TL:DR - see bottom of post. Otherwise, read on

Bought this the other day because the gameplay sounded quite fun and I tend to enjoy these open roaming sandbox space fighter/trader/pirate sims. I figured it might have a bit of a learning curve so I was prepared for some stumbles on my path to victory, but I wasn't quite ready for what I found.

The game hates me. Just me, specifically. It runs perfectly, no issues there. I can handle the start menu no problem! After that, things get iffy. Here are a few lessons I have learned so far:-

Lesson 1: My first run I thought to go a terran trader. Average starter to just get the hang of the game, so lets go normal difficulty. Get through the tutorial alright (close call with the black hole, but thats just because I'm not used to those controls yet) and start shipping goods around the nearby systems. Things are starting to look up, I've amassed a bit of coin and now I'm starting to think about upgrading my ship and taking on those nasty klissans, so I buy a few more proton lasers and even a zip gun! I see a klissan invasion going on nearby and decide to bolster my heros rep as a ranger and head in. I promptly get absolutely butchered by the weakest klissan ship in the game. One of them.

Lesson 1 moral: don't attack klissans with proton lasers when you have no accuracy skills. You will do 1 or 2 damage per shot, assuming you hit at all, while they happily tear strips off you.


Lesson 2: Alright, lets leave those klissans alone for a while until I can get some decent weapons. I start trading again, but this time pay more attention to those government jobs, they pay really well after all, and some get you bonuses to ranger or military ranking. I'm pretty much becoming one of the richest couriers in space when a job sends me to a nice safe system out the back of nowhere. I arrive to find it has been invaded by klissans while I was travelling there, and I promptly get ended by a massive fleet of all sizes of nasties.

Lesson 2 moral: Doesn't matter where you go, you aren't safe from klissans


Lesson 3: Alright, time to really pay attention and knuckle down. Faeyan trader this time, trading and govt work again, taking great care not to run assfirst into a flotilla of excited klissans. I actually manage to accomplish this, and things start looking up. I manage to put together a ship that can actually take down stray klissans, so I can start improving my skills as well as my ship and bank account. Looking good! Sadly, my next mission takes me through Maloc (sp) space and I discover something I had previously overlooked. They don't like traders. In fact, they don't like traders so much that the military of a planet with which I have excellent relations decide to tell me so and then attack me. Unprepared to face 4 or 5 military ships, I depart the scene in a cloud of rapidly expanding gases.

Lesson 3 moral: Trading can be just as dangerous as fighting klissans for the unwary

Lesson 4: Alright, now I'm a little bit peeved. I reload a save, regear my ship to fight and head back to Maloc space. Sure enough, they express their affection for me in that special Maloc way, but this time I'm ready and emerge victorious! So victorious in fact, that their military ships start asking for aid off other races passing traders, many of whom obviously see this as a chance to eliminate a rival, and promptly join in the fun. Sadly for these ambitious merchants, mine is a klissan hunting ship. Trader stand no chance! I cut a bloody swath through Maloc space, and return home with lots of new toys to play with or sell, and a satisfied smile. Unfortunately, it appears that killing the military and traders of other races is considered piracy, and that tends to be frowned on by all governments, so it appears that now I don't have a home, and in short order I also no longer have a ship. Or anything else, including bodily function.

Lesson 4 moral: It doesn't matter who starts the fight, when you fight the law the law wins. Also, pay attention to how planets perceive you so you can repair the damage while you still have a chance.

FYI: after lesson 1, I switched to Easy. Yes, I suck that badly

TL:DR

Basically I suck at the game and need some help learning how to balance trading/missions/fighting while managing not to irritate the entire galaxy.

Tips on the best way to trade, fight and basically survive would be most welcome!

I just did government jobs all the time. And klissan hunting later.

And IIRC, Malocs don't mind traders, as long as they don't sell forbidden stuff (like, luxury items) on their planets. I might be wrong though. I had bigger problems with Pelengs, because Peleng pirates attacked me all the time, and after I killed them their planets didn't like me for some reason :(

Also, when some planet doesn't like you, you can just land there and pay to government to change that. Or go to jail if they don't like you too much. Jail is another text adventure with possible different playthroughs and endings. You can even earn money there.

What the OP described is pretty much my experience. However, I just made a Terran Trader on Normal Difficulty with lots of saves. So, I cold try something, then revert back to a save a year prior (if needed) to try something else. I suppose I have probably start the game over 3 or 4 times now, if you count how many times I reloaded to try new strategies. I have only made it to the year 3005 on my latest save, but I'll try to help as much as I can

I wrote some tips down in the "What Exactly are We Getting Here?" thread. I'll elaborate a little further here. Keep in mind, this is for a trader based character, so YMMV with other types of characters.

When first starting, I would suggest getting better engines. Second tier engines have a base speed of 450 and can be upgraded to 510 speed. I have found this is enough to outrun most enemies I have met up until and during (however, the other guys are slowly getting faster). I have been looking for a better engine, but I can't find one that isn't farkin' huge.

After you have a nice engine, hopefully under 30 units in size, then I looked for a hull upgrade. I emphasized size over armor type, because I don't think that extra couple of damage soaking is going to save you at that point int he game. For the same reason, I generally didn't bother with shields or repair bots until I found some tier 2 ones that had a reasonably size (around 20 for the bot and 25 for the shield, iirc). The excess hull space I used for trading capacity.

At around the same time as the larger hull, I replaced my mining laser with a zip gun (size 20, which was nice). I keyed my Photon Gun to my main attack and the Zip Gun for the Hyperspace Arcade. I found that firing them both simultaneously rips the hyperspace pirates to shreds; the Zip Gun blocks them, and Photon Gun has a very forgiving 'heat-seeking' property that allows one to maneuver and dodge while firing constantly. Oh, yeah, I fight all my arcade battle as if I am flying a Spathi Eluder from Star Control: I fly backwards and shoot back at the enemy as they chase me.

With this set up, I had a ship at the start of 3001 with around 200 free hull space (I think the base hull size was 370ish), with no shield, no repair droid, and only a Zip Gun and Photon Gun for weapons. From memory (so expect rounding), the Zip Gun was size 20, the Photon Gun was size 15, the Radar was size 35, the Scanner was size 20, the engine was size 30, the Fuel Tank was size 30 (with a capacity of 35), and the Cargo Hooks were 25 (or whatever the value of the starter hooks, I never really paid attention).

My general strategy was to pick up government missions and trade along the way. I could clean some systems out entirely of bargain goods, and make a killing this way. I used the search function in the Info screen to find the current prices and quantities at each planet in the destination system, and planned accordingly. I couple good routes are Luxury goods from Gaal planets to Terrans/Pelengs and Drugs from Pelengs to Pelengs (I had several all-Peleng systems in one sector which made this easy) If there were no good items to sell in the system I planned to go to next, I would just farm Hyperspace for minerals. It was better than nothing.

Once my title became 'Merchant', the Maloq started occasionally attacking me for be a 'dirty trader'. This went double when my title was "Tycoon" (I tend to lose Tycoon as soon as I kill a few baddies). All the Maloq planets already had a "Bad" attitude towards me, so I was really trading with them much anyway. I had bribed a couple systems, just to check the mechanic, and those stayed happy enough to trade with me. However, even those planets would send military ships after me occasionally. So, I just ignore all Maloq planets and run from them if they attack me now. No huge loss, imho.

I continued this way until 3004, slowly upgrading my ship. The main trouble is that better items are not showing up quickly enough. I am rolling in cash, but I have nowhere to spend it. I am powerful enough to take on Klissans if they invade an inhabited system, but I am not powerful enough to boot them out of a system they have taken over. So, for now I just help defend systems from Klissans if I can get there fast enough and do missions/trade.

My current ship is a size 460 with 3 +4 defense, 20% shield, 10 +8 repair droid, starter hook, 38 +7 capacity fuel tank, 450 +60 speed (24 range) engine , 2500 range radar, 11 +5% scanner, two Zip Guns enhanced for damage, 3 Photon Guns enhanced for damage. Special items that I have are: 1) Polarizer (+5% shields), 2) Antigravitator (reduces ship mass by 25%), 3) Erimeter (+15 hook capacity), and 4) Prolonger (+600 radar range). That leave me with around 130 extra hull space for picking up alien scrap or trading.

I have no idea if that is any good, but it seems t work okay. If I could find better items, I would certainly swap them in, but planet/base stocks add new items at a glacially slow pace. currently, I am looking for a Tier 4 engine (600 base speed) to replace my enhanced Tier 2 engine. However, the smallest one of those I have seen is size 77 or something (50 more than my current engine, give or take). There is a size 520 Hull I could buy, so maybe I'll bite the bullet and buy the new hull and the bigger engine...

I have arounf 1,000 ranger points, putting in 3rd place there. I have 16 Klissan kills and 19 Pirate kills (all Hyperspace pirates), which puts me pretty much smack dab in the middle to Cadet Rank (130 points for Pilot). I blame the ninja-looting kill-stealing system defense forces ;).

I think that is about it. I hope it helps, I think I rambled on a little bit in there. Let me know if you see anything that I missed too!

Okay...I was literally drooling by the end of the above post. I...must have this game. It sounds better than Freelancer.

I never got into Freelancer, but one of my favorite games of all time has to be Wing Commander: Privateer. This game is very similar to both games. It is hard and the learning curve is steep, but once you get a handle on how to go about things I think it is quite a good game.

Update about my experiences:

Right after I loaded my saved game from my previous post, I found a nice size 25 Tier 4 Engine. It took just about all my spare cash (around 48k of my 45k), but I bought it and upgraded to to 600 +80 speed. I think that is the engine to look out for. With that speed (and the 31 range) I can actually handle some of the hardest missions with the shortest time-limit; not all, but I would say 75% are doable. It also makes hit-and-run tactics against Klissans feasible (can get out of range in a couple turns), allowing the repair droid to do its work.

Anyway, that's it for my play by play, I think. I mainly wanted to point out that the Tier 4 Engine is a game changer. At least it was for me.

Some very useful information there, thanks to all replying.

I've pushed on, and now seem to be able to hold my own (barely), but I'm having a hard time improving my ship now - hard choice seems to be between ability to fight and stay alive and the ability to actually loot things you kill (protoplasm and other goodies) or cargo space.

How do you increase your hold size? (apart from dumping stuff you're using a lot)

At the very beginning, I sell off less useful weapons (like mining lasers, after the asteroid portion of the tutorial) and items (repair droids, shields, and scanners) and only buy them back as necessity dictates or I find a really small model. Once I have more enough money at my disposal, I buy a new, larger hull, so I can fill up the component slots and leave decent room for trading and looting. I think I generally wait to buy a new hull until the size is fairly significant and/or there is a significant armor upgrade; if there is no net increase in defense, I would want +75-100 capacity or so, but if there is an increase in defense then I might settle for +50-60.

So a bigger hull means more hold space? Argh, I've been avoiding buying larger ones because it looked like they'd leave me with even less.

Good candidate for Lesson 5

I don't get the reference, is it a Down Under thing?

EDIT: Nevermind, you mean for your list in the OP. Duh. I thought it was an internet meme I had never run across. Whew, my geek cred is still safe then!

As for hulls, yeah, it is a little confusing since they use the same icon to denote capacity whether it is gained from hulls or used my components. In my game, currently at the end of year 3010, I can tell you that hull armor doesn't really start to make a difference until you can get hulls with around 7 base armor. For more armor, pop into a few black holes or liberate systems to get Iron bugs (increases armor by +5) or enhance the armor at a science station.

Once your armor rating gets above 10, the difference is significant. In my current game, I have 12 armor and I successfully took on a Klissan held system solo. It took a little running to break up the pack, but it only took a couple months of game time. About midway through more rangers/military started showing up to help too. The only really tough part was keeping the other guys from stealing my kills; nothing aggravates me as much as when I have been beating down a big Klissan for 10 or 15 turns, and then some piss-ant comes in and takes the kill blow. :P

I just bought the game yesterday, and I'm having a hard time getting started.

Can't seem to remember the last time I died this many times in a game.

I especially have trouble in the arcade battles, but also lowly pirates in solar systems are easily able to shoot me out of the stars or so it seems :-(

Oh well, let's have another go.

Guess I should restart, and see if I can find some better engines this time..

Finally figured out how to key some weapons to my secondary fire button, so now hyperspace battles are a tiny bit easier.
(had to shift + click the number key assigned to the weapon. Green coloured weapon icons = ctrl key, while purple couloured ones = space)

No doubt. Also, sending you to the score screen with your 0 score just adds insult to injury. The learning curve on this game is more like a learning cliff. It is compounded by the fact that there are no FAQ to be found online (there are some for SR2, but not SR1) and only a few helpful threads on the elemental boards. I had to figure it out with a lot of trial and error.

When you start out, your ship and gear suck. I mean, not just a little bit of suckage either, I think some freighters could probably take you. If you start as a warrior, then you are a little better off, because your starting character statistics are better suited toward fighting. But, in general, I have found that running is the better part of valor for the first year. After than, you should have gained enough cash through trading to afford a better hull and some decent weapons.

Arcade battles are doable early, just learn how to aim and dodge while flying backwards. It helps if you have a zip gun equipped, since when the bolts hit they knock the enemy back. I had very good result with a photon gun and a zip gun; the photoc gun was used as my primary attack, and the zip gun was used when the enemy got too close and I needed some room or if I had them pinned in a corner.

I've had some minor luck with the hyperspace battles lately, but that brings me a new dilemma. I have received some pretty nice but also quite heavy items from the space pirates. I definitely want to use them later on, but for now they are too heavy compared to my hull capacity. My titanium hull can carry 340 units, and right now my equipment weighs 270 units, so not much room for salvage goods / trade goods :-s

Is there any way to store items on planet bases while I roam around the galaxies trading for profit?

So far I've found:
1: Black Slush - weight 26, refills fuel tank
2: Iron zhuppi-bugs - weight 21, +5 hull armor
3: Matter psi-accelerator - weight 32, improves speed by ~80

I definitely want to hang on to the engine booster, but I'm not too sure about the other two items for now. Also it seems like I can't repair those items?

Do you know if these items are unique? Or can I count on finding more of them later?

Thanks in advance for any advice / information you can bring.

You can repair the non-standard items at pirate bases and science bases. As for on-planet storage, that isn't a possibility in SR1 (they added it in SR2, or so I've heard). The Iron-Zhuppi Bugs are extremely useful once you start attempting to free systems from the Klissans (around year 3010 for me), and the Black Slush is probably useful (I haven't found any in my game yet) because fuel tanks are usually pretty large and self-regenerating fuel seems liek it would help get longer use out of smaller tanks.

EDIT: Oh yeah, they are not unique. I have gotten half a dozen Prolongers, for instance, in my current game. I just keep the smaller one and sell the other when I end up with a duplicate. So, in the case of the Iron Zhuppi-Bugs, you could probably get away with selling them. However, I have only encountered them once in my current play-through, so be careful.

Later on, when you are helping to clear Klissan held systems, more fuel capacity can be useful to reach a Ranger base more directly with the protoplasm or even just to make the round trip at all (though this is rare). Also, sometimes black holes send you across the map. If some intervening systems have fallen since you bought a sector map, it might make still using the black holes viable.