Tips and Tricks

This is a page for anyone to post their tips and tricks in playing this game. If you are new, please refer to the actual pages for the following subjects.

## Battles

Battles have cool aspects in the game, and are really fun to do (as long as you aren't the one to lose). It's fairly profitable and there are plenty of tips to go around. Here are some tips on dealing with battles against other ships. For example, if your ship has a Rear Turret, it is advisable to turn the ship constantly to utilize all turrets, provided you have sufficient power systems to support their usage.

### Against All Ships

* **The Tail Method:** Stay behind the ship and fire. This method works well as few ships have enough rear offensives. Watch out for mines.
* **The** S**cout Spam Method:** Spam the enemy with Scout ships.
* **Logical Method:** Use a better ship to counter a weaker one.
* **Missile Spam:** Waste the enemies ECMs with lancers and hammer their exposed ships with interceptors way more effective vs Magnus. If you have no frigates, Achilles is good, but it is slow. Watch out for an enemy light weapon (e.g. Laser) shooting down your missiles...

### Against Scouts

While scouts are fairly easy to destroy, they are not by any means something to ignore. They are usually very fast and more annoying than mosquitoes. A shot from a Laser V can knock straight through their shields and hit the ship itself, though, so don't use these against capital ships unless you like dying a lot.

Most, if not all, ships are capable to destroy scouts easily. Usually, stock weaponry is enough to kill the scouts, as they can only equip shields up to 75 hitpoints, meaning a blast from a Laser II will penetrate it.

* **Laugh-at-them Method:** Set your ship to autopilot if they are in a group of 4 or less. Attack. Laugh as they die unceremoniously.
* **Mines Method** (very hard to pull off): Toss mines behind your ship. A single mine can take out all their shields in one hit, and can even kill a Ranger outright from full hull health. Hard to pull off because the AI swerves very effectively.
* **One** **Shot Kill Method:** Equip the ship with a decent weapon, and kill them by firing all weapons once.(Only works when weapons are enough to destroy the Scout by firing once.) (Recommended weapons: Plasma Pulse II or above, Laser III or above, Photon Burst II, and all missiles)
* Magnus Mega Rush:Use a magnus (any type) to kill them best with Laser V

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### Against Fighters

Fighters are fairly powerful ships, agile, fast, and equipped with considerable shields and weaponry. They can be quite annoying in large numbers. They are a force to be reckoned with, and must not be left unnoticed.

Fighters are the most common ships in the universe. Most bandits only use these ships, although some may equip with capital ships. Most patrollers are fighters.

* **Grand Battle** M**ethod: M**oney intensive and often results in the loss of a ship or more. Buy a bunch of fighters equivalent or better to the ones you want to take out. Set them to protect you. Lead them to your target(s) and piss it (them) off. Watch the fireworks.
* **Crush all Opposition method:** Get an Overlord. Upgrade it to the teeth with Laser V's and at least one Military Launcher (preferably the back turret). Declare war on your target(s). Carve them up into tiny pieces. Voila.
* **Overlord Overkill method:** Get SEVERAL Overlords and upgrade them. Get the others to protect your Overlord ship. Declare war on your target(s). Watch your ships eviscerate the enemy.
* **Careful push method:** Use your ship to push one of the targets away from its buddies (works best in an Orion, Thunder, or Flyer-X class). Piss it off and kill it. Repair and repeat. Make sure you keep cloaked once you've pissed them off when selecting a new target to destroy.
* **1V1 method:** Use a frigate, and rush in. Best used with fully upgraded ones, with Shield 650.
* The Magnus Mega bash method: 4 Laser V blasts can destroy a fighter instantly..

### Against Frigates

Frigates are basically an upgrade of fighters. Although they may not have the same high speed as fighters, they compensate this with firepower. When fully upgraded, a frigate may even destroy an entire base, as well as a capital ship, single-handedly.

Among Frigates, the most powerful one is obviously the Thunder. The Orion is slightly inferior in every aspect, while the Drake has a high turning speed. The Venture, being the cheapest frigate, is also the weakest ship, as fighters can defeat it easily unless upgrading components.

* **The Swarm method:** Swarm them with hordes of scouts.
* **General method:** Get a good ship, fully upgrade it, and attack.
* **Overkilling:** Use a capital ship, and fire tons of Laser V's at them.

### Against Freighters

Freighters are comprised of 2 variants, the Hauler and the Creon. Although they are classified as Frigates and Destroyers respectively, they differ from other ships of the same category greatly. They may have less firepower than other ships, but they can still hold their own against attacks.

The Hauler has less cargo hold than the Creon, but it has the ability to be cloaked, and have a countermeasure bay. The Creon has a bigger cargo hold, and can serve as a flag ship when fully upgraded.

Due to their sluggish turn rate, low speed, and general lack of armament, freighters are easily underestimated. Generally, groups of fighters/frigates are recommended to take down a freighter, and sometimes, its escorts.

### Against Capital Ships

Capital ships, such as Magnuses, Overlords, Ares', and Creons in some cases, can be difficult to fight and even harder to take out. They have the thickest armour, the best shields, and the strongest weaponry in the game. Although their speed is not to be boasted about, this can be totally ignored, as their powerful weaponry can take out most ships anyway.

Ares' and Creons are the less powerful "destroyers", and can be defeated by frigates, though with some difficulty. Overlords and Magnusses, however, are the kings and queens of ships. The Overlord is slightly better in terms of armament, turret placement, and armour. The Magnus, however, has a much larger docking bay, with the number of 8 ships, compared to the Overlord's 2.

In most cases, the best option is to run away. However, if you have a powerful enough ship, or a group of fairly capable fighters/frigates, they can be taken out fairly easily.

* **Bear Against Bear method:** If you have another capital ship, you can easily take out another capital ship with all laser V by tailing behind it where it cannot do full damage to you. You don't need laser V but we recommend it.
* **Mines method:** Turn your brightness way up if you can barely see the screen for this method. Often, there will be cloaked capital ships patrolling systems. When you are cloaked, shields are down. You can use mines to destroy any cloaked capital ship fairly quickly. Mine II's are best for this, as once you start deploying them and damaging the ship you're targeting, the pilot inside is gonna get pissed off pretty fast. You can \*just\* barely see cloaked ships moving around normally, and a surefire way to find them is to ram into them at top speed. Just deploy and run like hell, then keep deploying. You will have a small window of opportunity to take them out before they uncloak.
* **Missiles method:** This works best with a Frigate or better, as they can equip Military Launchers and the more powerful Interceptor Missiles. Load up your ship with the Military Launchers on all turrets, then stock up on Interceptor Missiles. Find your target, then start spamming the missiles at them. If your target is an Overlord, start this from some distance away, as they can deploy countermeasures to get rid of your missiles. This method will VERY quickly take down ANYTHING you use it against. Its one weakness is that once you run out of missiles, you're a sitting duck. Run like hell once you run out.
* **Wolves Against** Bear (aka Throw Money At It): Works best if you have a lot of money and don't care how many ships you lose. A more powerful phone is recommended for this method as well since the lag caused by so many ships fighting in one system can create problems for weaker models. Essentially, you buy a lot of Flyer-X fighters and give them a decent loadout. Set them to protect your ship and set their aggression to the maximum. Piss off your target, cloak, and watch as your Flyers chip away at its defenses. Get popcorn and enjoy the fireworks. It is optional, but you can join in on the mayhem.
* **Fools Rush in method:** Get a bunch of Laser turrets (6 or more is preferable to absolutely ensure success). Set them up in the same system as your mark. Piss off your mark. Lure them into the range of your turrets. Cloak and watch the show. Laser V's will most reliably win, but Laser III's can win. This will often result in you losing at least 2 of the turrets, but Laser III's are fairly cheap. Even if you lose all of the turrets, your target will usually be weakened more than enough for you to finish them off even in a stock Flyer-X.
* **The Bite-tail method:** Equip your ship with decent weapon. Stay at the back of the target, and fire at them. You will only sustain (relatively) feeble Laser II attacks.

### Against Stations

Stations are special. Different stations have different shields, weaponry, and armour. All stations, except the turrets, have no weaponry, meaning an unguarded station can be destroyed by even a scout. The turrets, however, have either a Laser III, or a Laser V turret, depending on the type of turrets.

* **Capital Ship method:** Fire Laser V's at them
* **Scout:** purchase at least one million credits worth of scouts and swarm them (scouts are weak and a single laser V shot can deshield them).
* **Sniping:** Find a blind spot (out of the enemy turrets range) and hit the target station unharmed (Works with Laser II or higher.)
* **Flock method:** Fly multiple fighters/Drakes and ambush the station and its protectors.
* **Gunboat Tactics:** Use gunboats, frigate class ships with at least 2 front turrets, equipped with as many military missile launchers as possible, and a cloaking device to sneak by enemy fleets and destroy the enemy station (Orion-X recommended, can have 4 missile launchers for maximum devastation). Approach the station cloaked, uncloak, pause the game and fire at will. While laused, you can fire 2 missiles at each time to increase effectiveness. A pair can knock out Laser-III turrets, and 2 can destroy Laser-V turrets. If you play your cards right, you can eliminate the entire base and escape with minimum damage.
* **Attrition warfare(!):**Buy 2-3 full fleets worth of Fighters/Frigates. Buy 3 Magnusses and assign the fleets to them as their homebase. Set the war fleets to protect the magnus and dock as well. Get a ship, preferrably an Overlord and attack the station, ordering the magnusses to follow you. You can let the enemy ships/turrets deal with your ships while you take out the turrets. After battle, few ships may sustain damage.
* **Mobile Laser V:** Get the most powerful ship, and upgrade every weapon slot to Laser Vs: You are now a "war machine" with 9 Laser Vs. Go to enemy base, and spam the fire buttons. Most stations will succumb within 25-30 blasts.
* **Military Launchers with Interceptor Missiles:** At 675 points of damage, two volleys of six missiles, plus several Mk V laser blasts will destroy a hostile base. In the Magnus-X, you must bring six (6) Thunder-X Frigates which are set to "Protect Me" with maximum aggro setting on the slider. Also, trick out your Magnus-X with maximum shields and weapons. You may loose a frigate but it's rare (I've lost two destroying over seventy (70) hostile bases). A Magnus-X can carry 208 Interceptors, but you will blow through those really fast, so load all of you energy weapon based Thunder-X frigates (4 of the 6) with 50 additional missiles each, and after each slugging match, transfer the cargo from the Thunder-X to the Magnus-X. That's 408 x 675 = 275,400 damage. Fire only at bases and turrets to realize the damage potential. Fighters can often spoof your missiles so let the Thunder-Xs kill them.
* Q-Ship Method. This is slow going but can destroy any hostile base on a budget, and use the AI's logic against itself. Amounts are approximate. Get a classic Hauler-A (80k). Replace all four weapons with military launchers (14k each, or 56k), sell the mines (875), bump shield to 650 (72k), upgrade engine to "Frigate Engine 16" (9.5k) Small Cloak Mk IV (69k) and "Countermeasure II" (2k). Loadout the ship with 6 ECM II (2.4 tons)(300) and 52 Interceptor Missiles (62.4 tons)(9.1k). The add "-Q" to end of the ship's name so you know what it's for. Now head towards the enemy base cloaked and at max speed. Only target the actual base, not the lasers around it or any of the bandits, which will appear at 0 speed at 1.2km. At 550m uncloak, when your ship finally gets its weapons online, fire three or four vollies of four missiles at the base, dumping an ECM between each volley and then recloak. Now comes the best part, all of the remaining bandits now rush headlong into the nearest base and get destroyed by the base defenses. Sweet! all for the price of 16 interceptor missiles and 5.3k, or less, in repairs. So for about 330k, and about 7k per run you can drive out all of the hostiles in your area, and drive your opinion well into the green to get better deals everywhere.

## Raiding an Enemy Base

There are enemy bases(Enemy Stations) throughout the Universe. There are ways to defeat them with little loss.

* **The Drake Spam Method:** Group at least 4 Drakes, set them to protect you, and charge at the enemy. Watch the fireworks.
* **The Scout Armada method:** Gather no less than 50 Rangers, or 45 Raptors. Charge at the enemy. You will lose a lot of ships, but will win.
* **The** **Magnus/Overlord rushin method:** Use 1 to 2 Magnusses or Overlords, charge at the enemy. You may sustain considerable damage.
* **The Fighters swarm method:** Gather 20-30 fighters, and treat them like you did with Frigates or Scouts.
* The Laser Turret method(For non-hostile stations): Spam 5 laser V turret or 15 Laser III turrets around the Station, and declare war.
* Last you can get a Magnus-x and 6 frigates (make sure fleet settings is attack and intercept )then attack if base has fighters around it i recommend using 2 magnus and 12 frigates for better protection I guarantee you will lose 0 - 2 ships

### Trading

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Trading is the main way to make money in the game, fairly easy, and makes plenty of money, so here are some tips.

* When buying, always look at cargo prices to find the closest or lowest price sellers for a commodity. The same goes for the selling too. Always look at cargo prices for closest or highest price buyers for a commodity.
* To make the most out of trading, you don't want to go around buying and selling something that you might sell for 300. Check cargo prices for things that sell for a lot of money; such as: Jewellery, Impulse, and Hypersleep pods.

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### Passengers

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Delivering passengers is a very easy way of earning credits but not very profitable, here are some tips.

* For passengers, look for the most passengers available for you to ferry. This let you make the most out of passengers. Use the Pioneer P class if you want a fast ferrying, and a Hauler P when you want to ferry more at once.

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### Bounty Hunting

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Bounty hunting is the one of most difficult things to accomplish in the game. Here are some tips.

* The waypoint does not point to the ship, instead it points to the location it was last seen by a NPC. Find hostile ships that have the bounty logo. If you cannot take on a bounty target (your ship is damaged or enemy in reach of other enemies) bookmark it and come latter.
* Equip a decent ship, at least a Drake, with the most high-tier weapons as you can, so that you can kill the enemy fast.
* Equip a cloaking device, and ambush the enemy before it can react.

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### Missions

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Missions are a sure way to please a faction, here are some tips.

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#### Courier Missions

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Courier missions are missions that require you to ferry rocket fuel, EV-1 Androids, and space suits from one station to another. Cloak if possible, and make sure the destination is at least neutral.

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#### Ship Delivery

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Buy the required ship and dock with the destination. Only accept them if you are sure that you can afford such ships. It is a good way of earning money by delivering ships whit big prices which will give you over 100k profit. The ship delivery missions pay more than usual for the sold ships.

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#### Ship Recovery

Being the simplest mission, simply fly to the target ship, and tow it back to the station using tractor beams.

Use at least frigates for a fast delivery, especially when delivering other frigates and even bigger ships.

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#### Destroy ships

Only target ships you are sure you can destroy. Equip your ship with the best shield and weapons. Cloaking devices are also recommended. Lure them near to other friendly ships if you want them to be weakened faster, but ensure that you get the last shot in, otherwise you might not get the reward.

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Recover Abandoned Ships

== Starting with 0 money and a shuttle, stay at a Trade Station and "De-Aggro" your shuttle in "Fleet Settings". You can let the game run overnight by downloading and running a "never off" app, set the screen to near blackout while plugged into the charger) to accumulate a series of abandoned ship messages. Look for a Hornet-X. Once you find one (you can recover and sell others if safe to do so, but be careful) go recover it, sell the shuttle and repair the Hornet-X and put the best engine in it. Often abandoned ships will be close to hostiles so you get jumped by bandits when you attempt a recovery. To stop this problem, stay cloaked and push, YES PUSH, the abandoned ship away from the hostiles and towards any place that can repair a ship. Now you can recover ships with impunity. Also if you have several abandoned ship messages that accumulated overnight, you can check what they are by setting your waypoint to them. Skip the Raptors and Rangers, focus on the Pioneer (place a cheap 21k cloak on it, a passenger module and "De-Aggro" it in the Fleet settings, along with "prefer to cloak" and set it to transport passengers, also under "Faction Headings" exclude the sectors that are crawling with hostiles) and Haulers (do the same) after a couple of real days you will build up a money making fleet that doesn't need to buy and sell, it just transports passenger. The AI does eventually jam up trading and will have ships wait endlessly at a trade station to sell goods when there is an over abundance of the commodity. The same is not true for passenger transport. Also Hauler-Ps can carry a large passenger module, so focus on their recovery if at all possible. You are now printing money. Time to build a Q Ship or two for each sector.

## Taking over a sector

### Benefits

* Make your own trading stations hub and boost your economy.
* Have a repairing facility and rearming places for future battles.
* Have a place for hiding and recovering when your faction is almost destroyed.

### Sector Types

#### Core (Planet) Sectors

Core sectors are those which have a planet in orbit. Trade stations can be built only in these sectors. These sectors serve as headquarters of powerful factions. They can be identified by looking at the background of the sector. If they have a planet on it, the sector is a planet one.

#### Pros:

1. Lots of trading ships to trade with.
2. Get to other sectors easily.

Cons:

1. Mostly dominated by powerful factions.
2. Common big traffic difficult for big ships (Magnus, Overlord etc.) to navigate.

#### Mining Sectors

Sectors which have either Type-B, Type-H or both types of asteroids are called mining sectors.

Pros:

1. Build a Refinery and have a stable income
2. Good place to sell goods.

Cons:

1. Other refineries pose competition unless you destroy them or destroy other factories and replace them with your own.
2. Mining ships refuse to mine in Dyamapa 753 as per the latest update, so setting up a refinery there is useless unless you assign your own miners.

#### Remote Sectors

Pros:

1. Not many factions in there: Easy to take over.
2. Not much bandits factions bases spawn there

Cons:

1. If you set up factories there you may need to supply it with materials yourself using the cargo transfer button since few trading ships venture into such sectors. Target the factory, then go to Menu > target > scan > factory to see the materials needed to start production.

### Tips

* When taking over a sector occupied by your enemies, you should have a station not to far away to repair your ship.
* The station you repair at should be friendly enough for you to dock and repair, and at least neutral with the people you are kicking out. Otherwise, you're going to have a bad time.
* If you are taking it out with just one ship, you should take an Overlord with all Laser V turrets (or with the back two turrets set to Military Launchers equipped with Interceptor missiles), a Thunder-X frigate with top of the line cloaking and all Military Launchers on all turrets, fully loaded with Interceptors, or a Magnus of any class with Laser V's all round except for back facing turrets (not a good idea if taking out a well-equipped bandit-type faction station. Those ships can swarm you and take you down fairly fast).
* If wanted, you should take some backup inside your ship, such as Flyer-A classes, and set their home to your ship, tell them to prefer docking, and set the to protect your ship. If done right, they will hop out when you fire upon an enemy or you get attacked, and defend you.
* A good tactic is to distract the faction you are attacking. Tractor a few storage lockers to their station, hit them with a couple of lancers, and keep doing this until the missiles are no longer hitting them, but just circling around and around underneath them. They are now out of the playing field for missiles. Once you attack the station, ships inside that are equipped with missile launchers will waste them against the lockers. As they often target the nearest enemy, they will also attack them before you. Easy kills.
* If the sector occupants or their allies are traders make sure to pick up possible spoils that they may drop and sell or transfer them to stations as a small extra reward, this will also make sure that nothing is wasted.

Choose starting mode

Choose miner if you have not bought capital ships pack

if you bought it already, than Choose refinery owner because you can sell your refinery parts and you can choose to buy every type of magnes

You can start as a plunderer if you dont want to be bothered by any of the evil factions or any factions in general although be warned that this would mean that most of the honourable factions would hate you and limit your trade routes to those of neutral and evil factions also considering that normal-honourable factions are usually thriple the number of evil factions making it harder to earn income but otherwise you could pay honourable-normal factions for a truce while bandits wont let you do such thing and you could also capitalize the bandits natural tendency to build thousands of kilometers away by using the taxi especially if its a shipyard and i forgot to mention that in the late game you could have every factions opinion raised up into the positive scale by monopolizing the games economy and trading with everyone via trade stations or trade ships as much as possible even bandits will be in your favor