Usually George posts these topics, but he hasn't gotten around to it yet, so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5nO96eF9Kk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd2iBPWVwEc
A Developer Tries to Reach the Core - Episodes 6 and 7
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JohnBWatson
- Fleet Officer
- Posts: 1452
- Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:17 pm
Cool, I'll check those out.
My advice:
Are weapon and armor dealers completely invisible to you? You keep saying things like "I need to find somewhere to repair my armor.", "I need to find somewhere to sell my loot.", "I wonder if there are any good upgrades around?", but ignoring the weapon and armor dealers. They buy damaged equipment! They pay more for undamaged equipment than Commonwealth stations. (80% more in the case of armor dealers!) I get that sometimes you just want to unload your cargo ASAP, but you really shouldn't sell valuable things like level 3+ shields to Commonwealth stations/Corporate metropolises (until the Outer Realm, where you have to backtrack pretty far to find anyone else who'll buy them).
The mark I howitzer is not very good. It's only slightly more DPS both in general and against compartments than your particle beam +fast, while its shots are slower and easier to block. Its main advantage is range, but you didn't take advantage of it to snipe stations. The mark III is a significant upgrade, due to higher damage and WMD rating.
Don't pick fights while your front armor is just above 25%. Even if you don't die, getting knocked below 25% means you have to use repair items to get it back to where stations can repair it. And it's a good idea to save at least a few of these items for emergencies, so don't use the last of them when it's not urgent. Just retreat to a station.
I'm a bit surprised you got the class V deflector, given the freighters you lost early on, but it's probably better than the Nephren until you start facing significant amounts of ion damage. It has nearly twice the regen and good laser resistance, which would have been nice against those frigates. Both of them are bigger energy hogs than I prefer at this stage of the game, which you're starting to see as you have to go refuel a lot, but that's mostly a matter of personal preference.
It's a good idea to check the inventories of Commonwealth and Corporate stations for things like weapon enhancers and shield enhancement ROMs (if you don't have any). When you find a weapon you expect to use for a while, you can boost its damage a lot. And if you never find another use for them, you can install a matching item you looted, enhance it, then uninstall it and sell it for extra. Depending on your ship class and loadout, you might also want to look for weapon boosting devices. They're quite powerful if you can spare the slots, but their power consumption makes it important to disable them when you're not in combat, which is a pain. The howitzer speed loader is especially nice, as it's about a 40% increase in fire rate, so it multiplies with damage enhancements, and there are relevant weapons for it to boost all the way to the endgame.
You're going to need a lot more money if you want to gear up in preparation for the Ungoverned Territories. You might be able to manage for a while with your current equipment, but it's nice to have some margin for error in case you get careless or run into something nasty, like a Dwarg Master early on. That means trading. It doesn't have to be tedious and time consuming if you have enough money to buy out stations' whole inventories of trade goods when you come across them. You just have to delay your upgrades until you can afford them without spending all your money. This is especially important as your fuel and armor repair expenses get larger.
There are several trade routes you can take advantage of:
- Ice farms pay 200% for He3 fuel rods. It's worth buying them from fuel stations, and even other stations to sell at a profit. You may already have sold the one you found too many for it to be convenient to keep selling them more though. Once stations have a certain amount of a good, they'll only buy more if you have more in your hold than they have in their inventory. Ice farms also pay great prices for cheap non-luxury foods and medical supplies. Unfortunately, they keep less than 10,000 credits on hand, but you can clean them out, do other stuff in the system, then come back. Of course, they also sell low priced luxury foods, which you already bought.
- Conveniently, there's a medical station right near your ice farm. You can sell the medical supplies to the farm and the other medial items to Corporate enclaves (or hotels for slightly less).
- You have a large number of Black Markets and Tempus labs, most (if not all) of which still have large inventories of illegal goods you can smuggle to Victorian nightclubs. Buying enough of these also gets you promotions, giving you free shields and weapons, which you can use or uninstall and sell.
- Ores from mining stations can be sold at a profit to enclaves. This isn't usually a huge source of income, but it's a nice bonus if you happen to be passing by.
- Once you get to St. Katherine's Star, there will likely be manufacturing plants. Sell them what they want if you can, but definitely buy out all their items and sell them to hotels, enclaves, ice farms, or the arcology (if other stations won't buy them). You can also buy fruit from the arcology and sell it to hotels (or enclaves if there are no hotels in the system). If there's a hotel in a neighboring system, you can probably sell fruit there for more, but only try it if you buy them when they're fresh (not ripe) and if you can afford to lose the money if they spoil.
Once you have enough money, you have several upgrade options. Both of the Tinkers' weapons are quite nice. You're mostly done with the part of the game where they're crushingly powerful, but they're still pretty good in the Ungoverned Territories. You can get the X-ray laser and probably the omnidirectional laser in Rigel. You can get the mark III howitzers and probably the Makayev enhancer from the Makayev dealer you found in episode 7. Even if you don't fabricate the dual mark III, getting a regular one would be pretty good. The dual particle beam in Rigel is also OK. If you're lucky, there'll be a Bushido dealer in St. K's or soon after and you can upgrade to carbide carapace, which is level 8, so it has great resistances. Either the Nephren P25 or the class V deflector is a fine shield for now, but if you come across an Invincible-class, that's pretty awesome.
Are weapon and armor dealers completely invisible to you? You keep saying things like "I need to find somewhere to repair my armor.", "I need to find somewhere to sell my loot.", "I wonder if there are any good upgrades around?", but ignoring the weapon and armor dealers. They buy damaged equipment! They pay more for undamaged equipment than Commonwealth stations. (80% more in the case of armor dealers!) I get that sometimes you just want to unload your cargo ASAP, but you really shouldn't sell valuable things like level 3+ shields to Commonwealth stations/Corporate metropolises (until the Outer Realm, where you have to backtrack pretty far to find anyone else who'll buy them).
The mark I howitzer is not very good. It's only slightly more DPS both in general and against compartments than your particle beam +fast, while its shots are slower and easier to block. Its main advantage is range, but you didn't take advantage of it to snipe stations. The mark III is a significant upgrade, due to higher damage and WMD rating.
Don't pick fights while your front armor is just above 25%. Even if you don't die, getting knocked below 25% means you have to use repair items to get it back to where stations can repair it. And it's a good idea to save at least a few of these items for emergencies, so don't use the last of them when it's not urgent. Just retreat to a station.
I'm a bit surprised you got the class V deflector, given the freighters you lost early on, but it's probably better than the Nephren until you start facing significant amounts of ion damage. It has nearly twice the regen and good laser resistance, which would have been nice against those frigates. Both of them are bigger energy hogs than I prefer at this stage of the game, which you're starting to see as you have to go refuel a lot, but that's mostly a matter of personal preference.
It's a good idea to check the inventories of Commonwealth and Corporate stations for things like weapon enhancers and shield enhancement ROMs (if you don't have any). When you find a weapon you expect to use for a while, you can boost its damage a lot. And if you never find another use for them, you can install a matching item you looted, enhance it, then uninstall it and sell it for extra. Depending on your ship class and loadout, you might also want to look for weapon boosting devices. They're quite powerful if you can spare the slots, but their power consumption makes it important to disable them when you're not in combat, which is a pain. The howitzer speed loader is especially nice, as it's about a 40% increase in fire rate, so it multiplies with damage enhancements, and there are relevant weapons for it to boost all the way to the endgame.
You're going to need a lot more money if you want to gear up in preparation for the Ungoverned Territories. You might be able to manage for a while with your current equipment, but it's nice to have some margin for error in case you get careless or run into something nasty, like a Dwarg Master early on. That means trading. It doesn't have to be tedious and time consuming if you have enough money to buy out stations' whole inventories of trade goods when you come across them. You just have to delay your upgrades until you can afford them without spending all your money. This is especially important as your fuel and armor repair expenses get larger.
There are several trade routes you can take advantage of:
- Ice farms pay 200% for He3 fuel rods. It's worth buying them from fuel stations, and even other stations to sell at a profit. You may already have sold the one you found too many for it to be convenient to keep selling them more though. Once stations have a certain amount of a good, they'll only buy more if you have more in your hold than they have in their inventory. Ice farms also pay great prices for cheap non-luxury foods and medical supplies. Unfortunately, they keep less than 10,000 credits on hand, but you can clean them out, do other stuff in the system, then come back. Of course, they also sell low priced luxury foods, which you already bought.
- Conveniently, there's a medical station right near your ice farm. You can sell the medical supplies to the farm and the other medial items to Corporate enclaves (or hotels for slightly less).
- You have a large number of Black Markets and Tempus labs, most (if not all) of which still have large inventories of illegal goods you can smuggle to Victorian nightclubs. Buying enough of these also gets you promotions, giving you free shields and weapons, which you can use or uninstall and sell.
- Ores from mining stations can be sold at a profit to enclaves. This isn't usually a huge source of income, but it's a nice bonus if you happen to be passing by.
- Once you get to St. Katherine's Star, there will likely be manufacturing plants. Sell them what they want if you can, but definitely buy out all their items and sell them to hotels, enclaves, ice farms, or the arcology (if other stations won't buy them). You can also buy fruit from the arcology and sell it to hotels (or enclaves if there are no hotels in the system). If there's a hotel in a neighboring system, you can probably sell fruit there for more, but only try it if you buy them when they're fresh (not ripe) and if you can afford to lose the money if they spoil.
Once you have enough money, you have several upgrade options. Both of the Tinkers' weapons are quite nice. You're mostly done with the part of the game where they're crushingly powerful, but they're still pretty good in the Ungoverned Territories. You can get the X-ray laser and probably the omnidirectional laser in Rigel. You can get the mark III howitzers and probably the Makayev enhancer from the Makayev dealer you found in episode 7. Even if you don't fabricate the dual mark III, getting a regular one would be pretty good. The dual particle beam in Rigel is also OK. If you're lucky, there'll be a Bushido dealer in St. K's or soon after and you can upgrade to carbide carapace, which is level 8, so it has great resistances. Either the Nephren P25 or the class V deflector is a fine shield for now, but if you come across an Invincible-class, that's pretty awesome.
I'm watching the next episode on Twitch. I can't scream out loud because people are sleeping nearby, so I came here to say, "GAAAAAAAH!" at George giving up tens of thousands of credits by selling nearly everything to the wrong stations, including taking a loss on illegals (and ignoring the medical stations).
On Episode 8 24:47, consider yourself yelled at for selling the reaper missiles.
Quite a few capital ship types in the ungoverned territories aren't radiation immune and radiation kills don't have to go through internal structure. For instance the thing at 31:05. That Curator frigate at 11:58 in episode 9 is another place where those reapers would have come in handy.
Also, what are you doing identifying curator artifacts?
90% are fake. Fakes sell for basically nothing. Genuine artifacts sell for 10x as much as unidentified artifacts. If you identify them on average you lose as much to fakes as you gain from genuine artifacts. And analyzers are rare and limited use and sell for a lot. You're just throwing money away.
Quite a few capital ship types in the ungoverned territories aren't radiation immune and radiation kills don't have to go through internal structure. For instance the thing at 31:05. That Curator frigate at 11:58 in episode 9 is another place where those reapers would have come in handy.
Also, what are you doing identifying curator artifacts?
90% are fake. Fakes sell for basically nothing. Genuine artifacts sell for 10x as much as unidentified artifacts. If you identify them on average you lose as much to fakes as you gain from genuine artifacts. And analyzers are rare and limited use and sell for a lot. You're just throwing money away.
Literally is the new Figuratively
I think there's some merit in identifying curator artifacts. If exactly 90% are fake, that means in the long term you get about 1 genuine artifact for every 9 fakes. The total sells for 10 times the normal price plus 9/10 times the normal price, which is a little more than what you get from selling all artifacts unidentified. For high-level artifacts, this profit can eclipse the cost of identification.
Then there's the chance that you'll get a genuine artifact on an early attempt. When that happen, stop identifying and sell everything. Granted, this is not a reliable source of income, but with luck it can net quite a lot, if you can get some high level artifacts.
Then there's the chance that you'll get a genuine artifact on an early attempt. When that happen, stop identifying and sell everything. Granted, this is not a reliable source of income, but with luck it can net quite a lot, if you can get some high level artifacts.
Yes, look at my avatar, I have a wyvera type ship.
Isn't there also always a chance for a special genuine artifact? For example the notable Ringer artifact for 750k rin, or the deinonychus skull I identified, which was much more expensive than the usual genuine earth fossils (I sold it for 90k to a commonwealth station, the corporate enclaves didn't have enough credits to buy it).
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JohnBWatson
- Fleet Officer
- Posts: 1452
- Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:17 pm
I'd say it's generally not worth IDing the artifacts. It's far riskier than just selling them off, and a steady supply of money is more often than not more beneficial to the player than a few unpredictable surges. Given that higher level artifacts require rarer and more expensive means of identification, the risk vs. reward is not favorable.
Last edited by JohnBWatson on Mon Sep 28, 2015 8:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'd argue that big, (seemingly) unpredictable credits surges are exactly what let the pilgrim become so powerful. Unless you farm something and call it a steady supply, the things that propels me forward into new territories confidently were always lucky chunks of creds. A reactor dropped by a marauding platform, a Xenophobe Worldship and its fleet I manage to take down, a Phobos dropping good loot, and, sometimes, a good artifact from the curators' lot. Most of my resources, whether in credits, rins, or domina relationship, had always come in big chunks from random luck. Thing is, it seems the game sooner or later give in and give the player enough good luck to last him all the way to the next good luck, all the way to Heretic. Perhaps Domina is behind this.
Yes, look at my avatar, I have a wyvera type ship.