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[George_Chickens]

Somehow, the pirates have got Onslaughts and Sunders of their own.

It's because you sold the blueprints on the black market.

You know how you get the blueprints for a paragon, and it's worth something like 500.000, and you want to sell it with no tariffs? Well, don't do it.

I sold Sunder blueprints and the blueprints for a few high tech ships to independents, but I never found more than one Onslaught blueprint. The Hegemony was getting screwed REALLY bad by pirate attacks, is it possible that they stole the blueprints from them?

[Blastbeard]

I'm not sure you have enough Paragons there... and I'm hoping you modified the battle size you can deploy more then two at a time.

Of course I don't have enough Paragons, I can only take thirty ships at a time I could change the config file so I could have a hundred in a single fleet and it still wouldn't be enough. On the other hand, deploying more than five at once is so effective it should be considered a war crime spicy tactic. I really only need to field three at once to deal with what I've seen so far.

You know how you get the blueprints for a paragon, and it's worth something like 500.000, and you want to sell it with no tariffs? Well, don't do it.

Come on, it's not that bad. The pirates even limit themselves to one two per armada in the name of fair play. I sold my spare for about 680k and it was totally worth it.

[Frumple]

I'm deeply saddened that bigger zam doesn't have a higher credit value than big zam. So much for truth in advertising

[Jejune]

I bought this game after I saw the review. I've got a few colonies set up in the same system but I am hitting a bit of a rough patch-- I have explored 70% of the sector and finding research bases and domain survey ships is getting harder so the money there is slowing down. My colonies aren't making that much (70k between them) and dealing with the last pirate base (which inflicted -50% access and -3 stability and was on the other side of the core world) cost me all of my carriers, my only cruiser and most of my destroyers All I have left is two badly damaged shrikes, four omens and some civvie ships back at my base that I use for exploration like ventures and shepherds.

I've heard apogee cruisers are pretty good so I might build a few of those and go exploring again, extract the last morsels of income from the outer worlds and pray I find another motherlode. If not, at least they will be useful in a fight. Or maybe I'd be better off trading for a few months while I build an Odessey instead, and some escort ships to go along.

[Blastbeard]

I like the Apogee, It looks great, it's got a modest deployment cost, and the shields can take a beating. It could have more weapons, and the point defense coverage is a little iffy,  but it's an otherwise solid support ship. Give it an Autopulse Laser and either a Squall MRLS or Hurricane MIRV and you've got yourself a stew going.

As for sustainable income, consider bounty hunting. Pirate and Luddic Path bases typically get large bounties, and the bigger a bounty fleet is the bigger the payout. Deserter fleets have some of the best ships their faction has to offer as well, so there's a chance to bring home a gently used capital ship as a bonus. Just remember bring your A-game for those, they're going make you work for it.
I financed my current playthrough thanks to an abundance of high value bounties, most ranging around 280,000 to 360,000. I wasn't seeing this sort of money being thrown around in the first couple of playthroughs, so maybe something broke or fixed itself this time around.

[Mephansteras]

How hard are pirate bases to take out, anyway? I've never tried.

My current run has a decently large fleet, but nothing in it bigger than a Heron carrier and Falcon light cruiser. I've sort of assumed that's not enough. It's mostly an exploration fleet, really.

Granted, I'm not all that far along yet. My colony is still fledgling and I've mostly been doing small scale bounties in addition to exploration and the occasional shipping job.

[Il Palazzo]

My current run has a decently large fleet, but nothing in it bigger than a Heron carrier and Falcon light cruiser.

Should be well enough for the size-1 stations. I've been avoiding anything larger myself.

[Blastbeard]

Pirate bases are easy pickings for the most part. The ones that can only attack and be attacked from one side are just a waiting game, and the rest can be handled provided you don't get careless, and remember to leave your frigates at the door. Bring bombers and long-range weapons, such as hypervelocity drivers, and let those do the heavy lifting.

The real wild card with bases are defending fleets. The fewer things you have to kill at once, the better, so removing the defndners should be your priority. If your fleet is big enough, they'll try to stay far enough away that you can't catch them, but close enough to defend the base. Firing an interdiction pulse usually scares them away long enough to deal with the base uninterrupted.
Just don't take too long, otherwise a patrol fleet might spawn right on top of you. That's never fun.

Edit: Starsector stop I can only get so erect

Spoiler: Omnissiah Be Praised! (click to show/hide)

[Jejune]

Handy tip with the interdiction pulses. I've been using a strategy to take over a conma array or something to lure fleets over and eradicating then one by one that way until all are cleared.

Pirate bases aren't usually as hard as that last fight. That fleet of mine (3 drovers, 2 shrikes, 4 omens) was enough to take out most bases no issue but this base was different: two faces instead of three,, rapidly rotating, enough firepower to overload a shrike in two barrages on one side and huge hangers on the other. I had an eagle with me for that fight as well with two HVDs and one mauler but that wasn't enough by itself. It took the drovers rushing with reapers to do the job.

I've done a few bounties. The ones with high tech ships tend to wreck my face though. I'm not very good at this game.

E: Surveying with a venture and apogee seems to be making okay money. Nothing costs much more than 5 supplies to do (500) and even class III planets give 5,000 in return. I've found a lot of ruins already and even an alpha corr on some vast ruins that I'm going to ship people over to to set up as a techmining site.

[Blastbeard]

Hahaha oh wow.


Good luck, I'm behind 7 proxies, and the 7 proxies are behind 7 proxies.

[Nirur Torir]

Pirate bases aren't usually as hard as that last fight. That fleet of mine (3 drovers, 2 shrikes, 4 omens) was enough to take out most bases no issue but this base was different: two faces instead of three,, rapidly rotating, enough firepower to overload a shrike in two barrages on one side and huge hangers on the other. I had an eagle with me for that fight as well with two HVDs and one mauler but that wasn't enough by itself. It took the drovers rushing with reapers to do the job.

That's a mid-tech base, while the other ones you've seen are low tech.

Shrikes are light destroyers, not primary combat ships. I mostly use them with safety overrides for outrunning and mowing through lighter enemies in the pursuit phase. They're hard to fly in a real battle. Try Hammerheads, if you haven't. They're fun battle destroyers.
Wolves are my favorite frigates. They're common, have a decent punch. Even mid-game they're nice skirmishers with their speed and teleporter, and they're good at surviving against light or medium fleets, while drawing off and scattering enemies.

[Il Palazzo]

I have a memory leak on my current game (GC overhead limit exceeded) and can't save. The relevant threads on the game forum are way over my head, full of programming nerdspeak I couldn't even begin to understand in my advancing geezerness.
Does anyone know a way to save it regardless? Maybe there are some temp files I could delete or some other simple, hamfisted way?
It's a few hours progress, so it's enough to care and not enough to cry over it. So, eh, anyone?

ed: nvrmnd, it crashed hard soon after. I guess I'll allocate more memory and save more often for the future.

[Jejune]

oops

[zaimoni]

I have a memory leak on my current game (GC overhead limit exceeded) and can't save. The relevant threads on the game forum are way over my head, full of programming nerdspeak I couldn't even begin to understand in my advancing geezerness.

• Never use quickload. (May not be true now, but has been true in all versions I've actively played.)
• StarSector ships with a blessed Java 7 release, and will use the 64-bit version on 64-bit hardware.  If for any reason a more advanced version of Java (even a more advanced point release of Java 7) ends up being used, the savegame will wipe out as the "more advanced" standard Java XML savefile libraries don't just leak, they actively corrupt the XML.  (Verified on the lead developer's system). If you're lucky, the GC fails and the savegame doesn't actually write.  (Fortunately, the more advanced Java-based mods can be compiled with later versions of Java...just target Java 7 bytecode.)
• Certain mods have a reputation for shipping with reference cycles and thus leak memory that way much faster than the base game.  I can run the game for about 8-10 hours before the garbage collector fails and crashes out the game; this has been independent of actual version played.

[Il Palazzo]

Ta. I modified the vmparams file as advertised in the sticky thread. Everything's going smoothly so far.

In other news, size-3 stations. How do they die? A ~300-deployment point armada including an Onslaught with a retinue of heavy cruisers and maybe 15 wings of fighters/bombers couldn't even scratch it.