I have not studied their roadmap or planned feature matrix extensively, but one thing I'm wondering about -- will they be adding a way to capture live bounties, restrain them, and transport them to a station or authority to collect? Basically, I'd like to be able to live out the entire Mandalorian fantasy in a gameplay loop. Get a bounty, track the mark to a planet or outpost, hunt them down, and capture them and then haul them back for a payday. That's what I want. Like on foot. I'd like to be able to do bounties that are FPS missions.
They say so, yes. There are even a few ships in game that have the role of being a prisoner/cryopod delivery thing.
When that'll happen is, of course, another matter.
I have not studied their roadmap or planned feature matrix extensively, but one thing I'm wondering about -- will they be adding a way to capture live bounties, restrain them, and transport them to a station or authority to collect? Basically, I'd like to be able to live out the entire Mandalorian fantasy in a gameplay loop. Get a bounty, track the mark to a planet or outpost, hunt them down, and capture them and then haul them back for a payday. That's what I want. Like on foot. I'd like to be able to do bounties that are FPS missions.
Yes. There are even some ships specifically designed for transporting live bounties with "prisoner pods".
There are ship weapons in-game that disable the electronics on enemy ships instead of doing damage to them, which will be the first step toward taking live bounties that are flying around. At some point there are supposed to be player weapons for taking bounties in alive as well.
I just randomly remembered how fun bounty hunting was in Star Wars Galaxies.
Man I miss SWG. That game was way ahead of it's time. It was a sandbox game with a lot of early conception ideas that later evolved into the build/craft/survive games we have today. I'd love to see someone take another crack at a game like that, using lessons learned from both the MMO genre, but also from games like Minecraft, ARK, Conan, and No Man's Sky.
I have not studied their roadmap or planned feature matrix extensively, but one thing I'm wondering about -- will they be adding a way to capture live bounties, restrain them, and transport them to a station or authority to collect? Basically, I'd like to be able to live out the entire Mandalorian fantasy in a gameplay loop. Get a bounty, track the mark to a planet or outpost, hunt them down, and capture them and then haul them back for a payday. That's what I want. Like on foot. I'd like to be able to do bounties that are FPS missions.
Yes. There are even some ships specifically designed for transporting live bounties with "prisoner pods".
There are ship weapons in-game that disable the electronics on enemy ships instead of doing damage to them, which will be the first step toward taking live bounties that are flying around. At some point there are supposed to be player weapons for taking bounties in alive as well.
Got any idea which ships these are? I'd like to take a look at 'em.
Got any idea which ships these are? I'd like to take a look at 'em.
The Avenger Stalker and Cutlass Blue both have multiple prisoner pods, and the Hawk has a single pod. The pods in the Avenger and Cutlass are not currently usable for storing people, but another player can ride in the pod in the rear of the Hawk. The Hawk is a purpose built bounty hunting ship, whereas the other two are versions of the base ship that have had modifications done to make them bounty hunting ships. The Avenger just adds pods to the cargo area, but the Cutlass has an extra airlocked section in between the cockpit/habitation area and the rear cargo area where the pods are. The Avenger and the Hawk are both positioned as bounty hunting ships, whereas the Cutlass Blue is supposed to be a police/security ship, so it has exterior flashing cop car style lights that can be turned on and off. It also has actual docking doors on both left and right sides, as opposed to the sliding side doors on the Cutlass Black.
CIG has said that it'll be possible to swap the pods out of the Avenger Stalker (to turn it back into a normal Avenger Titan, gaining more cargo space) and vice versa in the future, but I don't know if that will be possible with the Cutlass Blue since it is a dedicated ship with different internals than a Cutlass Black.
I took a mission, somewhat on a whim (because I have no idea what I'm doing still. Every single thing is a learning experience at this point), and did an investigation to fly out to a derelict ship in space and locate the body of one of the officers. I got there. I found the body. But I also found a glowing red flight recorder box. The flight recorder was not part of the mission, but I've got it anyhow. Is there anything I can do with this thing? Turn it in to a local authority for a bit of extra cash or anything?
You can't get anything for a flight recorder (unless you took a mission to find it specifically), but you can pick up various other cargo boxes that are floating around in wrecks and sell them (although I think you have to put them in a cargo grid area for the game to register that they are in your ship as actual cargo, which you can't do in a Mustang yet).
Depending on the wreck, you might also run into illegal goods (basically drugs). If you get scanned by security while storing them you'll get a crimestat. If you just book it without letting them scan you than you'll also get a crimestat, although it will likely be lower.
Individual boxes aren't worth much though, so you're not really missing out on a lot of UEC, just some gameplay.
The derelict wreck missions can be pretty spooky, I like them.
Apparently there's a thing going down now where CIG have greatly increased the claim time on ships in the PTU, both standard and expedited, along with a corresponding increase in UEC.
Considering we're in a state where 95+% of my ship losses have been to 30ks and bugs, I can't help but feel like this is the wrong time.
Apparently there's a thing going down now where CIG have greatly increased the claim time on ships in the PTU, both standard and expedited, along with a corresponding increase in UEC.
Considering we're in a state where 95+% of my ship losses have been to 30ks and bugs, I can't help but feel like this is the wrong time.
Apparently to dissuade people from dispersing their ordinance, then blowing themselves up rather than try to repair/rearm at a pad.
But people only do that because the restock option is broken most of the time, so...
I'm really not opposed to the changes in the long run, but I wholeheartedly agree that doing this now is not the right time. Until they fix 30Ks, ship refuel/rearming at all landing pads, ship despawning, and falling through planets, this is a bit premature. I'm really hoping they set it back before Live. In the grand scheme of things this isn't a huge deal for me, but I have an embarrassing number of ships in my shame fleet. For others, however, this could completely wreck their play experience.
SwampFox on
"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." - Sir. Winston Churchill
For whatever it's worth, ground vehicles are now effectively instant claims, and all the ships you can buy as Starter Packs (Aurora/Mustang/Avenger/Nomad/a couple others) have had their respawn times and expedite costs cut in a third at least. And that part of the change is good. But yeah maybe don't punish people in larger ships for the game's instability, a Carrack randomly exploding when you put a vehicle in the cargo bay shouldn't mean you have to go play Cyberpunk for two hours.
I saw that the Origin 100i is going to become purchasable with in-game currency in 3.12. Do we know what the pricing on it will be? I want to buy one for two reasons.
1) The Mustang Alpha is kinda bad. I mean, it's fine for low level bounty missions, but not being able to do box missions or carry cargo really limits my gameplay opportunities.
2) The 100i is a slick looking spaceship for being tagged as a starter ship.
So 3.12 is out and the elevator panels turn off when you approach them now so you have to pick a floor from the back wall of the elevator.
I assume there's some other stuff added too but I can't tell because New Babbage/Microtech still crashes my client. I assume it's some graphics setting but I don't know which one.
The elevator thing happened to me when I started, but went away after a few minutes. I had to hit F and zoom in to use the panels until then.
One thing I noticed immediately is that I was getting a lot more of the Investigation missions, which is nice, because they're pretty low key and some of them can be fairly profitable. I had a bunch that were stackable (a "retrieve this piece of cargo/black box from a wrecked ship" mission, and a "find this missing person/identify these crewmembers from a wrecked ship" mission, with both being at the same derelict), so I did those as well as delivering packages from the busted Covalex Gundo station to PO and Grim Hex for a bit, and I ended up making a ton of money.
Also, my custom character for 3.12 came out looking like a young Ray Liotta who constantly walks around with an expression on his face that looks like he just caught a the first whiff of a horrific fart.
I started my 3.12 character on Area 18 and immediately went to the ship store (Astro Armada) and looked up the Origin 100i, as that's what I targeted as being the first ship I wanted to purchase. Everything I've seen about it says it's a starter ship, which to me indicates it should be roughly on par with the Mustang Alpha and Aurora, only newer and thus supporting must-have features like actual working cargo areas so that I can do box missions.
But looking at this ship buying terminal, the cost of the 100i is 654,000 aUAC. By comparison, the 300i is only 767,000 aUAC.
I've got 17k to my name. I'm a total noob with no money, still very little idea how to play the game, and I'm looking at those prices and wondering why I'd buy the 100i for that price when I could save up another 120k and get a bigger, better ship. The price on that 100i seems massively overpriced for being listed as a starter ship, and being considered a single-seat, small sized craft.
The 100i and the 300i are basically space BMWs, which is why they're spendy. I still think you should check out a Pisces. It's a starter with ample space for box missions, plus four weapon hardpoints. You can pick one up at ArcCorp for 406,000AUEC. The only downside is that it doesn't have a bed, but neither does your Mustang.
I think the best option for you to earn money quick would be to rent a Cutlass, then put a rented/borrowed ROC in the back and go mining for a bit.
Can you buy an Avenger in game? I think it's a pretty great starter ship, but admittedly it's basically the only ship I've spent anything nearing significant time in.
Alternatively, rent a Cutlass then start bounty hunting. 25004000 for the Very-Low Risk target, 5000 for Low Risk, and 7500 for Medium Risk adds up quick when they die in seconds of combat. Add the additional optional bounty ships that come in for 500-1000 each, and it starts to pile up.
Erlkönig on
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Quite liked flying the Reliant TANA in 3.11. Costs about 700,000aUEC, takes a bit of upgrading, but 4 turreted size 2s, 2 gimballed size 1s, 16 size 2 missiles plus 2 external missile mounts. Interior's got enough space for a couple mission boxes, weapons rack and 2 beds. Decent little ship and a definite upgrade over the Aurora or Mustang.
Alternatively, rent a Cutlass then start bounty hunting. 25004000 for the Very-Low Risk target, 5000 for Low Risk, and 7500 for Medium Risk adds up quick when they die in seconds of combat. Add the additional optional bounty ships that come in for 500-1000 each, and it starts to pile up.
I did the Very low and low risk ones in my Aurora LR, but didn't have the DPS to take reliably take down some of the things that spawn in Medium Risk ones.
Bought 2x NN13 and 2x NN14 and suddenly those weren't a problem any more.
Saw the application mission for High Risk targets but decided to stay away because no way in hell I thought my little Aurora could take on something like a Constellation.
Then I did one of those save and protect a civilian ships missions, not knowing what could spawn in those... 5 dead Constellations later I have now decided to try the High Risk Targets after all.
Edit: Journeyman Bounty Hunter Certification done, High Risk Targets unlocked. Aurora forever! Going from 4 mid tier size 1 guns to 2 high tier size 1 and two high tier size 2 weapons was a much bigger jump in Damage output than I'd hoped for.
Well that was quick. Somebody already figured out how to steal an Idris. Which is double impressive considering it doesn't have an interior and isn't supposed to be flyable.
Apparently some people figured out how to glitch inside the Idris during Invictus and found a little area with a pilot and gunner's seats, but because the Invictus fleet always spawned in an armistice zone they couldn't kill the pilot in order to steal their chair. Now that they're spawning in the wild and no longer immortal, they're much more vulnerable to play fuckery.
I forgot to mention they're doing a Luminala thing (some kind of Banu totally-not-christmas celebration) where if you go this this page, every day there's a clickable link that gives you a small something:
NPC ship gunner AI is pretty bad, you can take out a surprising number of large ships with nothing more than an Aurora and the space equivalent of circle strafing. Be careful not to get too close to pirate Cutlasses though, you can blast them to pieces from afar without much trouble, but a lot of them have scatterguns that will turn you into swiss cheese at close range.
Also, with missiles, you can buy different racks to hold a different amount based on the missile size and the hardpoint on your ship. The LN for example comes with a rack that (at stock) holds 4 size 2 missiles. You can replace this with a wrack that holds two size three missiles, or one size 4 missile (which is enormous and looks hilarious strapped to the roof), but you can also go smaller and slap 8 size 1 missiles on it instead. Your base missile hardpoint size (in this case, a S4 hardpoint) determines how many missiles your ship can carry. You double the amount when you go down a size (1 S4 becomes 2 S3s, 2 S3s become 4 S2s, etc), and cut it in half when you go up a size.
This leads to shenanigans like people running a Cutlass Black as a missile boat with 48 S1 missiles onboard, which is a total blast (until it's time to pay to restock them all).
Man, I am just having rotten luck with 3.12. So here's a quick list of my misadventures from this weekend:
--Flew my Mustang Alpha to a mission location and something glitched in quantum travel. Quantum travel literally smashed me into a planet or something and my ship was destroyed / I died. So I respawned, went to claim my ship, and it said it was destroyed on the vehicle retrieval console. But there was no "claim" button. Just a "retrieve" button. And when I attempt to retrieve my ship, it spawns into the hangar all broken and destroyed.
--So I catch a ride from a friendly stranger to another system and try again to claim my Mustang Alpha. But still only have a retrieve option, and it still spawns in completely destroyed.
--I decided to rent an Aurora for a 1 day rental. Fly to Lorville, New Babbage, and Port Olisar. Can't retrieve my own personal Mustang at any of them. It spawns broken everywhere.
--Decide to take the Aurora rental out adventuring. Complete a couple missions.
--Take a mercenary mission for an FPS clearing of a space station. The objective was to kill 7 dudes. I kill 4 and the other 3 aren't anywhere to be found. Did a very thorough sweep, explored everywhere. Eventually I just abandoned it because the remaining 3 guys just didn't exist.
--Take one of those new bounty missions where the target is able to move and flee. I find him, but I crash into an asteroid shortly after finding him and go to retrieve my ship. Target has moved, so I chase him, which required a cross-system flight of like 55mil KM or whatever. Basically I flew from Crusader to Microtech. So now my Aurora needs fuel. But guess what? I've got the bug where you can't refuel or resupply. So now my personal ship is out of commission, and my rental cannot be refueled.
--I log out and log back in, so that I can get a free refuel by resetting my ship.
--But now instead of being able to claim my rental Aurora, I continually get this big red X page that says something about they are unable to retrieve my ship.
Edit:
--Oh yah, after character creation, the game had forgotten that I own a multi tool and a rucksack chestpiece. So I had to rebuy those.
--The game had also forgotten that I own a sniper rifle that I bought at Port Olisar, but I didn't rebuy that yet.
So yah. That's been my weekend. Two ships unusable.
If your ship spawns in wrecked you can try a character reset. You'll be unable to play for 15 minutes, but they recommend you wait an hour before logging back in. That fixes most item problems.
Sometimes you will have a stretch where the game runs like a dream, the missions are all fun and profitable, and everything clicks. Sometimes you run into bug after bug and the entire thing feels like a waste of time. That's the nature of playing a game that is still in alpha.
Do I lose anything if I do a character reset? Am I gonna have to re-buy my multitool and rucksack again?
Now that the first steps of character persistence have been added, you should keep your UEC, and it's a crapshoot on whether or not you'll keep your personal gear. If you do lose them, the multi-tool is sold at almost every store (and at every smelting area), and I am pretty sure that armor is pretty widely available as well. Both are pretty cheap, but if you're low on spacebucks join a game with some people from the Discord server and we can run some missions with you and get your wallet fatter.
A while back they added the ability to share missions between players in a party (If I take a "Kill Boggs Dooflughter" mercenary mission and share it with you, whenever we kill Boggs we'll both get credit for completing the mission, as well as the payout (which is divided up among however many players in the party that the mission has been shared with). It can drop the payouts by quite a bit if you have 3-4 people with you, but if you have a complement (other guns who are going into bunkers with you, or guys manning turrets in a ship for space combat as a couple of examples) it makes it a lot easier to do a lot of the missions, so you can do them a lot faster. You can also transfer UEC directly to other players now, so if you help someone with some mining they can sell the ore and then send you your cut of the proceeds directly.
If your ship spawns in wrecked you can try a character reset. You'll be unable to play for 15 minutes, but they recommend you wait an hour before logging back in. That fixes most item problems.
Sometimes you will have a stretch where the game runs like a dream, the missions are all fun and profitable, and everything clicks. Sometimes you run into bug after bug and the entire thing feels like a waste of time. That's the nature of playing a game that is still in alpha.
Yeah...I couldn't even run into bug after bug. Just had one that made it difficult to do anything:
Figured I'd pop in and hoover up some of those little gift boxes that are sprinkled around the hubs. Turns out, I don't have any armor, so didn't have pockets to stash the boxes into. Figure, okay, I'll just head over to the Commons (I'm on New Babbage) to do a little shopping. Get on the metrolink and it pulls up to the Commons station...but the doors don't open. Hrm...maybe I'll just wait for the next stop. Next stop rolls around, doors don't open. Stop after that, the station is open space (like, starfield and everything...no platform). Stand on the train for a good 5 minutes, 3 more open space stops, 1 more at the Commons, and I decide it's as good a time as any to just quit out and try again later.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
I had something similar happen yesterday, but not that bad. Took about 2 round trips on the metro on New Babbage before the station loaded in.
So far I am not impressed by 3.12. I haven't been playing long, since I literally just got this new PC a couple weeks ago and can finally get on and actually enjoy the game. But in my limited experience, 3.11 felt a lot more stable. It wasn't perfect. I had lots of bugs there too. But 3.12 feels worse.
New patches always feel worse ime. Things always get better after a couple hotfix patches and players are done checking out the new patch, giving the servers some breathing room.
If your ship spawns in wrecked you can try a character reset. You'll be unable to play for 15 minutes, but they recommend you wait an hour before logging back in. That fixes most item problems.
Sometimes you will have a stretch where the game runs like a dream, the missions are all fun and profitable, and everything clicks. Sometimes you run into bug after bug and the entire thing feels like a waste of time. That's the nature of playing a game that is still in alpha.
Yeah...I couldn't even run into bug after bug. Just had one that made it difficult to do anything:
Figured I'd pop in and hoover up some of those little gift boxes that are sprinkled around the hubs. Turns out, I don't have any armor, so didn't have pockets to stash the boxes into. Figure, okay, I'll just head over to the Commons (I'm on New Babbage) to do a little shopping. Get on the metrolink and it pulls up to the Commons station...but the doors don't open. Hrm...maybe I'll just wait for the next stop. Next stop rolls around, doors don't open. Stop after that, the station is open space (like, starfield and everything...no platform). Stand on the train for a good 5 minutes, 3 more open space stops, 1 more at the Commons, and I decide it's as good a time as any to just quit out and try again later.
The tube door bug is infuriating, and I find it very difficult to understand why they don't put in override/workarounds for the showstoppers you can run into like that. Give me an emergency door open or something, or a vending machine that will give me a new mobiglas if I don't have one. You can always patch them out later once you fix the bug.
If you get a world not rendering that server is going to die and you should go back to the main menu and back in.
Alright y'all. I've been trying to do some bounty hunting for quick money. But I suck. More than that though, I find that my ship runs out of ammo very quickly if that's even a thing. I assume it is because after a while of chasing targets around my ship just stops shooting. So I assume it's an ammo problem. But I honestly have no idea because I've never seen a spot on the HUD for my Mustang Alpha that indicates if I have ammo, and if so, how much.
So can someone help me better learn to read and understand my HUD?
Likewise, are bullet shooting guns the best option for a noob like me who totally sucks at hitting his target? Is there perhaps an energy weapon with infinite ammo that would be a better choice?
Lastly, I've heard about upgrading your ship but I've got no idea how or where to do that, or how much it costs, or what I should be upgrading to (if anything). I need more guns. And more bullets.
Random side rant - while doing FPS missions, it really annoys me that I can't pickup ammo off of fallen enemies. Actually, the entire ammo system in general is very annoying. Having to "equip" ammo to a slot is the dumbest thing ever. Definitely a case where realism needs to give way to gameplay.
Posts
They say so, yes. There are even a few ships in game that have the role of being a prisoner/cryopod delivery thing.
When that'll happen is, of course, another matter.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Yes. There are even some ships specifically designed for transporting live bounties with "prisoner pods".
There are ship weapons in-game that disable the electronics on enemy ships instead of doing damage to them, which will be the first step toward taking live bounties that are flying around. At some point there are supposed to be player weapons for taking bounties in alive as well.
Man I miss SWG. That game was way ahead of it's time. It was a sandbox game with a lot of early conception ideas that later evolved into the build/craft/survive games we have today. I'd love to see someone take another crack at a game like that, using lessons learned from both the MMO genre, but also from games like Minecraft, ARK, Conan, and No Man's Sky.
Got any idea which ships these are? I'd like to take a look at 'em.
The Avenger Stalker and Cutlass Blue both have multiple prisoner pods, and the Hawk has a single pod. The pods in the Avenger and Cutlass are not currently usable for storing people, but another player can ride in the pod in the rear of the Hawk. The Hawk is a purpose built bounty hunting ship, whereas the other two are versions of the base ship that have had modifications done to make them bounty hunting ships. The Avenger just adds pods to the cargo area, but the Cutlass has an extra airlocked section in between the cockpit/habitation area and the rear cargo area where the pods are. The Avenger and the Hawk are both positioned as bounty hunting ships, whereas the Cutlass Blue is supposed to be a police/security ship, so it has exterior flashing cop car style lights that can be turned on and off. It also has actual docking doors on both left and right sides, as opposed to the sliding side doors on the Cutlass Black.
CIG has said that it'll be possible to swap the pods out of the Avenger Stalker (to turn it back into a normal Avenger Titan, gaining more cargo space) and vice versa in the future, but I don't know if that will be possible with the Cutlass Blue since it is a dedicated ship with different internals than a Cutlass Black.
Depending on the wreck, you might also run into illegal goods (basically drugs). If you get scanned by security while storing them you'll get a crimestat. If you just book it without letting them scan you than you'll also get a crimestat, although it will likely be lower.
Individual boxes aren't worth much though, so you're not really missing out on a lot of UEC, just some gameplay.
The derelict wreck missions can be pretty spooky, I like them.
Considering we're in a state where 95+% of my ship losses have been to 30ks and bugs, I can't help but feel like this is the wrong time.
e: Announcement here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/alpha-3-12-insurance-timer-and-price-changes-1
Apparently to dissuade people from dispersing their ordinance, then blowing themselves up rather than try to repair/rearm at a pad.
But people only do that because the restock option is broken most of the time, so...
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
I'm really not opposed to the changes in the long run, but I wholeheartedly agree that doing this now is not the right time. Until they fix 30Ks, ship refuel/rearming at all landing pads, ship despawning, and falling through planets, this is a bit premature. I'm really hoping they set it back before Live. In the grand scheme of things this isn't a huge deal for me, but I have an embarrassing number of ships in my shame fleet. For others, however, this could completely wreck their play experience.
Loving those component compartments. Not loving the idea of being shot in them, but they certainly look cool.
1) The Mustang Alpha is kinda bad. I mean, it's fine for low level bounty missions, but not being able to do box missions or carry cargo really limits my gameplay opportunities.
2) The 100i is a slick looking spaceship for being tagged as a starter ship.
I assume there's some other stuff added too but I can't tell because New Babbage/Microtech still crashes my client. I assume it's some graphics setting but I don't know which one.
One thing I noticed immediately is that I was getting a lot more of the Investigation missions, which is nice, because they're pretty low key and some of them can be fairly profitable. I had a bunch that were stackable (a "retrieve this piece of cargo/black box from a wrecked ship" mission, and a "find this missing person/identify these crewmembers from a wrecked ship" mission, with both being at the same derelict), so I did those as well as delivering packages from the busted Covalex Gundo station to PO and Grim Hex for a bit, and I ended up making a ton of money.
Also, my custom character for 3.12 came out looking like a young Ray Liotta who constantly walks around with an expression on his face that looks like he just caught a the first whiff of a horrific fart.
But looking at this ship buying terminal, the cost of the 100i is 654,000 aUAC. By comparison, the 300i is only 767,000 aUAC.
I've got 17k to my name. I'm a total noob with no money, still very little idea how to play the game, and I'm looking at those prices and wondering why I'd buy the 100i for that price when I could save up another 120k and get a bigger, better ship. The price on that 100i seems massively overpriced for being listed as a starter ship, and being considered a single-seat, small sized craft.
I think the best option for you to earn money quick would be to rent a Cutlass, then put a rented/borrowed ROC in the back and go mining for a bit.
Bought 2x NN13 and 2x NN14 and suddenly those weren't a problem any more.
Saw the application mission for High Risk targets but decided to stay away because no way in hell I thought my little Aurora could take on something like a Constellation.
Then I did one of those save and protect a civilian ships missions, not knowing what could spawn in those... 5 dead Constellations later I have now decided to try the High Risk Targets after all.
Edit: Journeyman Bounty Hunter Certification done, High Risk Targets unlocked. Aurora forever! Going from 4 mid tier size 1 guns to 2 high tier size 1 and two high tier size 2 weapons was a much bigger jump in Damage output than I'd hoped for.
Apparently some people figured out how to glitch inside the Idris during Invictus and found a little area with a pilot and gunner's seats, but because the Invictus fleet always spawned in an armistice zone they couldn't kill the pilot in order to steal their chair. Now that they're spawning in the wild and no longer immortal, they're much more vulnerable to play fuckery.
Neutron Cannons. You can buy them in Port Olisar's Dumpster Depot but they are cheaper in the Ship's Weapon Shop in Hur L2.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17907-Luminalia-2950
Today's gift is a free Pico plushie, in-game presumably since I doubt they're giving away real physical items for free.
Also, with missiles, you can buy different racks to hold a different amount based on the missile size and the hardpoint on your ship. The LN for example comes with a rack that (at stock) holds 4 size 2 missiles. You can replace this with a wrack that holds two size three missiles, or one size 4 missile (which is enormous and looks hilarious strapped to the roof), but you can also go smaller and slap 8 size 1 missiles on it instead. Your base missile hardpoint size (in this case, a S4 hardpoint) determines how many missiles your ship can carry. You double the amount when you go down a size (1 S4 becomes 2 S3s, 2 S3s become 4 S2s, etc), and cut it in half when you go up a size.
This leads to shenanigans like people running a Cutlass Black as a missile boat with 48 S1 missiles onboard, which is a total blast (until it's time to pay to restock them all).
--Flew my Mustang Alpha to a mission location and something glitched in quantum travel. Quantum travel literally smashed me into a planet or something and my ship was destroyed / I died. So I respawned, went to claim my ship, and it said it was destroyed on the vehicle retrieval console. But there was no "claim" button. Just a "retrieve" button. And when I attempt to retrieve my ship, it spawns into the hangar all broken and destroyed.
--So I catch a ride from a friendly stranger to another system and try again to claim my Mustang Alpha. But still only have a retrieve option, and it still spawns in completely destroyed.
--I decided to rent an Aurora for a 1 day rental. Fly to Lorville, New Babbage, and Port Olisar. Can't retrieve my own personal Mustang at any of them. It spawns broken everywhere.
--Decide to take the Aurora rental out adventuring. Complete a couple missions.
--Take a mercenary mission for an FPS clearing of a space station. The objective was to kill 7 dudes. I kill 4 and the other 3 aren't anywhere to be found. Did a very thorough sweep, explored everywhere. Eventually I just abandoned it because the remaining 3 guys just didn't exist.
--Take one of those new bounty missions where the target is able to move and flee. I find him, but I crash into an asteroid shortly after finding him and go to retrieve my ship. Target has moved, so I chase him, which required a cross-system flight of like 55mil KM or whatever. Basically I flew from Crusader to Microtech. So now my Aurora needs fuel. But guess what? I've got the bug where you can't refuel or resupply. So now my personal ship is out of commission, and my rental cannot be refueled.
--I log out and log back in, so that I can get a free refuel by resetting my ship.
--But now instead of being able to claim my rental Aurora, I continually get this big red X page that says something about they are unable to retrieve my ship.
Edit:
--Oh yah, after character creation, the game had forgotten that I own a multi tool and a rucksack chestpiece. So I had to rebuy those.
--The game had also forgotten that I own a sniper rifle that I bought at Port Olisar, but I didn't rebuy that yet.
So yah. That's been my weekend. Two ships unusable.
Sometimes you will have a stretch where the game runs like a dream, the missions are all fun and profitable, and everything clicks. Sometimes you run into bug after bug and the entire thing feels like a waste of time. That's the nature of playing a game that is still in alpha.
Now that the first steps of character persistence have been added, you should keep your UEC, and it's a crapshoot on whether or not you'll keep your personal gear. If you do lose them, the multi-tool is sold at almost every store (and at every smelting area), and I am pretty sure that armor is pretty widely available as well. Both are pretty cheap, but if you're low on spacebucks join a game with some people from the Discord server and we can run some missions with you and get your wallet fatter.
A while back they added the ability to share missions between players in a party (If I take a "Kill Boggs Dooflughter" mercenary mission and share it with you, whenever we kill Boggs we'll both get credit for completing the mission, as well as the payout (which is divided up among however many players in the party that the mission has been shared with). It can drop the payouts by quite a bit if you have 3-4 people with you, but if you have a complement (other guns who are going into bunkers with you, or guys manning turrets in a ship for space combat as a couple of examples) it makes it a lot easier to do a lot of the missions, so you can do them a lot faster. You can also transfer UEC directly to other players now, so if you help someone with some mining they can sell the ore and then send you your cut of the proceeds directly.
Yeah...I couldn't even run into bug after bug. Just had one that made it difficult to do anything:
Figured I'd pop in and hoover up some of those little gift boxes that are sprinkled around the hubs. Turns out, I don't have any armor, so didn't have pockets to stash the boxes into. Figure, okay, I'll just head over to the Commons (I'm on New Babbage) to do a little shopping. Get on the metrolink and it pulls up to the Commons station...but the doors don't open. Hrm...maybe I'll just wait for the next stop. Next stop rolls around, doors don't open. Stop after that, the station is open space (like, starfield and everything...no platform). Stand on the train for a good 5 minutes, 3 more open space stops, 1 more at the Commons, and I decide it's as good a time as any to just quit out and try again later.
So far I am not impressed by 3.12. I haven't been playing long, since I literally just got this new PC a couple weeks ago and can finally get on and actually enjoy the game. But in my limited experience, 3.11 felt a lot more stable. It wasn't perfect. I had lots of bugs there too. But 3.12 feels worse.
The tube door bug is infuriating, and I find it very difficult to understand why they don't put in override/workarounds for the showstoppers you can run into like that. Give me an emergency door open or something, or a vending machine that will give me a new mobiglas if I don't have one. You can always patch them out later once you fix the bug.
If you get a world not rendering that server is going to die and you should go back to the main menu and back in.
So can someone help me better learn to read and understand my HUD?
Likewise, are bullet shooting guns the best option for a noob like me who totally sucks at hitting his target? Is there perhaps an energy weapon with infinite ammo that would be a better choice?
Lastly, I've heard about upgrading your ship but I've got no idea how or where to do that, or how much it costs, or what I should be upgrading to (if anything). I need more guns. And more bullets.
Random side rant - while doing FPS missions, it really annoys me that I can't pickup ammo off of fallen enemies. Actually, the entire ammo system in general is very annoying. Having to "equip" ammo to a slot is the dumbest thing ever. Definitely a case where realism needs to give way to gameplay.
Change one of the MFDs to show your weapon list, and it shows ammo count next to the weapons with ammo.