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« on: August 19, 2023, 01:54:48 PM »
One good rule of thumb when supplying your fleet (for me, anyway) is to figure out how many supplies you need for roughly a hundred days. Even when you count for the damage of hyperspace storms and possible encounters (which should provide SOME supplies in return, assuming you win) this should usually give you a few month's worth of endurance with room for error. I usually try to make sure my fuel is about 90% full before I head out somewhere, so I'm good for a long trip yet have room for sudden fuel acquisition if/when it happens. As for crew, I try to keep about 10-15% crew over my ships' needs to account for possible combat losses and unexpected ship recovery; bump that up another 15% or so if I'm using fighters that need pilots.
When fitting your logistics ships (fuel, cargo, transports) strip their weapons. If your fuel and cargo ships end up in an actual engagement, you're probably already wiped anyway. Just fit them with mods that make them cheaper to maintain and/or provide passive benefits to your fleet; then worry about making them faster and more durable. S-mod in solar shielding to drastically reduce the supplies wasted by travel near stars and storms, especially if you're running Atlas or Prometheus for logistics.
Try to adjust your ships and skills to get up to an 18 sustained burn speed. 20 is cool if you really want it, but I find that 18 is sufficient to either match or outrun basically any fleet in the sector that you can't outfight.
When exploring, always look for planets with debris around them. They have ruins...and ruins can mean major goodies. If you see a mission to scan a research station, GRAB IT, faction rep be damned. Research stations mean blueprints and mods. ALSO note that, (unless I'm sorely mistaken) when a mission for some kind of derelict ship or station appears, even if the mission times out, the object in question remains; therefore if you make a note of where a target is located, you can still go salvage it if you fail the mission.
Speaking of missions, mission alerts travel to you in real time, NOT instantaneously, starting from their place of origin. If you're constantly seeing missions get withdrawn just after you get them, it's because you're too far away from the source and getting the news too late. Comm relays help; staying near a system with a relay can get you better picks of missions.
