Once again regarding marines...it's a fun, and yes, challenging part of the game. As WS mentioned, you may want to hold off for now, but but later, it does make for a great challenge, while perhaps you are waiting for time to pass during some of the main plots (ie. The HUB!..no spoilers though, you'll see). Just poke your head around while exploring and cherry pick those high fight rank marines when you can, and get to training them for later as money allows. You'll be happy you did later, because successfully boarding and taking ships is kind of like a badge of honor, and you'll really feel like patting yourself on the back once you've done it. Is all the money and time expended to train your boys up for this worth it? Probably, and most likely, definitely not, lol. But the fun of beating the challenge, and actually doing it, is! I'd also recommend training up *all* their skills at once each time, to try to get your marines maxxed out in all skills as much as possible...not completely necessary to successfully board ships, but I found thier survivability, and chances of success are better that way. Just pick 'em here there, get their training regimens going, and kind of forget them for now (except when the game lets you know their present training is complete..then continue the training again until maxxed if possible).

You'll eventually come to a part of the game, when your economy is humming along, and your happy with the way your empire is doing, and you'll say to yourself..."let's go capture a ship boys". You'll know when that time arrives, trust me ;).

Ahh, and the shields...yeah, can be a pain in the ass. Just gotta keep your eyes open, and buy 'em up just like the marines when the opportunity is there, until you can build your own shield station as WS also mentioned. Hang in there bud!

Don't! :) They can be hard as hell to pull off, but they're also probably the most fun thing you can do in the game... plus there's no way of acquiring certain ships save for boarding.

True, the Argons don't have them - it will have to be either the Paranid or the Split you buy them off of. I have a Split station pumping them out and beside my Argon 200MJ Shield Fab and CIG Production Plants it's probably the best investment I ever made.

Btw, if you're looking for something you can just produce and have the NPCs flock up to buy from you, try 1MJ Shield Fabs or Advanced Satellite Fabs - in my corner of the galaxy both sell like hot coco in Antarctica. I barely have time to put some aside for personal use before someone turns in to buy a batch.

DAY 6
It's amazing what you can learn by sitting down at the end of a long day and looking through your ship's logs. Just giving my overworked brain a moment to recover and take stock. It's a ritual I've come to relish over these last six - incredibly busy - days out here in outer space.

For example, I just discovered that one of my wheat tankers over in Black Hole Sun was destroyed by a friggin' Q, many hours ago! Urgh. For the moment I'm just going to assign my other wheat transporter to do double duty, taking care of both stations (it has easily enough capacity for that, what with the never-ending taste for wheat that these cahoona bakeries have), and later on I'll try out the tractor beam I newly installed on a random unassigned Mercury to tow the two farms closer together and turn them into a complex. Should've done that from the beginning, anyway - much more efficient to just have a single TS deal with the output of one complex. Ah well, live and learn. And I'm learning, indeed! Took up a "teach yourself economy in 12 easy lessons" course which I saw hawked about on the Outernet, and gained my certificate earlier today, now being able to call myself a bona fide "Economist". My aunt would've been so proud if she could've lived long enough to see this!
And my thirst for knowledge doesn't end there, oh no! I had this spare Vidar laying around anyway (yeah, yeah, "mission to the moon", "urgent", yadda-yadda. I'll get to that tomorrow, Command, now that I think those nitwit marines you had me babysit have finally gained some real skills), and so I stocked it up with a bunch of Advanced satellites and set it to map lots of interesting regions which I hadn't gotten around to exploring myself yet. Consecrated Fire, Mists of Elysium, Clarity's End, Spaceweed Grove, ... so many interesting sounding places. Really must take a day off sometime soon to go on a vacation and see the sights!

But anyway, that's not how the day started. The day started - of course! - with disappointment. The Goners - remember them? - had politely asked me to go and destroy a pirate base for them, and - ever the obliging gentleman that I am - I had consented to look into the manner. So I took my trusty Cutlass, my three M8s (each with their very own jumpdrive, ferried over to order from the Atreus Headquarters at great personal expense!), which had been idly doing nothing for so many hours, and my Vidar, and - ace in the hole - my Truelight Seeker, which I had equipped with two Concussion Impulse Generators and two Point Singularity Projectors over at the Moon (where I'd sent it to inform Command about me having gotten turned around in Omicron Lyrae, so being just slightly delayed (that one just never gets old, and they still buy it!))
Now, I hadn't yet had the chance to see these babies in action, but the brochure I'd gotten sure sounded promising. And sure enough, when my very own fleet of badassness popped into existance in Gaian Star, and I saw that pirate M7 waiting there for me - *gulp* - those PSPs more than paid for their initial investment by saving my bacon with a few well placed shots, while my Vidar took care of the assorted chaf of M3s. Rubbing my hands in glee at a plan well executed, I started heading toward the pirate base... only for those Goners to suddenly inform me that oh yeah, oops, they'd forgotten to tell me that they had an agent on board, and I needed to destroy the station through subterfuge rather than awesome firepower of badassness! GAAAH!
I tried arguing with them, believe you me! "What's one small life given for a just cause if we can wipe out this pirate terror thread once and for all right now?!", but nooooo, they just didn't want to see reason. Hrmph. So much for finally getting to use my M8s. :( So instead I had to jump back and set my Vidar to gathering these highly illegal SQUASH mines wherever it could find them (had to shuttle over supplies at one point just to get those factories up and running), while I just flew around haphazardly doing some missions in Paranid and Boron space and working remotely on fine-tuning my supply and demand chains.

Anyway, I did finally gather everything I needed, jumped in with my Cutlass to distract the new pirate fleet (wimps; only an M6, no M7) by heading one direction, then having my Vidar jump in and head the other direction, and then jumping after it to personally take care of delivering the goods and blow up the pirate base. Anticlimax! The Goners were happy though, and threw me some fireworks from their newly finished temple. And they also... I only discover just now, looking through my computer logs! ...apprently fiddled with my jumpdrive! I sure hope they didn't break it! I mean, sure, I've been jumping all over the place since then, none the wiser and without apparent ill effect, but who knows where I might end up if it suddenly starts acting up?!

Anyway, with all that excitement over, I've been putting my economy lessons to good use, promoting my more successful sector traders and telling them to go roam the entire universe, and starting up a new complex over in Third Redemption, one of those groovy new sectors my Vidar explored for me, where I sensed a lot of Paranid in want of soja husks. That whole complex started off with a bit of a minsunderstanding, as the shipyard over in Cardinal's Domain apparently only sold large soyeries, which apparently can handle as many soy beans as two and a half medium soyfarms produce. But some minor clerk must've rounded that down when putting together the sales package, so here I was constantly running out of soy beans. And then, when I belatedly realized there was a much better stocked shipyard right there in Third Redemption as well, I figured I could just add on a large soyfarm and two medium soyeries and go from there. But of course, I'd need ships to transport all those soja husks, and decent shields were hard to find, and workers in these shield factories apparently love them some soja husks... so that was a rather obvious addition right there! And what's a TS without a way of defending itself, particularly with a pretty decent weapon like a Fragmentation Bomb Launcher? So, erm... yeah, my complex now consists of 8 stations, and so far most of my soja husks have been used for producing my own shields and weapons, rather than for supplying the other stations in this and neighbouring sectors.
The two large solar power plants in the sector are starting to struggle with supplying me as well (at least at the low prices I prefer), so I'm pondering adding on just a medium-sized solar power plant of my own, and maybe a crystal fab (there's two large silicon mines in the neighbouring sectors, so I don't think I'll need one of those, but just in case I do, I did scout an interesting looking asteroid right here, too).
Unfortunately Third Redemption has just now been invaded by a huge Argon war fleet. Apparently the Argon aren't very pleased with the Paranid for some reason or another, so they've laid waste to most of the shipping in the system. I don't mind that too much (lots of free wares floating around!), but they seem to have taken down the TL as well, which is putting a serious dampener on those renovation plans for this complex! Ah well, I'll have to go off to the moon first anyhow, so hopefully these Argon will have moved on when I return...

Great diary entry :-). I always get a kick out watching some of those fleet invasions in sectors, but as you now know, they often take out desirable ships or sometimes stations that are nice to have around. On the brighter side, the inhabitants will often replace them (but not *always*), and it can take a while for them to do so.

Day 6 report now updated with screenshotty goodness.

I'm currently struggling with figuring out if I find the spitfyre to be incredibly awesome, or game-brakingly overpowered, and should thus return to a savegame from before I acquired it (had no idea it existed, but was just mapping Aldrin on a lark, and then of course I snapped it up when I found their shipyard).

I fear I'm mostly leaning toward overpowered. It feels to me to make a mockery of the otherwise careful balance between the different ship types.

Of course, I also stumbled upon a fleet of about 200 deca M3s/M4s/M5s - so maybe making a mockery of game balance is what the game will be about anyway? (I can personally take care of a couple dozen of those at once, but doubt any AI-equipped fighters would do better than dying at an average of 1:1... (yeah, yeah, I probably shouldn't try to fight them and just go with the plot, but eh, why do things the easy way?)) ^_^

I think they threw out balance when they made X3TC anyway. The idea being that it is more fun like this.

DAY 7
I'm currently waiting for the announcement that I've been awarded the galactic Best Boss of the Month award. I selflessly put the health and wellbeing of all my employees ahead of a 1.8% increase in my profit margin, and a sacrifice like that just cannot be ignored.

It's really all a matter of empathy. My agents had scouted me some sweet-looking M3s and M6s over in Aldrin ("Aldrin?" you ask? Eh, just some boring sector over at the ass-end of nowhere - I'll fill you in later), so I took them for a testdrive. And sure, they were indeed as fast as promised, leading to that projected 1.8% increase in profit margin... But, really those Aldrinians have utterly crooked backs (lack of calcium or somesuch), and over the years the seats of their ships have warped along to accommodate that. So after just half an hour of flying around in one of those things, my own back started hurting like crazy. And apparently due to some design-flaw with these ships, the seats are non-replaceable. Now, I'm personally willing to suffer quite some discomfort for the greater good, but this was just too much. And if it's too much for me, then it'd definitely be too much for my employees to handle. Who cares about speed or profits when flying around in a ship makes you feel as uncomfortable as that?! So I took the ship right back to the seller, hopped back into my Helios, and haven't looked back since.

Hmm, I guess that Helios is new too, eh? I bought it to bring back my sweet new Xenon L ride. But wait, let me just start at the beginning, because I can already see you wanting to ask about that, too...

So, like, remember back to what I've told you before: Mission to the moon, terraformer threat, "only I could save mankind" (*eyerolling*), fully trained elite marine squad, etc. Command is always notoriously slow with assembling a fleet, which I'd calculated in perfectly, so when I arrived at the moon they were finally ready to move out. We would be jumping blind, so I brought along my Vidar, my Cutlass and my Scabbard with ten elite marines (preparation pays off, so I'd had time to equip them all with jumpdrives (the ships, that is, not the marines - though that thought does have potential)). We discovered some yokel who barely spoke English and told us this sector was called Aldrin, and then were attacked by Xenon and deca-* ships. I managed to get off a precision shot which disabled the AI on a Xenon L, leaving it adrift. Score! Of course I immediately hopped over to start repairing the damage. While I was doing that, there apparently was a boring boarding operation happening on some big ass cylinder ship or something? I don't know - didn't really pay attention. Probably should've sent over my marines to share in the glory, but they were busy babysitting a new bunch of marines which Command had foisted on me when I arrived in the sector, and eh - the rest of the fleet managed just fine without me.

But yeah, now I had a problem, since this sector didn't have a gate (told you it was at the ass-end of nowhere), while I had a new Scabbard and a Xenon L, each without a jumpdrive. So I flew back to the solar system to ponder this problem (ferrying along some minor diplomat who wanted to see the New Year's eve fireworks at Earth), while I set my ships to scout the system just in case there were any jump-drive sellers hiding out between the asteroids. Eventually I decided I'd better buy myself a military transport ship to carry out my recent acquisitions (with some shuffling of jumpdrives and other boring logistical operations). I spent a long time re-gathering my ships over at Aldrin, during the course of which I took that testdrive.

Back in civilization, I spent some time monitoring my universe traders (promoting most of them to Director) and increasing my working capital (30M by the end of the day; I think I'm going to blow it all on something really nice sometime soon!), and ran some errants for Jonferson and Atreus. Well worth the time, for it sent me to places I had pretty much ignored, like Menelaus' Oasis, where I spotted this super sweet looking Skate Prototype. Also had my Vidar continue its mapping missions, dropping satellites everywhere so my traders would have up-to-date information on profitable goods everywhere. Somehow the day just flew by doing that. I should make my way over to Danna's Chance one of these days, too, as I got a plea for help from there. First want to fully upgrade the fighters in my Helios, though - I have the feeling I'm gonna need them.

You're right, that is a sweet looking ship. Got to get me one of those someday :).

Congrats on your 7th journal entry and the end of your official obligation as a giveaway winner. Hope you'll keep writing them for as long as you play though :).

Do be warned that it's huge. I nearly killed myself with it while flying a protect mission on an ore mine, as its wings kept grazing the asteroid while I tried to swat the final M5 which was buzzing around it.

I definitely intend to! The pace of journal entries might go down a bit, as I just got happily suckered back into Colonization, but I expect many more days to come. I definitely had a lot of fun with this game so far, and am really very grateful for the "obligation" attached to winning it - as writing these journal entries was also a lot of fun. So thanks once more! :)