Tutorial: Help and Information / early Strategy

[dari]

here my few hints (worked at least for me) for an almost safe start:

feel free to add your strategies / comments !

reckless Exploration strategy
(unless you favor dying of boredom as trader)

1. start with ship that can support the most crew members, explore any planet you can land on as complete as possible to gather data (to sell it for credits -> 5.)
The explorer out of the 4 starting ships is a good choice.

2. to survive such exploration start your captain as Science and take field medic - and on next promotion get field medic 2 - makes surviving planetary explorations rather easy.

3. before returning from planet: if you have field medic and your shuttle area is safe rest until your party survival % is at 100% (just to be sure)

4. if it happens that your new game A.T. starts with a damage (1) sidearm and a damage (3) knife .. better start over - its a hassle to tough it out - especially on insane!

5. a good price range to sell data in case you need money in the first digit sectors is 2$+ per MB - tentaculons usually pay the most for data, gruff the least, bankers are ok but have a wide range.

6. for this heavy exploration style spent your money on good suits (matching sight range with weapon range - maybe +1 for better movement - but damage resistance should be priority to be able to land on more planets - prio2 should be amount of oxygen)

7. if you find mountainclimber and/or waterwalkers install them and have the other item in your cargo hold - mountainclimbers should be the default item - and if you encounter large rivers / sea you can leave the planet, equip the waterwalkers, and explore further.

8. once you find enough firax datapads to get the startemple quest - finish exploring the level but dont go any deeper if you are in a cave or explore an unknown planet. Finish the startemple quest first! (after the 3rd artifact this could mean you have to upgrade your ship to survive the advanced sectors), then go back to lower sectors to finish any explorable planet.

9. dont worry about having a "negative" artifact - as of v1.20 they have all positive effects.

10. if you have a 2nd artifact with the same effect - sell it to the tentaculons (for most $, or the very good shield as their 2nd quest reward) because the effects dont stack (at least not the "helps identify artifacts" effect)

11. try to get planetary and tactical officers (if you didn't start with science/medic - get them first) - useful early skills for planetary is frontiersman for the speed and for tactical marksman (useful for the early shotgun/smg) and then security chief for better ground combat
(don't forget to set them all to away team)

and finally:
don't use auto-explore on Hard+.
At Insane! take every move step-by-step : you can be killed from 100%HP by a single non-boss monster in just 3 turns.