Good starting star systems for beginners

[z30]

Troy and the surrounding systems (Regallis, Pyrenees etc) are actually very good places to start in.

There are nearly always Militia forces nearby to assist if you get jumped on for one and hostile ships generally don't come in bunches of 4-6 unlike New Con, ND, Ox and Perry.

No Kilrathi's around either to make your life miserable

Systems like Troy have 3 places to repair, do cargo runs, pick up missions - this should be the hub of your operations. Pick missions to systems nearby and do double system patrols when possible.

I'm slowly building my Orion Mk2 in New Constantinople this way, using my Tarsus Mk2 to trade, hunt and explore this side of the Privateer universe.

[mkruer]

I think just about every time I have played the game I more or less stayed in Troy until I bought the Centurion

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

I often find myself going back there. it's a great place for retros to.

[z30]

I kept heading back to the Perry, New Detroit, New Constantinople triangle which is a pretty terrible route when you've just got the original Tarsus

Should have stuck to the familiar back yard, got retros but you've got backup too.

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

Should not be that bad with TarsusMk2

[mkruer]

I think that the best way to earn credits in the beginning is to do a few things. First try to not upgrade your ship, keep it as basic as possible and purchase the advanced repair droid as soon as you can. This is by far the best investment in the game.

Next buy the BEST equipment you can for the Taurus, just skip the in-between steps and go to the maximum the ship will support. Information is key for the HUD so make sure that you purchase one of the Radars that can separate between friend and foe also speed is life in this game, so max out engines and shielding first. The last thing you want to worry about is weapons. I also tend to avoid missiles because they are too expensive. Just get the Tachyon Cannons; they are the best bang for the buck.

You can get most of this stuff fairly quickly if you save your money. Finally what I like to do is choose seek and destroy, and patrol missions around Troy and the related systems. You will find that it’s easier to net a profit if you don’t have to go anywhere, and as a added benefit because it’s all in the same system, you can double stack waypoints. (Two different missions goals at the same waypoint) this will maximize your ROI.

This is my life as a hunter.

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

i did this with my Demon when trying to get a Galaxy. it was much easyer. now with a fully kitted Galaxy i go fill up on drugs and go smuggling. Turruts take care of most bogies.

[z30]

I'm encountering randomly generated TarsusMk2's in my journeys now with the modified ship generation list in faction_ships.py. They still lack turrets but this is ok as long as some do have one.

Saw a flight of militia Kukhri's once and it was way cool to watch them head for a jump point in formation.

I'm thinking of adding some merchant Sparrowhawks in again, Confed & Militia forces are too thin for my taste.

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

how can one do this? there are not enough craft around for my liking. esp. New Detroit and new costantinople

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

how can one do this? there are not enough craft around for my liking. esp. New Detroit and new costantinople

[z30]

how can one do this? there are not enough craft around for my liking. esp. New Detroit and new costantinople

The code below , taken from modules/faction_ships.py controls the ave. number of fighters per flight group (FG) per faction. I increased Merchants from 3 to 5 :

fightersPerFG= {"confed":10
,"landreich":3
,"border_worlds":6
,"kilrathi":8
,"retro":4
,"merchant":5
,"pirates":6
,"hunter":1
,"militia":6
,"default":10
,"firekkan":4
,"AWACS":6
}





fighters = (("stiletto","stiletto","gladius","gladius","kukhri","broadsword",), #confed
("dralthi","dralthi","gothri",), #kilrathi
("steltek_fighter",), #nephilim

-----------
This one (also from faction_ships) controls what ship type is in the FG. Note the variants, these are not present in the original Privateer files.
-----------

("tarsus","tarsus","sparrowhawk","tarsusMk2","tarsusMk2","galaxy","orion","orionMk2",), #merchant
("talon",), #retro
("talon","talon","talon","talon","talon",), #pirates
("demon","demon","demon","orion","orion","centurion",), #hunter
("sparrowhawk","kukhri",), #militia
("salthi","salthi.particle"), #unknown
("tarsus","gladius","talon","talon","talon","drayman",),#landreich
("tarsus","gladius","talon","talon","talon","drayman",),#border_worlds
("stiletto",), #firekkan
("stiletto",), #AWACS

-----------

This controls the ship production rate, I increased Militia from 0.1 to 0.3, Merchants from 0.6 to 0.7 to get a more realistic ship population.

Note that the weaknesses of the stock Gladius & militia Talon & merchant Tarsus also contribute to the pirate Talon & Kilrathi overpopulation. They're simply not strong enough to keep these in check.

------------

fighterProductionRate= {"confed":.002
,"landreich":.12
,"border_worlds":.06
,"kilrathi":.008
,"retro":.5
,"merchant":.7
,"pirates":.4
,"hunter":1
,"militia":.3
,"default":.1
,"firekkan":.1
,"AWACS":2
}

-----------------------------

This controls which systems produce which faction ships. Note that I've included New Constantinople as a militia production facility. I felt that since the variants reflect closer collaboration between the merchanters & militia, this was the next logical step.

-------------------------------
production_centers={"confed":["Gemini/Perry","Gemini/New_Detroit"]
,"kilrathi":["Gemini/Gamma","Gemini/Tr_Pakh","Gemini/Sumn_Kpta"]
,"nephilim":["Enigma/Shanha"]
,"pirates":["Gemini/Pentonville","Gemini/Sherwood","Gemini/Penders_Star","Gemini/Capella"]
,"merchant":["Gemini/New_Constantinople","Gemini/Troy","Gemini/Oxford"]
,"militia":["Gemini/New_Constantinople","Gemini/Pyrenees","Gemini/Rygannon","Gemini/Prasepe"]
,"retro":["Gemini/Eden","Gemini/Oxford"]
,"hunter":["Gemini/Palan","Gemini/New_Detroit"]
,"firekkan":["Epsilon/Firekka"]
,"border_worlds":["Epsilon/Deneb"]
,"landreich":["Landreich/Landreich"]
,"AWACS":["Gemini/Auriga","Gemini/XXN-1927"]
}

-----------------------------
I'm getting positive results with the variants & increased ratio's. Merchant & Militia centers like New Constantinople & Pyrenees are becoming strongholds.

[Gosshawk]

Damn fine work z30.

[z30]

Damn fine work z30.

Thanks Gosshawk, it's good to be looking at code again after such a long time.

The militia random ship generation line now reads :

("talon","talon","sparrowhawk","gladius","gladius","kukhri",), #militia

I thought that one third of the ships being new would be a nice touch. Also toned down the militia ship generation factor to 0.2 - we'll see how the new settings play.

[z30]

The Privateer game universe is really a population experiment. There are six populations :

confed
hunters
militia
merchants
retro
kilrathi

Each has a generation center where they are most plentiful.

Perry - confed center
Palan - hunters
Pyrenees - militia
New Constantinople - merchants
Gemini, Oxford - retro
Gamma - kilrathi

There more generation centers than this and some are hybrids like New Detroit (confed & hunters).

One problem with the original setup is that the Kilrathi's are too strong. Dralthi's are terribly difficult to take down being very slim, manueverable & good armament (3 lasers are deadly!).

I've seen one Dralthi survive many minutes , outnumbered 3 to 1 and sometimes winning. Gothris are worse.

Retro ships, though weaker, are far more numerous and tend to overwhelm any star system nearby through sheer numbers.

Another issue is ship model generation, you can often have an Orion with level 1 shields and we all know what that's like

What we hope to do with the variants & modified faction_ships is to have more balanced population distribution. Merchants should be dominant near their production centers, same with confeds/hunters/militia/retro's etc.

Players should be relatively secure where friendly factions dominate, with risks escalating higher & higher the futher you stray from safe trade routes.

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

Unless you wan't to rack up credits really quickly.

[Pravus Prime]

I found that mission stacking, Commodity Buying, and sticking around New Constantanople, New Detroit, and Perry to be rather fortune making. Actually, the biggest profit runs for me are 3 high paying cargo runs to the same destination. It doesn't happen often, but if you look through the mission computer, both guilds, and the bar before taking any mission, sometimes you can fill your mission computer with nothing but cargo runs to the same destination. Then, I tend to buy commodities that I know will sell for a profit there as well to load up my hold, then go there. I can net 100+K Credits in that single run after delivering the cargo and selling what I had bought.

Of course, if you're just interested in profit, using Peytonvilles Pirate base as your drug supply, you can make a pretty good profit drug running, especially back to Troy, Junction, or New Detroit.

Your Mileage may vary.