Ironclads is not just about factions, ships and weapons - mod introduces new market conditions, commodities, new interaction options, harvestable and lootable objects and other stuff for player to play with.
Mining. One of the old features of this mod is asteroid/iceroid mining with specialised ships. The ship is a dedicated mining vessel that you can pick from start or obtain at any planet of major factions (if you are lucky). It is a slow and poorly defended vessel that is hardly suitable for exploration - so before conducting any mining operations it is wise to locate at least one of the sources of harvestables - special asteroid or iceroid clusters.
Mining is text-based interaction with these cluster objects. You have to survey the fields for ores/volatiles first and only then be allowed to mine them. Mining results depend on crew experience, your skills, deposit richness and mining operation type picked. Richness depends on the survey type applied.
Locating a field is hard, but most of the time the presence of a gas giant in the system is a guaranteed success - so look for those first.
Note that to utilise mining to full capacity a fleet of freighter and additional mining ships is recommended. But be warned - without escorts your juicy freighters are an easy target for pirates! It is also a good idea to stockpile ored/volatiles somewhere for possible procurement missions to appear as ores themselves are not that profitable to sell just anywhere.
Mining. Harvestable asteroidsMining. Surveying resulsMining. Mining operationsMining. Risky operationsSalvaging.A large amount of collectable/salvagable objects are randomly distributed all over the map in the mod. These can be easy to collect scrap, more risky and rewarding station wrecks and even recoverable ships. All of these require combat rating, crew and some lack to accomplish. Ship recovery/disassembly requires a repair ship to be present in the fleet.
Abandoned, but fully operational stations that player can easily access are also present at random on the map. Locating one may help player with future exploration or raiding/trading.
A range of salvagebles as well as their mechanics are subjects to change and be expanded in the future.
Ship requisition.Ironclads introduces a simple, but useful system of ordering specific, though predetermined, ship classes from major factions. You need to locate that faction`s shipyard and be at least favourable by that faction to get access to that.
Requisition is a direct ship purchase system that has nothing to do with local market except that it always puts the ordered ships in local storage (which you have to buy access to!). Ships come mothballed, but in full default variants - so mindstorming with what to arm these is not necessary.
Only a limited list of options is available per faction! Available ship classes depend on your status with the given faction.
Accessing ship requisitionShip class optionsFrigate optionsPlanetary surveys.Each uninhabited world in Ironclads can be surveyed for valuable 'survey logs' that are equally demanded at any market. To survey a planet you need a shuttle class ship in your fleet and crew. Planet conditions increase the risks of surveying, but rewarding with more logs in return - so it is up to a player if he wants to risk his crew.
Each planet can also be scanned for anomalies, but don`t expect each of them having something of value - around 10% of systems (20% if you are using specialised scanner ships and 35% if special planet scanner is used) contain something.
The anomalies types vary from smuggler`s cash to weapons and strained crew and require shuttles to be recovered.
Reparations.If at any moment you actions have dropped relationship with a given minor or major faction (or pirates) to inhospitable or hostile - it is possible to pay a sum of credits that is directly depending on the current statue with the faction. Paying reparations is possible at any market of the given faction and immidiatelly resets your relationship to cautious. From here you`ll have to repair your relations on your own.