549

You want to start off by going to bars and taking contracts/missions there, go sector to sector and hit bars, and branch out to explore the sectors just outside the core worlds for stuff you can sell. Scan planets that have ruins and explore those ruins, for example.

550

I cannot speak for others. But in my 3 restarts, I found that going exploration really helps out.

  1. Buy a drone tender. They have salvage and exploration perks. Basically they reduce the requirements for surveying and increases it’s rewards.

  2. As you fly around into other systems, alerts will pop u at the left bottom corner. Look at them. They will have survey missions that pay a LOT. Take those that are close to the core worlds (center of map).

  3. Keep the fleet managably small. You’ll consume little supplies and fuel if your fleet is not too big.

  4. Keep exploring and learn the techs. The augmented drives and militarization mods are best to make you fly really fast. They give the “burn” stat. I keep mine at 9 and can zip around even with fleets of 10+ ships.

551

May I know which start did you pick? Your start ship will require you to buy other ships to round up your capability.

I found a frieighter and a fuel tender (small ones at first) crucial to allow me to benefit from doing missions as well as in exploration. They are needed even if you want to focus on combat.

Tip: At the starting system Corvus, there is a small pirate station that will send out small groups that will match your level. Get some quick exp and loot from that, at least in the beginning.

552

Don’t these survey missions all require hundreds of crew and supplies? I looked into surveying but found I couldn’t fit all the people required in my fleet without buying a new ship, which kind of put a damper on that route.

553

My run typically goes like this:

  1. I’ll get a tender or 2. (They reduce the supplies and heavy equipment needed.)

001

002

The crew requirement is only applicable for Gas Giants. So a small fleet can still explore.

  1. My typical setup will have
    a. A tender
    b. Freighter
    c. Tanker
    d. Civillian Transporter

This will allow exploring even Gas Giants.

In my current set up, I think with the Captain’s exploration perks and with a Survey Rig, 2 Apogee and 1 tender. My explorations only require 5 supplies now.

Edit: You’ll need some combat ships to keep you safe of course! =)

554

Funny you should ask about crew, the display says I have 636 of 450 needed. Which made me wonder, is this minimum crew needed? And also, where do you set crew numbers on each ship? All I’ve found is where you can assign a ship captain?!

555

The crew is automatically distributed. You dont control where they go.

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Edit: You can go below min necessary crew, but you get hit with more than 10x the supply burn rate which will basically bankrupt you.

Edit2: Note that if your supply/personnel/fuel bars goes into the red, you’ll be hit with the supplies penalty as well. basically you are carry beyond your carrying capacity and is suffering from a drastic reduction in efficiencies.

556

Here’s a tip I think about a lot but never see mentioned. Don’t plot a course for and then exit into a star - use one of the jump points near the star. If you take the star point you’ll end up in the corona of the star and lose a ton of supplies while your fleet struggles to stay alive in such harsh conditions. Navigating to a sector seems to (always?) dump you into the star, so I took to manually taking over as I approached my destination and diving into one of the nearby jump points instead.

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557

That is a very clever mechanic.

558

Listen to this man.

559

Thanks for that tip, I made use of it repeatedly tonight.

I gave up on continuing the tutorial campaign, I got what I needed out of it up to the point it cuts you loose.

I’ve started a new one as basically an explorer/scavenger, least at the outset, I’ve run a couple shipment missions, killed some pirates who got in the way, salvaged a derelict I ran across and bought a couple of cheap ships for extra storage capacity.

I can feel the hooks slowly sinking in, I really didn’t want to stop tonight.

560

I had to force myself to stop playing lest nothing else get done for Space Game Junkie. I feel ya, mate.

561

Can someone breakdown for me how this compares to Star Traders: Frontiers, in terms of game scale, progression, overall vibe, and so forth? I’d be curious to hear a little about how they’re similar and how they’re different.

-Tom

562

Star Traders: Frontiers seems to have ground missions, which Starsector doesn’t (yet) have. Should Starsectors add ground missions prior to release?

563

Starsector have the raid mechanism that you can do against bases. It’ll need you to have a contingent of marines. I think that count as “ground missions”?

564

No, I mean combat with individual ground units or soldiers.

Or “tactical” combat or whatever.

565

I played a bit of Star Traders but it didnt really grab me so my impressions are biased.

  1. The world seems much more alive and dynamic in Starsector. The effect of approaching stars systems and having the factions generate and withdrawing contracts adds a LOT to the impression that the world is alive.

  2. The combat in Starsector is amazingly visceral compared to the highly abstract pew-pew in Star Trader. I read in the forum that if one master the piloting, it gets even better and just by looking at my ships auto-fight I think they are right in saying that!

  3. I checked out the modding structure. They are written in Java and allows for complex coding compared to just simplistic json tweaks. I have a feeling that this game is gonna stay in my drive for a long long time purely due to the fact that the customization is extremely flexible.

  4. On the other hand, Star Traders seem to be more “flavourful” in the campaign.

  5. YakAttack mentioned ground combat, which Starsector lacks. But I think it’s a plus in this case. Sometimes, the profusion of game systems detract from the gameplay. I’ll rather the game do 1 combat well than 2 half as well.

Starsector grabbed me really hard. I dont remember anything in the past 20 years grabbing me so much. Maybe Space Rangers, but even that excellent game is not as great as this game will be imo.

Edit: I’ve basically stopped playing anything else apart from this. Rebel Galaxy languishes and I abandoned my latest run at XCOM. This is really something!

566

I forgot about that! When I played it, that portion seemed to be a chore. It’s not as polished as Darkest Dungeon and feels tacked on.

Also, I the character classes is a huge gigantic list that is hard to figure out but turns out to be more like statistics and numbers. I could not get attached to the crew members and just relied on the auto assignment to allocate points I think.

567

@easytarget The others have posted some great starting tips to get you going, but I will add only one: try black market trading of drugs and organs. You can make a great profit pretty easily, and it is exciting trying to make sure you don’t run afoul of authorities.

@tomchick I was a KS backer of Star Traders: Frontiers, backing enough to get both Steam and iOS versions, so I was all in. @cicobuff’s assessment of the two is precisely mine.

I eventually tired of crew management in ST:F, and the space combat left me wanting. On the other hand, I cannot stop playing Starsector - I feel true tension as a I carry out my missions, there’s a ton of things to do, I love the tactical combat, the universe feels alive and foreboding. As I said upthread, it is everything I want in a space game.

568

Well, raiding, which uses marines, is (very abstracted) ground combat. But, it’s abstracted to the point that you can’t really call it combat. It’s just some numbers and percentages.