Tricks And Tips

[fragger]

Might be an idea to have one of these topics here :) Here's a few for starters.

On a planet, you can get better ship speed at higher altitudes. On all planets that I have so far visited, my ship speed always maxes out at about 115u (whatever "u" stands for) if I stay low. But if I climb to over 12,000ks I can get the ship up to about 150u. The higher you get, the faster you can go - but the ship's thruster speed appears to be capped at around 150u, even in space. An exception is immediate after a pulse jump, your speed can remain considerably higher if you don't immediately "throttle back" too far when you disengage the pulse.

If a destination such as a shipwreck is further away than a few minutes, like twenty minutes or something, it's quicker to pulse into orbit, then pulse again toward the destination marker (aim above it - don't aim straight at it or too low or you'll re-enter too early). Leave it till the last possible second to disengage pulse, then you may only have a minute or so to drop down to the target, or maybe two. Still better than twenty.

Scan and analyze rocks, as well as animals and plants. If you see a rock or boulder with a unique pattern on it, even if it is indicated as "Iron Oxide" when you stand near it, scan it with your binos. The pattern will be caused by a unique element which you can then upload and get some money for.

When your mining laser heats to the max (the bar at the top of the screen fills and turns red) you don't have to wait for it to go all the way back down to fire it again. As soon as there is even the tiniest sliver of clear bar showing as it starts to go back down, you can fire it and the bar will instantly empty to start filling again.

Those big green drop crates that contain valuable alien trinkets like "Fascination Balls" and "Grahgrahs" are always worth opening as those trinkets can be sold for at least 12,000 units each, sometimes a lot more if their current values are high. However, the crates will fill again! If you leave a location that has an openable crate and travel enough distance, such as fly to another location, when you come back the crate will have a new goodie in it (if it has anything - sometimes they're empty). Same goes for the other crates - the yellow ones that often contain shield powerups and the little red Plutonium canisters. They all refill if you go away far enough. How far you have to go I'm not sure, but definitely more than a stone's throw away. At least a couple of minutes' flying time away maybe, and well out of line-of-sight.


This one is I posted in another thread, but I think it's worth paraphrasing here:

When those pesky pirates show up, there is an aiming reticle during combat which calculates deflection shooting for you. When you point your ship towards an enemy, unless he's coming right at you, you'll see three marks appear around the pirate ship indicating a kind of lock-on, but there'll be another three-sided aiming-type reticle a short distance away from the target. This reticle is what you should aim at, not the pirate ship itself, as it's calculating the deflection of the shot for you. I've been doing better against the pirates since I tumbled to this. I was aware that my shots were deflecting but I didn't associate this reticle with it at first - I was trying to compensate by eye.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting, I wasn't aware that the crates refilled, nice tip. Also about aiming in space battles, have to keep that in mind.

One thing I noticed is sentinels don't care if you destroy certain landforms to get the raw materials. A small bush or plutonium crystal? They will be right on you. One of those giant crystal or metal formations? They could care less. I was hammering away on a herbidium (whatever) crystal that was about 10 stories tall and a sentinel came right by and didn't care a bit. Just floated away. Same goes for the looped natural bridge formations you find, one of the most beautiful formations on the whole planet and you can just demolish it without any concern. But rip up a small mushroom to get some carbon and you're public enemy number one.

[Art Blade]

cool tips, guys :)

Shooting in space: what fragger said is true for the photon cannon as you spill those energy bubbles that travel through space until they hit or pass the target. I much rather use the mining laser. Those shots are beams that are instantaneous destruction. But they don't reach too far. So, aiming the lasers is better for moving objects as you just shoot and hit what's inside the triangular crosshair.


legally Making money at space stations / trading posts
From insolvent to magnate in one hour

Forget about those "premium" (golden star behind the name) goods. Forget about the trading terminal for guidance as to what sells how. And forget about illegal suicidal raids. Forget mining minerals or stuff for money.

Bring some time to observe the incoming traders' ware lists and find out what items they repeatedly offer for sale (you need a constant flow of the same goods) and among those, find the one that is most expensive per unit on a galactic average because if you buy a few of those, you will get more profit per sale.

Now compare the buying/selling lists of the traders and find out which of those previously noted items occasionally go for like 100% above average.

Always do the above with the same trader, meaning you should first look at the SELL and then at the BUY list of the SAME trader. With every trader you check.

Having compared perhaps up to 10 traders, you should have found your item of choice. If you haven't, then you're likely not going to make a lot of money here and should find a different station or post because here you won't find enough traders to make good deals fast.

Once you found something that keeps selling at around average but sometimes buying is around 100% above average, you've got your item.

Make sure that your suit is empty so you can fill it up with many units of the same type of item.

Always check the trader's OFFER first so you can BUY at a good (around average) price. If he sells it at 100%, then it's the one YOU should sell to. He'll buy for 100%, too  :-D

Ships don't stay long. Sometimes only long enough to run from ship to ship, open their list to BUY from them, if they sell at average, BUY, and leave the trader and RUN to the next ship

Rinse and repeat.

I made it from "insolvent" (16,000u) to "Magnate" (2,300,000u) in about one hour.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I figured you'd find a way to game the system like you did in GTA. I looked at a bunch of traders last night and was wondering on the prices and markups they had. So essentially, buy low-sell high? My problem was they would take off almost immediately after I left their menu, so I couldn't go back and see what the first guy had after checking what the second guy had, because he was already gone.

[Art Blade]

yep -- so once you figured which item you want to trade, and only that one so you speed up profit, you focus on BUYING. As long as you know that there will be one trader who will buy that item from you for 100% over the average, you first try to get as many as quickly as possible. So if you bought something, RUN to the next guy and try to buy again. Do that until either you happen upon someone who wants to sell to you completely overpriced at 100%, then that's the buyer you're looking for. leave the buying option but stay in the trade menu, then select sell option and sell him your stash for 100% over market price and rip him off instead.  :-D Or you keep buying until you're filled to the brim, then keep looking for buyers. Hurry before they take off.. it is a really fast-paced trading job but will pay off rather handsomely  :-()

I just sold 11 units at 103% for around 600k while I bought those 11 for around 300k. Made 300k or 100% profit within perhaps 10 minutes. Beats mining, doesn't it.  :-D

[fragger]

Well done Art+1 :-X I knew if anybody would quickly find a good way to rake the bucks in, it would be your good self :)

I'll have to wait until I go to the next system to try that. The one I'm in now doesn't get any traffic. I kicked a pebble around the station for about ten minutes once waiting for other ships to come in, but none did. Must be a poor neighbourhood :-() I've only ever seen one other ship here, whereas the last station I was in was like Grand Central - they were coming and going all the time. Stations can vary greatly in traffic density, apparently.

I actually enjoy mining. I like being a working stiff, loading up my ship and flying to a trading post to flog my goods. I find a lot of things and places along the way. The planets with "abundant resources" often have a lot of those suit-slot upgrade pods as well, which is where I picked up most of my extra slots.

I'm definitely going to try that trader thing in the next station though. The sooner I can get the money for that 30-slot ship I want, the better :-()

[Art Blade]

thank you, fragger  :) And D_B, too, for both of you believing in my ability to analyse that trading stuff and to make money using my acquired knowledge ^-^

Here, to show that it really works and that it is my new character, look.. only walked around (a lot of which involved running from and to trader ships  ) but else, no achievements except Magnate. And there you can see, by now I have some 6.5 million units cash. It took just another hour or so to get some 2M out of trading, from (previously racked up) 4.5M.

Oh and before hitting that 6.5M, I needed a break and checked ships coming in. Indeed, I already bought a ship for some 600k in between -- so I actually made around 7M+ until just now and it might have taken perhaps even less than an hour to make 2M cash there, just "playing" the traders on that station  :-()

[smg id=8970 type=preview align=center caption="I love to trade"]
[smg id=8971 type=preview align=center caption="new ship"]
[smg id=8972 type=preview align=center caption="showing off new ship"]

[Art Blade]

Actually, this is my tip for a new career:

RESIST the urge to leave your home system early.

STAY a while, don't jump out of your system. Why? It's still safe in that system, no pirates yet and time to rack up money and experience and blueprints and expansions for your inventories. :) Pirates are not what you want while you're still a novice flying around in a handcart.  ;)

Next tip, regarding that handcart of yours..
if you're about to buy a new ship:

Bring fuel. Meaning Plutonium and Thamium9. Because the new ship will come without fuel. No launch thrusters, no pulse engine -- you're a sitting duck. If you bring that stuff and fuel your new ship where you bought it, you'll be ready to take off without having to worry much.

And no, you can't use the fuel of your old ship for the new ship, it just stays behind. Along with your old ship. No refund for that, either, sadly so.

[fragger]

That's a good plan for starting out. I wish now that I hadn't been in such a hurry to leave my nice, safe, first world.

D_B was asking about those five health symbols you see in the top-left corner of the screen. They can get knocked out one by one. I had a dialogue with a Vy'keen and to give the correct response to his challenge, I had to cut my own hand as a sign of camaraderie or honour or something. It cost me one of those health symbols (I was warned that it would) but the next time I found a health crate I interacted with it and the symbol was restored.

I haven't been hurt badly enough to verify the following hypothesis (only ever been killed outright in pirate attacks) but I think what happens is that if you take enough hurt for the health bar to empty, one of those health symbols will disappear. Then the meter will be full again, but if it immediately gets knocked all the way down again another health symbol will go. If all the symbols wink out, you die. This is why you come across those health crates and health dispensers in some buildings - they will replace a health symbol if you've lost any. I'd thought that they would just refill the bar, but I thought there wasn't much point when your health bar refills slowly by itself anyway.

So it seems you can take quite a lot of damage before you die - the bar emptying once won't kill you, it will have to empty five times in a row to do that. I may have to do a save and then sacrifice myself to a nasty animal to find out if that is indeed how it works. Will let you know.

[fragger]

I was right initially. When your health bar empties a health symbol winks out. However, the bar doesn't immediately fill again - it has to regenerate as per normal. If you keep getting hit before it begins to regenerate, or it gets knocked back down faster that it can regenerate, another health symbol will disappear. Once they're all gone, you die of course. So if you're getting hit continually, after the first empty bar you'll be out of it pretty quickly.

I hope you all appreciate my sacrifice in the name of investigative gaming :-()

[Art Blade]

I do: +1 :-X  :-D

cheers, mate :)

[Art Blade]

Tips regarding ships

I tested fragger's tip regarding how to keep your old ship but with a new appearance (that of a ship you bought without creating a restore point -- indeed, once you load your "current" restore point (before you bought the ship) your "old" current ship still looks and feels exactly like the ship that you, thanks to loading the restore point, never bought. It is a funny glitch :)

Here's my follow-up tip: What we could do with that glitch: Once you bought a massive merchant ship, fragger, the one with 30+ slots.. make it look and feel like a nimble tiny fighter  :-() Obviously it works the other way round, too, like fly in with a tiny ship and fly out with a monster of a ship (that only sports like 10 cargo slots..) 


Speaking of ships that you are about to buy:

Don't buy just any ship that has got, say, enough slots. The same type of ship (if you want it for its design) will come with various upgrades, slots, and how those slots are arranged. Pick one that is actually really good regarding what's in it. You could still use the trick above if the design isn't to your liking.. as long as the slots and upgrades are good, that's what counts.

The game warns you not to forget to transfer items from your old ship to the new one. Makes sense. But I found out that you don't have to worry if you forgot something, even if you realise that you can't move everything at once..

First off, I recommend that you avoid creating a restore point by climbing into and out of your ships.. in case you screwed up, just reload. Only when everything is completed to your satisfaction, create one and save your progress.

Buy the ship just like you are supposed to. Then your old ship should still be close to you like it is when buying a ship at a space station. Now walk over to your old ship and make it your own again, costs nothing. Don't worry, your new ship is also just nearby and all the stuff you moved into it will stay in it.

Now, from your old ship, you can pick up the stuff that might still be in the cargo slots (you may want to pack stuff from your new ship into your suit first so you get new free slots in that ship) and transfer it to your other ship, just like when buying a new one. You can swap ships back and forth like that and rearrange the cargo area. The fuel (if you already fuelled up your new ship) will stay in it, other than when buying it from someone else which always comes without fuel.

When your old ship is empty, you can now dismantle all those weapon and engine upgrades and whatever there is that can be dismantled. This will result in that ship's cargo slots filling up with what you get for dismantling the upgrades.. which you can now transfer.

This is very useful if you came all loaded up and don't have space in your cargo bay to shift stuff around, particularly stuff that wasn't there before (thanks to dismantling) but at least you can now keep all that stuff..

This should also w@&k with multi-tools I just realised. Will have to keep it in mind :) I used to leave my upgrades behind but now I can keep a lot of stuff, I consider it a nice little "refund"  :-()

[fragger]

Cool tips Art 8)

Regarding the first part of your post, that's my plan :-() It occurred to me just as I was getting into bed (yes, I do in fact sleep - occasionally).

Regarding the second part, that's great thinking :-X I'll definitely remember to do that. All the dismantled upgrades and such will add up to a nice little dividend of resources, including some hard to come by ones from the advanced upgrades.

[Art Blade]

very kind of you to say, thank you ^-^

It just occurred to me that we could keep the ship design, too. Like, you fly in with your beloved ship but the one you're about to buy doesn't look that good.

Proceed as usual (buy it) and when you're done moving cargo around and dismantling stuff, create a restore point. Then, hehe, you make your old ship your current one.. and reload..  :-()

[Art Blade]

I keep thinking about your discovery, how to trick the game by changing your ship's appearance. You do deserve an extra +1 :-X for it, fragger, it is quite a discovery.  :)

[fragger]

Thanks Art, even though it was entirely by chance :) Hopefully that's one bug the devs won't fix.

[Art Blade]

entirely by chance, which is why it is very likely no one would have found out any time soon. You found out about it and made it available, which is why you deserve the kudos  :)

[Dweller_Benthos]

A couple from Reddit:

I hope they w@&k on world-waypoints in the future, but until then, you can mark certain structures with a temporary waypoint by scanning them. It is easy to miss, but by scanning any kind of facility, structure or even a solitary floating market terminal from a distance, the game will provide you with a black Bullseye marker. This persists until you leave the planet (in my experience thus far). It doesn't show up on your compass, and is easy to miss in graphically dense terrain, but it has helped me immensely on planets. Hope this helps.

I've had this happen and not know why I was getting that little marker among all the regular markers. This is why.

Or:

What works for me on planet and in system is to unlock discoveries through towers or beacons. Visit but dont touch the save post. It forever leaves a red shelter map marker with a white line into the planet. I never lose where Im at with those and it makes it easy to fly back to my general area if I leave the planet.

And I thought I'd illustrate Art's patented "Make 2 million money units in an hour" technique.

First off, get on the station and look at the trade terminal.

[smg id=9012 type=preview align=center]

I have the item I'm trading selected. They are buying Dynamic Resonators for 53,379 U - which is +94% average, which is not great, you really want over 100%, but you play the cards you're dealt, and this is the best deal this station has.

Now let's look at one of the traders who land at the station:

[smg id=9013 type=preview align=center]

Notice he's also buying for the same price. You can either sell to this guy or to the trade station, I have only one test, but it seems there's one or two guys who sell and buy at the same price as the trade terminal. So, if you want to sell, and your guy isn't around, go to the terminal, should be the same price. If anyone sees any different, let me know.

Now let's look at one of the other guys who land here:

[smg id=9010 type=preview align=center]

This guy (and most of the others) are selling these for 32,027 U, so that's a pretty good deal, not the best, but again, that seems to be the values set at this station. It seems these don't change, they have stayed the same through several visits and save games.

So, there you have it, by low, sell high. Look at the trade terminal to find the best deal they are buying, the highest green percentage, and I believe that will be the one you're looking for. Check the traders that come in, see what they are selling that for, if it's a decent profit, that's what you want to trade in. Buy as much as you can from each person that drops by, and sell either to the guy who buys high or at the trade terminal. You will eventually come to see the same people stopping by in the same ships, sometimes the same person will magically duplicate themselves and be there two or three times at the same time. Once the trading gets moving, you should have little time to stop and breathe, as they will land and take off almost continuously. When there's three or four ships landed at the same time, you have to hustle to visit them all and buy/sell as fast as you can. It also seems that they will land fairly often for a few minutes, then there will be a pause for a few minutes where no one lands. This is a good time to go to the trade station and sell off any stock you have if the regular guy hasn't been around for a while, you don't want to run out of inventory space in the middle of a deal. Sometimes you might only get the sell to guy three or four times in a row, so those times aren't as profitable.

I made a bit over 2 million in two trade sessions of maybe 45 minutes each.

[fragger]

@ Art: Cheers :) Btw, that tip you posted about scavenging the upgrades out of your old ship when buying a new one worked a treat. You too deserve a kudo for that +1 :-X

@D-B: I discovered that scanning trick myself just a little while ago too. Before that I couldn't w@&k out what that little bulls-eye meant. I followed one once and it led me to one of those small pre-fab shelter things, where it just hung in the middle of the room. I thought it was a glitch, but I must have scanned the location without realising it :-()

That other idea of not interacting with the save post didn't occur to me, that's a great tip from whoever it was :-X The game could sorely do with some kind of manual waypointing system, like maybe be able to bring up a list of places you've found and select one to waypoint. It's nearly impossible to find particular places once you've lost sight of them.

And thanks for illustrating Art's mogul technique :-X +1 for you too, buddy!

*****

Here's my new ship. As Han Solo said "She may not look like much kid, but she's got it where it counts". I can get a nicer looking hull later by exploiting the other new ship glitch :-() At the moment it looks very Captain Nemo, but it's still  better than those ones I like to collectively call "the Flying Turkey".

[smg id=9016 align=center width=600]

I still need to tweak a few things. The vacant slot under the Photon Cannon is waiting for a Theta-level (3) upgrade which I have the blueprint for but still need one more Dimensional Matrix to build it. I have two, but it needs three. I have a Tau-level one I could put there in the meantime, but I want to save the resources. The Trade Terminal in the station had three and I bought them all, but I didn't realise I only had enough space in my inventory for two of them. You would have thought the terminal would have only have charged me for two and kept one itself, but instead it charged me for all three, told me my inventory was full and made the third unit disappear - it was gone from the terminal (it showed 0/3) ???? So that's something to be careful of.

I also still have a Phase Beam Coolant upgrade out of place below the Hyperdrive, but that will go over with the other Phase Beam stuff when I have more resources to dismantle and reassemble it.

That adjacency bonus or whatever it is works diagonally as well as vertically and horizontally. As long as at least one corner of an item is adjacent to a related item, the highlighting will appear.

That trick with the upgrade scavenge from your old ship doesn't w@&k with the Multitool. When you buy a new Multitool, the old one disappears altogether.

FYI, that Sigma, Tau, Theta and Omega business means this:

Sigma - Level 1 Upgrade
Tau - Level 2 Upgrade
Theta - Level 3 Upgrade
Omega - Level 4 Upgrade

The level numbers are shown on the icons, but when you receive a new blueprint from an alien or a machine it doesn't tell you the level number, just the Greek Alphabet letter, for some reason.

[Art Blade]

+1 :-X for D_B, indeed -- nice illustration and explanation. I do it like that, only I can't be arsed to run up to the terminal. I much rather take a break and check ships in between. I want to buy a bigger ship, too :)

[smg id=9017 type=preview align=center caption="shopping wish"]

Thanks for all the info guys, appreciated. And fragger, another one for all your recent stuff lol +1 :-X

[fragger]

Thanks Art :)

You know, I haven't seen any of the ships in my game that you have so far posted pictures of. Do you think it's possible that each player sees a different assortment of ships? I've never seen one like that.

[Art Blade]

I think so.. except the pre-order bonus ship which obviously looks the same to all of us  :)

Oh, maybe you're interested in this

I took a break and made a test jump. Before I jumped, I checked in free mode nearby systems. If you select one, it does actually show how many planets are in there, even if the system hasn't been discovered yet.

What is more interesting, there is an option bottom left on the galaxy map, "scan for discoveries," which I thought would only show your own systems that you discovered. Turns out that you can find systems discovered by other players. Just wait long enough. ??? :)

I found three player names and their systems, some 500 to 1,000 light years away. And if you checked for them like that, those systems will actually show up in your list but with a yellow instead of a green symbol behind the names ???

[smg id=9018 type=preview align=center caption="testing scan for discoveries"]

[fragger]

That is interesting, I'm going to look at that when I go back in 8)

[Art Blade]

finally found a ship with a decently arranged storage grid. And capacity, and "companions" (upgrades) and all that.. and the price was right, too :)

[smg id=9019 type=preview align=center caption="that's the one"]

And that's what it looks and feels like, now. Yay! :-()

[smg id=9020 type=preview align=center caption="better than new"]

[Art Blade]

I need to find out something about those multi-tools. Some of those outposts have a crate hanging from the wall with a multi-tool in it. I got my second tool from one of those crates and it was better than the one I had. The third I got from an alien as it was better and now the tools in those crates are just like the second, like all of them have one slot less than the one from the alien. I decided to trade in my 14-slot tool in favour of a 13-slot tool from the wall (at least it's got a somewhat good layout and a nice installed scanner upgrade). I want to find out now whether or not the next time I'll see a better tool in a wall box, like with 14 rather than 13 slots. If not, well, there will be better ones somewhere else no doubt.

[smg id=9021 type=preview align=center caption="tool tip"]