Starsector

It changes way more than that m8, it adds "abandoned" sectors with AI ships and better planets for surveying, whatever that does.

It was a dice roll for a guaranteed loss of a ship and marines early game. The rework is better for getting ships but I don't think marines are useful.

knowing the dev, he will probably replace it with something else.

...

lol what is this thing? it's so ridiculous I want to try it out

Same

Try downloading the game from the site and installing the pirate copy on top
s3.amazonaws.com/fractalsoftworks/starsector/starsector_install-0.8a-RC19.exe
s3.amazonaws.com/fractalsoftworks/starsector/starsector_linux-0.8a-RC19.zip

All I know is that I enjoyed this game a whole lot more when it was a simple SC like melee named Starfarer.

So how is the RNG affected by not using a game key?
Noticed that pirate fleets are barely spawning and the bounty fleets in general are small and weak.
Also are salvager and prospector fleets supposed to turn pirate so much outside of the core worlds?

Legion battlecarrier is all around better in my opinion. The thing can take a massive beating and keep fighting.

The AI fighters you can get from those fleets are pretty fucking OP, all of them have shields and don't have to worry about crew losses.
You should really see the AI stations. The undamaged ones are fucking brutal to fight, they have ridiculous firepower.
Also all those AI fleets and stations might drop cores, can trade them in for better reputation with a faction.

As for surveying, think in the future the shit will allow for the player and NPCs to build outpost/factory/mining stations, expanding into the older systems.

Looks like a space technical to me, pretty fucking /k/.

did not worked

check the forums, I recall that error being common.

Sorry m8.

it`s almost exclusive mod related, I checked those and did pretty much all conventional potential solutions

try the 64 bit java thingy?

I did what you suggested again and it worked

J-just as planned.
I had no idea that would even work, I'm a buyfag

I was having fps issues, one fix was enabling an option, the next step was disabling the option you enables and it admitted it has no idea why that works but does.
This games weird like that.

Saving in this game is fucking ridiculous. I just went to delete some old saves threw windows and it 1+ gig of saves.

Maybe it was 20 or so folders at most? Fucking java.

If you use mods, it bloats even bigger respectively.

wew

Saving takes long (10 seconds) but the save file and the backup don't get past 15mb each.

Pirate fleets have been rare for a while now.
And bounties scale to your fleet I believe, they always tend to be just strong enough for a fun fight.
The scavengers have been ridiculous in my game too, they have even bigger fleets than the HDF.
Why
Astrals are amazing at supporting bomber wings, legion sucks at two tasks at once.

Get daggers you pleb
Or kopesh, 42 rockets can ruin anyones day.

Didn't want to play this game anyway

wew

Remember when pirate fleets would spawn like crazy if anything related to key authentication was modified.
Bounties haven't scaled in my game, they always seem to be way weaker than my fleets.

Well it fits my playstyle.
Like to keep my fleets at a lower supply/fuel/crew profile when away from the core worlds unless I'm hunting something big like a fully operational Remnant battlestation or Hegemony capital detachments.
Having a carrier that can support the front line and even hold its own against most capitals or a shitload of cruisers while running smaller fleets helps.

If you're concerned about running smaller fleets why not also consider using smaller faster ships too?
I've had some success using medusa, falcons and sunders with some tempests for pursuit. And they all have 9 base speed.

Mods at:
fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=177.0
LazyLib (required by other mods)
fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=5444.0
GraphicsLib (shaders, lighting, bloom, color blindness, post processing)
fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10982.0

Well fuck. Ironcalds modmaker doesn't have time for it.

Guss I'll have to partially update it.

What mods you fags use? I love me some knight templars.

Is that what brought that thread back from the dead? I thought that shit was abandoned.

So is this like a shump with a space theme?

It's very much like Mount and Blade, in 2D, in Space.

Star Control meets Mount&Blade.

Greatest cons are that it's in development, made in Java and that there's a forced tutorial the first time you run it. For the tutorial, you may want to avoid combat and go for the objectives.

I was able to skip the tutorial, it's an option when starting a new game.

Shit sure likes it's popup tooltips though.

I should've gone full combat.

That's wrong though, Industry is entirely about salvaging ships and throwing disposable ships into combat.

But what about the lives of your valuable crew you will be needlessly sacrificing?

That's taken care of by one of the Industry skills.
Besides, casualties matter less now that there are no elite crew anymore.

wew lad

ree lads

Fuck me

Yeah, figured. I'm still too used to playing as the 1 man wolf/medusa army that used heavy blasters to 1v1 everything.

Mothball it and put it in storage, or is it too late for that?

are there any mods to let me respec my character? I've put loads of points into carrier stuff and the novelty has finally worn off

found it, the console commands mod lets you do it

Is there any mods that makes trading for lucrative?

FOR ANYONE THAT STILL CAN'T GET THIS TO WORK

s3.amazonaws.com/fractalsoftworks/starsector/starsector_install-0.8a-RC19.exe
s3.amazonaws.com/fractalsoftworks/starsector/starsector_linux-0.8a-RC19.zip

files.catbox.moe/s5e2gm.7z

how could they possibly know? is it phoning home?

I downloaded it, but every time I try and launch the program, it runs the start program, and asks for a serial code to start the game. How do I solve this shit party.

Retard.

LOL javashit. That's all I needed to know. Thank you.

　　Λ＿Λ　　＼＼　 （　・∀・）　　　|　|　ｶﾞｯ　と　　　　）　 　 |　|　　 Ｙ　/ノ　　　 人　　　 /　）　 　 < 　>_Λ∩　 ＿/し'　／／. Ｖ｀Д´）/　（＿フ彡　　　　　 　　/

...

Downloadan. Any starting tips?

it's actually kind of fun
can't even get in range of the bigger ships though, I have to wait and try for a straggler
I also get some good boy points for participating and a bit of the salvage from the fight
huge debris fields afterwards too

Here's a tip don't say Downloadan since it makes you look like a retard.

When you install the game it is important to load the game first before you put the crack in and put in random numbers into the serial number boxes, pressing activate and closing the game. Then install the crack over and play.

I'm on an imageboard, what the fuck do I care what others think? I'm going to keep saying downloadan just to trigger your autism.

You tell that bluehair harlot havin, worst girl lovin, damaged goods luggin, no good shitposting faggot what for.

Is there a way to stop it from making the screen go white for 2-3 full fucking seconds when you destroy a ship?

Thank you that worked

If you're using GraphicsLib, you should probably try [GRAPHICS_OPTIONS.ini]'s settings.

"intensityScale":0.5, # Default: 0.5 # This controls the intensity of all lights # The default light settings are carefully selected to maximize immersion and minimize distractions during gameplay "sizeScale":2.0, # Default: 2.0 # This controls the size of all lights # The default light settings are carefully selected to maximize immersion and minimize distractions during gameplay

Get good.

It's just a question of having some class versus acting like you just leaked from cuck/vg/.

You know some purplefag will rip you a new one over that, right? Also, doesn't know about cloning

i tried this using

on linux
failed with
[main] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher - java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/fs/util/ooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

fuckin java shit

The fuck does run sensor package mean?

If you're talking about the quests, it means you only have to move your fleet to the ship/sensor/station and accept the special event-only option it gives you. After doing that, you'll get the payment and you don't have to do anything else, the quest is finished. That step is done before all options to fight/salvage anything.

The quest itself gives you a hint as to where the object is located inside the solar system, if it's orbiting something or if it's near the heart of the system (star).

pic related

Can it run on a toaster ?

Post specs.

Nevermind, google had the answer.

POST SPECS

aw, shit

Dataminers confirmed from IDF.

oy vey, shut it down.

Are you afraid we'll bully you?

rate my fleet m8s

who are you gonna sell this information to, and for how much?

Thank you, now it works just fine.

OY.

The mudskipper is actually a modified cargo shuttle. I think we used to get pegasus in civilian fleets

Is trading finally not shit?

...

Man, the Mora carrier is pretty tough.

...

In starsector/starsector-core/data/config/settings.json, set enableShipExplosionWhiteout to false.

Legit trading has been temporarily removed until Alex can figure out how to make it not shit.

How do I get into a fight with one of those ai stations? I haven't found it yet.

There are three levels of warning beacon: 1 yellow ping, 2 orange pings, and 3 red pings. Partially broken AI battlestations can potentially spawn in systems with a 1 or 2 ping beacon, and a fully functional AI battlestation will always spawn in a system with a 3 ping beacon.

Neet. Gas is a bitch to manage are supplies expensive as Fuck. Kinda fun though. You can also find ships floating in hyper space, nabbed a big shippung freighter that way.

Yeah, you really need to get a tanker or two if you're going to be doing much exploring. Remember to put Insulated Engine Assembly on them to help with the sensor penalties. Navigation 2 (-25% fuel use) also helps a lot.

Buy from Agreus (in Arcadia, system south of Corvus).
Syndria (Askonia).

How does that work, herr furher? Is your sensor range determined by whichever ship in your fleet has the longest sensor range?

Is your detectability determined by whichever ship in your fleet has the longest detection range?

Or is it some kind of mathematical formula that does some kind of averaging or summing?

They decided to settle down and live a simple life as farmers on a planet far, far away from civilization. It's a function of how the bounty system works. Bounty fleets are spawned by the planet they're hiding out near, and when they expire they return to that planet to despawn.

From the patch notes.

Civillian-grade hull ships, like most freighters and tankers, have 100 percent increased sensor profile and 50 percent decreased sensor strength. So a Phaeton has a sensor strength of 45, lower than a military destroyer, and a sensor profile of 180, higher than a military capital. Slapping Insulated Engines on a ship halves the sensor profile, bringing civillian-grade hull ships back down to a normal profile for its size class.

You can click on the sensor values in the UI to get a list of the sensor strength/profiles of all of your ships, and which 5 are ones contributing to the strength/profile of your fleet.

...

Both Cortex Command and Starsector got a update recently, huh.

Which Starsector mod has the coolest ships?

what are you looking for?

wut?

Might actually try playing this again. I wasn't really able to get into it after the last big patch, but I played a ton before that. Maybe this time…

This depends entirely on what those Tempests are equipped with. Personally I always liked to use Pulse Lasers set to alternate fire (the continuous fire instead of simultaneous made them much easier to aim and manage energy with).

Whatsa matter goy, its not like they were using them.

There are a few mods with cool ships
Interstellar Imperium has long ranged bombardment ships
Templars is a boss faction, with hard to maintain ships that are really powerful
There's the bounty mod where you can get unique ships by capturing them
Blackrock ships tend to be good player ships
And I forgot where to find them but a few mods tend to have a prototype frigate with a billion unique mechanics and abilities.

Ironically I find the best player ships to be default. The Tempest and Hyperion can both take on most capitol ships (mods included) if you pilot them well.

Like I said, it's been a while since I've played, but back then I also liked the Mayorite's capitol ship, which essentially amounted to a really big gun with a fast engine. HUGE forward firepower able to easily destroy other capitol ships QUICKLY, but not much else besides its speed boost. There was also Citadel's Monolith, which combined with some other mods was able to completely saturate the battlefield with missiles, making it great AI support to just keep it out of harms way and keep firing. That one I know has been nerfed both ways though.

The best player ships tend to have high risk abilities that pull off unique things.
Tempest is okay as a player ship but only because a player is more agressive with it.
Hyperion has the teleporter, which is better in the player's hand than the AIs.
The Omen is actually pretty good now, the EMP damage has been booster 4x, the shield is pretty good for it's speed and the EMP isn't affected by the Unstable engine nerf.
Then there are the protoypes which are crazy.
There's one mod frigate that sucks in projectiles and then does a wave of damage based on what was sucked up.
There's another whose weapon drains flux to fire a special weapon.
And that's all I can remember right now.

I'd tried this game once before and thought it looked cool but it didn't really stick with me. Now I tried it for a second time and I really got a better hold of things. Certainly not going to preorder it (or anything else, ever), but I'll now keep a closer eye on it and the release.

> (paraphrasing) The game may know if it's been pirated and might effect the RNG. Let the paranoia begin!

It just so happens I have a video of what the Monolith could do back then. The missiles themselves came from a couple of other major faction mods, exigency and imperium I think.

This makes me miss the Achilles Cruiser. That thing was amazing until they deleted it for being "unbalanced"

Fuck AI stations
even the broken ones that have the single MIRV launcher can go fuck themselves

How to play in this? I just pick up few resources from wrecks and immediately come big army and slap my shit and all of this in 1 min.

Probably a pirate fleet. They are everywhere.

Play the tutorial.

Mission boards are the best source of money if you can't fight.

Start with a Wolf and a Shepard, and buy a Dram with your starting money. Take missions to run scans on shit for mad easy early-game dosh. Avoid all scavenger fleets because some of them will scavenge you if they think they can take you and there's no-one else around, that's probably what killed you. Kill domain drones for easy combat exp, the starting Wolf locks them down hard with its Ion Cannon. When you can, get a Condor or Drover and give it Talon Interceptors; Talons fuck up trash pirate frigates and destroyers really hard. If you do the tutorial it gives you a bunch of garbage ships for free, including a Condor and Hammerhead, and they're actually pretty decent.

This pleases me.

Alright, I'll give the crack a try later to see if I like it enough to buy.

...

Please rate my fleet. Is there anything I can do to improve it? With this fleet playing on normal I pretty much go anywhere and make money doing sensor runs for 90-100k+ each while salvaging and looting anything ontop of being able to take on whatever I want. Carriers punch above their weight so fucking hard when upgraded its not funny.

Come back when you can take on a Hegemony Defense Fleet without taking losses. Try taking on one with 3 Onslaughts in it.
What's that white ship in the middle? Never seen it before

As for immediate improvements, your fleet is very frigate heavy at the moment. Get yourself some destroyers.

Okay maybe I was misunderstood. The purpose of this fleet is for long range salvaging/exploring. Its not for taking on Home defense fleets. Besides, I'm best bros with the Hegemony 100/100 cooperation and a commission. Question is now how to do I get out of commission, I can't seem to find the button.

Also in regards to the ship, its a custom one from a mod. Its a tanky ship with missile spam.

Yeah but I don't /need/ DDs. I've not encountered an enemy while salvaging that really makes me wish I had a DD. My CV can take on anything the frigates can't and even 3v1 or 4v1 cruisers. The frigs are just for wolfpack tactics.
Also I try to think in terms of logistics, DDs are maintenance and fuel heavy and really don't have the speed or firepower worth it. Unless there is a specific class of DD I should be using?

Only way to leave a commission right now is to become hostile to the faction, so you're taking on a Hegemony fleet sooner than you think.
A good Destroyer is a Medusa, it's a wolf but better in every way. Especially if you add hardened shields which boosts it's effective HP to 30k. Get Sunders afterwards so you have a large energy hardpoint to play with.
Otherwise swap to Tempest frigates instead, they're faster and better overall and have an AI drone partner. There's a reason they're rarer.
If you're exploring, you'll want a more combat capable fleet soon. Those AI fleets can be nasty at 2 pings. And then there are the AI battlestations at 3 pings.

FUCK
Okay thanks, I will look into those.
Sounds like a plan once I manage to find one.

Thats the thing, I'm already going into the dark red pings and routinely beating these fleets. My carrier is the main DPS. The only thing I can't take on is the 3 ping battle fortresses.

Not much can, those things are monsters.
All you have to do is somehow move onto a Tricorp commission.
You could try annoying the hegemony by constantly turning off your beacon. That should get your rep down without a battle.

Annoy them into submission? Sounds like an idea. Then it would just be a long cooling off in the outer reaches of the sector until everyone doesn't hate my fleet anymore. Also, is there any way to raise the level cap? Level 40 is so low.

This won't work out like you think it will. Faction relationships don't decay with time.

In starsector/starsector-core/data/config/settings.json, change playerMaxLevel to whatever to you want it to be.

starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Factions
If I'm hostile, hopefully a couple months in the fringe of the galaxy would make peace with everyone right?

Also thanks for the editing tip, set my limit to 100 for maximum grind.

neat

where the dink do I even find/buy railguns anyway?

Finally found my first HVDs for sale in tritac space, and some dual flaks to boot, but I've not yet seen a single railgun.

You get decent rep and credits from turning it into Hegemony as well.
Does Tri-Tach pay more per data core?

I usually loot them off pirates.

I know TTach military markets sell them. Probably the other military markets carry them too.

TTach pays 300% of the core's base worth and gives 50% of normal rep.

Welp

I've found this to please me in my limited time with the game, although I already saw how the autofire might fuck you over with flux if you're not careful.

I'm sure that's a maneuver of some famous loose cannon space cowboy captain. It was a learning experience for sure, and an expensive one too, since my destroyer hull went below 25%.

Skills are so shit right now that there's really no point going for anything that isn't fleetwide stuff or even carrier skills. Officers with ship-only skills are good enough.

Even then most of the actual combat skills are designed to help you survive hits and the offensive ones are weapon type specific.

Sell survey data on Sindria's black market.

...

I kind of wish you didn't have to find hullmods in the new version. I have a hard time finding some simple stuff like insulated engine assembly.

So how the fuck do you even play this game? I have zero idea what im doing except for picking bounty hunter and hoping my ai ships can kill the shitty pirates. Its hard to control even. Is there also a way to have it turn like in the game SPAZ?

This game could be summarized to M&B in space. But thanks to how mechanics work, bigger is not always better. You also get to minmax like fuck on hulls and equipment so you have frigates punching like destroyers if you want.

First I suggest you play the tutorial fully until you reach Jangala to learn mechanics and understand things better. Once you've done that, delete your save and restart without the tutorial. With the credits you are given, buy a small freighter and top off on supplies. Grab a mission that pays like 100k credits to survey an object. Start from there until you know what you want.

Keep in mind all ships have varying logistics and costs, so bigger isn't always better. I've opted for a bunch of frigates and a main carrier cruiser as my force for example.

Fuck yes.
Independent likes em too.

One of the things that helps me is a button that keeps you ship facing your curser, I bound it to a mouse button.

What skills, other than fleet logistics, are worth going for?
Also what fighters are most efficient?

Thanks.

Unless you like to hang back and let an AI-controlled swarm of fighters do everything, I'd say probably most of the Combat skills. The very first things I'd buy are the +50% acceleration and maneuverability (both are tier 1), makes a pretty big difference for the piloted ship.

Lethal fireworks show.

Keeping your ship facing your mouse cursor is an setting you can toggle on in the options menu.

This is the build I'm using in this playthrough, piloting a carrier as part of a carrier fleet. Gunnery Implants, Loadout Design, and Power Grid Modulation are all basically mandatory if you want to do combat. The fighter skills are all very powerful. If you want free money the surveying and salvaging skills get you lots of free money, but you'll be sacrificing long-term combat potential.

Sparks and Talons are overpowered enough to be getting nerfed in the next update. The Khopesh is the best HE bomber right now, as the Atropos torpedo is terrible so all Atropos based bombers are terrible. The Longbow is the only Kinetic bomber, and it's pretty good. The Claw is incredibly effective at locking down anything up to and including capital ships, and the Gladius can keep up with the Claw and provide shield pressure so the EMP can get through.

I want to make a drone ship that can self sustain and do well, is that possible (I honestly really like how SPAZ did it but i can understand if drones cost resources)

Hey you wanna see some real shit, get the Warthog assault fighters. Three squadrons of those fuckers face tanking enemy fleets while shitting flares and popping heads.
I use custom fleets, for example the TSA has a neat jet shaped fighter that has a light MG/dumb fire rockets/2 swarmer missiles with a very slow self heal.

Ive found that assault fighters > bombers in any situation. The fact that bombers have to reload is just shit compared to the DPS a fighter can put out.

Also I seriously recommend getting some mods to anyone reading this, they do nothing but enrich your game and give more options.

Losing fighters in-combat will cost crew post-combat if they're manned, unmanned fighters don't. Fighters will replenish infinitely in-combat, but replacing fighters reduces the carriers replacement rate, which determines how quickly fighters get replaced. So if your fighters are constantly getting destroyed, you'll end up waiting forever for them to be replaced and your carriers will get killed while their fighters are down.

All carriers can operate on their own and are quite powerful, but I'd generally recommend pairing them with a ship one size class lower that can follow up on targets the carrier's fighters are pressuring and help fend off dedicated carrier-killers.

Oh I see. What about drones, are drones pretty good or are they just kind of there.

Assault fighters have a very hard time punching through cruiser-grade armor, or even heavy destroyer grade armor. They'll fall off once the enemy starts fielding anything heavier than a Falcon. Also warthogs are incredibly slow. They're tanky because they take forever to get anywhere, and if you mix them with anything other than more warthogs your fighter cloud will get split apart and be more easily destroyed.

Most mods aren't going to be updating until 0.8.1 because of some sort of bug in 0.8a.

Drone fighters function basically the same as regular fighters, except you don't lose crew when they die. Power-wise, drone fighters range from decent to absolutely overpowered.

I just tested on one of the heaviest armored cruisers in game; the Dominator class.

It took 2 Rocket Skiffs from TSA and 1 Warthog less than 40 seconds to kill one of the most heavily armored ships in game.

12.97 seconds to kill an Eagle class cruiser.

Didn't lose a single fighter to each in the testing room. Pound for pound the Heron carrier with upgrades can kill all of the shit you will normally face with absolute ease. The only thing it will struggle with are BB or the super fortress.

BBs go down piecemeal though with 3-4 frigates supporting your fighters.

Yeah its not an instant wipe on the enemy ship, but its reliable and effective.

So its completely plausible to run nothing but drone ships and ruin everyone correct? Sorry if I am asking so much I really enjoy games like this and having drone ships add on so much fun since rarely can i have automated hives running around killing things.

Good luck getting enough drone ships, that means you have to farm the (REDACTED) systems.

If I can farm 100 slimes to level up I can farm that. Thanks for telling me where to look.

Place 4 frigates, a destroyer and a handful of fighters in that mix and see if it works as well.

How do I find domain drones, all I ever find is [REDACTED] faggots.

You find domain drones on the domain probes, ships and motherships. Domain motherships, if you are going to one, always bring a storage freighter, you are gonna get a load of shit.

Will the mission tell me its a mother ship mission or will it be just another derelict?

Yeah dude, read the flavor text of the mission. It will 90 percent of the time say domain drone. Sometimes you get lucky and its domain ship.

See when you go find the things you just click them and receive dosh. But make sure you read it clearly, because there is a chance there is a tidbit about logs on another object or resources.

For example I had a 110k credit run to find a probe.
Then probe stated there was a ship not far away in the same system in an asteroid field. Go to said ship, fight off the drones and see that there is flavortext for a mothership like 3 days of warp travel away.

Went back to Jangala and got a cargo ship and then took the trip back to the new area, which will by the way be updated in your intel thing when you pull up the map for locations of things and past events.

Looted the fuck out of the mothership with just 3 frigates fighting everything it had. Loaded down with goodies and made a clean 200k profit when I got back.

Thanks mang

I meant to say "domain probe" in that first bit. But yeah if you are gonna be doing probe or derelict runs, make sure to have at least one cargo ship and one tanker, even if your fleet is small. You will be picking up so much spare loot.

Its easy as hell to come back from a single trip with 500+ extra cargo. In some areas you can get so much shit that you can top off your fuel and supplies.

I have two colossus freighters just for that purpose and I regularly fill them on my trips.

But remember, most of the time the probes and ships will just be wiped of memory. Even more so if they are close to a sun.

Does heavy machinery or the metal do anything or have any purpose besides sellable items. Or food items?

It's used to survey planets and scavenge.
More is always better, used to survey planets and man derelict ships.
You can use the neutrino detector to find man made stuff in a system.
Can be sold to markets going through food shortages.
Used to survey and bring derelict ships back into function, besides maintenance
You can speak to certain NPCs to exchange them for either lots of reputation or cash or a bit of both.
Besides fuel's standard uses, you'll receive quests looking for them. Metal usually goes into storage until you see a quest.
You can get lots of that from pirate markets at $3 (for instance at the one in Askonia) and sell that for $11 at Sindria.
If a patrol scans you while carrying them, you'll lose reputation and
That goes into the black market of the nearest 10 stability market.

Metal is a tradegood. Not worth much. If you are gonna be doing salvaging, you want heavy machinery. Up to 100 for the hardest tasks. They are like a tool that isnt used up. Like a shovel.

They also sell for a decent amount if you ever get spares. You never lose any stuff unless you botch a roll.

Also I have a question about derelict ships. How do i go about finding them? I really enjoy scavenging in games and finding things to bring them back online sounds fun.

Derelicgmt ships are everywhere. Just check out blips on the radar that dont move

about three fiddy

spess

...

is 8ch fucked again

What's the differance between this and X3TC? Judging from the thread it's 2d and the missions have more story elements to them.

You…

Couldn't post anything for half the day… stuck at "Posting 0%" forever.

Only story related stuff are the scenarios you can play before loading any saves and the tutorial.

Well that's an effect that I haven't seen since FEAR and Facewound.

X3 that i've just played for a half-hour long ago is a 3d arcadish simulator-like action with capability to command some sized fleet and trade, right?
Starsector is 2D, pretty much GTA 2 meets Mount and Blade in spess, slow but ongoing early development. Can't conquer faction holds right now, only pledge by "comission" and then run errand quest of delivery goods, bounty hunt and just random waging war with anything you want. Some exploration, too.

inshallah

Cheers.
I wouldn't describe it that way, but I suppose you're not wrong. You can assemble a number of "wings" for combat and advanced orders, assign trading orders to wingless, and in wing ships, destroy stations and construct your own. Lag becomes a problem once your empire grows large enough and there's zero planet interaction so it has its drawbacks.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with this ship?

The default loadouts give it armor as if was meant to take hits and some really fucking retarded weapons.

Also came back to say that swarmer missiles, the little red ones, pound for pound are one of the best missile systems in game.

You can put them on anything and the AI rarely runs out of ammo. They are good against frigates, all manner of logistical ships and some DDs straight out. But their ability to be spammed and punch through weak spots in armor while being auto guided with great accuracy is invaluable. You can get them en masse from domain defense drones and learn to love them.

Yeah MRMs are good damage, but they run out of ammo too quickly and are too slow for fast ships like frigates.

Vid related.

Looking at it's loadout it looks like a laser spam ship with a shit on of upkeep. Which makes me wonder if its even worth it. Like with the plasma jets I could see it being a ship thats used to hammer and anvil tactics.

Your mainline ships engage from the front and keep ships occupied while your this cruiser w/ a frigate or two loop around and start pounding the side or behind with laser fire. With 4 medium lasers pounding away you will need a shit ton of flux vents.

Or you could do something like.
2 medium lasers
2 medium missiles spam systems of your choice in synergy slots

Then 4 swarmer missiles in the 4 small synergy to be spammed at will when you close and engage for the killing blow.

The rest could be point defense or tactical lasers.

Personally I would store the ship and use something that costs less and less upkeep with better mileage.

At that point you may as well run talon interceptors

Don't diss swarmemes when you have a bunch of frigates that need some extra punch for longer engagements or you want something that lasts an entire fight.

What missile system would you suggest then?

For frigates? No missiles at all. The 4 OP you're not using is better spent on better energy weapons.

Swarmers are only good when you use Talons because those cost 0 OP and do from PD to giving enough time for LRMs to hit.

You could Safety Override it, would turn it into an absolute monster of a ship that could chase down frigates with the Plasma jet it has.
Stick on Unstable Engines and fill up it's energy slots with Heavy blasters.

I bet your wife's son really likes the game, OP.

Yes, the artist is a massive cuck.

This is the first game in a long time that I am genuinely enjoying. Been playing the last couple days. I just wish that there was more faction and world interaction.

That's what mods are for, and unlike Skyrim the original game is a good foundation to build on.

The only thing the Aurora is good at is a Safety Overrides Heavy Blaster build. And honestly, when a ship requires SO to function, that's when you know it's not good enough.

Any recommendations?

I recommend waiting until 0.8.1, as most of the mods are unable to update because of a java bug. After the update hits, basically all faction mods compatible with Dynasector are worth your time.

There's also the mod that let's you take over station and create your own faction. Which turns it into actual M&B in space.

I miss when it used to have the large energy slot, means it wouldn't be outclassed by a non-combat vessel.

I meant missile obviously.

Yea i noticed not a single fucking good looking character. A lot of "diversity" it seems. Any chance for custom pictures?

Yeah there are custom picture mods.

Grab one portraits mod from the forums, open it up, then tailor it and make it your own.

Option to install an alpha level remnant core in your ship when?

There is a setting to keep your ship facing your cursor unless told otherwise. It inverts the follow cursor button to free the cursor. It handles exactly like SPAZ then.

What is the best officer personality for a carrier? You want them to use their fighters aggressively, but keep the carrier itself safe, though not necessarily TOO safe. Aggressive is the only type that specifically says "will use fighters aggressively", though I'm sure Reckless will do so as well. The problem is both of those seem to suggest they will use their Carrier as if it were a strike ship, which isn't ideal unless perhaps they are piloting a Legion.

Aggressive has the ship at

Is long range capital ship sniping with gauss cannons still a viable build? I must have been away for at least 2 years now and my last fleet was a battlestar galactica styled capital/carrier focused siege fleet that had enough close up firepower to destroy anyone who charges but the main function of the fleet was long range shield incapacitation, followed by torpedo volleys and finishing it with fighters and frigates.

There's only 1 billion whites at most
There's 6 billion other people, of which at least 4 billion are dependent on whites for survival
He's not technically wrong, but he's still a cuck.

I always just end up using this as my player portrait.

This shit really needs polishing

I wonder how much shit you'll get if you dare make and upload an Aryan sprite pack

Yeah the game does need polishing, but the planet you are looking at is like Jangala. If you want a movie example, think Avatar.

Technically I think that actually works. "Habitable" talks about surface conditions, ie atmosphere, temperature etc. Inimical Biosphere is referring the lifeforms present on the planet. So basically it's a death world.

Actually Pandora didn't have a human-breathable atmosphere, but otherwise that's pretty much it. Inimical Biosphere could be dealing with microoganisims though, which would explain the quarantine bit.

The space roman mod is already technically aryan.

Can't decide between Hegemony and Tri-Tachyon for my commission. Tri-Tachyon obviously has all the best shit, the Paragon and Tempests mostly. I already have a Hyperion and the Medusa is basically just a fat Tempest (same 2 medium energy slots) as its main guns). Astral is questionable, and rare as fuck. Questionable as in if I wanted pure Fighter power I would take mass Drovers, which are more efficient in supply and I don't really have to worry about losing them occasionally

Hegemony only really has one unique ship that I want to mess with, and that's the Legion. it's a 4-slot battlecarrier with firepower equal to the Dominator and better armor. Ultimately that means it fills both the carrier and cruiser roles without the dead weight of a back line carrier, plus being up front lets it field and resupply fighters faster as well.

The Astral has 6 fighter bays and an ability that teleports fighters back to the ship.

I'm aware, and for the logistical cost I could get 8 fighter bays with the comparatively expendable Drovers. Neither the astral nor the drovers can do anything themselves. I don't know how valuable the teleport ability is, especially in AI hands because like fuck if I'm going to pilot a carrier.

smh tbh fam

The teleport ability turns the Astral into a giant missile cannon. You use it after your bombers have finished their run, greatly reducing their rearm time. The AI is pretty decent with it; it uses the system as effectively as a human, but has minor problems with target prioritization.

A player piloted Astral has some of the highest DPS in game.

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God bless transverse jump

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My faction tried stealing my fucking alpha cores in a scan, I refused a scan and now every faction hates me, what do?

Dock with miltary ports and give cores to factions that you want to improve standing with.

should also be able to run named bounties, it'll improve relations too. Some places, like pirates and "free port"s doesn't care about transponder too, giving you full access to services, while you are living on the run.

How do I git gud at this game? I have been wiped out like ten times.

see

Wait, so the starter two ships can take the probe ships off the bat?

The wayfarer or whatever can deal with the basic small probes if you let the Ion cannon fire. It's really recommended that you split the weapon groups further since you're really not going to use the kinetic weapon against them.

Also consider going for yet another light assault gun/mortar instead of PD/kinetic if the only thing you'll go after is drones.

Yes. The Wolf can solo all the probe ships on its own. If you start with the Wayfarer, you'll probably want to deploy the other ship. Both the Wolf and the Wayfarer have ion weaponry, which you really need to shield against as it does almost no damage to hull but tons of damage to weapons, disabling them easily and quickly. Domain drones have no shields.

Honestly, I just want to be able to make enough at this point to build a fleet that isnt going to get wiped with an accidental pirate encounter.

You don't even fight the pirates since sustained burn lets you fly away unless they're right in front of you.

My main problem is running into them in the storms. Other than that they arnt a problem to run from.

You can use sustained burn on a worldmap too, just fyi.

🆘

BEEP BOOP BEEP
PREP THAT EXCREMENT HOLE ORGANIC

I'm having a lot of fun ramming my battleship into carriers and breaking enemy lines.

Post fleet pls

I forgot how broken overpowered the Paragon's Fortress Shield ability was in AI hands. They are fucking unkillable I have 2 in my fleet right now

As someone who rarely returns to a game, is it in a state where I should play it now, or should I be waiting for the final version 20 years from now?

Play it now, it's a decent combat simulator and it'll give you less of a learning curve if you try it now.
Otherwise, imagine trying to learn the entire game when it's feature complete.

Nebula storms were a fucking awful idea.

If the tutorial is any good that won't be a problem. Learning what weapons and ships are worth a damn and where to find them could take a while, but most people consider that part of the fun of exploration.

I'd probably say no. It's got a lot of fun shit to do, but it's still absent anything that could be considered "end game". Just a bunch of different stuff you can fight for absolutely no reason (most of the time even at a net-loss) after you've got a decent fleet.

Once Nexerelin gets updated, you'll have some bare bones end game content. This update won't make it that much less hollow but it still gives more meaningful faction warfare than vanilla.

Am I just fucking bad at videogames or is this game hard to start in? I have no idea what I'm doing.

I bothered to search one of those derelicts you find on the map and it ended up being a relatively undamaged phase frigate.

I hope you get aids, I have yet to find a decent derelict.

Run trade missions until you can buy an oiler and do scan missions. You can buy and sell on the black market with very few consequences as long as you don't get caught with something illegal by a patrol.

I cant hear you over the sound of my HIV and phase engines.

Here's what I'm using right now. There's absolutely no reason to take (non-fleetwide) carrier skills. You'd have to be an idiot to pilot one yourself, even with an Astral the AI can do just fine with that job. It's not too hard to get most of those skills on your pilots, plenty of room for junk skills since it only takes 9 points to max out.

Field Repairs + Safety Procedures (skills 1 and 3 in Industry) allow you to use a fleet of (D)amaged ships to great efficiency. A ship with 4 D-mods costs 60% less supply, 80% less when combined with Fleet Logistics, and thanks to the -50% negative D-mod effect they aren't really that bad off. I have an onslaught with 4 dmods, costs 8.19 supply per month and 16 recovery. The total effect of those mods is -15% armor, -15% peak active time, -10% speed, -10% flux total, -10% flux disappation, -1 max burn, and +50% sensor profile

Round that to about a -15% overall effectiveness, and I can afford to field 2 of them (with some left over) where normally I would only take 1. The big downside to this is that it does nothing to ease the Fuel costs, so this is far more practical in Core Wars than in deep space.

Naturally, the Onslaught was one I captured in battle. This build makes doing that sort of thing actually useful, rather than just immediately trashing anything damaged.

The other main additions are Salvaging and Surveying. Salvaging might be worth dropping actually, but Surveying is a ludicrous amount of easy money, millions of credits fast with a relatively low startup cost, and generally the fastest way to keep funding your shit as well as starting it up, at least until you've surveyed the whole sector.

Since I'm relying on my fleet to do most of the work, my own piloting skills only take what gives the most bang for the buck. 50% maneuverability/accelleration is essential, especially since I prefer fighting with frigates myself. +25% vent rate is pretty essential to how I use my Hyperion, where 10-15% damage/range etc wouldn't really make much difference.

If I dropped Surveying I'd take 1 point in ECM, mainly to neutralize counteract enemy ECM levels, probably put the other 2 into Coordinated Maneuvers. You can't really beat enemy ECM by 20 unless they ether don't have any or your fleet overpowers them anyway, so bumping that to rank 2/3 doesn't do anything. Getting your top speed for all ships up another 10% though could help a lot.

I'd say that if you're not piloting a carrier, you're an idiot or a poor. They're outright overpowered in 0.8, and are actually fun to fly now. If you don't want to pilot an Astral, try a Legion, a Heron, or a Mora.

You're underestimating the effect of Gunnery Implants. +50% recoil and +100% autofire accuracy is a big deal for anything that has recoil and travel time. The recoil reduction doesn't just reduce per-shot recoil, it halves the maximum reduction in accuracy, and the autofire accuracy makes ballistic PD way better than it otherwise is. The +15% range is almost icing on the cake, but it's also really good in and of itself. Frigates are actually the ships that benefit most from it, as they get much lesser effect from ITU than larger ship classes. They're really hurting for range, so every little bit helps.

Surveying is easy money, but I've never had issues with money. Sensor package missions and bounties pay more than enough to cover the cost of getting there, and supplies aren't expensive enough to put much of a dent in my profit margins. Maybe it's because I'm deploying almost entirely carriers and never have to repair anything because carriers don't take damage anymore.

The thing about EWar is that 99% of fleets just outright don't have EWar. That means 99% of the time you're gonna be getting the full effect, and the other 1% you're going to be really glad you have those points in EWar because range is one of the best stats in the game.

Explain to me what I'm missing. I have a fleet of Drovers. I'm not saying carriers are bad, they are amazingly useful, but as far as I know there's very little for the player to actually do controlling one. You can toggle between engage and regroup, and select a target for your fighters to attack or escort. Otherwise you just sit there and wait for things to happen. The astral gives you one more option with its active ability.

So again I ask why the HELL would you want to pilot a slow ship that does nothing in combat while you wait for fighters to do the work themselves, when you can pilot something like a Hyperion and do precision strikes while your carrier fleet distracts the enemy for you, intercepts enemy fighters and munitions, and softens things up?

As for those other skills, since I'm piloting a Frigate (either a Hyperion or Tempest), I don't use PD at all. I'd rather just dodge the missiles, or spin near-instantly to eat them on my shield. My typical loadouts are either two Phase Lances, or two Pulse Lasers, usually set to alternating. Neither of them have recoil or autofire, and frigates are never going to outrange anything to begin with, better to outmaneuver instead.

You get a carrier that isn't just a flight deck, put actual guns on it, and use the fighters to pin down targets for you to fuck up with your guns. Try piloting a Heron with 2 Gladius Wings, 1 Claw Wing, and something to crack armor like a pair of AM Blasters or a Heavy Mauler. Also,

If you ever want to pilot anything that isn't a high-tech frigate, you'll want Gunnery Implants.

Thanks to the user who said to drop off data cores at Tri-tach.
Now I never have money problems ever again.

So I went derelict hunting after barely playing and managed to grab 2 goodish ships. One is a hammerhead and the other was a freighter. Did I do good?

Until you try to field a high end fleet, blow 3 million on the ships, another 1-2 on weapons, and then realize it takes about half a million to supply said fleet for a single expedition.

I would have scrapped both tbh. Certain freighters can be useful but I'm guessing you found a Hound(d), one of the worst ships in the game. The hammerhead can be useful, but if you are clever with your starting Wolf you'll probably never need to field it.

Try this for a Wolf loadout: one Phase Lance in the primary slot, one Antimatter Blaster in the center small energy, no other weapons. Set the Antimatter Blaster to autofire. Install the safety overrides mod, auxiliary thrusters, and put the rest into flux.

The trick here is that the antimatter blaster will go off automatically any time you get to close range, so you can control its firing by playing with your range rather than manually switching weapon groups. The two weapons should instantly kill most Frigates and do strong damage to larger ships, and with the speed and maneuverability you get from those two mods plus the phase skimmer you basically have a poor-man's Hyperion.

Careful though, if you fire both weapons and take a couple of taps on the shield at the same time, you can easily overload yourself. Since it's probably the Antimatter Blaster fluxing you out, you'll end up overloaded for a good 10 seconds. It's a massively high risk high reward playstyle from any angle.

I see. I dont think i recognize any of thosenames. I do know that it had medium slots or something. Im completely new to this game, like less than an hour in, counting tutorials.

The Wolf is one of the frigates you can start the game with, depending on which background you choose. It's a relatively high tech ship, equipped with a Phase Skimmer that allows it to teleport short distances in the direction of its momentum.

The Phase Lance is a medium energy beam weapon. Moderately common, just keep checking the black market. It's primarly a burst-damage weapon, it fires a short range beam for about 2 seconds, and then has to cool down for several seconds before firing again.

The Antimatter Blaster is a very unusual weapon. It's a small energy weapon with damage per shot in excess of some Large energy weapons and many missiles. However, it is expensive to equip, has ammo (20 shots), and can only fire once every 10 seconds. Shouldn't be too difficult to find, but check on Tri-Tachyon planets especially

The two hull mods I mentioned are Safety Overrides and Auxiliary Thrusters. Both of them should be available either by default or early in the game. Safety Overrides has some huge tradeoffs. It increases max speed by a LOT, increases acceleration, and doubles passive flux dissipation. However it massively decreases how long you can fly the ship before its combat readiness degrades and completely disables active flux venting. Auxiliary Thrusters just gives you an extra 50% turn speed, I put that on every combat ship, from frigates to battlecruisers.

The Hyperion is one of the rarest, highest tech ships in the game (not THE rarest, the Scarab and Astral are both harder to find). It's a frigate with a lot of firepower and a "phase teleporter" that lets you near instantly teleport wherever you point the mouse, with no cooldown. It comes with the drawback of an extremely high supply cost, for the cost to field and maintain a single Hyperion frigate you could have a Cruiser instead.

What the Hyperion is good at is teleporting behind enemy shields and quickly unleashing a high-damage burst while their back is turned. The Wolf loadout I described can do similar things, relying on its high speed and phase skimmer to outmaneuver enemies rather than simply teleporting wherever it wants.

Man, fighting against Wolf class frigates gives me serious flashbacks from Star Control 2 and the Slylandro Probes.
Of course in this case you need to hope you can take down their shields before they skim away.

Neutrino corp is best corp.

Why not just bring a cruiser then?

Wolves are EXTREMELY weak to strike craft. A single fighter squadron can tie them up to be taken out.

This needs an initial D remix.

A cruiser can't teleport behind enemies like a shitty naruto character and slap their ass with two antimatter blasters.
Shit's pretty fun to watch, or do.

??????

Lack of sleep, user. Lack of sleep.

The Hyperion seems nice in theory, but a certain point I could get more bang for my buck from an actual cruiser.

It's damn nice in even in practice.
Everything, that isn't the Onslaught, with a frontal shield dies pretty quickly in one-on-one. It's fast as hell too, due to its Phase Teleporter.
Slap two Ion Cannons and Antimatter Blasters on it and you're golden. It has issues with fighters with this setup, obviously.
The low peak active time and high supply usage are the only flaws I can find it this ship.
And it lost to the Onslaught only because it didn't have enough time.

i think. i'm playing this game wrong. every wreck i salvage has 2-4 D mods and i never want to recover them because i feel like it'd just be a waste and they slow me down

so now im sitting at 700k credits and my fleet only consists of 2 medusa destroyers, a wolf frigate, a kite, a freighter and a dram for fuel. should i just buy ships and build up my fleet? what do i even fight? nothing is attacking me except for bounties

and is there any way to survey planets without investing so many skillpoints? i got some tips from caches or drones that tell me of planets with ultra-rich rare deposits and i have no way of getting them without wasting points

Why do my savegames keep getting corrupted?

Java is gay, sometimes.
News at 11.

Get the industry skills that reduce the number and severity of D mods, has the right idea where a) you can take damaged ships while knowing that they are only marginally less effective than regular ships and b) they are much much cheaper than normal ships. Of course, there are some mods that I personally wouldn't accept such as the faulty power grid.
As for the rest of your post, get yourself a good fleet, then get a commision for a faction you like and start wrecking shit. I'm with TriTach and they're at war with everyone, it's pretty fun. I also get to salvage a wide variety of ships for my fleet.
Surveying in my opinion just isn't worth it. I wouldn't invest any points into it. Maybe in later versions when you can actually do something with the planets you survey.

I think that things that go in storage should have weight and volume. Maybe done better. Like it should be easier to move a bunch of inert heavy metal compared to gas and organs.

Take a pair of Reaper Torpedos and you won't have much trouble with an Onslaught either.

Not to fond of the antimatter approach with the hyperion though. They don't fire instantly, so anything with an omnishield will probably get it up before they hit. That's why I go Phase Lances or Mining Blasters.

Not Number. If you are going to use D-mod ships for the cost effectiveness, you might as well let them have the max of 4 mods. Take the one that cuts severity by half, and then take the one that applies the cost effectiveness to upkeep as well as deployment. That skill is pretty nice anyway since it dramatically improves repair time and cost even on non-dmod ships.

Also, it seems to be so that higher classes of ships have a higher base chance to be salvaged. So far, any disabled enemy capital ship has had a 100% salvage rate for me even without the +salvage chance skill.

I finally took down an undamaged battlestation without having to find a Paragon. Used an Odyssey with range mods and 2 high intensity lasers, Moras to tank some damage and some other carriers to provide a fighter screen and rocket bombers.

How did you manage to fuck up so badly? As someone who beat an Onslaught with a buffalo II, I am obligated to bully you.

you can remove D-mods in the refit screen, there's a RESTORE button in the bottom right, it wont restore missing/smaller than normal weapon mounts though, so check those carefully

bottom left, i'm retarded

fug

I did not know that
Ok now it makes sense. Good if you want something you can't buy, for instance if you want to run a Legion or two but you have a Tri-Tachyon commission. Also good for restoring rare high-tech frigates you lose during battle, though keep in mind you still have to replace most of the guns.

I only found it because I remembered something about restoration in the dev blog and read through it again

Should I bother recovering combat frigates like the Cerberus D?

I let the AI have the reins.

Holy shit that's some nostalgia

Battleships Forever was fantastic. Now that we've got multi-part ships someone should recreate the ships in Starsector.

I'm farming these fuckers so hard right now. One at a time is a waste of CR, so I gather up 4 or 5 groups before I let them engage.

Does anyone know how good the [REDACTED] bombers are?

So how hard does using carriers chew through your crew? Does a destroyed fighter always mean a dead crew member (without any of those captain skills)?
I bought a Condor light carrier and then five minutes later recovered another from a derelict.

I've never noticed crew losses being too bad, but I do take the skills to mitigate it as well. Just don't rely on a pure fighter swarm of "expendable" fighters to chip down the enemy by itself and you shouldn't have too much trouble.

get the carrier skills (or officers with them) and use the Recovery Shuttles hullmod

Flash bombers are really good against mostly stationary targets like capital ships, and fighters. If you tell your Flashes to kill a carrier, the enemy fighters will try to intercept and end up getting blown up by the mines.

The real question though is are they better than Khopesh. They are a lot tougher at least.

sheeeeeeeeeeeit

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Independents have 2 decently sized military markets that can potentially carry any ship in the game, including capitals, locked behind reputation. Getting high indie rep lets you buy pristine ships you'd otherwise have to fight, maybe not have them drop, then restore them.

this
also i'm at war with everyone who isn't the tritachyon and the independents

Indies have a military market again? I thought those were removed to encourage commissions.
Do the pirates have their military market again too?

I just said that indies have two military markets. There's Nortia, in the Askonia system, and Baetis, in the Eos Exodus system. Pirates also have two military markets; Qaras, in the Yma system, and Umbra, in the Askonia system.

So now that I've gotten a few ships in my fleet (2 cruisers, 2 carriers, several destroyers and some utility ships), what do I do next? Pick a side and fight a war?
Or are there some alternative paths, like something to do with the Remnants or that sort of things?

Is it possible to turn in AI cores to pirates? Pirate station commanders don't want them.

no idea

Wander around and blow shit up because the combat is fun, and that's about it. You can find really big things to blow up if you look around, mods add bigger fleets and different stuff to blow up, but that's about it. There is one mod that lets planets change hands so one faction can take over the galaxy, but it's not able to be updated until 0.8.1 because of a java bug.

rate my flagship
I'm having fun with it but I feel like I'm doing something wrong
my fighters serve as fodder while I dip in and let loose a little wall of annihilator missiles

Hokay. You'll basically never need more flux dissipation than your shield flux/sec plus your weapon flux/sec, so you don't need any vents with that loadout. You can safely remove those vents and get more capacity, hullmods, or higher-OP fighters. However, I'd really recommend picking up some longer ranged kinetics instead, in which case you will need that many vents. I have never had issues with crew losses, even when using Talons. You can probably drop Recovery Shuttles and swap those Machine Guns out for Railguns, which will let you push up your target's hard flux before you swoop in with the Annihilators and potentially overload them.

Unless you actually take damage on your shield and need to recharge it.

What the fuck do you do with a Scarab? I found one, but I just can't figure out how to make it do anything useful.

How severe is the RNG penalty for playing the pirated copy of the game? Apparently, the game knows.

Welp, nevermind.

Rate my fleet? I really should get a 4th d-mod on that second budget-hyperion.

Everything bigger than a frigate is covered in "point defense" tactical lasers. With a 1000m range on the Herons, up to a 2000m range on the Paragon they create a massive exclusion zone where fighters and missiles simply can't do anything to me.

Fucking hell is screenshot on a delay for this game?

Tri-Tach heretic / 5

The funny thing is I've found it more efficient to attack TryTach Fleets and try to salvage their ships, than to go to TriTach markets looking to buy them. I found a grand total of 3 tempests, 1 hyperion, and 1 astral (Paragons for days though) at market, but every big fleet has them.

I've actually seen 3 paragons being sold at the same time on the military market. Fucking unbelievable when all I wanted were more Tempests.

I still have a TriTach commission, but I like to turn my transponder off and murder a few of their fleets every now and then, then go work my rep back up farming hegemony and luddites.

Sure, but you can't dissipate hard flux while your shields are up anyway. At that point you should be backing off to vent, which doubles dissipation rate so you don't need much dissipation anyway. Carriers are great at this since their fighters don't stop attacking while they're venting.

I made a new civilian corporation playthrough today that's focused on civilian activities to turn a profit and not having military commission to become a warlord. I have somewhat amassed a fleet of ships designed for minimum cost surveying (all my ships have surveying tool mod), strategic scavenging and have enough storage room for the occasional inter system delivery mission. However, I got really lucky in one scavenge trip and found a Dominator class heavy cruiser with no missing turrets. Brought that baby back to Jangala where I always stop for resupplies and restored it up to decommissioned from damaged for nearly 140k (much more expensive than buying it from the military I know). But now I can still spend another 120k to recommission the Dominator. What do you say anons, should I throw down another 110k to restore it into a cruiser that's more expensive than a freaking capital ship?

Welp nevermind, it tells me I can restore it but it actually does nothing when I throw my money at it.

Scarabs are good, but not 8 DP good. They're like high-tech Lashers that cost twice as much to deploy, but energy weapons are generally inferior to ballistics anyway so they end up being on par. Tempests are better frigates, and Hammerheads are a better use of 8 supplies/DP.

I wouldn't bother just yet. First you should buy a few combat destroyers off the black market to escort it. Dominators turn glacially slow and have huge blindspots in their turret coverage to their sides and behind, so they need to have their flanks covered by other ships.

Yes, venting doubles flux dissipation, so the more you have, the faster you can vent. Ideally you want to be able to vent faster than it takes the enemy to send a Harpoon at you.

Talons murder Harpoons just like they murder everything else.

Yeah it definitely needs escorts, but even weapon wise I have problems getting stuff beyond civilian grade unless I go full on black market shopping. But for now, like every good company, I'm using it as muscle so that only serious pirate fleets would even think of approaching me.

Well I just picked up two more enforcers in the same scavenge run. Does that solve my escort problem?

Probably.

I haven't gotten far enough for this to be possible yet but can you colonize a planet or something so there is somewhere to fuel up outside of the inhabited part of the sector?

Not yet. Could happen in a future update maybe

Nah. At most you can download a mod to allow planets to be conquered.

Problem is that slow cruisers weigh down your fleet. Otherwise nice idea. I would pick up a larger freighter for less fuel consumption to replace your small fleet of cargo haulers.

The dominator is actually surprisingly fast for a heavy cruiser with a maximum burn of 8. My civilian ships and shuttles all have a burn of 9. I can actually add an ox to get my burn up to 9 again, but I remember the Ox being a big fuel hog for its size.

I actually only have 4 haulers in the fleet. The mule, the cerebus, the wayfarer and the buffalo. They all also have surveying tools installed to contribute towards minimizing planetary surveying cost. The mule will probably stay while the Cerberus, the wayfarer and the buffalo would either be replaced with more mules (since larger size = better surveying tools), or I'll get a cruiser sized hauler and tanker instead (since two cruisers might beat the cost saving for 3-4 destroyers). The Shepards are there to stay since they come equipped with both salvage gantry (the salvage rig is an absolute logistical nightmare without the full perk, don't bother) and surveillance tool. The mudskippers are there because they cost fuck all to run and they can carry up to 100 company employees each, which means I can have a relatively low profile fleet and still survey very large planets.

One of the enforcers class destroyers I looted earlier is a full mil-spec version. The other one I sold since it was useless. Life is good.

Buffaloes and Mules are the same size, iirc.

But the mule's best points is more in terms of their combat contributions when the pirates do come to play and the mule only has 50 less cargo space compared to the buffalo, which is a disgrace really, because for 10k more credits and 50 less storage space, you get a pretty potent (an army of mules with ion beams, graviton beams and harpoons will fuck you up really fast) combat capable science vessel.

I think I also partially solves the problem with my use of Dominators. Basically, autocannons/rail guns will be on my turrets while I have devastator cannons on the front guns for leeroy jenkin charges. So far autocannons with enhanced range actually outpaces a lot of other crafts and I'm able to lock them down until the AI start to put their shield down and attempt to back off, which is when I turn on the burn drive and turn the devastators on auto. On the bonus point, the devastators basically fire flak. So any missiles, torpedoes or fighters in my way to the target will get flak as well.

So far working as a civilian private astral geologist and exploratory company is working out to be pretty swell to me. I've been in maybe 3 fights since the start of the game (usually from a massive pirate fleet following me and later I run into a massive patrol who helps me out). Surveying pays really well as long as you sell your data to the planet with the highest stability. Hell, I can even go back to Jangala and buy the data I sold them at the start of my playthough, sell it at pic related and still turn a profit after accounting for fuel costs.

Currently I've done mapping all known domain regions. I'll have to start stocking up on more tankers and haulers for supplies and fuel before tackling the uncharted regions.

My first outing into the uncharted areas. Found a warzone with tons of automated defense drones, tons of loot and HOLY SHIT.

So used to carrying around 100, I forget that some is used in surveying.

If you have enough surveying equipment in your fleet it goes down to a minimum of 5. It's not really worth surveying a planet that costs 100+ supply, and the equipment always equals the supply, so there's still no real reason to carry all that around.

Most of those came from scavenging. It's just spares to replace those potentially lost in scavenges gone bad. Also, I have to make sure I have redundants as I'm aiming to be out in the uncharted areas for months at a time, coming back maybe with 500k to 1m worth of survey data.

I guess that's nice if you don't have a TT commission. They are common as shit at the main TT shipyard, and way cheaper to buy than restore. On the other hand, findingand taking down a TT fleet with a paragon at all, and then getting lucky enough to recover said paragon, would be pretty damn tough for a non-TT player.

You should be coming back with ~2M worth of data TBH. Just make sure you turn it in at a 9 or 10 stability market (Sindara is my usual go-to), preferably in the black market of said planet if you don't have a problem with that. It'll probably cost you 5-10 rep, but you can make that up doing a couple missions for them.

I'm playing as a civilian company with reasonable reach of power so it's civilian grade hulls for me unless I scavenge military grade stuff. My limit is probably shopping around for supplies, fuel, trade stuff and weapons on the black market when there's nothing on the open market. Something small that the people in charge will not bother checking me out for. That said though, I lost 5 reputation with hegemony for my shopping spree to arm up the Paragon due to suspicious activities. It's done.

I'll need to mobilize a few more tankers before that does happen. Right now my sustained burn is still capped at 20 so avoiding fights is no problem at all.

I found an Onslaught battleship just hanging around in space. Well, it was surrounded by a fleet of other Hegemony ships and it started just hanging around after I pounded it with munitions for several minutes solid, but those are just details. Would cost over 1M to restore, I wonder if it's worth it.

I still haven't found any decent abandoned ships. Do the graphics on the map screen match the ship, or should I just check every one?

They do, but about 80% of derelicts aren't salvageable to begin with.

yeah they do. This one had a fuckhuge circle and some drones guarding it when I got there.

That really looks like a TERRIBLE Paragon loadout. Here's the one I use currently

with Point Defense AI, the Tac lasers (in place of PD lasers) are able to create a huge exclusion zone for fighters and missiles. Installing the AI DOES limit their range to only +50% instead of +100% with the advanced targetting core, but 1500 units of "point defense" is still insane.

Plasma cannons are the anti "big ship" hard fluxer, hypervelocity drivers poke from range and the Tachyon lances on the turrets can either disable ships opportunistically or focus fire on whatever is in front taking advantage of said hard-flux to EMP through shields.

Missiles just seem like a waste, not when capacitors and hull mods are so much more important.

Generally, I find that the AI is far better with a Paragon than the player. They are extremely good at toggling the Paragon's active systems and better at managing multiple sets of turrets, whereas the player either has to swap weapons and give up the ability to fire everything at once, or else set things to auto and have LESS control than full auto does.

Lastly, the fighter bay creates a guaranteed distraction. While I'm never going to field a Paragon unsupported, sometimes the rest of my fleet fucks off from it's slow movement and leaves it alone. With a bay of fighters always nearby, the Paragon has a way to prevent itself from being surrounded and focused. Plus a little more PD never hurt.

For some reason when I print screen in this game it gives me whatever I was looking at about 10 seconds before I push the button. Honestly I don't know how that's even possible. Anyway here's the correct screenshot.

Okay now I don't know if this a bug but this is pretty bullshit.
What the fuck, it doesn't work like that. That makes no sense.

Are you SURE they attacked and you didn't just click engage instead of leave?

No /they/ attacked me because my transponder was off. This was in a far off place in the sector because mission. I should have screenshotted it. Its bullshit and happened to me before.

Okay went back to a save and came back for the mission. This independent started pursuing my fleet.
Got the warning, "if you turn on your transponder independents will be hostile to you"
Fleet catches up, and now its a pirate fleet.
What the fuck?

Apparently scavenger fleets can go pirate and attack other parties if no one is around, but it's a bug that you lose reputation from it.

Is there ever a case where Hyperions are a good idea?
For the same cost I can field 5 Tempests, which combined have a LOT more firepower.

user, I have to find the AI first. There's a reason why I'm stuck with LRPD lasers instead of the inherently superior tac lasers.

I have the choice between 2 lances, 2 high intensity lasers and 2 autopulse laser. Nothing else has popped up for me in the black markets.

How about this user, ion lasers to exploit turret lance generated hard flux, hypervelocity drivers to poke at things without too much flux generation, autopulse laser for anything without shields in front of me, no missiles and more points into capacitors and flux. I'm still 3 levels away from the final version of this since I need to get the perks for more flux/capacitors/points.

Tach lances don't generate hard flux tho.

Oh shit yeah they don't. I have to go find another hard flux generator then.

I think I nearly got it user. Maybe I'll replace all the LRPD with tac lasers and just use fortress shield to tank missiles when they do come.

This is how it looks at the moment. I can probably finalize it once I get even more points to dump.

Looks alright to me, I used a similar loadout myself at one point. I'd still give it to an officer to pilot, since they do pretty well with the ship system and basically can't die. The only downside to an officer pilot is they might not be aggro enough, but with the 30 top speed there's only so much you can do on that front anyway.

Consider the Converted Hanger if you get a chance. Like I said the distraction those Talons give is worth any point cost, and there's no guarantee any dedicated carriers you have will be supporting the Paragon when it needs it.

New favorite playership btw. Way easier to backstab with phase cloak than with the Hyperion's teleporter, and at half the price. The Afflictor looks better on paper, with better all around stats and hardpoints, but the Shade's EMP Emitter makes it that much better at causing Flameouts and then lining up an antimatter shot. The Afflictor's Disruptor only lasts for a half a second and only gets 3 uses per fight. Great for dropping shields to alpha-strike some torpedoes in, or for taking out a Hyperion by stopping it from teleporting when you fire, but otherwise very limited in usefulness. Gotta be careful killing Capital ships with the Shade though, the max range on the Antimatter Blaster is shorter than the minimum safe distance when they explode, so unless you can get in for the last shot without using Phase cloak (to shift out for the explosion) you might want to let someone else take the final shot.

The reason I'm using Augmented Drive Field right now is I'm hunting a better set of officers, and the extra +1 speed without Sustained Burn lets me more easily dodge Hegemony and Luddite patrols while I'm visiting their worlds (even without being allowed to dock, you can still check coms for mercenaries). In a fleet setting that would probably get replaced with Hardened Subsystems, and I might consider dropping unstable injector as well which could certainly help if I'm trying to snipe an Onslaught.

No you faggot, it recharges.

Guess you are right. Still not as useful as the EMP emitter in general. The best use for an Afflictor is to load it up with Reapers and throw them all at a capitol ship. 4 of them at once, with PD and shields down, should either instant-kill or at least knock out 80-90% of its health, after which you simply tell the Afflictor to retreat. Not much else can do any good during that tiny window, and energy weapons get reduced damage during the activation (so no antimatter blaster combo)

four reapers + antimatter blaster with expanded magazines and missile racks has worked wonders for a long time now. It's not 1v1 every time so you can take opportunity shots with AB throughout the battle.