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[sambojin]

I don't know if it works in this version, but if you're at the late/end-game and still need money then

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

go to the underground section of the pirate cove planet and fight in the arena's gladiator fights. 40 crew with disruptors wins vs anything, usually in one shot. Then do it again, and again, and again.

Free money for those final few items you want in case you haven't gotten the best of everything plus artifacts yet. Nice to do those implant mods on crew members or if you've cleared all resources off all the planets that are closer than that.

[ConscriptFive]

Great advice about the troop ship.

If you're in deep trouble on a planet, or in genocidal mood, you can also use your ship as an artillery piece.  As long as you keep your standoff range and know the damage splash for your ship's gun, radio is a lifesaver.  I pretty much never use my away party weapons on a planet surface.

[sambojin]

Yeah, knowing all the radio commands can be a life saver. "Fire" requires LOS (I forget if it's you to creature, ship to creature or you to ship) or used to. Don't ever "Launch", it's suicide. Being able to move your ship is great for when it gets surrounded by lava (but then, so is landing close to a designated spot for a mineral grab on ocean worlds or very hostile ones).

But, to tell you the truth, I ALWAYS use my away team's weapons. Partly because I'm lazy, partly because they work underground, partly because they're very powerful, but mainly because it's cool to press "f" then "0" and watch everything around you die. Oh, and you get xp on away-team kills, I think only the gunner gets xp on ship->ground kills.

It might be handy for early on when you don't actually have any decent weapons though.

[puke]

you need to use the ship weapons to hammer some ground targets, unless you have a very large / powerfull away team.  by ground targets, I mean structures.

I once had an amazing running battle with a gang of very hard to kill robots.  I was down to just my captain, and he was injured.  The robots were very close and persuing me, but I was able to continuously call fire on my own position and then run away -- as the robots followed they would be hit but I would be out of the way.  It took a good long time, but I evenually killed them, got whatever loot I was after, and escaped the planet.

Ship-to-ground fire became my best friend after that.

[sambojin]

Nice use of them. I wonder just how the artifact weapons x 2 would go compared to a fully tooled away team? I forget my firepower rating, but it was probably 60+ (in a version or two ago).

When you say structures, do you mean a few certain mission structures, or just blowing away buildings and mountains and that? Regular away team weapons do the second one just fine (although not with just your captain being alive, even with the best weapon).

Still, I never thought of using a sort of rolling barrage when I'm in a heap of danger. You learn something new every day

[sambojin]

Actually, not a bad time for a mini-analysis of away team fire modes. There's three of them, and they're all useful at different times. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but they sort of go like this:

1: f, directional key. This gets your entire away team to fire in a certain direction. You can only pick N/S/E/W and the diagonals, but all your firepower travels along this path. Anything in the way gets hit with the max firepower, even if something was in the way first (unless the shot was blocked by an monster/ice/building that didn't die first). Range is taken into account, so range 3 weapons will fizzle at 3 squares whilst your longer ranged weapons will still do damage further away, but only at the remaining firepower that can reach that range. The may be damage drop-off from firing through things (ie: you have 30 damage, monster 1 takes 20 damage and dies, monster 2 only takes 10 damage), but I've never noticed it.

2: f, 5(numeric), target. This type of fire can target any square within the longest ranged weapons reach, rather than just the compass points. Drop-off of firepower still occurs with a mixture of weapon ranges. Otherwise very similar to #1.

3: f, 0(numeric). This splits your away team's firepower equally between all targets in range, being able to hit multiple targets at once. All firepower seems to stop at the point of target (rather than continuing to max range like the other two) and is still effected by firepower drop-off for a mixture of different ranges on weapons (range 3 and range 5 beams will be split evenly at range 3, with the remainder of range 5 damage being split between targets that are further away). I may have the order of range splitting around the wrong way (range 5 damage split, then remainder+range 3 goes to close targets, although it seems logically incorrect unless the game works out how much damage it needs to kill a target and only assigns that much, leaving a remainder for closer targets).

Anyway, I could be miles off. I haven't looked at the code yet (although I should, BASIC rocks). Basically it goes: #1 for laser-drilling through dirt and hitting stuff that's lined up, #2 for hitting a particular target hard, #3 for light targets or for when you're feeling lazy and have heaps of long range guns.

I should have just typed that last bit. Anyway, that's the wonders of Prospector targetting. As a word of warning, never fire a weapon past the north or south pole. It will probably hit you in the back of the head

[Neonivek]

Actually Sambojin there are areas in the game where you can be uttarly flooded by weak enemies.

The ability to shoot at all the enemies at once is a great boon there.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Actually Sambojin there are areas in the game where you can be uttarly flooded by weak enemies.

The ability to shoot at all the enemies at once is a great boon there.

I also find the Redshirts usually pick good targets, so no pistols trying to shoot at rifle range or anything. It seems like it makes sense, being as how you need a bunch of officers if you have that many Redshirts anyways and they could probably split up into groups and fire on targets. That's how I see it in my mind, anyway.

[puke]

When you say structures, do you mean a few certain mission structures, or just blowing away buildings and mountains and that? Regular away team weapons do the second one just fine (although not with just your captain being alive, even with the best weapon).

mission structures.  As a caviat, I havent done thorough imperical testing with strong away teams -- but there have been things that I couldnt crack at the time.

In fact, the first time I discovered the "fire" command was when I needed to shoot at something.  I knew the correct course of action from the ST:TOS episode that the planet was taken from, and my away team weapons didnt seem to be denting the target on their own.  Barely killed it in time with the ships guns, most of my guys got smacked down.

[sambojin]

Ok, I thought you might mean that bit.   Incidentally, the fire command is also really handy for blowing away mountains early on, when you don't have any drills, jetpacks or anything.

Speaking of equipment, here's a quick list for new players of cheap stuff you'll definately want. It makes things a lot easier.

Starting ship:
Light Scout or Troop Transport. Move onto the Troop Carrier until decent ships turn up.

Sensors MkII. $800 that makes you better at what you do. Need a scout, a transport or a ship hull upgrade to use though.

Imp. AT Landing Gear. $500 that will pay for itself in a few planet missions early on. Then it's still good, even with a bad pilot.

Crew Quarters. $0. Zero. Yep, you lose a weapon/add-on, but you shouldn't be ship fighting in the early game anyway. Big crews=more guns=good.

Hover Platforms. $500. Carries 5 people, makes it so all those water planets are now open to you. Buy a fair few.

Portable Sensor Set. $500. Long range vision means less time wasted and long range shooting. Great, one-off purchase. Possibly the best purchase in the game.

Big Aux. Oxygen Tank. $50. More air means less stuffing around. The normal size and big seem to be about the same. One for each away team member.

Imp. Air Filters. $20. Only twenty bucks, more air on heaps of worlds. One for each person.

Ground Penetrating Radar. $550 Underground vision and see through walls. You really want this for later, but it's handy for tunnel exploring early as well. A one-off purchase.

These won't make you invincible, but once you've got them you only really need weapons, armour, crew, implants, better hulls and ship upgrades. The expensive stuff. And jetpacks, lots of expensive jetpacks.

This may seem a pricey list at first, but believe me, outfitting a 45 man crew with even half-way decent weapons and armour is so much pricier. You need them decently outfitted to survive the time it takes you to find all the lovely artifacts that replace that cheap stuff I listed.

[Shawarma]

Man, you guys are lucky. I can't get 100 turns in without the game crashing when I exit a star system.

[Neonivek]

Man, you guys are lucky. I can't get 100 turns in without the game crashing when I exit a star system.

You HAVE to abuse savescumming in this game. It gets more buggy as you keep going.

[sambojin]

The newer versions seem a lot better than the old. No more "invincible, confused captain is your saviour again" sort of stuff.

But yeah, there's crashes from time to time. It usually crashes the game so you can just restart from where you left off, before landing on the planet. But it's not a bad idea to keep a backup save for safety. It's not savescum abuse if it's used for fixing up "features" in the game.

And seriously, don't fire weapons off the north or south pole of a planet. It's a random thing, but it is my most common cause of crashes.

[Neonivek]

The newer versions seem a lot better than the old. No more "invincible, confused captain is your saviour again" sort of stuff.

But yeah, there's crashes from time to time. It usually crashes the game so you can just restart from where you left off, before landing on the planet. But it's not a bad idea to keep a backup save for safety. It's not savescum abuse if it's used for fixing up "features" in the game.

And seriously, don't fire weapons off the north or south pole of a planet. It's a random thing, but it is my most common cause of crashes.

I mean abuse as in "Do it a LOT!"

[Deon]

I haven't got a single crash, I must be very lucky .