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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Your best themed playthrough ideas?  (Read 2279 times)

Dexy

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Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« on: June 19, 2021, 07:59:45 AM »

A themed playthrough is one where you set rules for yourself to make things more interesting and challenging, such as "only use low-tech".
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Tecrys

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2021, 08:09:04 AM »

I've done one of these fairly recently:
1. Maximum of 3 cruisers (except for pure logistics ships), no capitals
2. Pirate start from shadowyards, everyone hates you except for a few mod factions
3. No colony, no commission

Had over 100 hours of fun with this
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Yunru

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2021, 11:00:13 AM »

Phase only is quite fun.
And I mean phase only, even for logistics ships.

It's quite the challenging start though.

(Fun fact: Your detection radius can go negative! At which point going dark is actually counter-productive, since a negative number halved becomes bigger.)

WeiTuLo

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #3 on: June 19, 2021, 11:17:23 AM »

I want to try a mostly/all Atlas MK II fleet. I think they can do pretty well in two groups of ships escorting each other. The fuel is a killer though.
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IonDragonX

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #4 on: June 19, 2021, 01:53:02 PM »

Phase only is quite fun.(Fun fact: Your detection radius can go negative! At which point going dark is actually counter-productive, since a negative number halved becomes bigger.)
Now, that one sounds fun

How about this : You keep what you kill - Never purchase nor take as a gift any ship, even in quests. You are, however, allowed to purchase locations of ships that are currently piloted just to shoot them down and hope that you get to loot it.
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Amoebka

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2021, 06:25:00 PM »

Have you done the usual faction cosplays? Only allowed to use ships that say "pirate" in their design type, only allowed to use pather ships, only allowed to use "hegemony" / "hegemony auxiliary" design type + XIV versions of ships, etc.
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Daynen

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2021, 08:57:53 PM »

I want to try a mostly/all Atlas MK II fleet. I think they can do pretty well in two groups of ships escorting each other. The fuel is a killer though.

A fellow man of culture, I see!
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Dexy

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #7 on: June 20, 2021, 08:14:16 AM »

One fun themed playthrough I'm doing at the moment:

With a spacer start, I'm only allowed to work for and trade with pirates. The galatian academy is allowed only after getting a colony.

Making credits is actually somewhat difficult with these restrictions It's fun because it forces me into a completely different playstyle, e.g. making money by salvaging whatever is left after pirate raids or ambushing smugglers and selling the drugs and organs via pirate trade missions. Having a small fleet of d-mod junk that can successfully complete bounties for pirate warloads feels like an achievement. Getting colonies up soon is also important before the spacer tax becomes unbearable. 
« Last Edit: June 20, 2021, 08:16:31 AM by Dexy »
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WeiTuLo

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2021, 01:39:18 PM »

I want to try a mostly/all Atlas MK II fleet. I think they can do pretty well in two groups of ships escorting each other. The fuel is a killer though.

A fellow man of culture, I see!

And Prometheus MK II shall bring the Infernal Fire.
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isyourmojofly

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #9 on: June 22, 2021, 07:59:59 AM »


How about this : You keep what you kill - Never purchase nor take as a gift any ship, even in quests. You are, however, allowed to purchase locations of ships that are currently piloted just to shoot them down and hope that you get to loot it.

This is a fun one! Goes for weapons too, so you're always trying to make do with what you've got. It gives you an incentive to attack 'good' factions, not just Pirates, since you need some of that sweet tech.
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WeiTuLo

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #10 on: June 22, 2021, 08:02:59 AM »

A Buffalo MK II run would be awesome. They use too much fuel though. And they don't like to send fighters/bombers towards targets while drifting into range themselves.
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Deshara

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #11 on: June 22, 2021, 10:44:46 AM »

I'm having a lot of fun doing a cabal/pirate king playthrough, where I kick out of every system I can everyone except for pirates, LP & I install a cabal submarket somehwere in the system so my systems are crawling with underworld raiders. To keep up with the theme my fleet is all cabal or otherwise elite or phase ships then my faction is only allowed to use low tech or pirate/LP variants of midline so that my fleet is always technologically superior. If I get a blueprint for high tech stuff I sell it instead of consuming it so my faction can't have them. I sold a paragon blueprint lol
In fact, once I got stuck defending one of my systems from back to back to back to back to back invasions (everybody hates me) I just accepted that I was gonna have to do all the defense manually & set my fleet doctrine to only prioritize A-Kites & hammer torps then deleted all kite variants except for one with expanded missile racks, then set fleet size to max, ship size to minimum, all warships, aggressive/reckless. So my defense fleets that would try to help were restricted to just torpedo kites to make kill-shots against ships that my fleet had disabled/opened up to a hammer torpedo up the tailpipe. It was actually quite fun.
And for the record, this playthru is extremely hard.
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Flying Birdy

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Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?
« Reply #12 on: June 22, 2021, 11:08:07 PM »

I want to try a mostly/all Atlas MK II fleet. I think they can do pretty well in two groups of ships escorting each other. The fuel is a killer though.

A fellow man of culture, I see!

And Prometheus MK II shall bring the Infernal Fire.

I've been thinking of trying a civilian hull playthrough just for fun. But then I thought about fighting redacted with nothing but prometheus and just decided against it.
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