Just repairing some hull damage.
The fuel bar is actually flashing right now, I missed it on the next screenshot too. But it's quite low.
Disabling everything except engines will help us make it to the nearest fuel supply.
Beyond a certain threshold armour can't be repaired. At least not this way.
Well shit.
This is a good reason to avoid using barrels with unidentified substances inside to try repair your ship.
Fortunately this mining colony was willing to decontaminate us. For a fee.
They can't repair our armour either however.
Well, time for an upgrade then.
And another.
This one was long overdue.
More ass kicking.
Always happy to find new ROM cards.
A cookie to anyone who hasn't played before that can actually spot the enhancement. (You might need to look at later screenshots.)
Oh, cool. Never used this before.
Free weapons always nice.
I meant to take more screenshots here, I guess I forgot in the chaos. These guys are significantly stronger.
Though that should be obvious from our shields and hull.
Well, more practice repairing hull is good.
Reinforcements arrived while we waited for shields to regenerate.
This is what the little ships were firing at us. It adds up fast. The range is too short for a decent weapon for us though.
And this thing is what the station was firing. Also pretty strong. Much longer range too. Pity it's broken. The next weapon down isn't too shabby either, but it's not really good enough to warrant ditching anything we have.
Buy a few more missiles.
And an upgrade to our main weapon.
When exploring new systems, often the best way to find friendly stations is to follow traffic leaving the gate you just came out of. Or any non hostile traffic, really.
Oops, finger slipped...
New type of station for us. A cool one, too.
Another aspect of the game there are probably some really cool mods for. I think one lets you build your own weapons. (As in, custom effects, designed in game.)
The weapons for sale are generally not very useful, though they do occasionally serve a purpose.
The armour for sale, on the other hand...
An excellent bargain. We could actually sell this armour for a profit later.
This is the cool part though.
Would love to have me one of these. (Our current laser hits for 1/8th that much damage fyi, though it's a bit faster firing rate.)
We'll make a note just to be sure.
Another fun option. Pity we only have 5 barrels. The stuff isn't super rare though, we can probably get more.
These are... really good.
Lots of cool armour too, all of it pre enhanced with various cool effects. Actually, we already have some of that lanthanum glass from earlier...
Another station. Nice to find so many of these, they can be annoyingly rare in some games. We'll grab these missiles; the tracking component can be incredibly helpful, since even if you can direct fire missiles accurately, they can be shot down by enemy fire. So indirect shots are more useful.
Some of that ore we need.
Our shiny new weapon.
Though it requires actually aiming, unlike the omni directional laser.
Can't argue with firepower though.
Showing off some missiles too.
Jackpot.
The drones defending these illegal mining operations are hardly a threat to us.
Another lucky find.
10% isn't that good, but we probably won't be using anything else for a while, so any little bit is good.
I didn't buy the ore earlier, so I only have enough for 2 segments here. Still, that might be enough.
Lets try our new armour out...
Oh yeah, thats the stuff. We won't need to refuel until we get another major reactor upgrade.
More ore, I don't feel like making more segments, but I'll keep some on hand in case we need to replace it.
An interestiing find. Heavy as fuck.
Another interesting find.
Getting better at this shit. When we started we damaged the hull half the time.
More new enemies, these ones aren't so tough though.
Planets are another good place to check out when looking for stations in an uncharted system.
Though not necessarily friendly stations.
Outlaws frequently have drugs on station, much more often than pirates.
Just gonna...
No sir officer, they were there when I got here...
Of course, I could have ditched these too, just wanted to show the message off. There's also an event that can occur when you try to sell them, but that one tends to result in a game over.
Pick these back up...
Remember this place?
Smooth...
Oh, you can dock with all sorts of stuff too, not just stations and wrecks. These gates aren't actually human tech, feeble 'mans haven't figured out FTL tech yet. (This applies to the weapons too, the lasers actually move at 1c, and if you mod yout ship to move at a similar speed (or use certain, generally very crappy, weapons), stuff starts to get... weird.
A cool looking system.
A fuel station! Did I show these before?
We don't need the fuel, but sometimes they carry system mapping software, which is obviously very useful.
Why hello there...
Shall we try our hands at... piracy?
The escorts seem to dissaprove.
However, they are beneath our fists (and shields, and tech level in general.)
Lets see what we've earned...
Well now...
Quite a rare find, especially intact.
Though I knew this ship was carrying illegal goods.
Following this one will illustrate why. Do note that most actual factions will get pissed at you for pirating their shit, I'd advise against pirating corporate stations, for example, despite the fact that you could potentially steal all their shit, plus the shit you just sold to them.
And here we find the friendly transport's destination.
The destination itself being not so friendly (this was not because of our piracy, these are simply enemies.)
And then they return to a normal colony station.
Better not let this little gem get confiscated.
Shockingly, the colony is unwilling to pay us much for what we can only describe as a really cool
looking starship device.
Miners hold is a good deal though.
Ooh, and they have a neat toy in stock. We'll use this later. Mostly cause I immediately forgot I bought this.
Sell this dead weight off too, though I'll show them off first.
Neat huh?
They're pretty much indestructible to our crappy mining laser, and can come in handy for certain missions (like protecting a station from enemies.)
And another new station...
Take me to the boss! I got important drug stuff to sell!
Damn, it works in the movies...
Eh, we already have one though. Just need someone to install it.
Well, if the black market isn't for selling drugs, then what is for sale?
Hot damn. That may seem like a piddly amount of damage for that price, but it's thermo damage. My shields and armour don't show their penalty vs thermo damage, but if they did, it'd be a real nasty one.
And here we have the main buffet.
Most of which now belongs to us.
Lets go find a buyer.
Seemed like too obnoxiously large and dense a system to manually explore. Alas, what we want is not here.
Oh yeah, I never came back and collected my fee. Must have forgotten after getting filthy rich from that mining trip.
Well, as a member, they give me access to docking services, so...
Oh come on. If you're not going to swipe it from me why not look the other way? Bastards.
Well, we can install this unknown device instead. Thats probably safe to do.
Actually, I already know what it is. Meta info ftw.
Ta-da! The cheapskate way to identify a device. Equip shit until you find something it enhances. Assuming the device enhances stuff.
Time to ditch this thing I think.
Oh yeah, theres other stuff you can do here too. Some neat info.
Note that these suckers don't have shields, hence the rank requirement to escort them. Well, they're all huge, carry way more cargo, and are slow as fuck. Note their hull too; same as the front of our ship, not terribly strong for a slow ass freighter with no shields. They get more than 4 segments iirc, but it still goes down fast, and burning through any one segment generally makes a ship go kaboom.
There's another pirate ship after this one too. Unlike the freighters, these guys have multi layered armour, and an inner hull akin to station bulkheads. You need special weapons rated for station damage to finish them off quickly. Also, the missiles they fire are better than the lame cheap ones with no tracking I've been using.
If you see one of these while learning the game, I advise doing what it says in the description.
Corporations will rat you out for selling drugs, but if you don't go to the commodities area, you don't need to check customs...
I think I showed a visit here before, there's a little blurb that shows evidence of drug use here. The game is very good with details like that. Chatting with random people can give good tips too, like places to mine or equipment to use.
*Puts on drug dealing hat.*
I didn't notice at the time, but as the trade assistant is indicating here, this isn't actually a profitable deal. I only sold the syringes though, cause I knew there are better places to sell. Just wanted to show this option off. You can actually bypass the black market entirely if you want to for some reason. (Or if, say, you blew one up and looted it's drugs and kewl weapons.)
Gotta find a place to install that hold...
I forgot these guys have customs when you dock. I think one type of mining outfit doesn't, but this was clearly not the right kind.
Well then, better make some money the old fashioned way: violence.
Some nice stuff.
Remember this thing? I finally did, thanks to that new rom we looted.
Apparently this requires experience too. That sure bodes well.
Thats ok, still 6 charges left...
Ouch, that was a lot of charges for one item. These things aren't too common. Though, there are only so many low tech items we'll need to ID anyways.
Good thing we ID'd this. Wouldn't want to remove that display enhancement most of you probably didn't even notice. Also, it blinds you intermittently for a while, but you can just wait that out unless you're a retard and popped this during a firefight.
Anyways, shield upgrade is nice.
And this is now worth 11 times it's previous value since we know what it does.
Speaking of unidentified shit... this probably isn't worth spending all our money on. Lets use our funds to turn a profit instead.
These things are nice finds though.
Oh, and we'll install this. Will make a nice base cracker if we don't want to use missiles or find a better item before we need it. Plus it's just nice to have more toys.
Pew pew!
Another way to get a black market chip.
Too heavy to bother looting. The ship actually handles much worse when weighed down a lot.
Would love to have this baby installed. Those seige mags really do live up to their description. I'll have to go into some detail on how station armour works later, it's not something I can show with screenshots.
Oh. Well then. This seems like a good place to end the update.
