Help me git gud, question thread

[Scorrpio]

Random thoughts:
A large stash of cash is a deadweight.   You need enough to cover the payday, rest should go to work.   Develop your industrial infrastructure.   Many facilities depend on others, and intermediate ones often allow lucrative manufactures that can really up your profit. 

Retaliation missions originate where a craft was shot down.   Shadow your targets untill you are a fair distance from your bases, and chances are they will never find you.   Or even better, down their craft near a death trap fortress base.   Also, with HW decoders, you can easily spot retaliation scouts and get ready.   For example, transfer some crack troops to the base in question.

I recently defended a base from a Spartan raid, and was pleasantly surprised to find a sludge cavern under the base and a network of corridors above the base.   These offer alternate routes through your base and make defenses a lot more fun.

[KiriKaneko]

I'm putting the money to work on a production base, though I should keep some of the bases clear to have space to build things later. I doubt I've got all the buildings I'll ever need after all. But more importantly once I make the research I wont be able to down civvie ships for points anymore and will be forced to take on faction ships exclusively, meaning I'll absolutely need to be able to research and build the new tech I unlock right away, so I'll need money in the bank to be sure I can get the new weapons, armour and interceptors to not get a game over due to low score while we lack the money to buy the things we need for the new challenges

I dont know what craft you are talking about sadly. I've been stuck with Pachy and shark bikes since year 1. I unlocked skyranger but its too slow, and I like the pachy sliding doors for not getting rocketed turn 1. The shark jetbikes are the only decent interceptors I've got, and I need 3 of them to catch every ship. 1 or 2 isnt enough to catch everything that pops up, but if I have 1 in North America, 1 in Europe and 1 in China then they can down every v.small and small ship. I don't try to down medium or large, I ignore them or get them when they land

[KiriKaneko]

Any idea where I can find power armour parts?

[ohartenstein23]

Kill or rob somebody with power armor.  Some Guild freighters have Marsec bodyguards, otherwise you need to assault their military craft or a base.  There are a few other sources, but they are the most common.

[Dioxine]

The game is designed to be very difficult to progress into real midgame without shooting down larger vessels - that is where the goodies are.

[KiriKaneko]

Do I have to shoot them down? All I have are 3 shark bikes but I do see some landed mediums and large craft. The large are usually just guild mining ships but a few times a year I see some kind of large military vessel land. I've been seeing a lot of landed mediums but I still skip them since some of the enemies on board have one shot kill potential, and I'm still replacing some losses. I still haven't found out how to make any new interceptor craft, though I do have some decent long range missiles unlocked, I could conceivably buy a few of those hover car things and try to mob a medium with missiles

Btw the 6 new soldiers I'm training are coming along well. Most of them are nearly maxed in TUs. I've been having my elites training in the dojo meanwhile and they're getting good accuracy now. Plan is to start assaulting landed mediums with the elites, and losses from the elites will be replaced with the veterans (max TU, 100+ energy, 80Str, 50+ bravery) while I recruit new hands to grind the civvie vessels to try and get TU/Energy up. It's sad to get those elites killed when I've put so much into them but I guess I'll need to do it to progress in tech. If I can raid each of the landed mediums and get a better industry going then I'll research stop raiding civvies and probably build a training facility to replace future losses

[legionof1]

It sounds very much like somehow you have missed doing the tiny drill manufacturing project which gates pretty much everything involved with craft and air combat as well as a alot of ground combat tech.

[Dioxine]

Right, with the recent versions, you need to make that project, since without it, you won't get offered cloaking devices, and without them, you have no access to any powerful craft.

EDIT: Looks like the tech progression was too restrictive. Not having a Cloaking Device should only block off actual cloaked craft, not the Contact: Ship Junkyard itself. Having the Cloaking Device actually makes some of the stuff available there kinda obsolete, while some other stuff like ground tech shouldn't depend on it. I'll add these changes to the bugfix version I plan on releasing soon.

[KiriKaneko]

I've got contact ship junkyard and I did the tiny drill and hull projects. I took the grey codex. All I got out of it was a crappy laser armament though. I can buy stuff from the shipyard but I don't have any projects for ship manufacture to use them with

Just checked, definetly can't make any ships even though I can buy old fighter hulls and cloaking devices. I can also buy snake and pigeon crafts which seem to slow to catch anything

[Solarius Scorch]

Have you researched a pilot? You need it to build a Menace class ship.

[KiriKaneko]

I don't know. I just got heavy duty construction and now it says I can make my own ships

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, who else is supposed to know?

[KiriKaneko]

I've researched quite a lot of those guys and they're still telling me about new ships, there sur eis a lot! Credit to Dioxine!

[legionof1]

I think it's time to link a save for a more in depth examination. Something is increasingly fishy smelling.

[Scorrpio]

Looks like you got green, not gray.  Picking green should let you also get Sakura bus(12 carry capacity) and Ashen Scarab crafts, in addition to Verdant Snake.
To build your menace class (Ventura), you need Interceptor Assembly (Plastasteel, Junkyard, Ship Engine), Test flight(unlocked by any main faction pilot) and Back to School