Newbie Guide

From Fleet
Revision as of 17:44, 24 April 2010 by Centic (talk | contribs) (Step 2)

Here's where a quality quick start guide might go.

Here are Chubba's top tips to success (the word 'top' is debatable on its effectiveness) as of 29-10-09 24-11-09 12-12-09 1/1/10 24-1-10 21-2-10 (UK-style date):

This quick start guide assumes that you know the BASICS (e.g. what a planet is, how to move/launch, how to attack things, how the Action Point system works). If you're not familiar with these feel free to ask me (Chubbatubba) or any other player who looks big and impressive (I'd liken myself personally to more of a fine cheese than a person of stature though). Otherwise, they're not difficult to pick up and most just need a little quantity of that strange old thing: "Common sense."

First Thing's First (Outfitting)

Engines and Malarkey

  • Visit the 'outfitter' on a planet and visit the 'engine' department.

Choice 1: You can either go for a solar sail (which requires less effort to maintain, but lets you do less STUFF in each session) or an engine (**Chubba's choice**) which requires you to keep it stoked by collecting hydrogen at irregular intervals. However, you get a lot more done per session.

  • If you buy an engine, you'll then also need a 'hydrogen harvester' and an 'auto-refueler' which can be found through that 'outfitter' section, but this time under 'specials' (special equipment for special needs :D). You'll also see that there are a bunch of other harvesters on offer - you'll only need the hydrogen one for now.
  • The amount of fuel left in your ship is shown on the left under 'Cargo' - once you run out, you can collect more by, on a space tile, clicking 'Hydrogen Gas' which is underneath 'Tile Resources.' You can collect other resources the same way, so long as you have the corresponding resource collector.

Guns/Turrets

  • To start with you'll only need baby guns - 500KJs to 2MJs are ideal; and try to have as many guns installed as your ship allows, whilst retaining some credits for repairs. Don't worry about turrets for now (they're expensive to maintain) but later on, it'll be good to invest in a few of them as well ;P
  • Rule of a thumb: For gaining stats, go for little fire power whilst firing as much as possible. For getting experience or killing people, BIG guns, BIG firepower.

Shields

  • The smallest shield is all you need until MUCH later on.

Step 2

  • Decide what kind of career you'd like to adopt - There are currently 4 factions, 3 of which you can join: 'Blackwater', 'The Shadow' and 'Expeditious Anodyne'. Neither is particularly different in what they can provide as of yet (apart from in terms of personality and player strength), so any will do. Joining a faction will give you more missions on the planets which the faction controls (so providing you with an avenue to earn more money) as well as giving you the opportunity to buy better STUFF later on in the game. Even if you want to be a pirate (Aaar... Scurvy) it's good to join a faction at the beginning to give you a boost in terms of finance.

Killing Things/Missions

  • Mission it up, mission it in - in other words go round the galaxy not killing stuff yet, but accepting space eel missions (and eel mother missions if you're feeling lush) until you've visited about 5 planets. The system works so that if you accept say 3 'kill 2 space eels' missions and 2 'kill 3 space eels' missions, once you kill 2 space eels, all the missions raving for the blood of two eels are completed and you only have to kill 1 more eel to complete the other mission. So once you've accepted a load, then go kill some eels. This'll give you money, experience, and much merriness.
  • Do NOT increase that little thing under 'Policy' called Distinction or Faction Rank - the missions get harder. Instead, stick with it on 0-4 until you can handle Master Pirates. You'll soon be swimming in cash. Mmmmmm.

Ships

  • Keep upgrading ships: My recommended combo is an Atlas (trading) and either a Raptor (for skilling) or Decimator (for PvP).

SERIOUS MONEY

There are LOADS of ways to get big money.
To start with, your three sources of income are likely to be from missions, NPCs, and (assuming you're in a cheery alliance) charity. Clearly, you can't force the last one (although I hear puppy dog eyes work a treat), but you can enhance the AP\income ratio from the other two by knowing which money-making NPCs to target and doing a bit of efficient missioning.
As brushed upon above, the humble space eel can make you a bosch-load of money. Space eels drop light ore (not particularly special) as well as light metal and coronal gas. You can sell these off for a nice amount at pretty much any planet (except class G planets (like Venus) which aren't as receptive to coronal gas) but ideally and for minimal effort, it's best to heave them all off at a big planet that doesn't have any of them in stock. The more of a commodity a planet has, the less profit you get for selling the planet more of it - and with bigger planets, the speed which you get less profit decreases (which is good). At the time written, Centic is a brilliant place to sell off space eel stuff. Once you can take on Space Eel Mothers, they're a lush little sandwich as well, though they're less common. MUCH later, the NPC of choice is the MASTER PIRATE, which gives just 1 tonne precious metal and 1 of carbon hex... Worth roughly 50k per master pirate.
This is lovely, but as soon as you have an Atlas (all the other freighters are pants in comparison) you can start making SERIOUS cash by buying and selling goods from planet to planet. When you visit the 'marketplace' on a planet, on the right column you should be able to see many negative numbers and many numbers in that same column with a plus in front of them. The plus numbers show how many of the adjacent commodity the planet produces per tick. The negative numbers show how much of the adjacent commodity the planet eats up per tick.
For example: An M class planet (like earth) produces a LOT of water per tick and also produces a load of food rations, some fresh food and a bit of luxury food. It eats up ALL other commodities.
The next column to look at is the one to the right of the one we've just looked at, which shows how much each commodity costs; it's colour is relative to the amount of that commodity that's in stock. Essentially, if that number is GREEN, then it's better to buy. If it's RED, then run away, it might want your children (i.e. don't buy it).
For short term planet growth and BIG money, you can try Chubbing - though this is incredibly profitable, it also only works if there is little activity in the area. As soon as more than one person tries to 'Chubb' a planet... Well, it starts to look a little tired.
You can also try a more sustainable approach by trying to reserve something like Blackwater's recommended 8 ticks of production in each planet, though only on the long term does this produce BIG money for the individual. A sustainable tactic is to:

  1. Check what a planet produces and pick one of them
  2. Check that its price is in green
  3. If green, purchase the number produced (or slightly less if things look busy) per tick, taking care to reserve a substantial ('substantial' referring to at least 4 ticks of production) amount to regulate pricings and keep things lush for others.
  4. If red, don't buy anything. That's right - ANYTHING.
  5. Regard other commodities produced by the planet and repeat 2-4.
  6. Fly to next planet
  7. Smile in anticipation
  8. Repeat Steps 1-5 for this planet
  9. Check on new planet whether obtained commodities are consumed by the planet.
  10. If yes, sell anything up to the rate of consumption of the planet of the commodity and look slighly light-headedly at the profits. Move on to the next planet (or one you've already visited).
  11. If no, cry a little and move on, hoping that your commodities are wanted elsewhere.
  12. And so on.

This makes much more than missions or NPCs :D

Note: If trading in Blackwater territory, you are required to follow these rules.

Buildings/Alliances

  • Make sure you're part of an alliance or community before you build buildings - it's sensible to have it where it's useful. Defense modules are now useful, but don't worry about them until you've gained some girth.
  • Alliances technically provide a place to get to know people more closely than within a faction. Alliances are not constrained to one faction (there can be many factions in one alliance) but so far, alliance have tended to band together to become faction specific. If I were you, I'd join an alliance AS SOON AS POSSIBLE because they provide general, financial and militaristic help (as well as nice banter). There are currently two main alliances: Echoing Decay and Heaven's Wrath which have active communities.
  • When finished for the day, click on a planet and log out - you can't just hover over it, you've got to click on the planet name (bottom left) to be docked.

Other Beasties

  • Other good kills in the first few weeks include (in order of difficulty): 'Bulgers' (green and oval with lots of suckers at the bottom - NOT to be mixed with Cephalopods, which only have 5), 'Space Eel Mothers' (look like fat worms), 'Echinochloa' (look like patches of grass) and 'Sentry Drones' (Grey spheres with red spikes).

Chubba's Skilling List

  • Essentially, start from the top and work down. I'm not very good at statistics, so my method of skilling is quite vague ^^. Also, I haven't skilled a great deal until recently, so if a more skilled player could extend this list and provide some stat brackets, that would be much appreciated. My method of telling when to move on: when an NPC becomes easy, poke the next one down (attack it 5 rounds). If nice, continue poking until easy.

Other NPCs at a level are shown in brackets, but are prone to spike damage or aren't as readily available (or I don't like them ^^).

  1. Space Eel (Bulger)
  2. Space Eel Mother (Sentry Drone)
  3. Echinochloa
  4. Rogue Pirate (Space Eel Warrior)
  5. Vorpal Fang/Anemone (Master Pirate/Space Jelly)
  6. Interstellar Wasp
  7. Space Monkey
  8. Whatever's left


Voila. I hope you feel the last 5 minutes of your life were worth living.
Please don't kill me.