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Idiot's guide to Space Rangers 2

Unwanted

RaXz

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Joined
Sep 10, 2008
Messages
837
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Netherlands
Thanks for the advice, I will try it again. Any starting race,class and skills recommendations?

I really want to kick some hardboiled butt, payback time. :cool:
 

DefJam101

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2007
Messages
8,047
Location
Cybernegro HQ
Playing the game on Normal was way, way too easy. Other than a few losses at the start we have taken back ~40 systems without a single loss. That's stupid. I'm not even going to bother finishing it. I'm thinking of playing Hard with hardboiled Dominators for my next game. I already know I'm going to be a pirate, again, but this time I'd like the war to actually be something to worry about.

Having the fastest ship in the 'verse is ridiculously fun, too. You can do whatever the fuck you want, hit boost, and be out of the system in 2 turns. I managed to snag a +200 speed hull, a really fast engine, a +speed micromodule for the engine, and an artifact that increases engine speed by 100, AND an artifact that reduces wear from boost mode. I was moving ~1200 when everyone else was still chugging along at 600-800. With boost? Lol, bitches can't comprehend.

I actually like the fetch quest-oriented design. Running missions gives you a reason to move around, and equipping your ship helps you be prepared for whatever you run into along the way. Causing mass chaos in sectors with a pirate base never gets old, either.

I hated the combat at first, but I've come to like the subtle blend of logistics/tactics. It's mostly logistics—if your ship is crap you're going to die no matter what—but delaying your attack a few turns to split up your enemies, prioritizing targets based on scans, docking/undocking, using superior speed to flee and heal damaged cladding, and launching volleys of missiles from long range before moving in can all turn a battle in your favor. And when it does it's incredibly satisfying.

The relative importance of sensors is also a plus. Space is big, too many outer space vidya games forget this. Acquiring information through sensors should be an important component of the gameplay. Having an advanced sensor array, allowing you to see what ships are, where they are moving, who they are attacking/defending helps you stay alive. Scanning arrays help you judge whether you should flee or attack, and who (if anyone) you should attack first. This is good.

If I have one complaint it's that you should NOT be able to see anything past the maximum distance of your sensor array. It should be a complete blackout, like the 'fog of war' in RTS games. If your ship doesn't have a sensor, you could see in a radius up to your 'visual distance' (although not receive data about objects, i.e. UNKNOWN OBJECT) which could be controlled by a stat or something. The orbital status of planets and the locations of stations would be stored in your ship's computer, though.


P.S. I have a question, too: If you're playing in the Iron Man mode, and you 'die' in a text adventure, is the game over?
 

MetalCraze

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2007
Messages
21,104
Location
Urkanistan
RaXz said:
Thanks for the advice, I will try it again. Any starting race,class and skills recommendations?

I really want to kick some hardboiled butt, payback time. :cool:

Anything you want - just remember when setting the difficulty - it tends to go the other way in this game - when you gain new technologies the game becomes easier (it still won't be all too easy on hard-boiled though). Also don't put any points into a leadership, compared to the other skills it's useless.
 
Unwanted

RaXz

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Joined
Sep 10, 2008
Messages
837
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Netherlands
Yeah leadership sucks, if you really want wingmen, your better of with using a stim that gives leadership and hire some people. Leadership is only needed for the hiring.

Good outfitted Tranclucators are better IMO, you can even up their skills if you have fully upgraded your own skills, I haven't bothered much with tranclucators yet though, but it would be fun too get a bunch of them in a big hull and have a squadron of bots. I don't want to think of the upkeep bills.

DefJam101 said:
I'm thinking of playing Hard with hardboiled Dominators for my next game. I already know I'm going to be a pirate, again, but this time I'd like the war to actually be something to worry about.

And you will worry on hardboiled.. a lot!
 
Unwanted

RaXz

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Messages
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Location
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And if I am not mistaken, you need a intercom too. And a scanner that can pierce their shields, if they have one.
 

Paingod

Novice
Joined
Dec 16, 2009
Messages
2
Hopefully not too much of an "idiotic" question for the Idiot's Guide.

...

I've played through the game a few times on varying difficulties, but can't seem to actually succeed with Dominators set to "Hard-Boiled" - Last night I lost the game in record time. Well, okay, I was down to one system but opted to quit since the last (only) Ranger station with my Node account got nuked and took my Nodes with it.

I started with 3 systems "freed". Everything else I could see was dominator-owned. By the time I finished the tutorial, one of those three had been occupied by the dominators.

I outfitted myself with the only other Missile launcher I could find and took off to go run missions and earn some cash (I started with one, because they're awesome and relatively inexpensive to run). Pirates fell to my launcher spam when they hassled me. Dominators did too when they invaded, but took a long time to whittle down.

I couldn't be everywhere at once, though. While protecting one sector after all the defending battleships had been wiped out, the other last remaining sector (with Business, Medical, and Ranger stations) fell to a secondary assault. I managed to hold my ground but figured it was just a matter of time before I couldn't afford to keep buying more missiles. Loot was scarce because I couldn't reliably loop back for it without getting chewed up and spat out.

On the up side, the very first Black Hole I entered game me a Nanitoid, which simply made my day. I'm considering going back to a previous save and trying to defend the Ranger sector and let the other one fall if I have to.

I had enough of a chance to buy a few cheap components, make a couple trade runs, and blow some pirates up before the game was pretty much over.

Are Hard-Boiled Dominators supposed to be that hard? There's no way I could have taken out a system by myself yet, not with engines going 450 and two launchers in my starter ship.

*Edit: Ahhh ... Nevermind. Apparently Dominators on the hardest setting are simply retardedly hard - after reading page 10. I dropped them a notch and they're completely bearable now. I'm now 2.4 years into my next playthrough, with a Rapid II ship (330 hull, +150 speed, 8000cr), a boatload of upgraded beginner-level gear that's close to minimum weight, and three launchers (the only ones on the market so far). I haven't conquered any systems, but I'm skipping through Wormholes looking for artifacts and whenever I land in a Dominator system, I activate the beacon to summon other dominators there. Come back in a month and the place is almost empty and items are everywhere. I love how they fight each other. Tonight will be a night to conquer my first sector, with the - uh - help of the Dominators to do it.

Still waiting for more Nanitoids, though :/
 

Cairn

Novice
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
6
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)
e

I have to disagree on parts. I find the repair droid to be in my top priorities list because without it, you're hull never heals, and most dogfights that aren't the random one on one pirate trying to steal your cargo are with several ships, and without a substantial healing mechanism, you won't even last long enough to take down single ship, especially because of their tendency to focus primarily on the player, often even at their own peril. Also, in the beginning the droid is invaluable because it costs about the same as the ship to repair, but in the later parts of the game, the more advanced droids, they cost absurd amounts to fix too, often way more than the hull, but by that time one can usually afford to use it only when they actually expect to get into fights.

One strategy you failed to mention that I use quite often, before I can afford a bigger hull, is to pick a favorite planet, and simply drop all your unnecessary equipment so that you have a lot more hull room to transport goods to sell elsewhere. It's annoying to have to scurry back to it whenever danger approaches, but what can you do, you must have hull space, even if you can't afford a bigger ship. And yes I do agree with your sentiment, above all else, you must ensure you have decent hull space for trading, otherwise, you'll never have enough money to get what you need to done.

And this leads me into my next suggestion, and I can't stress this enough, perhaps more important than having a lot of extra hull room, although not more important than having adequate hull room to trade decent amounts, is to have the fastest possible ship. At first you can't because you can't afford the best engine, nor the upgrades, and you don't have any node balls or attachments that will substantially increase engine speed. But as soon as you possibly can, you need to upgrade your stuff and either become or get close to being the fastest ship in the universe because there is absolutely nothing that will keep you alive longer than simply being able to outrun your enemies, and engine overdrive capability is absolutely essential for getting away from a sticky situation without getting killed. Having the fastest ship will ensure you can escape any problem, that trades will much less likely be a bust because someone else made the trade before you and brought the buying price down on the planet, it will ensure that you can invade enemy systems literally on your own, even though from the beginning through the middle of the game, you'll never have enough missiles and/or strength to kill enough to actually liberate the system. I personally wish they had added a strategic element to that perhaps involved being able to call for help or tell your minions to basically do what I do, which is to run away while attacking one of the closest ships while I run until my state of repair gets too low, and I have to go back and repair all my equipment. In the latter parts of the game, it's usually the repair droid that threatens to break down, and then I go back and spend thousands to repair it.

Anyhow, I digress. After hull-space is adequate, speed, and repair droid are good, that's when I suggest focusing on getting the most powerful weapons, and upgrading them to the max, and using any node balls you might have to increase their power without increasing their size too much. This way, you will have either close to the fastest or the fastest ship, and you'll pretty much be capable of taking on any one ship at a time, and more than one of the smaller ships, and if you find you can't, well, you have close to the fastest ship now with overdrive if you need it, so no big deal.
 

Cairn

Novice
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
6
Yeah I'm just such an idiot because I don't like FedEx quests. Stupid fucking me. I'm sorry for encroaching on your 1337 territory. :roll:

LOL, I have to agree with you on that, they do the delivery missions way way overboard. There are times when I get like 10 delivery missions in a row. And do you realize how long it takes to find 10 missions? That's like 10 hours of game time right there averaging out to about 1 or 2 quests an hour, some in spurts of several, and some don't trickle in for a couple hours of playing.

However, Reboot, and especially Revolution seems to have done something that stopped the incessant nature of the delivery missions.

In case any of you are wondering, Space Rangers Revolution is a Russian-only mod-like expansion created by somebody that had something to do with the game, and I think it requires Reboot in order to work. You can download it from some wonderful people who actually went through the exhaustive work of translating the Reboot parts and most of the added equipment so that we English-only speakers/readers could try it out.

Here's the website for downloading Revolution if you want to give it a try,
https://snk-games.ru/forums/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=482

Follow the directions, I can't stress that enough, except for number 4, you don't have to delete or change that file name. In fact, I'm still not sure what happens if you do. Yeah, I know they're confusing, but they work. I know because I'm playing it now. And be sure to remember to download all the cfg files at the bottom of the post. I I didn't even realize it was there at first, and I'm glad I caught it because I'm sure not having them will cause a lot of stuff to be missing. Once you have it installed and all the files are in their proper place, you merely have to activate the Revolutions mod by getting onto the game and selecting it, but if you read the instructions, you'll know that. I think one is for Revolution equipment to be activated but Russian quests to be deactivated, and the other is the same, but Russian quests are activated. I personally took on the whole enchilada and downloaded Firefox Lingo, and installed more languages for Microsoft Keyboard, and now I use Microsoft's on-screen keyboard, switch to the Russian keyboard so that I can see the symbols, and I take a screenshot of the message, and I type it in notepad with the on-screen keyboard, and then paste the message into firefox lingo. Then I get a very very very rough idea of what the message is. That way I can play the Russian quests too. Of course, if I ever get tired of doiong this, I expect I should be able to simply say no to the quest. One hint though, the Jedi quest, I didn't translate what the Jedi said to me, so I have no idea what I was supposed to do or what to do with his Light Saber that was left behind after the group of pirates chasing him killed him. Anyone who knows, feel free to let me know.
 

Cairn

Novice
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
6
I need to stop reading these threads, because they're going to end up polluting my impression of the game (one way or the other), but it sounds a lot like Darklands in terms of having a strained, narrow early game (although in DL that only applies for young characters). There's not much else you can do in DL at the beginning than fight city ruffians at night and do some alchemy in your healing time.

Too bad SR doesn't have the DL background model that lets you sacrifice age for an accelerated early game.

Don't even play Space Rangers, save the storyline and having only one enemy, it's exactly like SR2, except SR2 has all the conveniences that SR should have had from the start, and it has more stuff.

SR2 is a much more rewarding experience. If you enjoy SR2 enough to love it, you might enjoy SR just because it has the prequel storyline because it's really not a different gaming experience, just a more annoying gaming experience as it lacks so many of the simple things you will come to love about SR2. You know, such as being able to place your gripper hand maker on an item before it's within grabbing range, meaning you don't have to wait another day just to even mark it.
 

Cairn

Novice
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
6
I went through the entire game without ever finding any nanitoids or whatever repair micromodule. It's not too hard if you're smart. Missions towards the end reward a HUGE sum of money. I think the RTS ones yield the most. I just remember being hurt for cash and after completing a RTS mission I was on easy street. Rags to Riches.

Nevertheless, after getting all the best equpiment (my Droid was INSANE - repairing it costed way more than my HULL), I was still able to handle the repair costs just by fighting the dominators and still managed to turn a profit. I did have a max tech skill though.

No, that's exactly how it is. I've always had moderate to lower tech skill, and repairing the most advanced droids will cost more unless you get lucky and manage to obtain high-price items you can sell.

OH, YOU FORGOT TO MENTION A VERY VERY IMPORTANT ASPECT TO MONEY!!!

RESEARCH CENTERS, while they're still researching something to help turn the tide of the war, they will offer X2 the full value of the odd tech items Dominators drop, but you have to sell for the dept that is specifically researching the particular dominator the odd tech came from. Usually, it will be moderate-valued items worth under a thousand or just over a thousand credits, but sometimes they'll drop something worth like 8000 or 4000 base value, and talk about rags to riches . . . that's equals 16,000 for one and 8,000 for the other, which is way more than you get for planet missions near the beginning and middle of the game, and they are far easier and quicker for turning your financial situation around . . . if you can get to it either before Dominators or some idiot battleship or civilian ship blows them up. Oh, and don't be firing off missiles on the same turn you're trying to pick stuff up. I've lost more stuff because I accidentally destroy it with my missiles in a dog fight than I care to admit.
 

sgc_meltdown

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2003
Messages
6,000
Space and Ranger

2479412804_51c524cefc_o.jpg


Also I don't know why you would start as anything but Gaalians or Faeyans.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
Joined
Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
Are Hard-Boiled Dominators supposed to be that hard? There's no way I could have taken out a system by myself yet, not with engines going 450 and two launchers in my starter ship.

Hard-boiled are quite manageable - they're not hard, they're pretty much right, because on easier difficulties AI rangers just win the game without you and that's no fun.

Here's an easy & simple guide to it:

1. Obviously, you must start with 2x rocket launchers - anything less is not adequate for the task. I suggest engine as a second piece of equipment & attack+defense skills as they are worth more XP than non-combat XP and there's a real shortage of XP in the beginning of the game. That leaves you with faeyan or peleng start - faeyans are obviously better since their ship has afterburners & their equipment is more durable.

2. Do the tutorial, at least to the point where you're advised to sell some hardware tech on another planet - it's very important that you sell all your unneeded equipment for this (anything except launchers, engine & fuel tank) so you can buy as much goods as you can. Use afterburners to deliver the goods (use afterburns for everything, actually - use a cheap, lightweight, upgraded 1st generation engine & afterburn it indefinitely, it's much cheaper & faster than to use a more advanced one) - it is important to act as fast as possible so AI ships won't be able to buy much of your precious tech. If you're really into it, you can save scum a bit until the point where during this quest 2 planets are as close to each other as possible. Make these runs for as long as the good prices last.

Also, to prepare better for the run you may either buy some additional meds before delivering them to the sick planet or gather some minerals in the space to earn some extra money - the more money you'll have, the more you'll earn. if they'll offer it to you, you may also do a tutorial planetary battle quest on the third planet in the system (other than these quest two) - reward money will help.

Depending on your luck, this process will net you 10 to 25k credits.

3. Now you will have a wee bit time before all youre base will belong to the dommies. Try to use it effectively - do some quests if they're available, explore some black holes if you can, search for better gear (you're looking for any lightweight pigamar one, with bonuses to missiles, it's kinda broken in early game) and modules. In terms of modules you look for cheap ones that give +10 to the rocket launcher power - since each salvo fires 3 rockets, the summary damage increase is 30 and that's totally nuts. Also, buy some star maps because in a short time you won't be able to do that for a while.

If there's a business center, buy yourself a life insurance (you should always be stimmed up with some combat skill enhansing drug, the best one is gaalistra of time, obviously, and insurance saves you ton of money here) and try to take a credit from there just before dommies invade the system where it hangs & destroy it - mind you, you must take it not during invasion (they won't give you money, don't even hope), but just before it. The reason is that when all business centers are destroyed all your debts to them are nullified so it's more free money for you and you need them.

Oh, and if there's a pirate station, you may wish to buy some camo if you can afford it.

4. After a year or so, dommies will take all of your systems one for one and you'll become deadlocked in your homeworld. Do not despair - it's perfectly normal for a hard-boiled playthrough. Besides, dommies won't attack you with deadly force - there will be no full-scale invasion, it's just Keller who will be pestering you again and again. Now, first objective is earning money (between his attacks). Basically, you have two options:

a. Get yourself a mining laser and hunt for some asteroids. Use laser to break them - it's not called "mining" for no reason, you'll get more minerals this way. Sure, the system will soon get oversaturated with them, but even 6-7 credits a pop is better than nothing. Besides, if your luck setting is not awfully low, you'll often get a credit bonus for destroying the asteroids, so it's not that bad of a deal.

b. Use the "luxury triangle" technique. How it works. See, planetary economics in rangers works by a simple "supply/demand" model - the more stuff the planet has, the less it pays for it and vice versa. Therefore, what you need to do is to concentrate all luxury present in the system on one planet - you will sell it at an average price (even high if you'll time it right), then, after a while, it will become pretty cheap. You buy it back and haul it to another planet - since, thank to your efforts, there will be no luxury items on it, it will buy yours pretty high. OK, you wait 'til it gets cheap again and then drag it on to another planet... You get the point, right? Do this ad infinitum and you'll become an millionaire easily. And sure, you can do this with every kind of merchandise, it's just that the luxury has the best cargo space/profit proportion.

5. Don't forget to scan the uninhabited planets for good - you really, really need good artifacts & modules. After you'll scan the planets of your homeworld (which shouldn't take long), do a blockade runs inside occupied systems. Basically, you jump in, fly to the planets on afterburners, drop the satellites, wait for a couple of days (as soon as you land, dominators get sad about not being able to kill you and fly away from the planet, back to their patrolling routes) then lift off and either fly to another planet (if you have enough satellites & engine durability - to gain more satellites easily, buy them while under duration +tech drug, you will be able to get up to 7 of them fast this way) or back to your homeworld. After the scanning is done, collect in a similar manner.

You also may do a blockade runs to the systems that have a black hole inside of them, but that's a bit more luck dependent - there's no guarantee that the hole will spawn in a safe location and not in the midst of dommie swarm & that the exit point will be in a jump range from your homeworld.

6. Try to do all quests that you're offered - money are not that relevant, but each quest gives you precious XP and a chance to win artifact/module. Well, there will be 2 types of them - planetary battles (annoying, I know) & guard the system/ship for X days. I prefer to do the latter on the easiest setting - you lose some money, but, without save/scumming, you never know when keller shows up and it's hard to repel him without casualties.

7. Now, you will have to occasionally repel Keller - as soon as you have money to repair your ships and restock your missiles via paragraph 4, you'll do fine, just remember one rule of utmost importants: PROTECT STATIONS AT ANY COST. Seriously, none of them should die or you're really, really screwed up - med stations is gone, no stims for you (meaning shooting that doesn't do shit) and if you're sick, you become absolutely worthless in combat. Ranger station gone, no missile-upgrading modules for you and no good equipment for you. Science station gone - no loot 2x money for you, no upgrades for you. Basically, they're crucial, so if you see any of them in low HPs, dock to them, buy permission to upgrade them and repair them - yes, it will cost you a lot of money (always keep a spare 50k credits for this), but there's no other way. Stations are your lifeline.

Other than that, it's pretty easy - Keller's ship are pushovers and there's not much of them, so, with your uber-upgraded missiles & tanking done by other ships in the system you should do just fine. The hardest time is when all the military men die - see, your system slowly spawns military ships until it has a maximum number of them, after that, it sends them to liberate a nearby systems (i.e., to die pointlessly, until a certain point, at least). And that leaves you with a window of vulnerability where you will have a couple of merchant ships to help you and that'll be it - be prepared. Also, you can accompany armymen to their doom - just gather the loot until they die then run back to your homeworld as fast as possible. And that's the way you'll liberate your first system - by accompanying them to battle (somewhere in a year 04-05; you can also do it solo, but it takes more time - year 08 or so, unless you're bloody lucky with artifacts & items).

One other thing to add is that, with some patience & skill, you can slaughter keller inside his black hole by using just 2 starting missile launchers - just fly in circles and spam those missiles at him, but don't miss the respawns of healing bonus in the middle (it's especially easy with droid junior). But I'm against it, actually - of you kill him, no one will attack you, and if no one attacks you, where will you get loot and XPs?

One other trick is to fly inside Keller's black hole while he still floats in your system - then, instead of his boss level, you will find yourself in some usual black hole level, with usual artifact prizes, but the important thing that the exiting point won't be random! You'll exit to your homeworld system, just at the point you've entered it. Now, there's a catch here - if your hull points are low, Keller may blast you to smithereens as you rush to the black hole (or exit it), but, if your speed is good and you time it right and you're not escaping the hole in low HPs, you can avoid that possibility.

Well, that's pretty much it - just do these things and in year 04-05 (maybe a bit later, that depends on your surrounding worlds) you will reclaim your first system (at the very least, you will get powerful enough to combat dommies via missile tactics, so you will get lots of loot and XPs) and after that it's just a snowball.
 

muffildy

Educated
Joined
Jan 3, 2010
Messages
74
modules are your wallets friend
buy the smallest cheapest stuff you can find and install a powerful module on it and you get a cheap powerful item.
For example,
there is a module that adds 1500 radar range, put this onto the 2nd lowest tech radar and you get a radar with around 3300 (science station upgraded) range radar that costs you practically nothing to maintain.
your only actual expensive items should be your engine, shield, and your weapons. the rest of stuff you dont really need expensive high tech equipment. I love using the bot you kill in the tutorials fuel tank for example, its tiny like 15 units of space, but with the best fuel tank module it makes the best fuel tank. 15 space for like 80 fuel.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2018
Messages
1
So, this is some serious Thread Necro.

CORRECTION: - THIS... Is some Serious Thread Necro. Like... Yum, yum, - Cum get u Sum; - All you can eat, Yummy in ur Tummy; Nom Nom Nom, - Super Necrotized, Necro-Orgy-Buffet.

I member coming across this thread; just about 10 years, or so, ago....... As I recall, I found it... ehhh....... somewhat helpful, at the time... But mostly, was just horrifically hilarious. Almost akin to watching a horrible train wreck, but at the same time, you just CANT look away...

10 years ago... & to this day, this whole entire thread, is perhaps the most ridic, funniest, tragically hilarious mix of, - insults & innuendos & out-right internet tough-guy tolling / bashing Ive ever seen, lol...

Started playing the newest iteration of SR2... & for the fricken life of me; - CANNOT find one single damn page ANYWHERE, across the ENTIRE DAMN SPECTRUM of the internet, that simply states, - which hole slot on a hull, holds the repair droid....... NOTHING... NOWHERE... Not the damn manual, not the damn, - so-called official wiki....... Sooo... idk, like 2 or so hours later, was just about to give up... & then THIS, MARVELOUS GEM, from the past flashes upon my screen, before my very eyes. I was like, " Oh... wait a min here... This looks kinda familiar....... " - And then it was like - the OP, - B, saying - " kingcomrade is a fucking dumb idiot... " & then KC was all like, - " Nuh-uh, I just know what I like & dont like... " then B would respond with some other choice words & insults, back to KC, then KC would be all like... - " All I see is insults from you, wheres your facts; wheres the proof... " & that trend continued onward, for several MOAR pages, beyond the original post in this thread, all of which led to,.. just about the most awesomeness, goofy, kewl, in ur face, no in ur face, back & forth again action, that I can ever recall seeing online before.

Yeah, dont get me wrong here, Im sure theres def some way MOAR HC chats & posts & threads strung across the galactic reaches of the net, but I do typical try to actually avoid those places... I just came across this old thang & had to whack it back into place, somehow. Idk... If nothing else, I feel this whole thread & its entire contents should be stored & logged forever, in the annals of time... Granted, some of the info here, Im sure, is no longer up-to-date & relevant to the newest SR2 HD version,.. but relevantly so, & still on-topic...ish;.. - theres still some fairly pretty privy & helpful insight & info here for the game, to help older players, from back in the day, & newcomers & beginners; alike. And, other than that, if nothing else, it sure is one super entertaining, fascinating read. And... perhaps... A trip down memory lane, for others.......

Good luck & long happy life, to all who come here & happen upon this masterful time-piece, that MUST NEVER BE FORGOTTEN. Ive marked my calendar;.. set my alarms & back-up reminders... Ill pop back in here, in say... another decade, or so, from now... Just to see, - whats what, at THAT time... Till then, peace out yall;.. Word to your mother,.. & see you all back here, for a joyous reunion, in another 10 years!

Best Regards,

T** S****** ~ aka ~ LongLiveThisPost4Eva
 

ntonystinson

Scholar
Joined
Nov 11, 2016
Messages
181
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)

Just started playing this game, was looking for something similar to Mount and Blade Warband and Crusader Kings 2 while waiting for Archmage Rises (am a dynamic world moving on its own with reactive NPC instead of sitting around waiting for the player kind of gamer) and it was a bit difficult to figure some things out. Found this thread through google actually so thanks for taking the time to make this guide
 

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