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.
Thrag
845
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.
Despite many hours in this game, I’m kind of stuck getting to the level where I can build a colony. My commander is level 27, and I have a strong fleet of 12 ships. But I only hover around $350K, and the missions I get are either too difficult, or not lucrative enough to do more than break even. In other words, the missions I can complete bring in around $100k, but that ends up getting spent on repairs and supplies. Higher yield missions are too difficult and I get decimated and have to reload.
In short, I’m stalled. I don’t know enough about comparing ships and weapons to know how to effectively upgrade either. I’m spinning my wheels. Mostly I’m doing bounty missions to destroy pirate fleets or pirate bases. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thrag
847
Personal bounty and pirate base missions have high overhead. Get a few colossus freighters and look for transport missions in bars. Some are really high paying without a lot of risk if you have the burn to stay out of trouble.
With militarized subsystems and augmented field drives you can have both high burn and high cargo capacity.
Thanks, I’ll give that a try.
Thrag
849
Also to help break even on combat get a salvage rig or two and also equip support ships like your tankers with salvage gantries. When you assess fresh large debris fields you want to see a percent well over one hundred.
At some point make sure to do some exploring. With high salvage exploring ruins and other things you find can be lucrative and it’s very important to find good blueprints before starting colonies. Use an explore mission to fund an expedition and explore as much as you can on the way. Make sure to have support ships with surveying equipment to keep supply costs down.
Plus you’ll want to find that ideal system to colonize, and I do emphasize system, not planet. Rich but high hazzard worlds in the same system as habitable worlds can be very useful and profitable. My 200 hazard world is currently my biggest source of income.
Thank you! I’ll give those a go. So much to do here!
Thrag
851
I misspoke about one thing, the max salvage number you get is not from debris fields but when you salvage a derelict ship. With the skill bonus and salvage equipment I currently get a 194% max value.
Thrag
852
I just took on a domain mothership and received a pristine nanoforge! It was a huge risk as I still lack a capital ship in my fleet. I went in with three plasma cannon equipped Apogees, four Medusae, four drovers with a variety of high tech and remnant figters, and my Sunder. Since domain automated defense ships are slow and don’t have great range I was able to use superior range and speed to wear them down and defeat them.
Thrag
853
Installing the combat stats mod was a good decision.
That looks cool as shit. But other than looking cool as shit, does the data help? I don’t mean that in a snarky way, I’m truly curious.
Thrag
855
It does help in that you can see which weapons on your ships are actually being effective.
Yes, that would be helpful. Do you know if you can install it mid-game or only on a new start?
Thrag
857
You can install mid game.
That’s awesome - I hope that ends up being part of the main game (I know a few other popular mods have already).
