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[Manganese]

Just bought the game yesterday, loving it so far, been playing literally all day.

My main frustration at this point seems to be with how the faction standing increases/decreases. I grabbed a hegemony commission thinking "oh sweet, I can fight their enemies and then they'll let me buy their ships!". That worked for like 30 minutes until I suddenly start bleeding reputation because I'm not hostile with literally every other faction. But hey, I just got the game, whatever lets go to war.

Three hours later I'm -5 with the Hegemony after battling basically everything that moves, I'm down to 248 credits and my fleet of 4 ships is damn near out of fuel and supplies in hostile territory. I finally manage to *** off Sindrian Diktat and now I'm thinking everything will be kosher. I start limping back to friendly space and about 5 minutes in I lose more standing with the Hegemony because they decided to be friends with Sindrian Diktat out of apparently no where.

What the hell?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed battling the entire universe, but to do all that in the name of the Hegemony only to have them be like "oh whoa bro, we're totally buds with those guys now, what the hell are you doing?" was immensely frustrating and lacking any sort of accomplishment.

Is grabbing a commission normally such a pointless endeavor or did I do it too soon? I only had 2 wolf class ships and a kinda meh combat frigate, do most people just buy new ships off the black market until their fleet is big enough for a commission to be worthwhile?

[Recklessimpulse]

Currently joining a faction is a fools game, as no form of conflict resolution is in the game yet so being blocked off form the other factions stops you form accessing large parts of the map and even after your allied faction stops being hostile to the other faction your not going to be at peace with them, it won't be so bad when world/station conquering becomes a thing I suspect.

[Weltall]

This is one thing I feel the same. Commissions are a pain in the neck, since factions keep changing from truce to war FTL. In my vanilla game (no mods), I too got a Hegemony commission, until at least I got myself 3 of their largest ships and at a point i was caught smuggling by them and they disliked me and took away my commission. I was glad to get rid of the commission and not have the headache to run all around the map.

What I did to not make all the factions my enemies, to keep Hegemony happy, was to keep attacking 1 faction a lot and whatever points I lost from not being hostile with their enemies, I gained through attacking Tri-Tachyon, which was the faction they were at war the most.

For better or worse getting a commission means you are bound to attack their enemies and be part of their army in a way. FOr me After I got kicked out of their army, having 3 Onslaughts in my army from them, I did not care to be anymore part of them. Money in vanilla can come from trading. Having a fleet with 2 Atlas (6000 cargo) along with the cargo the rest of my fleet had, I could easily trade huge quantities of commodities and no one dared to attack me.

Afar from finding a way to survive in vanilla with how things work for now, I have a suggestion. If you want to experience a semi-vanilla game and enjoy Starsector's vanilla galaxy, you can use the Nexerelin mod and play in Corvus mode. You will play in the vanilla galaxy but with Nexerelin rules. That means factions will be able to invade planets and take them over, which will make the Starsector universe feel a bit more alive since you will see it slowly change. You can get commissions with them too, but in Nexerelin you are your own faction too. If you manage to raise a really big fleet, you can start taking over planets, with the easiest being the pirate ones. Your own faction will pay you a small amount of money monthly and will never tell you to run around all over the map to kill their enemies.

You get prisoners in the game, from killing enemy fleets. What can you do is for example; befriend a faction and get a commission from them. Buy the ships you want from them and ignore their request for you to attack their enemies. When they will dislike you to inhospitable level (-30 I think?) and take your commission away, fly to one of ther planets and use the option to repatriate prisoners. Each one you will repatriate will gain you 5 reputation with them. That means if you repatriate 6 of them, you will return back to 0 reputation and ignore them.. until you will decide to attack them to take over their planets and make them yours XD

[StarSchulz]

It takes a bit to figure out, this game. when a notification appears at the bottom left of the screen, it is usually important to glance over and check what it is. i'm guessing you were happily turning the Sindrians to space dust when the Hegemony decided they didn't want their only friendly neighbors to be dust any longer, so they stopped the war. when the war stops, you go back to inhospitable standing automatically, so i imagine you attacked them right after the war stopped. [ sometimes the timing of it is really annoying ]

The 300cr/frigate and up is to make fighting an enemy faction at least sustainable, so doing it isn't just draining you completely. It also helps you earn rep quicker to gain access to better things. what i usually do is accept whatever commission i want to get as early as possible but still carry on bounty hunting. Black markets will get you some frigates and such, but unless you do some crazy stuff and get lucky you generally won't find big stuff there. Recently i have changed my play style so i start with a fair bit of heavy smuggling early on, til i decide what faction i want to side with. then i scrape enough to get a destroyer and have at it with bounty fleets.

There is still some room for improvement in those events though for sure.



Like weltall says, the [n]exerelin mod helps a whole lot in this department. a WHOLE lot. though, it is probably of good intention for me to tell you to play the game for a while without the mods to have everything in the standard game figured out before you start with mods.

[Euphytose]

I am pretty sure you don't go back to inhospitable if you're vengeful. The way commissions are implemented right now is indeed very frustrating. When you accept a commission, all rep gain / losses should be paused with anybody that's not your faction of choice. With a 1 week or month delay in stance change, so you can get out of a soon-to-be-enemy system, or get your stuff back from a station of a faction that's soon going to attack you.

[Megas]

Commissions are nice if you can use them.  The small bounty is useful, and many of them will add up.  I would not want to fight enemy fleets without that commission.  Access to military markets for ships and weapons is good too.  I think the commission is more useful than no commission, especially since the black markets keep selling the same old junk.

Black Markets used to sell heavy weapons, but they do not stock them or other specialties like Atropos or proxy bombs anymore.  It is nice they sell more staples like maulers, LAGs, and IR pulse lasers... and better ships, but it seems to have come at a cost of not selling the big guns anymore.  I cannot find a plasma cannon, tachyon lance, or (another) gauss cannon anywhere!

Currently, no Knights of Ludd means Tri-Tachyon always dings rep off of you, if you take the TT commission in this RC.  (I was lucky to get mine in the previous RC.)

The only problem with commission is if you want to quit, you probably still are vengeful with the faction's enemies.  At that point, might as well stick with the faction and commission for the benefits.

[Manganese]

Hmm, good stuff in all your responses.

I'll check out that Nexerelin mod. I was trying to avoid mods until I had a firmer grasp on the core gameplay but being able to invade planets sounds pretty awesome.

[wozmir]

Go for Nexerelin & SS+ man. You can actually win the game using them - I'm currently waging a guerilla war against Hegemony as a TT lone wolf, taking over lone stations and pirate bases. Hard stuff, especially since invading spawns a reserve fleet that wants to kill you

[Weltall]

I am pretty sure you don't go back to inhospitable if you're vengeful.

Sadly, I am pretty sure you do, since it would not make sense anyway for them to be hostile towards you. That would make them attack you even after the ceasefire. But I say that because at a point I had a big enough fleet, I would try to find an small enemy fleet, use the emergency burn to catch up with it. When I caught it, I would just harry their fleet. That would give me a minor reputation reduction, enough to stop Hegemony from giving me a headache. Still after their cease of fire, I would end up as neutral and of course soon after they would be like "Oh a month passed! Ok, back to war!"

Go for Nexerelin & SS+ man. You can actually win the game using them - I'm currently waging a guerilla war against Hegemony as a TT lone wolf, taking over lone stations and pirate bases. Hard stuff, especially since invading spawns a reserve fleet that wants to kill you

I said just Nexerelin because a lot of people like playing first the vanilla game a bit, before diving in mods. Then again my first experience with Starsector was a modded game and then I played the vanilla. SS+ changes more rules, but I like it how it gives pirates stronger ships. Keep in mind though in SS+ you will be paying your crew members, so it will be a bit harder for first experience. You can always turn that off in SS+ settings though. Be it you play with SS+ or not, make sure when you start your game to choose Corvus Mode, so you can play in the vanilla world.

[moontan]

i chose to get a TT commission.

but i never fought the Independent or the Sindrian, even when the TT was at war with them.
there was enough other targets near in and out the Maxios jumpoint to offset the penalties because i wasn't hostile with the Independent or the Syndrian.

i want to be able to get to any star system and dock with an Indepent station.
and the Syndrians are natural allies with the TT.

as a commissioned TT member, i don't need everybody to be hostile with me.
i got enough to keep me busy as it is.  

[Weltall]

For a reason I feel everyone is a natural enemy to Tri-Tachyon. Or more like Tri-Tachyon looks down at everyone, like they are lesser.