In my current game (had to restart, again) it seems like the Klissans are fighting a lot more effectively than in earlier games. It's now 3002, and they have conquered ~12 solar systems already, while only 1 have been liberated by the alliance.

How aggressive are the Klissans in your games? Does it vary a lot from time to time? Is it completely random or is it scripted invasions that follows a certain time line?

Also seems like a lot of the friendly planets are agricultural or mixed economy this time, and I seem to remember more industrial planets from my earlier games. Do the different planet types have different fighting forces? So a solar system with large industrial planets have a decent military force, while the single agricultural world get's peasants with pitchforks to fend off the Klissans?

I'm liking this game a lot, but it's also still quite difficult to get started. I hoped to have picked up some more decent strategies to help me get started this time over, but it's still very hard. And now the Klissans have removed some of my best trading partners, and they're also blocking me from reaching large parts of the map cause my hyperdrive isn't really state of the art, and running through 2-3 enemy controlled zones to reach yet another invasion force isn't really that much fun :-p
(/end rant)

Anyways, I'm curious to hear how the Klissans and allies match up in your games, before you start to heavily intervene.

I have only played this one game (with tons of save reversions to try new stuff), so I don't have a good idea of how maps tend to be generated. However, in my game the Klissans took about half a dozen systems right off the bat, then nothing much happened.

In 3005, give or take, I saw in the news that a fleet was moving to take back a system, so I went with them. We succeeded, but it trashed my gear; rather a Pyrrhic victory for me. While I rebuilt my finances after the repair, the Klissans took back the system.

It would go on this way, with us taking a system then losing it, for another 5 years. In 3010, my ship was good enough that I could pop into a system and clear out most of the smaller Klissans. By that point the others Rangers (dang good for nothing scavenging/opportunist thieves in my game) would pop into the system and help me take out the rest.

However, half those systems would be lost within a year after I left as well. It is year 3014 in my game and I think only 4 of the 6 initially lost systems are free from the Klissans. I think one or two others not of the first 6 were also taken from the Klissan. We continue to trade systems, but it is somewhat stable and we are making steady progress. I don't think I am going to win any speed records though ;).

I think that single planet systems are the ones that keep flipping in my game. With more planets, it seems that they can get a defense force up faster. The times that I have been around to meet the Klissan counter-attack in 2- and 3-planet systems, they seem to stay in Federation control. The single planet systems can stay safe for years then get overrun out of the blue.

I haven't paid too much attention to planet type in regards to this. You might be right about the type of planet determining how good the protective force is in the system (or at least how fast they are built). I'll keep a closer eye on it from now on, though. Thanks for the heads up.

Just as an aside, to give another look into my game. I currently have around 5,000 ranger points, just hit Fighter rank with the military (the rank before Ace), have 146 Klissan kills, 62 Pirate kills(all but 3 or 4 from Hyperspace), have cleared 9 systems, and have 14 rewards. The next best Ranger has under 2,000 ranger points (and he started the game with 500, iirc), so they aren't doing much at all. It is March, 3014 in that game.

When I upgrade, I usually go with the middle quality one (the mechanics). The only items that I pay for the 'Expert Upgrade' is for weapons. The marginal increase in quality is not worth the insane prices. With that engine you bought, I think the mechanics upgrade is +60. For half the cost, I am uncertain that the extra +20 is worth the $9,000 (or whatever, i think that is close). Now, if you already went with the Experts in your game, no biggie. I did the same thing in my game, same engine and everything, I just stopped right after that (the prices got even crazier, like 50K for +7% on shields, but 25k for 5%, and such).

As for trade routes, I mainly went with Luxury items and Machinery. Sometimes Drugs if there was a disparity among two Peleng worlds. Whenever I would dock in a planet, I would check for missions. Then, I would look around at the various systems and the planets in them with the map. For each planet I would use the search function on the info screen to find what each planet was willing to pay for each good. Using that information, I would buy (or not, as the case may be) items and drop them off at the world with the most profit. If I had a mission, I would try to get a trade route going in the correct direction, of course. If there were no good trades, I would just mine hyperspace.

Generally, 100 extra capacity in your hull is what is needed to make it worthwhile. Once you have 250+ of space you can almost ignore trading entirely and just mine hyperspace; that is $1,000 to $2,000 without breaking a sweat. When you reach Wingman military rank (ranks are: Newbie, Cadet, Wingman, Fighter, Ace), you get implanted with a chip that allows you to see which clusters in Hyperspace have pirates. This makes mining hyperspace much more profitable, since you don't have to constantly repair your ship after pirate attacks.

Also, don't discount the Leadership skill. On a lark, right after my prior post a few hours ago, I dumped about 400 points into it to raise it from 0 to 2. Then I jumped into a contested system and instantly hired two rangers for a small amount (around 9 months worth of duty). I took them with me and cleared out 3 systems in rapid succession. Some of the items dropped by Klissans (at least in 3015) sell for $10,000 to $40,000. I usually sell the larger ones right away, and hold on to the smaller ones for a science base.

A word about hiring ranger wingmen: Keep hitting 'Half that amount' in the dialogue until the price becomes reasonable. They start out asking for ALL your money, but by decreasing the value you can make it more reasonable. The maximum amount of time you can hire a wingman is 54 months, regardless of how much money you pay them. As you decrease the money offered, eventually their time-frame working with you will decrease as well.

Wow, I missed the fact that we can enter clusters in hyperspace to mine... I've just flown through every time, hoping to avoid combat, since when I get ambushed on the yellow / red trails, I usually die horribly.

Any more tips regarding hyperspace combat? I have no experience what so ever with arcade games like this, and I have to admit I'm seriously tempted to turn arcade mode off. I might be missing some obvious tactics though.

Also I suspect my main problem might be an underequipped spaceship and me blundering into more powerful space pirates than I'm supposed to handle at this stage.. You seem to be quite successful though :-)

How does different weapons behave in hyperspace? So far I've had most success using lowly photon guns, and a zipgun. I didn't manage to aim properly with the graviton beamer for some reason I had trouble controlling.

/Edit
I just stumbled over a nice little feature. If you press ctrl when picking up items in your ship screen while at a planet base, you can put items into storage. You can reclaim them from the government screen later on.

I haven't done much testing yet, but I suspect it can be used to either store heavy equipment you don't really need for the moment. Or maybe it can be used to gain more profit from trades, after stockpiling lucrative goods on a planet base.

OMGWTFBBQ! (sorry, I love that one, and seemed appropriate)

I had no idea, and as far as I know it is undocumented in the manual. I read that thing cover to cover. Maybe it was in the readme that I didn't read. Thanks a bunch for this heads up! That really changes some strategies.

As for the Hyperspace Arcade, I have the best results flying bacwards just out of range of the enemy guns and spamming both my fire buttons. I used 3 Photon Guns on one attack button and 2 Zip Guns on the other button. I never stopped firing until they were all dead; cheap but effective.

I used that weapon set up until year 3010, when I started trying to take out Klissan systems. Photon Guns are not really powerful enough for Klissans at that stage of the game. The trouble is that the next decent weapon (one with decent range and auto-tracking in Battle) for Hyperspace is the Aeonic blaster). That is the the gun that shoots the little blue homing missile things, if you have seen it use by pirates. Keller's Phaser (which is available before the Aeonic Blaster) is decent for killing Klissans, with its good damage, but its short range in Hyperspace battles makes it sub-par (it is the machine gun like thing, if you have seen it used by pirates).

It is 3017 in my game, and I still haven't seen a Submesonic Cannon, Field Annihilator, or Tachyon cleaver available at any base or planet. A Submesonic Cannon did drop from a ship in a Black hole, but it was huge 103 space requirement) and didn't do as much damage as a decent Aeonic Blaster (20 - 50 damage, iirc). No idea how good it is in Hyperspace battles, but I doublt it could be that much better than an Aeonic Blaster; that thing is awesome).

My current weapons loadout: 3 Aeonic cannons (size 33, 36, and 41), a Keller's Phaser (size 25), and a Zip Gun (size 20). I am trying to get all 5 slots filled with the Aeonic Cannons, but most of the ones I see have sizes of 80+.

Currently I'm pretending to be a modestly armed merchantman, running around with two photon guns and a single zip gun. I have a 425 size titanium hull with a 600+80 engine, so with the speed artifact equipped I can still break 600 carrying a full load. I'm trying to keep my equipment to a minimum, to allow me better trade options. That means flying around without droid, shield, and scanner I'm afraid.

Btw; Scanners, are they any use at all when fighting klissans? They seem kind of pointless to me, but I might be missing something..

I planned to mainly do government missions + add in some trade, but now it seems like the missions are running dry, and the few planets that offers missions requires me to kill rangers / traders / pirates, and I'm not equipped for the job. Do you know if the number of missions I can take are limited? Or do I just have to try my luck with all the governments all over the galaxy?

It's now January 3006, and I guess I'll stick to my current plan for a few more years, trying to hoard some cash for decent upgrades sometime in 3010 or so. Not sure how much credits I'll need though. So far I've managed to hoard 90k or so, but I get the feeling it will be expensive to buy hull, engines, shields, radar and droid all in one go + the required upgrades. This might not be a good way to doing things, but I'll see how it goes.

About upgrades: I've noticed that upgrades seems to be a bit random regarding how much power they add. Not sure how upgrade strength is determined, is it random or is it depending on time / other equipment? For example I have two identical photon guns, one with +8 damage, the other with +6 damage.

They let you see how many hitpoints Klissans have left. This was useful for me to time my fire in order to win kills over my ranger 'buddies'. I mean, they are killstealing bastards, so I figured I would be one too ;)

I, too, ran into this trouble with fewer and fewer missions. At about the same time too. That is when i started doing a lot of trading. But, then that got wonky; prices got really high everywhere, and it became harder to find good places to sell off cargo. A lot of folks selling luxuries for 180 but only buying them for 120, for instance. I suspect it is built into the game, in order to force the player to start hunting down pirates/Klissans.

So, yeah, it is up to you. I tried in vain to find missions and finally gave up. Every 5 or so planets (I tried to vary my trade routes to always hit a new system), I would get a mission. But, usually, they were of the "Go to this system and kill the pirate then come back for the reward" type. Good money, if it could be done on the hardest setting (over $20,000 in 3010, over 30,000 in 3025).

In that time-frame, I usually kept a buffer of about $30,000, and bought any component that was a decent upgrade and reasonably small in size. The $30,000 amount was rouoghly how much cash it would take to fill my hold with Luxury goods at the time.

I think the amount of the upgrade depends on which race made the item. Higher quality items (Gaalians and Faeyans) seem to upgrade more. I didn't pay hugely close attention to it, but I think this is the case.

Anyway, I finally won the game. It took a while, in terms of game years, but clearing systems just eats game-time. There was one system that took me half a year to clear because the Klissans kept sending reinforcements. What a pain in the arse.

If Machpalla is on the system, then all the rangers will flee. I would try to solo Machpalla, but by the time I would get to the end, all my components would be breaking over and over (repaired by nanitoids), so it was feasible. What I ended up doing is hiring a couple other Rangers, then making them help me fight Machpalla (I called them my "Meatshields", I don't care how they felt about it :P). They WILL run too, so I would have to order them to attack Machpalla every turn. It was tedious, but it got the job done.

My Ending Statistics:

Score: 28,830 (3rd place, against the pre-done scores)
Won Game: 1 June, 3020
Rank: Commander (this is the rank better than Ace and, also, the highest rank achievable)
Civilian Ships Killed: 2
Pirates Killed: 66 (all but 4 were in Hyperspace, iirc)
Klissans Killed: 353
Systems Cleared: 27
Rewards: 19
Protoplasm Delivered: 6,735
Pilot's Accuracy: 5/5
Pilot's Mobility: 5/5
Technical Skill: 3/5
Trading Skill: 3/5
Pilot's Charm: 2/5
Leadership: 2/5

Ship Statistics:
44% +21 defense, 321 Free Capacity

Weapons:
1) Aeonic Blaster (36 space): 15 - 60 +22 damage, 357 range
2) Aeonic Blaster (31 space): 12 - 50 +21 damage, 340 range
3) Aeonic Blaster (33 space): 12 - 46 +23 damage, 323 range
4) Aeonic Blaster (41 space): 12 - 46 +10 damage, 323 range
5) Keller's Phaser (32 space): 36 - 54 +19 damage, 242 range

Crystalline Hull (969 capacity): 11 +5 defense
Energetic Engine (27 space): 800 +70 speed, 41 parsec jump distance
Archivatory Fuel Tank (24 space): 46 units
Suspensor Droid (27 space): 60 units of damage repaired
Cryometric Cargo Hook (28 space): 100 +24 units
Staging Force Field (41 space): 30 +9% damage reflected
Sonating Radar (15 space): 4000 million km
Duplex Scanner (15 space): 26% scanning strength

I also had one of everything non-standard item, except for the Z-tranzmitter (seemed useless, since Klissans came right for me anyway), Quark Bomb (I got a few of them, but used them right away), and the Tranklucator-XXXXX (Thing was too big, ~70 space, and died too quickly).

Maybe later I'll com back and discuss what I could have done differently to finish the game with a higher score. However, this post is long enough, and I need a break :)

Congratulations winning the game! I guess I'll need a few more weeks until I have it beat :-)

So will you play it again, or are you off Space Rangers for now? Or maybe you'll pick up Space Rangers 2 sometime soon? I've heard it's better than the first..

I started a new game with a Maloqi Warrior (Normal mode again). I want to test out some of my theories on what I think I could have done better.

I did the tutorial up to the black hole portion. Before entering the black hole, I replaced my 60 size engine with a 29 sized one, replaced my 80 size hook with a 39 sized hook, replaced my mining laser/photon gun combo with two smaller photon guns (around ~15 size each). This reduced my mass considerably and opened up over 100 free space in my ship. Then I went through the Black Hole and got a Probabilistic Analayzer (bleh) that I plan to sell as soon as i require the cash. I just started taking missions and never went back to complete the tutorial; I mainly just wanted the free black hole item. As I go, I go through the 'tough' path in hyperspace and rob the pirates blind (2 photon guns is pretty sufficient, I have found).

It is only March, 3001, so I don't know how things are really going, but it is certainly going smoother than my first play-through. The only downside is Maloqi Warrior start off with kinda crappy relations. The only people that I have good relations with are the Pelengs and Gaalians. Everyone else is just 'normal', including Maloqi planets (except the home-world, they have excellent relations).

So, that is a big reason I am high-tailing it to Gaalian space, and not finishing the tutorial. I don't want to have to bribe every planet to find one with a mission available. Once my ship gets a little better, I'll start killing off system pirates. It could screw up my relations even more, but it is an experiment :). Hopefully, it will spread out my relations more, so I'll have at least one port in most systems to get missions.

EDIT: Yeah, editing a two-day old post is rather silly, however I felt that I needed to change a typo in the date on the second game from "March, 3010" to "March, 3001". People could probably figure out what I meant, but in this game those two years are rather different.

I got tired of trading when not finding any missions, so I decided to get the best equipment I could, and go hunt some hyperspace pirates. I was a bit surprised when the enemies instantly got better. Seems like the game has an auto balance feature that scales the enemy to your equipment. I guess it isn't that noticeable when you constantly upgrade, but it was a big jump for me that went from 1st tire to 4th and 5th tire equipment in one go.

In my game I had about 250k credits in August 3009 when I started shopping. It's now January 3010, and I've managed to find some decent equipment, I hope. I'm limited to phasers and graviton beamers for now though, since the only aeonic blaster I've found so far weighs 97 tons.

Also just found the Antigravitator artifact, finally! I have almost all of them now. I even kept a Z-transmitter, since it seems like you primarily get artifacts you don't currently have on board your ship when fighting in wormholes. At least I think that is how it works.

I'm thinking this thread should be renamed Krypsyn's Q&A (now with 35% more waladorn!)

Hell of a lot of good info from you there Krypsyn, and that tidbit from waladorn on planet storage is making me want to (a) just huddle in the corner crying for a bit, and (b) cheer wildly because now I can keep all those nifty (but heavy) things I just don't have space for yet.

Just regarding a few things, scanners are a lot more useful in combat than just for seeing enemy hp. They also let you know how quickly enemies regen hull - vital information if you're trying to take out a couple nondus and one of them regens at 30/turn and the other 0/turn. Doesn't tell you directly, but you just need to check hp before firing, fire at it and tally damage, check hp at start of next round.

As far as rep goes, successfully completing delivery missions to other planets raises your relationship there, as does killing klissans and other races pirates in that system (except pelengans, they seem to hate you for killing their pirates anywhere)

Think you can get rep by taking needed supplies to planets as well (like when a planets population is dying and they want food/medicine). can't verify it, but its always good for the bank balance anyway.

[edit] Also, regarding invading klyssan held systems, seems better to stick with any military ships that are around. Unlike rangers (who subscribe to the brave Sir Robin school of combat), they'll stay and fight to the death (from what I've seen anyway)

Yeah, that was one of my 'theories' that I was testing out in my second game. I think you are right about the auto-scaling in Hyperspace. The Klissans (and Rangers) just seem to gradually get better as time goes by.

In my first game, I found only 3 or 4 Aeonic Blasters that had a size under 40 units. They are awesome though, so it might be worth it to buy an over-sized one to tide you over. Since weapons are fairly cheap compared to other components, you wouldn't be losing too much money by buying a temporary place-holder. Worst case scenario is that you use it to take out some Klissans then shove it out an airlock to make room for loot. You might even be able to pick it back up after visiting the freed planet for your reward and selling a few loot items.

Yeah, the Antigravitator is one of the best items, imho. Most other items have reduced usefulness as the game progresses (anything with a flat increase, such as a Droid Junior or Polarizer), but the two speed increasing non-standard items are useful up until the very end.

As far as not getting duplicate items, you are perhaps correct. I can't recall ever getting an item I already had on my ship while in a wormhole. I got redundant items from freed planets all the time, but none from wormholes themselves. Furthermore, there were some wormholes where I didn't get any nonstandard items (just a bunch pirate-like loot with slightly better statistics than average). Perhaps those wormholes where I didn't get any non-standard items are just those where the random number generator fell on a component I already had equipped.
This game is hard. I primarily wanted to post some tips that would help folks get out of the first few years. The start of the game can be pretty brutal, after all. I am glad waladorn figured out the planetary storage feature though. That was actually something I had incorrectly mentioned in another thread, so it was nice to have the misinformation corrected.

True enough. I didn't think to do this in my first play-through, so I probably took more damage and wasted more time than I needed to. However, I usually went after the ships with the lowest armor rating, so they probably also had lower repair rates as well. I usually went for the smaller ships first, since they usually died fast, but there were exceptions.

Yeah, Pelengans get mad if you kill pirates. However, I don't think Gaalians mind too much if you kill pirates from their own race. So, before taking a bounty hunting mission, I check what kind of ship the pirate is flying via the Info Screen search function. If is is a Gaalian ship, or a race I have reasonably good relations with, then I consider taking the mission. If it is a Pelengan pirate, I usually don't take it, since it is a double whammy from the Pelengan for destroying that pirate.

Good tip. I'll have to keep an eye on it. I have to admit that I didn't really start paying attention to the news reports until late into my first game. Even then, I was mainly looking to see where the next big military raid on the Klissans was going to occur.

Yeah, military ships don't seem to run from Klissans. I don't know if they stick around for Machpalla, though. I don't remember seeing any ship other than the player's (or hired help) attack Machpalla. On the other hand, I never saw a military ship flee from Machpalla either. They just never seemed to be in the system whenever I saw Machpalla.

I completed the game yesterday, in July 3017. Ran into the alien mothership early, so I guess my game was cut short.

From what I can tell enemy equipment definitely scales with your own equipment, so the strategy I tested out with saving up huge piles of credits for large scale upgrades simply isn't the way to go. You get more credits, and much better equipment faster if you spend your hard earned cash at a steady rate as you find new and better equipment. Just make sure you have some trade skill, so you get a good cash return on equipment you sell.

Playing that way I could make a healthy profit when selling off all the high value junk I picked up during prolonged battles. When I'm clearing out solar systems I try to look out for the hight value / low weight drops + grab a hold of as much protoplasm as I can carry. Then when my cargo space is filled up, I either return to base if I'm defending a star system from invasion, putting items into storage, or jump to a nearby star system preferably with science base + ranger base to sell, repair and hand in protoplasm. Usually the battle is still raging when I jump back, and I have enough time to get in a few more kills and join the celebration.

One thing though; I don't know what happens to items in storage on planets getting occupied by Klissans? So for now I'm trying to mainly use large systems preferably with a few star-bases as well to store my items, since it seems like they rarely get conquered.

Anyway, I enjoyed this game a lot, and I might play it again sometime soon. Or maybe I'll look out for Space Rangers 2: Reboot, that is claimed to be more of the same experience, just better!

I just started the game, but one thing I noticed was that your relations to the other races depends on which race and ranger profile you pick. For example, the human trader (which is what I picked) gets along with all races except Maloqs. In your case you were a Fayean, and the manual lists that Maloqs do not like Fayeans, so you were probably just the victim of racism, rather than Maloqs hating all traders. The manual also says that "Fayeans treat Maloqs rather like animals than intelligent creatures" so I guess you can't really blame the Maloqs for it.

So I guess a new lesson could be: pay careful attention to which race and ranger profile you pick, as it will determine who likes you and who hates you. From glancing over them, the Maloq trader might be a good one for new players, as he has good relations with all races and supposedly good starting weapons, with the rest of his equipment being poor.