Starsector beginner guide
Starsector is a hard game, especially when you have no idea what to do. Hence, i decided to write this little guide to show any new players the basic guidelines to get started with the game. While there's no wrong way to play, here i'll focus on what i think is the easiest career. Let's play as a scavenger, shall we?
0. Avoid mods for a first playthrough
Mods are great and all, but they usually increase the difficulty of the game, and may or may not cause issues depending on what you decide to download. The basic game is quite good as it is, you'll have plenty of time to try mods later.
1. Do the main menu Tutorials
Really, if you want to survive, you gotta play the tutorial.
2. Do some missions before starting a campaign
Not all of them of course, and you might not even win a single one. But it's a good way to get a feel on the various ships you'll fly and encounter.
3. Start campaign with the Wolf frigate and Shepherd freighter, use easy mode
No shame in using easy mode here, the game is still going to rough you up with it. As for the starting ships, The Wolf is a proper combat ship, and even as a scavenger you'll have to fight your way through. The Shepherd is equally capable of carrying your supplies as well as keeping its opponents busy in battle thanks to its Drones.
4. Do the campaign tutorial
It'll show you how the "overworld map" works, so don't skip it. It's also the occasion to gain some "free" ships at the beginning.
5. What skills should you choose?
Spoiler
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Technology tree -> Navigation up to level 3
Industry tree -> Field repairs and Recovery operations up to level 3
While those are not the "best" skills available, they'll help reduce the maintenance cost of your fleet. The other skills depends on your preference. Want to fight a lot? Combat skills might be handy for you. Want to field a large fleet and use Carriers? Leadership might be better. Want to salvage ships and explore things? Industry and Technology are good too.
6. Save often !
Bad things will happen, a lot. And you'll need to reload, a lot.
7. Mothball recovered ships
If you do not have a surplus of supplies and crew in your inventory, it's better to mothball your newly acquired ships to avoid the unnecessary supply drain. You can go to a station to un-mothball them and repair them more safely later.
8. Do not sell salvaged ships
Salvaged ships aren't worth much, even when repaired. You'd be better scuttling them for a few ressources or not recovering them in the first place.
9. Turning the transponder ON and OFF is important
The transponder is like your licence plate, you want it ON when you're in civilised space. You do not want to be seen and identified when you're in hyperspace and uninhabited systems though, unless of course you want to signal your position to every pirates in the Sector.
10. Avoid hyperspace storms
Storms will make your life miserable, avoid them at all cost. Turning off Sustained Burn to better maneuver around them is better than diving straight through them. Also, a simple trick to avoid being caught in deep hyperspace :
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11. Don't take a commission with any factions
Taking a commission with a faction will makes others groups hostile, preventing you from (officially) docking their stations. Commission are useful if you want to maximise your profits while bounty hunting, but in general, you'd rather want to keep it low and avoid annoying the big players in the sector.
12. Get a tanker
No matter what you're planning to do, you'll always need a tanker for hyperspace travel. The Dram tanker is the smallest, cheapest one, available pretty much anywhere. Get one of those.
13. Pick analyze derelict mission
In most station's comm directory, you can choose missions for a faction, you'll gain reputation and money from completing them. "Analyze derelicts" missions tends to be the easiest to do, and require you to travel in deep space to find a specific object to scan (it will appears with a "!" on it). Avoid taking missions where the target is located in the "outer reaches" of the system, finding those can be hell. Be sure to load on fuel before doing those, you don't want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere, don't you? You can activate the fuel range indicator in both the Map and Intel Map to see how far you can travel.
Spoiler
The inner ring shows how far you can go and have the fuel to come back to your starting point, it's recommended not to go too far beyond that limit
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14. Avoid unnecessary battles
Fighting for the hell of it is going to cost you many supplies and leave you in difficulty later on. Only fight when you can't do otherwise (or when the target have a bounty on its head).
15. Avoid systems with a warning beacon
Yellow beacons with one ping are okay even at the beginning, orange and red ones (with two, and three pings respectively) are not.
Spoiler
Pictured here, not your friendly neighbourhood.
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16. Keep a safe distance with the neutral Scavengers
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In deep space, there's no law, and frustrated scavengers are quick to turn to piracy when the opportunity comes.
17. Don't hesitate to explore systems
Even after completing your Analysis mission, it's not a bad idea to stay in the system a bit to explore with your Active Sensor Burst. Inhabited systems usually have a bunch of derelicts drifting around, some full of expensive loot.
18. Dump metal and other cheap commodities in priority
There's only so much stuff your fleet can carry, and being overcapacity (both in crew and ressources) will drain more supplies than usual. Be ready to throw away the cheap stuff (metal, ore, organics, volatiles, etc) to make room for more interesting ressources.
19. Use the black market
Law abiding citizens get the short end of the stick in Starsector, don't be a law abiding citizen when you don't have a reason to. Black markets usually offer interesting ships and weapons for sale, and the reputation penalty for buying there is usually small enough that you can get away with it. A good compromise is to buy at both the open and black market to reduce the reputation hit.
20. Get officers whenever possible
You can hire officers in the comm directory of stations/planets. Officers will level up as they fight and greatly improve the capabilities of your ships. Officers have personalities that modify their behaviour in combat, in order, try to hire officers in that way : (Steady>Cautious>Agressive>Timid>Reckless)
There! You're good to go now! Of course, there's more than this, derelict analysis missions will sustain your fleet for a bit, but you can later on switch to different careers depending on what you want. There's probably a few things i missed as well, but if you have questions, the Starsector's discord usually have quite a few people active willing to answer those questions.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11488.0
Hopefully you'll enjoy your first campaign. And if you still want more, well, then i'll direct you to this thread instead :
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11462.0
