Day 10, is that it?
Well I finished the campaign today. Well that's not strictly true. I collected the missions while another player flew around firing OMGDEATHTOEVERYTHING missiles for me, which made things a LOT easier.
This player was also friendly (and rich) enough to just hand over an Excalibur Regenerative Missile - indeed as I speculated, these missiles only need to be purchased once. There is a few downsides however, you need EIGHT secondary weapon hardpoints to equip them and they have a rather long cooldown. Five minutes sounds about right but time is difficult to keep track of in games. I could rarely use them twice in the same fight at any rate.
The advantage comes in that it fires eight missiles. All at once. Bambambambambambambambam. This is usually enough to kill anything so at the very least I got one opponent down before getting into cannon range. Maybe not worth 3mill (especially since I had to buy a new frame to equip the damn things without sacrificing equipment) but not bad at all.
Coming back to the missions, I highly recommend playing online and asking for help. There is usually a veteran player with nothing better to do so speak up! Most of the missions this point onwards are impossible with standard equipment.
Let's put it this way. There's NO point attacking a cruiser without a Fulcrum Torpedo. It's pointless. You should only need one though, plus a fair distance between you and it when it detonates and you're fine. Sometimes a friendly destroyer or cruiser might jump in and take out its shields but I'd try not to rely on it.
If you get to the point in the campaign where you can't find anyone to help, get a Fulcrum Torpedo. I know they're like 3mill each but better than going nowhere eh? Now you may be wondering what the point in spending a 3mill topedo on a 200k quest is, but fret not - the reward at the end of the questline, well, let's say it's worth it.
I haven't had a chance to run around like a schoolgirl buying everything yet but I'll do that tomorrow. For now, I've worked out that you CAN condense your cargo, I think this even works while not docked, hold the Alt key and right click an item and it will put one unit into the topmost hold of the same item that is not already full.
I also mentioned earlier about a docking fee, I will amend this but docking fees in hostile sectors are recurring - you will pay it every time you dock until you have a better reputation. This apparently takes LOTS of mercenary quests.
Which brings me to factions. Generally picking up things from other players and looking at the News screen, it looks like you've generally got two factions in each sector that work reasonably well together. For example Military protects biological research while Energy profits from it. It will occasionally even mention this. If you do lots of quests for these two factions you will gain favour with them and your system reputation will go up, while those factions (probably) get a higher presence from your assistance.
In this way you can turn a hostile system into a mostly friendly one, however I am told this take MANY many missions so maybe a long term project? The appearance of the station also looks like it designates what faction it is from and so your standing with them will affect the docking fee.
This is all speculation mind you - I haven't yet found any good resources out there on this stuff so take nothing for granted, test and speculate for yourselves!
Next I plan to just screw around with missions and of course upgrade everything, then in awhile I'll go through the Military missions. It looks like it's probably another questline or something, don't know, will look into it. To activate them I just need to equip a military frame, to test this you won't be able to change the colour of it.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Day 10 (Going Forward)
Day 10, hostile systems are a pain.
I kept following the main quest and it got me to go to Cerulean - Really? Skip Onyx completely then. Great. Okay. Olympus straight to Cerulean. Sure I can handle it.
A warning, the missions get a LOT more difficult here, now going for around 140k credits and being tricky like 'scan this ship while other ships constantly fly in and attack you'. This is a SERIOUSLY hostile system in that if you wait around, you'll have a dozen ships around you within a few minutes. And they're not light ships either.
Thankfully I found a C14 cannon on sale in one of the markets. 570 range - YAY so upgrading cannons doesn't mean forever diminishing range. There is light at the end of the tunnel yet! It WAS a few hundred thou but my current cannon also sold for a few hundred thou so I didn't pay a great deal for it overall. Considering I got over 100 range and double damage, I'm not complaining.
But man is everything EXPENSIVE in this system, geez. I went in with a full hold of diamonds - literally, all slots full of 18-19 diamonds. These sold for about 3k per diamond in Cerulean so I made quite a tidy profit from that. The downside is all the upgrades are also overpriced.
Additionally there's some more upgrades and a regenrative missile pack?? Wow! I want one. I don't have 3.5mill credits though so I'll have to wait.
I did some testing on managing cargo and I can't find anything you can do with commodities except dump or sell them. Maybe Alt+right click might do something but I ran out of stuff to test it on. I do know now that you can put weapons into your cargo holds while docked by right clicking though so that's cool.
Another neat little trick I found awhile ago but keep forgetting to mention is the IDS scale - check your keyboard config for it. This allows you to increase the maximum speed you can go while IDS is active. Why they bothered with it is beyond me but oh well. I bump it up to 2X so my max speed is safely within planetary speed limits and I can just cruise to the dock.
I think I'm getting the hang of navigation too - you can zoom out and click the Text button on the right to switch on all text, then the button under that cycles the various types of object. So you can switch text on only for gates so you can see where you need to go next. This unfortunately overlaps each other and is pushed around by the borders of the screen so when you can read it it's often still a mission to find what it's marking, but it's easier than flicking through each sector.
I kept following the main quest and it got me to go to Cerulean - Really? Skip Onyx completely then. Great. Okay. Olympus straight to Cerulean. Sure I can handle it.
A warning, the missions get a LOT more difficult here, now going for around 140k credits and being tricky like 'scan this ship while other ships constantly fly in and attack you'. This is a SERIOUSLY hostile system in that if you wait around, you'll have a dozen ships around you within a few minutes. And they're not light ships either.
Thankfully I found a C14 cannon on sale in one of the markets. 570 range - YAY so upgrading cannons doesn't mean forever diminishing range. There is light at the end of the tunnel yet! It WAS a few hundred thou but my current cannon also sold for a few hundred thou so I didn't pay a great deal for it overall. Considering I got over 100 range and double damage, I'm not complaining.
But man is everything EXPENSIVE in this system, geez. I went in with a full hold of diamonds - literally, all slots full of 18-19 diamonds. These sold for about 3k per diamond in Cerulean so I made quite a tidy profit from that. The downside is all the upgrades are also overpriced.
Additionally there's some more upgrades and a regenrative missile pack?? Wow! I want one. I don't have 3.5mill credits though so I'll have to wait.
I did some testing on managing cargo and I can't find anything you can do with commodities except dump or sell them. Maybe Alt+right click might do something but I ran out of stuff to test it on. I do know now that you can put weapons into your cargo holds while docked by right clicking though so that's cool.
Another neat little trick I found awhile ago but keep forgetting to mention is the IDS scale - check your keyboard config for it. This allows you to increase the maximum speed you can go while IDS is active. Why they bothered with it is beyond me but oh well. I bump it up to 2X so my max speed is safely within planetary speed limits and I can just cruise to the dock.
I think I'm getting the hang of navigation too - you can zoom out and click the Text button on the right to switch on all text, then the button under that cycles the various types of object. So you can switch text on only for gates so you can see where you need to go next. This unfortunately overlaps each other and is pushed around by the borders of the screen so when you can read it it's often still a mission to find what it's marking, but it's easier than flicking through each sector.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Day 9 (Stuff)
Day 9, a nice short one.
So I only played a brief few missions today but still learned a fair bit - for a start you can scroll in the navigation map using the mouse wheel and yes, weapons really do keep losing range as you upgrade.
I just happened to obtain, free of charge, a class 10 cannon. Now this IS five classes above what was my current cannon but the range is down from 550 to 450. Considering we originally started at 700, I'm feeling more and more restricted and hostile ships are hitting me long before I get into range. That said they barely do any damage then I destroy them in a few hits, but it's still annoying. I managed to take damage in Olympus. Seriously!? That's fail.
So I mapped Launch to End and it's interesting hitting F2 out of habit and seeing my rear view mirror. At least I won't be crashing into any more asteroids any time soon. In hindsight I could have swapped F1 and F2 but I was already too used to using F1 as navigation.
My I.M.G. contracts took me to Olympus and are nearly paying something worthwhile now, just under 50k. This seems to be a good way to progress as no doubt it will lead me through the quadrants in order of difficulty. There's also some pretty neat rewards occasionally, like a bunch of missiles.
This brings me to another point, I don't think I'll be bothering with missiles for awhile. The secondary weapon slots you have? You can only equip one missile to one slot. So you can have five secondary equipment slots and carry a whole five missiles.
You can carry additional missiles (and cannons) in your cargo hold, though I picked mine up from space so don't know if you can buy them this way, and equip them by right clicking while docked. I didn't think to try right clicking my equipped weapon but I assume it'll go back into cargo hold. Maybe I should buy a C1 cannon for when I have to destroy asteroids!
I wonder if, by extension, you can right click cargo to merge them. So for example, I have 19 and 18 diamonds, if I wanted a stack of 25 I assume I could right click one and it would boost the other to 25? Worth checking out tomorrow.
So I only played a brief few missions today but still learned a fair bit - for a start you can scroll in the navigation map using the mouse wheel and yes, weapons really do keep losing range as you upgrade.
I just happened to obtain, free of charge, a class 10 cannon. Now this IS five classes above what was my current cannon but the range is down from 550 to 450. Considering we originally started at 700, I'm feeling more and more restricted and hostile ships are hitting me long before I get into range. That said they barely do any damage then I destroy them in a few hits, but it's still annoying. I managed to take damage in Olympus. Seriously!? That's fail.
So I mapped Launch to End and it's interesting hitting F2 out of habit and seeing my rear view mirror. At least I won't be crashing into any more asteroids any time soon. In hindsight I could have swapped F1 and F2 but I was already too used to using F1 as navigation.
My I.M.G. contracts took me to Olympus and are nearly paying something worthwhile now, just under 50k. This seems to be a good way to progress as no doubt it will lead me through the quadrants in order of difficulty. There's also some pretty neat rewards occasionally, like a bunch of missiles.
This brings me to another point, I don't think I'll be bothering with missiles for awhile. The secondary weapon slots you have? You can only equip one missile to one slot. So you can have five secondary equipment slots and carry a whole five missiles.
You can carry additional missiles (and cannons) in your cargo hold, though I picked mine up from space so don't know if you can buy them this way, and equip them by right clicking while docked. I didn't think to try right clicking my equipped weapon but I assume it'll go back into cargo hold. Maybe I should buy a C1 cannon for when I have to destroy asteroids!
I wonder if, by extension, you can right click cargo to merge them. So for example, I have 19 and 18 diamonds, if I wanted a stack of 25 I assume I could right click one and it would boost the other to 25? Worth checking out tomorrow.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Day 8 (Advanced Tips + Campaign)
Day 8, I am SO changing the Launch button.
Okay so today I was messing around in Thuban - turns out this is MUCH better that Onyx for a "next level" as the enemy ships are still fairly low tech but there are still some tasty missions. Mostly "go kill these things" and again, involving lots of fighting, but hey if it didn't then they wouldn't need mercenaries and we'd all be out of a job.Out of a game. Yeah.
I quickly worked my way up to 1 MILLION credits - wow! Sweet stuff. I upgraded my ship, skipped the Saber frame and went straight for Raven. So much more assembly... Boosted my cargo to 4 and equipped the Falcon Mk II wings for better agility, while I was at it upgraded my shields to class 2.
While in this view I worked out there IS a way of telling what you have equipped (will edit previous post, I originally said to make note of the remaining assembly and keep equipping stuff until it got back there), in the top left you have the current stats of your ship. Obviously cargo and fuel can be worked out easily, everything else simply says a number, eg "Wings: 5". This means you have the fifth set of wings installed, which is labelled such, so "Falcon Mk II (5)".
Bit easier. On the right you have what you are changing to so you can compare your upgrades against how much it's costing.
Lastly for advanced tips, if you're getting frustrated with landing on planets I can provide further advice there. Most of the time a yellow (might be green, I'm colourblind ^^) box with a + appears somewhere on the outskirts, this is the location of the city. Additional cities are marked with green + symbols. Just jump above it and cruise down. If you don't have the box, get close to the planet so you get a gravity warning and an altimeter, it should then come up (I presume your ship scans the planet).
Now I was getting bored with random missions, I wanted to try the campaign. I looked up where to start and found that it all begins on New Hope in sector -3, 0, 2. One of the contracts comes up with an "I.M.G Contract" label indicating a main story quest. Take a satellite to space. Easy peasy.
Launched and dropped the satellite. Mission accomplished. It was at this point I got disconnected from the server (really glad it lets you save) so I had NO idea where I was going next.
Reconnected, no messages came up. Hm. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING NOW. The site I looked up only had the first mission and I couldn't find anything for the second. Someone was however kind enough to direct me to News (open Inventory, then click News Console). Within there is a button for "View Last Quest Message". Excellent, go to the orbiting station and race the guy waiting there.
Etc, etc, you know the drill. Soon enough I had to mine something so went and did that, watched it count up then when I hit 25, closed my inventory.
Except I didn't close my inventory. I missed F3 entirely and hit F2, which is of course the Launch button and the reason for the first statement. My ship quickly accellerated straight into the asteroid and blew up. Apparently this happens often but I intend to prevent further cases by putting the Launch button on the other end of the keyboard. The End button looks appropriate (it's the top right key on my Asus G73 laptop).
I found myself back above Erato, having just cleaned the solar array. Yeeaaah screw that, I'll go again tomorrow. This post is long enough as it is anyway! xD
Okay so today I was messing around in Thuban - turns out this is MUCH better that Onyx for a "next level" as the enemy ships are still fairly low tech but there are still some tasty missions. Mostly "go kill these things" and again, involving lots of fighting, but hey if it didn't then they wouldn't need mercenaries and we'd all be out of a job.Out of a game. Yeah.
I quickly worked my way up to 1 MILLION credits - wow! Sweet stuff. I upgraded my ship, skipped the Saber frame and went straight for Raven. So much more assembly... Boosted my cargo to 4 and equipped the Falcon Mk II wings for better agility, while I was at it upgraded my shields to class 2.
While in this view I worked out there IS a way of telling what you have equipped (will edit previous post, I originally said to make note of the remaining assembly and keep equipping stuff until it got back there), in the top left you have the current stats of your ship. Obviously cargo and fuel can be worked out easily, everything else simply says a number, eg "Wings: 5". This means you have the fifth set of wings installed, which is labelled such, so "Falcon Mk II (5)".
Bit easier. On the right you have what you are changing to so you can compare your upgrades against how much it's costing.
Lastly for advanced tips, if you're getting frustrated with landing on planets I can provide further advice there. Most of the time a yellow (might be green, I'm colourblind ^^) box with a + appears somewhere on the outskirts, this is the location of the city. Additional cities are marked with green + symbols. Just jump above it and cruise down. If you don't have the box, get close to the planet so you get a gravity warning and an altimeter, it should then come up (I presume your ship scans the planet).
Now I was getting bored with random missions, I wanted to try the campaign. I looked up where to start and found that it all begins on New Hope in sector -3, 0, 2. One of the contracts comes up with an "I.M.G Contract" label indicating a main story quest. Take a satellite to space. Easy peasy.
Launched and dropped the satellite. Mission accomplished. It was at this point I got disconnected from the server (really glad it lets you save) so I had NO idea where I was going next.
Reconnected, no messages came up. Hm. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING NOW. The site I looked up only had the first mission and I couldn't find anything for the second. Someone was however kind enough to direct me to News (open Inventory, then click News Console). Within there is a button for "View Last Quest Message". Excellent, go to the orbiting station and race the guy waiting there.
Etc, etc, you know the drill. Soon enough I had to mine something so went and did that, watched it count up then when I hit 25, closed my inventory.
Except I didn't close my inventory. I missed F3 entirely and hit F2, which is of course the Launch button and the reason for the first statement. My ship quickly accellerated straight into the asteroid and blew up. Apparently this happens often but I intend to prevent further cases by putting the Launch button on the other end of the keyboard. The End button looks appropriate (it's the top right key on my Asus G73 laptop).
I found myself back above Erato, having just cleaned the solar array. Yeeaaah screw that, I'll go again tomorrow. This post is long enough as it is anyway! xD
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Day 7 (New Ship + Hostility)
Day 7, today! Well only for another four minutes, then it will be yesterday.
So today I ventured into Onyx and did a few missions. Died a lot, the fighters here seem to be a lot more accurate and do a lot more damage. Take care to shoot them before they shoot you and as always, change direction often. They now seem to be able to calculate even exponential tradjectories, meaning if you accellerate in the one direction you'll still get hit.
However with my kitted out ship with C5 cannon and C3 laser, I was able to take at least a few on. Three, maybe four if the money was right. Unfortunately it seems nearly all the missions now involve fighting, even dropping off commodities involves a few enemy fighters waiting for you at the objective. Nothing to stop you shooting past them, dropping the cargo in the box on the fly and warping straight back out but I found it sometimes hard to hit the box.
At least the loot is good when you kill fighters, some of them drop antimatter or diamonds which sell reasonably well. Constantly frustrated with one cargo slot though so once I got enough money it was back into the hangar.
I mentioned in day 6 that your goal was around 600k - the reason for this is that plus the sell value of your current ship make up enough to buy the next base. Drag it in and marvel at the slight extra assembly capacity! I went for two cargo slots, better wings and better shields in the end. Engine was left as is since I'm fairly happy with it currently and fuel tank, well 800 is plenty for now. Annoyingly I was left with 10 assembly regardless of what I did so I just left it. It seems that any downgrades cost the same as any upgrade I could get. Oh well, it's an improvement.
Also got myself another equipment hardpoint or two (don't know if you get any extra points for the upgraded base but I now also have a secondary weapon slot), customised and built. Bought myself a fast repair unit and tried some more missions, marginally easier however don't expect wonders from the repair unit. It might have repaired your ship by the time you're done fighting and manually floated back to the starbase, but at least I don't have to pay for repairs anymore.
I am now starting to wonder about the factions - I hung around a starbase for awhile and had lots of fighters just appear from nowhere and head towards me while firing missiles. There were Guild, Navy, an Energy fighter, mostly Guild though. What I wouldn't give for some diplomacy. Am I missing papers or something? Who do I get a visa from?
I got disconnected from multiplayer so just continued in single player, fortunately I'd literally only just saved it but it asked if I wanted to save before booting me out anyway. Continuing in single player, I found something odd. On one side of a planet near a starbase, I suddenly had loads of friendly Navy ships floating around. Huh, okay, a break at last.
I then decided I wanted to land on the planet. checking the map, the little icon thing was on the other side so I just jumped over, it's too late to sit there waiting for my ship to cruise around it. Suddenly I was surrounded by hostile Navy ships - wtf? These guys were friendly a second ago. Maybe jumping through a volcanic planet is against a law or offended someone? I dunno. A friendly ship showed up and fired a few missiles, I didn't catch their faction, but I got bored at that point and decided to write this blog instead.
More updates when I play next! =D
So today I ventured into Onyx and did a few missions. Died a lot, the fighters here seem to be a lot more accurate and do a lot more damage. Take care to shoot them before they shoot you and as always, change direction often. They now seem to be able to calculate even exponential tradjectories, meaning if you accellerate in the one direction you'll still get hit.
However with my kitted out ship with C5 cannon and C3 laser, I was able to take at least a few on. Three, maybe four if the money was right. Unfortunately it seems nearly all the missions now involve fighting, even dropping off commodities involves a few enemy fighters waiting for you at the objective. Nothing to stop you shooting past them, dropping the cargo in the box on the fly and warping straight back out but I found it sometimes hard to hit the box.
At least the loot is good when you kill fighters, some of them drop antimatter or diamonds which sell reasonably well. Constantly frustrated with one cargo slot though so once I got enough money it was back into the hangar.
I mentioned in day 6 that your goal was around 600k - the reason for this is that plus the sell value of your current ship make up enough to buy the next base. Drag it in and marvel at the slight extra assembly capacity! I went for two cargo slots, better wings and better shields in the end. Engine was left as is since I'm fairly happy with it currently and fuel tank, well 800 is plenty for now. Annoyingly I was left with 10 assembly regardless of what I did so I just left it. It seems that any downgrades cost the same as any upgrade I could get. Oh well, it's an improvement.
Also got myself another equipment hardpoint or two (don't know if you get any extra points for the upgraded base but I now also have a secondary weapon slot), customised and built. Bought myself a fast repair unit and tried some more missions, marginally easier however don't expect wonders from the repair unit. It might have repaired your ship by the time you're done fighting and manually floated back to the starbase, but at least I don't have to pay for repairs anymore.
I am now starting to wonder about the factions - I hung around a starbase for awhile and had lots of fighters just appear from nowhere and head towards me while firing missiles. There were Guild, Navy, an Energy fighter, mostly Guild though. What I wouldn't give for some diplomacy. Am I missing papers or something? Who do I get a visa from?
I got disconnected from multiplayer so just continued in single player, fortunately I'd literally only just saved it but it asked if I wanted to save before booting me out anyway. Continuing in single player, I found something odd. On one side of a planet near a starbase, I suddenly had loads of friendly Navy ships floating around. Huh, okay, a break at last.
I then decided I wanted to land on the planet. checking the map, the little icon thing was on the other side so I just jumped over, it's too late to sit there waiting for my ship to cruise around it. Suddenly I was surrounded by hostile Navy ships - wtf? These guys were friendly a second ago. Maybe jumping through a volcanic planet is against a law or offended someone? I dunno. A friendly ship showed up and fired a few missiles, I didn't catch their faction, but I got bored at that point and decided to write this blog instead.
More updates when I play next! =D
Day 6 (Objective)
Day 6. FRIDAY! =D
So the highlight of today is what to do next. I got to this stage, people on multiplayer are unhelpful, I dunno. I explored, tried random planets, the missions were always around 20k at most. Well for the second ship base you need about 600k when you include upgrades so it's just not gonna cut it.
Well, dear reader, I think I have it sussed. Muck about in Sapphire until you work out what you're doing and have a few upgrades and a full tank of fuel. Then head one map to the right to get to a wormhole that will take you to Olympus, where the missions are better but you get randomly attacked by other ships. This is annoying but just take the closer ones out and if you dock for any extended periods of time just enter the spaceport. If the button doesn't work check the bit that normally has all the trade goods, it'll probably say 'Due to your reputation you must pay a docking fee' - whether you pay it or not is down to circumstance I guess, seems to be a one time fee.
From here is actually day 7 but I don't care, it's relevant. Day 7 can be what I actually did today (yes that's me caught up then! =D)
So you can play in Olumpus or you can continue into Onyx. See Navigation for where to find the gate because I can't be bothered looking it up. Onyx has a LOT more fighters trying to kill you and the missions are MUCH harder, but they net two, three, FOUR times as much as Olympus. Up to 200k, though I wouldn't recommend that as those missions look insanely difficult. I can barely take out four fighters in this area, forget six while also protecting a ship. Drop off missions seem to be the go.
Either way, your aim is to have around 600k.
So the highlight of today is what to do next. I got to this stage, people on multiplayer are unhelpful, I dunno. I explored, tried random planets, the missions were always around 20k at most. Well for the second ship base you need about 600k when you include upgrades so it's just not gonna cut it.
Well, dear reader, I think I have it sussed. Muck about in Sapphire until you work out what you're doing and have a few upgrades and a full tank of fuel. Then head one map to the right to get to a wormhole that will take you to Olympus, where the missions are better but you get randomly attacked by other ships. This is annoying but just take the closer ones out and if you dock for any extended periods of time just enter the spaceport. If the button doesn't work check the bit that normally has all the trade goods, it'll probably say 'Due to your reputation you must pay a docking fee' - whether you pay it or not is down to circumstance I guess, seems to be a one time fee.
From here is actually day 7 but I don't care, it's relevant. Day 7 can be what I actually did today (yes that's me caught up then! =D)
So you can play in Olumpus or you can continue into Onyx. See Navigation for where to find the gate because I can't be bothered looking it up. Onyx has a LOT more fighters trying to kill you and the missions are MUCH harder, but they net two, three, FOUR times as much as Olympus. Up to 200k, though I wouldn't recommend that as those missions look insanely difficult. I can barely take out four fighters in this area, forget six while also protecting a ship. Drop off missions seem to be the go.
Either way, your aim is to have around 600k.
Day 5 (Customisation)
I don't actually think this was day 5 but I don't care. It's going in here as day 5.
Today I decided to have a better look into my ship. Although I had an X4 shield booster and C5 cannon I was still getting a bit beat up by fighter missions in Olympus. Not enough to fail but it was time to look into upgrades.
So I docked at a spaceport and clicked Enter Spaceport. There's a Shipyard button down on the left that allows you to customise your ship.
There's a video somewhere that explains this screen in detail but I'll give the important points here.
Firstly, you have a frame, on the right. By default you'll be given the top one, regardless of class, and the lower frames will unlock as you gain military rank and explore new systems. So, to go to the next level is.. 500k additional to what I already have. Great. Ignoring that for now as I only have 150k.
Basically you have an assembly capacity, which amounts to how much stuff you can bolt on to the base ship. The remainder is shown up the top and won't let you build if you go into negative values. If you're not sure what you've got equipped you can check your ship stats in the top left, so for example wings, it gives you the name of the wings and then a number. Have a look at the available wings, you'll notice they're numbered too. The number in the top left is what you have equipped, same for engine and shield. Cargo hold and fuel tank give you the actual figures.
A neat feature is you can allocate points on what your ship can be used for, the lowest button just above your ship. I removed my secondary weapon points as I'd already used my missiles and didn't intend on buying more, and put one in crew and one in equipment hardpoints. Later found this was silly, leave a point in countermeasures and drop the rest into hardpoints. Taxi missions are a pain anyway and maybe we'll get around to hiring additional crew later.
That's about it for what you can do for the time being. If you have the cash you can downgrade your fuel tank from 1200 to 800, which gives you enough for another cargo hold or whatever you want. See what you can do. I don't understand how wings can make a different in SPACE but anyway, if agility is your thing. The Sell cost of your ship is subtracted from the cost of the new ship to give you Total, at the top. Make sure you have enough funds for the upgrade! Funds are shown above Total.
Once that's done you can use the sliders to customise each part and give your ship a unique look. Click Highlight to see the bit you're modifying. I trust you all to work the rest out by clicking stuff.
Once that's done by some more equipment to fill your hardpoints, I recommend having a tractor beam, cannon relay (doubles up your cannons), your usual shields and warp drive, etc. Whatever you think you would need. Remember the sell cost is usually reasonable so even if you can't reload a save before buying something you can get most of your cash back.
Today I decided to have a better look into my ship. Although I had an X4 shield booster and C5 cannon I was still getting a bit beat up by fighter missions in Olympus. Not enough to fail but it was time to look into upgrades.
So I docked at a spaceport and clicked Enter Spaceport. There's a Shipyard button down on the left that allows you to customise your ship.
There's a video somewhere that explains this screen in detail but I'll give the important points here.
Firstly, you have a frame, on the right. By default you'll be given the top one, regardless of class, and the lower frames will unlock as you gain military rank and explore new systems. So, to go to the next level is.. 500k additional to what I already have. Great. Ignoring that for now as I only have 150k.
Basically you have an assembly capacity, which amounts to how much stuff you can bolt on to the base ship. The remainder is shown up the top and won't let you build if you go into negative values. If you're not sure what you've got equipped you can check your ship stats in the top left, so for example wings, it gives you the name of the wings and then a number. Have a look at the available wings, you'll notice they're numbered too. The number in the top left is what you have equipped, same for engine and shield. Cargo hold and fuel tank give you the actual figures.
A neat feature is you can allocate points on what your ship can be used for, the lowest button just above your ship. I removed my secondary weapon points as I'd already used my missiles and didn't intend on buying more, and put one in crew and one in equipment hardpoints. Later found this was silly, leave a point in countermeasures and drop the rest into hardpoints. Taxi missions are a pain anyway and maybe we'll get around to hiring additional crew later.
That's about it for what you can do for the time being. If you have the cash you can downgrade your fuel tank from 1200 to 800, which gives you enough for another cargo hold or whatever you want. See what you can do. I don't understand how wings can make a different in SPACE but anyway, if agility is your thing. The Sell cost of your ship is subtracted from the cost of the new ship to give you Total, at the top. Make sure you have enough funds for the upgrade! Funds are shown above Total.
Once that's done you can use the sliders to customise each part and give your ship a unique look. Click Highlight to see the bit you're modifying. I trust you all to work the rest out by clicking stuff.
Once that's done by some more equipment to fill your hardpoints, I recommend having a tractor beam, cannon relay (doubles up your cannons), your usual shields and warp drive, etc. Whatever you think you would need. Remember the sell cost is usually reasonable so even if you can't reload a save before buying something you can get most of your cash back.
Day 4 (Navigation)
Day 4 dawns in-... wait... Are there days in space? Screw it.
So today I tried multiplayer. It was actually not so different from single player except sometimes people talked. Mostly they didn't care to answer newbie questions and when they did they were sometimes wrong (see day 3, R = fire rate). It was generally nice to have some background conversation however and to see other people playing, and it seems to make no difference to the game whatsoever if you're not playing with anyone. You can still pause and everything, which suspends the status of your ship.
Now one of the guys playing actually sort of sent out his own distress call, basically he'd run out of fuel and was prepared to give a big, shiny expensive mining laser to anyone who could bring him a tank. Problem is he was the other side of the galaxy and I had no clue how the navigation worked. I'd worked my way into Olympus after thoroughly researching the subject so I could play taxi (ended up with 90k in my pocket) but travelling that kind of distance was beyond me and again, nobody was keen to help. Oddly enough not even the stranded guy.
So I had a better look at the nav map and found the Quadrant button. This showed me the general path I had to take to get there as it shows each sector and how it connects to other sectors by wormholes. This didn't tell me where the wormholes were however nor do the wormholes tell you which sector they're in. Helpful.
So I returned to Sector view and tried browsing through for wormhole gates - I don't know if you've noticed but there's a slight lag in it loading the next map, which is agonising when you're flicking through them. OH! There's a zoom out button on the left. Let's try that. Okay, now I can see where the wormholes are, but I can no longer get information by hovering over them.
Seriously? My first gripe with this game. True, navigation is difficult in three dimensions and they've done reasonably well with it, but this is just painful. You can zoom out, look for the wormholes, note their position relative to you, and scroll over to them. THEN you can get the details.
Alternatively there's an interactive map, http://mercenary.junholt.se/ which you can search for objects in. Very helpful, but I still couldn't work out where the gate I needed was and then someone else got to the stranded guy. Oh well.
As this is the section on Navigation I will add some more tips I worked out later; You can check the SX, SY and SZ coordinates for each sector from the Quadrant map, identify the one you want, then look for the gate with roughly those coordinates. It's roundabout but seems to work. If you can work out how to use the Junholt map then that's good too, I haven't really bothered with it yet.
So today I tried multiplayer. It was actually not so different from single player except sometimes people talked. Mostly they didn't care to answer newbie questions and when they did they were sometimes wrong (see day 3, R = fire rate). It was generally nice to have some background conversation however and to see other people playing, and it seems to make no difference to the game whatsoever if you're not playing with anyone. You can still pause and everything, which suspends the status of your ship.
Now one of the guys playing actually sort of sent out his own distress call, basically he'd run out of fuel and was prepared to give a big, shiny expensive mining laser to anyone who could bring him a tank. Problem is he was the other side of the galaxy and I had no clue how the navigation worked. I'd worked my way into Olympus after thoroughly researching the subject so I could play taxi (ended up with 90k in my pocket) but travelling that kind of distance was beyond me and again, nobody was keen to help. Oddly enough not even the stranded guy.
So I had a better look at the nav map and found the Quadrant button. This showed me the general path I had to take to get there as it shows each sector and how it connects to other sectors by wormholes. This didn't tell me where the wormholes were however nor do the wormholes tell you which sector they're in. Helpful.
So I returned to Sector view and tried browsing through for wormhole gates - I don't know if you've noticed but there's a slight lag in it loading the next map, which is agonising when you're flicking through them. OH! There's a zoom out button on the left. Let's try that. Okay, now I can see where the wormholes are, but I can no longer get information by hovering over them.
Seriously? My first gripe with this game. True, navigation is difficult in three dimensions and they've done reasonably well with it, but this is just painful. You can zoom out, look for the wormholes, note their position relative to you, and scroll over to them. THEN you can get the details.
Alternatively there's an interactive map, http://mercenary.junholt.se/ which you can search for objects in. Very helpful, but I still couldn't work out where the gate I needed was and then someone else got to the stranded guy. Oh well.
As this is the section on Navigation I will add some more tips I worked out later; You can check the SX, SY and SZ coordinates for each sector from the Quadrant map, identify the one you want, then look for the gate with roughly those coordinates. It's roundabout but seems to work. If you can work out how to use the Junholt map then that's good too, I haven't really bothered with it yet.
Day 3 (Fighting and Upgrading)
Day 3 and more missions ahead. I tried buying and selling a few commodities but to be honest they weren't really worth it. A few grand and it fills your cargo, which you could easily fill while on a mission, and you don't have to pay for that.
I of course had a tractor beam at this point and did some exploring, found a huge asteroid I could actually fly INTO, but there was nothing of interest. I could mine but how dull is that? Easy but boring money, I'm here to play a game not watch number tick up. More interesting picking up the cargo of destroyed ships.
Yeah, destroyed ships. After accumulating lots of money I bought a class 3 cannon and tried some fighting missions. Without using IDS and with all the experience I'd got from racing, I was able to destroy a few ships. Change direction often and when the little circle appears next to the enemy ship, start shooting until he's out of range. You can also shoot down missiles when they get close enough, save your countermeasures for when you don't have time. Don't fly straight at him since his cannons don't seem to predict as well and keep him in your sights, you can generally get out of it without even needing shields, at least at this stage in the game. No doubt it'll get more difficult but that's the point eh!
I haven't bothered with missiles yet, they seem to cost a fair bit and are a limited use weapon. I'll stick to my one-time-payment cannon. Also bought a laser a few missions in and found that it fires in addition to the cannon and doesn't actually consume any more energy! It's nearly guaranteed to hit the target too so worth picking up, but it's useless outside combat.
Now there are letters associated with weapons - Y for laser, Y, C and R for cannons, and Y, R and S for missiles. After much digging and many days of testing, lots of asking people and a bit of research I have finally come to the conclusion of these stats:
Y - Yeild - Raw damage. Why this is called Yield I don't know.
C - Cycle - How fast the weapon fires (so far only applicable to cannons)
R - Range - I got told a lot this was fire rate. I can confirm that is rubbish, it's range, C is fire rate.
S - Speed - Only applies to Missiles it seems.
So when picking a weapon you want low C and high Y and R values. High S as well for missile if you feel so inclined to go that route. At least you would if you had much choice! It seems we're limited to classes of weapons. I think I found a class 3 cannon on the planet Sapphire which allowed me to win many a battle but it comes at the cost of range for some reason. Down from 700 to 600! It was worth it for the extra damage though.
If you find yourself doing lots of fighting, it is also worth upgrading your shield by selling your existing and buying a better one if available. The difference is usually small so doesn't cost much overall. A better Fulcron drive will get you further in warp too but I'm yet to fully work out the limits of each class. Oh well, not like it's expensive.
Day 3 ends here as I only had part of the afternoon and work the next day. One thing about this game is it is a HUGE timewaster - takes about five minutes just to land on a planet due to finding the bloody city and getting through the atmosphere under 1500m/s. Oh well, t'was fun.
I of course had a tractor beam at this point and did some exploring, found a huge asteroid I could actually fly INTO, but there was nothing of interest. I could mine but how dull is that? Easy but boring money, I'm here to play a game not watch number tick up. More interesting picking up the cargo of destroyed ships.
Yeah, destroyed ships. After accumulating lots of money I bought a class 3 cannon and tried some fighting missions. Without using IDS and with all the experience I'd got from racing, I was able to destroy a few ships. Change direction often and when the little circle appears next to the enemy ship, start shooting until he's out of range. You can also shoot down missiles when they get close enough, save your countermeasures for when you don't have time. Don't fly straight at him since his cannons don't seem to predict as well and keep him in your sights, you can generally get out of it without even needing shields, at least at this stage in the game. No doubt it'll get more difficult but that's the point eh!
I haven't bothered with missiles yet, they seem to cost a fair bit and are a limited use weapon. I'll stick to my one-time-payment cannon. Also bought a laser a few missions in and found that it fires in addition to the cannon and doesn't actually consume any more energy! It's nearly guaranteed to hit the target too so worth picking up, but it's useless outside combat.
Now there are letters associated with weapons - Y for laser, Y, C and R for cannons, and Y, R and S for missiles. After much digging and many days of testing, lots of asking people and a bit of research I have finally come to the conclusion of these stats:
Y - Yeild - Raw damage. Why this is called Yield I don't know.
C - Cycle - How fast the weapon fires (so far only applicable to cannons)
R - Range - I got told a lot this was fire rate. I can confirm that is rubbish, it's range, C is fire rate.
S - Speed - Only applies to Missiles it seems.
So when picking a weapon you want low C and high Y and R values. High S as well for missile if you feel so inclined to go that route. At least you would if you had much choice! It seems we're limited to classes of weapons. I think I found a class 3 cannon on the planet Sapphire which allowed me to win many a battle but it comes at the cost of range for some reason. Down from 700 to 600! It was worth it for the extra damage though.
If you find yourself doing lots of fighting, it is also worth upgrading your shield by selling your existing and buying a better one if available. The difference is usually small so doesn't cost much overall. A better Fulcron drive will get you further in warp too but I'm yet to fully work out the limits of each class. Oh well, not like it's expensive.
Day 3 ends here as I only had part of the afternoon and work the next day. One thing about this game is it is a HUGE timewaster - takes about five minutes just to land on a planet due to finding the bloody city and getting through the atmosphere under 1500m/s. Oh well, t'was fun.
Day 2 (Config and flying)
Day 2. Screw the fighter.
I picked Evochron up again the next day and deleted my pilot. Mostly accidental but I usually do this anyway. Learn the game then start fresh, you get a better jump on things from the go and any skills and cash can be more wisely spent.
I created a new pilot, this time as a Racer. I figured, hey, what better to force me to learn some flight lessons? Dear LORD was I right there. Grabbed a racing mission from the nearby starport and engaged jump.
Now initially it's not clear what you have to do. There's a tunnel type thing leading away from the navpoint. After flying around for a bit I worked out you have to approach the tunnel roughly from the navpoint and (more obviously) fly through the rings. You HAVE to hit each ring in sequence and within a certain amount of time (or if there is another racer, faster than him).
This is where I learned the limits of IDS. It's a great function that's good for simple navigation but it just doesn't give the SPEED necessary to complete a course. I tried turning it off but as my W and S were configured for IDS speed they didn't work, strafe up and down were set to Z and X which was awkward, and of course I was very inexperienced so I kept missing rings and had to go back for them. Needless to say, I failed that mission.
Time for another look at the keyboard config. Below is a list of what I ended up with, which seems to still be working a week later.
W- strafe down
S- strafe up (swap with W if you don't like inverted)
A- strafe left
D- strafe right
Q- slow down (primary thrusters. They're near the top of the second page)
E- speed up
LShift- Rotate anticlockwise
Spacebar- Rotate clockwise
R- engage IDS
1- Secondary slow down (IDS)
2- Secondary speed up
3- Match speed (only applies to IDS)
4- Tractor beam
C- Countermeasures (I think this is also on Mouse 4 as I have 5 button mouse)
X- Select nearest ship
H- HUD
J- Jettison cargo
TAB - Afterburners
All others as default, I don't tend to use much else. Obviously if you have a joypad (or two) you'll want to configure those appropriately but mouse and keyboard work just fine.
From the Pause menu there's an option for mouse controls, I left this as the one with the deadzone (can't remember the name) so that I have a mouse pointer that the ship turns towards whatever direction I point it in (in oppose to moving with the mouse like a FPS). While slightly sacrificing accuracy this allows me to spin as many times as I like without having to pick up the mouse. Accuracy isn't particularly important anyway as your weapons will automatically aim at any ships as long as they're within the larger circle.
So, let's try these races again. Opened the Nav menu (F1) and pointed my ship at the starbase Sapphire, then launched (actually I initially got confused and thought F2 was navigation, which is engage warp. Fun times) and picked up another mission. Worked out that starbases don't really seem to care how fast you enter the dock.
Tried a second race, MUCH better. Still failed as I missed several rings while testing the limits of my ship, but worked out I could make most turns while going around 1000 (I assume m/s?), but managing speed with travel direction AND facing direction was taking some getting used to.
I committed myself to not using IDS from this point to boost my coordination and returned to the starbase. Bit of a wild entry but got there in the end (again, no impact damage, at least not travelling ~1200 so don't be hesitant) and picked up another race. Nearly finished this one! Got to something around 89/99 rings before the time ran out. Returned and picked up another race, success! Did a few more races and bought LOADS of fuel so I didn't have to worry about it, though it cost me most my cash. Tried a few of the mundane missions, like destroying asteroids (get closer until sparks fly, it's around 700m for the starting cannon on the racer) and mining (need to be closer still, about 150m - Turn on IDS and put it to 0, lock your tractor beam on using ALT+4 or ALT+B if you're using defaults, and press J to jettison your cargo until you get the required resource.
I concluded day 2 rather happy with my progress.
I picked Evochron up again the next day and deleted my pilot. Mostly accidental but I usually do this anyway. Learn the game then start fresh, you get a better jump on things from the go and any skills and cash can be more wisely spent.
I created a new pilot, this time as a Racer. I figured, hey, what better to force me to learn some flight lessons? Dear LORD was I right there. Grabbed a racing mission from the nearby starport and engaged jump.
Now initially it's not clear what you have to do. There's a tunnel type thing leading away from the navpoint. After flying around for a bit I worked out you have to approach the tunnel roughly from the navpoint and (more obviously) fly through the rings. You HAVE to hit each ring in sequence and within a certain amount of time (or if there is another racer, faster than him).
This is where I learned the limits of IDS. It's a great function that's good for simple navigation but it just doesn't give the SPEED necessary to complete a course. I tried turning it off but as my W and S were configured for IDS speed they didn't work, strafe up and down were set to Z and X which was awkward, and of course I was very inexperienced so I kept missing rings and had to go back for them. Needless to say, I failed that mission.
Time for another look at the keyboard config. Below is a list of what I ended up with, which seems to still be working a week later.
W- strafe down
S- strafe up (swap with W if you don't like inverted)
A- strafe left
D- strafe right
Q- slow down (primary thrusters. They're near the top of the second page)
E- speed up
LShift- Rotate anticlockwise
Spacebar- Rotate clockwise
R- engage IDS
1- Secondary slow down (IDS)
2- Secondary speed up
3- Match speed (only applies to IDS)
4- Tractor beam
C- Countermeasures (I think this is also on Mouse 4 as I have 5 button mouse)
X- Select nearest ship
H- HUD
J- Jettison cargo
TAB - Afterburners
All others as default, I don't tend to use much else. Obviously if you have a joypad (or two) you'll want to configure those appropriately but mouse and keyboard work just fine.
From the Pause menu there's an option for mouse controls, I left this as the one with the deadzone (can't remember the name) so that I have a mouse pointer that the ship turns towards whatever direction I point it in (in oppose to moving with the mouse like a FPS). While slightly sacrificing accuracy this allows me to spin as many times as I like without having to pick up the mouse. Accuracy isn't particularly important anyway as your weapons will automatically aim at any ships as long as they're within the larger circle.
So, let's try these races again. Opened the Nav menu (F1) and pointed my ship at the starbase Sapphire, then launched (actually I initially got confused and thought F2 was navigation, which is engage warp. Fun times) and picked up another mission. Worked out that starbases don't really seem to care how fast you enter the dock.
Tried a second race, MUCH better. Still failed as I missed several rings while testing the limits of my ship, but worked out I could make most turns while going around 1000 (I assume m/s?), but managing speed with travel direction AND facing direction was taking some getting used to.
I committed myself to not using IDS from this point to boost my coordination and returned to the starbase. Bit of a wild entry but got there in the end (again, no impact damage, at least not travelling ~1200 so don't be hesitant) and picked up another race. Nearly finished this one! Got to something around 89/99 rings before the time ran out. Returned and picked up another race, success! Did a few more races and bought LOADS of fuel so I didn't have to worry about it, though it cost me most my cash. Tried a few of the mundane missions, like destroying asteroids (get closer until sparks fly, it's around 700m for the starting cannon on the racer) and mining (need to be closer still, about 150m - Turn on IDS and put it to 0, lock your tractor beam on using ALT+4 or ALT+B if you're using defaults, and press J to jettison your cargo until you get the required resource.
I concluded day 2 rather happy with my progress.
Day 1 (Intro)
Okay, there appears to be SO little information about Evochron Mercenary on the internet that I feel it's my duty to inform the good gamers of the internet of my experiences in the hopes that it will help someone outin place of a direct training guide.
Now I did buy this last week so I'm talking from a week ago here, details may be a bit lacking and perhaps not totally accurate but the important bits are there. First of all - 250MB download?!? Wow. This game is tiny, though you'll probably need a decent processor. Mine seems to run it pretty hot.
The first thing I did after launching the game was check the options - ALWAYS check the options! It gives you an idea of what to expect in terms of controls and you're better off for it later. If you're just reading this and have been playing a little while, not having done this, do it now.
I configured WASD on the horizontal plane (go faster/slower, strafe) and assigned useful-looking keys to easy access buttons (will go into detail later with a better configuration as this really didn't work later on). I went through the tutorials but to be honest they weren't particularly helpful. That guy just drones on and on and I couldn't focus on him, but even coming back to it the guides aren't particularly helpful. Do them but don't worry if you come out feeling none the wiser.
Skip to the next chapter if you're interested in advice, this bit is just going to be how I arrived at it.
So I'd picked Fighter as my class, apparently this just affects your starting ship and it seems initial missions so I wasn't really fussed. I attempted to dock in the starbase but flying into the blue stuff didn't seem to be working, and I was randomly engaging warp for some reason. At least there wasn't any collision damage. Getting frustrated I returned to the tutorial and redid the starbase one, then went back to the game. It didn't quite look like a starbase so I looked around until I found one nearby, a minute or so flight. Turns out I was flying through a wormhole! lol
So I dock at the starbase and pick up a mission. Destroy a few ships, should be easy right? I'm a fighter. Nice high rewards compared to the other missions. Exited base, engaged warp, landed in the midst of half a dozen fighters and promptly blew up.
Hm.
Tried a few more times but just couldn't get it. Could get one or two by flying along the outskirts, turning off IDS and strafing them, but they got me soon enough either way. I then had to put it down as it was getting late and I couldn't focus. So concludes day 1.
Now I did buy this last week so I'm talking from a week ago here, details may be a bit lacking and perhaps not totally accurate but the important bits are there. First of all - 250MB download?!? Wow. This game is tiny, though you'll probably need a decent processor. Mine seems to run it pretty hot.
The first thing I did after launching the game was check the options - ALWAYS check the options! It gives you an idea of what to expect in terms of controls and you're better off for it later. If you're just reading this and have been playing a little while, not having done this, do it now.
I configured WASD on the horizontal plane (go faster/slower, strafe) and assigned useful-looking keys to easy access buttons (will go into detail later with a better configuration as this really didn't work later on). I went through the tutorials but to be honest they weren't particularly helpful. That guy just drones on and on and I couldn't focus on him, but even coming back to it the guides aren't particularly helpful. Do them but don't worry if you come out feeling none the wiser.
Skip to the next chapter if you're interested in advice, this bit is just going to be how I arrived at it.
So I'd picked Fighter as my class, apparently this just affects your starting ship and it seems initial missions so I wasn't really fussed. I attempted to dock in the starbase but flying into the blue stuff didn't seem to be working, and I was randomly engaging warp for some reason. At least there wasn't any collision damage. Getting frustrated I returned to the tutorial and redid the starbase one, then went back to the game. It didn't quite look like a starbase so I looked around until I found one nearby, a minute or so flight. Turns out I was flying through a wormhole! lol
So I dock at the starbase and pick up a mission. Destroy a few ships, should be easy right? I'm a fighter. Nice high rewards compared to the other missions. Exited base, engaged warp, landed in the midst of half a dozen fighters and promptly blew up.
Hm.
Tried a few more times but just couldn't get it. Could get one or two by flying along the outskirts, turning off IDS and strafing them, but they got me soon enough either way. I then had to put it down as it was getting late and I couldn't focus. So concludes day 1.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)