Opening moves?

[Zhuangzi]

I wouldn't worry about the Scout base upgrades for now. Basically it will be cheaper to find better equipment at this early stage. Learn how to use the search function - it is definitely your friend. With your first ship, you need to trade in the crappy equipment you start off with for better and smaller stuff. The size is VERY important. Ideally you want most or all of your equipment to be size 20 or below. No size 60 grippers.

Once you have done a couple of quests and gotten some smaller equipment, you should have at least 100 free space on your ship. This means you can start making a profit from trading goods. I don't generally find it too useful to deliberately go to a system for trading per se, but I always make sure to have a look at what's on offer in every system I visit. I only buy things that have three 'thumbs up' signs in the buy column (you'll see what I mean). Be warned that you can't buy weapons or drugs without a big negative effect on your reputation, so I wouldn't bother. But equipment, medicine and sometimes luxuries are good bets. I don't use trade a hell of a lot, but it can get you going financially early on.

Other marginal activities for money including picking up minerals from asteroids (which hardly nets you any profit) or buying research probes to mine empty planets. This is okay, but still isn't that spectacular. Ultimately, in SR2 you will make your money from two main sources: quests, and selling Dominator parts.

QUESTS

At the beginning of the game, you are much too weak to successfully destroy pretty much anything. You are also too slow to stop enemies from landing on planets or otherwise getting away. So you definitely want to steer clear of anything where you need to destroy any ships. Ship escort missions aren't that much better, because the routine pirates will be far too strong for you. The only thing I'll say here is that there's no requirement to actually escort the ship you are supposed to be defending. It only has to survive until the specified date. So you can sometimes win these quests without lifting a finger. But it's risky.

Some people hate the real time strategy battles, but I quite enjoy them, and they are quite easy for most of the game. They also ramp up in reward quickly. So I would recommend learning how to win these RTS battles. I can write more on this topic if required. The easiest type of quests are probably the 'fed-ex' type (in which you must deliver something somewhere, and sometimes return too). The key to succeeding here is not so much engine speed but JUMP RANGE. At the beginning, you will have a jump range of 18-20. This is bad, because you will need to make several small jumps to reach a specific system. Time is taken up, not by the jumps themselves, but the intra-stellar travel (i.e. within a system). This sucks, because you will normally need to re-fuel every time you make a jump (unless you have a big fuel tank, of course). So you need an engine with a bigger jump range, and a bigger fuel tank. In my current game (which I've only just started) I was lucky enough to find a micromodule which when put on the engine increases jump distance by 8. So now I can perform jumps of 30 parsecs or whatever it is, and reach the destination system in less jumps. This translates into a much higher chance of completing fed-ex quests on time.

Then there are the text adventures. These are great and I highly recommend giving them a try whenever you get the chance.

DOMINATORS

Later in the game, you will spend a lot of time fighting the Dominators who have taken over a sizable chunk of the galaxy. You will also find that several systems are routinely attacked by the Dominators. But of course the Doms will own you if you try to attack them. One great money spinner, however, is to lurk around Dominator fights hoping to pick up the equipment they drop when they blow up. This stuff is VERY valuable. The nodes are less important, but you can pick them up too if you want. It takes a bit of experience to know when the coalition forces are going to win a fight against the Dominators, and in truth I still need to quickload a bit when trying this, but if you pull it off you can score some great stuff. The stuff can be sold in the normal fashion, or even better, at scientific stations. They pay top dollar in the name of Dominator research, and this contributes toward winning the game as well.

[jfp3]

Great offering there Z. This is the type of info that helps get us Noobs going with the game. 2 Questions:

At what point should one consider taking on single Pirates? What ship setup for a Merchant for instance?

and

When one does the RTS elements, do Robots made for "repair" do those repairs themselves or do you need to micro manage them? I wonder about this because the battles seem to go quite fast (I've only done the training one so far) and it seems it would be really rough to micromanage much of anything.

Anyone else have something to add here?

[jake21]

I managed to stick to a game for a while (6 or 7 hours) without having to restart (I'm playing a non-human trader) (pink) (I wish i could remember which icon went with which race other than blue is huaman )
--
Anyways this will mostly be a repeat of what Z said (btw I'm playing on the easiest level but i'm not sure if that only influence time per quest or also combat).

Unlike the other games I avoid helping request to fight off pirate. In the other game I found it made a lot of planets and other folks hate me. I worry that by not helping I'm pissing someone else off but so far it hasn't been too bad. I always try to explore black hole (save first) and avoid all escort/kill request - cept one. i did my first kill quest with success (i asked everyone near by to help me whack the smuck). The biggest problem I have with kill request (in addition to fear that it will piss people off and I'm too weak) is that the scum always runs to a planet and it becomes a pain to actually kill anyone (at least with my current fire power).

I'm not sure if it is luck or normal after 5 or 6 hours but I've found some really nity items:
I found an artifact that allows me to hyperspace 40 psc and some weapons that do 30 or so damage as well as an artifact that gives me 3 more artifact (but I can't seem to use it since my ship has 4 artifact slot and using it doesn't add 3 more - but still removes a droid slot).

I've no where near 100 cargo space and Ithink the only way I could get that would be to buy a new hull (my hull is around 300 and i've been eyeing one that is 420 (iff the yellow boxes with a number represent the size of the hull you are buying).

I've seen some nifty items I can't afford (I'm up to around 10,000 coins which is a *lot* compared to my other starts).

So far the rts have been pretty easy iff i set up a quick defense with repairer. I've had more problems in the blackholes (I find the controls not so good) but the rewards are pretty good there if you win (usually an artifact).

Probes are making me some money and I think they are better than Z. alluded to (at least in the early game) but I've not figured out much about nodes.

The rts controls are a pain (you can't create sub groups and the robots will charge forward unless you expl. hit stop so they need a lot of micro management - the repair thingy do not repair themselves so I always build repair bots in pairs). Switching into a robot gives you the best since you can shoot further (not sure why this is the case). What I do is set up a cluster or bots with repairer at some point - switch into a bot - go forward and attack - when I take hits - back up until the repairer is fixing me up. If I get too damaged i can switch into another bot. I'm not sure if it is because I'm playing on the lowest level or near the start of the game but so far it seems like the computer is not excessively agressive with all parties. It seems that one or two (usually red and sometime blue) will be quite aggressive but green is almost always very passive.

Originally Posted by jfp3

Great offering there Z. This is the type of info that helps get us Noobs going with the game. 2 Questions:

At what point should one consider taking on single Pirates? What ship setup for a Merchant for instance?

and

When one does the RTS elements, do Robots made for "repair" do those repairs themselves or do you need to micro manage them? I wonder about this because the battles seem to go quite fast (I've only done the training one so far) and it seems it would be really rough to micromanage much of anything.

Anyone else have something to add here?

[warbob1991]

Well i don't really like it but i tink that in space rangers you HAVE to use the cheat points (very good idea to add them!).I do that inspite of i hate cheaters but if you don't use some small cheats like 10k gold(belive me that is enough only to get fuel and repeir in about 8 years after beggining the game) you are never going to finish the game unless you are a pro !Sometime your money just go down and down and you can't buy equipment and the biggest trouble - you don't have enought money to repeir your hull full your tank or repeir the items !You can't even get some stuped mission no matter how dum it is cause you are low hull no fuel and outside waits 1 or 2 pirаtе who hate you so much that even if they attack someone they stop and go for you!If you don't want to start over you have yo use a tiny cheat!But not always whne you can or you will ruin the fun of the game!But honestly you must tink about some things like weight of the items!Money is always a problem so you have to but heavier items and one time it happened that if i want a good quality ship ( i meen radar droid scaner and stuff) there was no space for wepons .So i suggest 3 options.1)make things a bit less expensive.2)make even the heaviest things weight less.3)make the hulls bigger!I tink option 3) is the best for us gamers cause if you happen to save money then you can actualy use the hook to get something aboard over 20tons

[jfp3]

Nice tips gents, perfect for this thread. I wonder if anyone out there can give some hints about starting as another race?

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by jfp3

Great offering there Z. This is the type of info that helps get us Noobs going with the game. 2 Questions:

At what point should one consider taking on single Pirates? What ship setup for a Merchant for instance?

and

When one does the RTS elements, do Robots made for "repair" do those repairs themselves or do you need to micro manage them? I wonder about this because the battles seem to go quite fast (I've only done the training one so far) and it seems it would be really rough to micromanage much of anything.

Anyone else have something to add here?

I wouldn't take on pirates until my second hull. Depending on the difficulty, you might be able to do it in the third year of the game or even earlier. One thing to keep in mind is that the equipment available gets better as time passes, so it's not really feasible to take on pirates at the beginning (at least not on normal and hard difficulty).

Particular setups for different classes (merchant etc) don't seem to be necessary in this game. The initial choices you make aren't actually as important as you might think. So essentially you want a ship with a big hull, defensive cladding and all the slots for equipment. Three weapon slots is usually enough. Missiles are very useful early in the game.

In the RTS battles, I have a very simple formula that seems to work well 90% of the time. I only build one type of robot. Fullstack (i.e. four weapon slots), usually with dynamo and mortar as well. The weapons will vary slightly depending on the available resources, but I think that two rocket launchers, one spitfire and one repairer works well. Plasma cannon is great but uses too much of the plasma resource. Repairing will happen automatically when the robots don't have an order, so you don't need to micromanage this. Essentially, I've decided that missiles in the RTS battles own everything. This actually works best when you are retreating from the enemy. It is also VERY easy to lure the enemy robots toward your own robots/defenses. I always build missile turrets and some heavy cannon turrets too. If there are three turret slots, I build two missile and one cannon.

A team of nine of these robots can defeat most enemies without losing more than one robot, often none. Then you repair back to full health. You need to be aggressive in the RTS battles in terms of taking the available resources. Try to let the Dominators fight amongst themselves if you can. Because the robot cap is very low, you want the best robots you can possibly get.

[jake21]

How do you tell how large a hull is (before you buy it) ? At first I thought the number was the hull size but now I think it is the armor - not cubic space ...

[Zhuangzi]

The hull size has three little boxes nearby, and it should be in the range of 250 - 600 (much later in the game).

EDIT: I see the problem. The hull size and hit points are the same. 285 hit points equals 285 hull space.

[Zhuangzi]

To give an idea of what I consider to be a reasonable start, I am now up to Nov 3302 in my game, i.e. almost three game years. I started as a Peleng Merchant. This is on 143% difficulty, which is essential Hard but with normal Dominator strength. For most of this time, my money has hovered around 5,000 - 10,000, but I've finally got it up toward 15,000 now. This is still very small. I am now in a position to consider buying a new hull, because 285 is just too small.

I was able to do several 'fed-ex' missions due to my comparatively high jump distance (30 with Farstar micromodule). I have completely avoided attacking any ships, which means no hitman missions, and I've also avoided defending freighters etc. I usually pay pirates if I can't outrun them. One tip with the fed-ex quests: you can ask for easier or harder versions of the same mission. Quite often I found that the destination system was within my jump distance, which meant I could always reach it in less than a month. This meant I could take the harder option for more cash.

The other easy way to make money is doing the real-time battles. These are most commonly available in systems that have just been liberated from the dominators. So it can pay to visit a system that the coalition is attacking, try to shoot a small Dominator ship (like a Shtip) in order to get a reward AND then another reward for the RTS battles. Oh and you should be picking up Dominator equipment and selling them at science stations. But sometimes you will enter a system and see four Equentors (the biggest Dominators). Then it's time to run.

So I finally upgraded all the equipment I had, which means I have some fairly good stuff for this stage of the game, but now I need a new hull. Size 350 or 400 is required for now, and it's important to get one that has all the equipment modules. These are most expensive, of course.

EDIT: if you get stuck on a text quest, here are the solutions. This is from the now defunct Elemental Games forum. There are a few new text quests in Reboot that aren't covered here. I recommend trying all the text quests yourself, but a few of them are fiendishly difficult and may need a spoiler:

http://www.elementalgames.com/forum/...e=42&page=auto

[jake21]

Ack. The rts just got a lot harder and now i'm stuck

Green keeps rushing me with like 10 robots and whacking me good. Which weapon do you use on your robot - i've been using launcher (full stack) since it has both the greatest damage and longest fire range but maybe there is something better ?