Stories and Experiences

[Art Blade]

hehe nice :)

I haven't even found any terminal with Omegon yet :( Well, I got all the blueprints for those upgrades you mentioned. A lot of resources (and slots for them) needed, indeed :) The system I'm hanging out at is quite loaded with materials. Emeril and gold and other stuff. :)

I want that ship I showed you before, the long-nosed fighter. Apparently it only shows up as a 40-slotter if your own ship is nearly as big. When I first saw it, it was a test, and I had bought a 36-slotter for 10M before so that is what triggered the fighter to be that big, I suppose. Now, with 34 slots, I am slowly getting there.  :-D

[Art Blade]

it'll just about clean me out. I'm gonna have to do the Dynamic Resonator hustle on the Space Station again :-()

funny you should mention that, I just grabbed the formula that may make us rich. But looking at it, it also makes it clear why those things cost around 33k.
[smg id=9119 type=preview align=center caption="money making formula"]

[Art Blade]

I've got 42 slots now for my suit, going for 48.

that was an inspiring note. I did just that. And it's bloody expensive  :-D It's not cleaned up because I kept adding slot after slot and in between happened upon two monoliths.. I'll clean it up soon :-()
[smg id=9122 type=preview align=center caption="maxed out exo"]

[Art Blade]

I just calculated the costs of a fully upgraded exosuit:

6,300,000 starting with a free upgrade and then 10,000 per additional slot plus the cost of the previous one. So you start paying 10,000 then 20,000 then 30,000.. until the last slot which costs 350,000.

[fragger]

I was estimating about 350,000 - 360,000 off the top of my head for that last slot, so I was close. Expensive business. But when you think about it, after the ship, the suit and the multitool, what else do you spend really big money on? Those are the costliest things in the game, so once you've gotten them together there won't be any more huge outlays of money. There still may be times when you need to buy stuff, but not in the millions or the hundreds of thousands once you have your essential hardware sorted.

[fragger]

Well, I got the 48-slot suit together, and I'm considerably poorer for it :-() But it's worth having the max suit slots since I'm not going for a 48-slot ship. There are 48-slot "Spruce Gooses" coming into the station now but because I'm nearly all upgraded they're selling for about 175 million ??? I'm not gonna go dismantling everything to get the price to come down, do hours and hours of hustling in the station, buy a 48 and then re-craft everything for it at this stage - bugger that. So I'm sticking with what I've got.

(Out of curiosity, I saved the game and stripped out the ship to see what the prices of 48s would then do. They came down to about 57 million, but still).

So far, I don't have that many upgrades crafted for the suit. I haven't bothered much with protection upgrades as the planets in this system are all pretty benign. I do want the Jetpack Theta there though. That will go where the Jetpack Tau is now, and the Tau will be re-crafted one space to the right. But for now I want the adjacency bonus from the ones I've got.

[smg id=9123 align=center width=600]

Funny how I have all the Stamina upgrades, but the Stamina circle at the right of the screen isn't closed. Maybe I'm missing something there, or Stamina needs to be adjacent to something else. I've had it adjacent to the Hazard Protection slot in the past but there was no highlight, so I dunno.

Man, that bloody Omegon stuff is a pain to get hold of. I finally found some in a terminal at one of those places that has the single launch pad outside, and I got enough to craft the final Phase Beam upgrade. But I still have that Jetpack Theta upgrade to craft, which requires 50 pieces of Omegon, and I've got 47 :D I've been hunting for ages for those last three miserable pieces.

I've picked up a lot of Korvax words in the meantime though, stopping at every Monolith and Ruin that I come across. Almost got 200 of them now. I've gone right through he Korvax story that appears bit by bit whenever I interact with a Monolith, and it's gone back to the start. I've also found that I'm starting to get the same challenges all over again from the Monoliths that require a response from a multiple-choice selection. I guess there had to be a limit to the number of those.

The only ship blueprint I'm missing now is the Photonix Core for the Pulse Engine, which will go in that empty space left of centre. All other ship upgrades are complete.

[smg id=9124 align=center width=600]

Once again, I can't get the circles at right to close, except for the Hyperdrive (I think the inner white circle there is for the Pulse Engine, which theoretically should close once the Phototnix Core is in place). So maybe even if you have all the upgrades for something, and they're all adjacent to each other, you'll only get a closed circle if at least one of the upgrades is adjacent to whatever is being upgraded. In the case of my ship, only the Hyperdrive and Pulse Engine upgrades are adjacent to the corresponding systems, so maybe that's it. Same deal with the weapons, can't get any closed circles there either. But due to the layout of the ship, this is about as close as I can get whilst maintaining good weapons upgrade adjacency, but I'm still pretty well wepped up. I don't know what "Health" refers to. If it's the Deflector Shield, it doesn't make sense as there's a very large gap in the circle yet I have all three Shield upgrades adjacent. There is no damage to the ship either, so it's a bit of a mystery.

Once I get that Photonix Core installed, I'm going to start jumping. Time to see some new planets :-()

[Dweller_Benthos]

I've seen Omegon for sale now and then, but not often, and as I recall, only at those single landing pad stations.

As for your upgrades, Fragger, isn't there an omega level upgrade for most things? I'm pretty sure I have an omega for something. Don't know where/when you find those, as I've only ever found the sigma-theta-tau ones, except for that one thing, I'll have to check what it was, if I wasn't dreaming that.

[fragger]

There's a Combat Amplifier Omega for the Mining Beam and an Impact Damage Omega for the Boltcaster. There's a level 4 upgrade for the ship's Phase Beam Impact but it's called a Theta. The Beam Impact upgrades are titled Sigma, Tau and Theta but they're numbered 2, 3 and 4 - there's no number 1.

There's actually three level 5 Boltcaster ones but they're all one-off add-ons, not part of a sequence (Homingbolt, Wideshot and Shortburst Adapters).

There doesn't seem to be any other Omegas.

I'm starting to think that it's more a case of the titles Sigma, Tau, Theta and Omega being generations and the actual numbers on the upgrade icons are strength multipliers, so even thought the Phase Beam Impact Theta is the third generation it has a multiplying strength of 4, or something along those lines.

The game certainly doesn't make any of this very clear.

[Art Blade]

I have a feeling that getting away from the home system and closer to the centre of the galaxy, we might find more stuff unbeknownst to us at this point.

There are a few reasons why I think so.

First, those massive freighters that pop up out of nowhere. Huge ships that come in groups of three or four, you all saw those, and fragger posted some close-up screenshots. I wish one day we might own one of those.  :-D

Then, the pirates.. they can scan our cargo. We can't scan them. They can intercept us, we can't intercept them. So they're using some technology we don't have access to (at least, yet)

And I've recently collected a bunch of blueprints for stuff that is always build in by default, like a hazard protection in our exosuits, a pulse engine and launch thruster in a space ship. Stuff like that, the blueprints for which we can't use because.. we can neither build something from scratch nor dismantle those items. So maybe we might one day.

And there are those materials or items we got blueprints for and which we can already buy and sell, that seem to be part of a construction of something we don't have access to yet. Like unstable plasma for plasma grenade launchers or materials used for building large ships (I think one of those is called Lemmium or so, a yellow potato-like chunk of "hard" metal that is of no use to us so far)

Which is why I think there could be more..  :)

PS: and stuff you can buy like Calcium and whatnot, the purple stuff.. Radnox and so on.. blueprints coming up? :)

[Art Blade]

Yesss.. YES! :)

I mended ship wrecks until I got a 36-slotter and then I bought my dream ship, even a cool layout of the slots  :-D

[smg id=9130 type=preview align=center caption="the decision"]
[smg id=9128 type=preview align=center caption="I got it 40 slots"]
[smg id=9129 type=preview align=center caption="upgrading w@&k in progress"]

[fragger]

 :-X

It's cool when you get the ship you want. I knew I wanted the Goose as soon as I saw it, and it took hours to get it, but it turned out to be well worth all the trouble.

I was seriously thinking about going for a 48-slot version of it, but I would have to spend about 30 hours flogging Dynamic Resonators in the station - that's even if I strip out my ship to make the 48 cheaper. Then I'd have to re-craft all the upgrades again. Nah - I'll stick with the 40 I think :-()

[Art Blade]

 :) I think 40 will do, combined with a 48 exo.

This ship is fast.. goes over 210 normal speed, not using the boost.  :-D

[fragger]

Nice :-X

[fragger]

Interesting, I finally got the Photonix Core installed and now my ship gets up to 220u in space, and up to 183u at low-level planetside. It seems that upgrading your Pulse Engine increases your overall thrust speeds.

[smg id=9135 align=center width=600]

I also noticed on the Galactic map that having the Hyperdrive fully upgraded will allow me to make significantly longer jumps. I can now jump past five or six systems in one go, if I so choose. But the further I trace a path for a single jump, the fainter the line showing the path to the Galactic core becomes - after tracing the path on the map from one star to the next, beyond about the sixth star the path had faded to the point where I couldn't see it anymore.

I guess the devs don't want anyone to get to the centre too quickly :-()

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice ship, Art, I'm going to do it the slow way and salvage, I had the thing where no traders showed up at the station last night, so I left and went exploring in the new system.

[Art Blade]

cheers :) I worked my way up to get that ship. If I hadn't done some testing before when I just thought, screw it, going to buy that 36-slot ship for 10M as I'm going to revert to the backup anyway, and jumped with that thing to the system "Six Pack" which I had made out as a 6-planet Gek system during yet another prior test, I wouldn't have seen "my" ship as a 40-slot version. It dawned on me that I need to have my own 36-slots ship in order to trigger the otherwise small fighter types with 40 slots. Fighters always seem to have only 4 slots more than your own ship as a maximum. And I wanted a 40-slots ship, and if possible, a fighter.. that's how it came to that. I reverted to my backup with a 31-slot ship and fixed up wrecks until I had my own 36 slots and then I found "my" 40-slot fighter. I am really happy and it does feel like having achieved something. :)

Now I am upgrading it to the max, which is fun. ^-^

[Art Blade]

The last planet in my second system called Six Pack is quite something. When I punched through the atmosphere and saw the first silhouettes and structures emerge, I briefly had a blackout. As in, the sky and terrain were not there but it turned black and dark for a moment. Something had passed me or I had flown through something, a graphics glitch, perhaps? But I did see my cockpit from the inside, it was something outside that darkened the sky and blocked the view.

It was the beast you see here, there was a flock of perhaps 20 or so of those, and it had kind of headbutted my ship  ???

[smg id=9150 type=preview align=center caption="flying dragons"]

The next thing I saw were enormous tulip-like plants about two or three times the size of a small shelter or building. You can see some of them here.. ???

[smg id=9151 type=preview align=center caption="enormous plants"]

And while I was standing on my ship, something aggressive and big as a pig or perhaps pony with light-emitting spots on its head was trying to rip me to ribbons.. ??? Only it couldn't get through the wing and fuselage of my ship. Phew..

[smg id=9152 type=preview align=center caption="come get me"]

It is also enormously hot. But else.. I called the planet Jurassic Park because there are tons of monstrously big animals and plants. Really like back in the day of the dinosaurs. Crazy  ???

[Dweller_Benthos]

I stood on top of my ship to get away from an attack and it didn't w@&k, thing must have a jump of 10m or so.

[fragger]

 :-D

Same thing happened to me. I was way up on top of my ship going "Nyah nyah" and the critter jumped up and got a bite in ???

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

Yay, I finally got an Atlas Pass (v1). I got it from one of those terminal things after breaking into a locked building.

Now for a v2 and a v3. I want to find out what's behind those locked doors in the Space Station which require a v3 pass. Maybe it's an exclusive club where you get to drink Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters and hang out with Barbarella :-D

[Art Blade]

Barbarella! ??? OK, count me in. :-()

[fragger]

Jumped into my third system and straight into a "distress call to stop pirate attacks on a fleet of freighters" mission. So what the hell, I mixed it up with them. The upgraded weapons knocked them out of space like flies >:D My Deflector Shield held up very well too, though I had to repair it a few times between bouts. The same amount of damage that would knock the shield out entirely in my earlier game barely dents it now. I took out all sixteen pirate ships (yep, count 'em - sixteen).

I've since jumped a few more systems along - but I always seem to end up in a Korvax one :D I've decided I'm not going to stop in one system for any great length of time, unless I find a planet worth hanging around on for a bit (which I have, a lush and jungly tropical-type world that I posted some screenies of in that topic). I'm finding that once you have all your upgrades completed, there's not a great incentive to go to every planet in every system you visit. In fact I'm starting to think that the most fun part of the game is in the early days while you're gearing yourself up and getting your ship and Multitool together. Now that I've done all that, it's starting to get a tad monotonous - jump to new system, check out the planets, jump to new system, check out the planets... I'm hoping something fresh and novel pops up along the way. As it is, I've worked out that at the current rate (of traveling as far as my Hyperdrive will let me in one jump), it'll take about 1,700 jumps to get to the centre ???? Hopefully some quicker method of getting there will present itself later on, because I'm not going to stay interested long enough to get through 1,700 jumps. I'll be sick to death of it before I even get to a hundred.

There's got to be a better way, surely.


EDIT: Well, what do you know - I went back into the game and something new did pop up which led me into a whole new aspect of the game. Now maybe I'm getting somewhere.

HINT: (Art has already had experience with this in his first game) Make sure you do a "Planetary scan" every time you enter a new system. The default key is "c", or use whatever key you may have mapped it to for doing a resource scan on a planet's surface, but do it while you're in space. If you get an Atlas message in the lower right corner, act on it by following the guide that will appear.

This is speculation, but there may be something to be gained by getting the whole story of each race (you get a bit of one whenever you interact with a Monolith. You'll know when you've gotten a whole story when it says words to the effect of "this is the end of the tale" and the next time you do a Monolith for that race the story will begin again). I've gotten all of the Korvax's story, whose systems I've found myself in four times in a row... But I've jumped into a Vy'keen one now.

[Art Blade]

There's going to be a shortcut type of jump, fragger :) And various ways of keeping you interested, too..  ;)

[fragger]

Yep, met two individuals who provided a way to find shortcuts and I took one (won't say what it is for those who haven't come across it yet, don't want to spoil the surprise or the thrill of discovery). It shot me across several hundred thousand light years laterally but "only" about 15 thousand light years closer to the centre. Still a sizeable jump inwards though - it would have taken me about a couple of hundred "normal" jumps to make up that 15,000.