New Player with Questions

[AssumedPseudonym]

 It depends on what enemy stations spawn in the system. If you get Sung slave camps, Marauder compounds, or Sapiens compounds, they’ll send you on missions to go destroy them.

[JohnBWatson]

I was still using lasers and kinetics till I entered the Outer Realm

Particle weapons aren't very good right now - I usually stick with the laser and kinetic weapons I was using in St. Katherine's Star until at least the middle of the Ungoverned Territories, potentially upgrading to a blast howitzer(the MK I or MK III) midway through. Waiting until the Outer Realm is a bit much - unless you're really unlucky, you should at least be able to loot something more capable of damaging the highly resistant enemies beyond Jiang's Star.

[Derakon]

 It depends on what enemy stations spawn in the system. If you get Sung slave camps, Marauder compounds, or Sapiens compounds, they’ll send you on missions to go destroy them.

I've often had them stop giving me missions when there's still plenty of red stations left in-system, though.

Come to think, it's super-weird that St. Kat's, by far the most civilized system in the game, has such a high prevalence of outlaw stations. What is the Commonwealth militia even doing?

Particle weapons aren't very good right now - I usually stick with the laser and kinetic weapons I was using in St. Katherine's Star until at least the middle of the Ungoverned Territories, potentially upgrading to a blast howitzer(the MK I or MK III) midway through.

Some particle weapons are better than others. The Slicer and the particle lancer can both be pretty decent. For the Ungoverned Territories, you mostly just need a flyswatter for your primary weapon; use a launcher on the capships and stations. The light NAMI is still usable at this stage, though transitioning to the Rasiermessier at some point might not be a bad idea; even its White Strelka missiles will put the hurt on enemies in a hurry. The big problem with particle weapons is the Dwarg.

But yeah, assuming you can handle their recoil, howitzers are consistently reliable weapons with a straightforward upgrade path. The Mk. 7 Dual Fusionfire howitzer is one of the highest-damage weapons in the game and behaves basically identically to a Mk. 1 blast howitzer, so IMO howitzers are well worth learning to use.

[Ferdinand]

The militia can give you missions, but if you have already cleaned out the entire system, or (not sure about this) if you do not seem to be powerful enough, they have nothing to do for you.

You must be careful around slave camps, get rid of the guards, destroy the sung turrets from outside their range, then destroy the centre of the camp. This is slow, but can leave all slave quarters intact if done correctly. (requires targeting and omnidirectional or tracking weapons, or very skilled fixed weapon handling)
Or get in very fast with a powerful weapon, destroy the centre of the camp very quickly, before to many slave quarter have been blown up dock with the slave quarters and get out with the slaves, and leave the turrets alone. (risky, make sure you have good particle protection)

If you stay to close to the camp, all turrets around it will fire at you and this will indeed destroy the slave quarters. Best never to get within firing distance of more than one turret.

[Plant]

It depends on what enemy stations spawn in the system. If you get Sung slave camps, Marauder compounds, or Sapiens compounds, they’ll send you on missions to go destroy them.

There were plenty of enemy stations in St.Katherines. The HQ didn't offer a single mission. I've seemed to run out of the carrier missions, but at least they actually offered missions, and loads of loot.

I was still using lasers and kinetics till I entered the Outer Realm

Particle weapons aren't very good right now - I usually stick with the laser and kinetic weapons I was using in St. Katherine's Star until at least the middle of the Ungoverned Territories, potentially upgrading to a blast howitzer(the MK I or MK III) midway through. Waiting until the Outer Realm is a bit much - unless you're really unlucky, you should at least be able to loot something more capable of damaging the highly resistant enemies beyond Jiang's Star.

Well, I had a gem of despair that took me out of most of the Ungoverned Territories quite accidently. It was just lucky that I didn't choose the interesting sounding "Heretic" and chose "Tau Ceti" as I had some sort of rescue the children mission there. I ran around with hardened plasteel armour and a smart cannon, NAMI launcher, dual turbolaser cannon for the longest time as I simply was worried about running out of money for fuel. Every single enemy I looted seemed to only have damaged components for the longest time. In any case, I used the smart cannon and NAMI launcher to destroy bases and large ships, till I looted a particle weapon and blast plate and connected that most enemies I was encountering had armours vulnerable to particle and blast weapons.

 It depends on what enemy stations spawn in the system. If you get Sung slave camps, Marauder compounds, or Sapiens compounds, they’ll send you on missions to go destroy them.

I've often had them stop giving me missions when there's still plenty of red stations left in-system, though.

Come to think, it's super-weird that St. Kat's, by far the most civilized system in the game, has such a high prevalence of outlaw stations. What is the Commonwealth militia even doing?

Particle weapons aren't very good right now - I usually stick with the laser and kinetic weapons I was using in St. Katherine's Star until at least the middle of the Ungoverned Territories, potentially upgrading to a blast howitzer(the MK I or MK III) midway through.

Some particle weapons are better than others. The Slicer and the particle lancer can both be pretty decent. For the Ungoverned Territories, you mostly just need a flyswatter for your primary weapon; use a launcher on the capships and stations. The light NAMI is still usable at this stage, though transitioning to the Rasiermessier at some point might not be a bad idea; even its White Strelka missiles will put the hurt on enemies in a hurry. The big problem with particle weapons is the Dwarg.

But yeah, assuming you can handle their recoil, howitzers are consistently reliable weapons with a straightforward upgrade path. The Mk. 7 Dual Fusionfire howitzer is one of the highest-damage weapons in the game and behaves basically identically to a Mk. 1 blast howitzer, so IMO howitzers are well worth learning to use.

Slicer has weapon to loot? I killed him before in the Arena before I even went to St. Katherine, but I am pretty sure there was no weapon available to loot. As it turns out, I should have just brought a particle weapon, but looking at the dps, the particle beam cannon is less powerful than the dual turbolaser cannon. It was only after I used my first particle weapon that I worked out that all enemies are resistant to laser and kinetic. In any case I basically used the NAMI till Point Juno. The Lucifer missile is expensive but good enough. It's pretty wierd that the nearer the system in to St.Katherine in New Beyond, the more enemy stations there are. Eridani is a safe haven of peace in comparison. I think the one before St.Katherine's Star had 10 enemy stations.

The militia can give you missions, but if you have already cleaned out the entire system, or (not sure about this) if you do not seem to be powerful enough, they have nothing to do for you.

You must be careful around slave camps, get rid of the guards, destroy the sung turrets from outside their range, then destroy the centre of the camp. This is slow, but can leave all slave quarters intact if done correctly. (requires targeting and omnidirectional or tracking weapons, or very skilled fixed weapon handling)
Or get in very fast with a powerful weapon, destroy the centre of the camp very quickly, before to many slave quarter have been blown up dock with the slave quarters and get out with the slaves, and leave the turrets alone. (risky, make sure you have good particle protection)

If you stay to close to the camp, all turrets around it will fire at you and this will indeed destroy the slave quarters. Best never to get within firing distance of more than one turret.

Leaving slave quarters alive aren't a problem now that I have lvl9 weaponry.
______

Btw guys, I've been playing around checking out if I can destroy bases like I normally do. Is there really no consequences for destroying tereton nests? Other than the obvious of not being able to use that station. Their loot is good and their danger level is low. Everybody else cares if I destroy their stations or ships.

[erwgd]

Slicer has weapon to loot? I killed him before in the Arena before I even went to St. Katherine, but I am pretty sure there was no weapon available to loot.

Yeah, the weapon is a PM6 Slicer cannon, which you can only get from his wreck.
There's only a small chance that the weapon can be looted undamaged, that's just how it is with every ship that gets wrecked during the game.

Btw guys, I've been playing around checking out if I can destroy bases like I normally do. Is there really no consequences for destroying tereton nests? Other than the obvious of not being able to use that station. Their loot is good and their danger level is low. Everybody else cares if I destroy their stations or ships.

There aren't any long-term consequences for destroying Teraton nests. Any turrets guarding the nest will start shooting you, but other Teraton nests and turrets won't do anything until they're attacked themselves.
If there are friendly ships docked with the nest you can ignore them; they're neutral with the Teratons, so they'll flee the station and they won't attack you.

[JohnBWatson]

Come to think, it's super-weird that St. Kat's, by far the most civilized system in the game, has such a high prevalence of outlaw stations. What is the Commonwealth militia even doing?

The justification that most people have come up with is that it's canonically much harder to locate stations than it is in - game, due to how the game scales down distances.

Some particle weapons are better than others. The Slicer and the particle lancer can both be pretty decent.

The Lancer is definitely a source of nostalgia for me. Back in the older versions, with the non - WMD damage system, they were excellent all round weapons. The 'vmmp' sound is still satisfying to hear.

---

There were plenty of enemy stations in St.Katherines. The HQ didn't offer a single mission. I've seemed to run out of the carrier missions, but at least they actually offered missions, and loads of loot.

You didn't 'run out', you just hit the highest rank. There's been a lot of talk over the years about what should be done to make that system more intuitive and dynamic.

[Plant]

It is running out of missions. Calling it hitting the highest rank doesn't change that the carriers have run out of missions to give.

I've entered the Heretics Gate. I wonder, is there a way to stop the Iocrym from destroying all those research stations? They all started spawning all of a sudden and destroyed almost all the stations whilst I fighting a bunch of Xenophobes for a research mission. What does the Ares research station do? Is there a way to increase non-weapon devices for the Wolfen? You almost basically have to have a cargo extention and a repair arm for the early game and a jumpdrive in the late game for quality of life reasons. It's very galling that I basically never got to use all of these cool anti missile or weapon boosting devices, and the endgame drive upgrades were fun to use in combat, but I wasn't willing to give up the jumpdrive nor cargohold for quality of life reasons.

Do enemies in the game use the same armour and weaponry as they drop? I have noticed for instance that Luminous drone shields are very odd. They appear to only defend against a specific weapon type, otherwise let the weapon pass through the shield; but when you pick up their shield, this is not reflected.

I quess in the end, no one can figure out why the Militia HQ at St.Katherine's couldn't give me any missions. I've also noticed that the black market also haven't given me any missions; the option to ask is there though.

[Derakon]

I've entered the Heretics Gate. I wonder, is there a way to stop the Iocrym from destroying all those research stations? They all started spawning all of a sudden and destroyed almost all the stations whilst I fighting a bunch of Xenophobes for a research mission.

It is possible, but difficult. Start by destroying the Iocrym ships that are in-system already, but don't touch their station. Then do one of the longer missions (Xenophobes is a good one). They start attacking as soon as you finish any one of the missions. Do the other missions as quickly as possible, but keep an eye on new messages -- you get a message as soon as the Iocrym deploy ships, telling you what station they're attacking. You have to beeline to a point between the Iocrym station and the station they're attacking, then kill the ships ASAP. Fortunately they don't fight back.

What does the Ares research station do?

If you complete the Commonwealth Navy missions (distinct from the militia; there's a separate quest chain), you'll have the opportunity to be able to dock here. Like the other stations, they give you a mission that can give you data needed to break the quarantine.

Is there a way to increase non-weapon devices for the Wolfen?

No.

You almost basically have to have a cargo extention and a repair arm for the early game and a jumpdrive in the late game for quality of life reasons. It's very galling that I basically never got to use all of these cool anti missile or weapon boosting devices, and the endgame drive upgrades were fun to use in combat, but I wasn't willing to give up the jumpdrive nor cargohold for quality of life reasons.

Cargo hold is more important than jumpdrive IMO, and the Wolfen doesn't really need a normal drive upgrade as it's already plenty fast. But yes, the equipment constraints on the Wolfen are pretty tight.

Do enemies in the game use the same armour and weaponry as they drop? I have noticed for instance that Luminous drone shields are very odd. They appear to only defend against a specific weapon type, otherwise let the weapon pass through the shield; but when you pick up their shield, this is not reflected.

They drop what they use, yes. Luminous shields should generally have like +900% resistance to one damage types and negligible resists for other types.

[JohnBWatson]

It is running out of missions. Calling it hitting the highest rank doesn't change that the carriers have run out of missions to give.

Not really. While it's not presently implemented for the older mission sets, the game engine does allow distinctions between 'you're too powerful for this mission - giver' and 'this mission giver does not have any missions to give'.

I've entered the Heretics Gate. I wonder, is there a way to stop the Iocrym from destroying all those research stations? They all started spawning all of a sudden and destroyed almost all the stations whilst I fighting a bunch of Xenophobes for a research mission.

The Iocrym destroying the research stations work the same as any other enemies - they actually fly to the stations and attack them. Thus, you can prevent them from destroying the stations by engaging and destroying their strike forces, if you pay attention to the advance warning you get beforehand.

Note that they send more ships every time you do this, and eventually your DPS won't be able to keep up, so you're still working with a time limit.

What does the Ares research station do?

It gives you a mission if you help the Antarctica. The mission is fairly easy, but not all that interesting(just a basic station destruction mission for a station you were probably going to kill anyways), so it's only worth doing if you're struggling to get enough research data.

Is there a way to increase non-weapon devices for the Wolfen? You almost basically have to have a cargo extention and a repair arm for the early game and a jumpdrive in the late game for quality of life reasons. It's very galling that I basically never got to use all of these cool anti missile or weapon boosting devices, and the endgame drive upgrades were fun to use in combat, but I wasn't willing to give up the jumpdrive nor cargohold for quality of life reasons.

Nope, it's a tradeoff. The Wolfen doesn't really need a drive upgrade, given that it's faster than every non - trivial enemy in the game by quite a bit, but you may want to get rid of the repair arm(which hardly does anything past midgame) to trade it for a PD device, which will be very useful in the last bit of the game.

Do enemies in the game use the same armour and weaponry as they drop? I have noticed for instance that Luminous drone shields are very odd. They appear to only defend against a specific weapon type, otherwise let the weapon pass through the shield; but when you pick up their shield, this is not reflected.

Yes. The Luminous are a very interesting faction - they keep track of how their drones are killed and configure them to be resistant to the damage types that are most deadly against them. It's a shame they're so slow - they'd be a real challenge if they couldn't just be kited to death due to their odd weapon arrangement.

I quess in the end, no one can figure out why the Militia HQ at St.Katherine's couldn't give me any missions.

We did.

"It depends on what enemy stations spawn in the system. If you get Sung slave camps, Marauder compounds, or Sapiens compounds, they’ll send you on missions to go destroy them." - AP

I've also noticed that the black market also haven't given me any missions; the option to ask is there though.

Right now, they've only got one mission, in which you carry a cargo crate to St. Kat's Arcology. Their mission system is definitely quite a ways away from complete, and given that you get EXP from buying and selling, there isn't much benefit to doing their mission.

[Plant]

Thanks Derakon, I destroyed an iocrym station which I assumed was spawning ships, but they must have all started spawning regularily after I finished the Ringer research mission. Unlike the other research missions, it doesn't seem to tell you that the iocrym have noticed their presence. I get the message, but it doesn't seem to tell you where they are spawning from. One time I was gating in from Elysium and the station was destroyed by the time I got there even using the jumpdrive. So it seems that once you have finished one research mission, you have to make a beeline to ending the game if you want no destroyed stations. I'll try another game and see what the Ares research mission is about. As for Luminous drones, some of the drones seem to let weapons bypass the shields entirely. The sheild would be at 100% whilst the armour drops down after every hit.

JohnBwatson, like I said, you can call it what you like, but essentially there is no new missions, therefore I have run out of missions. Unless there's some secret carrier somewhere or some station I had not docked. As for the drive upgrade, the lategame drive upgrades are good even for the wolfen. You can dodge a lot more shots with them. With it, you can choose to simply not be hit by any non tracking weapon whilst shooting back at under 60 range. The mid game ones are useful too. I think there is some underestimating on how useful the extra acceleration from thrust is, even if you gain no extra max speed. It's just a bit wierd how the nominally fighter ship by around the midgame has worst flight characteristics simply due to upgrade slots, though I guess it still retains its rotation speed.

I quess in the end, no one can figure out why the Militia HQ at St.Katherine's couldn't give me any missions.

We did.

"It depends on what enemy stations spawn in the system. If you get Sung slave camps, Marauder compounds, or Sapiens compounds, they’ll send you on missions to go destroy them." - AP

No you didn't. Are you really suggesting that there weren't any enemy stations spawn in St Katherines in my game? I thought it was clear there were loads, but for some reason the HQ militia gave me no missions. There was a commonwealth fortress 2 gates later that did give me missions though. Hmmm, that crate delivery was the mission? I was wondering about that. It seemed kind of pointless. Perhaps it opened up an option in the black market that wasn't open before?

[digdug]

Hmmm, that crate delivery was the mission? I was wondering about that. It seemed kind of pointless. Perhaps it opened up an option in the black market that wasn't open before?

nope, just that crate.
It is "nearly" a placeholder mission.

[JohnBWatson]

No you didn't. Are you really suggesting that there weren't any enemy stations spawn in St Katherines in my game? I thought it was clear there were loads, but for some reason the HQ militia gave me no missions.

You missed the point. It only gives you missions if those kinds of stations are present. There are other kinds of enemy stations that can spawn, but it ignores them. You also have to be at the lowest rank, but St. Kat's is the earliest source of militia rank, so that's pretty much a given.

Hmmm, that crate delivery was the mission? I was wondering about that. It seemed kind of pointless. Perhaps it opened up an option in the black market that wasn't open before?

Nope - just the exp. Like I said, it's unfinished. It'll probably get some cool stuff once George gets around to revamping it. He's been hinting that he might add content that makes Black Market vs. Militia a choice that the player has to make if he wants to advance far enough in either faction, adding some replayability. If he goes ahead with that, the Syndikat will probably get more content, including a more functional mission system.

[Derakon]

Thanks Derakon, I destroyed an iocrym station which I assumed was spawning ships, but they must have all started spawning regularily after I finished the Ringer research mission. Unlike the other research missions, it doesn't seem to tell you that the iocrym have noticed their presence. I get the message, but it doesn't seem to tell you where they are spawning from.

If you don't destroy the Iocrym station, then their ships will always fly in from the station. I don't know where they fly in from otherwise. I believe they start attacking stations as soon as you either destroy their station or finish any one of the missions.

You should get notifications for all of the stations once they realize they're under attack, including for the Ringers and Ares. But it's easy to miss the notifications, especially if you're looking at the system map. And you have very little time between when the notification arrives and when the station gets attacked, so you do need to drop everything to go protect it.

Take heart -- in one of my first games, there were 4 Iocrym stations instead of just 1.

Regarding the Wolfen and engines, I didn't mean to say that they weren't valuable, just that the Wolfen is fast enough without one that I don't feel the loss very acutely. I'd rather take a weapon enhancing system (like a laser collimator, howitzer loader, etc.) in most situations. Compared with other ships where a drive is necessary to enjoy flying the ship, the Wolfen then effectively needs one fewer non-weapon device slots.

[Plant]

I see. Perhaps I destroyed them on the way to the arcology. Would had been nice if freighter escort missions were given instead if no enemy stations are available.

4 Iocrym stations? Sounds wonderful. Anyways, I think I just enjoyed the near instantaneous acceleration of the upgraded drives a bit too much.

I've started a second playthrough on the Sapphire, and I worked out why I never got a particle weapon until the ungoverened territiories. Simply put, with the Wolfen I wasn't making any money from looting. I have a general dislike of "farming" combined with that having 4 weapons with shield online and the tiny cargo hold of the Wolfen meant that I was breaking even, struggling for fuel from system to system. Even going back to the nearest staton/weapon/armour station if it was in another system would cost 800 credits in fuel, and that simply isn't worth it if you had about 20 spare cargo space. Plus I never did the Korolov missions as a freighter escort mission seemed to give me a measly 250 and defending the second system station from a random attack mission gave me 5000, so I thought it was a better use of time to go to find new stations. Then I visited the arena, which gave me the funds needed to upgrade weaponry and armour, but by that time the early game had conditioned me to live frugally and hoard credits for fuel. So I stuck with only looted weaponry. Just after St Katherines, because of the amount of shields and weaponry I had, and the lack of a reactor powerful enough to store enough fuel, I couldn't actually travel and get through a long fight without having to refuel the reactor midfight. I never realised that enemies were resistant to laser and kinetics as I thought that was the natural progression of the game and NAMI launcher dealt with the toughest over time. And then the gem of despair happened.

In the second playthrough, the Sapphire starts with 2k and so I brought a cargo bay immediately and everything was so much easier. I could afford to loot and sell when the cargohold was full, combined with knowledge on jettisoning, and disabling weapons and shield when not needed, which led to not having the money or fuel problems which so plagued my early game with the Wolfen.