Are commissions mutually exclusive? If I’m currently signed up with hegemony would I have to resign that one to sign up with Tri?
They are mutually exclusive and you need to resign the Hegemony commission first, yes.
Development is in full swing on Kobold and Elgard. Once an industry is up and running on each world, farming for Kobold and mining for Elgard, attention turns to defenses. Patrol headquarters, ground defenses, and eventually high tech orbital stations are built around each moon. A waystation is built on Kobold as it will be the center of operations. Later one is built on Elgard so it can also benefit from the increased market access. Once credits have been allocated toward these building endeavors much of what remains from the almost 2.5 million credit nest egg, raised through bounty hunting, salvage and surveying in the pre-colonization days, goes into growth incentives.
A few trips are made back to the core worlds to bolster cash reserves and find opportunities to shore up standing with other factions. Chasing down system bounties again provides lots of both. There is even a pleasant surprise when stopping into a core world bar looking for contracts. There is someone willing to pay 100k to make a freight haul out to Lilith. Needless to say that contract was taken. It’s a good sign the colonies are doing well.
During this time, prior to any orbital stations being built, warning of a pirate raid forced an unplanned rush back home. When the fleet arrived scanners showed a huge slow moving pirate armada. With multiple capital ships it was larger than the main fleet could take on, and far larger than the few scrapped together frigates that made up the colonies’ patrols. Fortunately the armada spends a lot of time trying to chase down those patrols. An earlier decision to break down a domain era sensor buoy that was in the system and replace it with a makeshift nav buoy proves to have been the right one as the Summerstar fleet relies on superior burn to play cat and mouse with the armada. The pirate armada is unable to land a raid on any of the colonies and eventually leaves the system. Whew!
Between the orbits of Kobold and Elgard lies the third moon of Gren. A cryovolcanic moon whose freezing temperatures and extreme tectonic activity make it hostile to human life (hazard 200%), but a moon that contains a valuable abundance of both rare ores and volatile elements, as well as moderate ore deposits. The heavy industry planned for Kobold will benefit greatly from this source of raw materials. Despite its harsh conditions the last major moon of Gren is colonized. In tribute to an old legend of another icy, inhospitable land this colony is named “Greenland”. Given the name of its giant mother the name locally morphs to be pronounced as “grenlind”.
While large infusions of cash are necessary to incentive people to settle and stay on Greenland, especially during its first days, once the spaceport is built and the mines this colony too is profitable. Incentives are still required to grow the population, but at least the colony won’t wither away if the incentives dry up.
Months pass. The Summerstar fleet roams in search of money and reputation as the colonies grow. With spaceports, waystations, and orbital stations to increase access to core world markets big money from exports starts flowing in. Much is invested into growth. Some is spent to bolster the main fleet as high tech blueprints found earlier are put to use. A second Apogee cruiser and couple of Medusa destroyers are added to the fleet. The first medusa was built to replace a hammerhead that had been disabled in battle and still bore the scars in its compromised armor. While the fleet is still experimenting to find an loadout that the average captain can use effectively, the ship is turning out to be a favorite and a second was quickly commissioned.
The earth-like moons Kobold and Elgard now are home to hundreds of thousands of people. Though Kobold began as a farming colony it now boats an orbital works. Its spaceport has been upgraded to a megaport and it is now a thriving center of commerce. Light industry on Elgard now provides the necessities and luxuries of life to the colonies. Its patrol headquarters eventually expands to become a military base. Greenland has grown as well. Tens of thousands now inhabit its domes and work in the mines and refineries.
As the colonies grow, so does Hector Summerstar’s experience and ability to administer them. In addition to Gren the gas giant there is one more planet orbiting Lilith. A large barren ringed world that has extensive domain era ruins. It has no atmosphere, and it’s unbearably hot, but a tech mining operation may be lucrative and perhaps provide some of the rarer weapons and blueprints that have so far remained elusive. Plans are laid for when the time seems right to further expand.
Man you guys got me playing this again, and what a cool game. I just died after about 25 hours in. Grabbed a colony with ridiculous stats. Little did I know you need a lot of money and a big fleet first. So I revive, and I still have my colony. Maybe this isn’t so bad I think, I put a tanker and freighter in storage, maybe I can do some tavern deals and come back. I grab the ships, come out, and immediately die to more pirates.
There’s no deadwood in this design. If it’s not interesting or fun, it’s not in the game.
Such a shame about the small text. It’s the only thing that is really ‘wrong’ with the game. Well, that, and the UI which is a frankenstein monster of various arms and legs stuck to a torso. But even that’s polish. The text is the biggee.
Hey, if I don’t fly my ship myself, do I still get the ‘piloted ship’ bonuses? Thanks.
Yeah, so far I just can’t stop playing it, I know I’ll wear it out, but I’ll wear it out having fun and then get to look forward to more content in probably like 2 years, haha.
Pretty sure you do get your bonuses on your ship, I pretty much never pilot it myself unless the AI starts doing something really dumb with it and tries to get it destroyed. Which as it just so happens took place last night against a base that had fleet support. Very nearly lost 2 battleships. What I wonder is, if your ship does get destroyed do you die with it? Do my pilots come to think of it that I’ve recruited and slotted in ships die if their ship gets destroyed?
Same. It’s been weeks and I keep expecting to tire of it, but that hasn’t happened. I’m kind of obsessed with building up my fleet and my wallet before tackling colony development. Lately I’m mostly flying around collecting bounties for destroying pirate bases. Sometimes I get in over my head and run the hell out of the system using my nifty new transverse power. Fun times.
For those that don’t pilot much in battles, as you get a bigger fleet I would recommend trying again with just a destroyer or frigate. That way if you are ineffective not much is lost, but if you can swoop in and deliver finishing blows here and there you can make a big difference. Also try to find battles where you are helping out allies to mitigate the risk of screwing up while piloting. Even though I have a few cruisers now, I still just pilot my autopulse laser equipped Sunder to deliver bursts of damage where needed.
The most important tip I can give for piloting in battles is pause often and get your bearings. It doesn’t need to be played like an action game. Especially when using the mouse steering mode I pause a lot to re-position the pointer so as to get the lead I want.
Yeah, have to give that a try just for entertainment purposes. I’ve got a couple smaller but deadly ships I could mess with in a battle.
I spend most of my time switching back over to the tactical view to make sure what’s happening everywhere is still OK and no one is getting ganged up on (and if they are I order support over there, so I suppose I could be that support).
The tactical view though is so handy to get the whole battle picture and easily check I’ve not burned thru too much CR on particular ships that tabbing back and forth to that is how I spend most of my time in battles. Watch the pretty effects for the fun, manage the battle from the tactical screen to control things.
My colonies are now cranking out the dough. With four colonies in one system the overlapping defenses of one military base and three patrol HQs are now repulsing smaller pirate raids without me having to race back home every time.
Very nice! Four colonies in one sector is a sweet set up. I just turned on AI running two of my colonies in my 1st two colonies just to see what would happen.
As expected the luddic activity kicked in, nothing much yet to worry about. The interesting part is hegemony are sending an AI inspect in 2 months, at which point they’re going to die running into heavy batteries and a battle-station (that in 180 days will be a star fortress which cost me a cool million just for that upgrade alone).
I’ll be amused to see two things in the near future:
- how much of a ding I take on my relations with hegemony as a result of them getting themselves blown into small pieces by my defenses, it cracks me up the idea I have a commission with these guys and they’re attacking me
- whether anything can ever penetrate a star fortress for a colony that’s already sporting 5600 defense rating
Well, I discovered this much today:
- you lose 10 pts diplomacy when they do the inspection and find cores
- and this is the part that is pissing me off, they take the cores (and if you catch their fleet and blow it up, like I did, you don’t recover those cores
Net: any time I get a report they are showing up I’m either going to figure out how to temporarily remove them, of if that’s not possible, destroy the hegemony fleet when they show up
I’ve read that if they find far fewer cores than expected that can also cause a relations hit. Though I’d image it would be less than the one incurred if you blow up their fleet.
Yeah, next time I get a warning I’ll try and remove them and see what happens. Shame I can’t instruct my planet defenses to attack them.
I think my next area of exploration in the game is sorting what happens when you turn on heavy industry and attempt to build your own fleet. My guess is still more attention from everyone in the form of hostile fleets.
It is by far easier to just bribe them.
Edit: Although turning dark and ambushing them will net you some greet additions to your fleet =)
Do you have to intercept them in order to bribe them?
The bribe is accessed in the Intel screen. Click on the mission, and then on the right panel, you’ll see the options available, where you can choose to
- stand down and let them do what they want, or
- oppose them, which will start a war or
- bribe them
Ah, good, so you don’t have to hang out in sector in order to do this.
Have to give that a go once I fire up heavy industry and expect even more traffic in my main two colonies where there’s already a surprising amount of traffic. I’ll be interested in seeing how much it costs and how much it increases over time.
It’s like a few hundred grand. Personally I love to get to my home world just a few days before they arrive, turn off my transponder and then ambush them for the exp and loot! If you turn off transponder before they arrive, they wont know it’s you and you take a very minimal rep hit.
Hmm, I must have had my transponder on and didn’t realize it when I took them out once they did the inspection and I realized they were taking the cores.
That’s a good idea you’ve got there if you can turn off transponder and take them out w/o them realizing who you are and taking a diplomacy ding for it.
If I’m near home when I get the alert I’m definitely giving that a go, thanks for the tip.
Heavy industry will start to attract Luddic Path cells. Two of my words have active cells at the moment. So far they haven’t succeeded in carrying out any terror attacks. My ample patrols are probably catching their smugglers.
What seems to attract the interest of the major factions is market share. I’ve had two expeditions sent after my worlds so far after reaching 10% market share in some commodities. One fleet I destroyed, the other I paid off for 100k (which I didn’t realize I could do when the first one came, the option is shown when you select the entry in the intel screen). The reputation hit I took was easily repaired with a little system bounty action. I’m still cooperative with all the major factions except the Diktat which I haven’t interacted with much.
The details on the intel screen will tell you how large a pirate raid or faction expedition is, and how effective their ground forces might me. Remember that in order to prevent a planetary raid all you need to do is be in the area. You don’t necessarily need to defeat the enemy fleet. As I mentioned above the first huge pirate raid on my colonies was too big for my fleet to defeat but just dancing around it while staying close to my planets prevented them from raiding and they eventually left. I don’t know if this will also work for major faction expeditions.