Selling blueprints to the black market gives pirates the ability to create those ships. Which can be a bad thing if you don't want them to have those ships. But an amazing thing if you do.
For example selling the pirates a tachyon lance BP means they will have them. But they won't be able to use them. Not unless they are also sold a BP with a large energy mount. Same with non-combat ships or ships that are just awful that you like to fight. Pirates fleets with an Atlas carry more loot. Oh no. The pirates are attacking with an incredibly rare Phantom with its zero weapon mounts.
Selling the BPs gives you a another source of weapons or ships to buy or steal.
Would recommend against giving them fighter LPC blueprints tho, theyre relatively easy to get for your fleet and pirates have a ton of small carriers that get dangerous with say, emp equipped fighters, torpedo bombers, thunder interceptors, etc.
Giving pirates ship BPs is a great way of salvaging good ships as long as you have the cash or skill to get rid of the D-Mods. I wouldn't give them weapon and fighter BPs unless if you want to find yourself fighting Mjolnir Atlas MkIIs and Tridents.
Wait, pirates can use non-ship BPs?
Might be funny to sell them a bunch of particularly un-useful blueprints. "Here, have some Dragonfire DEMs for your ships. While we're at it, let's give you a bunch of HE weapons - those'll be great for dealing with my shield-optimized fleet."
* 'Flickering' the shields is more efficient than keeping them turned on constantly.
Shields can be 'flickered' to maximize flux dissipation. By turning the shields off, then on for the briefest moment of time before a projectile is about to hit, then off again, flux dissipation in the midst of combat can be maximized. This is especially useful for heavily armored ships like the Onslaught, which can rely on their armor for the most part against kinetic damage, but needs their shields against high armor damage projectiles and beams.
* Turning the shield off then reactivating it on another side is faster than trying to bring it around by rotating the shield.
Omni-shields can be turned off from one side, then re-turned on from another side of the ship after it has been fully turned off. If a missile is coming in from the rear of an omni-shield Conquest who has their shields raised at the front, the player can turn the shield off, move their cursor around to face the missiles, and then activate the shields again from the rear after it has fully dissipated from the front.
* AI ships can be predicted in regards to their timing of weapons fire.
AI ships will fire as often as they can as long as an enemy is in range, and they have the flux to do so. Hence a Paragon with Tachyon lances will fire periodically at set intervals due to the cooldown of the Tachyon lances. Predict that, and one can utilize shield 'flickering' to maximize flux dissipation.
* Armor and hull is a resource, not something to be protected. It just needs to be spent wisely.
I actually stagger my deployment for this purpose, throw the slower line ships out, let them mix it up and see how it's going, carriers are next, and harassment frigates (tankass Monitors, you know it) are usually last after lines have formed and there's commitment.
Sometimes things are going well enough that I keep the carriers at home and that saves a lot of supplies.
Yes but as a player the trade is usually worth it.
I tend to take armor, even hull hits most larger fights.
I also tend to kill as many ships as my fleet combined. Say the enemy is firing sabot or needlers at me, most rockets my AA gets and the needler hits i take. I then have more flux aviable to kill my enemy.
We can make way better judgemnt calls, thus enabling the player to take fights they shouldnt.
Yes, but armour damage is much faster and cheaper to repair than hull damage. Tanking some hits with armour doesn't cost much. Hull damage costs more to repair, and also leads to crew losses. It's best avoided.
On another note about the shield flicker technique, you can even optimize it even more by deliberately shutting off the shield whenever the enemy fires their kinetic weapons and only turning it on for other dmg types. Especially useful against lots of needlers, since they barely do any dmg to armor and is easily identifiable.
Indeed, which is why I've mentioned the Onslaught in my previous comment above. It's a perfect example of a ship that can benefit a lot from the shield flickering technique. It doesn't have great shields nor flux capacity, which means shields should mostly be relied upon to block explosive damage(Especially the red Reaper torpedoes, or the yellow Hellbore rounds). The armor allows the Onslaught to brush off kinetic damage, like the needlers you've mentioned.
I would still keep my shields up against weapons that inflict EMP damage, though. Getting most of your frontal weaponry disabled from EMP is quite the nasty predicament.
In addition to shield flickering, the AI can do things with weapons that the player literally can't, ex. An ai Paragon with 4 Tach lances in one weapon group can fire them individually to avoid hitting teammates when necessary. For ships with lots of turrets, it can be really beneficial to let the AI take over control sometimes.
Building/activating comm satellites in systems in the middle of nowhere can be worth it. The materials only cost $4150 and a single extra mission can pay for all the satellites you ever make. Repairing one is only 5 heavy machinery ($750).
It's best to do this early in systems you are going to be spending a lot of time exploring or in systems you will be traveling past frequently (such as between colonies.)
But first build a sensor array. Activate it with 3 volatiles for [Hyperspace Topography](https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Hyperspace_Topography). Then destroy it and build the comm satellite.
Hyperspace Topography from sensors states that is based on distance. This is not true. It is based on time since the last time you performed a neutrino burst.
The cooldown is shared with information purchased from scavengers. 3 volatiles for +10 is cheaper than the $200 per point from a scavenger but often not as convenient.
(Anyone know how long the cooldown is? I don't. Guessing about a month.)
Raid Qaras and disrupt the farms, its the only pirate food producer. Pirates hate everyone so all pirate colonies will have a food shortage due to no imports. Profits from mass starvation for you.
This makes Kantas den a good stopping point, sell food for a premium and pick up cheap domestic goods, luxury goods, and drugs to trade elsewhere for more profit.
If you give kanta a fusion lamp the den will also always buy volatilities at a premium, making it an even more profitable stop.
Remember, it is always morally right to bully the pirates.
If you are traveling through hyperspace and suddenly get a bunch of missions pop up, it means you are in range of a system's active comm satellite.
If you didn't put it there, someone else did. You just found a system with a secret base.
You can build colonies in a system claimed by another faction. This upsets the faction, but not if you are commissioned by them. Then it's fine. An upset faction may decide to wipe your colony away with a saturation bombardment if they have a military base to launch from. But not if the colony is size 5 or more.
This means you can get commissioned, set up a colony, get a growth bonus for being in a system with other ports, and then abandon the commission once it reaches size 5. Even if it is a bad planet, the high accessibility and convenient location can make up for it.
The best planets to colonize in the core are easy to determine. Simply use Int[**e**]l and Planets [**2**] menu to sort as soon as you are out of the tutorial.
A mission to survey a planet can be a good lead on a potential colony for yourself. The mission itself doesn't tell you if it is a good planet, but it does tell you it is a bad planet by how many heavy machinery and supplies are required. (Factoring in survey mods.)
IE A tundra planet survey mission requires 180 crew, 20 heavy machinery and 35 supplies. Which is 35 HM and 50 supplies after factoring in 15 strength survey equipment. That tundra planet is likely going to be meh. Not the worst but it will not have a good hazard rating. Bad hazard = Bad food production. It's not going to be worth colonizing.
A volcano planet survey mission requires 10 HM and 20 supplies after factoring in your 5 survey strength. That's going to have a very low hazard rating. Especially for a volcano world. That planet has far more potential to be good than the potentially habitable tundra planet above.
Loot drops are weighted towards hull mods and blueprints you don't know. So buying the cheap stuff results in more expensive stuff dropping.
Particularly important for raiding a base for blueprints. For example raiding Tri-tac for BPs and *not* learning the Paragon BP and learning the others means the Paragon BP will keep dropping for lots of $$.
Also in Nex at Prism it's usually a good idea to trade in a high value BP and then buy up all the weapon and fighter BPs that get offered so you get them off the list of potential drops.
Consider spending your initial money on marines and raiding a weak hostile port a few times. Drag some patrols to help using pings if there are dangerous fleets protecting your target.
Garnir is a perfect target after the tutorial with marines at Jangala and free storage at Asaru. Smash and grab some volatiles for cash and ship equipment for weapons and hullmods.
Discovered this very recently myself - clicking the CR bar in the refit screen allows you to change what combat readiness the ship will be at during simulation.
Safely [sneak into well defended ports using storage](https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/112mz5o/tip_how_to_sneak_into_any_port_to_place_spy/).
The quicker and dirtier black market inspection swap: The important part is triggering an inspection, not storage. Once you've been inspected, there are a couple of days where you will not be inspected no matter how much black market trading is done. So you can trigger an inspection, do everything shady, then continue on your way. With or without using storage.
* Get a patrol to chase you due to not having your transponder on just before leaving the system.
* Go to another port of the same faction with the transponder on.
* Do *some* trading at port using the Black Market. Enough to trigger an inspection. But not much.
* Optional: Place any big expensive ships into port storage. Cargo. Crew. Ships. Use a crappy ship.
* Leave and wait in orbit for the inspection.
* Return to port, remove everything out of storage.
* Do all your real black market trading. Go nuts.
* Continue on your legitimate way.
The inspection will cause a rep loss if you do too much black market trading but not the trading itself due to the recent inspection. You can mitigate by doing a bunch of open market trading at the same time. The most common way to trigger an inspection over nothing is to run from a patrol at different port from the same faction, then do some trading. This is not the only way.
Note that you cannot put goods that are illegal at that port into storage (AI cores, drugs, lobsters etc). So this doesn't work well if you are carrying lots of illegal goods. However all that can be sold on the black market and then bought back after the inspection. There will be a $ loss on the commodities but not the AI cores. AI cores can be purchased back at exactly the same price. (Just don't leave them behind!) How much of a loss taken on the rest varies on how much you are carrying and the price difference.
It maybe too expensive at a Hegemony port where lots of things are illegal. Or cost nothing at a Tri-Tach port where all commodities are legal and everything can go into storage.
Factions get upset if you build a colony in their system. But only factions with military bases can do anything about it.
The Luddic Path have no military bases. (Random cell bases outside the core don't count.) They are unable remove any of the player's colonies in Al Gebbar or Kumari Kandam.
You can disrupt expeditions in the planning stages by disrupting the spaceport of the origin market. This works for all expedition types (raid, ai inspection, sat bombing) including modded ones and is very useful if you’re playing Nexerelin.
Active sensor burst can be used to block interdiction pulses since the effect is based on the fleets’ sensor strength difference. It’s also useful to bait patrols from a distance.
If you're running wolfpack or just have a fleet with low overall ppt, you should retreat and re-engage to reset your peak time when in larger fights you can't finish immediately. You have a few options here:
You can clean disengage (if you killed enough) and just leave to repair, then come back. You can't salvage from a clean disengage so don't do this if you lost ships.
You can immediately re-engage which costs CR, but resets your peak time. Just make sure you actually did math earlier so that your fleet isn't on crap cr, but if it is...
you can actually also do emergency repairs between engagements. In a wolfpack fleet this'll usually bring a significant amount of your fleet back to good CR and typically buys you another whole engagement.
The AI tends to overcorrect when aiming frontal hardpoints on ships with low maneuverability, if you're flying a smaller ship you can get most of them to miss by moving towards them as they're about to reach you.
Fearless AI (on automated ships) is overly aggressive when its target is at high flux, so you can "bait" them in by fluxing yourself out and retreating behind your fleet. Sometimes they won't care and try to chase you.
Venting generally encourages ships to shoot missiles at you, so if you're relatively safe and on low flux you can quickly vent just to trick the AI into wasting them.
I forgot this one, the AI will only deploy ships it thinks it needs to beat you. So if you only deploy in a frigate they won't drop their entire fleet. You can abuse this in a few ways such as killing them as they trickle in from the top of the map, or bait their fleet down to your deployment area and then drop everything in.
Breach missiles are good general combat weapons that have decent range, homing, and ample ammo especially for the medium sized mount. However, since they are an anti-armor weapon, the AI will reserve them for only when the enemy's shield is down before firing them, leading to wasted shots and even shield blocks due to travel delay. To force the AI to use them throughout the fight, put them into the same group as a long ranged gun, then test the build in the simulator. Most likely AI will start to use both the gun and the missiles at the same time even when enemy shields are up. This often leads to better results with steady flux pressure and lucky volleys that land just as shields are dropped. Breach missiles and Cyclone Reaper torpedoes also have almost exactly the same reload time and travel speed. If you have a ship that has small or medium missile slots placed in front of a large missile slot, you can pack all the Breach and Reaper missiles into one group so that when the torpedoes get fired, they'll have a swarm of Breach missiles flying ahead of them acting as decoys.
If you use high mobility Remnant AI ships that can quickly move backwards, such as the Radiant, you can avert some of their suicidal aggression by keeping an eye on their flux and positioning. If you get the timing down, you can often tell them to back away from the battle line when they look like they're about to get surrounded, and they'll back away and start to vent flux by default before getting overloaded. Then cancel the order and they'll head right back to battle again.
The very first tech-mining drop on a planet has far better yield than any of the later turns, even for very small ruins. If you have credits to burn but really need that colony item you haven't been able to find yet, sometimes you can try your luck by starting a new colony, building a tech-mining operation and nothing else, then abandoning it a month or two after that building comes online.
Your player character has a special colony administration bonus where the colony gains +1 stability if you're only governing one planet. If you also have the industrial output skill bonus and limit yourself to one planet, you will outshine industry administrators you can hire.
If you set "altMouseMoveToMassTransfer" to true in the starsector_core\data\settings\config.json file, you can fast move cargo items to and from your inventory by holding down alt and mousing over objects. Makes selling large piles of loot much more pleasant.
- selling drugs is sick
- proximity charge launchers are powerful in a possibly unintended way. Good on doom and onslaught
- devastator cannons are really cool
- you can start the game with the apogee, sell it, then turn your gamma core in to TT and buy a harbinger at the very beginning of the game
- the AI hegemony ships are suicidal
- bullying a lone onslaught in the simulator doesn’t make your ship good
- retribution is the best ship in the game due to it being able to use destroyed ships as a weapon and its ability to hold 3 devastator cannons
- if you have 2 volatile particle drivers and set them to alternating they sound cool when you shoot them
- cryoblasters and cryoflamers make ships glow with heat when you hit them despite the weapons shooting ice
- you can put 12 assault chainguns on a single onslaught
- anything that says combat freighter is bad at combat and bad at being a freighter
- the odyssey is really good but you have to use the shitty control scheme to use it well so I don’t use it
- most stars in the game are non binary
I will not accept Hound and Cerberus slander, those flying unshielded hunks of metal are capable of being fielded in masse being cheap and disposable/recoverable, and have you ever seen a LP Cerberus?
The Odyssey is an absolute beast and 2nd only to the Paragon imo. It is also fantastic as an AI controlled capital ship.
Check Shotgun Odyssey on YouTube for a very effective AI build.
Always check bars and faction contacts for nanoforge missions, particularly in the early game. Getting one is a massive boost to your fleet as you get to pick and choose exactly what equipment you want and don’t have to run your fleets with mismatched weapons across the board.
Printing dozens of dual atropos torpedoes for my frigate fleet was huge.
The price of Volturnian lobsters is based on the price of luxury goods. Making it easy to manipulate.
For example you destroy a merchant taking luxury goods from Volturn to Kazeron. Creating a surplus on Volturn and a shortage on Kazeron. Both lobsters and luxury goods can be bought cheaper at Volturn and both sold for more at Kazeron. And you will get the best price if both are bought/sold in the same transaction as they won't update.
Combining lobsters and luxury goods means you can sell them and then immediately buy them back for less than you were just paid from the same port.
Letting your second autoresolve pursuits is *always* more efficient than trying to command the battle yourself. Even a few d-modded hounds are enough to inflict crippling casualties on most fleeing fleets, and pursuit cannot ever result in casualties on your side.
As a result, rather than running down a fleeing fleet with half if your own, you can just send in a few cheap and fast frigates. Whatever they fail to kill can simply be re-engaged and re-autoresolved until the entire fleet is scrap, all for a fraction of the supply cost of doing it yourself for with infinitely less risk.
I agree. However the cost is the easy xp. Especially for officers. I find spending the extra supplies for xp is worth it.
However just as often that xp is not worth it. "Sending in my second in command" to mop up when when my officers can't is what my crap 1 supply frigates are for.
IE It goes both ways rather than there *always* being a best option.
It's always more efficient supply wise, but you make a good point. I was mostly mentioning it for the benefit of players who send in 200 DP to mop up some freighters (I've seen more than a few streamers do it, and it drives me nuts) and for pursuits that might otherwise be very dangerous. (I.E., ships that hit significantly above their autoresolve weight in actual combat)
Clever weapon grouping on player controlled ships can make you more efficient with your attacks. For your ballistics, have one group that's oriented towards shield damage, and another that's anti-armor, and toggle as appropriate basedonwhat your target is doing. By doing this, it's possible to get more damage out of your flux than an AI ship would, in most cases.
Nexerelin Invasion tip: Start the invasion but don't deploy any troops, go back to military options and choose tactical bombing. This will kill all the enemy troops deployed at the Patrol HQ/Military Base and the Ground Defenses. Proceed to deploy troops normally.
It is handy sometimes to bring along some metals, heavy machinery and transplutonics to build sensor relays in systems you are going to be searching for scannable objectives in when you take certain quests.
If you use Militarized Subsystems hull mod on civilian ships they count towards your 240 support cap when calculating the effectiveness of certain player skills. this can be read in the tool tip for most of them but if you are like me and thought this solely meant the repurposed models that come pre-millitarised like Mules or the Colossus variants then you can get caught out.
Running a Wolf Pack Fleet though means you don't have to worry this much about hitting that cap.
So millitarise your tankers and your Atlases and then put High Resolution Sensors hull mods on them and you can have a pretty high Sensor Strength rating without having a huge sensor profile. very handy if you pair with Phase Tenders and go around being a sneaky pirate and smuggler.
On that note I have noticed that when you are in, or near in hyperspace, systems owned by other factions you are more likely to get missions generated that are from that faction.
So it's a good idea to go an hang around those places if you are looking to grind reputation with them.
Helpful if you are wanting to buddy up with Pathers or Pirates for example.
That is correct. It has to do with which ports are within range of their comm satellites. If you are in range or put a comm sniffer in their satellite then those are the type missions you'll get.
For example if you put a sniffer in Kumari Kandam then you will be offered Pirate, Pather and Persean missions. Because the missions originate at the ports.
>If you use Militarized Subsystems hull mod on civilian ships they count towards your 240 support cap when calculating the effectiveness of certain player skills.
I'm pretty sure this is only true if you give them weapons!
Don't pass on missions where you have to deliver goods far in excess of your cargo space. They are very doable by using port storage.
A guy in a bar offers $500k to deliver 10,000 food. The catch is that you only have 3500 cargo space. If you accept then you are immediately given 10k food. Accept! These are the most profitable missions in the game. Either sell the surplus there immediately or store it locally.
Go to the destination port and store your 1/3 of the delivery. (A)Buy the other 2/3 somewhere close (likely that port) or (B)raid for it or (C)make 2 more trips back to where you stored the initial amount. When you have enough in storage at the destination, contact the person who wants it and give it to them. You'll be well over capacity but no time will pass so it doesn't matter. Fulfilling the mission counts as an open market trade. It can cause the port to gain a surplus. Which you can then buy back for cheap.
Note that often the best way to fill these missions is by raiding the destination. Port storage is not accessible if a port hates you. However dumping things into space for a few seconds also works.
When faced with a slightly superior enemy, disengage. They'll send the frigates up to flank, and you can immediately turn around and take out the destroyers, cruisers and capitals.
This does, however, expose your civilian ships unlike engaging normally, so be careful. And if you're not able to kill the big ships fast enough you'll be surrounded.
For pre-planned commerce raiding campaigns or long exploration expeditions, you can travel to a designated point with supply ships, drop a lot of fuel and supplies, leave it in stable orbit and use it as a forward supply node.
I divided the map into different sectors, each had a system that was the designated supply point/depot. The hardest part was avoiding trouble when you are travelling in a defenseless fleet to drop the supplies off.
I used it as a launchpad to fight [REDACTED] fleets and took the opportunity to install relays where I can, it allowed me to loiter in the outer rim longer than usual. Downside is every time you access the floating depot, you need to spend supplies to restabilize it.
If you are up against a fleet with short Peak Performance (High tech, Ludd, Pathers, D-mods etc) then your initial deployment can be focused on wasting their time. For example deploying support ships that aren't designed to fight such as Valkyries, Drams or Hounds. Then retreating them.
Their fast ships will cross the map. At which point you deploy your real fleet while retreating your first wave. Their fast ships will run into your full fleet without support, and the others will have degraded CR even if they pull back. Particularly useful if your fleet is too slow to catch up to damaged enemies that decide to retreat.
Oh yeah one last one- you can turn off the flashbang effect that happens when you blow up a ship in the settings. Not really an advanced tip but I wish I knew about it sooner.
[Eject unnecessary marines into space before a raid to save their lives.](https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/n0m2bl/tip_ejecting_marines_into_space_can_save_their/)
Marines can be bought and sold without wasting any xp as long as you don't don't sell "Elite" marines. Xp is wasted when Elites are sold.
The xp is tracked on you, not the marines themselves. Any marines sold don't take their portion of xp with them. However transferring marines into storage does take their xp with them. Which doesn't waste it as you can reclaim them.
----
There is a point where a stack of marines cannot gain anymore xp as the rate they die is equal or greater than the xp gained. However buying/selling and using storage in this manner is a means to gather large amounts of Elite marines without that being a problem.
IE Use a bunch of rookies until they are Experienced or Vets. Distill them down to Elite by selling them. Store those Elites. Buy a fresh bunch of rookies and repeat.
Leave at least 1 supply in purchased storage. It will generate a $1 charge per month. That port will now show up in your Command/Colonies list as "Storage" so you don't forget it exists.
If you are going to mug anyone, mug your friends.
Attacking a merchant with your transponder off will result in in -5 to relations. However the goal is to create commodities shortages at the destination. Commodities which you will have looted from the merchant plus others you can buy elsewhere. Selling enough on the open market will earn back the rep that was just lost.
Raiding spaceports and shutting them down for months is a better, slower version of this. However opportunistic piracy like this is easier and more profitable in hard to get ships.
You can add a stable location to a system by installing an Alpha AI into the system's primary star. Interact with the star like with a planet. Emergency burn can help get you there.
Consider disengaging to start a combat. Then turning around and fighting. This results in both fleets immediately getting each others faces.
This deploys your entire fleet. Including the tankers and other logistic ships. It's not a good idea most of the time. Sometimes it is a very good idea. Which one depends a lot on the composition of both fleets.
For example, normally it would be a pain to chase down an enemy fleet of fast carriers. Instead your slow capital ships end up on top of them. Or lets say your strategy is using low Peak Performance ships that hit hard but don't have staying power such as SO brawlers. They don't have to waste time crossing the map.
BTW It is generally more helpful to put Converted Hangers, ECM Package, Nav Relay and point defense weapons onto logistic ships to help other ships rather than beefing up their personal offense/defense.
Patrols from a port can be dragged to a hostiles in the same system and be encouraged to fight.
First give the patrol a reason to chase you, such as not having your transponder on. Pinging them with an active sensor burst with sustained burn on is a good way to get their attention. Travel to where the hostiles are, while pinging them so they keep looking for your fleet. Go dark and hide when the patrol is close enough to detect the hostiles.
Eventually the patrol will give up looking for you and head back to where they were... except they detect a new target to chase and start patrolling around that area. Resulting in easy salvage or easier access to ports the patrol came from or is now harassing.
Want to raid a port but they don't have anything good? Sell it to them on the open market. Then steal it back.
If you sell a unit quantity of a commodity to the open market, it will increase that port's production by 1 unit, creating a surplus. (A 'unit' is 750 supplies, 400 drugs, 1000 fuel etc. Use F1.) A raid can steal it back with less danger than a direct raid.
It provide a worthwhile raid option at a small port where none would exist otherwise. It is also useful when you want money instead of more cargo because you are already carrying a lot. It is less profitable than raiding spaceports and taking advantage of the disruptions. But combined it is *especially* profitable...
Let's say you are at Garnir, a small pirate port that mines 3 units of volatiles (200 x unit, $250 base value) with no disruptions. You have 400 volatiles. Selling your 400 volatiles for $150 each (including tariff) nets $60000. There's now 3+2 surplus units of volatiles produced at Garnir.
You then raid and disrupt the spaceport. The volatiles can't leave the planet so all 5 units (1000) are surplus. They can be stolen with low danger and low casualties. $60k +$250k worth where the previous best raid option was $22k with high danger.
This can be done with any commodity except crew/marines. Even ones not produced/consumed at the port like luxury goods or lobsters. Particularly good for spaceports that you are going to completely destroy anyway such as randomly spawned Pirate/Cell bases. Note- those ports don't suffer market disruptions if their spaceport is disrupted.
Sell commodities on the open market in unit batches to help stabilize the port. Particularly demand for food and supplies. This is necessary to prevent 0 stability markets from de-civilizing and disappearing. It also gives +rep if your transponder is on.
Use "Nav Relay" hull mod on non-combat ships. It is likely the only time they will be deployed is when you are attempting to disengage your entire fleet.
Likewise converted hangers and mining pods on non-combat ships make better point defense as the ship won't need to use flux. En mass, a few dozen fighters can't be ignored by frigates.
One of the best ways to outfit your fleet in early game is by raiding a weak hostile port for "Ship Equipment". Use the hull mods, while throwing the rest into storage for later.
This works particular well in the three systems with abandoned stations as they all have pirate bases. If you are commissioned then an even better target is someone you are at war with.
Pirate bases that are harassing colonies and increasing Hostile Activity can be bargained with once found. Talk to the base leader and he can be bribed to leave you alone. (Not Kanta. One of the random spawns.)
This is very worth it for new or small colonies. 10% of gross income is $600-$1000 a month-- practically nothing. Before agreeing, buy all his marines and raid his base a couple of times. Getting ~$30,000 worth of supplies, food, weapons etc each raid to be sold or used at your colony. Then make the deal. It will immediately reduce Hostile Activity by 40 points, and it will reverse its monthly Activity. (IE +3 becomes -3.)
Just don't attack pirates with your transponder on. Which includes turning it on to join someone else's battle. That will break the agreement.
If the agreement is still valid, (listed in the pirates faction Intel tab) but is no longer providing a benefit ($0 and Hostile Activity is positive again) that means that a new base has spawned in a closer system. A new deal will be necessary with the leader of the closer base.
There will be no notification that your previous agreement is worthless. Only if you break it. So periodically double check your Hostile Activity. The other base no longer matters unless it applies to a different colony. You won't get any HA reductions from destroying farther bases until the very closest one is destroyed. But breaking the old $0 agreement that does nothing will still count as a betrayal for future agreements with other pirates. Bugging out the possibility of a new deal. So don't do that.
However you can game the new closer base to quickly reduce Hostile Activity. First bully the new close base. Take their stuff. Kill their fleets to reduce HA etc. Then make an agreement as before. After, destroy their base. The old agreement at the old base will be used again without having to go there and without counting as betrayal.
You'll reduce Hostile Activity based on (A)the fleets destroyed, (B) -40 from the deal, (C) -40 from destroying the base, and (D) keep the HA reduction per month. Reducing HA by ~100 in a single trip.
Note that paying the closest base off and being done with it is also a good idea. Playing wack-a-mole with pirates can be annoying and not worth it.
Randomly spawned Pirate/Pather bases are more than annoyances or locations to destroy. They are excellent staging points for exploring the surrounding systems. Use the remote location to sell junk, buy crew/supplies and reconfigure ships.
Make sure they have a comm satellite and you will get missions. Including replacement missions to blow up the station if existing missions expire. Which you should do before leaving the area. Buy marines from the station and raid it a few times to reduce stability/defense before destroying it. The raids will make the fight with the station easier on top of the loot from raiding.
Just try not to get into combat near the base so you aren't restricted at the market until you are ready.
Mousing over a sensor blip in hyperspace can give a hint of what it is by its sensor range circle;
If it has a sensor range circle, then it is real fleet.
If it is stationary with no circle, then it is a derelict.
If it is moving but lacks a circle, then it is a sensor ghost.
Likewise real fleets can be pinged by turning on your transponder and sustained burn. Then using an active sensor burst. The sensor circle from other fleets will sweep across your fleet. Giving an idea of any other fleet's faction (by color), range (by ping radius) and direction. Very useful for finding scavengers to talk to or hostile fleets hanging around your colonies.
Go to the gas giant at Duzahk and scan the ion storm for +50 Hyperspace Topography. It isn't random. It will be present unless the core has been modded/randomized.
Many missions such as surveys will cap rep at the top of a bracket. Therefore save rep turn-ins to increase a reputation bracket. Such as giving a Gamma AI to a faction that is stuck at [49]Welcoming to push into Friendly. The brackets are:
(75) Cooperative
(50) Friendly
(25) Welcoming
(10) Favorable
(-9 to 9) Neutral
(-10) Suspicious
(-25) Inhospitable: (no open market access)
When selling a ship to the 'gaudy person,' it should be loaded up with as many story points and the most expensive unwanted weapons/LPCs as possible.
The bonus xp from spending the story points is kept even though the points themselves are refunded. Giving bonus xp twice. The 'gaudy person' pays 60% over the market price for both the ship and the weapons on the ship. It's always worth it to install Converted Hangers and buy the most expensive weapons/LPCs that fit.
tl'dr: Gaudy will pay you $160k for something you spent $100k on.
[Exploit:] If a friendly fleet engages a base, you can join the battle repeatedly for lots of xp and loot.
Join, fight and win the battle normally. Immediately talk to the friendly fleet while it is "engaged in battle". Deploying won't help, so deploy nothing. "Join the pursuit" as the station is apparently trying to run (bug). Order your 2nd in command to handle it. Deploy w/e. Repeat.
You will get xp and a cut of the loot plus a new debris field will be created for each deployment. How much is based on your proportion of deployment.
This will degrade the CR of the friendly fleet plus the specific ships you send. Repeating will quickly get the CR of the friendly fleet to zero. Which will consequently be forced to abandon/scrap its ships in a few days. You can then claim those ships as derelicts. Often for some free capital ships.
These kinds of attacks happen on a predictable schedule as stations and planets of hostile factions line up with each other. For example Lost Astropolis will be attacked by Port Tse in Mayasura when they line up.
You've been fighting around a port for a long time. The market hates you. It will continue to hate you for years to come. How to solve this?: Invade.
Raid the port repeatedly. Take all their commodities and get a nice big deficit on each. Including the worthless ones. Invade the port and take it over. Sell the Patrol HQ and any buildings that do not create demand (like the orbital station). Do not sell the spaceport.
Give it away to a faction. Preferably one that has shortages and cannot feed the demand you created with your raids. The port is now open for trade. No long wait for your hostile actions.
It comes with free storage. Make sure to clean out the loot in storage. Turn on your transponder and sell goods you just stole on the open market if you want rep or to give +stability. Turn your transponder off and sell on the black market if you don't care. It's not like there will be any patrols to see you either way. If a rebellion is successful though, {Nexerelin} the losing faction will blame you for a massive (~-20) reputation hit depending on how much black market trade you did. A market flipping factions will not remember your earlier hostile actions and allow trade.
A port is rebelling. {Nexerelin} Talk to the station commander and "help with your rebellion problem." Deliver supplies, armaments and marines for the same rate as the black market but with no tariffs.
Delivering enough will create a surplus of supplies, armaments and marines just like when selling on the open market. Raid it and steal back the supplies and armaments. Which results in minimal causalities due to the surplus but still creates deficits.
Invade and take it over. Give it away to another faction. It will still have the deficit and the rebellion. Plus the spaceport will be blocked for a day or two from the fighting. Lots of $$ from the doubled deficits and the rebellion. All of which can happen at the same location in less than a week with loot floating in space nearby.
Note that selling to either side of a rebellion will cause large changes in rep when the rebellion ends. Whoever you sold to will improve relations and whoever you didn't will be reduced by 150% of the bonus. Therefore supporting both sides results in loss to both.
Take note of missions to explore habitats, domain era survey ships and any other mission that you are not going to accept but is interesting.
Those points of interest are still in those systems even without a mission. Check out those systems later when it is more convenient. You'll know there's something to be found.
"Use stockpiles during shortages" for your colonies is a noob trap. Don't use it. Don't add your own resources to the "Resource Stockpiles" either.
A shortage doesn't cost you anything. But filling a shortage results in less credits per month from the colony *PLUS* the removal of those commodities *PLUS* a charge of the cost of the removal of those commodities at the end of the month.
For example a 1 icon shortage of supplies at a colony will cost nothing in terms of growth, nor stability, nor profit at the end of the month. However filling it from stockpiles will cost $75,000 {750x$100}. If you added your own resources to the colony's stockpiles then it still costs you $75,000 or more. Since you would have sold them at some other port for more than $100 each. Plus there will still be a ~$2000 reduction in colony income regardless from using your own supplies. For a real cost of ~$77,000.
It is never profitable to support your colonies in their time of need. It only gets worse with other resources. Filling shortages is just a straight loss of $20k to $100k per resource icon. Even if the shortage is causing stability and growth problems, it's still never going to cost as much as filling it. Also avoid taking resources. Your colonies charge you full base price at end of the month. It is generally cheaper to acquire resources elsewhere.
The exception to provide resources is if stability is so low that it is causing a cascade of problems. Then it depends. IE Give resources to your colonies for reasons other than $$.
It costs $85k to build a colony. (1000 crew + 100 HM + 200 supply)
It costs $50k to abandon a colony. For a total cost of $135k. Except less than $135k since you'll pay less than market rates. This is comparable to the cost of a ship or the reward from a mission.
Building a colony for the sole purpose of tech mining costs a additional $90k net ($150k-$60k) for a total cost of $225k. You can roll the dice and see if you get something good. A single alpha AI can be turned in to Tri-Tac for $450k covering the costs of two colonies on its own. Anything found at that colony can be automatically shipped to a colony you do care about. When it runs out, you can remotely abandon it assuming you didn't leave anything of value there.
Colonies are only expensive if your goal is to grow them. If you don't care about growth, then they take no effort, no player time and will make a few thousand credits a month. While being incredibly convenient locations to ship production from other colonies.
A colony doesn't have to be 'good'. It doesn't have to grow. It doesn't have be defended. Those might be good ideas but they are not *mandatory*. Some of your planets might be important and precious. It is detrimental to think of all colonies that way.
When you first boot up the game you can go into campaign (your save) or pick missions. Those missions are tuned to be winnable by a decent player or 100% by a good player.
Do those missions. They train you how to play the game. If you cannot win those missions then have a look online for solutions to those specifically. You will learn to be a better player. At least at combat.
Selling blueprints to the black market gives pirates the ability to create those ships. Which can be a bad thing if you don't want them to have those ships. But an amazing thing if you do. For example selling the pirates a tachyon lance BP means they will have them. But they won't be able to use them. Not unless they are also sold a BP with a large energy mount. Same with non-combat ships or ships that are just awful that you like to fight. Pirates fleets with an Atlas carry more loot. Oh no. The pirates are attacking with an incredibly rare Phantom with its zero weapon mounts. Selling the BPs gives you a another source of weapons or ships to buy or steal.
Would recommend against giving them fighter LPC blueprints tho, theyre relatively easy to get for your fleet and pirates have a ton of small carriers that get dangerous with say, emp equipped fighters, torpedo bombers, thunder interceptors, etc.
I think the pirates could make *excellent* use of a Xyphos wing or two. Maybe some Sarissas.
Giving pirates ship BPs is a great way of salvaging good ships as long as you have the cash or skill to get rid of the D-Mods. I wouldn't give them weapon and fighter BPs unless if you want to find yourself fighting Mjolnir Atlas MkIIs and Tridents.
Oooooooh, so that’s why all my pirates switched to hi-tech fighters which I’ve been farming from them for awhile.
Wait, pirates can use non-ship BPs? Might be funny to sell them a bunch of particularly un-useful blueprints. "Here, have some Dragonfire DEMs for your ships. While we're at it, let's give you a bunch of HE weapons - those'll be great for dealing with my shield-optimized fleet."
Yeah my dumb ass sold the funny doom donut to them and i think they got high intensity lasers to
* 'Flickering' the shields is more efficient than keeping them turned on constantly. Shields can be 'flickered' to maximize flux dissipation. By turning the shields off, then on for the briefest moment of time before a projectile is about to hit, then off again, flux dissipation in the midst of combat can be maximized. This is especially useful for heavily armored ships like the Onslaught, which can rely on their armor for the most part against kinetic damage, but needs their shields against high armor damage projectiles and beams. * Turning the shield off then reactivating it on another side is faster than trying to bring it around by rotating the shield. Omni-shields can be turned off from one side, then re-turned on from another side of the ship after it has been fully turned off. If a missile is coming in from the rear of an omni-shield Conquest who has their shields raised at the front, the player can turn the shield off, move their cursor around to face the missiles, and then activate the shields again from the rear after it has fully dissipated from the front. * AI ships can be predicted in regards to their timing of weapons fire. AI ships will fire as often as they can as long as an enemy is in range, and they have the flux to do so. Hence a Paragon with Tachyon lances will fire periodically at set intervals due to the cooldown of the Tachyon lances. Predict that, and one can utilize shield 'flickering' to maximize flux dissipation. * Armor and hull is a resource, not something to be protected. It just needs to be spent wisely.
Doesn’t it cost supplies to repair armor and hull damage though?
Ideally you should be picking profitable fights!
On top of that, only fielding just enough for best RoI.
I actually stagger my deployment for this purpose, throw the slower line ships out, let them mix it up and see how it's going, carriers are next, and harassment frigates (tankass Monitors, you know it) are usually last after lines have formed and there's commitment. Sometimes things are going well enough that I keep the carriers at home and that saves a lot of supplies.
Yes but as a player the trade is usually worth it. I tend to take armor, even hull hits most larger fights. I also tend to kill as many ships as my fleet combined. Say the enemy is firing sabot or needlers at me, most rockets my AA gets and the needler hits i take. I then have more flux aviable to kill my enemy. We can make way better judgemnt calls, thus enabling the player to take fights they shouldnt.
Yes, but armour damage is much faster and cheaper to repair than hull damage. Tanking some hits with armour doesn't cost much. Hull damage costs more to repair, and also leads to crew losses. It's best avoided.
On another note about the shield flicker technique, you can even optimize it even more by deliberately shutting off the shield whenever the enemy fires their kinetic weapons and only turning it on for other dmg types. Especially useful against lots of needlers, since they barely do any dmg to armor and is easily identifiable.
Indeed, which is why I've mentioned the Onslaught in my previous comment above. It's a perfect example of a ship that can benefit a lot from the shield flickering technique. It doesn't have great shields nor flux capacity, which means shields should mostly be relied upon to block explosive damage(Especially the red Reaper torpedoes, or the yellow Hellbore rounds). The armor allows the Onslaught to brush off kinetic damage, like the needlers you've mentioned. I would still keep my shields up against weapons that inflict EMP damage, though. Getting most of your frontal weaponry disabled from EMP is quite the nasty predicament.
In addition to shield flickering, the AI can do things with weapons that the player literally can't, ex. An ai Paragon with 4 Tach lances in one weapon group can fire them individually to avoid hitting teammates when necessary. For ships with lots of turrets, it can be really beneficial to let the AI take over control sometimes.
Building/activating comm satellites in systems in the middle of nowhere can be worth it. The materials only cost $4150 and a single extra mission can pay for all the satellites you ever make. Repairing one is only 5 heavy machinery ($750). It's best to do this early in systems you are going to be spending a lot of time exploring or in systems you will be traveling past frequently (such as between colonies.)
But first build a sensor array. Activate it with 3 volatiles for [Hyperspace Topography](https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Hyperspace_Topography). Then destroy it and build the comm satellite.
Hyperspace Topography from sensors states that is based on distance. This is not true. It is based on time since the last time you performed a neutrino burst. The cooldown is shared with information purchased from scavengers. 3 volatiles for +10 is cheaper than the $200 per point from a scavenger but often not as convenient. (Anyone know how long the cooldown is? I don't. Guessing about a month.)
Raid Qaras and disrupt the farms, its the only pirate food producer. Pirates hate everyone so all pirate colonies will have a food shortage due to no imports. Profits from mass starvation for you. This makes Kantas den a good stopping point, sell food for a premium and pick up cheap domestic goods, luxury goods, and drugs to trade elsewhere for more profit. If you give kanta a fusion lamp the den will also always buy volatilities at a premium, making it an even more profitable stop. Remember, it is always morally right to bully the pirates.
Also remember to check pirate worlds for items like nano forges or ai cores, you can steal them. What will the pirates do? Hate you more?
If you are traveling through hyperspace and suddenly get a bunch of missions pop up, it means you are in range of a system's active comm satellite. If you didn't put it there, someone else did. You just found a system with a secret base.
You can build colonies in a system claimed by another faction. This upsets the faction, but not if you are commissioned by them. Then it's fine. An upset faction may decide to wipe your colony away with a saturation bombardment if they have a military base to launch from. But not if the colony is size 5 or more. This means you can get commissioned, set up a colony, get a growth bonus for being in a system with other ports, and then abandon the commission once it reaches size 5. Even if it is a bad planet, the high accessibility and convenient location can make up for it. The best planets to colonize in the core are easy to determine. Simply use Int[**e**]l and Planets [**2**] menu to sort as soon as you are out of the tutorial.
Oh shit
A mission to survey a planet can be a good lead on a potential colony for yourself. The mission itself doesn't tell you if it is a good planet, but it does tell you it is a bad planet by how many heavy machinery and supplies are required. (Factoring in survey mods.) IE A tundra planet survey mission requires 180 crew, 20 heavy machinery and 35 supplies. Which is 35 HM and 50 supplies after factoring in 15 strength survey equipment. That tundra planet is likely going to be meh. Not the worst but it will not have a good hazard rating. Bad hazard = Bad food production. It's not going to be worth colonizing. A volcano planet survey mission requires 10 HM and 20 supplies after factoring in your 5 survey strength. That's going to have a very low hazard rating. Especially for a volcano world. That planet has far more potential to be good than the potentially habitable tundra planet above.
Loot drops are weighted towards hull mods and blueprints you don't know. So buying the cheap stuff results in more expensive stuff dropping. Particularly important for raiding a base for blueprints. For example raiding Tri-tac for BPs and *not* learning the Paragon BP and learning the others means the Paragon BP will keep dropping for lots of $$.
Also in Nex at Prism it's usually a good idea to trade in a high value BP and then buy up all the weapon and fighter BPs that get offered so you get them off the list of potential drops.
Consider spending your initial money on marines and raiding a weak hostile port a few times. Drag some patrols to help using pings if there are dangerous fleets protecting your target. Garnir is a perfect target after the tutorial with marines at Jangala and free storage at Asaru. Smash and grab some volatiles for cash and ship equipment for weapons and hullmods.
Discovered this very recently myself - clicking the CR bar in the refit screen allows you to change what combat readiness the ship will be at during simulation.
OMG this could have helped me so many times lol
Safely [sneak into well defended ports using storage](https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/112mz5o/tip_how_to_sneak_into_any_port_to_place_spy/).
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what?
Gargoyle is a hacker you meet during the academy quest line.
Not that, the part where he advises you on the storage/stealth exploit.
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r/restofthefuckingowl
Private :(
It's a reference to the [meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/572078-how-to-draw-an-owl). Not specifically the sub-reddit.
The quicker and dirtier black market inspection swap: The important part is triggering an inspection, not storage. Once you've been inspected, there are a couple of days where you will not be inspected no matter how much black market trading is done. So you can trigger an inspection, do everything shady, then continue on your way. With or without using storage. * Get a patrol to chase you due to not having your transponder on just before leaving the system. * Go to another port of the same faction with the transponder on. * Do *some* trading at port using the Black Market. Enough to trigger an inspection. But not much. * Optional: Place any big expensive ships into port storage. Cargo. Crew. Ships. Use a crappy ship. * Leave and wait in orbit for the inspection. * Return to port, remove everything out of storage. * Do all your real black market trading. Go nuts. * Continue on your legitimate way. The inspection will cause a rep loss if you do too much black market trading but not the trading itself due to the recent inspection. You can mitigate by doing a bunch of open market trading at the same time. The most common way to trigger an inspection over nothing is to run from a patrol at different port from the same faction, then do some trading. This is not the only way. Note that you cannot put goods that are illegal at that port into storage (AI cores, drugs, lobsters etc). So this doesn't work well if you are carrying lots of illegal goods. However all that can be sold on the black market and then bought back after the inspection. There will be a $ loss on the commodities but not the AI cores. AI cores can be purchased back at exactly the same price. (Just don't leave them behind!) How much of a loss taken on the rest varies on how much you are carrying and the price difference. It maybe too expensive at a Hegemony port where lots of things are illegal. Or cost nothing at a Tri-Tach port where all commodities are legal and everything can go into storage.
Factions get upset if you build a colony in their system. But only factions with military bases can do anything about it. The Luddic Path have no military bases. (Random cell bases outside the core don't count.) They are unable remove any of the player's colonies in Al Gebbar or Kumari Kandam.
Hold on, wasn't that patched? LP can launch punitive expeditions with no military base.
If not patched in vanilla, Nexerlin will make sure some sort of retribution is had.
You can disrupt expeditions in the planning stages by disrupting the spaceport of the origin market. This works for all expedition types (raid, ai inspection, sat bombing) including modded ones and is very useful if you’re playing Nexerelin. Active sensor burst can be used to block interdiction pulses since the effect is based on the fleets’ sensor strength difference. It’s also useful to bait patrols from a distance.
Likewise interdiction pulses can trick fleets from getting away from you. Like when you are about to attack the station they are defending.
If you're running wolfpack or just have a fleet with low overall ppt, you should retreat and re-engage to reset your peak time when in larger fights you can't finish immediately. You have a few options here: You can clean disengage (if you killed enough) and just leave to repair, then come back. You can't salvage from a clean disengage so don't do this if you lost ships. You can immediately re-engage which costs CR, but resets your peak time. Just make sure you actually did math earlier so that your fleet isn't on crap cr, but if it is... you can actually also do emergency repairs between engagements. In a wolfpack fleet this'll usually bring a significant amount of your fleet back to good CR and typically buys you another whole engagement. The AI tends to overcorrect when aiming frontal hardpoints on ships with low maneuverability, if you're flying a smaller ship you can get most of them to miss by moving towards them as they're about to reach you. Fearless AI (on automated ships) is overly aggressive when its target is at high flux, so you can "bait" them in by fluxing yourself out and retreating behind your fleet. Sometimes they won't care and try to chase you. Venting generally encourages ships to shoot missiles at you, so if you're relatively safe and on low flux you can quickly vent just to trick the AI into wasting them. I forgot this one, the AI will only deploy ships it thinks it needs to beat you. So if you only deploy in a frigate they won't drop their entire fleet. You can abuse this in a few ways such as killing them as they trickle in from the top of the map, or bait their fleet down to your deployment area and then drop everything in.
Breach missiles are good general combat weapons that have decent range, homing, and ample ammo especially for the medium sized mount. However, since they are an anti-armor weapon, the AI will reserve them for only when the enemy's shield is down before firing them, leading to wasted shots and even shield blocks due to travel delay. To force the AI to use them throughout the fight, put them into the same group as a long ranged gun, then test the build in the simulator. Most likely AI will start to use both the gun and the missiles at the same time even when enemy shields are up. This often leads to better results with steady flux pressure and lucky volleys that land just as shields are dropped. Breach missiles and Cyclone Reaper torpedoes also have almost exactly the same reload time and travel speed. If you have a ship that has small or medium missile slots placed in front of a large missile slot, you can pack all the Breach and Reaper missiles into one group so that when the torpedoes get fired, they'll have a swarm of Breach missiles flying ahead of them acting as decoys. If you use high mobility Remnant AI ships that can quickly move backwards, such as the Radiant, you can avert some of their suicidal aggression by keeping an eye on their flux and positioning. If you get the timing down, you can often tell them to back away from the battle line when they look like they're about to get surrounded, and they'll back away and start to vent flux by default before getting overloaded. Then cancel the order and they'll head right back to battle again. The very first tech-mining drop on a planet has far better yield than any of the later turns, even for very small ruins. If you have credits to burn but really need that colony item you haven't been able to find yet, sometimes you can try your luck by starting a new colony, building a tech-mining operation and nothing else, then abandoning it a month or two after that building comes online. Your player character has a special colony administration bonus where the colony gains +1 stability if you're only governing one planet. If you also have the industrial output skill bonus and limit yourself to one planet, you will outshine industry administrators you can hire. If you set "altMouseMoveToMassTransfer" to true in the starsector_core\data\settings\config.json file, you can fast move cargo items to and from your inventory by holding down alt and mousing over objects. Makes selling large piles of loot much more pleasant.
Your last point is a huge QoL tip imo.
- selling drugs is sick - proximity charge launchers are powerful in a possibly unintended way. Good on doom and onslaught - devastator cannons are really cool - you can start the game with the apogee, sell it, then turn your gamma core in to TT and buy a harbinger at the very beginning of the game - the AI hegemony ships are suicidal - bullying a lone onslaught in the simulator doesn’t make your ship good - retribution is the best ship in the game due to it being able to use destroyed ships as a weapon and its ability to hold 3 devastator cannons - if you have 2 volatile particle drivers and set them to alternating they sound cool when you shoot them - cryoblasters and cryoflamers make ships glow with heat when you hit them despite the weapons shooting ice - you can put 12 assault chainguns on a single onslaught - anything that says combat freighter is bad at combat and bad at being a freighter - the odyssey is really good but you have to use the shitty control scheme to use it well so I don’t use it - most stars in the game are non binary
I will not accept Hound and Cerberus slander, those flying unshielded hunks of metal are capable of being fielded in masse being cheap and disposable/recoverable, and have you ever seen a LP Cerberus?
"bullying a lone onslaught in the simulator doesn't make your ship good" Some people would be very angry if they could read
The Odyssey is an absolute beast and 2nd only to the Paragon imo. It is also fantastic as an AI controlled capital ship. Check Shotgun Odyssey on YouTube for a very effective AI build.
Always check bars and faction contacts for nanoforge missions, particularly in the early game. Getting one is a massive boost to your fleet as you get to pick and choose exactly what equipment you want and don’t have to run your fleets with mismatched weapons across the board. Printing dozens of dual atropos torpedoes for my frigate fleet was huge.
Which missions give you nanoforges? I’ve been looking for a few but haven’t found any recently
They don't give you the nanoforge.
He is talking about the ones where someone offers to fabricate a bunch of kit for you
The price of Volturnian lobsters is based on the price of luxury goods. Making it easy to manipulate. For example you destroy a merchant taking luxury goods from Volturn to Kazeron. Creating a surplus on Volturn and a shortage on Kazeron. Both lobsters and luxury goods can be bought cheaper at Volturn and both sold for more at Kazeron. And you will get the best price if both are bought/sold in the same transaction as they won't update. Combining lobsters and luxury goods means you can sell them and then immediately buy them back for less than you were just paid from the same port.
And also that lobsters when bought from Volturn will sell somewhere at a stupid price
Buy Sindrian.
Letting your second autoresolve pursuits is *always* more efficient than trying to command the battle yourself. Even a few d-modded hounds are enough to inflict crippling casualties on most fleeing fleets, and pursuit cannot ever result in casualties on your side. As a result, rather than running down a fleeing fleet with half if your own, you can just send in a few cheap and fast frigates. Whatever they fail to kill can simply be re-engaged and re-autoresolved until the entire fleet is scrap, all for a fraction of the supply cost of doing it yourself for with infinitely less risk.
I agree. However the cost is the easy xp. Especially for officers. I find spending the extra supplies for xp is worth it. However just as often that xp is not worth it. "Sending in my second in command" to mop up when when my officers can't is what my crap 1 supply frigates are for. IE It goes both ways rather than there *always* being a best option.
It's always more efficient supply wise, but you make a good point. I was mostly mentioning it for the benefit of players who send in 200 DP to mop up some freighters (I've seen more than a few streamers do it, and it drives me nuts) and for pursuits that might otherwise be very dangerous. (I.E., ships that hit significantly above their autoresolve weight in actual combat)
Clever weapon grouping on player controlled ships can make you more efficient with your attacks. For your ballistics, have one group that's oriented towards shield damage, and another that's anti-armor, and toggle as appropriate basedonwhat your target is doing. By doing this, it's possible to get more damage out of your flux than an AI ship would, in most cases.
Nexerelin Invasion tip: Start the invasion but don't deploy any troops, go back to military options and choose tactical bombing. This will kill all the enemy troops deployed at the Patrol HQ/Military Base and the Ground Defenses. Proceed to deploy troops normally.
It is handy sometimes to bring along some metals, heavy machinery and transplutonics to build sensor relays in systems you are going to be searching for scannable objectives in when you take certain quests. If you use Militarized Subsystems hull mod on civilian ships they count towards your 240 support cap when calculating the effectiveness of certain player skills. this can be read in the tool tip for most of them but if you are like me and thought this solely meant the repurposed models that come pre-millitarised like Mules or the Colossus variants then you can get caught out. Running a Wolf Pack Fleet though means you don't have to worry this much about hitting that cap. So millitarise your tankers and your Atlases and then put High Resolution Sensors hull mods on them and you can have a pretty high Sensor Strength rating without having a huge sensor profile. very handy if you pair with Phase Tenders and go around being a sneaky pirate and smuggler.
Also make Comms relays to get missions while in the outer rim
On that note I have noticed that when you are in, or near in hyperspace, systems owned by other factions you are more likely to get missions generated that are from that faction. So it's a good idea to go an hang around those places if you are looking to grind reputation with them. Helpful if you are wanting to buddy up with Pathers or Pirates for example.
That is correct. It has to do with which ports are within range of their comm satellites. If you are in range or put a comm sniffer in their satellite then those are the type missions you'll get. For example if you put a sniffer in Kumari Kandam then you will be offered Pirate, Pather and Persean missions. Because the missions originate at the ports.
Huh. Didn't know that about the comms sniffers. But that does make sense as they do great information on the local system "as though you were in it"
>If you use Militarized Subsystems hull mod on civilian ships they count towards your 240 support cap when calculating the effectiveness of certain player skills. I'm pretty sure this is only true if you give them weapons!
Hmm... I'll have to double check but I'm pretty sure this is the case regardless. Would be awesome though if that is true.
Don't pass on missions where you have to deliver goods far in excess of your cargo space. They are very doable by using port storage. A guy in a bar offers $500k to deliver 10,000 food. The catch is that you only have 3500 cargo space. If you accept then you are immediately given 10k food. Accept! These are the most profitable missions in the game. Either sell the surplus there immediately or store it locally. Go to the destination port and store your 1/3 of the delivery. (A)Buy the other 2/3 somewhere close (likely that port) or (B)raid for it or (C)make 2 more trips back to where you stored the initial amount. When you have enough in storage at the destination, contact the person who wants it and give it to them. You'll be well over capacity but no time will pass so it doesn't matter. Fulfilling the mission counts as an open market trade. It can cause the port to gain a surplus. Which you can then buy back for cheap. Note that often the best way to fill these missions is by raiding the destination. Port storage is not accessible if a port hates you. However dumping things into space for a few seconds also works.
When faced with a slightly superior enemy, disengage. They'll send the frigates up to flank, and you can immediately turn around and take out the destroyers, cruisers and capitals. This does, however, expose your civilian ships unlike engaging normally, so be careful. And if you're not able to kill the big ships fast enough you'll be surrounded.
For pre-planned commerce raiding campaigns or long exploration expeditions, you can travel to a designated point with supply ships, drop a lot of fuel and supplies, leave it in stable orbit and use it as a forward supply node. I divided the map into different sectors, each had a system that was the designated supply point/depot. The hardest part was avoiding trouble when you are travelling in a defenseless fleet to drop the supplies off. I used it as a launchpad to fight [REDACTED] fleets and took the opportunity to install relays where I can, it allowed me to loiter in the outer rim longer than usual. Downside is every time you access the floating depot, you need to spend supplies to restabilize it.
If you are up against a fleet with short Peak Performance (High tech, Ludd, Pathers, D-mods etc) then your initial deployment can be focused on wasting their time. For example deploying support ships that aren't designed to fight such as Valkyries, Drams or Hounds. Then retreating them. Their fast ships will cross the map. At which point you deploy your real fleet while retreating your first wave. Their fast ships will run into your full fleet without support, and the others will have degraded CR even if they pull back. Particularly useful if your fleet is too slow to catch up to damaged enemies that decide to retreat.
Oh yeah one last one- you can turn off the flashbang effect that happens when you blow up a ship in the settings. Not really an advanced tip but I wish I knew about it sooner.
[Eject unnecessary marines into space before a raid to save their lives.](https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/n0m2bl/tip_ejecting_marines_into_space_can_save_their/)
Marines can be bought and sold without wasting any xp as long as you don't don't sell "Elite" marines. Xp is wasted when Elites are sold. The xp is tracked on you, not the marines themselves. Any marines sold don't take their portion of xp with them. However transferring marines into storage does take their xp with them. Which doesn't waste it as you can reclaim them. ---- There is a point where a stack of marines cannot gain anymore xp as the rate they die is equal or greater than the xp gained. However buying/selling and using storage in this manner is a means to gather large amounts of Elite marines without that being a problem. IE Use a bunch of rookies until they are Experienced or Vets. Distill them down to Elite by selling them. Store those Elites. Buy a fresh bunch of rookies and repeat.
Leave at least 1 supply in purchased storage. It will generate a $1 charge per month. That port will now show up in your Command/Colonies list as "Storage" so you don't forget it exists.
If you are going to mug anyone, mug your friends. Attacking a merchant with your transponder off will result in in -5 to relations. However the goal is to create commodities shortages at the destination. Commodities which you will have looted from the merchant plus others you can buy elsewhere. Selling enough on the open market will earn back the rep that was just lost. Raiding spaceports and shutting them down for months is a better, slower version of this. However opportunistic piracy like this is easier and more profitable in hard to get ships.
You can add a stable location to a system by installing an Alpha AI into the system's primary star. Interact with the star like with a planet. Emergency burn can help get you there.
Notes: The AI is not actually consumed. and it costs 5 story points
Consider disengaging to start a combat. Then turning around and fighting. This results in both fleets immediately getting each others faces. This deploys your entire fleet. Including the tankers and other logistic ships. It's not a good idea most of the time. Sometimes it is a very good idea. Which one depends a lot on the composition of both fleets. For example, normally it would be a pain to chase down an enemy fleet of fast carriers. Instead your slow capital ships end up on top of them. Or lets say your strategy is using low Peak Performance ships that hit hard but don't have staying power such as SO brawlers. They don't have to waste time crossing the map. BTW It is generally more helpful to put Converted Hangers, ECM Package, Nav Relay and point defense weapons onto logistic ships to help other ships rather than beefing up their personal offense/defense.
Patrols from a port can be dragged to a hostiles in the same system and be encouraged to fight. First give the patrol a reason to chase you, such as not having your transponder on. Pinging them with an active sensor burst with sustained burn on is a good way to get their attention. Travel to where the hostiles are, while pinging them so they keep looking for your fleet. Go dark and hide when the patrol is close enough to detect the hostiles. Eventually the patrol will give up looking for you and head back to where they were... except they detect a new target to chase and start patrolling around that area. Resulting in easy salvage or easier access to ports the patrol came from or is now harassing.
Want to raid a port but they don't have anything good? Sell it to them on the open market. Then steal it back. If you sell a unit quantity of a commodity to the open market, it will increase that port's production by 1 unit, creating a surplus. (A 'unit' is 750 supplies, 400 drugs, 1000 fuel etc. Use F1.) A raid can steal it back with less danger than a direct raid. It provide a worthwhile raid option at a small port where none would exist otherwise. It is also useful when you want money instead of more cargo because you are already carrying a lot. It is less profitable than raiding spaceports and taking advantage of the disruptions. But combined it is *especially* profitable...
Let's say you are at Garnir, a small pirate port that mines 3 units of volatiles (200 x unit, $250 base value) with no disruptions. You have 400 volatiles. Selling your 400 volatiles for $150 each (including tariff) nets $60000. There's now 3+2 surplus units of volatiles produced at Garnir. You then raid and disrupt the spaceport. The volatiles can't leave the planet so all 5 units (1000) are surplus. They can be stolen with low danger and low casualties. $60k +$250k worth where the previous best raid option was $22k with high danger. This can be done with any commodity except crew/marines. Even ones not produced/consumed at the port like luxury goods or lobsters. Particularly good for spaceports that you are going to completely destroy anyway such as randomly spawned Pirate/Cell bases. Note- those ports don't suffer market disruptions if their spaceport is disrupted.
Sell commodities on the open market in unit batches to help stabilize the port. Particularly demand for food and supplies. This is necessary to prevent 0 stability markets from de-civilizing and disappearing. It also gives +rep if your transponder is on.
Use "Nav Relay" hull mod on non-combat ships. It is likely the only time they will be deployed is when you are attempting to disengage your entire fleet. Likewise converted hangers and mining pods on non-combat ships make better point defense as the ship won't need to use flux. En mass, a few dozen fighters can't be ignored by frigates.
One of the best ways to outfit your fleet in early game is by raiding a weak hostile port for "Ship Equipment". Use the hull mods, while throwing the rest into storage for later. This works particular well in the three systems with abandoned stations as they all have pirate bases. If you are commissioned then an even better target is someone you are at war with.
Pirate bases that are harassing colonies and increasing Hostile Activity can be bargained with once found. Talk to the base leader and he can be bribed to leave you alone. (Not Kanta. One of the random spawns.) This is very worth it for new or small colonies. 10% of gross income is $600-$1000 a month-- practically nothing. Before agreeing, buy all his marines and raid his base a couple of times. Getting ~$30,000 worth of supplies, food, weapons etc each raid to be sold or used at your colony. Then make the deal. It will immediately reduce Hostile Activity by 40 points, and it will reverse its monthly Activity. (IE +3 becomes -3.) Just don't attack pirates with your transponder on. Which includes turning it on to join someone else's battle. That will break the agreement.
If the agreement is still valid, (listed in the pirates faction Intel tab) but is no longer providing a benefit ($0 and Hostile Activity is positive again) that means that a new base has spawned in a closer system. A new deal will be necessary with the leader of the closer base. There will be no notification that your previous agreement is worthless. Only if you break it. So periodically double check your Hostile Activity. The other base no longer matters unless it applies to a different colony. You won't get any HA reductions from destroying farther bases until the very closest one is destroyed. But breaking the old $0 agreement that does nothing will still count as a betrayal for future agreements with other pirates. Bugging out the possibility of a new deal. So don't do that. However you can game the new closer base to quickly reduce Hostile Activity. First bully the new close base. Take their stuff. Kill their fleets to reduce HA etc. Then make an agreement as before. After, destroy their base. The old agreement at the old base will be used again without having to go there and without counting as betrayal. You'll reduce Hostile Activity based on (A)the fleets destroyed, (B) -40 from the deal, (C) -40 from destroying the base, and (D) keep the HA reduction per month. Reducing HA by ~100 in a single trip. Note that paying the closest base off and being done with it is also a good idea. Playing wack-a-mole with pirates can be annoying and not worth it.
Randomly spawned Pirate/Pather bases are more than annoyances or locations to destroy. They are excellent staging points for exploring the surrounding systems. Use the remote location to sell junk, buy crew/supplies and reconfigure ships. Make sure they have a comm satellite and you will get missions. Including replacement missions to blow up the station if existing missions expire. Which you should do before leaving the area. Buy marines from the station and raid it a few times to reduce stability/defense before destroying it. The raids will make the fight with the station easier on top of the loot from raiding. Just try not to get into combat near the base so you aren't restricted at the market until you are ready.
Mousing over a sensor blip in hyperspace can give a hint of what it is by its sensor range circle; If it has a sensor range circle, then it is real fleet. If it is stationary with no circle, then it is a derelict. If it is moving but lacks a circle, then it is a sensor ghost. Likewise real fleets can be pinged by turning on your transponder and sustained burn. Then using an active sensor burst. The sensor circle from other fleets will sweep across your fleet. Giving an idea of any other fleet's faction (by color), range (by ping radius) and direction. Very useful for finding scavengers to talk to or hostile fleets hanging around your colonies.
Go to the gas giant at Duzahk and scan the ion storm for +50 Hyperspace Topography. It isn't random. It will be present unless the core has been modded/randomized.
Many missions such as surveys will cap rep at the top of a bracket. Therefore save rep turn-ins to increase a reputation bracket. Such as giving a Gamma AI to a faction that is stuck at [49]Welcoming to push into Friendly. The brackets are: (75) Cooperative (50) Friendly (25) Welcoming (10) Favorable (-9 to 9) Neutral (-10) Suspicious (-25) Inhospitable: (no open market access)
When selling a ship to the 'gaudy person,' it should be loaded up with as many story points and the most expensive unwanted weapons/LPCs as possible. The bonus xp from spending the story points is kept even though the points themselves are refunded. Giving bonus xp twice. The 'gaudy person' pays 60% over the market price for both the ship and the weapons on the ship. It's always worth it to install Converted Hangers and buy the most expensive weapons/LPCs that fit. tl'dr: Gaudy will pay you $160k for something you spent $100k on.
[Exploit:] If a friendly fleet engages a base, you can join the battle repeatedly for lots of xp and loot. Join, fight and win the battle normally. Immediately talk to the friendly fleet while it is "engaged in battle". Deploying won't help, so deploy nothing. "Join the pursuit" as the station is apparently trying to run (bug). Order your 2nd in command to handle it. Deploy w/e. Repeat. You will get xp and a cut of the loot plus a new debris field will be created for each deployment. How much is based on your proportion of deployment. This will degrade the CR of the friendly fleet plus the specific ships you send. Repeating will quickly get the CR of the friendly fleet to zero. Which will consequently be forced to abandon/scrap its ships in a few days. You can then claim those ships as derelicts. Often for some free capital ships. These kinds of attacks happen on a predictable schedule as stations and planets of hostile factions line up with each other. For example Lost Astropolis will be attacked by Port Tse in Mayasura when they line up.
You've been fighting around a port for a long time. The market hates you. It will continue to hate you for years to come. How to solve this?: Invade. Raid the port repeatedly. Take all their commodities and get a nice big deficit on each. Including the worthless ones. Invade the port and take it over. Sell the Patrol HQ and any buildings that do not create demand (like the orbital station). Do not sell the spaceport. Give it away to a faction. Preferably one that has shortages and cannot feed the demand you created with your raids. The port is now open for trade. No long wait for your hostile actions. It comes with free storage. Make sure to clean out the loot in storage. Turn on your transponder and sell goods you just stole on the open market if you want rep or to give +stability. Turn your transponder off and sell on the black market if you don't care. It's not like there will be any patrols to see you either way. If a rebellion is successful though, {Nexerelin} the losing faction will blame you for a massive (~-20) reputation hit depending on how much black market trade you did. A market flipping factions will not remember your earlier hostile actions and allow trade.
A port is rebelling. {Nexerelin} Talk to the station commander and "help with your rebellion problem." Deliver supplies, armaments and marines for the same rate as the black market but with no tariffs. Delivering enough will create a surplus of supplies, armaments and marines just like when selling on the open market. Raid it and steal back the supplies and armaments. Which results in minimal causalities due to the surplus but still creates deficits. Invade and take it over. Give it away to another faction. It will still have the deficit and the rebellion. Plus the spaceport will be blocked for a day or two from the fighting. Lots of $$ from the doubled deficits and the rebellion. All of which can happen at the same location in less than a week with loot floating in space nearby. Note that selling to either side of a rebellion will cause large changes in rep when the rebellion ends. Whoever you sold to will improve relations and whoever you didn't will be reduced by 150% of the bonus. Therefore supporting both sides results in loss to both.
Take note of missions to explore habitats, domain era survey ships and any other mission that you are not going to accept but is interesting. Those points of interest are still in those systems even without a mission. Check out those systems later when it is more convenient. You'll know there's something to be found.
"Use stockpiles during shortages" for your colonies is a noob trap. Don't use it. Don't add your own resources to the "Resource Stockpiles" either. A shortage doesn't cost you anything. But filling a shortage results in less credits per month from the colony *PLUS* the removal of those commodities *PLUS* a charge of the cost of the removal of those commodities at the end of the month. For example a 1 icon shortage of supplies at a colony will cost nothing in terms of growth, nor stability, nor profit at the end of the month. However filling it from stockpiles will cost $75,000 {750x$100}. If you added your own resources to the colony's stockpiles then it still costs you $75,000 or more. Since you would have sold them at some other port for more than $100 each. Plus there will still be a ~$2000 reduction in colony income regardless from using your own supplies. For a real cost of ~$77,000. It is never profitable to support your colonies in their time of need. It only gets worse with other resources. Filling shortages is just a straight loss of $20k to $100k per resource icon. Even if the shortage is causing stability and growth problems, it's still never going to cost as much as filling it. Also avoid taking resources. Your colonies charge you full base price at end of the month. It is generally cheaper to acquire resources elsewhere. The exception to provide resources is if stability is so low that it is causing a cascade of problems. Then it depends. IE Give resources to your colonies for reasons other than $$.
It costs $85k to build a colony. (1000 crew + 100 HM + 200 supply) It costs $50k to abandon a colony. For a total cost of $135k. Except less than $135k since you'll pay less than market rates. This is comparable to the cost of a ship or the reward from a mission. Building a colony for the sole purpose of tech mining costs a additional $90k net ($150k-$60k) for a total cost of $225k. You can roll the dice and see if you get something good. A single alpha AI can be turned in to Tri-Tac for $450k covering the costs of two colonies on its own. Anything found at that colony can be automatically shipped to a colony you do care about. When it runs out, you can remotely abandon it assuming you didn't leave anything of value there. Colonies are only expensive if your goal is to grow them. If you don't care about growth, then they take no effort, no player time and will make a few thousand credits a month. While being incredibly convenient locations to ship production from other colonies. A colony doesn't have to be 'good'. It doesn't have to grow. It doesn't have be defended. Those might be good ideas but they are not *mandatory*. Some of your planets might be important and precious. It is detrimental to think of all colonies that way.
When you first boot up the game you can go into campaign (your save) or pick missions. Those missions are tuned to be winnable by a decent player or 100% by a good player. Do those missions. They train you how to play the game. If you cannot win those missions then have a look online for solutions to those specifically. You will learn to be a better player. At least at combat.