Space... The Anal Frontier (Space Rangers 2 Blind Ironman)

[Ulminati]

I guess tha tmakes it 3 wotes for sensible and 4 for stupid shit

Firing up SR2... If Paco survives, I'm totally crediting the fact that I used a red thingmabob on his hull.

[edit]

Paco may have just accidentally led the Dominators to Earth

[edit 2]

Update later today. got around 150 screenshots to sort through. Turns out firing a salvo of missiles, looting a few scraps and legging it is sorta profitable. I *think* Earth is safe. For now.

 

[Thor Kaufman]

2) Defend the BROs

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Wow, Paco owes the RNG god some sexual favors for that drop there. And yes, using it on that hull was a bad idea. 3 months from now you will have tons of money and want a nice 500+ hull that can take 5 missile launchers for more dakka.

Have you sold the dominator equipment to science stations? Selling stuff otherwise only gets about 40-70% return based on trading skill, but science stations pay either 100% or 200% worth.

Option 2, defend use your countrymen as bullet sponges.

Yeah, there's plenty of basic skills that standard rangers would and would not need, depending on how much he knows about the game. But Science Vessel 100% Alien Tech sales policy definitely made the trader skill completely useless. Also, do not forget - Stimulants can max out combat skills Time Galliistra is my favorite even if I'm just trading since it boosts your speed.

Biggest problem is that you get very little equipment from killing ships and its always random. Even if you kill a ranger ship with a weapon worth 20k they will probably drop some crappy 3k fuel tank or 20 foodstuffs. And since trade goods aren't affected by trading skill (WTF? It should be renamed salvage if it will only be good for pirates selling off destroyed target equipment) you really get no direct money boost unless you get really lucky.

Stimulants are fucking amazing. You just can't beat spending 500-5k (depending on time) to have a max stat character for half a year. In addition to the speed booster I love the one that maxes your technical skill, since it allows you to buy the max of 7 probes early on and then keep them after the stimulant wears out. Being powerful in SR2 is all about stacking up those powerful micromodules and artifacts.

 

[RK47]

Yeah, by late game, commodity prices skyrocket like crazy and luxuries would hover around 400-500 prices...which makes savings account completely worthless. 3% a year is nothing compared to the double goods prices...and the best part, if you stuff it in a planetary warehouse, you'll never lose it, even if Dominators take it over. Just retake the planet and make your withdrawal. Ka-ching! Just park 1000 cred to qualify for the yearly lottery if you want to. It's like a free probing mission.

So don't underestimate those cheap foodstuff sales at 23-26 creds early on. If you have the cash to spare, clear them all out. Funny though, it won't spoil after 30 years.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Hoarding and sitting on stuff while you go out to fight is great, I had some 3k luxuries at once in one game. But for cheap things like foodstuffs? Nah, even if the profit margins are high the fact that you can only move ~600 of them at a time makes it a poor payoff for a lot of work. Profit per trip is what I want and making dozens of trips for 15k of foodstuffs is just a PITA vs a single luxury sell off to pay for a shiny new hull. Plus, a 5 second search to see if any planet is paying top dollar for luxuries is a lot more attractive compared to a several minute search for each and every good when you have to do it every 15 mins between fighting dominators. So IMO, after you get out of the poorhouse just stick with luxuries, drugs/weapons (if you want to deal with the smuggling problems), and maybe equipment (though I stop dealing in equipment eventually).

I haven't seen prices go up nearly that fast on the hardest difficulties, but the mere fact that dominators attack constantly sends luxury prices into constant flux. 200 spreads in price range are normal a few years in and 300 isn't hard to find if the right planets are under attack. You can score a good 75-200k profit in just one trip, even on the "minimal" price range settings.

 

[RK47]

Yeah, finished the game. I kinda like the game, but things got too hard and too easy at points,...there's really no middle ground in here. Well, perhaps there's some close scrapes but that's it.

Still, good game. Will not play it again for another half year to keep it fresh.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

The regular part of the game can definitely get to the point where it's too easy, but the text quests are so awesome. RTS missions I could kind of do without, but they're not exactly poorly implemented, just not my cup'o'tea and an awkward change of pace from the rest of the game.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

RTS controls are just a pain in the ass. AI is also fairly random in what it does on lots of maps which can make beating the harder ones impossible if things don't go your way. I remember on the island Ulminati lost on (coincidentally one of the hardest ones and I think its always the first non-tutorial mission), there's a 50/50 chance the top right green base will survive and if it does green immediately fucks up red and then you are staring down a fully controlled green map thanks to the flip of a coin.

 

[RK47]

Not sure why my RTS map kept crashing on loading...Exception error and kick me to desktop. It happened since I switched video card...anyone know a solution?

 

[Azira]

Try switching resolutions under the settings. I tried upping to 32-bit colours, which caused crashes. Setting it back to 16-bit made it run smoothly without crashes.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Not sure why my RTS map kept crashing on loading...Exception error and kick me to desktop. It happened since I switched video card...anyone know a solution?

I don't, but in addition to what Azira suggested, a few things off the top of my head (try one at a time):
- Delete the "Cache" folder in the game's directory.
- Start the game in XP compatibility mode.
- Lower land battles' resolution to 800x600.
- In "cfg.txt", change "VideoMode=R2" into "VideoMode=R1".
- The classics: uninstall video drivers, reboot, clean ATI/Nvidia stuff with Driver Sweeper (today is largely unnecessary, but who knows), reboot, reinstall latest official stable drivers. It's a stupid long shot, so it's up to you.

 

[Pope Amole]

No update?

By the way, this LP has inspired me to get another playthrough of rangers - one year has passed since the last one, so yeah, that's enough resting time. No iron manning or uber-hardcoring, though - with the exception of hardboiled dominators and poor quality items in shops (125% difficulty overall). Spent my first 7 years locked in one system, shooting asteroids for profit (mostly planetary rewards for them - minerals were not worth a damn so I've hoarded them), doing an occasional quest of guarding some spaceship and, of course, repelling Keller's attacks. Made two failed attempts of killing him with starting equipment - yeah, the bastard himself is easy to snipe down, but that stupid equentor of his is entirely different story. But then I've stopped the assassinations attempts since his raids were quite welcome - excellent source of experience and money, since it's not like I could've raided other systems comfortably (well, it can be done and I've done that before, but that's really tedious). The key to this is flying with cheapest equipment possible (apart from the weapons), basically, all first tier (preferrably with bonuses to rokkits). You don't have the need for better stuff until late, late in the game.

The hardest part of this all was keeping the space stations secure - if keller's hole warps near them, it's really hard to arrive in time to save them, not to mention the tax of gaining ability to repair their hulls and gathering money to actually pay for it - apparently, personnel of those stations are 100% jewish since they won't even work to save their lives if that won't profit them. In the end, I have lost the medical one, but kept safe the ranger center and station and they're the most important ones(though now I'm sick with the faeyan racial illness and can't do much about it, not to mention that losing access to stims is bitch). Got a medium luck in this try - no uber-artifacts from the start, still have no droid and defensive field, but got a 403 speedy hull and bought few +10 modules for my rokkits. Now, with the help of some military bros, I have liberated my first system (in 3307) and it's time to escalate this fight even further.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

By the way, this LP has inspired me to get another playthrough of rangers

Show us the ranger roster.
I remember a game on Hardest difficulty I attempted as a pacifist trader lol. Within a year, there were only 3 other rookie rangers left, one system crawling with pirates and no business center to dump all the awesome ~15000cr I've made. Man, I gotta pick that one up, someday - looked optimistic.

 

[RK47]

By the way, this LP has inspired me to get another playthrough of rangers

Show us the ranger roster.
I remember a game on Hardest difficulty I attempted as a pacifist trader lol. Within a year, there were only 3 other rookie rangers left, one system crawling with pirates and no business center to dump all the awesome ~15000cr I've made. Man, I gotta pick that one up, someday - looked optimistic.

Hahah
I remembered one playthrough where I wondered why do I keep gaining ranks even though I'm basically trading...Then I realized upon checking the ranking board, half the rangers are KIA and I was 14th, second last in the boards.

The best part is helping them get back on their feet by funding more ranger centers, military bases, and giving away cash to low ranking rangers...in 10 years, the roster repopulated itself. Quite nice touch, really.

 

[Azira]

I've also started playing it again.

Didn't go for hardboiled dommies though, just hard, even then we were quickly down to just 3 non-dominator controlled territories. Flying around trying to keep those three from falling while not dying myself tied up the first 4 years. Then more missile launchers started appearing, and I'm now the #1 ranger out of the 8 surviving.

Have started winning back sectors. Missiles truly are your best friends, even if they do tend to blow up nice dominator equipment if not used wisely, and even though they do cost cash to reload. Doing the RTS missions that invariably open up after clearing a sector is my primary source of income. Have done 4 so far, the pay is now reaching 25K, and I know from previous playthroughs that it can easily reach amounts 10 times higher.

Thank you for drawing attention back to this wonderful little game.

 

[Pope Amole]

Show us the ranger roster.

It's kinda after the point of my post, with 4 systems liberated and, thus, 4 rangers being spawned. Most of the time it was just me and some random faeyan dude with 300 experience points or so.

I remember a game on Hardest difficulty I attempted as a pacifist trader lol. Within a year, there were only 3 other rookie rangers left, one system crawling with pirates and no business center to dump all the awesome ~15000cr I've made. Man, I gotta pick that one up, someday - looked optimistic.

Well, you can invest them either in goods to earn your % by just letting them wait in planetary storehouses or invest them in stations since, as a pacifist, it's gonna be quite hard to protect them and you can't really go on without stations. Like, as I've said, I lost my medical one, still can't rebuild it and suddenly I've got a complex immunocide disease, meaning that I'm hundred times more prone to getting sick which really, really sucks - already have Aka Seciyanka (or however it is translated, faeyan racial disease) and waiting for some more goodness to come.

 

[Ulminati]

No update?

there's 2 possible explanations, pick one to your liking:

1) I've been super-busy and haven't had time to sort through the 250-or-so screenshots in my fraps folder
2) I'm actually meta-LARPing as Lord Paco by copying his Baldurs Gate 2 LP update schedule

 

[oldmanpaco]

The hell is going on in this thread you lazy bastard?

 

[oldmanpaco]

You have learned well grasshopper. But I will continue to bump this to shame you into action.

Or just to shame you. Whatever.