Erial's starter questions

[Erial]

Greetings pilots

Discovered the game by chance, liked the looks and idea, and here we are.
Thanks alot to the developers for creating it xoxo



I burned through some ships to get to learn the basics, however there are some things that confuse me:

1) what do i do with damaged weapons ?
Armour is repairable one way or another, but i didn't see a repair service or item to fix weapons. This felt a tiny little bit extra sad when Aran I-dunno-who (the boss of the Eridani mission from Station Raisu) or maybe one of the last Sisters missions in Eridani dropped a tasty lvl 4-5 weapon with a dps of 40-something, if i calculated correctly. I said "a tiny little bit" because that chara was exploded by a pirate band a fight later, but anyway the question stands.

2) weapon's damage / damage per second
a) how is weapon damage calculated: dmg (x "gun barrels" ) x shots per second ?
b) does it make sense to compare weapons on a dps basis (i.e. compare kinetic 1 with kinteic 2, or compare two lasers) or should i take other factors into account ?

3) is player knowledge persistent ?
I differentiate between "what does the character know" and "what does the player aka me know".
For example, i know that Rom XYZ does M, because my current chara just installed it (and i happened to remember the name of XYZ). Will my next chara know that too, or does she start from scratch ?
At first i had the impression that knowledge is persistent across games (i.e. Ablative Armour Coating), until i realized that the EI500 starts with some items (said AAC), so i'm not sure anymore.

4) la Roma
Is there a way to see what Roms i installed to the ship ? I didn't see anything in Dock Services or the Ship Info.
Are Roms carried over when i update to a new ship ?

-> 3+4) pen and paper
This leads to the intermitting question: does it make sense to play the game as pen & paper ? I wouldn't mind to do so, as it brings back some memories

5) SotP vs SotP
There are two entries in the catalog for "Stars of the Pilgrim", what's the difference ? I mean, apart from the obvious "HD" tag.

6) mining piracy ?
My last chara today went under the miners. Every now and then a transport with a mining laser and a two-ship-escort popped up and attacked.
Are those pirates, or people from the nearby mining colony, or ... ?
When defending against them, are there any effects later - or is "if you get shot first, you may shoot them to smithereens" a legit reaction in general ?

7) mining
Is there a crafting system in the game or can everything from mining be sold ?

8) watch your target
It cannot be helped but to sometimes hit friendlies in a fight. Are there any consequences for friendly fire ?
Is there a cooldown period like "if it happens in 1 fight its okay, if it happens in 2 fights 10 minutes apart it's okay, but if it happens in 2 fights within 1 minute the police flattens you" ?
How careful should you be, meaning is it tied to "how many shots connect on a friendly" or is it "how much damage is dealt" ?

9) friendly fire part 2
Tied to the above: if flying a highly upgraded ship (lets say from the midgame), but in a friendly fire incident you destroy an ally (you went back to Eridani), in short: is every friendly kill counted as an actual kill ? Are there consequences ?

10) i am bear, i bear 10 arms
It is possible to install several guns, but the maximum possible to fire is one. Okay, its the starting sector with a small ship, but: do later/bigger ships have multiple mounts, or does even Lord Helmet's Intergalactical Super Duster only ever have one main gun ?
Come to think of it: is it possible to install several missile launchers and fire them together or is it also just one ?
I am aware that i may shoot 1 x Gun + 1 x Missile, but i am wondering about 2 x Gun, 2 x Missile and N x Weapon.

11) money money money and others
A basic hint for survival is upgrading your equipment.
Except for mining, so far i was failing in raising the funds, thus "how to make money", respectively "is the trader's life worth it" ?
Already asked about crafting above.
Another method of upgrading equipment is living of the land *eh* space. This somewhat brings us back to the first question: is loot completely random in its quality and quantity, or can the player influence it a bit ? I mean with existing, non-cheaty methods - not with modding or console-ing.


I think that's it that jumped through my head while playing.

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Welcome aboard, and always glad to have another player on the forum. ^.^

 Let’s see, I can answer most of these, I think:

1) what do i do with damaged weapons ?

 This is actually a more interesting question than you might think. On the current stable version of Transcendence, the answer is either sell them to Tinkers or don’t bother looting them (with the exception of some lategame energy weapons that can be repaired with Longzhu spheres). The next beta coming out, on the other hand, reworks how some weapon-enhancing items are being handled, and they’ll be capable of repairing damaged weapons (depending on the item and weapon, of course). George has already demonstrated this in his weekly streams on Thursday.

2) weapon's damage / damage per second

 Your basic equation is a good start, but there are different tiers of damage types (kinetic —> blast —> fusion for matter weapons; laser —> particle —> ion for energy weapons, just to list off the first three tiers). The higher tier a damage type is, the bigger its damage multiplier against a given level of armor.

3) is player knowledge persistent ?

 In a word? No. Each game is separate from any previous game you may have played, no knowledge of which unidentified items do what carries over. Further details on this shortly.

4) la Roma

 Not currently. Do feel free to ticket that as a suggestion on the Ministry, though — it’s a good idea.

-> 3+4)

 Don’t bother. That barrel with a scuffed label that turned out to be repairing nanos this game? It’s as likely to be ablative coating or radioactive waste next game.

5) SotP vs SotP

 SotP is the core game, SotP HD is a graphics overwrite to update all ships to 120 facings (which George is currently working on porting into the core game).

6) mining piracy ?

 Most mining ships you encounter wandering around are going to be outlaw miners. If they show up as red blips when you first encounter them, they’re fair game.

7) mining

 Tinkers can make use of some ores to make items (mostly armor), and Eternity Port (and the upcoming Near Stars expansion for SotP) have a faction that can craft armors from different types of ore. It’s generally vendor trash otherwise, though.

8) watch your target

9) friendly fire part 2

  Friendly fire is somewhat situational. Some factions are more understanding about having a guard blown up in the heat of a fight, others will turn on you if a stray shot nicks a guard from well out of visual range. (Be careful around Black Market stations unless you can deal with an annoyed Molotok, for example, and don’t blow up EI or Antares freighters willy-nilly unless you don’t mind getting arrested for piracy when you next dock somewhere.) Some stations will get annoyed if you repeatedly poke at their guards and chase you off — assuming they don’t shoot the deck out from under you first. Figure out who’s willing to put up with how much.

10) i am bear, i bear 10 arms

 Missile launchers are currently limited to one per ship (outside of a few carefully coded mod ships). Also, ships are currently limited to one active primary weapon at a time, though the Minotaur (available at ship brokers in the lategame) can be equipped with a secondary weapon that fires alongside the primary weapon (and, again, carefully coded mod ships can grant secondary weapon mounts).

11) money money money and others

 Mining is one way to make money early on, though it’s currently a very painful mechanic to try to work with. Trading, assuming you know which stations sell for cheap and which buy what items for more, isn’t so much a way of making money as supplementing income when you don’t quite have enough for that upgrade you’ve been trying to get. Generally speaking, the most common way to make money is to mug weaker stations for their lunch money, as it were, and using the upgrades you buy from that to attack progressively stronger stations. As for loot quantity/quality, it’s all generated at the start of a game when each system is created. It does scale with system level, but the ever fickle RNG can shower you in riches one game only to starve you to the point of barely being able to keep your ship fueled and armor repaired in the next.

 Hopefully that’s enough to get you started, at least. ^.^

[PM]

Re: ore
Late game, there is a faction called Teratons, and they have fabricator stations where player can drop raw materials into a creature's maw and produce pristine items, or get eaten if he screws up and angers the creature. One of the ingredients is a 'material' stat, and ore is probably the most efficient item to do this. (That said, I usually dump armor because I loot damaged segments all over the place, and few buy them.) Fabrication at Teratons is very late in the game, almost at the end. I would not save all ore just for Teratons; you need the cash early.

[Erial]

Thank you


So, generally speaking: some items will be useful, more or less later, for crafting, but many can be sold.
This leads to the question...

11) personal Stash
are there storages where one can deposit items ? Ship space is limited and hauling along a lot of stuff seems inefficient.

Edit:
12) inertia
Question 11) just popped up another question: does a ship get more sluggish the more it is loaded ? If yes, then will this be counter-affected, at least to some extent, with a more powerful engine ?

2) weapon's damage / damage per second

 Your basic equation is a good start, but there are different tiers of damage types (kinetic —> blast —> fusion for matter weapons; laser —> particle —> ion for energy weapons, just to list off the first three tiers). The higher tier a damage type is, the bigger its damage multiplier against a given level of armor.

That's a bit much for starting - or maybe my long absence from "action" games narrows my field of view.
Does the game help in this regard, by generating higher tiers of damage along the way ? Example, in the beginning one sees many Kinetic weapons with a few Blast weapons, while advancing through systems it slowly switches to more Blast weapons with a few Kinetics and Fusions in between, towards midgame it slowly switches to Fusion weapons with a few Blast and tier 4 in between, and so on ?

3) is player knowledge persistent ?

 In a word? No.

-> 3+4)

 Don’t bother. That barrel with a scuffed label that turned out to be repairing nanos this game? It’s as likely to be ablative coating or radioactive waste next game.

Now that's "procedurally generated"
Come to think of it: if you identified Radioactive Waste from a "Barrel of D€imos" this game, may one catch a breath, or will you need to be careful as the later found "Barrel with inscription 'Don't open'" could also be Radioactive ? That would be scary

4) la Roma

 Not currently. Do feel free to ticket that as a suggestion on the Ministry, though — it’s a good idea.

Will do - thanks

Speaking of tickets, i have seen there is also a Suggestion sub-forum. What's the difference between the Ministry and the Suggestions ?
Or maybe more meaningful in this context: when to decide putting a suggestion/request on one or the other ?


Again, thanks you two for clearing it up xoxo

[AssumedPseudonym]

11) personal Stash

 Not exactly, but not exactly not, either. Technically you can use any shipwreck or abandoned station, but you risk losing your goods to looters (shipwrecks only, and even then only close to stations) or salvagers (who loot anything and everything). The exception to this is radioactive shipwrecks or stations, though obviously you’ll want to be radiation-proof to take that option.

12) inertia

 Simply put, yes on both counts.

That's a bit much for starting - or maybe my long absence from "action" games narrows my field of view.
Does the game help in this regard, by generating higher tiers of damage along the way ? Example, in the beginning one sees many Kinetic weapons with a few Blast weapons, while advancing through systems it slowly switches to more Blast weapons with a few Kinetics and Fusions in between, towards midgame it slowly switches to Fusion weapons with a few Blast and tier 4 in between, and so on ?

 Technically? No. In practice? Yes. To clarify, laser and kinetic weapons only go as far as Level 5 in the core game, whereas particle and blast weapons start showing up around Level 4, and then those go as far as Level 7 with ion and thermo being phased in thereabouts. It’s the level of the system that determines what loot shows up, and it looks at the loot’s level, not its damage type. By the time you’re getting Level 6 loot, though, you won’t be getting much along the lines of laser or kinetic weapons simply because there aren’t really weapons at that level utilizing those damage types.

Now that's "procedurally generated" :lol:
Come to think of it: if you identified Radioactive Waste from a "Barrel of D€imos" this game, may one catch a breath, or will you need to be careful as the later found "Barrel with inscription 'Don't open'" could also be Radioactive ? That would be scary :shock:

 Actually, a recent beta added the possibility of items having multiple unidentified versions. So yes, “D€imos” and “Don’t Open” could both be radioactive waste. However, once an unidentified version has been identified, any further instances of “Don’t Open” barrels will already show up as radioactive waste.

Speaking of tickets, i have seen there is also a Suggestion sub-forum. What's the difference between the Ministry and the Suggestions ?
Or maybe more meaningful in this context: when to decide putting a suggestion/request on one or the other ?

 Generally, suggestions on the Ministry are more likely to get quicker attention from George. This is usually fine for minor changes or QoL ideas. If it’s a major change, though — say, a sweeping rebalance of armors or a radical change to a core player ship — it should be posted on the forum first where potential ramifications and side-effects can be discussed.

[Ferdinand]

Damaged weapons:
In the early stages of the game you can sell damaged weapons off to Weapons dealers. They are relatively common and the cash is welcome, Same goes for damaged armor an shields, sell those at armor dealers. Tinkers offer better prices for damaged items, and you can craft some unique stuff there, but you'll usually find that they are rare in the game (there is always at least one) and finding it is something else.

Stash
I usually don't stash at the beginning of a game, sell off when the hold is full. Only when the system does not contain salvagers, you can safely stash in abandoned stations. You don't want to mess with salvagers in the first systems though, they will most likely be too powerfull for starter ships. Later on, they are good loot pinata's. Cargo expansions are a good investment. Use them!

Roms and other upgrades
Some of those are carried over if you buy another ship, most roms do, such as targeting, visual enhancers, and trading computer. (just like software can be transferred from one computer to another) Installed (hardware) updates usually do not. So if you have (for example) installed a laser collimator, it will still be installed in your old ship (and the price of your ship will be different from the same ship without that device). Other upgrades are tied to the weapon they are installed on, like kinetic upgrades. And will not be carried over when installing a new weapon or changing ships.

[Erial]

Thank you

if you identified Radioactive Waste from a "Barrel of D€imos" this game, may one catch a breath, or will you need to be careful as the later found "Barrel with inscription 'Don't open'" could also be Radioactive ?

Actually, a recent beta added the possibility of items having multiple unidentified versions.

I guess i'll stick to the stable release for a while, before updating to the beta.
Come to think of it: is there an options file or screen which i overlooked ? With settings like "activate multiple item ident" and "deactivate perma-death and insurance" and such ?

Stash
I usually don't stash at the beginning of a game, sell off when the hold is full. Only when the system does not contain salvagers, you can safely stash in abandoned stations. You don't want to mess with salvagers in the first systems though, they will most likely be too powerfull for starter ships. Later on, they are good loot pinata's.

Good to know. Just, what is a "pinata" ?



13) ship slots
A thing i don't quite understand yet is the slotting system.
Example, i install an additional weapon - it deducts from "total slots" and from "weapon slots". The latter only, if a ship has limited ## of weapon slots.
So far, so good.
However, if i install a different reactor, it also deducts from slots, even though the old reactor gets uninstalled.
How exactly are slots calculated, or maybe "treated", when installing additional equipment ? When will a slot be deducted from total, when will it not ?

[Ferdinand]

Just, what is a "pinata" ?
Well, wikipedia can answer that very well for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi%C3%B1ata

Slots
Every ship has slots for upgrades. Some slots are only for weapons, some are multi purpose. Almost everything you can install takes a slot. There are some exceptions though, some weapons (and perhaps other devices) even take two free slots, while some others do not use a slot at all, like patch spiders
Also every playership comes with a reactor, and if you upgrade that, the new reactor will take a slot, as you have noticed already. Same goes for cargo upgrades or drive upgrades. These slots will show up, even if you have no free slots left. To install something in that situation, you will have to remove something else. You cannot install multiple reactors, drives or cargo upgrades at the same time. However other devices are only limited by the amount of free slots. But installing too many devices might overload your reactor, so be careful.
A lot more can be written about this, but part of the fun in this game is figuring things out yourself.

[Erial]

Thank you

part of the fun in this game is figuring things out yourself.

In short: yes

However, the game is vast and can be overwhelming if you don't understand at least some basics.
Example, in my first games i haven't seen any Weapon's Station - not that i made it out of Eridani anyway. Damaged weapons can only be sold at uncommon places, so that i didn't know what to do with them.
Or, the EI500 has 2-3 slots more than the other starting ships, as such i didn't realize a new reactor would take a slot. Only when it happened with the Wolfen's limited space i started to wonder.

[relanat]

weapon damage
Damage levels can be calculated fairly consistently by using the method you suggest; hp x number of shots x time. But the actual damage done on impact is affected by resistances. See the "basic shield info" forum topic for an explanation. The same thing happens with armor resistances.
There is also WMD damage. This appears in the item description as a blue tag, eg "WMD 5". It ranges from 1 to 10. This is different from standard weapon damage. As a general rule you need WMD damage to destroy stations and larger ships. Weapons with little WMD damage can be used on gunships.

SOTP vs SOTP
SOTP HD is an addition to SOTP which contains more detailed images which make the ships appear to rotate more smoothly. Ship images in Trancendence use a similar method to stop motion photography. Having 120 'facing's rather than the original 20 means a smoother look as the ships can rotate every 3 degrees (360 degrees in a complete turn) rather than every 18 degrees. This is especially noticeable in larger or very long ships (big freighters are a good example). They appear to abruptly jump to a new rotation angle instead of smoothly rotate. Not critical but nice.

mining piracy
Although there is some ore scattered throughout the galaxy there are also concentrated deposits. If you find one of these and mine ore from it (even accidentally) the claim-jumpers will come hard and fast. These outlaw miners, always showing as red, will continue to appear from the nearest stargate and try to steal your ore. It's good fun rushing about trying to shoot them and mine and pick up all the ore while they try to steal it.

watch your target/friendly fire
What AssumedPseudonym said. Additionally, once a friendly green station gets angry with you (goes red) you are banned for life. Alandra had a great idea about paying off the station to get back to friendly status but it hasn't been implemented yet.

arms
Although the default is for only one or two weapons and one launcher to fire at the same time some have more damaging fire. Some missiles split into multiple warheads after launch, some weapons do the same or have multiple barrels. Worth researching.

money
Loot everything and then sell it.
Destroy all enemy stations and loot them, preferably without dying in the process!
Some stations have more loot than others. Working out which ones is part of the fun.
Some enemy ships will continually be replaced as you destroy them. These can be 'farmed' but the ones with the best loot are very hard to destroy and can quickly kill you. Beware.
Check for unit discounts of 30% or higher on items you can buy from stations. You can make money on heavily discounted items but there are limits on how many items the buying stations will buy.
Do as many mining station and Korolov escort missions as you can find. They pay a credit reward.
The Battle Arena can give good rewards for winning. You can also sell all the loot from shipwrecks to the handily placed weapons and armor stations just outside!
The mission from the agricultural station pays well.
Sell military items to Black Market stations. Adding enhancements to military armor before you do this gives better prices.
Be a drug dealer. Some stations will buy drugs at prices a lot higher than you buy them for at the Tempus and Black Market stations.
Sell higher level weapons to Teratons for rin.
Sell ore to Ringer stations for rin.

stash
You can jettison from your cargo hold. This creates an abandoned cargo crate. Salvager Nomads will loot them up to about Sanctuary. There are a few exceptions to this. The crates won't be looted in named systems, eg Eridani, Rigel, St Kats, but can be destroyed by errant weapons fire.
You can store anything in the Elysium system. It will be totally safe there unless you accidently shoot it yourself and blow it up.

If you want to try mods, the Betel's Storage Stations mod on xelerus.de will safely store items for you and also transport items to other systems for you.

ship slots
I think the reactor thingy is a leftover from the recent introduction of the "changing playerships during the game" feature. Originally the player was stuck with the same playership through the whole game so other ships didn't need actual reactor items. They were assumed to have one. IIRC after you install a reactor item the slots work on a one for one basis as expected.
There was also a bug with 'two slot' devices messing up the slot counts sometimes but I think that has been fixed.

[NMS]

Any device that doesn't take up a slot, or takes more than one, should have a tag specifying that. Player ships used to have a built-in reactor that didn't take a slot, but they were changed years ago to come with a removable reactor that does take a slot. So unless you're using mods with multi-slot reactors or ships with built-in reactors, replacing your reactor shouldn't change your number of free slots.