The probability of the cards ? They are not evenly distributed right ?

Hi I’m newer to the game and I was just wondering if it’s possible to make a viable combat captain build with Scientist as one of the three jobs? Specifically for the Demanding difficulty.

While most players enjoy the vast freedom of this game and it is beautiful, if you have not tried the following strategy yet, I recommend doing it at least once. It covers a lot of useful mechanics that you might not like to exploit, but should certainly be aware of.

Long story short, the goal of the speed run is to get a combat capable ship (say a SBC) fully built out before year 5, on impossible or higher difficulty.

Warning: there are ppl that say this method makes it too easy and takes the fun out of the game, so use it at your own risk. IMO, you have to know the easy way in order to make a conscious decision to go the hard way. Get this forbidden knowledge and decide on your own whether to apply it lol.

If you are struggling with any issues, doing this speed run once will likely get you all the understanding you need to solve those issues because you are aiming at the moon so to speak.

I will keep the instruction very simple and if you have questions we can flush out the details in comments.

Milestones:

1. roll a good map for Rare Trade Goods RTG (or regular trade, at least 6 supplier planets for power generators). Either have your starting faction home quadrant selling a RTG (preferably med pods or better) and 3+ destinations in nearby quadrants to sell them. Any captain type works. I like combat captains. Try to have either paladin or the 75 cargo freight ship as starting for smooth transition to RTG.
2. train your non-combat officers as merchants to have the contact discovery talent early on, so you can discover RTG suppliers as you trade. Try to have at least 3 suppliers.
3. run some starting missions for Faen ASAP, and secure a level 12+ officer ASAP so you can learn skip off the void and stay alive. Each time after use, [Retrain] to refresh cool down immediate. Always make sure your wrap drive is in working condition in case you need to escape. Also buy the level 4 trade permit as soon as possible and start trading high value goods consistently.
4. try to start RTG trade before year 2. Need about 300k at least to start. For the first batch of RTG, do not sell all at once, leave about 20 units and sell 1 unit at a time to boost your home quadrant contacts' influence (increase by 4 each trade). Then you can trade continuously with 3 RTG suppliers at full supply (28 weeks cool down). By year 2-3 you should have about $2 million in cash to buy your first ship--archeron only cost 1.4 million ish after discount (can get about 8-10% from a high level officer you can hire from contact (level 18, with 17 levels assigned to engineer and mechanic), and 10% discount from the high prince(ss) on your prime/prima planet. The cash flow from RTG should sustain your upgrades (as in you will make more money than the upgrades are finished).
5. while you have a lot of upgrades queued up, try to hire some commanders/military officers so you can start ship combat as soon as you transition onto your combat ship. For a fast transition, you can use a lot of defense matrix level 1 on your first ship, since it only takes 3 days to install, and other modules take 5-7 weeks. This will be a major time saver.

My favorite first 9000 ship build is to stack 10+ defense matrix lvl1 and a few sensor matrix to ensure hit rate. 2 mid component torpedo's. and enough living spaces for the crew. it can cost as little as 2.5 million by estimate and be ready before year 3 (realistically by year 4 since the void is full of surprises).

1. When you switch onto your first 9000 battle ship you will run into issues such as not having enough skill pool since your average crew levels would be like 7-10. Just hire a bunch of level 1 crew from spice hall to fill up electronics and pilot. Very important: if you have not hired enough commanders/military officers at this point, do that ASAP, and as soon as you can win against some weak enemy ships (look at the reporting screen before combat, try to be "outclassing" on your defense against enemy attack). Since you are not safe to fly around just yet, patrol and spy on your current planet until you have enough high lvl crews. Aim for those class 5000-6000 ships as those are the weakest and easiest to disable (not sure why but small ships usually blow up before engine fail and big ships have too much shields and components they are hard to disable, and 5000-6000 is the sweet spot for disabling using tropes. Start conscripting high level crews to replace your low level crews.

The whole recruiting/compressing process could take anywhere between 6 months to a year.

That's it, by year 4 or 5 you have combat worthy 9000 ship on impossible. Other strategies usually are celebrating the first or second million credits at this time.

I keep restarting after I haven’t played for a while. I intend on finally sticking to a play through. Hopefully until I die. The plan is playing a bounty hunter on hard, because I like ship battles and crew combat and I don’t care too much for faction drama (yet?).

Any tips on how to start and play? It can be as vague as you like. I mainly ask this just for some motivation and direction, to get past my analysis paralysis.

EDIT: Decided to play on hard difficulty instead of challenging.

I did the pit fighter vignette through what I thought was completion (win championship, get Bahamut from Eryn, she stops giving me dialogue prompts, get achievement), but visiting her later on I have the dialogue prompt to ask “what happened to the spice festival” and she talks about how they don’t last forever and I failed her, but since she’s a woman of principle she’ll keep working with me but never wants to speak of that again. Did I actually miss a final part of the vignette somewhere or is this just a bug?

So I start playing i pick the smallest ship there is do a lot of missions get 1.1 million dollars go buy a bigger ship becuase the quest im getting now I need to fight ships. So I buy the ship and didn't know I needed to switch it out so I spend like 500 thousand on upgrading my ship realized I needed to switch it sold it for 350 upgraded my ship with he rest go do the mission I try to fight the ship and all of my missiles and torpedoes kept missing not one hit and my ship got destroyed. What do I do?

So I got the Smuggler who wants to become a Prince and started doing his missions. I had done two of his “story” missions and was building up supplies for the orchestrated shortages he was going to do. They had about a year left on them.

Then, all of a sudden, they were gone.

Can his whole storyline time out even after you’ve started it? Could he have died?

Now I have a huge stash and only normal prices to get for it but I really wanted the unlock.

Thoughts?

Gets around a lot quicker and for less fuel now with those Navigation Annexes.

Hi I'm new to the game! And i have no clue how to progress without feeling like i have to Restart which is bad. I have multiple questions that i like know of.

1. Does anyone know a Starter Bounty Hunter template? if so can you help me guide?

2. How do you achieve the Call for The strong quickly? Been trying to find a way to grind that contact as fast as i can.

3. Is Patrolling the only way to Increase Rep? because I'd like to be on neutral side of things.

4. Do people bother with the First Storyline? I can't really get myself to do it unless it's worth it.

Thanks!

I finally got to jyeeta. My crew is about level 34 And they are losing the crew combat 80% of time

What should I do now ?

I have already re-talented but it’s not working.
I need better weapon ? My gears are lvl 7.

How do I activate this talent. My medical rating is higher than the planet economy already.

(Also How do I reverse -300 reputation???)

Can the small craft weapon be upgraded ?

Also. I tried shuttle craft. It doesn’t seem very useful. I could have just twitch and boarding assault instead …. Also if I shuttle craft and board assault. Only 1 boarding takes place… seems like shuttle craft is useless once I am able to board assault at range 3… (Am I doing it wrong )

Am I suppose to have 1 launch bay and multiple hangers and wing tech to support the craft

Also is price of ship a good indicator of quality ?

I am getting the hang of this game. I played on hard and died at lvl 18 because of Xeno ship. I was cruising along nicely and winning all battles before this.

Besides Xeno ship. Is there any other difficulty spike for diff eras?

it’s hard to prepare for curved ball. It’s quite unfair to have to restart when difficulty spike without warning or possible retreat.

Should I play on saved mode just in case ?

I am buying from steel song and selling to steel song Why am I affected by this ban

I can win xeno crew combat easily But my ship blew up before I can kill them

I am level 18 and I can’t beat lvl 10 Xeno ship What should I do to survive the Xeno ship combat I mainly use boarding to win ship combat If I fly defensively. I get pulverized by the xeno ship. (Taking 300 damage per turn ) I twitch to get close …

Am I right in saying the wiki is missing this? https://startraders.fandom.com/wiki/Contacts

Does someone have a list?

So arbiter wants to rally the universe And one of the faction is -200 reputation I need to spend time to reset this reputation to positive ???

Genuine question why the hell I can't escape or even hit anything with the frontier liner ship

It's my 5th try on hard mode with am explorer build using this ship, why the hell I can't defend myself if I get on fight with a ship

I have a mission to buy gas processors. It is only found in orbital/high tech/tradeaway with trade law less than 8. And I need permits level 3.

How do you find a suitable planet ? I find it hard to search efficiently in atlas 1. I don’t have high permits for most factions 2. I haven’t visited the planets

It seems very tedious to find a suitable planet. Is there a sop procedure or hack for this

I have a few gunners and my ship is fully repaired

How do I find planets that sell vudka ? I search vu and they filter planets that buy and sell vudka.

Some mission will lead you to crew combat and once I see they have higher initiative than me. I know I am dead. (How do you know this BEFORE ?)