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ZearothK posted:Getting involved in the Caen family missions will always at least tank your reputation with their rival faction. Keeping a positive/neutral reputation while doing quests is easier if you go with the Arbiter, as she'll help you develop contacts in a multitude of factions while not offending any too much. I found the enemy faction allied with enough other factions that huge swathes of space were barred to me. Can you buy bigger fuel tanks?
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Nov 14, 2018 19:21
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dreadmojo posted:I found the enemy faction allied with enough other factions that huge swathes of space were barred to me. Can you buy bigger fuel tanks? You can, but the more important thing is to have an engine that burns more efficiently. Getting one that is only 1 or 2 fuel per AU makes a big difference for how often you have to stop. willing to settle posted:one of the biggest things to learn about the game, in my opinion, is reputation management This is very true. My second serious playthrough I made a point to take time out to build rep to at least 30 with every faction except the one I cratered with Faen quests (started as Zenrin so Rychart was in the shitter) and it's a completely different game. It's definitely the way to go if you want to avoid ship combat, do trading, etc. aparmenideanmonad fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Nov 15, 2018 |
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Nov 15, 2018 02:09
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That would help, the biggest issue with making lots of enemies is how much it restricts your movements.
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Nov 15, 2018 02:12
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One tip I've picked up from watching a random LP is to just hit spy / patrol basically every time you hit orbit just to see the card pull. If you get a decent hand with minimal risk you might as well just go for it (assuming you're under no time pressure.) It doesn't cost anything to just look. I completely ignored that stuff for a long time because I assumed I needed better skills and reroll talents to actually get anything done but nah.
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Nov 15, 2018 02:52
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Yeah, intel is really helpful, especially to bump rep with contacts who don't give missions. Random spying is pretty painless, especially once your E-techs are all level 8+.
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Nov 15, 2018 02:55
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I would honestly love a mod that did nothing but changed 'star trader' to 'rogue trader', it's just such a badass name for what they do.
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Nov 15, 2018 03:18
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My two long term captains were spies and yeah, Intel is fantastic for building up rep without also pissing people off and builds up contact influence pretty quickly so you can access their service, plus it tends to have a good weight on conflict scores. Definitely worth it. By the way, what does conflict score even do? I know the faction with greatest score "wins" the conflict, but what does that mean in game? Bonus influence for characters involved in the winning side and loss for the losers?
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Nov 15, 2018 12:06
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dreadmojo posted:I would honestly love a mod that did nothing but changed 'star trader' to 'rogue trader', it's just such a badass name for what they do. I just wish we could mod the game at all. For a team of developers that is so generally receptive to requests from their player base, I’m surprised that they haven’t worked on mod support.
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Nov 15, 2018 16:10
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dreadmojo posted:I would honestly love a mod that did nothing but changed 'star trader' to 'rogue trader', it's just such a badass name for what they do. Also change the factions to various sub-sectors of the Imperium, put some xeno territories on the outskirts, and change "Arbiter" to "Inquistor".
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Nov 15, 2018 18:45
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willing to settle posted:Also, one of the biggest things to learn about the game, in my opinion, is reputation management. You need to get yourself to a place where you can stay neutral or mildly positive with most factions. You're gonna want stuff like rep loss mitigation talents, and talents that let you avoid fights. Eventually you'll get to a point where you're slowly building rep with basically everyone just by doing normal poo poo, and will only have like a couple of serious enemies. That makes sense. If you have positive rep with someone it's probably easy to keep it in the green because you can just hail them every now and then. Right now unfortunately, I only have positive rep with Steel Song and Cadar Syndicate, everyone else kind of hates me. I'm trying to do top dollar missions for those two factions, but the problem is that those keep pitting me against enemies that I can't defeat. I still have the starting ship with only a few upgrades. I should probably grind some other factions for a bit.
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Nov 15, 2018 20:11
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Also change the factions to various sub-sectors of the Imperium, put some xeno territories on the outskirts, and change "Arbiter" to "Inquistor". Why does everyone want dumb 40k names for everything?
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Nov 15, 2018 20:14
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I must have crossed some sort of scaling threshold because now I'm getting wrecked by everyone I see. I just lost to some random Alta Mesa ship and they apparently imprisoned me for several years (!!!). I like this game but the ship combat is just too brutal for me, I have no idea how to make my ship not suck. I'm thinking of starting over while trying to maintain positive rep with everyone from the beginning.
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Nov 15, 2018 20:50
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Phlegmish posted:I must have crossed some sort of scaling threshold because now I'm getting wrecked by everyone I see. I just lost to some random Alta Mesa ship and they apparently imprisoned me for several years (!!!). I like this game but the ship combat is just too brutal for me, I have no idea how to make my ship not suck. I'm thinking of starting over while trying to maintain positive rep with everyone from the beginning. So: pre:Distance 5 ----------------> 4 ----------------> 3 ---------------------> 2 -----------------------> 1 Actions Buff/Cripple Buff/Cripple Boarding Assault Boarding Assault Buff/Cripple/None Advance Advance Advance Advance Board Shoot Shoot Shoot Shoot Shoot
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Nov 15, 2018 22:52
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Panzeh posted:Why does everyone want dumb 40k names for everything? Because they're fun?
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Nov 16, 2018 00:12
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Panzeh posted:Why does everyone want dumb 40k names for everything? Presumably because they enjoy 40k, find the rogue trader aspects of 40k the most interesting, and while happy to have this as a good game in that style they still want it to more directly scratch that itch on an aesthetic level.
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Nov 16, 2018 00:26
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Phlegmish posted:I must have crossed some sort of scaling threshold because now I'm getting wrecked by everyone I see. I just lost to some random Alta Mesa ship and they apparently imprisoned me for several years (!!!). I like this game but the ship combat is just too brutal for me, I have no idea how to make my ship not suck. I'm thinking of starting over while trying to maintain positive rep with everyone from the beginning. I'd say that unless you take A or B for ship priority you will want to focus on avoiding the hell out of any space fights until you've had upgrades. Get Stiff Salute on a Commander character at level 1 (your main or officer if none of your starting contacts offers the hires) so you can avoid even starting combat against Zealots and Military ships, which are the worst encounters short of Xenos. Going for Boarding is also very effective, like Woebin posted, but then make a priority upgrading your weapon's locker to improve the odds there. Plasma guns also do a lot of damage to crew, so they have a decent synergy with that strategy. Even then, I'd still describe ship-combat as the highest risk activity in the game, as even if you win it will often be pricy to pay for any repairs. It is, frankly, my least favorite part, so I tend to pick careers that avoid it.
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Nov 16, 2018 00:37
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Phlegmish posted:I must have crossed some sort of scaling threshold because now I'm getting wrecked by everyone I see. I just lost to some random Alta Mesa ship and they apparently imprisoned me for several years (!!!). I like this game but the ship combat is just too brutal for me, I have no idea how to make my ship not suck. I'm thinking of starting over while trying to maintain positive rep with everyone from the beginning. Bumping up armor and shields also helps with crew attrition; a cheap upgrade (both in $$ and time) is upgrading officer bunks to reinforced bunks for the extra armor and shielding. Soft skills like Tactics and Command also throw a bunch of extra small dice into a bunch of crew and ship combat checks, so having a few Military Officers and Commanders makes a bigger difference than you'd think.
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Nov 16, 2018 04:55
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Is there a decent somewhat up to date (I know it adds stuff so fast that it can't be 100% accurate) beginner guide for this? I keep trying to sink into it but I keep bouncing off.
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Nov 16, 2018 05:27
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Is there a decent somewhat up to date (I know it adds stuff so fast that it can't be 100% accurate) beginner guide for this? https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Getting_Started_Guide Play on the easiest difficulty and roll up as this directs and you'll be fine assuming you pay at least minimal attention. Not "fine" in a "I've beaten the game and will never have to play again" kind of way, but you'll probably have a successful run and get an idea of what to do on your next playthrough. Early game behavior changes drastically based on difficulty, so ramp up slowly and figure out what things you need to do differently to survive to the midgame.
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Nov 16, 2018 09:03
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Thanks for the help, guys. I've decided to start yet another playthrough with the following in mind: - Keep reputation with everyone in the positive. I guess I'll have to be very particular about the missions I accept, keep trade wars in mind, and switch factions often. I'm assuming I'll need the E-tech (?) talent that gives you a chance to learn about faction contacts when you land on a planet. Anything else similar to that? Finding out about contacts is difficult. Stiff Salute will allow me to avoid combat, anything else? - Rely on boarding when I do get into ship combat. - Get upgrades even when they don't seem very useful of themselves. One thing I don't like is how opaque the dice roll system is, sometimes I fail a test even when I rolled higher dice. I don't get that one - the reverse does make sense because you're triggering a talent.
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Nov 16, 2018 11:43
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Phlegmish posted:Thanks for the help, guys. I've decided to start yet another playthrough with the following in mind: If you're trying to keep reputation up, a Diplomat crewmember is a good one to have. At level 5 they get a talent that reduces reputation loss from missions (and at 8 they reduce rep loss from ship battles). Since you're picking E-Techs, their Signature Jammer skill also reduces reputation loss from ship encounters - which definitely adds up over time. Smugglers get a similar talent to avoid combat with fellow smugglers, but that's not as important as they're not a captain class that tends to be too aggressive, there might be other classes and talents that just shut down combat that I don't know of. There are a bunch of rep damage reduction talents in Spy too, and probably other careers, with spy having the bonus of a lot of talents to manipulate the cards in the spying action, so you can improve the odds of getting that "Contact Introduction" effect. To accumulate contacts, Merchant has two level 1 talents that help you find ones. One that procs every time you make a trade worth 5k or more (relatively big in the early game, but trivial once you're on your feet) and another with a chance to trigger when going to spice-halls, if you get both you will have more contacts than you know what to do with by the mid-game. E-Techs are not the best at this since their required talent is level 8, which takes a while to get to unless you have experience at A - which I honestly don't recommend, but E-Techs are pretty useful anyway, so might as well pick a few. Naturally, always check out who your contact can introduce you to after you have some influence with them. The Arbiter Questline in the early game will introduce you to a bunch of contacts in varied factions, so that's a good one too, but be ready for some ship combat in that case.
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Nov 16, 2018 12:06
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Alright, I'm going to pick secondary careers in Diplomat, Merchant, and Spy. Wish me luck. Which starting class would you recommend, Explorer? Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Nov 16, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 12:46
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Why Spy with Diplomat and Merchant? Spy doesn't synergize with the either of the two. My starting captains are usually military officer/commander/zealot 1 for command stats/buff bot during crew fights, pistoleer/spy or assassin/spy 2/swordsman with evasion for front row fights or explorer/exo-scout/sniper for backrow sniping. I should try a medic captain sometimes. I think electronics is kind of a waste on a captain/officer slot since I always have way too many e-techs. Starting class can be whatever bonus that floats your boat. Oh and fyi you can hold a pistol/knife if you have at least a point in both either from character creation or from jobs, might not seem like much but 3 points of parry is useful. I always pick up extra doctors and folks with command in their jobs early on, command is necessary in space fights and failing doctor rolls always suck.
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Nov 16, 2018 13:17
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Phlegmish posted:Alright, I'm going to pick secondary careers in Diplomat, Merchant, and Spy. Wish me luck. It depends on what you want to do, really. If you're thinking of avoiding combat, I'd suggest taking up either Spy or Merchant as your primary careers. Spy missions often end up having crew combat, note, but you can avoid choosing the ones that would involve ship battles. (and yeah, if you take spy it is good to also put some skill points into blades at character creation so you can wield Sword + Pistol, or take up Assassin as well and go all in into combat). Explorer also doesn't involve ship combat directly in its core activity, but at least when I last played it was a pretty difficult career to make good money at, and the really valuable stuff (Xeno Artefacts) will require Black Market Access, so there are caveats to it. Oh yeah, if you leave a crew slot open you will eventually get a stowaway event when leaving an urban planet that can award you a Smuggler character, which is pretty handy. It reliably triggers in the first two years if you can afford to not have a full crew for a bit. Another rep maintenance action is patrolling, now that I think of it, many of its available cards improve reputation with the local faction, so you can check out the options you have when stopping at a planet. The risk is that patrols will put you in encounters with dangerous ships, but again, it doesn't cost anything to check what the cards are.
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Nov 16, 2018 15:45
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Phlegmish posted:That makes sense. If you have positive rep with someone it's probably easy to keep it in the green because you can just hail them every now and then. You need to keep your ship upgraded, the enemies scale surprisingly quickly. Try to focus primarily on either weapons and armor (probably the most expensive route), board chance and weapon locker (will still need some shield/armor) or just running away (it's totally legit to get into the combat mini-game and then just bail). You'll be sticking with your starting ship for a long time, I normally play mission-heavy and I'm generally looking at getting my second during the early Third Age, which is one of the later stages of the game at the current phase of development. Just the Frontier Liner or something similar can carry you a long way. Make sure also, for combat, that you're getting the right talents. Anything with +defense or +evade is really good, as is anything that helps you close distance if you want to board. Bounty Hunters (recruitable from the arbiter) have a nice talent that lets you board at range 5 if you're fighting a mission target, which can help.
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Nov 16, 2018 17:51
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Ship combat is an arcane system and I have prepared this Effort Post to try to explain how it works, and how you can improve your odds. The most important thing is to have a good chance to avoid attacks. Since each hit sustained will damage systems, crew health, and crew morale, in addition to potentially adding debuffs to your ship, it is very important to get hit as little as possible. Each hit will make it more difficult to evade future attacks and take actions. In order to evade attacks, the most important skill is Pilot. When you look at your ship's stats, you'll see something like Pilot: [30/20], followed by a progress bar. The first number is the combined Pilot skill of your crew. The second number is the Pilot capacity of your ship, this is provided by the installed modules on your ship. The progress bar and attached percentage number are overcapacity - they help you to pass skill checks that rely on Pilot, however, in combat, you only benefit from pilot skill up to the capacity number. Installing Pilot Assist modules in your small slots is a very efficient way to boost your capacity - the top grade one gives +7. Mass Modulators in your small slots also give a small bonus, +3, if you are struggling with mass limits. Upgrading your bridge, engine, and hyperwarp drive can also give you benefits to your piloting capacity. In addition, your engine statistics, Electronics skill up to ship electronics capacity, and Command skill also add to your defense skill, but have a weaker effect than Pilot. Command skill is worthy of note as the bonus it provides is not limited by ship components. Here's the wiki page that shows the formula. https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Ship_Combat#Ship_Combat_Dice_Pools There are also percentage bonuses applied for differences in Engine Score - which is the difference between your engine statistics and the opponents - these are applied both when an attack is made and when evasion of that attack is attempted, effectively doubling them. This gives faster or more agile ships a natural bonus against slower (larger) ones. Modules can be installed that give percentage bonuses to your ship's Defense, but these take up space that could host a Pilot Assist module. So consider carefully before you install one. Finally, you can add a further percentage bonus to Defense with combat Talents such as Evasive Maneuvers, Steady Hands, Barrel Roll and Vigilant Scanners. It's a good idea to start the combat with one of these skills. These effects stack, so consider having multiple uses of these on different crew and firing them continuously until you feel safe. You can also debuff enemy accuracy with Talents and weapon effects. Bombardment is a gunner Talent with this effect. Railguns can cause the Distortion Fields crippling which cause a heavy penalty to enemy accuracy.
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Nov 16, 2018 20:53
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Thanks for the information, guys. I've started a new game as Smuggler, picked Diplomat, Merchant and Spy (among others) for my officers and myself, and this time it's going rather well. I have positive rep with everyone but Clan Zehrin, and I'm about to go butter them up. Eddy-Baby, I knew about the overcapacity thing with stats, but didn't realize higher ships had higher capacities - even though that makes sense. I actually bought a new 500K ship at one point (a Heavylifter or something), but it was total rear end compared to the Frontier Liner in that it had almost no fuel range or cargo space. I immediately resold it for that reason. Is there a ship that is a straight upgrade to the Frontier Liner or will there always be that trade-off? With the Longhaul Engine and Cargo Pod x 2 I have 90 cargo space and an effective fuel range spanning multiple systems. I'd like to keep it that way. Oh, and I got wrecked by a xeno ship I couldn't run away from, the game helpfully told me it would have been game over if not for my pussy difficulty. I can only imagine how annoying it must be to lose to that after playing for twenty hours
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Nov 17, 2018 12:03
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Yeah, I don't like permadeath in this game for that exact reason. Permadeath in a session-based game? Cool. But in one where you will be playing for dozens of hours and can get a random encounter that obliterates your engine with an unfortunate diceroll? Not cool, man. I think the main hurdle when changing ships is that your starting one likely has some upgrades of its own, so you will want to have enough cash for the new ship AND to upgrade it - which can take a while. They added a few month's ago the ability to leave a ship undergoing changes while going around with another, thankfully, since large components often take months to be replaced. There is also the fact that bigger ships do require bigger crews to operate at full capacity, and if you're coming from a small ship you probably have a high level crew (one of the perks of small ships is that the crew levels up faster), but the new guys won't be up to the same standards for a while. It doesn't help that the shopping list doesn't really detail the components of each ship's basic modules, so you kind of have to guess, hope, ask or look at the Wiki to figure out if you really want this ship. I've never played a dedicated smuggler/merchant so I don't know what would be a straight upgrade for the Frontier Liner, but organize by cargo space in the wiki to see what would improve on your build. It seems that only the Horizon Highliner fits the bill (with 100 cargo space out of the box), but the other ones near it can probably have their cargo spaces upgraded beyond what the Frontier Liner has (I see it starts with 50 cargo space, so one of the 75 ships can probably upgrade beyond). Bigger ships do consume more fuel, though, so they often will have less autonomy than smaller ones. Eddy-Baby posted:Ship combat is an arcane system and I have prepared this Effort Post to try to explain how it works, and how you can improve your odds. Man, this was a great post, much appreciated it. If the OP was around I'd ask her to put it there.
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Nov 17, 2018 13:41
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On ships and by the standards you've set forth: the 6,000 mass ships are all terrible. 5,000 mass ships have large sized engines, medium sized bridges, and medium sized jump drives. The 6,000 mass ships have large sized bridges, engines, and jump drives. But on average 6,000 mass ships only have 1 more large component slot than the closest 5,000 mass comparison. So you're doubling your fuel costs with the most efficient engine, AND you're losing one cargo hold because your mandatory equipment is bigger. The Horizon Highliner is the only 6k mass ship that might feel like an upgrade, you'll still double your fuel cost and your cargo space won't increase, but you'll have ~600 more mass in combat or exploration gear. Buuut for an 800k buy-in (before the customization that you need to budget for!) you're nearly full capital and can pick up a Broadsword for just 50k more. At 8,000 mass, you'll have the space capacity to devote one of your medium components to a shield module of some kind. At that point you can build a better ship in every metric but fuel efficiency. TLDR: 5,000 mass ships are a sweet spot in terms of effectiveness. To get good results from upgrading you have to go REALLY BIG.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:39
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I know it's not great in terms of fuel economy but I can't ever resist the Raptor Class as my second ship. Reasonable speed and a lot of slots for me to get all the event characters as officers. I have a sickness. And that sickness is collecting dudes. Also: xeno ships are indeed bullshit, and are the reason why level 12 navigators for Skip off The Void are so important.
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Nov 17, 2018 17:47
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I ended up choosing the Cautela Titan, the most expensive ship available to me right now. With the cargo pods upgraded to level 4 and a Longhaul engine, I have max 100 AU fuel range and 90 cargo space. I really miss having 195 AU fuel range with my Frontier Liner, especially with these endless escort missions 8 jumps away, but I guess it's acceptable.  It does seem much more effective in combat, though. I have yet to upgrade everything, but just to be clear on this - if a component just boosts certain skills and you're already well over 200% for those skills, you can safely swap it out for something else, right?
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Nov 19, 2018 19:01
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The components do not increase your skills - skills only come from crew members. The components are increasing what I've called capacity for that skill. This is the second number to the left of the progress bar where you see Skill: [xx/XX] ------- xx% (the first number is your crew skill, the second the capacity, the percentage is derived by dividing one by the other) This number is used in ship combat. You should try to get it as high as possible - if you're at 200% for critical skills, you should consider installing more skill components for that skill until your number drops below 200%. You must remain above 100% or you'll suffer penalties, but anything above 100% doesn't help in combat. Anything above 200% has no effect. A higher capacity is always better than a high percentage even for non combat skill checks.
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Nov 19, 2018 23:17
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That makes much more sense and explains why I have 800% Gunnery or something stupid like that. The ship system is really about not having your cake and eating it too, which I guess I can understand. No matter how big your ship is, it's hard to fit all the components you want on it. That's okay - I'm a lover, not a fighter. As long as I can win the occasional fight against random nobodies, that's good enough for me.
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Nov 20, 2018 17:02
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Yep, you can do some pretty good all-rounder setups especially on lower difficulties, but you really have to min-max your crew setup and ship fittings if you want to do ship combat. It doesn't leave much room for fuel economy, cargo, passenger/prisoner space etc. Having a good combat crew and some escape/range change talents is much easier to roll with if you're into running missions/trading/etc, especially since you can eventually ditch your weapons locker once you have enough contact-purchased or mission-reward weapons and armor.
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Nov 20, 2018 18:45
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Destroyed my first xeno ship a few days ago. Hell yes, get wrecked. I'm running out of steam with my current playthrough, I have a lot of money and nothing to really spend it on. I decided to help the Coalition plant emissaries around the galaxy in hopes of getting more quests from them, but I finished doing that a while ago and nothing's happened in the main story since then, even after curing the crimson plague.
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Nov 22, 2018 20:16
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Phlegmish posted:Destroyed my first xeno ship a few days ago. Hell yes, get wrecked. The plague is the last part of the main story right now.
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Nov 22, 2018 22:13
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I’m loving the new hardcore save feature. Now I can set up a captain and ship and clear the first arbiter missions and make a save there for whenever I inevitably blow up my space mans. I think it lets you save up to a year in?
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Nov 22, 2018 22:15
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Just got into this and oh god I can see that this is going to suck me in help noooo. About missions. How many of them are scripted like the intro storyline you're dumped into vs randomly generated ones? The scripted ones must run out at some point.
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Jan 29, 2019 00:04
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Synthbuttrange posted:Just got into this and oh god I can see that this is going to suck me in help noooo. They go on for a decent amount of time, and they also branch into mutually exclusive storylines that lend themselves to certain playstyles (more replay value). Additionally, there's some smaller scripted missions that will start when you do various things like land on a planet. All that said, the average mission you get from a contact is just randomly generated, and these are primarily what you need to grind if you're looking to get influence/cash/etc. from doing missions. The scripted missions often provide good rewards if you are actually set up to do them/playing on a low enough difficulty, but you typically won't be able to keep up with them to sustain your run without doing other things to make progress in between.
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Jan 29, 2019 00:23
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I wish the game had a conclusion and ending...
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Jan 29, 2019 01:13
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