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[FloW]

Wow, did not think my post would imply such a long heated discussion.

Any starting tips for a noobie?

You're speaking names and stuff I have no idea of, do I have to learn the codex by heart before being able to understand anything, let alone do anything?

Just look at the "Tips of the Day" at the main menu, maybe click them all through. After that it's a lot about learning the ships - weaknesses, strengths - and the weapons - how they work, what they're good at.
Apart from that: engage single frigates in the beginning, maybe 1 or 2 fighter wings, and if you end up in a battle you don't think you can win: play either very careful or just turn around and retreat.

[Histidine]

What starting ship are you using? Each of them behaves differently, but the regulars here can help you with all three of the good ones.

For my part, I can explain the Vigilance (white T-shaped frigate), since it's what I always use:
- The Pulse Laser is your primary weapon. Don't spray and pray with it, it builds up flux much faster than you'd think. Learn to lead moving targets (practice in the simulator a bit if you like; it's accessible from the refit screen).
- The Harpoon MRM Pod fires two high-explosive seeker missiles. Use the laser to raise their flux levels and force them to drop shields, then let 'em have it with the missiles. Bear in mind that Hounds will generally evade or use flares. You can use the ship system (press F) after launching to near-instantly reload your missiles and be ready to fire again.
- Keep your shield facing towards threats with the mouse. High-explosive shots (yellow) and most missiles should be blocked with the shield; against kinetic shots (grey, except for Talon gun shots, which are fragmentation) it's generally better to take it on the armor instead. Beware of the Light Machine Guns that Lashers and Hounds generally carry for PD; they can overload your shield in seconds if you get close.
- Watch your flux meter. An overload is often fatal, as it leaves you without weapons or shields. If your flux levels are getting dangerously high (you'll get a feel for this eventually), back off and vent before returning to the fight.

If you're having trouble with a specific scenario, feel free to ask for help

[Zoidberg]

What starting ship are you using? Each of them behaves differently, but the regulars here can help you with all three of the good ones.

When starting a campaign, I can only chose between two vessels and I think the second depends on the choices made at the start (character creation).

[FloW]

What starting ship are you using? Each of them behaves differently, but the regulars here can help you with all three of the good ones.

When starting a campaign, I can only chose between two vessels and I think the second depends on the choices made at the start (character creation).

That is correct. I think the 4 starting ships are the Shuttle, the Hound, the Vigilance and the Lasher.
Personally I like the Vigilance the most. The Lasher is more a Brawler, while the Shuttle is mostly defensive and slowly pokes the enemy to death.
The Hound is very "up in your face", and as such not really good against several targets. The high speed however makes it possible to lure fighters and single frigates away from the rest of the fleet. And in a 1v1 situation it's possible to win. Still not easy, but if you're good you can win even against several enemies.

[Thaago]

Here's a few tips:

1) Mess around with the starting choices until you find the one that gives you the Wolf (only the second choice matters). It has a phase skimmer system (f key) that lets you get out of tight spots. It doesn't have the punch of a Lasher, but it will burn hounds and fighters out of the sky.

2) Choose your battles - go after lone Hounds or Buffalo Mk. II's if you can. If you do get caught by an impossible fleet, retreat off the bottom of the map (and hit the retreat all button so the rest of your fleet does as well). You'll take some damage and lose some crew, but will probably survive.

3) Save up for a destoyer - Hammerheads, Enforcers, and Medusae are all really nice ships that do well on most weapon loadouts. The difference is power is amazing between them and frigates. The top tier ballistic weapons are at the pirate station, while top tier energies are at the tri tach. You can search the forum for builds or just ask here.

4) Save and reload! Best way to learn.

5) Make sure 50% damage is still on in the settings menu (it really helps for starting!)

[Doom101]

For starting out you should aim for a Lasher or a vigilance via the choices at the beginning, reading the codex does help but is not necessary,

The Lasher is an excellent jack of all trades type of ship. it can load out with quite a bit of firepower even packing torpedoes or missiles. I know you said your having issues with names, the Lasher is the small red frigate that kind of looks like you might expect a fighter to look if it was much bigger.

the targets you should be going after like many have said is lone fighters/bombers, being able to fight and capture these can be a huge bit of loot to add right off the bat, whether you sell them or use them, i'd suggest selling any bombers you get as they are actually worth a LOT of money if fully repaired. most frigates you can fight well with the Lasher, avoid anything blue, period. blue ships means they are tri-tachyon ships which are super high tech, they will turn a Lasher and a lot of other ships into molten scrap really, really quickly. The ship you want to keep an eye out for are buffalo MK II's, this ship i suggest you look in the codex and learn exactly what it looks like so you can identify one easily, the reason you want to find these is that they are super easy to kill, and worth quite a bit of money. Especially if you capture, repair and sell it. Now i should tell you that this ship WILL NOT go down without a fight, near the end of it's life it will use its ship system to throw literally ALL of it's missiles at you, if you are unprepared for it this can and will either deal lots of damage to you, or kill you outright, the only other thing to worry about on this ship is that it has a single AM blaster on the front of it usually, this weapon is small, and extremely lethal, it deals massive damage but only has 20 rounds and a VERY short range come at the ship from the sides and you should be okay, if your wondering what makes the fight so easy, its that this ship has NO shields, so anything you throw at provided you don't miss will hit armor or hull and do damage, if you focus down the armor in one spot the buffalo very rapidly collapses.

If you capture and sell a few buffalos you should have more than enough money to afford a great fleet.

Other things you should know, do NOT neglect the character skills, in fact read all of them, if you don't understand one, either post here or send one of us more experienced players a message, we'll help you out. Also with your first bit of credits i'd suggest buying a talon wing to accompany you, having just those 4 little fighters around can REALLY help in an early fight.

Also don't attack anything brown or blue on the map, brown is the hegemony, think of them as your friend, they are great to retreat behind if a fleet is chasing you because they will usually wreck pretty much anything. The blue fleets are the Tri-Tachyon, they aren't really your friends but they regard the player as neutral so they'll leave you alone, their ships are all really high tech and like i said earlier can turn starting fleets and ships into molten scrap really fast.

Red fleets are the pirates and will be your main source of income, and grey fleets are the independents, they mostly go about their own business, and can have some valuable ships for the taking if you swing that way. But they will put up a fight.

[Wyvern]

Yeah, game start can be exceptionally difficult; it's not really balanced yet.

My suggestion would be, start with a wolf class frigate.  (No, I don't remember which answer to the second question gives you that option - but you can hit escape at ship selection and try again until you find it.)

Then, go into refitting, and make the following changes to weapon groups:
group 1: both harpoon racks, alternating fire, autofire turned off - this is the weapon group you'll be using manually.
group 2: graviton beam, linked fire, autofire turned on
group 3: tactical lasers, linked fire, autofire turned on

Now, in combat against fighters, the tactical lasers will mostly just kill them; your only concern is keeping shields angled reasonably - or turning shields off if you're in close combat with a wing of Broadsword fighters; their kinetic guns won't do that much damage to armor, but will overload shields in no time flat.  Ideally, you want to fire off a harpoon or three at broadswords when they're just approaching being on screen (at maximum zoom-out) - that will at worst distract them a bit, and at best take out one of the three fighters before it's in range to attack you.

Against enemy frigates, use strafing to aim (hold down shift, hit any turning key, and you'll rotate towards the mouse) - this will let you accurately aim the graviton beam, even when its firing arc isn't displayed.  You'll need to let up on shift in order to turn shields to absorb salamander hits, but otherwise this should work fairly well.  Use harpoons primarily against high-flux, overloaded, or venting targets; the two unshielded ships you'll fight are likely to either dodge (hound), or shoot down your missiles (buffalo II) - though in the later case you can just spam-fire four to six missiles for a nearly-guaranteed kill.

And, lastly, the ship system.  It's a short range teleporter - moves you a fixed distance in the direction you're currently flying (not the direction your ship is pointed).  It also shuts off shields (so be sure to bring shields back up quickly if needed), and will re-orient your ship to face towards nearby enemies.  This is the crown jewel of the Wolf frigate, and why I suggest the wolf as the optimal starting ship when learning the game.  Missiles incoming and you have your shield pointed the wrong way?  Teleport.  Enemy ships starting to get into flanking positions?  Teleport.  It's basically a limited-use get-out-of-jail-free card; the charges are limited, but usually regen fast enough to be available when you need them.  (Oh, and it's also nice when trying to chase down fleeing enemy ships.)

If you do go with the vigilance as your starter... It used to be a lot stronger as a starting ship, but then they replaced the LRMs with a harpoon pod - harpoons just don't have the maneuverability to hit an agile frigate-scale target, don't have the endurance to come around for a second (or third, or fourth) attack run, and have much more limited ammunition.  I'd strongly suggest swapping that back.

Alternatively, dump the missiles entirely, and mount a single heavy blaster; you'll need to invest heavily in vents and capacitors, but it'll take out a hound in two to three hits.  This variant is rather vulnerable to fighters, though, unless you're really good at aiming that heavy blaster; I'd suggest avoiding any fleet with talons.

[Wyvern]

Also, since advancement has come up some - Wavenarra, in particular, I'd suggest not expanding your fleet past maybe two frigates.  Instead, when you can, I'd suggest upgrading to an Apogee Cruiser* - there's one for sale at the Tri-Tachyon outpost.  As for how to outfit that, I suggest looking here.

Also... Thumpers?  Really?  Just say no to thumpers; they have an occasional place in some advanced builds, but - unless you really know what you're doing - just don't use them.  Fragmentation damage on an assault weapon just doesn't work well unless you've got other guns to take down shields & strip armor.

* Footnote: this will probably involve selling off everything else in your fleet; you'll need about 40k credits to buy hull & weapons - easy to get if you've been looting and selling weapons and stuff; the credits gained from a won fight are pocket change next to the value of selling a captured weapon or ship.

[ganjou234]

I gave a rundown of a fight in another thread.

It doesn't make much difference - no matter what fight it is, if I lose one ship, I must reload from save. And that is just bad game design.

It's not bad game design, it's picking bad fights, or fighting badly. A lot of the time, you should be supporting the rest of your fleet, not going full-Rambo on the enemy, or expecting your ships to do the same.

I AM supporting my fleet!

But it makes no difference!

Fighters are just so overpowered, a group of them can easily take out a capital ship, and I can't buy defense against them, BECAUSE I CAN'T WIN ANY FIGHTS TO GET MONEY

So I can't win fights, so I can't buy ships to help me win fights, so I can't win fights, etc, etc, etc.

Exactly! although I think this only applies int the beginning where your PD's are kinda weak... to counter this hunt single frigates or 2 even if there is 1 or 2 fighter escort (kill the fighters first they are annoying) if you get 1 frigate loot then repair it and let it join the hunt any other ship ( if you are lucky you boarded 2 frigs) repair and sell it if you get a fighter put it in storage (I got a Hound ). Save up for a Destroyer with a hangar and its crew. This way I got this fleet and stocks in no time :
Fleet and ships

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Stocks

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Igot 40+k in no time and im not buying anything yet

Here are the results of me pressing "Let the second in command....(Auto Combat):

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I will post on the specific ways I handle AI "dumbness", but the summary of that is not to let them just go search and destroy order them some tasks. And for your designs you should run tests on them simulate a 2-3 on one encounter against your subject ship. For example when I design "point defence" ships I spawn in 2 talons 2 piranhas and 1 missile launching frigate or any ship of similar size. And when I design CruisersI pit 2 destroyers or a Cruiser and a Destroyer, and if it can handle them then it has met my requirements. Dont always focus on firepower. I once focused on too much point defence and got ripped up by Tri-Tachyon Capitals and Lazors xD

All you need is micro-management, smart-economics and Knowledge of your limits and who to fight. Sell what you don't need, if you may need it store it. If you wanna farm I suggest sticking to a small frigate flotilla, or a medium sized carrier group. Those Big and nasty shps come later when you have enough funds and resources. My best Fleet I was able to take the Pirate convoys and Independent Mercs Big fleets by just clicking auto finish xD.

[phyrex]

your late to the party ganjou. sorry to say but that guy was acknowledged as a troll (i mean, seriously ?)

dont be mistaken tho, it was nice of you to try and help

[Faiter119]

If you want to know what options get you what in the start of the game, you can check out video I made 3 months ago

[ganjou234]

your late to the party ganjou. sorry to say but that guy was acknowledged as a troll (i mean, seriously ?)

dont be mistaken tho, it was nice of you to try and help

Posted anyway would like to help others besides this dude. And I think he said he was using Uomozs Corvus mod, so I tried using the mod. And I found it harder to farm and buy stuff but not impossible. I now have 4 Frigates 

[Erick Doe]

Starting out can be difficult. If you are having a hard time overcoming the challenge of starting as a lowly frigate, you may want to try this mod I've created:

Here!

It provides the player with a choice of new starting ships. Most of these are actually quite challenging to start out in, however the Talus may make things a lot easier since it functions as a light destroyer / carrier. I am currently also working on adding a light cruiser as starting ship, which should enable the player to overcome the initial difficulties of the game.

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