Gleaning Gleaners for Fun & for Profit

Post your best tactics and strategies for getting the big bux in Vega Strike
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KillerB
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Gleaning Gleaners for Fun & for Profit

Post by KillerB »

I was doing the Ocean Planet buy Space Porn, Booze, and Robo-Hookers, haul 'em to a Rllan Gas Mine run, and every time I landed on the Gas Mine, these ULN Gleaners parked outside would shoot the crap out of my poor 'ol beater Llama. So next time I landed on an Ocean Planet, I noticed this interesting gun for sale: the Micro Driver. The specs on this thing looked kinda weak, but it had awesome range and it did some Phase damage like those Hail Missiles and Aera Photon Swarm Missiles I love to use and hate to catch. So I plunked down the 9 grand for one to try it out. There were a couple of ULN Gleaners parked right outside, so I targeted the first one's turrets and opened up from 9 clicks out. SURPRIZE!! The whole ship went up :twisted: . Cool! Lets try this again! BOOM!! there went the second one 8) . Hmmmm.....looks like I'm onto something.

Next time I targeted an ULN Gleaner, I was able to shoot all it's turrets off but it took forEVER to finish her off. So I bought a second Micro Driver. Then I upgraded one of my Missile Slots and moved my tractor down there, and stuck 2 more Micro Drivers in the now-open gun slots.

Gleaners drop a range of commodities. I can ususally make between 60k and 250k off a kill. If I had a ship with a bigger cargo hold I could make 1.2 Million just on those Automated Factories.

Lately I've been hunting Gleaners in a Pacifier. She only holds 1000 cubic meters of cargo, but she mounts 4 Med/Heavy guns and 2 light guns. I gave her a Jackhammer for shooting off turrets from 23.8 Kilometers out, 2 Rapid FIre Microwave Lasers, a Hesphation for in close work, a Crippler, and a Heavy Tractor. I start shooting the turrets off from 24 clicks out, circle in to 9k and open up w/ the RFML's, and then when I have the turrets all gone gone, I move in to 4k and open up w/ all four main guns.

Note: an Autotracker Upgrade is a must for at least 1 long range gun for the 'clip a turret' trick to work! I tried this in my Pacifier before investing in any upgrades, and it took forever before I managed to hit all the turrets.
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TBeholder
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Re: Gleaning Gleaners for Fun & for Profit

Post by TBeholder »

KillerB wrote:I was doing the Ocean Planet buy Space Porn, Booze, and Robo-Hookers, haul 'em to a Rllan Gas Mine run, and every time I landed on the Gas Mine, these ULN Gleaners parked outside would shoot the crap out of my poor 'ol beater Llama. So next time I landed on an Ocean Planet, I noticed this interesting gun for sale: the Micro Driver. The specs on this thing looked kinda weak, but it had awesome range and it did some Phase damage like those Hail Missiles and Aera Photon Swarm Missiles I love to use and hate to catch.
True enough. Only 4.8 times less (per second) than Hail does. Razor is much more destructive, though has a range 8000 vs MicroDriver's 12000 and ammo isn't dirt-cheap. IonBeam does 8x more at point blank, but its 4500 range it's not always enough (but enough for Gleaner). If you want to kill a capship for bounty and not loot, Shizu with top shield and IonBeam is a ship of choice. Otherwise, well...
KillerB wrote: Lately I've been hunting Gleaners in a Pacifier. She only holds 1000 cubic meters of cargo, but she mounts 4 Med/Heavy guns and 2 light guns. I gave her a Jackhammer for shooting off turrets from 23.8 Kilometers out, 2 Rapid FIre Microwave Lasers
But RF's only merit is being easier to use in close quarters. In average RF does less than 3/4 of normal MW lasers' damage. Also, you don't need a Jackhammer to beat Gleaner: its 6x turretbeam has lame ParticleBeam, range 2200 vs. lasers' 10000. Keep your distance and it cannot answer. BTW, the main gun of Pirate Thales has range 42000, but it dissipates very quickly, has no phasedamage and no autotracking, so if you got a really good shield and dodge a bit, even this is less dangerous than it looks. Lasers out-range its disruptors and its Flak can hit you at this range only if you're adrift. Of course, it can move toward you, so if you have good shields it's easier to get very close where it cannot use many turrets at once and you just don't run into its big gun.
"Two Eyes Good, Eleven Eyes Better." -Michele Carter
KillerB
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Re: Gleaning Gleaners for Fun & for Profit

Post by KillerB »

I actually bought the Pacifier to sweep a cloud of unfriendlies out of an ULN system after it took me several tries to cross it the first time in my poor ol' hooptimobile starter llama...then I noticed how much quicker she knocks Gleaners and other fat mommas down, and the ol' Llama hasn't been outa the barn much lately. (Did I mention I really hate trading?) I switched over to a dual Jackhammer/Dual RFMW setup, for a combo Freighter Hunter/ Capship Slaying mission ship.
The dual torp launchers come in handy for the Cap Killer missions, although I have on occasion TKO'd a Pirate Corvette with the first volley of Jackhammers (apparently catching the poor buggars coming out of SPEC, with thier shields down...target the turrets, and then BOOM, nice secondary explosion and the huge plasma ring).
The Pacifier does surprisingly well on 'clean sweep' missions as well, in spite of her rather unwieldly turn rate......I've run several missions with just the Jackhammers turned on. I've thought about going to an all-JH loadout, but I'd have to have a much bigger reactor/cap setup. With the mk10 reactor and the caps I've got installed, the energy bar just pops down and then back up as the two pairs of guns go through thier cycles, which IMHO is just about perfect.
btw, why do the Pirate Corvettes only drop a handful of crates of alchohol? Ya'd think every now and then ya'd hit the jackpot and catch one after she had taken down a freighter or two...maybe with AI cores *drool*
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bokid 1603
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Re: Gleaning Gleaners for Fun & for Profit

Post by bokid 1603 »

Note that to make this viable you really need Autotracking equipped. I tried to do it without and it took me a good 4-5 minutes to kill a Gleaner by which time two more arrived and cut me up with their particle beams :( .
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Re: Gleaning Gleaners for Fun & for Profit

Post by Turbo »

Turbo Beholder is on it as always with the weapons analysis. But I do have one issue: in SVN at least, all the turrets of a cap ship or base can hit you if you are in range, even if you are so close that they have to fire through their own hull. So until AI turrets adhere to limited fields of fire, that portion of his otherwise excellent tactical advice should be approached with caution.
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