Vega Strike Forums

I picked up Vega a few weeks ago seeing that a new version was released.

Trying out the new version, I was glad to see how they improved Vegastrike compared to version 0.4.3

I started playing, headed out in space and soon had gathered a nice starting sum of about 2.5 miljon.
I then arrived in the system Sol and had some problems, which thanks to Loki I could resolve.

He suggested me to try out the subversion of the game if I was adventerous. So I did.
I downloaded conform what is explained in the vega wiki the latest subversion and started playing. I first tried to start a copied version of my save files on this version but soon realised that that this did not work out. As i did not want to restart again from zero, I "transferred" my 2.5 miljon to a new game started in the subversion.

From then on my adventure with the Plowshare started.

As compared to the llama this ship has a lot more cargo space, I thought well I can now easily raise my funds to higher limits.
So I bought me a Plowshare, outfitted it with pretty expensive components and bought in a commerce space station all the available construction items plus all the available mining gear.
Now I was ready to head out in deep space to seek a base to sell in with high profitssss.

I looked for the jumpgate I wanted to head to, pressed the auto button, relaxed and waited to arrive at the jumpgate.
Great was my surprice to see that the ship got out of autocontrol around 60 km from the gate. What ever I tried I had to fly him manually to the gate.
Once at the gate, again a surprice, the ship seemed uncontrollable. What ever i tried I floated away from the gate in stead of closing by.

My first reaction was, oh that is probably a bug in the subversion. So I returned to the official version, bought me there also the plowhare, filled it with the same items and headed out for a jumpgate. Great was my surprise to see I got the same effects.

To make a long story short, after a lot of trying and dying (as the area people found in me an easy prey) i realized that it all was related to
overloading the ship. A number I had noticed in the lower left corner of my hud display , mass 3600% (base), did now ring a bell.
I suddenly realized that the thrusters of the ship could not handle efficiently this mass. Only by carefully manually manuevring the ship using the overdrive thruster in the old fashioned way as I learned a long time ago with the space simulator I succeeded to get the ship through the jumpgate and to dock to a station. Man, that was almost as hard as the space simulator. It was a pain in the ass, but also a lot of fun.

So, I now realise the plowshare can be filled with a lot of cargo, but you have to calculate how much mass you are taking as the thrusters are to weak to handle the ship if overloaded. Also I realized you cannot upgrade the thrusters.
At this moment, my experience is that a loaded cargo mass of about 500 % is still ok. But that is about the same amount of contruction materials I took with the Llama. So there goes my fast and easy profitsss. So I now have a ship with 5x times the load capacity of the Llama but with the same thrusting capacity of the smaller LLama.

Is there any other space captain there who can share with me some experience in the maximum cargo you can load in this or other medium or heavy freighters to keep the ship decently manuevrable.

An other wrinkle for you to consider the greater the mass the further away from your target you drop out of auto-pilot the default distance is 2500 meters (2.5 Km) so if it is a base that you are travelling you have time to slow down for the docking manoeuvre as a bump may be taken as aggressive action and result in it shooting you to pieces

Enjoy the Choice

I will try to fill my cargo with a few high value low mass items (some mining eqiupment items fill that bill as well as the electronics (AI cores, PAI wetware)). Followed by some lesser valued lower mass items in bulk (expensive alcohol items, food stuffs, etc). Granted the run needs to be tailored depending on which bases/planets you plan to go to. By the time I can afford a plowshare and cargo I have an idea of what sells well where and ideas of what kind of prices I want to pay for the goods. Prices are fairly consistent across the galaxy for the same type of trade good and the same types of planets/stations.

Try buying a cheap fighter, like a robin, then fill up your plowshare, switch to the robin (which will be full unless there is no cargo small enough to fit into it), then fly to the mining base/planet/etc. Then switch to the plowshare, sell all the cargo, switch to the robin, and fly back!

not sure with a plowshare, but with a llama loaded to 4000%, i tap 'a' until I am about 25km - 30km away from say like a mining base, and then full reverse thrusters while pointing the ship at the external docking ring on the station, and hit the docking about 100kph where you can comfortably dock.

Again a reminder about the numbers the numbers on the HUD for velocity are in meters/sec not kph think about it:It just makes more sense when you are travelling that fast and what really matters is relative velocity the difference between your and the base you are approaching why do you think we have a match velocity to target key

Enjoy the Choice

The problem is base mass upgrades add mass cargo adds more

check me if i'm wrong
the basic Lama mass 225 metric tons space 2000 m^3
the Plowshare mass 830 metric tons cargo space 10,0000 m^3

are you starting to see the problem

the base mass is too low on either ship

Load a profitable cargo and waddle

loki how do we fix this



Bill

Your right the base mass for all ships is based on the Llama i believe, have to hunt down the code as it may be hard coded ATM as IIRC it was a quick hack to get to begin with.

Enjoy the Choice

not hard coded units.csv col 21&22 and mpl col 3?

I Set lama for 1000 and the plowshare for 5000 base mass

they still fly well and can now haul sufficent cargo

they fly better with hacked upgrades i mean who would fly a llama without medium autotracking minidrivers these days

Making money the old fashioned way earning it in luddite kills

Bill