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[forsaken1111]

I especially hate taking a commission in Nex because then I am suddenly hostile with whomever most recently rolled lowest on a diplomacy check.

[George_Chickens]

I especially hate taking a commission in Nex because then I am suddenly hostile with whomever most recently rolled lowest on a diplomacy check.

Isn't that the same as vanilla? When I'm commissioned with the Persean League, I find myself becoming hostile with literally everybody at random. Not that I care, it's a chance for consequence free piracy and to kill some Hegemony inspectors without starting a forever war.

[Dostoevsky]

In my experience it's actually less consequence-free in Vanilla - while relations reset after a war, in my experience any negative rep impacts from e.g. blasting a fleet will not reset. In Nex, since your reputation is tied to your faction's, when the war ends you'll be back to -49 regardless. (Though that does mean if you had a higher rep that's gone, it also means you won't be stuck with a long-term enemy.)

[Mephansteras]

Helps that I play with a bunch of faction mods so it rarely matters that much. Sure, it occasionally makes things inconvenient. But overall it just makes the game more interesting for me to have sections of the map that are more challenging to deal with than others.

[Kanil]

You can prevent commissions from causing surprise shifts in relations by just getting a pirate commission. Then everyone will hate you, forever.

[Zangi]

You can prevent commissions from causing surprise shifts in relations by just getting a pirate commission. Then everyone will hate you, forever.

You can actually make em not hate you, but it takes some work and avoidance.  Plenty of targets at the least.

[AlStar]

My most recent playthrough just ended abruptly - I've discovered that the most dangerous faction to piss off is not Tri-Tachyon or the Hegemony, nope - it's the Independents.

It's one thing having the occasional military fleet or patrol pissed off at you. Having every single bounty hunter, scavenger, and smuggler fleet out for your head is rough - they're far more wide-ranging than any of the major factions - you see them all over the place, both in hyperspace and in systems.

Surprisingly easy to piss off, too - a single raid on an indy (at the behest of a pub contact) that happened too close to a Hegemony patrol. Patrol shouts at me to turn on my IFF. I do. BAM! -55 independent reputation.

[George_Chickens]

My most recent playthrough just ended abruptly - I've discovered that the most dangerous faction to piss off is not Tri-Tachyon or the Hegemony, nope - it's the Independents.

I would say Tri Tachyon are the safest to piss off. After you harass them enough, their death fleets disappear and they are nothing more than a big, juicy target to steal drugs and organs from.

[AlStar]

Tales from the rim:

So I'm out in the middle of nowhere, dropping off a severed finger into a stable orbit (hey, I don't judge - for ₡70,000, you do you), when on the way back, hitting a planet to run a survey, what do I find in orbit? A 14th Fleet, mint-condition Onslaught Battleship!

For the low, low price of a single story point, my fleet, which up till now was running destroyers and frigates, just got a lot more oomph.

Had to triple my crew just to man the damn thing.

I'm off to run some bounties!

Edit: And, poof, gone. I really need to stop running pirate missions against independent stations. Even when I don't accidentally declare war on the entire galaxy, it seems guaranteed that I'll run afoul of multiple Hegemony patrols. Large enough to completely encircle my battleship and beat it into scrap.

[Hanzoku]

The Onslaught is one of the weakest unsupported capitals IMO - a lot of forward firepower, but its massive engine bank in the back and inability to shield it means that against multiple or more agile enemies can get in there, hug your engines and shoot you to death. It takes a while, but there is no stopping it.

[AlStar]

Yeah, definitely something to keep in mind for the future - have at least a couple of ships on guard, watching for the encirclement (and/or shooting down any small craft that try something tricky.

This playthrough (my first game on normal, instead of easy) has really been a rags-to-riches-to-rags-etc. story. I've lost my entire command on two occasions (fun fact for anyone who doesn't play on ironman settings: the game will throw you a couple of small ships, a couple thousand dollars, and a bare minimum of supplies in a random core system.) Managed to claw my way back from losing all combat ships several times now too.

Luckily, between raid, trading, and dead drop missions from the pub, even a badly understrength fleet can usually earn enough to pull itself back on its feet.

[Hanzoku]

My experience is that the only capitals that can fight unsupported are the Radiant and the Paragon. Everything else needs at least a few frigates to split up enemy attention.

As far as frigates go, you currently can't go wrong with the high-tech ones - pick up any Tempests, Hyperions and Scarabs you can.  Destroyers are more of a mixed bag tech-wise - Medusas are great, but so are Enforcers and Hammerheads. Sunders can be good, but are finnicky and tend to die more often in my experience.

Cruiser hulls, the Aurora can be an amazing shield tank, and you can do fun things with it like ducking behind an enemy capital ship and using the boost to ram it out of formation and into the middle of your fleet to be ripped apart. The Champion is supposed to be good, but I've literally never seen it in action (ever) across three full games in the newest version. I never saw a schematic for it either to just build one. Otherwise the Dominator is solid but suffers the same 'all guns forward' issue as the Conquest, and the Eagle and Falcon are solid.

I'd avoid carriers and hybrid carriers like the plague - I think Alex overnerfed them in the most recent versions. I don't really run into AI fleets making heavy use of fighters, but even when I go and pop fleets led by an Astral, I never had much trouble with strike craft.

[Draignean]

My experience is that the only capitals that can fight unsupported are the Radiant and the Paragon. Everything else needs at least a few frigates to split up enemy attention.

The Conquest is, imo, the example a high-micromanagement capital that can stand on its own. Terrible shields (one can compensate with some D-mods, heavy armor, shield shunt, and the DR from D-mods skill), amazing dissipation, and more weapon mounts than almighty god. The trick with it is that you should almost never be going full dakka, but should instead take advantage of the fact that you can have many sets of highly specialized and very big guns.

One feature I do wish existed in the game is some form of auto-shield, just let the AI manage the omni while I focus on weapon management and flying.

[AlStar]

Fuck you, game. 

I've had this mission since basically the beginning of the game, and visited this system on at least two separate occasions, trying to find the probe I'm supposed to be looking for. Pinged my radar all over the place, never finding anything.

I suppose I could have just cancelled the mission, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Finally, when a second mission happened to show up in the same system (since I wasn't going to waste the supplies going there yet again), I bought a bunch of volatiles and circled around the outer system with the neutrino detector on.

Took two laps (it's a damn faint signal, only visible if you're in the lower corner), but I found it - way the hell out in the middle of nowhere - but I found it!

[Mephansteras]

Ugh, hate those