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[mark.sucka]

So spoilers in advance if you haven't played through the tutorial.

Today I learned that when you play through the tutorial, and you are tasked with going to Tetra to collect ships to fight off the pirates guarding the gate, what you get as a reward for this mini-mission is directly linked to what you salvage.

If you choose to salvage nothing, perhaps because you already have a decent fleet from choosing one of the advanced starts that kick you off with an apogee or a hammerhead, you get the lowest reward possible waiting for you in the storage area:

• 100 supplies
• 1 talon wing LPC
• 1 piranha wing LPC

If you salvage any of the derelicts recovered around Tetra, your reward increases to:

• The above
• A random armament for each of the mounts of whatever ships you recovered, whether or not there was anything mounted on that slot already when you recovered it.  This does not include additional LPCs for the Condor, you already have 2.  These will always be low value common tech junk armaments; like thumpers, heavy mortar, mining blaster, light machine guns, mortars and autocannons (not even the double variants), sabots, annihilators.  But which specific ones you get are not linked to the seed, but rather completely variable and will trigger when completing the mission; if you save right before completion, you can re-roll what is waiting for you in storage.

This reward does not increase to include armaments for any additional ships you recover post-battle, either from the 4 fleets guarding the jump points, the fleet guarding Derinkuyu, nor the fleet guarding the probe (if you power level to level 5 via smuggling drugs to Derinkuyu, and pick automated ships skill, you can recover these ships too), nor any other ships that may populate through other means (pirate/pather spawns from mining with Nexerelin, impoverished mercenaries spawning from taking credits off the Tetra derelicts from IndEvo, etc.)

Also, and probably already well known, when completing the Tetra mini-mission, all ships in your possession will be raised to 100% health / maximum possible CR (70% by default, but will adjust to include crew training or officer's combat endurance buffs if they exist), so to maximize your reward, mothball the Tetra derelicts as you recover them to avoid unnecessarily wasting supplies repairing them on the way back to Ancyra.  This free repair will also apply to any other ships, so you can really milk the most of this reward by

• Recovering any ship you can in battle (if you choose to take on the Derinkuyu or jump gate guards early, or recover the drones from the probe), then mothballing them.  Even if you don't want them, they will yield more in resources for scuttling them at full health after the free repair than they would have yielded as post-battle scrap.
• Toggling off recovery for your ships.  Your fleet starts off the tutorial at 70% CR.  If you play smart, you can probably clear the first battle without a scratch.  As well as the probe battle, even at reduced CR from the first battle.  And if you picked the bigger fleet start, you can probably also take on the Derinkuyu fleet and some or all of the gate guards with the apogee or hammerhead.  At a minimum, toggle off recovery for the free mudskipper you get which starts at 50% CR, there is no need to waste 2 supplies bringing it up to 70% just to head out to Tetra.

[Nettle]

Thats very thorough, I imagine very few people play through the tutorial more than once though, there is little reason to do so.

[Void Ganymede]

if you power level to level 5 via smuggling drugs to Derinkuyu

... How much drugs are we talking here?

free mudskipper

excellent

[mark.sucka]

... How much drugs are we talking here?

I don't know.  It depends on a few variables.  You jump to level 2 after finishing the first battle.  If you spend story points on things to get bonus XP (hire and mentor officers, etc) you can rack a lot of bonus XP, and then fighting the 5 pirate fleets can bring you to level 3.5-just about 4.  A few months of smuggling can earn you the XP to get over lvl 5 and maybe even to lvl 6.  There are also 3 salvage fields that can earn you a bit of XP, in addition to the 8 derelicts (you can recover/salvage them and mothball them before the probe fight).  If you're going with a classic (2 frigate) start, the easiest way to smuggle enough quickly would be to take the wayfarer+shepherd combo.  You can also sometimes find heavily d-modded shepherds and wayfarers for sale at either station.

Drugs (Ancyra) <-> Organs (Derinkuyu) is always a guaranteed profit, yielding good XP per units trafficked.

Food (Ancyra) <-> Luxury Good, Domestic Goods, Organics, Supplies, Fuel (Derinkuyu) can be slightly profitable to fill the extra space, but if you overdo it the profit can vanish and you have to wait a bit for it to become profitable again.

You can also take advantage of cheap supplies and fuel on Ancyra and sell it to Derinkuyu before they remember they're cut off and jack the prices up.  Recovering the ships at Tetra (specifically the Dram) before heading over to Ancrya and clearing Ancyra out of fuel (both open market and black market) to sell off at Derinkuyu can yield profit of $30+ per unit.  These both can provide massive initial XP gains.

Overall it can be a great kickstart.  4+ months of smuggling and you can walk away with about 1 million credits.  And if you're doing a salvage/"buy nothing" play-through, getting the AI skill and those 2-3 extra explorarium frigates at the start can really help; they can deploy for 1 supply each, if they blow up you only lose ~3 supply and no crew each, they're guaranteed recoverable even without reinforced bulkheads (unless you're over the ship max), and if you're super lucky with your seed you can get an extra gamma core from the probe to use as a lvl 3 officer for one of them.  Sentries are decent missile harassers (swarmers / salamanders) to avoid your fleet being swarmed or as suicide bombers (hammerheads) to kill off cruisers, and wardens can bring a decent punch with a chain gun + machine gun combo, given they both only cost 1 supply to field.  You'll retire them eventually, but early game they can help out.

Just don't overdo it.  It may have been patched up, but in .95 if you went more than about a year without stabilizing the jump points, Derinkuyu would de-civilize.  And if you hadn't already at least contacted the agent, you'd be locked from being able to complete the tutorial (de-civilized = no comm directory at the station = can't speak to the agent to get the algorithm).

[Kinsume]

Interesting idea if you have the patience to do it. Not sure if I'm wording this right, but I've always wondered does the sector evolve during your time in the tutorial. Playing with Nex for example, if I spend to long in the tutorial is it possible when I leave one of the factions have already taken several planets and such? Or does the sector start coming alive once you exit the tutorial?

[mark.sucka]

Interesting idea if you have the patience to do it. Not sure if I'm wording this right, but I've always wondered does the sector evolve during your time in the tutorial. Playing with Nex for example, if I spend to long in the tutorial is it possible when I leave one of the factions have already taken several planets and such? Or does the sector start coming alive once you exit the tutorial?

Thanks for your engagement.

In the spirit of science, I thought I'd check this out on my latest playthrough with Nex & IndEvo.  The answer is; at one time yes, but that has since been patched.  SpiffingBrit did a playthrough of Starsector a few years back where he proved things do progress while you're in tutorial. If you don't know his content, he basically plays games with the intent of breaking them; discovering overpowering quirks by playing the game in a way that developers didn't expect people would play them.  He power-leveled in the tutorial to unlock the transverse jump skill (which at the time required a minimum level of 4 or 5, much higher than would be expected of someone going through the tutorial normally).  Then he basically transversed jumped out of Galatia without fixing the jump points, leaving them in the lurch.  This set him up as the only man in the sector capable of reaching Galatia, allowing him to repeated jump back in to extort them for large sums of money in exchange for fulling their desperate need for commodities as the sole person capable of delivering them, making him very wealthy very quickly.  All the while, the sector marched on, unable to help Galatia.

But Alex patched out the ability to use Transverse Jump in .95 and then must have made additional tweaks, because nothing outside Galatia changes during the tutorial.

Interestingly Galatia itself does change.  I floated around for 10 full cycles and found the following:

• Ancrya underwent numerous rebellions due to low stability.  Hegemony suppression fleets came in via the jump point, but after the suppression mission was completed, they were unable to leave and just floated around the jump points with a goal of returning to Citadel Arcadia.  They eventually disappeared (you can't camp the jump point forever).
• Despite repeated rebellions and cycles of 0-1 stability, neither Ancrya nor Derinkuyu decivilized.  This is likely a unique mechanic Alex put in explicitly to prevent the tutorial from breaking.
• Ancrya rebelled so hard, they switch allegiances to the Persean League.  When I finally turned in to complete the mission, I earned rep with Persean League instead of Hegemony due to this quirk.
• No outside colonies grew, but their population progress probably continued.  Eventually after completing the tutorial, I got a flood of notifications that a few colonies had grown in size, but moments earlier the scoreboard showed no change in populations for any factions.
• No diplomacy changes occurred during the tutorial.  No alliances were created, faction relations remained constant the full 10 cycles.  Alliances only started forming after the tutorial ended.
  
• The only way I could break the tutorial was to saturation bomb Ancrya.  There is a unique barrier to forming any colonies in Galatia while the jump points have not been stabilized.  With the AIRetrofits mod, you can create a mechanized colony of robots despite this unique barrier, which usually functions normally.  However, if establishing one on the ruins of Ancrya, interacting with the base commander of this new colony does not progress the tutorial missions.
• No income or expenses occur.  Crew and officer wages are not paid out at the end of the month.  You don't pay any storage for whatever you leave in Ancrya.  And bizarrely, with the Shadowy Broker mod, you incur a reduction in your cash on hand that offsets whatever bank deposit interest accrual you get, so neither expenses nor income happen.  If you build an AIRetrofit automated colony, there is no colony expense either.
• If you build an AIRetrofit colony (either Tetra or Pontus), unique things happen.  First, you will NOT create a faction (initially, you will once the tutorial is completed).  -10 Hegemony rep.  They will somehow send a sat bomb fleet to kill it off.  If you can fend it off, the 1 patrol from Ancyra will circle your colony.  If you destroy it, they will not create any more patrols.  More sat bomb fleets will follow, but you will never receive advanced notification.  If you build a patrol HQ on your colony, it will spawn a patrol fleet that will install a makeshift comm relay on the one free stable point.  This relay will work (even though the main one Hegemony owns will not), removing the -1 stability penalty for your colony and allowing you to see market prices.  Trade fleets from different factions will drop off commodities, and will somehow exit the map via sub-light impulse thrusters; migrating to the edge of the map and disappearing rather than using the jump points.  Your planets will generate trade fleets of their own, and exit the system in a similar fashion.  Your population will grow, and size will increase up to 6.  No pirate or pather activity will occur, save for a very small amount of pirate patrols likely spawning from mining fleets generating a pirate raider.  You can remove any commodities from your colony production and not pay any cost at the end of the month, creating an exploit to take all your stuff for free, dump it in storage and/or sell it to Ancrya or Derinkuyu for massive profit.  If you build heavy industry, you can queue custom production, but it will not produce.  If you had the patience and were willing to go to war with Hegemony, you could exit the tutorial with 2 size 6 colonies of Pontus & Tetra.  Alternatively, I'd imagine you could build enough positive rep with Hegemony through mining, then kiting the responding pirate/pather fleets into Ancrya station, then assisting with the battle, thus earning small amounts of positive rep with Hegemony.  Then you could ally with them, probably negating the sat bomb raids once your colony is built.
• Similarly, if your seed gave you an extra gamma core from the probe, you could build an outpost (or I guess you could "borrow" your only one for a while before handing it over to the admin, then abandon your outpost to recover it to turn in and advance the tutorial).  Again, the $5000 month upkeep is not deducted every month, and you can loot the waystation of the supplies, fuel and crew for free, and sell them off to the other 2 stations for easy money.

[li]Nex ground battles are disabled while the tutorial is active.  Even if you somehow had marines, initiating a ground battle results in an empty window and no way to deploy troops.[/li][/list]

So long story short, SOME stuff does go on while you're in the tutorial, but these are little more than hack-job stop-gap stuff and really nothing is truly progressing until you finish the tutorial.  And also, many of the old ways to brick the tutorial no longer exist.

[Kinsume]

I appreciate the dedication to figuring this stuff out lol. That is some interesting information for sure, I guess it is a good thing that Alex patched the tutorial breaking stuff. Decided not to use Nex afterall and go for a more vanilla-like experience. Personally I'm a fan of the tutorial, I believe it has its place in starting each game, though I understand why alot of people skip it. One of the reasons I used Nex is because I like random ship starts, but the vanilla randomized start with tutorial gives you ships but only like 10 supply so you're in the hole right off the bat. Some people enjoy the extra challenge, just not my cup of tea though as I prefer a smooth transition/progression in my playthroughs. Just going to use one of the other settings and go at it.

[Network Pesci]

Despite repeated rebellions and cycles of 0-1 stability, neither Ancrya nor Derinkuyu decivilized.  This is likely a unique mechanic Alex put in explicitly to prevent the tutorial from breaking.

I want to point out that this is not completely unique, several populated locations critical to the vanilla storyline have a hardcoded protection against being decivilized until they don't matter any more for the campaign storyline.  Kanta's Den, for example, will not decivilize no matter how often you raid it, until you have completed certain events in the Galatia Academy storyline.

Thats very thorough, I imagine very few people play through the tutorial more than once though, there is little reason to do so.

I might be unusual in the StarSector playerbase, but I nearly always play the tutorial when starting a new campaign.  For one thing, it's traditional.  For another thing, it helps me recalibrate my skills if I'm starting over from a lategame save where I have a max level character and piles of endgame loot, I can retrain myself to battling without character skills before it actually matters to my campaign.

[Nettle]

I might be unusual in the StarSector playerbase, but I nearly always play the tutorial when starting a new campaign.  For one thing, it's traditional.  For another thing, it helps me recalibrate my skills if I'm starting over from a lategame save where I have a max level character and piles of endgame loot, I can retrain myself to battling without character skills before it actually matters to my campaign.

If you ever get tired of redoing the tutorial but find yourself in need to shake off the rust after long break you can do main menu missions, they are probably even better for that purpose, unless you also need a refresher on controls and campaign basics I guess.

[Kinsume]

Fortunately I don't actually pilot the ships myself, I'm horrible at it. I tried a few of the main menu missions for laughs and I'm just terrible at it.