**This guide is made assuming you have followed all of the tutorial, if not GO BACK AND DO IT**
So you just finished your long hard tutorial, congratulations for sticking with it and surviving your first test, your patience. Now (depending on how frivolously you spent your solars during the tutorial) you have around 75-100k solars, a frigate and a Heavy frigate, your one step closer to universal domination. But what to do? Fear not i have some helpful hints and tips for your first steps out into the universe.
Now your first instinct depending on your personality may be to either go mining, or to go shoot something. DONT. Mining properly demands alot of time, and assets, what will most likely end up happening is your Mining modules being blown up, as well as any stations if you decided to place them near the planets. Secondly, its unprofitable. It takes over an hour to mine 1 cubic meter of material, there are only 5 materials that are profitable to mine at this point in the game, and i can gaurentee someone bigger, stronger, with more allies, or just better organized, has them claimed, mining is more of a passive continual income then your main money maker.
As far as combat goes? far be it from me to deny you going out and making a name for yourself as a pirate, but be warned at this stage in the game, you dont have enough power to have everyone else hating you, not to mention its also relativly unprofitable and inconsistant, you only salvage some of the material they may or may not have in thier cargo bay, or that were used to build the modules and stations. Yes you can raid ungaurded outposts but dont think thier going to forgive and forget if and when they do see you.
So you cant mine, you cant go all piratey, what can you do? Missions, and distress signals. Missions provide decent monetary returns for the time expended. I personally reccomend equiping one of your ships 2 FTL drives and the other with 2 Warmhole generators and an FTL drive.
The one with FTL Drives you keep in sol and fly interplanetary missions with during your active time. This allows you to make about 3k solars an hour-fuel costs. You will also need about 3 cargo holds for most interplanetary missions.
Interstellar missions have much higher Payouts, but require much more time. they usually pay between 6-10k solars, but take anywhere between 3-6 hours (with two Worm hole generators) once again you will also need at least 3 cargo bays, however in this case fuel will be the majority of your cargo. ALWAYS take enough fuel for a round trip, +30 (for moving within the system once you arrive)
Disstress calls: There are two types of Distress Calls SOS and COM. SOS missions are stranded ships in need of repair or fuel. For these missions usually must supply an amount of fuel, electronics, medicines, or food supplies (all available for purchase at a SOL commodity exchange), and get paid really good money. The issue is you never know how much or what an SOS will want till you get there. Now you could fly there, find out, fly back there, and then get your reward. Or if you intend to do distress calls, take about 100 of each rescource with you before you go. Chances are this will be enough to cover whatever it is they need.
COM distress calls are combat calls. Usually some ship that got capture by pirates or something or other. Regardless you have to go blow up the ship. These pay good money as well, but there is also the risk to your ship. Now COM missions are suppose to be scaled to your ships capabilities, but there is always the chance they will get lucky, In addition this ALWAYS requires 2 intersteller jumps. once to the distress signal, then to the enemy ship. Finally you also have the combat/engagement time. However though it takes more work and has more risk, these missions also pay the best.
Random Hints and tricks:
SHE KILLED ME WITH SCIENCE!!!!: and thats exactly what you must do, kill them with science. Science is your key to self efficiency, power, and intersteller capabilities. It is perhaps the most vital thing you can invest in when you start, as it directly impacts all other aspects of the game. If you have spare modual space, be it on a ship, station or planet, put a science modual there.
DONT BUY IT, BUILD IT!!!: It is always cheaper to build something then to buy it. If youve already researched how to make it, make it. Sure it takes 3 hours, but that 3 hours might save you a couple grand in solars. You can buy all the materials needed to produce something at a Sol commodity station.
POWER IN NUMBERS: in this game less IS NOT more, more guns, more ships, more mines, whatever it is having MORE of them is better then having a Higher rank of them. Sure you can research and build a mark 2 viper squad, but its the same cost as building 2 mark 1 viper squads, and weaker.
ex: MK 2 Viper squad. Total power: 2500
2x MK 1 Viper squad. Total power, 4000
Now having two of them does increase space, and you DO have to buy more marines (mk2 uses 500 marines, having 2 mk1 uses 1000. But dont forget the added marines dont only increase the weapons damage, but also factor into your manpower during fights). Also dont forget that they DO take up an extra module slot on your ship, which may negate the benifits of the added fire power depending on your ships desighn.
Exceptions: Engines, the above does apply to engines as well. You will travel faster with 2 mk1s then a single mk2. However your Fuel expenditure also increases by doing so. Possibly outweighing the benifits of having 2 engines.
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Im not an expert, im not succesful so far, just some things i picked up while playing that i thought might be useful. This will be updated edited, modified, etc as my experiance grows and community input shapes and expands my knowledge. Feel free to comment
if you disagree or dispute what ive said let me know
