I just keep on dieing

[Zigster]

Gday, so I got starwolves 3 on steam recently. Seems like a game I should enjoy, but it's just frustrating the crap out of me. It seems to be: try and find the path that doesn't get you instantly killed, rather than about making actual choices. But I don't know, maybe I'm just playing it wrong or something.

I'm at the stage where I've got Greyhair, so I'm up to three pilots (Two 2nd gen fighters, 1 first gen). I'm still stuck on the mission to get the third mothership from the pirates, I can't fight them because I just die every single time no matter what I do, so I can pay them 300g (all my money) and get the ship without dieing. OK. Then I delay the main quest line to do another job for Alex to earn some cash to improve my ships so I don't just get owned by anything more than 3 novice pirates. Yet this mission causes me to die every single time from pirate attacks trying to get to the objective to meet Alex.

So now I'm back trying to get the mothership without paying 300g, so I can upgrade it and the fighters and hopefully not just get owned by absolutely everything. But it seems basically impossible. Can't fast travel because the stupid thing won't let me repair my ships before it asks me, having just spent hours figuring out how to escape from a quest where I have all these people chasing me (Greyhair needed to dock -inside the mothership- to change the ID, the mothership didn't need to dock at a station to change the ID like it did JUST before in another mission, oh-my-god).

So by process of elimination, I guess I need to buy the mothership for 300g, then choose one of the two options to continue the main quest. Instead of foolishly following my characters advice to delay the main quest to earn some money to upgrade my ships so I hopefully wouldn't get owned during the main quest. Hopefully one of these two options will not result in instant death, and I can progress. But really, if this is what I'm going to have to do for the whole story line... I'm not sure I can be bothered.

There really doesn't seem to be any tactics, choice, or... strategy. It's just like a maze, with dead ends. You just have to turn around and find the "right path", ie, the one where you don't instantly die.

So, what the hell am I doing wrong? Or am I really expected to get the "game over" screen over and over and over again until I find the right quest path?

And for my mothership, there is a type of weapon that I can't find anywhere to buy, "major calibre gun". Haven't seen one in any trade station yet. Is this the reason I'm dieing so much? Is there an actual practical solution to stop dieing so much or is that just part of the game?

My setup atm is: Two 2nd gen fighters with 4 light guns each. One 1st gen Fighter with heavy guns and missiles. All of them have shield boosters and personal missile defence systems. My Mothership has 2 scorcher turrets and a bardiche turret, and buffalo and hawk systems. I know I need a repair system for my mothership, but can't afford it yet.

I want to keep going, but there's a limit to how many times I'm going to "repeat" missions and such, and I'm getting pretty close to it now. So any help would be appreciated.

Cheers.

[Scoob]

Hi,

Got the game a while back but recently started playing again. I'm using the Mod Pack, found here so things are both a little more difficult (missiles, missiles, missiles) as well as a little easier (better ships to buy if you have the money)

Early-game both the mothership and your Fighters are a bit rubbish. However, your fighters abilities really depend largely on how you've invested your skills. I find that giving my pilots (I too just have my character, Ternie and Greyhair at the moment) at least the first anti-missile usage perk is essential, as well as at least basic piloting and a couple of weapon acuracy perks before they become effective.

Equipment-wise I try to ensure I have at least the 2nd-level passive (flare) missile defence installed on all my fighters, as well as an extra shield. Weapon selection is also critical of course. Pilots with poor aim skill (perks) are better off with LOW accuracy weapons with a HIGH rate of fire. Once your pilots have a couple of perks bought (check the perk descriptions) they start to be better with medium to high accuracy guns - which usually have a lower rate of fire = every shot counts. I've recently promoted my character to "sniper" level of accuracy so he uses lasers now. As a bonus he also just got the "laser proficiency" perk (i think it's called) to give some bonus damage and accuracy. This means he can one-shot Gen 1 fighters easily.

Basically reading and understanding the pilot perk free is essential. There are perks to improve accuracy as I mentioned, perks that enable a pilot to get a bit more speed or manueverability out of a given ship (over base stats) as well as get better shield recharge - these are passive skills. There are also the special active skill perks such as rapid shot, sniper shot etc. all of which can help but need to be manually acitivated.

Personally I did not do the mission to get the new motherships you talk about - I stuck with the Mastiff a little longer before buying something better as the mod I use allows. Still, I did keep the Mastiff for quite some time. To keep it alive I invested in better shields (ones that give +1,500 shield) a tier 3 anti-missile system (very effective) and a good hull-repair system. Turret-wise I got some excellent Shining Turrets early game from a loot-drop - see the hidden cache thread here for some excellent tips.

As a gameplay tactic I also often micro-manage my fighters. Against weak pirates I'll often simply launch my fighters and assign them to guard the mothership so they engage as they see fit. Against stronger, ranked foes I'll directly order them to attack a given target, use missiles and special skills as needed. This does really help. In longer battles I'll also not be afraid to retreat and dock a damaged fighter and bring it back into the battle once repaired and rearmed with missiles. There are perks (Polarizer) that can give certain pilots the ability to insta-recharge a fighters shields during combat - very very useful and worth checking out in the perk tree.

You can buy fighter repair devices to repair in-flight - however these require the ship equipped with the device to enter repair mode, which means they no longer fire themselves. Early game that's taking one third off your fighter groups firepower which is too much in my view. Same logic applies to the active missile defence modules for fighters - the pilot in so equipped ships needs to be in anti-missile mode, so doesn't fight. I always go with the best passive (flare) missile defence I can get hold of - and fit it to all my fighters.

It's also essential to not let your mothership get swamped while it's still under-shielded = it'll go down quickly in those situations. However, once you mothership is a little better equipped, there are situations where it can hold out long enough to defeat a given foe where you fighters will get insta-toasted - laser equipped foes are a good example of this. In these situations I often pop my character in the drivers seat of the Mothership as he's better at using the equipped lasers, recharging the shields, repairing the hull and shooting down missiles that the motherships firmware. Plus he gets the experience for the kills. I recently bought better fighters over the starting ones so now it pays to launch them again.

You mentioned heavy weapons... The Mastiff can mount a single large-calibre front gun. These can be effective for taking down larger enemies but are totally ineffective vs. fighters as they rely on the motherships ability to face the target. Usually, at best, they'll get off a shot or two (that misses!) against smaller targets before the turrets take over. You can get insta-hit weapons, but I've not seen any early-game.

Regarding the Motherships turret weapons - I found the Gatling and Vulcan rapid-fire (but low accuracy) turrets to be fairly good early-game. There are other kinnetic guns that do more damage, but have LOW accuracy and a low rate of fire so miss most of the time. The rapid-fire nature of the Gatling and Vulcan help compensate for low-accuracy. Note: the Firmware AI will always be pretty average at everything, so popping an experience pilot in the drivers seat every now and again can really help.

Note: very early in the game, if you go off-mission (i.e. not where you are told to go) there is a scripted HUGE pirate ambush that kills you. I think you can free-roam to a certain degree once you have the Mastiff so that's the time to explore, gain experience etc.

One thing I do, now I have a strong ship and fighters, to "farm" experience and equipment is to attack any Pirate stations I find. Attacking a pirate station usually causes a scripted fleet to jump in to defend it. This fleet consists of 2 - 4 Mastiffs and 10 - 20 fighters so can be quite a battle. Very rewarding though. As my Mothership is well shielded I usually use it as a tank to soak up enemy fire. Its largely immune to missiles due to its excellent anti-missile system, but normal guns can hurt it. The AI tends to go for what attacked it, to I attack the pirate station with my mothership, let the pirate fleet enage and only then launch my fighters and micro-mange them. Fun but challenging.

One finaly thing. If you're not adverse to restarting I really do recommend the mod-pack - it wasn't around during my first playthrough and I'm loving it. You've proven your ability to earn good money early-game and that money would buy you a very good MS (better than Mastiff) for 200,000cr from any of the Maintennace Stations dotted around the game. The mission you're doing to get the "Astarte" I think it's called might not seem so appealing when you already have a good ship.

Sorry for the longish post, trying to brain dump when I'm not near my gaming machine. Hope this helps, feel free to ask questions as I'm in the Starwolves zone this month lol.

Cheers,

Scoob.