So I've been playing SR2 for a while now (since the C1 sale) and I think I will be playing it for some time to come. There are a few things I've learned over the hours but I'm hoping there are some ideas I haven't explored.

First is on planetary battles. They haven't come up too often but I more or less enjoy the formula. However, I find I'm struggling with them. My first attempt on one scenario lasted about half and hour and I failed. After retrying and basically freaking out for over an hour I finally took the last base and won. Last night I had another planetary battle mission but after three tries I never stopped getting whooped severely. From my first scenario I concluded cheap robots are more or less a waste of money, but its not helping now. Are there any good angles I should be working? Anything I shouldn't be doing?

The second thing is equipment maintenance. I understand that some races equipment degrades quicker than others. Unfortunately the stuff that always seems to be the best (and smallest) seems to degrade at an alarming rate. I am at a point where I can finally take out a few small dominators or a medium ship on my own. However, the damage will always run me a good 35,000cr to fix which means its financially devastating every time I get into a fight. I'm not too sure what to do.

I try and trade luxuries and machines as much as I can but I tend to run the regions I'm in out of product before I get much more than 100,000cr. Right now my strategy is dropping all my weapons, load up with goods and travel across the universe and then work my way back. At the end of everything there is usually some attractive equipment I go for, or I fight a battle that wipes me out. I would buy more balance equipment but its damn hard to resist a bot that restores 50 damage and only takes up 24 space. Its too bad I end up paying 5 times the price for it in the long run. Currently I'm putting stuff in the hold so I'm not using it if I don't need it

**** WARNING **** SPOILERS AHEAD ****

If you can successfully fight dominators then your best bet for money is their equipment. With both military attacks or system defenses try to fetch as many artifacts as you can - especially small valuable parts. Then sell them to science bases for research.
Some parts may sell for double value, so check all 3 kinds.

As for equipment, the higher race's tech, the slower rate equipment breaks, so the Gaalian's and Faeyan's are the most robust, while Maloq's breaks very easily.

After you get some more money, "Ideal" class ship is good investment. With good engine and afterburner will allow you to escape if needed and fight hard otherwise.

I'm confused. I knew you could take dominator's gear to a science station in exchange for research points but I assumed that meant no actual cash. Do you get both?

I think I will always be a little lost with gear. I recognize the symbols but I don't really know who they go to or where they stand in the tech race. Exceptions being Maloq's and humans. I always end up with the ones that have a yellow and white oval with smaller ovals inside of it. They always seem like the smallest and/or most powerful but I've regretted the repair cost just about every time.

Last night I don't know what happened. As soon as I started it every planet I went to had three thumbs up on high dollar goods in quantities of 300-500. I ended up making a decent amount of money very quickly though It started getting hard as I was hitting the limits of my hull size. I'm now shopping for a new ship in the 200,000cr range but not having much luck doing better than I already have. I also found some gizmo's on a planet that says it will repair 10% worth of damage to something (per day I think) so I'm hoping that will help the repair cost once I get a ship that has expansion ports. I also downgraded my drive a bit which helped with the cost of maintaining it. I'm itching to get to the fighting.

The gear is basically color-coded by the race of poeple who built it. From worst to best (i.e. fastest degradation to slowest degradation): Maloq equipment has a red symbol, Peleng equipment has a green symbol, human equipment has a blue symbol, Faeyan equipment has a purple symbol, and Gaalian equipment has a yellow symbol. The better stuff will also be more expensive.

The green Peleng and yellow Gaalian symbols are actually kind of close in color, but the Peleng symbol is triangular whereas the Gaalian symbol is circular, so it's easy to tell them apart.

Sounds like you're using Gaalian equipment already. So, you actually have the slowest-degrading equipment available. So I guess you'll just have to live with the repair costs. Remember that you don't have to repair equipment right away... nothing bad will happen until it's actually fully broken. You should, however, repair your hull after you take damage.

No I have a kick ass droid. I think it does 50 or 60 points and weighs less than 30. What I was talking about was some gizmo that installs in one of the four small slots as upgrades or something. I'm not real sure what you call them. I had one that regenerated fuel, one that took out 40% of missiles (which I think I got rid of which was stupid) This one says it will repair 10% damage to one item. My current ship doesn't have any slots so I cant test it yet but I'm going to hold onto it.

I feel like something funny is going on with degrading equipment. I'm wondering if it has something to do with what I'm buying being much much lighter than most options. All the lighter stuff is always (I assume from what I'm reading) Gaalian and has always cost me devastating amounts of money to repair. I just ditched my engine and bought a heaver one and its costing me way less to run even though its a lower tier race. Its performance is similar but it takes twice the space as my old one. Or I could just be crazy but it sure as hell is hard to get into even the simplest fights now without it costing ridiculous amounts of cash. It didn't use to be that way.

The "little gizmo" is probably an artifact and it indeed repairs degrading equipment. However it never repair it to the full and you will need to pay sometimes.

Try repairing in military or pirate bases because they will do it cheaper. While hunting for new hull, use search. You can search just for "hull" to get list of 50 closest ones or "ideal" for full-slot hulls (if available yet).

I'll do that, but I guess I better do work first(damn you work! Damn you!). I've found the search to be far more useful than I thought it was going to be. My favorite was when someone mentioned searching "planet" to get near by goods prices.

There are untold hours of search-less, confused, meandering SR2 I now want back :(