Arming the Away Team

[Dubious]

I found in the early game you have to be extremely cautious, especially until you get better suits and weapons. Mobs like kudzu and gnashers are deadly even in the later game. Even blobs can swarm you. Avoid shooting them as long as they remain docile or harmless, as much as possible until you get range and adjacency, as they will try to swarm between you and your shuttle in retaliation. You are just as dead from lack of oxygen. Retreat to the shuttle as soon as you get injured, even with First Aid, unless you have a large enough crew to get lots of HP. Without First Aid, you need to have the Medic Bay and lift off-planet while you still have a reasonable chance to avoid anyone dying (75+%). Similar applies to shipwrecks.

It's that pushing for "just that last tile/item before returning to the shuttle" that gets you.

Decent gear usually depends upon your crafting ability. Get that up ASAP. Salvaging new items helps with that. Suits and sidearms are the easiest to craft. When crafting it tends to cycle through the available "models", so be prepared to make multiple attempts and salvage the poor results. Remember that the first Tenaculon Quest gives a lot of free crafting sub-components.

Until then, trade is a boring but safe way to slowly build up a stake. Nothing says you have to explore every planet or cave.

-Dubious-

[pzgndr]

Originally Posted by Dubious

Decent gear usually depends upon your crafting ability. Get that up ASAP. Salvaging new items helps with that. Suits and sidearms are the easiest to craft. When crafting it tends to cycle through the available "models", so be prepared to make multiple attempts and salvage the poor results.

A small tutorial about crafting would be helpful. I've tried salvaging items and combining parts in the lab but not getting anywhere. The manual is vague about this aspect of the game.

[Dubious]

A small tutorial about crafting would be helpful. I've tried salvaging items and combining parts in the lab but not getting anywhere. The manual is vague about this aspect of the game.

Dari just added this to his excellent tutorial thread. Check it out.

Just to be clear: the lab is for discovering "recipes for unknown effects". Salvaging items (in space, not on a planet surface) gives you the recipe for that salvaged item effect (i.e. once you have salvaged one sidearm, you have the recipe/effect for all sidearms). In the early game, salvage is much cheaper than the lab until you have lots of parts (i.e. 20+ of all 25 parts). Buy cheap weapons and suits in the early sectors and salvage them to gain parts until you have built up a stock. The "Crafting Lab Upgrade" gives a chance that lab experiments might not consume parts, but it's only a chance. But you are better off getting officer promotions to aid your crafting than worrying about the lab. Raise money, then go back to early sectors where the price is cheaper and buy the more expensive items you couldn't afford earlier to salvage for their recipes & effects. Then you can try crafting.

I wouldn't bother trying for better crafted versions until after base crafting (check the Stats Screen) has gone up 10 points from the previous version you had created.

One thing I recently discovered. Some items sold in the stations have "special abilities" that you won't see unless you hover your cursor over the item and read the description. Things like the Shovel Suit (which enables the A.T. to clear away rubble). These special abilities are NOT effects you can gain by salvaging those items, and so far I haven't gained them from crafting. So you can wind up with several suits with different capabilities in cargo. Don't skimp on cargo space. The "Cargo Containers" device adds 25 to your built-in capacity.

-Dubious-

[PvK]

Unless there's an exceptional item, my close combat weapon is either a knife or a sword. Usually a knife, because the speed modifier affects speed when moving and shooting ranged weapons, too.

Ranged weapon depends on the situation, and what's the best available example. Multiplying swarms call for a strong enough weapon with some good adj to it. Later in the game, often I find a mortar is so destructive that it works in practically all ranges and situations. Though there are some situations where 0 adj is best. I don't think I've ever chosen a Cloud Gun.