bryce777
Erudite
First off, if you are really an idiot, such as kingcomrade (We have hundreds of his own posts to back this up) then just give up now because it's hopeless. You actually need a bit of a brain to play this game and enjoy it. It has something called challenge to it - it is not like freelancer with its broken, ludicrous economy where you have as much money as most planets after playing for 3 hours.
Now, some people have said the text adventures are just trial and error. This is not true. Actually it is true - again, if you are a Fucking Idiot. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out what you are trying to do and so you screw up the first time you play or even a couple of times, but generally speaking the path to victory is through logic. Some of the text adventures are also extremely difficult and would be near impossible to complete through trial and error, as well. Now, this sort of thing is not for everyone, but if one is too hard skipping it does not screw up your game much.
Ok, that aside I will get to what you actually need to play the game successfully.
The ship. Until you upgrade your ship quite a bit, you have zero chance to take out enemy vessels. If you are underarmed, then pirates will harass you mercilessly, too. Generally, almost anyone will leave you alone if you pay some small bribe to them, though, thankfully.
Your upgrades have to be done sensibly, or you may as well just give up the game. Early on the technology is far different than it is later in the game and your space is much more limited. So, the first thing I do is dump my shields. They are just too bulky and they do absolutely no good. Blocking 6% of all damage is completely, utterly useless. Later in the game you will be able to get shields that block up to 60% of all damage. When you combine this with heavy armor, you are basically untouchable by most ships. Early in the game, armor matters much more, and a good droid matters the most if you will be fighting. I recommend skipping the droid until you can find a really small one though, too. Same with the gripper. As for radar, it is IMPERATIVE you sell it off as soon as you find something as small as possible. Then you will have some room for weapons and cargo, and can start upgrading to better, smaller weapons.
As with defensive equipment, offensive equipment priorities are much different in the beginning. In the very beginning if you want to blow someone to kingdom come, you use missiles, plain and simple. Why? There are several reasons. First, later on a lot of ships have weapons that are very good at targetting swarms of missiles and destroying them. Second, missiles have the highest overall damage potential of the weapons initially available, because each salvo fires three shots - this is great in the beginning when shields and armor are nonexistent, but later the individual damage potential of each missile will be too low to cause any damage at all to the more protected ships. More important, missiles take a little while to hit their target. As the enemy maneuvers around, he tends to get a big swarm of missiles following him just like in galaxy quest with the mines - then he suddenly gets hit by all of them at once; this is important, because you can get a lot of missiles in the air headed for a target (fired from beyond the range of their cannons) before they realize they are in danger so by the time they try to retreat they are finished. The only problem with missiles early on is they run out, and they are sort of expensive to reload. Also, if you don't pay attention you will wake up and finally realize they are obsolete...usually as someone is attacking you.
Scientific upgrades. Upgrade. UPGRADE. At the science stations they can upgrade your weapons so they do more damage, and your shields so they block more, etc, etc, etc. the most important upgrade is to upgrade your hull, however. Upgrading the hull increases it armor rating by 5-6 points if you do the best technicians upgrade (which is the only one worth doing). Early on, this makes you nearly immune to lasers and missiles, and otherwise missiles will chew you up with ease. The next most important upgrade is your droid - you have to get a droid that can repair signifigant damage during combat or eventually you will get smoked, especially early on when shields are worthless and armor ratings are generally low. The weapon upgrades can also basically double your damage early on, so upgrading the weapons is important if you want to fight a lot.
After a while, you will want a new hull. The key early on is to realize that you don't have enough space for 5 weapons anyhow, and you don't have space for shields, so just get the largest hull that can hold 3 weapons and has a radar and gripper slot. Not much to it. You might be tempted to get a hull that has more armor, but through most of the game what really counts is hull space - especially because you can upgrade your armor level 1 hull to armor level 7 early on, and even an armor level 3 hull will be much more expensive and much smaller.
Now, the game is not without its flaws. Actually there are only two flaws that I can even think of, but they are sort of annoying. First off, it costs a lot of money to repair your ship - probably as much as just buying new equipment! It's crazy. Thankfully, you can kind of avoid this to a degree. Gaalian equipment degrades much, much more slowly than other equipment, and peleng equipment much faster. For hulls this does not matter and in fact peleng hulls are the best in the game because they are the largest, and because there is a micromodule that can make peleng or human hulls EXTREMELY tough. For weapons I don't worry too much, but I always buy gaalian engines when at all possible to do so. Your engine is the only thing that really needs to be repaired. Never just accept the repair all option blindly. There is no manual worth mentioning, but over time I have figured out that you slowly repair your stuff based on your tech skill. The higher your tech skill the longer it lasts. When it is in tiptop shape it repairs much more slowly, though. Early on, the Cent micromodule is easy to find, and it is very useful for your engines. It makes their cost much, much lower, and since repairs are based on cost this saves you a ton of money. Very useful early on. The most useful thing to have in the game is the nanitoids. Once you ahve them, you can totally stop repairing your ship...which later on becomes a huge drain in resources. Get used to going through black holes, because that is by far the fastest way to collect artifacts, many of which are incredibly useful. Once you get the nanitoids you will be able to face the dominators alone cost effectively - and make sure you have a big hull so you can haul plenty of loot back to the science stations.
The other flaw is that equipment prices go drastically up over time. The price of goods goes up a little, but really not much. So, trading is profitable early on, but it's useless later. By then, the only way to make any money is either raiding the dominators and getting equipment, or doing missions. And the dominator raiding actually tends to lose money until you have the nanitoids. Actually, you can still make a lot of profit, but it takes effort to do so - you cannot do casual trading to make tons of money in this game but have to plan out trade routes or bloackade planets or do other clever things that take more time and effort than I am willing to spend on trade.
It's a great game, but if you are a Fucking Idiot you will not be able to figure it out, because it is genuinely pretty challenging. Also, because of the way repairs work, it is also very unproitable to actually fight in the beginning of the game, unfortunately; I do think the game would be much better if this were changed.
UPDATE:
Ok, I started a new game after posting this. I had not played for a while because I played it for weeks on end nonstop and finally got burned out on it, but I have some more observations, now.
1. Trading. Actually, the trading is amazingly well done. Even better than I had realized at first. The economies are very good simulations of real economies. If you pay attention while you play, you will realize that moving alcohol and drugs from agricultural planets to industrial planets is a good idea, and from an industrial democracy it's good to buy machinery, which will sell well in an agricultural monarchy. Also, the capitals are far more industrialized. If a planet is starved for goods, prices will go up over time for goods it demands, such as if it's full of pirates or cut off from the rest of the galaxy by the dominators. I also realized that when you have a big hull and some capital you can make tons of money trading. If you pay attention to prices, you can do very well indeed. Also, if you have a lot of cash you can sink it into goods onplanet in order to hedge against inflation. You can also develop a huge stockpile on a planet, then blockade it til demand rises, and sell off your loot for an incredible amount of money.
2. Fighting the dominators early on. While this is very hard for a newbie, now that I have more experience, I have found it much easier and more rewarding. Not so much from the standpoint of he battles themselves, but from the standpoint of ship loadout. I have found that it is better not to have the most advanced equipment possible. Also, it's even more imperative that you have a big hull to carry loot around than I had stressed before. If you have all the most advanced equipment, then your repair costs are crazy. Paying thousands just to repair your stupid gripper is obscene - thankfully you can get micromodules that make any gripper into a powerhouse, though. Aside from the engines, I use all lowtech/cheap equipment in order to keep costs down; instead, pump your money into hull upgrades - your droid repairs your hull for free, so pouring money into it never COSTS you money, unlike other upgrades. For instance, you will have to repair your droid a lot if you fight a lot, so if you get a low level droid and upgrade him at the science station, you can have him repair almost as much per round as a much more expensive droid.
Using this strategy, I have been able to effectively fight dominators from the getgo and make a tidy profit doing so.
3. Assassin missions. I have also found that a few hours in I had no problem smoking pirates and cargo ships without having them get away. I just wanted to confirm this since someone had been unable to figure out how to do these missions well...the problem is not with the game, but the gamer. To be fair, it is a little more complex than many games, but really I think that is a good thing.
4 Nanitoids. If you have nanitoids, it makes sense to get as much gaalian equipment as possible. Why? Because it degrades more slowly, yet it is much more expensive. If you have nanitoids, the repair costs are not an issue, though. Also, if you ahve nanitoids it makes sense to repair cheap items yourself to keep it working on important stuff if you have major damage. The only complaint I have about nanitoids is that it repairs garbage in your HOLD first, so when hauling damaged loot it can be a real annoyance.
5. Repair at military bases and possibly ranger centers is half price. (thanks Svartberg)
Now, some people have said the text adventures are just trial and error. This is not true. Actually it is true - again, if you are a Fucking Idiot. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out what you are trying to do and so you screw up the first time you play or even a couple of times, but generally speaking the path to victory is through logic. Some of the text adventures are also extremely difficult and would be near impossible to complete through trial and error, as well. Now, this sort of thing is not for everyone, but if one is too hard skipping it does not screw up your game much.
Ok, that aside I will get to what you actually need to play the game successfully.
The ship. Until you upgrade your ship quite a bit, you have zero chance to take out enemy vessels. If you are underarmed, then pirates will harass you mercilessly, too. Generally, almost anyone will leave you alone if you pay some small bribe to them, though, thankfully.
Your upgrades have to be done sensibly, or you may as well just give up the game. Early on the technology is far different than it is later in the game and your space is much more limited. So, the first thing I do is dump my shields. They are just too bulky and they do absolutely no good. Blocking 6% of all damage is completely, utterly useless. Later in the game you will be able to get shields that block up to 60% of all damage. When you combine this with heavy armor, you are basically untouchable by most ships. Early in the game, armor matters much more, and a good droid matters the most if you will be fighting. I recommend skipping the droid until you can find a really small one though, too. Same with the gripper. As for radar, it is IMPERATIVE you sell it off as soon as you find something as small as possible. Then you will have some room for weapons and cargo, and can start upgrading to better, smaller weapons.
As with defensive equipment, offensive equipment priorities are much different in the beginning. In the very beginning if you want to blow someone to kingdom come, you use missiles, plain and simple. Why? There are several reasons. First, later on a lot of ships have weapons that are very good at targetting swarms of missiles and destroying them. Second, missiles have the highest overall damage potential of the weapons initially available, because each salvo fires three shots - this is great in the beginning when shields and armor are nonexistent, but later the individual damage potential of each missile will be too low to cause any damage at all to the more protected ships. More important, missiles take a little while to hit their target. As the enemy maneuvers around, he tends to get a big swarm of missiles following him just like in galaxy quest with the mines - then he suddenly gets hit by all of them at once; this is important, because you can get a lot of missiles in the air headed for a target (fired from beyond the range of their cannons) before they realize they are in danger so by the time they try to retreat they are finished. The only problem with missiles early on is they run out, and they are sort of expensive to reload. Also, if you don't pay attention you will wake up and finally realize they are obsolete...usually as someone is attacking you.
Scientific upgrades. Upgrade. UPGRADE. At the science stations they can upgrade your weapons so they do more damage, and your shields so they block more, etc, etc, etc. the most important upgrade is to upgrade your hull, however. Upgrading the hull increases it armor rating by 5-6 points if you do the best technicians upgrade (which is the only one worth doing). Early on, this makes you nearly immune to lasers and missiles, and otherwise missiles will chew you up with ease. The next most important upgrade is your droid - you have to get a droid that can repair signifigant damage during combat or eventually you will get smoked, especially early on when shields are worthless and armor ratings are generally low. The weapon upgrades can also basically double your damage early on, so upgrading the weapons is important if you want to fight a lot.
After a while, you will want a new hull. The key early on is to realize that you don't have enough space for 5 weapons anyhow, and you don't have space for shields, so just get the largest hull that can hold 3 weapons and has a radar and gripper slot. Not much to it. You might be tempted to get a hull that has more armor, but through most of the game what really counts is hull space - especially because you can upgrade your armor level 1 hull to armor level 7 early on, and even an armor level 3 hull will be much more expensive and much smaller.
Now, the game is not without its flaws. Actually there are only two flaws that I can even think of, but they are sort of annoying. First off, it costs a lot of money to repair your ship - probably as much as just buying new equipment! It's crazy. Thankfully, you can kind of avoid this to a degree. Gaalian equipment degrades much, much more slowly than other equipment, and peleng equipment much faster. For hulls this does not matter and in fact peleng hulls are the best in the game because they are the largest, and because there is a micromodule that can make peleng or human hulls EXTREMELY tough. For weapons I don't worry too much, but I always buy gaalian engines when at all possible to do so. Your engine is the only thing that really needs to be repaired. Never just accept the repair all option blindly. There is no manual worth mentioning, but over time I have figured out that you slowly repair your stuff based on your tech skill. The higher your tech skill the longer it lasts. When it is in tiptop shape it repairs much more slowly, though. Early on, the Cent micromodule is easy to find, and it is very useful for your engines. It makes their cost much, much lower, and since repairs are based on cost this saves you a ton of money. Very useful early on. The most useful thing to have in the game is the nanitoids. Once you ahve them, you can totally stop repairing your ship...which later on becomes a huge drain in resources. Get used to going through black holes, because that is by far the fastest way to collect artifacts, many of which are incredibly useful. Once you get the nanitoids you will be able to face the dominators alone cost effectively - and make sure you have a big hull so you can haul plenty of loot back to the science stations.
The other flaw is that equipment prices go drastically up over time. The price of goods goes up a little, but really not much. So, trading is profitable early on, but it's useless later. By then, the only way to make any money is either raiding the dominators and getting equipment, or doing missions. And the dominator raiding actually tends to lose money until you have the nanitoids. Actually, you can still make a lot of profit, but it takes effort to do so - you cannot do casual trading to make tons of money in this game but have to plan out trade routes or bloackade planets or do other clever things that take more time and effort than I am willing to spend on trade.
It's a great game, but if you are a Fucking Idiot you will not be able to figure it out, because it is genuinely pretty challenging. Also, because of the way repairs work, it is also very unproitable to actually fight in the beginning of the game, unfortunately; I do think the game would be much better if this were changed.
UPDATE:
Ok, I started a new game after posting this. I had not played for a while because I played it for weeks on end nonstop and finally got burned out on it, but I have some more observations, now.
1. Trading. Actually, the trading is amazingly well done. Even better than I had realized at first. The economies are very good simulations of real economies. If you pay attention while you play, you will realize that moving alcohol and drugs from agricultural planets to industrial planets is a good idea, and from an industrial democracy it's good to buy machinery, which will sell well in an agricultural monarchy. Also, the capitals are far more industrialized. If a planet is starved for goods, prices will go up over time for goods it demands, such as if it's full of pirates or cut off from the rest of the galaxy by the dominators. I also realized that when you have a big hull and some capital you can make tons of money trading. If you pay attention to prices, you can do very well indeed. Also, if you have a lot of cash you can sink it into goods onplanet in order to hedge against inflation. You can also develop a huge stockpile on a planet, then blockade it til demand rises, and sell off your loot for an incredible amount of money.
2. Fighting the dominators early on. While this is very hard for a newbie, now that I have more experience, I have found it much easier and more rewarding. Not so much from the standpoint of he battles themselves, but from the standpoint of ship loadout. I have found that it is better not to have the most advanced equipment possible. Also, it's even more imperative that you have a big hull to carry loot around than I had stressed before. If you have all the most advanced equipment, then your repair costs are crazy. Paying thousands just to repair your stupid gripper is obscene - thankfully you can get micromodules that make any gripper into a powerhouse, though. Aside from the engines, I use all lowtech/cheap equipment in order to keep costs down; instead, pump your money into hull upgrades - your droid repairs your hull for free, so pouring money into it never COSTS you money, unlike other upgrades. For instance, you will have to repair your droid a lot if you fight a lot, so if you get a low level droid and upgrade him at the science station, you can have him repair almost as much per round as a much more expensive droid.
Using this strategy, I have been able to effectively fight dominators from the getgo and make a tidy profit doing so.
3. Assassin missions. I have also found that a few hours in I had no problem smoking pirates and cargo ships without having them get away. I just wanted to confirm this since someone had been unable to figure out how to do these missions well...the problem is not with the game, but the gamer. To be fair, it is a little more complex than many games, but really I think that is a good thing.
4 Nanitoids. If you have nanitoids, it makes sense to get as much gaalian equipment as possible. Why? Because it degrades more slowly, yet it is much more expensive. If you have nanitoids, the repair costs are not an issue, though. Also, if you ahve nanitoids it makes sense to repair cheap items yourself to keep it working on important stuff if you have major damage. The only complaint I have about nanitoids is that it repairs garbage in your HOLD first, so when hauling damaged loot it can be a real annoyance.
5. Repair at military bases and possibly ranger centers is half price. (thanks Svartberg)
