A few beginner's questions

Ask any question about playing and surviving in the Transcendence universe. Newbies welcome!
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Sarin
Anarchist
Anarchist
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:26 pm

Alright, not totally beginner. I've played TC a long time ago, when it was around 0.9-1.0ish. A few weeks ago, I was looking for a game to play on my frequent travels on a mini laptop/tablet, and remebered this..

Anyway, my game led to a few questions:

Most pressing, whether it's worth continuing current game. The situation is this: I picked up a quest in the Sisters questline at St.K. to contact a guy few systems ahead. Got to the system, and it was a huge mess. An Urak Fortress, Urak mine, Tempus lab and Marauder station pretty much within firing distance from the gate I came through. So endless wave of Urak desroyers, lots of civilian traffic, huge howitzer spam...I barely managed to lead my posse of three wingmen and six non-combat autons away, then came back and gradually took out all hostiles. When picking through wreckage, I noticed that the guy I was supposed to meet turned out to be one of casualties, and his wreckage was already picked clean by scavengers. The quest, however, remains active at the stage "go meet that guy", with no quest marker.
So...is the quest salvageable, and what impact would not doing it have on my game?

I noticed that I can now trade ships. Very interesting, since I am facing conundrum in this game, assuming I'll continue it. My current setup is Sapphire, +40 mining laser, fast omni x-ray laser, laser collimator, enhanced titan drive, mining cargo hold, NX150 reactor, Yoroi 500 shield, +10 NAMI launcher. I can easily buy stuff to make dual mark III howitzer, but that means forgoing mining laser and probably also cargo hold in favour of enhancement device. Unless there might be a ship available in next few systems that would have more device slots available...but I have no idea if there is, as I don't know stats of the buyable ships.

Rather more general. Can I leave my mule autons in safe system, continue on and pick them up later without chance of losing any?

What penalties would I get for taknig down those damn thieving scavengers?

Mining in general. My impression so far is, there are few "treasure" systems like Eridani, Charon....that have rich deposits of various ores, from uranium and gold to high level stuff...my net gain from Eridani was around 40k in that game, and at this point I have over 200k even though I spent stupidly 100k on inertialess drive that's simply waste of power at this point.

Eh...that's it for now. Thanks for any answers...
NMS
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 569
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:26 am

Welcome to the forum!

I don't think you'll be able to complete the mission, and it will prevent you from getting a few more missions. But they're not important to completing the game and don't seem to have any rewards.

You seem well equipped, assuming you have decent armor and missiles. I don't think there are any available ships with more than 8 slots other than the EI500. The only really interesting ships to switch to are the Minotaur, which can fire an omni weapon at the same time as another primary weapon; and the EI200, which has huge cargo space, but is slow.

Mules will be safe in another system. A bit of time elapses when you leave, but otherwise nothing happens when you're not in a system. You can also order them to wait on top of a planet, star, destroyed station, etc., and they'll be safe from everything except shockwave weapons pushing them off, as long as you remember not to order your squadron to form up.

There's no penalty for killing Salvagers other than a note in your game stats and the knowledge that you murdered innocent people for minor material gain.

Mining is pretty tedious and generally unnecessary to afford the items you need, so I don't recommend it unless you're desperate for cash. Many systems randomly have deposits of high-value asteroids. You can get hints about whether there are any from the main screen text at mining stations. The ores get more valuable later in the game, but it gets harder to extract them, and eventually impossible without a heavily enhanced mining laser.
Sarin
Anarchist
Anarchist
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:26 pm

Thanks.

Missiles were one of reasons why I even cosidered the dual MKIII. While I'm still burning through stocks I gathered around, the usage is alarmingly high against stations. As my current weapons don't have WMD rating, I have to blast stations with missiles, and taking down Dwarg Fortress, and I had four in last system along with destroyers, takes over 100 Longbows. So I'm running out quick, and the damage is starting to be rather insufficient.


I have blast plate enhanced with ablative coating (I think), been contemplating a change, I have some stealth and hexphase 150 in my storage, as well as change to a military shield generator. Which reminds me...Hiro's shield ROM and shield enhancement ROMs, do they have maximum level of shield on which they are applicable?
Ferdinand
Militia Lieutenant
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Location: Dancing in the universe
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To start with your last question, Hiro's rom and shield enhancement ROM's work up until level 6 shields. For higher level shields you need a Heisenmachines quantumcomputer and/or christals for several different upgrades. (some of which also stack, and some are temporary).

When you're past St. Kats, Longbows are merely ballast, dump them for something better, use military grade missiles, like the KM550 and XM900 with the Nami, they will serve you much better.

Get rid of the lasers, they get obsolete fast past St. Kats, Better get Blast, Thermo or Ion weapons preferably with WMD.
PM
Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

NMS wrote:
Wed Oct 31, 2018 11:49 am
There's no penalty for killing Salvagers other than a note in your game stats and the knowledge that you murdered innocent people for minor material gain.
Yeah... they are marked as friendlies. In reality, they are anything but. Salvagers are one of the most aggravating entities in the game (for stealing your loot and raiding your stashes). They are a priority one, kill-on-sight target. Show no mercy!

Moving on... as for ships, if you want the strongest ship, it is either EI200 for maximum cargo capacity or Minotaur (either variant) for double primary weapons and good stats in everything (except turning, which is comparable to a freighter - i.e., not great, but not bad).

Note about stealth... your ship's stealth is equal to the equipped armor segment with the least stealth. If you want to use stealth armor, you need to use a full set of stealth armor or do not bother with stealth at all. If your Sapphire has three stealth armor and one blast plate, your stealth rating is still normal due to blast plate not having any stealth. Also note that capital ships tend to have better perception than gunships, and can see objects (stealthed or not) further away.

Enhancer ROMs are limited to max level of 6. Hiro's does not work on level 7+ shields. Weapon optimizers no longer speed up fire rate of level 7+ weapons.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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