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Ok, I've assigned 2 Boa's to the station as building traders with just hull parts selected, will see how long that takes to fill now I guess. Will make my next thing a hull part production plant. How big is typically the right size for these things? Do you typically build full vertical integration into a single station and make it self sufficient, if so do you only make 5 things or 20 things of the end product? I've done a couple of smaller stations on a previous play while getting a feel for the game and I did self contained things but only small scale, used an online calculator to work out the whole thing before hand.
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Apr 26, 2020 00:22
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I use stations of 1- 5 primary production modules and as many supporting ones as are needed. Currently I have dedicated stations for claytronics, hull parts, microchips and advanced electronics. Of these, the hull parts is the biggest profit centre. The exception is the 3 baseline intermediates, which get done at a centrally located mega refinery: Ore -> refined metals Silicon -> silicon wafers Methane -> graphene These supply my factories first, and any surplus is sold to the market. This is also a very consistent earner. All miners are assigned to the mega refinery, the other stations get 4 M class traders each assigned to them, and I keep three L class traders handy for bulk transfers, like when I’m building a station. I would call this the end of the early game or the early mid game. It’s enough to let me build a fleet and be mostly self sufficient for station building. But I’m not taking in mega bucks - maybe 10-20 mill per hour, 25% of which is bulk manual trades?
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Apr 26, 2020 09:03
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So to supply your own production lines youre having to do it all manually?
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Apr 26, 2020 11:52
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Station traders should keep their own stations supplied, presumably buying from the refinery.
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Apr 26, 2020 12:00
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OwlFancier posted:Station traders should keep their own stations supplied, presumably buying from the refinery. Do station traders consider your own stations "free" or do they still transfer credits from one to the other? I've always just made giant self sustaining monstrosities.
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Apr 26, 2020 12:05
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I think they transfer credits like any other trader but I haven't really checked. I don't see why they wouldn't though because there are separate interfaces for transferring and buying from your own stations and traders as far as I know do trade wares, not transfer them. There are probably mods that add that functionality, however.
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Apr 26, 2020 12:08
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Where's the central modding repository? Workshop, Nexus, or forum? Or just all combined
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Apr 26, 2020 14:42
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Garfu posted:Where's the central modding repository? Workshop, Nexus, or forum? Or just all combined Nexus and the Forum though I think the forum is still the best place to find stuff.
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Apr 26, 2020 14:49
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Also a lot of them are on the workshop, but yeah the forum is probably the main location.
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Apr 26, 2020 14:55
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I think that mule mod may help me ferrying about hull parts. Does anyone have any experience using it?
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Apr 26, 2020 15:09
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Garfu posted:Where's the central modding repository? Workshop, Nexus, or forum? Or just all combined The Egosoft forum is a good place to start because they'll generally list all places a mod can be found. However not everything is listed on the forum. Also for mods listed in multiple places you should cross-reference each place to make sure you've got the most up to date version. I got bit once because the mod author neglected to update every place their mod was listed.
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Apr 26, 2020 16:18
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Ragnar Gunvald posted:I think that mule mod may help me ferrying about hull parts. Does anyone have any experience using it? It works but can get kind of buggy and confusing. If you just use the supply mule option and pick player stations only it will mostly work as desired. However: 1. Don't use the option to assign the ship to a specific station. It eventually causes them to get stuck in a loop rapidly changing their orders many times a second. You'll know this has happened because your game turns into a slideshow no matter where in the galaxy you are. 2. By default the supply mules whitelist all wares, but I've found they ignore energy cells unless I manually remove and readd them from the list. 3. If you don't pick the player stations only option, I've found they'll buy from NPC stations instead of your own mostly. I think it's because they're checking prices instead of treating your own stuff as free, which kind of makes sense if you take it as the opportunity cost of not selling your stuff to an NPC instead. Also, if you let them trade with NPC stations I've found they're far better at finding deals than the vanilla build storage traders are. I have a suspicion that they somehow cheat or take liberties with trade data, but I'm just guessing there.
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Apr 26, 2020 16:32
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drat, I just captured a Scale Plate Dragon Raider! I didn't realize that it's so good! (On paper at least) It already has split mk3 engines, which seem to be VERY good - plus six guns, compares to the five my nemesis has! I was originally gonna deck it out as a patrol or escort boat, but now I'm REALLY tempted to outfit it properly, as my new main K-buster. But is it actually as good as it looks? Especially since it's a Raider/pirate variant - I'm sure it has its flaws
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Apr 27, 2020 08:04
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How is the shield ?
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Apr 27, 2020 08:20
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Krogort posted:How is the shield ? Oh, I think it was destroye during the fighting, so I gave it a Mk2 Teladi shield. I think my Nemesis has two shields, so I guess the Dragon is a little more glass-cannony? I'm not ingame anymore though - I should've compared shield and hull stats..
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Apr 27, 2020 08:25
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The FRF also sell the raider variant. It has one shield which can be a limiting factor but an extra gun compared with the nemesis, I think it's also faster. It also looks cool. I use one instead of a nemesis..
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Apr 27, 2020 08:50
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OwlFancier posted:The FRF also sell the raider variant. Yeah, it's a good looking ship, for sure - kinda like a mini Victory-class star destroyer, from star wars. Alright well, I think I'll deck it out and give it a go tomorrow - seems like it's a good boom 'n' zoom ship, like a FW-190 or Bf-109.
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Apr 27, 2020 09:25
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You can trivially mod it to go >1km/s which is hilariously broken. The Terran Springblossom comes to mind. It has no staying power, just project all the dakka on the target, kill it, retreat and let shields recharge. It's not very good at killing L and up because any kind of resistance will eat through the ship in no time. I think it's a bit broken in player hands but a sturdier ship can usually kill faster because it doesn't have to retreat. On the flipside, if you know how to pilot it, you can take on arbitrarily large fleets…
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Apr 27, 2020 10:35
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I think they may have patched it but last time I checked, the Dragon Raider barely had more shield than a S fighter and only like twice as much hull. But being a M ship, it is significantly bigger and take more fire. There is a non raider Dragon sold by the ZYA that is a bit slower but has like twice as much hull and a bit more shield. I like the Cobra more I think, it has a huge crew so you can get good repair and/or lot of marines with it. I'm going to make a pirate flotilla with 3 or 4 of them and go board every SCA destroyer I can find.
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Apr 27, 2020 10:40
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On the other hand it can reverse faster than most ships can fly forward and M guns outrange S. Its forward profile is not very big either. Just never, ever, ever, get into a dogfight with more than one ship. The Dragon is the epitome of Split.
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Apr 27, 2020 11:28
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Perfect for bullying borons.
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Apr 27, 2020 11:51
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Hey Owl, what kind of weapons do you use on your Dragon, out of curiosity? Since I know it can use standard CoP weapons, but on Roguey's site it only lists (presumably found only in Split turf) some other weapons, without being able to compare with regular guns, annoyingly. So, should I use my Nemesis guns (plasmas with two ions) or are there better options available to the Split? Since I've got nooo idea whether thermal disintegrators and boson lances etc are actually ANY good
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Apr 27, 2020 12:05
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I use VRO so I can't give you the best advice, but I will say when I tried it in vanilla I had a lot of fun with the split guns that do damage over time. You tag a fighter with one and it will lose a lot of health, and they also can give some really good damage to larger targets too. Can't remember what they were called though, possibly the thermal ones? The split guns generally are powerful but inaccurate, so they work better the closer you get to the target. The way you generally play it is you want maximum damage in the shortest amount of time, so anything with a high alpha strike that you can dump all the heat capacity into a target quickly will be a decent choice. Another option would be anything that punches through shields if you want to use it to destroy surface elements on large ships, not sure what (if any) M guns in vanilla do that. I also want to try doing a meme build where you slap all railguns on it, and see how much damage a volley of six of them will do to medium/large targets  Wouldn't be useful for a regular fight though cos they have no gimballing at all, they literally fire straight forward so you can't even get them all to hit something smaller than the width of your own gun mounts. Kinda weird honestly that world war 2 fighter technology has been lost in the space year whatever. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 12:09
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I've spent a lot of time in both Dragon variants in vanilla (i.e. no VRO). Both are cool, but as mentioned once modded the Raider becomes impossibly fast compared to everything else in the game and as agile as most scouts to boot. For weapons I recommend tau accelerators, which are the Split version of the shard cannon. Unmodded they will still shred any S or M ship in a couple of seconds, which is perfect for the crazy hit and run style of dogfighting you'll be doing. With mods you can tear apart a Xenon P in about a single second while strafing by at 1400 m/s and then power sliding to your next victim in complete disregard for physics or any sense of the word 'sim' in "space sim". It's legitimately a rush once you get a handle on everything. And yeah there's also the comedy option of the 6x Split railgun loadout. You can delete a Xenon P once every minute or so and that's about it. Pretty funny for 10 minutes, but the cooldown is way too long for any real use.
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Apr 27, 2020 14:43
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timn posted:I've spent a lot of time in both Dragon variants in vanilla (i.e. no VRO). Both are cool, but as mentioned once modded the Raider becomes impossibly fast compared to everything else in the game and as agile as most scouts to boot. Hmm, well how effective is the Tau Accelerator against shields? Since my main plan was to use it like I use the Nemesis - as a capital ship killer. I read a little more about the Thermal Disintegrators, and apparently some damage punches through shields, like mass drivers in X3 I guess. I figure that might be good on Ks and even Is - like, take out the turrets protecting the main shield generators, then drop the shield generators completely. Would maybe four thermals and two taus be a good mix? The Taus for general use against escorts, and the Thermals (mainly) for use against cap ships
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Apr 27, 2020 14:57
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I played with the thermal disintegrators a little bit and honestly I think their overall damage output is way too low compared to going all in on the tau accelerators. Even against destroyers, the turrets and other sub components don't have very strong shields anyway, and destroyers that aren't the Xenon K aren't that tanky overall either. What you sacrifice in overall damage output is much more than what you gain with the shield penetration imo.
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Apr 27, 2020 15:51
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Man getting higher-skilled pilots is bumming me out. I tried to roll with this as a design decision to push people into building stations instead of just auto-trading for easy money but now I've noticed that my stations assigned traders are also limited by the goddamned same piloting skill and right now the "best" trader I have with 2.5 stars has a 2 jump gate range on auto-trading, severely limiting the profits from a station. I can manually trade from my stations to make up for it but that's getting super boring and time consuming. I'm trying to play without mods yet and I'm going to try filling a Phoenix cargohold with claytronics and assigning a bunch of Elites to defend it; hopefully then when pirates threaten the combat will level them up. Alternatively maybe buying 20 or so Elites and just pushing as far into non-capital Xenon fights as I can to level people up. Bottom line though is goddamn what a baffling decision to limit all the possibilities in this game with that mechanic. I don't get why you would write all these features that require pilot skills that don't appear naturally even after a hundred hours. I've been following the trainwreck thread on the Egosoft forums and the Elite Dangerous-like levels of brown sea posting saying that "well in the military you wouldn't be a trained pilot after a thousand hours so I like this" is loving ridiculous.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:04
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Seriously just mod it if it's annoying you, there's no prize for playing purist and I agree that there's some extremely weird (and extremely german) design decisions in the game. Frankly I think the entire notion of crew skill is a pretty iffy one, especially the number of things it affects.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:09
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OwlFancier posted:Seriously just mod it if it's annoying you, there's no prize for playing purist and I agree that there's some extremely weird (and extremely german) design decisions in the game. Frankly I think the entire notion of crew skill is a pretty iffy one, especially the number of things it affects. I will definitely be modding in the skillbooks if my conscription plan doesn't work out  Also I think achievements aren't even affected by mods this time too right?
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Apr 27, 2020 17:15
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Less Fat Luke posted:Man getting higher-skilled pilots is bumming me out. I tried to roll with this as a design decision to push people into building stations instead of just auto-trading for easy money but now I've noticed that my stations assigned traders are also limited by the goddamned same piloting skill and right now the "best" trader I have with 2.5 stars has a 2 jump gate range on auto-trading, severely limiting the profits from a station. I can manually trade from my stations to make up for it but that's getting super boring and time consuming. I know you said you don't want to mess with mods yet, but this was the sole mod I used as I also found it baffling how the skill system works naturally in-game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1759853091&searchtext=Skill Every 20 minutes your pilots/managers etc have a chance to gain 1 level (1/3 of a star) to one of their skills, with the more more relevant skills to their role having a better chance of increasing. However as their skill level increases, the odds go down that they will get a skill level increase. Feels like a fair and much more sensible way of handling the skill system. You'll still need to put your fresh pilots on auto-mining or ware distribution duty for a while before they can become autotraders, but at least they can eventually get up to that level.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:17
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According to the person who made the Faster Crew Leveling mod, given the vanilla XP gain for traders and miners -- miners currently only get XP from selling their product and not the actual mining, incidentally -- "getting 3 stars in vanilla would take around 13 000 trades, 5 stars would take 40 million". The only way to get 3 stars or higher is to scour stations for expensive pilots or look for missions that give higher star seminars. Possibly your co-pilot might hit it "naturally" in 20 hours or so, since I think that looking at you be competent is currently the fastest way to level. I just installed said Faster Crew Leveling mod, because the vanilla system is stupid goddamn garbage. E: Also yes I'm still getting achievements with Faster Crew Leveling, Smoke & Fire and a few other less intrusive mods. I assume if a mod makes significant changes to the ships and storylines it might disable some flags for related achievements, but there's no hard "if modded then no achievements" check. Xerophyte fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 17:23
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Less Fat Luke posted:I will definitely be modding in the skillbooks if my conscription plan doesn't work out Not sure, I don't think so. The only thing you can't do is ventures but you can mod that too to make an offline equivalent.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:26
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Those requirements are wild. I suspect they'll address this in their next patch honestly.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:31
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Egosoft has always been terrible at balance and looking at numbers, which is pretty funny for a company thats been making spreadsheet games for 20 years.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:35
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The only thing they're worse at is pathfinding algorithms. Just disable collisions you monsters.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:37
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I've definitely gotten some achievements from my *modified* save. I'm using the skill leveling mod and the mod to put waypoints on station scan points because to hell with flying slowly around stations listening for a static sound effect while I'm trying to pay attention to my podcasts.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:39
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Incidentally, if you're running any mods at all you can't do ventures so installing the Paint Jobs for Sale mod is mandatory. Other venture rewards are transient, but making your boat look awesome and/or stupid is forever.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:44
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popewiles posted:I know you said you don't want to mess with mods yet, but this was the sole mod I used as I also found it baffling how the skill system works naturally in-game. I paired this with the mod that lets you buy every kind of seminar from traders at stations. So every time I dock somewhere I make a point to buy out their supply of seminars. After doing this long enough I now have like 100+ of each and can get new ship batches up and running with minimal delay.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:53
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Less Fat Luke posted:The only thing they're worse at is pathfinding algorithms. Just disable collisions you monsters. They've done good on this front in X4. No more autopilot ramming you into a station at full speed and the Game Over screen appearing. Even if it does ram you, it only does a bit of shield damage instead of instant death.
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Apr 27, 2020 18:17
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Thom12255 posted:They've done good on this front in X4. No more autopilot ramming you into a station at full speed and the Game Over screen appearing. Even if it does ram you, it only does a bit of shield damage instead of instant death. That is true but I have been stuck inside models a number of times - it is better than blowing up but teleporting out of sector to fix things gets old That being said I broke down and installed the DFSI mod, seems like a good compromise and I'll do like ChairmanMauzer and add the seminar one to help fast-track certain positions.
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Apr 27, 2020 18:27
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