘i̴̺̼̤̠̳t̴t̳ee̥̦̣̩̫͢ ҉͙͕̟̖̬̲̮o̻̥͉͞f̭̗̘̳͡ [REDACTED]
It is worth noting that D-mod -damaged- ships, can be real handy to keep around. They're cheaper to field and maintain, and lots of the damage won't matter in practice.
The only dmods that cause me to immediately toss a ship are busted engines on something too slow to mod back up to par for my fleet composition.
Keeping a stable of salvaged ships is a great way to snowball your fleet, and they can be handy as acceptable losses in a pinch.
This has been my experience so far.
I've got a pair of wolves with 4-5 demods that I keep meaning to ditch, but honestly they're still doing a fine job. I figure any cruisers/caps with bad engines can stay in dry dock to stunt double for the good ones when I have to hold off a raid; but I've only got the one hobbled Apogee.
And if it blow up: shrug.
Bad engines, high maintenance, and maybe higher fuel use (on something that's already a pig), are the only main fleet disqualifiers because those cost money. Anything that potentially shortens their life expectancy seems basically fine so far, but I've got the 'almost always recover ships with officers' perk or I might feel otherwise.
I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
I pretty much did nothing but explore and salvage domain probes and survey ships with an occasional bounty or cargo transport.
I did choose the fast start with the Apogee cruise and got the three month stipend for doing the tutorial. I’m sure it’d be much harder with a non fast start.
All of those probe scanning missions want me to go all the way from the center to the edge of the sector map, the fuel and supply costs in addition to the risk of pirate attacks make that a horrible way to make money, how are you saving on the travel cost?
I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
I pretty much did nothing but explore and salvage domain probes and survey ships with an occasional bounty or cargo transport.
I did choose the fast start with the Apogee cruise and got the three month stipend for doing the tutorial. I’m sure it’d be much harder with a non fast start.
All of those probe scanning missions want me to go all the way from the center to the edge of the sector map, the fuel and supply costs in addition to the risk of pirate attacks make that a horrible way to make money, how are you saving on the travel cost?
As I understand it, easy mode gives a bonus to salvage and the Apogee cruiser also has a bonus to salvage.
I’d usually take one of those scanning missions, and after salvaging everything in the system, I’m able to extend my “flight time” a little bit longer.
I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
I pretty much did nothing but explore and salvage domain probes and survey ships with an occasional bounty or cargo transport.
I did choose the fast start with the Apogee cruise and got the three month stipend for doing the tutorial. I’m sure it’d be much harder with a non fast start.
All of those probe scanning missions want me to go all the way from the center to the edge of the sector map, the fuel and supply costs in addition to the risk of pirate attacks make that a horrible way to make money, how are you saving on the travel cost?
Just go fast and quiet and don't sweat the pirates. Pair any civ frigate with a Dram and you'll have enough fuel to go anywhere and back for 4 supplies a month at a burn of 10 and a fleet sensor profile of 120 (w/ Militarized systems). Survey missions can be more costly because you need to lug machinery, crew, and extra supplies out there; but the scan jobs don't require a thing.
Also wait a while before you head out. You can usually pick up a few more in the same general quadrant before you're pressed for time to complete the first one; and you don't seem to get job postings once you leave the core.
I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
I pretty much did nothing but explore and salvage domain probes and survey ships with an occasional bounty or cargo transport.
I did choose the fast start with the Apogee cruise and got the three month stipend for doing the tutorial. I’m sure it’d be much harder with a non fast start.
All of those probe scanning missions want me to go all the way from the center to the edge of the sector map, the fuel and supply costs in addition to the risk of pirate attacks make that a horrible way to make money, how are you saving on the travel cost?
A small fleet can generally run away from the fleets that can kill you and pirate fleets are more sparse the further you go out.
You will occasionally run into “salvage” fleets who want to salvage you but its probably 5 to 1 salvager to “salvager”
Fuel and supply for small fleets is cheap and you can make notes of derelict locations where you can farm/resupply so long as you have a decent fleet
Goumindong on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Are you able to capture planets from other factions?
I still have no idea how to start making money at the start. Any pointers?
I pretty much did nothing but explore and salvage domain probes and survey ships with an occasional bounty or cargo transport.
I did choose the fast start with the Apogee cruise and got the three month stipend for doing the tutorial. I’m sure it’d be much harder with a non fast start.
All of those probe scanning missions want me to go all the way from the center to the edge of the sector map, the fuel and supply costs in addition to the risk of pirate attacks make that a horrible way to make money, how are you saving on the travel cost?
Your supply cost is going to be super negligible if you don't fight anything along the way. That is unless you already have a huge combat fleet -- you should try to keep your fleet fairly small and nimble while you're running exploration missions.
Pirates are super easy to avoid if you're not dragging along slow cumbersome ships. The max speed ("burn") your ships can have on the strategy layer is 10 (ignoring system specific buffs), which doubles to 20 on sustained burn. Very few pirate fleets are going to be that fast -- the ones that are are pretty weak, and you should be able to take them with even a couple of basic ships. Your fleet speed is just determined by the slowest ship -- unless you have an Apogee, which is speed 8, you should be able to really easily hit a combined fleet speed of 9. If you have an Apogee it's probably worth it to go down to 8 because they can fight stuff and have cool survey bonuses. Bonus points if you take the Navigation 3 skill, which gives you +1 to your burn on top of whatever your fleet is. That gives you 9/18 speed with an Apogee or any other 8 burn ship, and 10/20 if you don't have one. There are plenty of tankers and freighters that are burn speed 9 -- don't take any of the big ones that are slower when you're surveying.
If you have those speeds, you should be pretty much set. If pirates are overtaking you, they're using "emergency burn" and you're not. Just pay attention and hit your emergency burn when they hit theirs. The one thing you have to worry about is interdiction -- it's basically a stun that disables your emergency and sustained burns. If they time it right and hit you with it, a slower fleet can emergency burn into you while yours is disabled. But it has an animation and a circle that shows you where it's going to hit to give you time to dodge if you pay attention.
Are you able to capture planets from other factions?
Not in the base game yet* BUT you can bombard them/decivilize them and then recolonize. This will give you the decivilized population modifier which is something you can never get rid of as far as i know. (-2 stability, +3% population growth, +25% hazard rating)
Decivilizing a planet by way of persistent negative stability will not cause people to become hostile you. Bombarding a planet will cause every faction to become hostile to you.
If you settle a planet that is in the same system as another factions planet they will likely attempt to bombard you off the face of the planet. This is because the system is considered claimed and you're effectively trying to take their space.
*This may not ever be implemented: Having a relatively stable sector is kind of a base game value and taking systems/having the AI take systems is very easily able to devolve into a "winner" when that is not an ideal or realistic situation. Logistics and production are entirely abstracted because these are things that can fail pretty hard and produce dead sectors. As a result there is no mechanism which stretches the AI when it over-extends and so no rubber band mechanic that makes it hard to win.
The Nexelerin Mod does include the ability to capture worlds (and the AI will do it as well). And it does suffer problems with degenerate systems.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Are you able to capture planets from other factions?
Not in the base game yet* BUT you can bombard them/decivilize them and then recolonize. This will give you the decivilized population modifier which is something you can never get rid of as far as i know. (-2 stability, +3% population growth, +25% hazard rating)
Decivilizing a planet by way of persistent negative stability will not cause people to become hostile you. Bombarding a planet will cause every faction to become hostile to you.
If you settle a planet that is in the same system as another factions planet they will likely attempt to bombard you off the face of the planet. This is because the system is considered claimed and you're effectively trying to take their space.
*This may not ever be implemented: Having a relatively stable sector is kind of a base game value and taking systems/having the AI take systems is very easily able to devolve into a "winner" when that is not an ideal or realistic situation. Logistics and production are entirely abstracted because these are things that can fail pretty hard and produce dead sectors. As a result there is no mechanism which stretches the AI when it over-extends and so no rubber band mechanic that makes it hard to win.
The Nexelerin Mod does include the ability to capture worlds (and the AI will do it as well). And it does suffer problems with degenerate systems.
I'm currently playing Nexelerin, so that's cool.
Also, I think I saw on the forums that colonizing a planet with Decivilized, abandoning the colony, and re-colonizing supposedly gets rid of Decivilized.
Are you able to capture planets from other factions?
Not in the base game yet* BUT you can bombard them/decivilize them and then recolonize. This will give you the decivilized population modifier which is something you can never get rid of as far as i know. (-2 stability, +3% population growth, +25% hazard rating)
Decivilizing a planet by way of persistent negative stability will not cause people to become hostile you. Bombarding a planet will cause every faction to become hostile to you.
If you settle a planet that is in the same system as another factions planet they will likely attempt to bombard you off the face of the planet. This is because the system is considered claimed and you're effectively trying to take their space.
*This may not ever be implemented: Having a relatively stable sector is kind of a base game value and taking systems/having the AI take systems is very easily able to devolve into a "winner" when that is not an ideal or realistic situation. Logistics and production are entirely abstracted because these are things that can fail pretty hard and produce dead sectors. As a result there is no mechanism which stretches the AI when it over-extends and so no rubber band mechanic that makes it hard to win.
The Nexelerin Mod does include the ability to capture worlds (and the AI will do it as well). And it does suffer problems with degenerate systems.
I'm currently playing Nexelerin, so that's cool.
Also, I think I saw on the forums that colonizing a planet with Decivilized, abandoning the colony, and re-colonizing supposedly gets rid of Decivilized.
Better planets are more common around standard sized orange, yellow, and red stars. But you will find a lot of those types with crappy planets too, and just have to keep searching in general.
Isn't it just blind luck to be able to find a terran world? How are other people getting along finding good planets to colonize?
I've surveyed:
2x100
6x125
19x150
~20x175 and 200
Didn't grab the 100s (literally in the far corner of the Galaxy), but the 125s seem pretty solid, and less than 10ly from the core. Found all my colonized systems doing exploration missions, haven't found anything too special randomly hitting up stars.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I found mine by checking a derelict drone survey ship.
I think if you're looking for good habitable planets you need to search out orange stars. I've occasionally seen decent planets orbiting gas giants on blue giants. Pulsars and black holes seem to have decent chances at abandoned research or orbital stations with some nice loot and blueprints.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Hah, that was pretty awesome. I was in this huge furball around a research station, with 4 large beam cruisers and a bunch of other stuff. My battlecruiser was holding it's own, but this fleet had a shit ton of drones, way more than I've seen before, and they eventually started to wear us down. I watched my frigates go one by one, then my destroyer. I was all alone, but I had taken out 3 of the cruisers and wasn't having much trouble with the destroyers. But, sadly, attrition wore me down and after taking down the last cruiser, the drones took me out, with a couple of their ships still operational.
But, wait, what's this? My heavy assault cruiser, which I assumed was gone because I hadn't seen it for a while, comes charging in from the side of the screen, at full hull (or close enough, as far as I could tell from the bar). It bore down on the remaining ships and they didn't stand a chance. So what went from a stinging defeat ended up being a pyrrhic victory. I lost 2 of the frigates, but was able to salvage the other 3 ships. Then I cleaned up on the salvage screen. I think I owe Lt. Whitney Hiver a drink, or at least a raise.
Every now and then I try to do that scientist mission you get right off the bat after the tutorial, but nope.
Yeah, I did that on my recent restart and didn't stand a chance. I don’t know how I managed it on my very first play through. It did take me about a dozen tries, but on my last try, I let the AI drive and just issued orders.
Is the Commerce industry useful as anything other than +1 stability and a remote market? It seems otherwise not great since the tariffs don't seem to go to me, and I'm a quick hop from the core where I can use the black market.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Is the Commerce industry useful as anything other than +1 stability and a remote market? It seems otherwise not great since the tariffs don't seem to go to me, and I'm a quick hop from the core where I can use the black market.
Takes up an industry slot that could be used for orbital works or high command and it doesn't make you money. It's pretty bad.
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I pretty much did nothing but explore and salvage domain probes and survey ships with an occasional bounty or cargo transport.
I did choose the fast start with the Apogee cruise and got the three month stipend for doing the tutorial. I’m sure it’d be much harder with a non fast start.
Check your Intel tab. Itll have various missions like exploring or bounties. Try to find a geographically clumped set and do them all. You can also sign on with a faction to get guaranteed money every month, more based on how much they like you. This opens you up to hostilities with other factions though
I got lucky and found an Apogee cruiser with no D-mods out in the field so that gave me enough firepower to take on some pirate bounties while also running around surveying everything in sight (my surveying equipment got to the point where it was 5 supplies spent for normal planets, 15 for very large or extremely dangerous planets, and maybe 50-75 for gas giants). As I started making more money, I sold off or mothballed some of my crappy starter ships, upgraded my tanker to the next class up, and now I'm flying with 3 Colossus freighters. During my surveying I found a good system with two habitable planets (unfortunately very far from the core) and made my first planet a farming/heavy industry planet, the second refining and commerce, then found a pretty good mining planet. I think the key to keeping your colonies doing well is to invest in the skills and/or get lucky finding good administrators, use AI cores as administrators or industry boosters (surely nothing can go wrong here!), and build up defenses for stability and raid prevention before your colony starts thriving. My build order is usually: defense batteries, industry #1, station (queued up immediately after industry #1), patrol base, waystation if you need accessibility bonus, upgrade batteries, industry #2 around here, upgrade station, upgrade spaceport.
Also, I found a blueprint for the Paragon so of course my Orbital Shipyard had to build one. That big boi is expensive to run but a true joy to operate.
Is that default equipment? I looked at the gif on the wiki and I don't remember seeing high speed purple death balls. (Just the low speed purple death balls from the bombers)
This may be a function of my high rep with independents, but I seem to find shipping work in bars pretty reliably. They're a nice start because they provide the cargo, and I then tend to start seeing cargo acquisition jobs pop up along the route.
Definitely helps in the making-money department!
The tech-bro faction bars offer loans from time to time. The lower tiers require turning 200k into 300k, and that's quite feasible after deducting 50k for a Colossus.
(Or an Apogee to go on exploration missions)
Default equipment? I can tell you that flash bombers are 100% not default equipment.
No, the plasma cannons (they are not). Asking because I knew I had plenty of them in storage but the stock auto-fit either didn't grab them, or replaced them.
It gave me a Tachyon lance (25) and a high energy laser (20) instead; and a Cobra Bomber (15) which seems like a hat on a hat with the Flash Bombers but it's hard to test objectively. What do you use in the fighters bays with the PCs?
So autofit picks up both based on what you have and default fits. The default fits on the Odyssey are, kinda bad. They dont tend to have PCs.
I like 2x Plasma Cannon, 1x Xyphos, 1x spark, empty small slots, 2 sabot launchers, 1 typhoon (in the front, subbing to 3 sabots is fine), 1 locust(or MIRV). Hardened shields, reinforced flux conduits, ITU, max vents and rest into caps
2x HIL 2x longbow is probably OK as is double tach but its so much more effective to use your fighters as PD and then slam damage than it is to try to use them offensively
Also, 20 minutes before I picked that up, I happened to swoop past a battle going on - as it finished I saw a derelict show up, pulled the handbrake and did a U-turn to check it out.
It was a goddamn capital ship from one of the mod factions I added. Unfortunately it was way too banged up to be actually useful, but hey, totally worth it to hang around like a vulture hoping you can score something from battles.
It is worth noting that D-mod -damaged- ships, can be real handy to keep around. They're cheaper to field and maintain, and lots of the damage won't matter in practice.
The only dmods that cause me to immediately toss a ship are busted engines on something too slow to mod back up to par for my fleet composition.
Keeping a stable of salvaged ships is a great way to snowball your fleet, and they can be handy as acceptable losses in a pinch.
This has been my experience so far.
I've got a pair of wolves with 4-5 demods that I keep meaning to ditch, but honestly they're still doing a fine job. I figure any cruisers/caps with bad engines can stay in dry dock to stunt double for the good ones when I have to hold off a raid; but I've only got the one hobbled Apogee.
And if it blow up: shrug.
Bad engines, high maintenance, and maybe higher fuel use (on something that's already a pig), are the only main fleet disqualifiers because those cost money. Anything that potentially shortens their life expectancy seems basically fine so far, but I've got the 'almost always recover ships with officers' perk or I might feel otherwise.
All of those probe scanning missions want me to go all the way from the center to the edge of the sector map, the fuel and supply costs in addition to the risk of pirate attacks make that a horrible way to make money, how are you saving on the travel cost?
As I understand it, easy mode gives a bonus to salvage and the Apogee cruiser also has a bonus to salvage.
I’d usually take one of those scanning missions, and after salvaging everything in the system, I’m able to extend my “flight time” a little bit longer.
Just go fast and quiet and don't sweat the pirates. Pair any civ frigate with a Dram and you'll have enough fuel to go anywhere and back for 4 supplies a month at a burn of 10 and a fleet sensor profile of 120 (w/ Militarized systems). Survey missions can be more costly because you need to lug machinery, crew, and extra supplies out there; but the scan jobs don't require a thing.
Also wait a while before you head out. You can usually pick up a few more in the same general quadrant before you're pressed for time to complete the first one; and you don't seem to get job postings once you leave the core.
A small fleet can generally run away from the fleets that can kill you and pirate fleets are more sparse the further you go out.
You will occasionally run into “salvage” fleets who want to salvage you but its probably 5 to 1 salvager to “salvager”
Fuel and supply for small fleets is cheap and you can make notes of derelict locations where you can farm/resupply so long as you have a decent fleet
Your supply cost is going to be super negligible if you don't fight anything along the way. That is unless you already have a huge combat fleet -- you should try to keep your fleet fairly small and nimble while you're running exploration missions.
Pirates are super easy to avoid if you're not dragging along slow cumbersome ships. The max speed ("burn") your ships can have on the strategy layer is 10 (ignoring system specific buffs), which doubles to 20 on sustained burn. Very few pirate fleets are going to be that fast -- the ones that are are pretty weak, and you should be able to take them with even a couple of basic ships. Your fleet speed is just determined by the slowest ship -- unless you have an Apogee, which is speed 8, you should be able to really easily hit a combined fleet speed of 9. If you have an Apogee it's probably worth it to go down to 8 because they can fight stuff and have cool survey bonuses. Bonus points if you take the Navigation 3 skill, which gives you +1 to your burn on top of whatever your fleet is. That gives you 9/18 speed with an Apogee or any other 8 burn ship, and 10/20 if you don't have one. There are plenty of tankers and freighters that are burn speed 9 -- don't take any of the big ones that are slower when you're surveying.
If you have those speeds, you should be pretty much set. If pirates are overtaking you, they're using "emergency burn" and you're not. Just pay attention and hit your emergency burn when they hit theirs. The one thing you have to worry about is interdiction -- it's basically a stun that disables your emergency and sustained burns. If they time it right and hit you with it, a slower fleet can emergency burn into you while yours is disabled. But it has an animation and a circle that shows you where it's going to hit to give you time to dodge if you pay attention.
Not in the base game yet* BUT you can bombard them/decivilize them and then recolonize. This will give you the decivilized population modifier which is something you can never get rid of as far as i know. (-2 stability, +3% population growth, +25% hazard rating)
Decivilizing a planet by way of persistent negative stability will not cause people to become hostile you. Bombarding a planet will cause every faction to become hostile to you.
If you settle a planet that is in the same system as another factions planet they will likely attempt to bombard you off the face of the planet. This is because the system is considered claimed and you're effectively trying to take their space.
*This may not ever be implemented: Having a relatively stable sector is kind of a base game value and taking systems/having the AI take systems is very easily able to devolve into a "winner" when that is not an ideal or realistic situation. Logistics and production are entirely abstracted because these are things that can fail pretty hard and produce dead sectors. As a result there is no mechanism which stretches the AI when it over-extends and so no rubber band mechanic that makes it hard to win.
The Nexelerin Mod does include the ability to capture worlds (and the AI will do it as well). And it does suffer problems with degenerate systems.
I'm currently playing Nexelerin, so that's cool.
Also, I think I saw on the forums that colonizing a planet with Decivilized, abandoning the colony, and re-colonizing supposedly gets rid of Decivilized.
Decivilized also gives a growth buff though.
Is that base game? I don't know. Hmmmmm
Yeah, that one took me a bit, too.
You can also store hulls there.
I've surveyed:
2x100
6x125
19x150
~20x175 and 200
Didn't grab the 100s (literally in the far corner of the Galaxy), but the 125s seem pretty solid, and less than 10ly from the core. Found all my colonized systems doing exploration missions, haven't found anything too special randomly hitting up stars.
But, wait, what's this? My heavy assault cruiser, which I assumed was gone because I hadn't seen it for a while, comes charging in from the side of the screen, at full hull (or close enough, as far as I could tell from the bar). It bore down on the remaining ships and they didn't stand a chance. So what went from a stinging defeat ended up being a pyrrhic victory. I lost 2 of the frigates, but was able to salvage the other 3 ships. Then I cleaned up on the salvage screen. I think I owe Lt. Whitney Hiver a drink, or at least a raise.
Yeah, I did that on my recent restart and didn't stand a chance. I don’t know how I managed it on my very first play through. It did take me about a dozen tries, but on my last try, I let the AI drive and just issued orders.
Then I went back to settled space and bought a capital ship for 470k. Now I just want to find something decently sized to shoot at.
Fuck taxes. Buy and sell shit on the black market. 60%profit uptick right there.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
I finally figured out how the black market works, thankfully (with getting caught). It's made a big impact on getting money this game.
Takes up an industry slot that could be used for orbital works or high command and it doesn't make you money. It's pretty bad.