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I'm never quite sure what I "should" be doing fresh out of the tutorial - just kinda doing missions and wandering around aimlessly again. Tends to happen to me in sandbox games - I need guide rails I guess. At least this time the wandering is happening with properly resolution-scaled UI
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:15 |
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# ? Apr 24, 2024 18:44 |
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Swing by the Galatia system and pop in on the academy. I'm sure they'll have some interesting things for you to do.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:16 |
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Killing power issues aside (and possibly linked to it) I find my fleet inevitably starts to get spread out and eventually a few ships get isolated and either destroyed or nearly so. What can I do to encourage my fleet to keep tighter? I've tried marking points in space to defend, but they then just ball up and don't present a stronger battlefront. My frigates are really starting to suffer too. Hell, last battle I think I lost an Omen because it got crushed between my Champion and my Apogee... Like, dude, what were you doing? I also lost the Fury because it decided to try a crazy flank (with a steady officer!) and got its poo poo pushed in because no one could support it. Ugh, large fleet battles are so much more chaotic and complicated. I am having fun though, but my losses in that battle just made the ~215k reward kind of a wash. I just wish my colonies were making more money to help me care less about losing ships.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:31 |
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So I found an alpha core in a random low level ruin and now I'm terrified hegemony patrols will find it. How do inspections work? Will they take them away if I have them? Is there a safer place to stash my AI's?
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:43 |
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I've been telling my cruisers to escort my Paragon battleship for most of the big battles I've gotten in. Just put literally everyone on escort duty. It's working out okayish, I think there are times when they try to soak damage for the Paragon when it's doing fine and can take the hits instead, or they're reluctant to finish something off because they'd stray too far from their objective, but overall it's kept the fleet tight.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:45 |
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Baronjutter posted:So I found an alpha core in a random low level ruin and now I'm terrified hegemony patrols will find it. How do inspections work? Will they take them away if I have them? Is there a safer place to stash my AI's? There's a few empty stations that you can store stuff in. One is next to the indie planet in the (quick) starting system, another is one of the Luddic Path systems. You can store as much stuff there as you want, including ships, for no charge.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:48 |
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Baronjutter posted:So I found an alpha core in a random low level ruin and now I'm terrified hegemony patrols will find it. How do inspections work? Will they take them away if I have them? Is there a safer place to stash my AI's? They'll only get wind of your AI cores if you're actively using them. If they're just in (heavily shielded) storage containers they're perfectly "safe" (from outside eyes at least).
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:48 |
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Baronjutter posted:So I found an alpha core in a random low level ruin and now I'm terrified hegemony patrols will find it. How do inspections work? Will they take them away if I have them? Is there a safer place to stash my AI's? Just put it in any storage its fine. If you get stoppes by the Hegemony because of transponder off or black market activity they'll confiscate any cores that are actually on your fleet, and they only inspect your colonies if you actually use them
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:49 |
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In fact, the station near the Luddic path is great for stockpiling poo poo to sell to them later when the price is right.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:51 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:What are some of people's favorite low-tech flagships? I'm a little burnt out on the high tech blaster boat and phase ship lifestyle -- they're fantastic but I do them every game. Whether you load it asymmetrically to optimize OP usage, or symmetrically and using the armour on both sides of the ship, it provides a fairly unique experience either way, since no other ship goes quite all in on the broadside gimmick like the Conquest does. For an actual low-tech suggestion I'll second the Legion as a fun brick.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 17:56 |
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Killing power issues aside (and possibly linked to it) I find my fleet inevitably starts to get spread out and eventually a few ships get isolated and either destroyed or nearly so. What can I do to encourage my fleet to keep tighter? I've tried marking points in space to defend, but they then just ball up and don't present a stronger battlefront. It's pretty basic, but I generally just use two Defend points about 1.5 map squares apart from each other to form my battle line and it generally works for keeping the fleet together without them clumping up and getting in each other's way. Just do that in the middle of the map and then move them forward as the battle progresses (or backwards if you're getting encircled).
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 18:06 |
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CONQUEST CONQUEST CONQUEST CONQUEST
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 18:06 |
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El Spamo posted:CONQUEST CONQUEST CONQUEST CONQUEST If only this were still possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqeSrnrbuUc
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 18:07 |
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Killing power issues aside (and possibly linked to it) I find my fleet inevitably starts to get spread out and eventually a few ships get isolated and either destroyed or nearly so. What can I do to encourage my fleet to keep tighter? I've tried marking points in space to defend, but they then just ball up and don't present a stronger battlefront.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 18:27 |
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El Spamo posted:Swing by the Galatia system and pop in on the academy. I'm sure they'll have some interesting things for you to do. The interesting things to do seem to mostly be at the very edge of the map, requiring far more fuel and supplies than you can reasonably afford early on. In general the early game seems worse and less fun than in previous versions. Carriers/fighters seem bad, profitable missions are harder to come by, and the only good suggestion I've seen for making cash is selling loads of drugs. I'm not sure how drug trading is supposed to be more engaging than the regular trading that the ludicrous 30% tariffs are meant to make unprofitable, but I guess I'll give it a try. On the other hand, I did find a contact who helped me steal a Falcon for a mere 24k + 50 marines, which was nice. I was expecting an actual fight, though. I just clicked through and some text appeared about how the marines went pew pew and the Falcon was mine.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 18:46 |
Is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3Xvnw9-rcedZpP7e7lChHSvMUnTyDL7o08dlVPTvuE/edit still useful for fitting advice?
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 18:55 |
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Ciaphas posted:I'm never quite sure what I "should" be doing fresh out of the tutorial - just kinda doing missions and wandering around aimlessly again. Tends to happen to me in sandbox games - I need guide rails I guess. Seconding the Galatia academy plot quests (and their semi-randomized lead-in). They're balanced with an early-game player in mind, plus it's mostly a mix of diplomacy and (appropriately cheap) bribes + exploration missions anyways -- no need to take fights you aren't confident in. It also unlocks a bunch of utility skills for free that would normally be packaged with skill selections, and gives you extra story points. In terms of "what should you be doing" the truth is anything is fine as long as you're not running out of money and as long as you're having fun. Getting to the "endgame" mostly just means money and equipment availability stop being problems, which is great if you like tinkering and optimizing but bad if you find limitations and scraping by enjoyable in their own right. Personally, I find that not being able to outfit a ship exactly the way I want makes my eye twitch, so I focus on bootstrapping my way to colonies and infinite money sooner rather than later. My usual approach is something like: - With a default start (e.g. only a Wolf frigate + one other ship) I hang around NPC battles until I can scavenge a few extra combat frigates and some decent weapons, and buy a Dram on the market and fill it up. You can skip this by taking the "explorer" Apogee + fleet background, which I recommend unless you really enjoy the notion of starting from nothing. - Do exploration missions, particularly for probes, survey ships, and research stations, although you pretty much take what you can get. The Derelict enemies that you face in these missions are specifically designed as tutorial / newbie content, and the AI cores they drop provide a good source of both money and reputation. - Consider taking a commission when you hit 10 standing with a faction. A lot of newbie guides are like "oh no! stay away from commissions!" but this is nonsense. It's true that you'll get pulled into the faction's wars, but all you really have to do about that is not try to stop and refuel in a system that hates you. In return you get free money and (eventually, as your standing with your chosen faction increases) the ability to buy better weapons and hulls. - Gradually expand your fleet until it's about 9-10 combat ships, probably like 2-3 cruisers and the rest destroyers and frigates. Upgrade your Drams to a Phaethon, and whatever smaller freighters you're using to a Colossus once you get Augmented Drive Field mod (but not before, they'll slow you down on the world map otherwise). Gather officers to pilot your combat ships. Optimizing officer skills and personality is something I could write an entire separate guide about, but for now I'll just say make sure that each of them at least has one of the industry skills that makes their ships near-guaranteed recoverable. - With good fittings a fleet as described above can hit way above its weight class without being completely prohibitive from a logistical standpoint. This lets you take on combat bounties and make way more money than exploration, as well as taking on more capable and interesting enemies since you'll have outgrown most derelict enemies by now. - Another good thing to do through all of this -- save any weapons you find and dump them at an abandoned station like the one in Corvus. Abandoned stations have no storage fees and you can use your weapon collection to outfit new ships the way you want. The profit from selling weapons is negligible, while having access to rare or limited-availability when you need them for a fit is priceless. You can do this with hulls too if you find a ship you want but can't afford to maintain or can't fit properly. - Save up about 500k-1m credits. This is going to be your fund for establishing your first colony. Older guides recommended 1-2m or even more, but the most recent patch made it so that core world faction categorically do not raid level 3 colonies, which gives you way more breathing room. Hopefully during your exploration phase you will have found a good low-hazard, habitable world. While a perfect 50% hazard Terran world would be nice, location matters more -- you want something close to the core worlds for the accessibility bonus, which will have more of an effect on profitability than a small variation in hazard would, plus it's better for using as a waystation / base of operations. Turn on hazard pay but don't turn on freeport just yet. - Colony management and optimization is another "you could write an entire separate guide about this" topics -- these are easy to google or I'm happy to answer questions but I'm not going into too much detail here because this is already super long. The one thing I will say is that the secret to making profitable colonies is fulfilling as many of your imports in-faction as possible -- if you can form what's basically a self-sufficient economy among your colonies, even high-hazard worlds can generate a lot of money. - Keep doing missions and stuff through all of this, colonies take a lot of time to grow and the first one is the slowest since you're not using free ports or AI to accelerate the process. You may wish to use story points to accelerate your colony's growth or to offset negative events -- I ended up using mine to shore up stability, mostly, but accessibility isn't a bad call either. If you find later that the upgrades you made were pointless or overkill, you can destroy and rebuild the associated industry -- this costs a lot of credits, but in the endgame money is trivial and story points are scarce. - Once you have a few large-sized colonies that can fend off expeditions on their own, you basically have an infinite money machine that's near-entirely passive. Your focus is now finding blueprints so you can build literally whatever fleet composition and loadout you want, bullying the core worlds for fun and profit (since by this point pirate shitfits won't really be much of a challenge unless you've been deliberately feeding them upgrade items and blueprints), or tackling the handful of endgame threat easter eggs. Anyways, this is already a small novel despite all the stuff I feel like I've skipped over, so if you need more guidance on any of these steps feel free to ask, but this is basically the big-picture progression through different stages of the game. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Apr 8, 2021 |
# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:08 |
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Zane posted:the engage order gives a 'soft' direction to where your fleet should engage. eliminate and avoid are 'harder' directions. in large fleet battles i often manually make my frigates escort my destroyers and cruisers. this solves 80% of problems. Yeah, I would try Engage first as it's supposed to be dynamic. Same for Escort actually, if you need it - putting the Escort order itself on the ship will keep it covered even if you retreat the previous escort and maybe bring in reinforcements. The problem I have with Escort is sometimes the escorted ship overloads a target, but the escort will cover its flanks when it closes in to follow up, which often means giving up a chance to dive in and drop the Hammers. But if both ships are there because of an Engage order anyway, they should use the torpedoes properly.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:13 |
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eXXon posted:The interesting things to do seem to mostly be at the very edge of the map, requiring far more fuel and supplies than you can reasonably afford early on. I almost never sell on the regular market. I sometimes buy there if I'm buying cheap stuff or stuff that sells for a ludicrous price elsewhere. Just always sell on the black market. If you keep a fast fleet and position yourself right, the patrols are never going to catch you, and it's fairly easy to compensate a few points of faction relations. If you want a solid start, head to trytach space, and check out the bars, there's likely going to be someone willing to loan you 200k in return for 300k after about a year. And you don't even need to return it if you plan to be hostile with TT. You don't need to trade drugs, just buy low and sell high. Every so often, a trade convoy is going to explode, and a planet is going to find itself short on something. Keep checking prices, there's always something that's needed somewhere. Even basic supplies can fluctuate wildly in price, and you need them anyway. Probably the best prices to keep an eye on are domestic goods, supplies, drugs, marines, and weapons. Domestic goods are particularly good early on, you can easily get a triple return on initial investement if you find both a high supply and high demand planets. When you're near capacity, buy a few cheap cargo ships (shepherds, hounds, cerberi, etc). They're usually not as efficient in terms of fuel and supply use as bigger ships, but they're much cheaper than them. It's not a bad idea to grab some ships with shielded cargo holds. Additionally, the cheap frigate freighters also double as passable combat ships. This is important for the purpose of deterence. Small, fast pirate fleets won't bother you much, and you can run the gently caress away from the big ones. You can opportunistically hunt down Luddic Path patrol fleets when you're able to for the purpose of expanding your fleet. Once you've got 20 or so ships, you can start growing a combat fleet and getting a few more efficient logistics ships, selling off the worst old ships to make room if needed. Try to keep your fleet fast and your sensor profile low. Your fleet moves as fast as your slowest ship, and your sensor profile is based on the 5 "loudest" ships you have. The minimum for a non-phase ship is 30, even if it says that you reduced it below that, so try to use militarized hulls and insulated engine assemblies to keep everyone as close to that level as possible. You don't necessarily need to sneak a lot, but you do want to see other fleets before they see you.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:17 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:
New question: I dislike almost all of the Refit screen, to the point where I really cannot be bothered with anything but Autoconfig (which, I suspect, is awful). Are there any UI mods for that? It would be great to just see a text list or table of mount points, the mounted weapon and their stats - the popups make it harder than you'd think it would be for me to get the bigger picture, especially while I have no idea what weapons/ships are out there or, frankly, what the gently caress I'm doing
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:18 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:
Thanks a bunch for this its a great write up and I really appreciated it.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:20 |
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ChickenWing posted:Is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3Xvnw9-rcedZpP7e7lChHSvMUnTyDL7o08dlVPTvuE/edit still useful for fitting advice? still mostly accurate. most of the stuff that got nerfed this patch went from "hilariously OP why would you ever even think of not using this" to... still being perfectly good at what it does. like you're not going to not put Expanded Deck Crew on carriers just because it got nerfed, the hell else are you gonna do with that OP?
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:23 |
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Ciaphas posted:Thanks, that was an excellent read! The Weapon Groups page gives you a table view and flux stats, though just for mounted weapons. Picking a new weapon for a slot is harder since it's only telling you what's available rather than what you could have, though you can browse all the weapons in the Codex from the main menu.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:25 |
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Ciaphas posted:Thanks, that was an excellent read! the four guides in the OP of this post on the Starsector forums were written for 0.91 but are still largely accurate; 0.95's balance changes were very reasonable and mostly just reined in some of the best and worst outliers: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=19611.0 Most of the default fittings in the game are actually pretty decent -- not amazing, but good enough at their job. The problem I find is that: a) this assumes that you actually have all the fittings to make the fit, which is rarely the case in the early game -- and auto-config trying to make do with whatever random junk is available in the local system will mostly produce crap fits. b) fleet composition matters as much as individual loadouts, and a ship being "good at its job" does you no good if you don't know what the very ambiguously-named job actually is and whether you need it or not. In a small fleet, especially, it's important to have more generalist damage dealers instead of ships specialized for long-range artillery or screening or anchoring or many other things that are important and valuable later on but meaningless when you're, like, a cruiser and a couple of frigates fighting wimpy but numerous enemies like derelicts or pirates. Certain guns are much more suited to this generalist role than others -- off the top of my head the Pulse Laser and it's little cousin the IR Pulse Laser are great examples, and on ballistic fits it usually means finding an anti-shield and anti-armor weapon with the same range and matching them together on the same ship. Conversely, the bigger your fleet is (and the more willing you are to micromanage with command points), the more you can afford to specialize. It can be incredibly effective to have all kinds of weird stuff in your fleet -- frigates that only exist to be mobile PD for bigger ships, tanks/anchors that define battle lines while focusing more on flux management than actual offense, long-range glass cannon snipers, phase ship assassins, missile boats like the Falcon (P) that can instantly murder several times their own OP in enemy ships but then run out of ammo and become helpless, etc. You just have to get a feel for how they work together and what it takes to make them shine, which takes a lot of practice and experience. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Apr 8, 2021 |
# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:34 |
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Also, if you settle a colony, you don't need to think of it as something that you'll keep forever. Like, a mining colony on some ball of lava rich in both kinds of ore can be very profitable, and you don't need a lot of cash to set it up. If it never grows - good. When you don't need it anymore, abandon it. Also, when you're out exploring, you can set up a tech mining outpost that doubles as a resupply base. Again, if you don't need it anymore, just abandon it.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:36 |
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Here's an alternate starting method: 1. Acquire a freighter. One with "Shielded Cargo Holds" is preferred, but not necessary. 2. Go to a colony. Any colony. Open the black market tab. 3. Hover over the illegal drugs, heavy weapons etc. and push F1 to see which colonies have a deficit. 4. Sell these unfortunate souls what they need at a ridiculous markup on the black market. 5. (Optional) Pick up 100-300 Marines and raid colonies to help ensure there are deficits to exploit. Either pick a core empire as a designated whipping boy or harvest Luddic Path/Pirate tears. This will not only net you millions of credits in short order, it also gives you loads of XP for "Profitable Trades". If you are caught by patrols with your transponder off, use a story point to get off scot-free and simultaneously boost your XP gain. Visit the bars at each colony you visit to see if there are any good missions; many of them are piss-easy and award good money. If you grab the first-tier Bulk Cargo skill (you should!), a single Dram and Buffalo will give you enough of a cushion to do some exploring--enough to handle the early Galatia Academy missions for even more cash. Once you have a million or two in the bank, your options are wide-open and it really becomes a question of what you feel like doing next.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:46 |
abrosheen posted:How exactly do you successfully install the comm sniffer in Aztlan for the story mission? I tried stealthing in with a single phase frigate and no dice. The more phase ships you have in your fleet the lower your sensor profile. I ended up grabbing 3 phase frigates, the tech skill that makes you less detectable and waited until the patrol was orbiting the objective at a longer distance, then went dark and snuck in there.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 19:59 |
my dad posted:Also, if you settle a colony, you don't need to think of it as something that you'll keep forever. Like, a mining colony on some ball of lava rich in both kinds of ore can be very profitable, and you don't need a lot of cash to set it up. If it never grows - good. When you don't need it anymore, abandon it. Also, when you're out exploring, you can set up a tech mining outpost that doubles as a resupply base. Again, if you don't need it anymore, just abandon it. I read a post somewhere that said you should literally always carry enough supplies for a colony because every ruin is a chance for an Alpha AI core, which pays for a colony and then some.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 20:19 |
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my dad posted:In fact, the station near the Luddic path is great for stockpiling poo poo to sell to them later when the price is right. Basically just finished my first big playthru of .95 and Chalcedon was buying supplies, fuel, luxury goods, drugs, marines, and heavy weaponry for 2-3x base price from day one. I made uncounted millions just supplying poo poo to the space jihad and the only time they weren't desperate for any of that crap is immediately after I'd dumped a huge load of it on their black market. I know this was sorta always the case, but did something change because they were basically never not utterly desperate and I never saw anyone else in system loving with them.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 21:27 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:What are some of people's favorite low-tech flagships? I'm a little burnt out on the high tech blaster boat and phase ship lifestyle -- they're fantastic but I do them every game. Onslaught, by a mile. Excellent occasional use forward firepower, high mobility system (which gets significantly better with the skill) massive ballistic firepower and superb PD coverage.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 22:29 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:What are some of people's favorite low-tech flagships? I'm a little burnt out on the high tech blaster boat and phase ship lifestyle -- they're fantastic but I do them every game. Falcon-P missile boat! Put your best officers in your front line capitals and cruisers, and use its mobility to flank and finish off with salvos.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 22:32 |
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My favorite low-tech flagship is... the lasher. And once I'm done with frigates I never get in another low-tech ship. They're too drat slow, and can't carry nearly enough big guns to make it worth it. I am currently learning that I really like mid-line, but the Apogee used to be my favorite. So much shield. Too bad the AI isn't very good with it.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 00:20 |
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Mondian posted:Basically just finished my first big playthru of .95 and Chalcedon was buying supplies, fuel, luxury goods, drugs, marines, and heavy weaponry for 2-3x base price from day one. I made uncounted millions just supplying poo poo to the space jihad and the only time they weren't desperate for any of that crap is immediately after I'd dumped a huge load of it on their black market. I know this was sorta always the case, but did something change because they were basically never not utterly desperate and I never saw anyone else in system loving with them. I believe it's because the Path is always hostile with everyone, and thus doesn't get shipments from anyone (Except maybe smugglers? Their commodity needs do seem to fluctuate).
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 00:24 |
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Mondian posted:Basically just finished my first big playthru of .95 and Chalcedon was buying supplies, fuel, luxury goods, drugs, marines, and heavy weaponry for 2-3x base price from day one. I made uncounted millions just supplying poo poo to the space jihad and the only time they weren't desperate for any of that crap is immediately after I'd dumped a huge load of it on their black market. I know this was sorta always the case, but did something change because they were basically never not utterly desperate and I never saw anyone else in system loving with them. They're always getting hosed, and selling to the black market doesn't resolve the shortage either, last I checked.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 01:00 |
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So there should be 13 new weapons introduced in 0.95a. In my game, having cleared out both Coronal Hypershunts, I found ten of them, so the distribution must be at least semi-random (which is annoying; only finding out after you've beaten everything there is to see that you don't have enough Rift Lances to complete the loadout of your dreams is pretty obnoxious), and the wiki is incomplete but lists one more that didn't drop for me. I need help determining what the other two are. My list is: Antimatter SRM Launcher Cryoblaster Cryoflamer Disintegrator Minipulser Reality Disruptor Resonator MRM Launcher Rift Lance Rift Torpedo Launcher Shock Repeater Volatile Particle Driver Also I would like to make a minimod that makes it so that the Tesseract encounters drop blueprints instead of / in addition to the weapons as loot but I have no idea where to even start. I've made a few incredibly basic ship tweaks in the past but I've never done any encounter / loot modding.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 01:09 |
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That reminds me I kinda wish you could apply a paint job to ships, even if it was just a limited selection of alternative sprites. It’d be cool to have your faction’s ships painted different from everyone else.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 01:14 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:So there should be 13 new weapons introduced in 0.95a. I haven't confirmed this myself but according to a reddit comment if you develop a high level Tri Tach contact they can give you bounties for tesseracts
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 01:17 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:So there should be 13 new weapons introduced in 0.95a. You're missing the medium and large rift lances, the large one is called rift cascade or something. In the game files they're riftbeam and riftcascade TastyAvocado fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Apr 9, 2021 |
# ? Apr 9, 2021 01:18 |
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Amy tips for running a phase-heavy fleet? It runs counter to my usual instincts of throwing armored rocks/hordes of bombers at every and any problem.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 01:22 |
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# ? Apr 24, 2024 18:44 |
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all I know is that if you throw story points at the historian he (or she) can eventually offer you 14th legion blue prints. its pretty awesome.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 01:27 |