This is a tutorial how to get into the late game with Starsector. While I don't want to actively spoil the story line, there are details about the new crisis and other aspects of the game.
Starsector is an open world, space exploration game with fighting and colonization. It is a lot of fun, but the learning curve is quite steep. The tutorial is very good, but only helps you get your first fleet.
Starting with Starsector 0.97 there is a new crisis system that might seem daunting at first, but is quite interesting once you get the hang of it. In a nutshell, after you start your first colony, you start to get into conflict with the other factions. Pirates want to raid your systems, Tri Tachyon doesn’t like that you take more and more market share, the Persean League sees you as a potential target and the Hegemony is offended by your AI core use. Depending on how you setup your colony, you will attract unwanted attention from some of them.
At first it will be small fleets that harass you and your trade convoys, but when the crisis progress bar is full something big happens. It might be a blockade or an all-out attack on your colonies. No matter what it is, it tends to involve multiple fleets that have many capital ships.
So, you need to be well prepared for these events when they strike. Here is a guide how to setup your colonies, so you don’t suffer from the consequences of the crisis system.
I - Starting Scenarios
Choose any fleet to start your game with. I like the Scavenger one with the drone tender, but a bigger starting fleet will make the start easier. The more important choice is if you want to remain independent or sign a commission with one of the factions. Staying independent is good when you know what you are doing, as you don’t get involved in early conflicts with other factions. Commissions provide a steady income and access to rare faction battle ships at the expanse of getting pulled into wars. To get a commission you need a good relationship with the faction by participating in system bounties or doing missions for them.
Personally, I like to remain independent as it makes handling most of the colony crisis easier.
II - Industry Skill Tree
The industry skill tree is very powerful throughout the game, as it allows you to accumulate money, resources and ships faster. The skills I recommend are Salvaging, Ordnance Expertise, Polarized Armor, Industry Planning, and Hull Restoration. After that you can focus on the Combat or Technology.
• Salvaging – Super useful for salvaging resources after a battle. Early on you can save money on supplies and fuel and later you can explore longer without resupplying at a colony.
• Ordnance Expertise – Makes your flagship better by keeping your flux levels lower.
• Polarized Armor – Another good flagship skill that makes you take less damage and allows you to vent faster.
• Industry Planning – All your industries make more money, especially in combination with Industry improvements.
• Hull Restoration – The best skill throughout the game. It allows you to salvage more ships and repairs their D-mods over time. With this skill you rarely need to buy ships, as you can recycle your enemies fleet. This is especially interesting for rare ships like cruisers and capitals.
Doing bar missions, profitable trades (read: black market trades), and bounties levels you up. You should be around level 4 or higher when you have everything to start your first colony.
You can restore a lot of ships with many D-mods and store them in Abandoned Stations (like in Corvus) as you will obtain Hull Restoration soon. This saves you a lot of money for freighters, frigates and destroyers as you don’t need to buy them.
Early on, you can restore almost every ship to make your fleet bigger. I tend to skip the really trash ships like Mudskipper, Hound and Cerberus, but Mule, Manticore, Enforcer, and Venture are all good pre-colonization ships.
III - Head Start after skipping the Tutorial (Optional)
First, you need to setup your fleet unless you started with the tutorial or chose a start with a bigger fleet. If you have a decent fleet you can instantly go to Magec and continue from there.
When you first spawn in Corvus, visit the bars of Jangala and Asharu to check out the missions. If you are lucky you get the escort mission to Askonia or a heavily discounted ship. Both missions will make your start easier, but are not mandatory.
Fly to Garnir to fight some pirates. This will provide you with a small bounty and potentially your first restorable ship. Do 2 or 3 fights and leave for another system.
If you get the Askonia mission you can deliver your passengers and stay. The radar will show you skirmishes between the pirates and the Sindrian Dictate around the Listening Station and the Comm Relay. There will be loot and ships to salvage. Try to get your hands on some freighters.
Without the Askonia mission, Galitia is the better alternative to get your hands on some ships. Tetra has some derelict ships from the tutorial mission.
The next destination is Magec where you can do some quick trades to get money. Disable your transponder and explore the black markets. The system has an interesting dynamic:
• Nova Maxios sells supplies and fuel rather cheap and Kanta’s Den pays a premium for them. You can also get the Harvested Organs while you are at it.
• Kanta’s Den sells domestic goods, luxury goods and recreational drugs at a discount. Start by selling the stuff from Nova Maxios and get domestic and luxury goods to sell back to Tibicena and Nava Maxios. While they don’t need them urgently, you will still make a decent profit for the first 500 units. Get more freighters if your storage space is less than 1000.
• With the new funds, you can buy recreational drugs at Kanta’s Den. Check which colony has a deficit and sell them there. Often it’s the Thulian Raiders, Donn or Epiphany.
This trade should give you a couple of hundred thousand credits. The markets will normalize and this beneficial trade cannot be repeated. You need to wait many months before the markets reset again. The money is enough to start buying good weapons and maybe one good cruiser.
If there is a system bounty in the core systems try your best to participate in fending off the pirates. This will give you ships, weapons, resources and experience.
After that, I like to check the markets in Hybrasil and Mayasura for Doom, Aurora and energy weapons. If I see a trade convoy that I can take that has the ships I want, I disable my transponder and ambush them once they cannot recognize me.
Whenever you dock at colonies, check bar missions and the markets regularly for good opportunities. If you find good Modspecs like Augmented Drive Field or Expanded Magazines and you have the money, buy them.
Sprinkle in a few additional trades, system bounties and bar missions and you should have enough resources and money to look at your first colony.
IV - Preparation & Colonization
Setting up a colony requires a good planet, some resources and money.
Your first planet should be close to the core systems, have farming of +0 or more and a hazard rating of less than 125%.
To find a suitable planet you have two options: 1) explore the star systems and 2) know a planet based on a seed.
An efficient approach to exploration is to use a fast fuel tanker that jumps quickly from star system to star system and scans interesting planets. A Dram or Phaeton with Augmented Field Drive and Militarized Systems is excellent for this task, as you pay minimal crew salaries, you have enough fuel to fly between systems and consume minimal supplies. Some people prefer to have an additional freighter like a Wayfarer to carry more supplies, just make sure all your ships have a speed of 11+, so you move quickly and can flee most of the hostile fleets.
Systematically jump from system to system around the core in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. The goal is to find a good planet close to the core systems as they benefit from high accessibility. There is a chance that the closest systems are not suitable, then extend the radius of your search.
Interesting planets that you should investigate further are Arid, Desert, Jungle and Terran planets. It is random where they are, but yellow star systems have the highest probability to have a good planet. When you see a good candidate, fly to the planet and do an initial scan. If the planet is habitable and has a hazard rating of less than 125% then remember the system for later.
Once you have a handful of interesting habitable planets, return to the core systems, get a larger fleet that includes ships with Surveying Equipment. Apogees and Ventures have this mod build in, but you can also manually add it to other ships. This will reduce the supplies used and the crew size required to survey planets. Bring around 300 crew, 100 heavy machinery and 800 supplies for the exploration.
Check all your candidates and pick the best one for your first colony.
Back in the core systems, get resources to start your colony, here is a short list of what you will need:
• 1200+ crew (1000 will be consumed in the creation of the new colony)
• 700+ supplies (100 will be consumed in the creation of the new colony)
• 200+ heavy machinery (100 will be consumed in the creation of the new colony, 15 are required for a comm relay)
• 500 food (optional)
• 200 organics (optional)
• 100 domestic goods (optional)
• 5-15 transplutonics (for comm relay and the like)
• 30-90 steel (for comm relay and the like)
• 1-2 gamma cores (optional)
• 200.000+ credits
The optional goods will be required for an optimal start. A new colony will survive without them, but you will pay more through higher expenses in the first months.
After you create the colony, enable Hazard Pay, Use stockpiles during shortages and later Free Port. Add your AI cores to Population & Infrastructure and your new Spaceport to reduce the demands by 1 unit of each if you have any. Transfer all the optional resources if you have them. Ideally, you should spare some heavy machinery and supplies, but make sure you have enough yourself.
Create at least a comm relay as it provides +1 stability. Other stable point satellites are less important and can be omitted.
Build Farming and optimally a Waystation and spends story points on your Farming industry.
With this your first colony should be thriving and generate a small profit. Leave your star system and return to the core systems to earn more money and obtain more ships.
Later, add a Patrol HQ to make your colony more stable.
On size 4, add Light Industry to keep the Luddic Majority boon.
Around size 5, add an Orbital Station – High Tech and Commerce. Improve your Orbital Station when you stop hurting for money.
V - Growing your Fleet
With a growing colony, you need to increase your forces to be able to protect it properly. For this you need money and ships. With the industry tree it tends to be more effective to recover enemy ships.
V.1 - Getting Weapons
New ships require weapons to be effective. Unfortunately, there is no one-stop-shop for all your weapons needs. I focus on buying energy weapons if they are available, because it is less likely to loot enough early on in the game. Pirates and other factions drop ballistics weapons, so you usually have a stockpile of them.
Here is a short list of weapons I buy when they are available. Energy weapons: Antimatter Blaster, Burst PD Laser, Ion Pulser, and Autopulse Laser. Missile weapons: Reaper and Typhoon Reaper.
Tri-Tachyon, Sindrian Dictate, and Pearsion League worlds tend to have good energy weapons in their black markets. Check them out whenever you have the chance.
V.2 - System Bounties
Initially, it is good to set out on system bounties. Either shortly before you take your first colony or after. You will receive experience and resources like heavy machinery, many weapons and a few good ship hulls. Ships worth salvaging are Shrike (P), Enforcer (P), Manticore (P), Venture (P), Eradicator (P), and Falcon (P). Most of them you will substitute quickly with better ships, but the Falcon (P) is a solid choice for most of the game. Get more and more ships until you have a 150 – 200 DP fleet.
V.3 - Bounties
Bounties are a great way to obtain good ships. Look for bounties that have ships you want and go get them. The bounties scale with your level and with the amount of bounties you have finished. A huge downside are the logistics, as you need enough supplies and fuel for your fleet to make a roundtrip. A small efficient fleet is optimal for this, but early on you tend to have low tech fuel hungry ships.
It mostly makes sense to go for bounties if there are multiple juicy ones in the same area and it’s not too far from the core worlds.
Bounties take valuable time which is limited due to colony crisis. With slow ships a roundtrip can easily take 2 months, so you should pick your battles. If you waste too much time chasing bounties your fleet might not be large enough to fend off the first crisis.
V.4 - Trade Convoys
Always disable your transponder when you are not in a system owned by one of the factions, this way you can ambush fleets with minimal repercussions. Faction reputation is a resource you can use. It’s easy to get via bounties and you only lose 5 reputation for destroying a fleet as long as they haven’t identified you.
Look for convoys that hold valuable goods or have nice ships / ship hulls. As long as you can take them with your current forces it’s a good opportunity to pounce on them. Just keep the faction relations in mind. You don’t want to become hostile with one of the major factions.
V.5 - Occupation / Harassing Fleets
The colony crisis system introduced harassing fleets which loiter in your system and bully or attack trade fleets. They tend to be large and often include capital ships. At the start they might be too powerful, but with a decent army consisting of a handful of cruisers and destroyers they become manageable.
These fleets are a great opportunity to obtain good ships quickly. Destroying them has minimal impact on reputation and you can pick the ones that have the ships you want. As they are in the same system as your colony, you can restore almost all ships and tow them to your hangar.
Focus on fleets without capitals first to get powerful cruisers and then salvage your own capitals once you have enough forces.
I like to get a few Eagles and Champions first and then look for Onslaughts.
Within a month you can go from a rag tag collection of ships to a sizable military force.
V.6 - Restoring Ships
After battles you can restore ships if you win. The hull restoration skill is key and as long as your ships have few D-Mods and are piloted by you or your officers they are almost always recoverable. Enemy ships have a chance to be restored and there are a few factors that affect the rate.
• The amount of ships that can be salvaged per battle is limited and your own and enemy ships take up slots. Your ships have priority, so the less you lose the more slots are available for other ships.
• Disabled ships have twice the chance to be restorable. There is a random chance that a ship is only disabled and not destroyed. Controlling the damage on the enemy ship is key. The less you overkill the enemy the higher the chance that the hull remains intact.
• Facing an enemy fleet with support like an orbital station or allies only gives you a fraction of the loot and the restorable ships. The ratio depends on the damage you deal during the fight. For best chances fight alone.
Some ships require story points to be restored, but it mostly goes away with the hull restoration skill.
V.7 - Removing D-Mods
Most ships you obtain will have D-Mods, modifications that have negative effects. Hull restoration has a huge chance to remove one D-Mod after you obtain the ship. After that you remove around one D-Mod per month from your fleet.
You can also remove D-Mods by repairing them in a dock, but the price is higher than buying the ship new and it goes up for every additional D-Mod. A Mule (P) costs 40.800 credits when you produce it yourself and restoring it with one D-Mod costs 48.960. Still, it might be worth restoring small frigates with many D-Mods, so your hull restoration fixes your expensive ships.
I like to store most of my broken ships in my colonies and only take a couple of high value ones to restore over time. When they are fully restored, I rotate them for other ships with D-mods, so my fleet becomes pristine over time.
VI - Second Colony
Add your second colony once you stabilized your first one and saved enough money. This means you have a Spaceport, Farming, and a Waystation with 500.000 credits in the bank. Look for a planet with 150% hazard rating that has No Atmosphere. Optimally, it’s in the same star system as your first colony, close by or in a star system with a Gate. The first new industry is not too important. Pick either Refining or Heavy Industry if you have enough money. Fuel Production works too, but you will trigger the Sindrian Dictate and produce additional aggro for the colony crisis.
The setup is similar to your first colony. Add a comm relay, enable Hazard Pay, Use stopiles during shortages, Free Port and add your AI cores.
Create a Waystation, Patrol HQ, another industry from Refining, Heavy Industry or Fuel Production and an Orbital Station – High Tech.
On level 5 add the last industry from the selection above and finish it on level 6 with Commerce.
VII - Third and Fourth Colony
Explore for suitable planets for your next colonies. Make sure you hire administrators before proceed with adding more colonies, otherwise the stability of all your colonies can become critical due to the management malus. You can sometimes find freelance administrators in the comm directory of colonies or on random ships in space like officers.
You need a gas planet with +1 or +2 volatiles and 150-175% hazard rating for mining volatiles.
Additionally, you need a very hot volcanic planet with +2/+3 ore and +2/+3 rare ore with up to 250% hazard rating. Optimally both are +3, but you can compromise if it’s too difficult to find a good planet.
These planets will set you up for later when you find items to improve your industries.
To create your third and fourth colony you need a profitable setup, as they will be a major money drain at first due to their high hazard rating. Your first two colonies should provide 50.000+ credits per month and you should have at least Battlestations on both of them.
VIII - Colony Crisis
Each fraction has its own crisis. Mostly they attack your planets or systems with many fleets at once and cause economic damage if you fail to defend. Each crisis has multiple ways to stop them. I will highlight only the most relevant options. With each crisis you will get benefits and a significant influx in salvaged ships. After the first crisis you might get a couple of capitals and a handful of cruisers, which can be enough until the end game.
Sindrian Dictate & Luddic Church: They will try to destroy or take over your colony. You must either prevent the fleet from launching or defend your planet. SD will focus on the colony with the highest fuel production, while LC attacks the colony with the highest Luddic Majority. The best defense is a Planetary Fortress with an Alpha AI Core. You can also try to snipe fleets one by one on the travel from the core systems to your planet.
Tri-Tachyon: Harass their colonies and their trading before they launch their attack. It is very difficult to defend against their fleets, as they have many officers S-Mods and high tech ships. If you fail all the industries on your planet will be disrupted for almost a year and you still need to harass their colonies.
Hegemony: This tends to be one of the last colony crisis and you should have enough ships and resources to stop them. It repeats 3 times with progressively more and stronger fleets. Get their pristine nanoforge to make the fleets weaker.
Persean League: A dozen fleets will occupy your star system and prevent trade from happening. Make sure you stock up on enough supplies and have money in the bank. I like ot have at least 5000 supplies in total and around 300.000 credits to counteract the dip in income. Destroy their supply fleets or their main armada. With a decent fleet this is not too difficult. If your fleet is too small, try to snipe smaller fleets and salvage their capitals and cruisers. Get their pristine nanoforge to make the fleets weaker.
Luddic Path
The Luddic Path extremists ignore your colonies as long as you stay below an interest threshold of 7 per colony. Colonies above this limit receive sleeper cells that can become active or passive.
Here is short list of what creates interest:
• Gamma core, mining: 1
• Beta core, Refining, Tech-Mining on Scattered Ruins, Fuel Production: 2Alpha Core, Tech-Mining on Widespread Ruins, Corrupted Nanoforge, Pristine Nanoforge, Synchrotron Core, Orbital Fusion Lamp, Autonomous Mantle Bore, Catalytic Core, Soil Nanites, Biofactory Embryo, Fullerene Spool, Plasma Dynamo, Cryoarithmetic Engine, Combat Drone Replicators, Dealmaker Holosuite: 4
• Tech-Mining on Extensive Ruins: 6
• Hypershunt Tap, Tech-Mining on Vast Ruins: 8
• AI Core Administrator: 10
I like to stay below this threshold until I have a sizable fleet and can deal with the fallout. You can temporarily get rid of sleeper cells by destroying the base that supplies them with support or pay a sizable tithe that depends on the interest you generate, usually in the hundreds of thousands. This makes all sleeper cells passive for 2 years.
For a permanent fix, you need to start a quest to find a Planet Killer by flying to one of their outposts and speaking with the person in charge.
IX - Fleet
IX.1 - Early Game
The early game is everything between the start and your first colony. Almost all ships are good, as you need to become better at fighting and transportation of goods, fuel and crew. The best option is to check the bars on planets, as there are sometimes cheaper ships. Some require marines to get them others are just cheaper. Most of the time it’s worth buying them, unless you spend your whole bank on them.
Get a Colossus or a Buffalo to be able to do bigger logistics missions. You will need a tanker for fuel as your fleet grows. Additionally, get a Salvage Rig, so you can salvage more every time.
A common early game fleet consists of a handful of frigates, a handful of freighters and tankers and maybe a few destroyers.
IX.2 - Mid Game
Mid game is everything between your first colony and your colonies becoming really profitable. You hurt for cash to build industries and defensive structures and lack ships in your fleet. Often the mid game includes the first and maybe the second colony crisis.
I like to have a lean fleet in the mid game, as you need to move between planets a lot due to missions, trading, and colony defense.
• Doom (or your preferred flagship) – Buy or salvage. I go out of my way to get my flagship early in the game. They are rarely on sale and cost > 300.000 credits even with many D-mods.
• Aurora – Auroras are resource efficient regarding supplies and fuel. Buy or salvage. I tend to ambush Tri Tachyon traders for the chance to get an Aurora. There is a decent chance to buy them for 250.000 credits on the markets in Hybrasil.
• Venture or Apogee – Bolsters your forces and allows for efficient surveying of planets.
• Hammerhead – Don’t buy them, there is one from the tutorial in Galitia floating next to the planet Tetra, also many enemy fleets have them.
• Sunder – Don’t buy them, many enemy fleets have them.
• 4-5 frigates like Wolf, Vigilance, Brawler, Tempest, and Hyperion. Restore them and pick and chose as you get more and more of them.
• Salvage Rig – Always worth having one. They are cheap and often available.
• Phaeton – Get one or two. They are cheap.
• 1-2 Colossus, 2-4 Buffalo or 1 Atlas – I tend to buy my first Colossus and salvage the rest of the freighters / buy them cheaper at the bar.
• Any capital (optional) – I don’t buy capitals. Often, I find them or salvage them after battles. I don’t like bringing them on missions, as they require a lot of resources.
Start adding officers in the mid-game as they make your ships stronger. Make sure you have enough income to sustain them.
IX.3 - Late Game
The late game is when money is not an issue. With a 3-4 colonies you can easily make 300.000-600.000 credits per month which is enough to field and maintain a large fleet and then some. You can buy whatever ship you want.
For exploration I tend to stick with an optimized mid game fleet with 1-2 Atlas and 2 Phaeton.
Get a lean setup for exploration expeditions. Use the mid-game fleet and adapt it as needed.
For bigger fights like large bounties or planet defense I like to use a variation of these ships:
• 1-3 capitals: Mostly Onslaught and Pegasus
• 1-3 flagships: Basically more of your preferred ship. For me it’s Dooms.
• 2 Auroras
• 2-4 Champions
• 1-2 Eagles
• 1-2 Falcon (P)
• 1-2 Hammerheads
• 1-2 Sunders
• 1 Tempest
• 1-2 Monitors
• 4-8 Glimmers – I replace all frigates with Glimmers if I have the Automated Ships skill. They all receive the highest AI cores I have.
The basic strategy is to create a strong front and use the Doom to pull in ships or prevent them from retreating while taking minimal damage. For capital ships, focus them with 2-4 of your bigger ships and lay mines behind them to bring down their shields and prevent them from retreating.
In the late game you should have 8 officers that have a high level.
X - Flagship
The flagship is the ship you pilot yourself. As you progress your character, your level will be the highest among all your officers. The skills and S-mods stack and make you a one (wo)man army later in the game. It is good to focus on one ship type, as some of the combat skills are ship specific. Good ships for this are Doom and Aurora. They are relatively fast, pack a punch, you can get them early in the game. They also remain relevant in the late game.
The Doom is a phase ship and it handles different than other ships, but has probably the highest impact on battles. While it cannot tank a lot of shots, you can dodge missiles by phasing out and back in. Its special ability is the Mine Strike that allows you to lay mines on the battle field and that allows you to limit the movements of enemy ships. While you can use this offensively and target a specific ships, the far better use is to support your fleet. Prevent the enemy from retreating ships under attack, so that your forces can overwhelm them. The most crucial skill to develop is to spot missiles like Reaper torpedoes and to doge them.
The Aurora is a fast cruiser with powerful weapons. It can tank some damage, but it’s not great alone in the front lines. It’s excellent to hunt frigates and destroyers or to swoop in to help your fleet to overwhelm an enemy ship. The special ability of the Aurora are the Plasma Jets that propel the ship forward which allows you to pursue enemies or flee from disadvantageous positions.
Learning to pilot your flagship is a huge step forward in your gameplay. The player can destroy half of the enemy fleet with their ship, allowing the rest of the fleet to mop up the opponent. This advantage allows you to take on tougher opponents or fly with a smaller fleet to save resources.
At first it is difficult, but later it’s a lot of fun to pilot your ship.
If you pilot a ship you are not very good with you can use the AI to help you. When interact with your ship you take over. Move it where it makes the sense and let the AI do the rest. For this you need to go into the strategic overview, select your flagship and hit “U”. Your flagship will then raise its shields attack and most likely retreat to vent. Rinse and repeat until you win the battle. This is less effective than properly piloting your flagship, but tends to have better results than letting the AI pilot your ship.
XI - Skills
Assuming you want to pilot a Doom, these are the skills and the order I take them in. There are also other good options, but this is a solid choice.
1. Salvaging
2. Ordnance Expertise (+Elite)
3. Polarized Armor (+Elite)
4. Industrial Planning
5. Hull Restoration
6. Field Modulation (+Elite)
7. Helmsmanship (+Elite)
8. Target Analysis (+Elite)
9. Impact Mitigation (+Elite)
10. Systems Expertise (+Elite)
11. Sensors
12. Energy Weapons Mastery (+Elite)
13. Gunnery Implants (+Elite)
14. Electronic Warfare
15. Automated Ships
XII - Officers
I like to get steady officers with a subset of those skills:
• Helmsmanship or Impact Mitigation
• Target Analysis
• Systems Expertise or Missile Specialization
• Gunnery Implants
• Energy Weapon Mastery or Ballistic Mastery
There are a lot of guides that go into more details, but this is good enough for me.
XIII - Loadouts
Some of the notable loadouts I use. There is a lot of potential for improvement as you become better, but there is no need to obsess with loadouts except for your flagship.
• Doom: 4 Anti-Matter Blaster, 1 Reaper, 1 Typhoon Reaper, 2 Ion Pulser, 4 Burst PD Laser. S-mods: Expanded Magazines, Flux Distributor
• Aurora: The Autofit Strike Variant is good. S-mods (optional): Integrated Targeting Unit, Hardened Shields. This allows them to have more resilience.
• Freighters & tanks: Add Augmented Drive Field and High Resolution Sensors or Surveying Equipment. As you will never fight with them, they don’t need weapons, flux or armor.
• Hammerhead: The Autofit Balanced is good.
• Sunder: The Autofit Assault is good.
XIV - Raids
There are benefits to raiding the other factions. You can manipulate the market, so you earn even more money, you can obtain blueprints or colony items like a pristine nanoforges, and you can resolve some colony crisis by raiding or tactical bombing planets.
Small planets are easy to raid and you don’t need special preparation. A small fleet with 100-200 marines are enough to wait until there are no defending fleets or to destroy the defenses.
Planets like Kazeron and Chicomoztoc are a different beast. To successfully steal their pristine nanoforge or blueprints you need to destroy their Star Fortress and have 1500+ marines. It might work with less, but 1500 is on the safe side.
This requires enough capital ships and proper logistics. You need around 3-5 capital ships and maybe 3-5 cruisers. Additionally, you need 2000+ supplies and space for your marines. Valkyries and faction codes reduce the casualties of your marines, but aren’t mandatory. The supplies are needed to sustain your fleet while you wait for your chance and to repair your ships after the attack.
You want to either use a Gate or a less frequented Jump-Point to enter the system in “Go Dark” mode. Then, using asteroid belts and nebula you slowly move your fleet closer to your target and wait until the big fleets leave and work on other tasks. It’s best when you only monitor the radar and don’t go into visual range. You pounce when there are no defenders or only Pickets left. Destroy the defenses and raid the system directly afterwards. After you are done, you need to either instantly traverse jump or fly away to lose aggro before you leave the system.
Raids are difficult in mid game and become easy in late game.
Colony Items
In your exploration you might find colony items that boost your productivity. Most of them have restrictions and can only be installed under certain conditions. Here is a list of the most important ones.
• Plasma Dynamo - Effect: +3 volatiles; Restrictions: Only gas giant
• Corrupted / Pristine Nanoforge – Effect: +1/+3 heavy industry & increases quality of produced ships; Restrictions: Adds pollution to habitable planets
• Autonomous mantle bore - Effect: +3 mining; Restrictions: Not habitable & Not gas giant
• Synchroton Core - Effect: +3 fuel; Restrictions: No atmosphere
• Cryoarithmetic Engine – Effect: +25% or +100% fleet size; Restrictions: Only Hot or Very hot
• Fullerine Spool – Effect: +30% accessibility; Restrictions: No extreme weather, no extreme tectonic activity, not gas giant
• Soil nanites – Effect: +2 farming; Restrictions: No rare ore, no volatiles
• Biofactory Embryo – Effect: +2 light industry; Restrictions: Only habitable
• Catalytic Core – Effect: +2 refining; Restrictions: No atmosphere
• Dealmaker Holosuite – Effect: +50% colony income; Restrictions: None
These items are nice to have with the exception of nanoforges. A nanoforge reduces the amount of D-mods on ships you produce and affects your fleets and convoys.
XV - Main Story Line
The main story line involves the Academy in Galicia and can take a long in-game time to complete. It provides good money and access to an exclusive item/skill. You can do the questline before your first colony or after the first crisis.
On the one hand, doing the missions before you colonize gives you a lot of cash without additional stress of colony crisis, but you might run out of your academy stipend quickly.
On the other hand, doing the missions after your first crisis gives you a steady income when you need it most. Additionally, your colonies will grow while you are on errands and you can invest the additional income into industry upgrades.
It is possible to squeeze it in before the first crisis, but the timing is very tight and you run the risk of not having enough ships to defend properly.
Doing most of the missions requires to you to travel a lot and a very small fleet is optimal. A Dram with a Wayfarer are optimal with Augmented Drive Field and High Resolution Sensors. Bring 5-10 marines, so you can raid some of the objectives.
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Topic: [SPOILERS] Starsector – How to Colonize w/ Industry Tree (Read 1110 times)