Opening moves?

[jake21]

I managed to stick to a game for a while (6 or 7 hours) without having to restart (I'm playing a non-human trader) (pink) (I wish i could remember which icon went with which race other than blue is huaman )
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Anyways this will mostly be a repeat of what Z said (btw I'm playing on the easiest level but i'm not sure if that only influence time per quest or also combat).

Unlike the other games I avoid helping request to fight off pirate. In the other game I found it made a lot of planets and other folks hate me. I worry that by not helping I'm pissing someone else off but so far it hasn't been too bad. I always try to explore black hole (save first) and avoid all escort/kill request - cept one. i did my first kill quest with success (i asked everyone near by to help me whack the smuck). The biggest problem I have with kill request (in addition to fear that it will piss people off and I'm too weak) is that the scum always runs to a planet and it becomes a pain to actually kill anyone (at least with my current fire power).

I'm not sure if it is luck or normal after 5 or 6 hours but I've found some really nity items:
I found an artifact that allows me to hyperspace 40 psc and some weapons that do 30 or so damage as well as an artifact that gives me 3 more artifact (but I can't seem to use it since my ship has 4 artifact slot and using it doesn't add 3 more - but still removes a droid slot).

I've no where near 100 cargo space and Ithink the only way I could get that would be to buy a new hull (my hull is around 300 and i've been eyeing one that is 420 (iff the yellow boxes with a number represent the size of the hull you are buying).

I've seen some nifty items I can't afford (I'm up to around 10,000 coins which is a *lot* compared to my other starts).

So far the rts have been pretty easy iff i set up a quick defense with repairer. I've had more problems in the blackholes (I find the controls not so good) but the rewards are pretty good there if you win (usually an artifact).

Probes are making me some money and I think they are better than Z. alluded to (at least in the early game) but I've not figured out much about nodes.

The rts controls are a pain (you can't create sub groups and the robots will charge forward unless you expl. hit stop so they need a lot of micro management - the repair thingy do not repair themselves so I always build repair bots in pairs). Switching into a robot gives you the best since you can shoot further (not sure why this is the case). What I do is set up a cluster or bots with repairer at some point - switch into a bot - go forward and attack - when I take hits - back up until the repairer is fixing me up. If I get too damaged i can switch into another bot. I'm not sure if it is because I'm playing on the lowest level or near the start of the game but so far it seems like the computer is not excessively agressive with all parties. It seems that one or two (usually red and sometime blue) will be quite aggressive but green is almost always very passive.

Originally Posted by jfp3

Great offering there Z. This is the type of info that helps get us Noobs going with the game. 2 Questions:

At what point should one consider taking on single Pirates? What ship setup for a Merchant for instance?

and

When one does the RTS elements, do Robots made for "repair" do those repairs themselves or do you need to micro manage them? I wonder about this because the battles seem to go quite fast (I've only done the training one so far) and it seems it would be really rough to micromanage much of anything.

Anyone else have something to add here?

[warbob1991]

Well i don't really like it but i tink that in space rangers you HAVE to use the cheat points (very good idea to add them!).I do that inspite of i hate cheaters but if you don't use some small cheats like 10k gold(belive me that is enough only to get fuel and repeir in about 8 years after beggining the game) you are never going to finish the game unless you are a pro !Sometime your money just go down and down and you can't buy equipment and the biggest trouble - you don't have enought money to repeir your hull full your tank or repeir the items !You can't even get some stuped mission no matter how dum it is cause you are low hull no fuel and outside waits 1 or 2 pirаtе who hate you so much that even if they attack someone they stop and go for you!If you don't want to start over you have yo use a tiny cheat!But not always whne you can or you will ruin the fun of the game!But honestly you must tink about some things like weight of the items!Money is always a problem so you have to but heavier items and one time it happened that if i want a good quality ship ( i meen radar droid scaner and stuff) there was no space for wepons .So i suggest 3 options.1)make things a bit less expensive.2)make even the heaviest things weight less.3)make the hulls bigger!I tink option 3) is the best for us gamers cause if you happen to save money then you can actualy use the hook to get something aboard over 20tons

[jfp3]

Nice tips gents, perfect for this thread. I wonder if anyone out there can give some hints about starting as another race?