31
General Discussion / Re: How do you play the early game?
« on: July 29, 2019, 02:03:05 PM »I guess scavenging is what I'll vote for, but what I do is more so exploration/salvage (I'd imagine scavenging is more so going around home-world battlefields and looting). Basically I've found that the easiest way to make a quick profit is to go around, explore, avoid [REDACTED] and salvage their stuff.
That said - I modded my latest game and gave [REDACTED] +2 burn level, so now that's much, much harder, so I start out by trading instead with a little exploration mixed in.
I should have put exploring on the list. I knew I was missing something, finding early caches or ships can make a big difference in the earlygame. I can remember an extremely lucky game where I found a Legion carrier pretty early. I guess this kind of counts and salvage but tbh exploring is a big thing, should have its own spot on the poll.
Usually i go through these steps:
1. Scavenger - Getting some supplies, maybe a ship or two and some credits by hanging around the starting fights.
2. Opportunistic Trader - Supplying shortages and destroyed Outposts to get my starting money.
3. Looking for a World to claim: Usually these become year-long expeditions over 1/4 the map or something. (I start this when i have the spare 1000 People to colonize and enough ships to Survey (Around 6 Shepards, a few Wolves or something for Defense and loads of Fueltankers)
4. Endgame
I don't do Missions and such. Always working for myself.
Oh and Skillwise: Usually i take nearly the whole Industry block, starting with the scavenging - then i take Command - commanding a Carrier later on.
Its interesting to for me to look for a colony really early, however I guess if your in a deeper part of space you can basically use a colony to make money early on and not really need to worry about it being attacked just because of shear distance it is from most colonies. Hunting down supply shortages for money seems like a great thing to, since most colonies can be fixed supply shortage with only 100-200 supplies or a small amount of another commodity like food. Great way to gain rep as well, this is one thing I think I will have to focus more on in the future when starting a new game.
I also take industry block on about anything else early to as much of my fleet generally rely on salvaged ships early. I feel like taking advantage of its bonuses as soon as possible nets you quite a lot of free stuff/better ships early. Earlygame you can pretty much ignore buying fuel as long as you salvage regularly especially with the skill that increases salvaged fuel.
I played for a long time. Initially I went for either bounty hunter or exploration early on (which is what I selected in the poll), but now I just do one thing the whole run. I start as an explorer and I end as explorer (though rarely, since explorations is not risky enough). I start as a bounty hunter and I end as a bounty hunter. I start as a pirate and I end as a pirate.
By the way, it is not possible to be a miner without mods. You should remove that from the poll.
As far as pirating goes I generally do the same, once a pirate, always a pirate. Bounty hunting is something I think I do on nearly every play through to a degree however unless im trying to do a none aggressor playthough like being a trader/smuggler. Not that Ive done that often, you can do get lots of credits fast but later on it gets a bit boring because your fleet gets big and everyone tends to like you from all the trading.
I agree about the mining removal. I think I will replace It with explorer as an option.
I tend to pick a patrol fleet to hang around and join any fights it gets into.
Recovering Shepherds is one of the highlights of this stage. Sheps rule early game.
So these are thing things I genuinely haven't really thought doing. I tend to stay away from shepards like the black plague. But now that you mention it I can see what you mean about them being strong especially against un shielded pirate ships. I might give that a bit of a go, I could also seem them being decent for early exploration and elimination of automated defense systems.
As far as shadowing a patrol fleet I've never really done that. Do they tend see a lot of action? I would guess they do given their existence. Do you know if the game actively spawns fleets for them to fight or is this just a happy correlation of separate parts of a whole meeting together?
I typically depend on bounties for income until colonies are up and running, but I also explore a lot. I try to do a few bounties, and then stop at a pirate base (with a bounty on it), sell all the junk and buy out all their supplies and fuel, then destroy them and head out to explore until I need to come home due to lack of resources or full cargo holds.
I've pretty often used pirate bases as dumping grounds before I kill the bases. I generally raid their blackmarket of anything I value and then destroy the base. In my head its kind of like destroying the evidence lol but I think its just generally useful. With Nex on this is sometimes how I start my faction, taking a pirate colony/base for my own and then commissioning with the local faction in the system. Corvus is a great example with the pirate base there you can generally commission with heg, use them as a shield and then build up your forces before promptly wiping them from the sector, and taking Jangela for yourself. I use ai cores a lot so heg is usually on my chopping block just as much as the pirates. Inspections are annoying, especially if you miss them.