Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mammothbaby]

Hello Friends:

I purchased Starsector in Feb of '12 (back when it was Starfarer), but decided to shelve it until it was a little bit further along in its development.  The winter has provided me with some downtime, and while I've been immensely enjoying Elite: Dangerous, I'm also trying not to burn myself out on it... so it's back to Starsector I go.  Despite being an avid space game nerd, I'm still overwhelmed by the different systems at play in Starsector, so I was hoping to solicit some general advice on the current version in an attempt to get a handle on the basics and start feeling as though I'm making progress re: fleet advancement (upgrade paths for ships and weapons, for example) and piloting skills.  All advice is welcome.  Please note that I have read all of the help text and done the tutorials, and browsed through the 'help' threads on these forums -- but many of them seem to be outdated.  Also, do people recommend learning vanilla before modding, or are there mods that really improve the basic experience when starting out?

EDIT: as far a preferred playstyle, I much prefer to play a bounty hunter/scavanger to a trader.

Thanks in advance, everyone,

Aidan  

[Wyvern]

Most of the really game-changing mods are meant to make the game harder; in general I'd advise getting your feet wet, so to speak, with vanilla or vanilla + utility mods (things like omnifactory or the radar mod come to mind).  And, thanks to the save transfer mod, you can do this and then add in mods later without losing character progression.

Bounty hunter is quite viable at the moment, though a bit trickier to start out - my advice is to go for a wolf with the weapon upgrade option.  There are several threads around with advice on how to fly a heavy blaster wolf; it's not a trivial task (since you need to be able to deal with salamander missiles, either mounting enough PD to take them down - one burst PD should do it if you can find one, but other forms of small energy PD don't work well for me - or learning to fly so that they loop around you entirely and hit your front shields), but it has the most punch of your starting options.

If you do mess with mods, I'd advise looking at Starsector Plus (SS+) and its list of compatible mods; it does require significantly more memory than vanilla, however, so you'll also want to switch to 64-bit java.  There's a stickied thread with instructions over in the bug report / support section of the forum.  SS+ has a few more options for starting characters; the easiest path is probably to pick all of the Tri-Tachyon options and then take a ship upgrade; that starts you with a Tempest instead of a Wolf.
For the SS+ compatible mods, I'd advise adding Templars, Shadowyards, Interstellar Imperium, and Blackrock Driveyards.  Neutrino Corporation works fairly well with this, too, though it's not on the official "integrated factions" list.  Others on the list - Mayorate and Citadel - I am personally less impressed with, but your mileage may vary.

Don't completely ignore trade, though.  In particular, if you ever see an Atlas for sale (the Sindrian Diktat has been my best source of these), buy it; even if you don't want it in your fleet right then, these are rare enough that you want to buy and drop it in storage if need be.  Once you have even one of these, trade becomes a very viable option - buy food at Eos, ship it to somewhere that tends to have food shortages (Sindria, for example), and then just stockpile food in your storage there until there is a shortage.  Then sell all of it; you'll probably get dinged -5 rep for taking advantage of selling more food than was needed to stop the shortage... but you'll also gain an enormous pile of XP (and cash); totally worth it.

[Wyvern]

Oh, right.  A few other bits of general advice:

• Never select the option to pursue retreating ships (though blowing up boardable ships is just fine) - this is the only (outside of some mods) thing that can push your reputation into the unrecoverable zone of -76 or worse; of particular note is that pirates will trade with you down to -75 rep, but if you go below that you're permanently locked out of their bases.  Of course, if you decide that's okay, then you might as well pursue pirates whenever it's economical to do so.
• Never buy/sell in bulk with the pirates (and be careful about doing so in systems with multiple factions); you take a huge hit to reputation for trading with a faction's enemies if that faction has a presence in the system.  (For example, if both Hegemony and Tri-Tachyon have presence in a system, and you stop a food shortage on a Hegemony planet in that system, you'll likely find yourself immediately at war with Tri-Tachyon.)
• Be wary of buying too much on the black market - small purchases will be ignored, but large ones can tank your reputation.
  • Exception: pirate bases, where your rep will tend to hover at -75, you might as well use the black market.
  • Note that how much is "too much" varies by population - on a small population planet, buying even a single large weapon can trigger investigations.  This is sometimes still worth it, if you happen across a rare weapon like the Storm Needler or Plasma Cannon.

[Dark.Revenant]

I also recommend Junk Pirates / ASP Syndicate / P.A.C.K. if you use SS+.  Very close to vanilla, they are.

[Megas]

Bounty hunter start:
If you select bounty hunter start, always take the weapon upgrade.  Even if you do not want heavy blaster now, heavy blasters are rare and difficult to find in large quantities.  Put it in storage.

The easiest early PD option for the Wolf is Computer Systems 3 to unlock IPDAI hullmod, even if tactical lasers are less-than ideal.  This is because energy PD stronger than mining laser is in military market, and they require either welcoming or friendly relations to unlock, something that will probably happen by the time you reach level 10.

Suicide exploit after starting a new game:
The topic "Exploit: How to get some frigates cheap in a new game." explains a way to effectively trade a broken shuttle for a fully armed combat frigate.  Basically, spend your money, switch to a damaged shuttle as a flagship, store all of your assets, scrap your flagship (which kills you), and respawn as a fully armed Cerberus/Lasher/Vigilance.

Trade exploits:
In general, identify bases that get recurring shortages, store the commodities they want in advance, and when the shortage event occurs, rush to base, take your commodities out of storage, and sell.

Hauling food from Tartessus (Eos) to Sindrian/Volturn (Askonia) and storing the food until an inevitable shortage occurs is well known.

Trade disruptions I exploit sometimes is supplies and fuel for bases in Magec, usually Tibicena.

Faction usefulness, what they have to offer:

• Hegemony has the most bases.  Jangala (Corvus) is generally the cheapest place to buy supplies.
• Church of Ludd is infamous for the cheapest food in the sector at Tartessus (Eos).
• Sindrian Diktat often has the cheapest fuel at Sindria (Askonia).  They sell the most Herons and Atlases.  Sindria and Volturn get periodic food shortages.
• Tri-Tachyon has Tibicena (Magec), the only place in the sector that sells most high-tech ships.  They also sell more energy weapons than other factions.  Tibicena can get disruptions for supplies and fuel.
• Independents are the least useful but still have useful markets.  Asharu (Corvus) gets shortages and disruptions.  Agreus (Arcadia) gets disruptions for ore and/or metal.
• Pirates sell cheap ore at Barad (Corvus).  You can also buy stuff from their Black Market without problems (if you remain hostile), namely fighters wings (like Broadswords or Daggers) and the occasional rare weapon.

EDIT:
Named bounty fleets
At first, they are nothing but low skilled pirates with low reward.  As you destroy named bounties, future bounty fleets become bigger, more rewarding, and better skilled.  You can play the entire game killing Pirates only.  Actually, many late-game named bounty fleets are deserters from other factions turned Pirate, meaning they are Pirates in name and allegiance, but use the ships and variants of the faction they came from.  For example, Tri-Tachyon deserter fleet can include Paragon flagship (with all Combat skills at 10) and a variety of high-tech and midline ships.  Late game named bounty fleets are your strongest opponents, effectively replacing Hegemony System Defense Fleets from previous versions.

[mammothbaby]

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone!

-Aidan

[Megas]

More tips:

• Exceeding capacities penalizes burn speed.
• You cannot space personnel anymore (new in 0.65).
• You do not gain XP for losing ships anymore.

If you lose ships in battle, it is possible for personnel to far exceed your reduced limits, and slow your fleet down to zero.  Since you cannot space your men, you are forced to watch helplessly as your fleet self-destructs.

Before 0.65, you gained XP for ships lost in combat, but some players (like me) exploited that by destroying their own ships on purpose.  As compensation, XP gains from combat were doubled.