A comprehensive guide to Space Rangers 2!

[Monocause]

Post your suggestions and tips, I'll add them to the first post.

BEGINNER'S GUIDE

- I suggest you try starting as a Gaalian merchant. Gaalian stuff is expensive but reliable; you get a decent hull with which you can make some easy money.
I suggest the following picks: tech skill, charisma skill. Why tech? Equipment deterioration is one thing - the probes are more important in the very beginning.
For the equipment, I chose an engine and a rocket launcher. You'll want to replace the engine soon anyway, but it will speed you up in the beginning. The rocket launcher will remain useful for some time. When you start, sell your scanner, shields and gripper. You won't need these for now - but you need hull space you've just freed up. You think a gripper may be useful for stuff someone left or minerals, but the gripper you start with is horribly heavy. You'll make more money with these free 40 HP than by picking minerals or fuel cisterns.
First off, do the training RTS mission. Just spam quadrocket+mortar+dynamo robots and set them on a capturing program; take one into manual control when assaulting the main base to capture it quicker. You'll gain some money that way.
Start trading in your home system. I've noticed that when you start there's quite a couple of lucrative deals to be made. For trading runs leave your weapons and gripper in storage so that you have more space. Go to the information center and make a search for goods, leaving everything blank; you'll get a list of prices on some planets, including every planet in the sector you're in. The best deals usually are on equipment and luxuries.

When you've got some money, go to the med center and see what stims are available. If there's one that boosts your tech skill, get it immediately. Then go to the science base and get as many probes as you can. Start probing the uninhabited planets, go for the smallest first. The 'property not on ship' info will let you know how many days you need to wait. Spend these days on trade/missions. When they're done, again - leave your weapons/droids/grippers, you can even leave your radar if you want to in storage and go to the planet to pick up everything. Rinse and repeat.
Probing runs give decent income. Sometimes you'll find micromodules to install in your ship or exchange for nodes. Don't sell them for cash.

Be happy when you get RTS or text missions; why? Because you can do them regardless of your equipment, while the fedex missions can be a problem if you get attacked by pirates or dominators on the way. I'll explain how to play RTS missions later on.
Be happy when you get a 'defend the system' mission too. If you get one, don't reply. Take off instead and see if there are pirates attacking merchants. If there are, wait until the merchant is destroyed or runs off. If there are none, land and take the easier variant of the mission. Chances are high that during these ~20 days nothing will happen and you'll get a nice amount of cash for nothing.


MORE STUFF

- As to the equipment, your first priority should be to swap your basic equipment to more lightweight versions. Avoid buying Maloq and Peleng equipment if you can, somehow they degrade real quick. You can get shields when you've got a larger hull and when they start to matter (block more than 20%), although with a good droid and a good hull they aren't necessary for a long time. I think scanners start to be useful when you want to use programs on dominators, or if you're a pirate. Otherwise you can skip them too. Upgrade radars when you can get a cheap and lightweight one with better statistics. It's nice to see more and it's useful in battles to see where the faraway ships are planning to go, but you can do with your starting one for a long time too.

- If you want to play with fighting the dominators early on, get a couple of rocket launchers and an engine that has a speed above 500 (to outrun the shtips). Feels like cheating when you do that, only torpedoes can hit you if you plan your moves smart and they can't do anything that a decent droid won't quickly repair. Notice that this tactic works when you have allies in the system which draw some attention to themselves. If you're alone and facing a horde of dominators, there's going to be quite a few torpedoes headed your way. Remember the motto of this game: if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Another variant is to get a couple of rocket launchers and to have some close-range weapons in hold. That way you can pepper enemies with missiles to persuade them to come close and then take them on one-on-one with your close range Lezkas and Frags. It's more risky but less expensive (remember that you have to reload your launchers on stations).
Don't sell the dominator stuff at planets! Take it to science stations instead. You get more money for it and the research is a nice bonus. As to the nodes, you can take them to both science and ranger stations; in the latter you can exchange them for micromodules, while the former gives you a small amount of cash and boosts research with them. Your choice.

RTS STRATEGIES:

First off, turtling is NOT an option in the beginning. First thing you should do is build turrets wherever you can and then build a single uberpowerful quadrocket-mortar-dynamo on antigravs. Also build some garrison robots. A good setup to defend a base is to place two dual-rocket robots beside the turrets AND two quadrepairer robots. The repairer bots are essential.
Be cheap at the beginning.
Then, take manual control of the quadrocket bot and take some of the nearest bases. Build missile turrets as soon as possible. Don't ever build light and heavy turrets unless you're really short on cash, they're almost useless. I prefer to stick to the missile ones sometimes coupled with a laser turret.

The strategic layer of the planetary battles isn't resource management - you need to think which enemy to attack, where and how. Always try to weaken the strongest enemy and to keep your enemies balanced while you grow stronger. If you see the enemy is low on resources and has trouble building bots, go ahead and rush his factory directly with a quadrocket.

if you have a gut feeling that you're screwed, chances are you're screwed. Don't hesitate to push that 'restart' button, you'll quickly get frustrated if you won't. Actually, I recommend restarting a couple of times just to see what the enemies will usually do, ie. who will attack you and who will concentrate on someone else, which bases will they rush.

I've noticed in the other topics that you guys complain about the Mauna-Roa island map. I'll give a couple of tips how to do it:

-Restart the map until the green factory in the upper right corner gets destroyed in the beginning fight. Yes, it happens. It makes the map much easier.

-Build the quadrocket bot and take two green bases to your left as soon as possible. The lower the amount of bases your enemies have, the smaller the armies they send at you. Don't bother with assaulting the main green base yet, you'll lose.

-Build missile turrets! Garrison the bases at strategic points, ie. the bases which are at the end of the pathway green will attack (these are the two you start with). Your northern base has four bots which will give you a good idea of how it should look like. From time to time check out the garrison to see if the repair bots aren't too far from a turret and can't repair it. Don't use the 'defend base program', it sucks.

-Take your quadrocket uberlord and take a couple of red bases further away. Try to garrison them too, but don't worry if you'll lose them. Your next priority is to take the green base on the river, near the northeast corner of the map. Build missile turrets ASAP, it's got a great defensive position.

-Soon you should be ready to take on the main red base (unless red has taken a couple of bases from green inside the bunker and thus has some resources). Take control of the remaining red resource bases and then create a following army - three quadrocket bots and two repairbots, all on antigravs for better mobility. Position them near the red factory and take control of a quadrocket. Attack the base slowly destroying the turrets one by one and retreat to the repairbots if you take some heat. Once all the turrets are gone, ignore red robots and send all of the quadrockets to capture the factory. Remember, you need to destroy the turrets to be able to do so. With the red factory under your control you can easily steamroll the green by queueing quadrockets and repairers on antigravs and sending them on a capture program. Aid them by taking manual control from time to time and build turrets in the bunker.

 

[someone else]

Do you intend to make a FAQ and post it on gamesfaqs? I don't think they have a complete one yet.

 

[Monocause]

No, I hope to pool the knowledge here so that new players from Codexia would get some help. Skyway and others gave a couple of tips in Bryce's topic and Jimbob's LP, but they're too chaotic and context dependent.

I think I got a decent grip of the early game, but I don't know how it is later. I'd especially like to know what's the point of the investment system. Do the stations you fund help to defend the system? Does building a science station speed up the research? Does a new ranger station increase the total number of rangers? And what does the charity option do?

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Do the stations you fund help to defend the system?

As much as any other station. But stations are a bit tougher than ships and also prevent the capture of a system until destroyed, 'though they don't move around (except for the military bases, which don't move, per se, but can jump to occupied systems as a part of liberation forces (which you can also occasionally fund at the military bases themselves)).
In Reboot, you can also tinker with a station's equipment whenever you like for a one-time fee, so you can make them even tougher. But I've found that to be of little benefit, in practice. The dominator invasion forces are usually much too powerful for a station to make a dent in of any significance. Unless you've set the dominators to 'Easy'.
Upgrading the equipment of a military station about to jump to an occupied system might be a little more feasible if you have some equipment to spare, but, again, it depends on the strength of the dominators - without the rangers' help, the stations will get ripped apart by dominators set above 'Normal', anyway.
Long story short: unless you're playing with 'Easy' dominators, don't bother upgrading stations' equipment - it's a waste of resources better spent elsewhere.

Does building a science station speed up the research?

No. The only things that contribute to research speed are the scientists' cleverness you set before you begin the game and the mass of the dominator equipment you sell to the science stations through dialogue (the more, the heavier, the better). Also, keep in mind that non-standard dominator equipment (anything you can't equip on your ship) - except nodes - can be sold to science stations at x3 the price in the dominator department that particular piece belongs to.

Does a new ranger station increase the total number of rangers?

No. But remember that once the last ranger base is destroyed, your node count also drops to zero. Just as destruction of the last trading center wipes your bank deposits (bad) and loans (yharr, matey).

And what does the charity option do?

Improves your overall reputation.
In fact, all the projects you fund through the trading center improve or damage your reputation among one or more factions and/or races. For example, funding a new squadron of ships to be built on some planet improves your reputation with that planet and military ships, but decreases your standing with the pirates.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Has anyone been able to beat the RTS mission where you start out on the small map with the insanely cramped ship and all 3 enemies surrounding you? I have no idea what the name was, but it was definitely a reboot map and had red on the lower left, green upper left, blue lower right. Red would usually annihilate green within 2 mins, blue would come straight after you. Its hell just defending against blue, since there is no room for the usual missle launcher force except in one still small area, and a single flamer will kill your entire force, nevermind taking their base itself. Then when red gets 2 bases you are a minute away from getting fucked up the ass 100 different ways.

All the other RTS missions were easy compared to that one. After 10 or so tries I got close _once_, being able to take blue and green's base by what was probably 2/3rds luck, but red bum rushed my original base and its almost impossible to attack given how much of an advantage the CPU has in close quarter battles.

 

[Kalenden]

Man this game is hard. I've previously beaten it on normal, now I'm playing again with Dominators on Hard. Only 3 races exist now, Gaelians, humans and Faeyans ( although they will probably soon kick the bucket ). We've got 7 systems in total, of which 2 are inaccessible because it is too far to jump. So far the current systems have not fallen yet ( with a bit of save scumming and me intervening ) but I wonder if we will ever win...

Anyway some questions:

All the financiel centres have been destroyed, will they ever come back?

When do I get a text quest? I've got 2 RTS missions already ( of which one the Mauna Roa, took me 3 tries... ) and money income is low due to the lack of quests...

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

All the financiel centres have been destroyed, will they ever come back?

Yes. All stations are built randomly by the game when there are enough free systems. The bigger the system, the fewer stations it already has, the more likely a station will be built there.

When do I get a text quest?

It's random. However, the text quests you do get are limited by your race and profession.
Mind you, your race can be changed at a pirate base; and your profession is dynamic, depending on what you've been doing, and can be looked up in the rangers' rating chart (hold the cursor over your profession and you'll get a pop-up with percentage of your 'warrior-trader-pirate' rating).
Also, in a system that's just been liberated, first mission you get will always be RTS.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

You also seem to get RTS missions semi often after defending a sector from a large attack.
All quests appear to be limited by the amount of space you control.

On very hard, I was literally down to the last system for something like 2 or 3 years, no quests in sight for the entire time. On the next year I finally managed to scrape together enough missile launchers, which are frankly the only thing you can fight dominators with on very hard without killing your bank account on repairs every 2 turns, and liberated the 2 nearest systems along with the help of the 1 surviving ranger and some military people. Got an RTS quest from each, but still no quests. The next year about the same happened, liberating another 3 systems, a few quests started popping up. Then it seems like the military passed some kind of critical power limit at which point they started taking back systems on their own, and in the next year the dominators were controlling about only about 40-50% of the universe which were pretty much unbreakable without a huge force and both sides were trading systems every month. At this point pretty much every other planet I landed on was giving quests. So as long as you are kicking enough ass, you should start getting quests, but don't rely on them to help you out if the galaxy is about to be taken over.

Also, RTS mission rewards go up far faster then everything else with time. I am now hauling in 6 million credits per mission, whereas normal missions barely pay 500k. Of course, its not like I need the money anyway, the credit limit is only 10 million. But before then the main benefit from taking over sectors wasn't the salvage, it was the RTS mission.

 

[Kalenden]

Thanks for the info, too bad quests are system controlled ( I've got 12% or 7 systems now ).

What is the best tactic for conquering systems? What weapon loadout is the best ( I'm currently favoring missile launchers ), also favourite artifacts?

Oh, one more thing: What is the best weapon for hyperspace? I like to let the autopilot do all the work, if that should matter in the decision of the best weapon.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

On hard or very hard, you definitely want missile launchers and only missile launchers. Even when you get to the point where you have so much armor/shields that you take no or almost no damage from hits, thats just your health that takes no damage. All equipment still takes full damage AFAIK. Be prepared to have equipment fail that was just repaired a day ago during long fights if you duke it out.

Once you get to the shitload of money point you can switch over to other weapons. At end game the best part of non-missile weapons is that they hit instantly and do more base damage. However, since missiles have 3 shots, that means any additional damage from things like micromodules are 3x as effective. Where a normal weapon might put out at 40-70 base damage, which turns into 70-100 base damage with the best micromodule, the best missile will do 30-48 base damage, upgraded to 60-78 base damage TIMES THREE. the sightly lower base damage will hurt the missiles more then the other weapons though. I have 20 armor and 50% shields, so missiles would only do 10-19 damage while other weapons will hit 15-30 damage. The missiles still pull ahead, and I haven't seen any ship that comes near my own defensive power. Missile launchers are also incredibly more space efficient, only taking up 15-30 space while other high end weapons will be 100-150. That gives you much higher speed (which goes down the more you are hauling) and let me have 600 space instead of 100 to pick up shit after everything is destroyed. Also, each letter grade improvement of the missile launchers, the capacity goes up by 5. So while you only have 20 or something salvos of shots at the beginning, at the high end you have 60 salvos, which is more then enough to rape the shit out of everything considering every ship you come up against should almost never take more then 2 shots from all of your weapons.


TL;DR USE THE MISSILE LAUNCHERS

Artifacts for dominator fights, I have a
Matter psi-accelerator (improves speed by 20% or so)
Antigravitizer (decreses ship weight by 25%, another 20% or so speed increase. Note: Does not let you carry more)
Blast Wave Localizer (enemies equipment is less likely to be destroyed when they die so you can pick up more)
Nanitoids (Repair up to 10% of an item on your ship every day).

TBH I haven't seen much effect from the last two items. There are some items that also reinforce armor or improve laser/fragment weapons, but both of those are kinda useless. Improving weapons you don't/shouldn't use is obviously bad, and as mentioned above armor wont save your bank account from being raped due to equipment repair. Better to just play keep away. Obviously I haven't found every one of them, use your own discretion. As long as you have faster speed then dominators you can plink plink away with whatever missile launchers you have into infinity. Early on (when you can't even take over systems, just kill 10 dominators and run off) you will want to salvage them for money, which is a problem since they will destroy the equipment other dominators dropped so you cant take it. Try to lead them in circles so that they move out of range of dropped equipment and you can circle around and pick it up. Thats where having quite a bit more speed then the dominators helps.

For Hyperspace I've never used autopilot, it tends to get me killed. I killed Keller with a puny mining laser and missile launcher about 2 months into the first year. Just run backwards while spraying. You should quickly become familiar where the health powerups spawn, and make sure they don't get them. If you see someone whos chasing you (while you are shooting them) and they break off for some reason, assume they are going for a health powerup and beat them to it.

 

[Kalenden]

I'm kinda stuck ( again... ), with 4 missile launchers I'm quite capable of taking on dominators, but the repair bill and reload bill just destroy any money I have. I don't get any quests and trading only brings in a couple of thousands ( if I'm lucky ).

One time I came close to conquering a system, after having my remaining 15000 dissapear, only got 700 now, and then all of a sudden Kephrone was conquered by the dominators! Goddamn this game.... Dominators are too easy on normal, and the game is too boring ( no quests ) on hard.

I'm even willing to cheat, but I don't like the big cheater tag that appears on your screen, any way to get rid of it? ( it is 3309 already... ).

Edit: Also what is the best weapon for hyperspace?

 

[Ashery]

I'm kinda stuck ( again... ), with 4 missile launchers I'm quite capable of taking on dominators, but the repair bill and reload bill just destroy any money I have. I don't get any quests and trading only brings in a couple of thousands ( if I'm lucky ).

One time I came close to conquering a system, after having my remaining 15000 dissapear, only got 700 now, and then all of a sudden Kephrone was conquered by the dominators! Goddamn this game.... Dominators are too easy on normal, and the game is too boring ( no quests ) on hard.

I'm even willing to cheat, but I don't like the big cheater tag that appears on your screen, any way to get rid of it? ( it is 3309 already... ).

Cash wise, avoid buying high cost gear to lessen your repair bills. Once you get a Cent module, drop a sizable amount into a small, fast engine, but even then all other gear should be fairly cheap in order to keep repair costs down. One thing I was regretting for a while was dropping 35k on a small 35% shield generator. Thank god I just got nanobots or I would've been dropping a sizable chunk of my income to keep it repaired.

While I'm no longer scrounging around for every bit of cash (3316, but my first playthrough, everything normal but doms on hard), I certainly am not yet swimming in it. I definitely remember having similar cash issues around 3309 as you are. Much of my early income, once quests dried up, involved scavenging dominator parts while defending a system from invasion.

You can also check the news regularly and wait for a set of battleships to attempt to take back a system. Either join them and use them as fodder or hit the system a couple weeks early and clean out a sizable number of doms before the battleships come in to clean up.

Also, focus on getting the best missile launchers possible, as their cost per missile is the same. So a 21-30 +30 (and that's not even the best you can get) launcher costs as much, per missile, to reload as a 12-14. And upgrade your launchers immediately after buying'em as they're dirt fucking cheap to upgrade.

Edit: Also what is the best weapon for hyperspace?

I've gotten used to the missile launchers and find them to be fairly effective (Haven't tried out many other, though). The fragment cannon can be effective when flying around backwards and the electric cutter has damn nice damage when you land a direct hit, but has utter shit for range.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

You have to get good at keeping dominator's away from their own debris so you can pick it up. If you fly in a straight line away from them, you can kiss any chances of getting stuff goodbye. Keep flying in a circle around the system (the tighter the circle the lower the chance of them being able to fire on their own equipment) and shoot the dominators the furthest on the outside of said circle. Then go around again to pick it up. Also, if you can do some quick math and estimate how many salvos to shoot, that will save you a bit of wasted ammo that would be overkill. I got lucky getting 2 artifacts that improved ship speed early from black holes/missions, so I was dancing around dominators easily picking up their equipment. A single good pickup can net you 10-30k, more then enough to pay for reloads. Go in with other fighters when they go. If you can't take back the system, just swipe all the loot since the dominators will be too busy shooting your allies. Don't be shooting missiles while trying to pick up stuff, its easy to destroy the equipment if you aren't careful.

Make sure you are selling dominator equipment to a science station of course. My first game every science station was destroyed and it was pretty impossible to make any money sitting in the 1 system we had, trading between 3 planets. Nodes go to the ranger station if you have one.

Raise your fighting stats first, always. I believe (don't quote me on this) that the stat that lower your ship degradation rate only lower the rate of normal wear and tear over time, it doesn't protect you from ship to ship damage.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

Is there some list showing when the ranger stations will give out what nodes? I am getting sick of scraping out thousands of nodes with nothing to spend them on but useless crap. I find good micromodules in dominator wreckage more often than in the ranger stations.

 

[Average Manatee]

Is there some list showing when the ranger stations will give out what nodes? I am getting sick of scraping out thousands of nodes with nothing to spend them on but useless crap. I find good micromodules in dominator wreckage more often than in the ranger stations.

It's random but the stations try not to offer you a micromodules you already have in your ship (which I believe counts both stuff in your hold and stuff installed in your equipment). So what you want to do is build up a nice stash of MMs on a planet somewhere and before you go shopping load one of each you don't want in your hold while temporarily swapping out equipment that holds anything you want another of.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

Is there some list showing when the ranger stations will give out what nodes? I am getting sick of scraping out thousands of nodes with nothing to spend them on but useless crap. I find good micromodules in dominator wreckage more often than in the ranger stations.

It's random but the stations try not to offer you a micromodules you already have in your ship (which I believe counts both stuff in your hold and stuff installed in your equipment). So what you want to do is build up a nice stash of MMs on a planet somewhere and before you go shopping load one of each you don't want in your hold while temporarily swapping out equipment that holds anything you want another of.

God damn, that is the most horrible cancer mechanic I have ever heard of. No wonder everything is ALWAYS COMPLETELY USELESS.

Thanks, I wish I had known this before it would have made the game a lot more enjoyable.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

Ok, I had forgotten that you can just reclick on the dialog to get offered new choices. That makes it much easier. It is such a timesink to gather the fucking nodes that having it be so arbitrary would really suck. There's an awful lot of useless micromodules but I gathered a list of the better ones.

I also forgot you could use any race's micromodule in dominator equipment, which makes the dominator stuff a lot more worthwhile since there are a lot of nodes that WOULD be good if they were not limited to junky maloq equipment. Good luck to someone whose shield and engines are Maloquian.



Universe
tank +15
engine +70
droid +30
hull +5
missle +20
frag +30
energy +20
radar +800
scanner +6
shield +6
gripper +60

cost 1000

Burnz
race: pelengs, gaalians
energy +20
frag +40
missile +30
cost 1300

Threader
race: maloq, peleng
frag +35
cost +50%
cost 1300

Farsight
race: all but gaalian
range +120
cost 1300

Harding
race: human, peleng
hull armor +6
cost 800

Drover
race: maloq
speed +180
jump +20

Dimin
race: Gaalian, Human
tank volume +35
cost 1250

Integrator
race: any
energy +5
frag +15
missile +5
size +25%

Hocus
race:any
gripper +150
range -10

Dioshield
race: Faeyans, Humans
Shield +5
Missile +10
cost 600

Excalibur
race: Humans
energy +15
range +40
cost 700

Extremer
race: Maloqs
hull size +20%
cost +50%
cost 900

Redusa
race: Peleng
engine speed +140
cost 400

 

[Average Manatee]

Most dominator equipment sucks because you need nodes to repair it and the nanitoids won't repair them. Maloq stuff works alright once you have max reliability skill and nanitoids. Even if you don't want Maloq I'd take slightly slower engines from the Gaalians rather than engines I can't repair in flight.

Dominator weapons (especially the super AoE weapons) look pretty nice but I've always stuck with cheaper, smaller AoE weapons that are heavily boosted. Multiresonators w/ Burnz, the +33% damage mod, and artifacts eats everything but bosses instantly. Atomic Visions also work well but tend to be hard to find small.

Also, something that is mentioned nowhere in the game that I can find: Null Equipment (and I'm making up the name myself). Equipment found from black holes doesn't have a race. Equipment without a race can't take micromodules but does double the effect of any artifacts that affect the equipment. Usually this isn't optimal end-game stuff due to the lack of micromodules, but there is the possibility to make an engine that can basically go on afterburners indefinitely (null engine + artifact decreasing afterburner damage + nanitoids repairing at double speed). If you make a combo like this the artifact will light up green to show that it's boosted.

EDIT: Looks like Steam has a pretty thorough guide now: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=253596035

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

In the newer version it does not cost nodes to repair dominator equipment, which was stupid and annoying.

The game doesn't seem to want to give you too many artifacts, it seems to decide what you get before the game starts, so you don't always get the nanitoids. If you have the nanitoids then you are wasting them on maloq stuff though, because they will have to work much harder than if you have high quality stuff. The maloq stuff is just there for cheap stuff which is cheap to repair, if you have nanitoids you should avoid it.

The void engines are good if you have matter psi accelerator otherwise they suck, but it is hit and miss what you get in hyperspace.

I started over and I have a dominator engine with Exploder module. That gives me an engine that goes 650 and costs only 1200 credits, so repairs are nothing.

That is hardly a winning combo for the later game but it is highly useful right now. Later in the game you get tons of disintegrators from dominators, so if you want to go with energy weapons that is very helpful.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

Hmm, that guide (while retarded in some areas) seems to imply you can get a HULL in hyperspace. God damn, that would rock.

Also you can use scanner cache and probability analyzer to determine what artiface you will get. That would help a lot, though I never get those together.

 

[Average Manatee]

The only hull you can get in hyperspace is the android hulls. Which are pretty awesome. In one game I had 3 droids with full multi-resonators and burnz upgrades because overkill is the best kind of killing.

The game definitely doesn't pre-seed artifacts. Though, like the micromodules, you can't (or are incredibly unlikely to) get the same artifact you already have from a black hole. In fact if you use the scanner stuff during the black hole you'll see ships having nothing when they would have carried the artifacts you already have. Important to know if you want a 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) copy of an artifact for your droids. Artifacts that a droid carries don't count IIRC even if the droid itself is in your hold.

 

[tindrli]

fuck if i continue to read this post i will start to play it AGAIN!!!!

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

You know you want to, just do it.

The only hull you can get in hyperspace is the android hulls. Which are pretty awesome. In one game I had 3 droids with full multi-resonators and burnz upgrades because overkill is the best kind of killing.

The game definitely doesn't pre-seed artifacts. Though, like the micromodules, you can't (or are incredibly unlikely to) get the same artifact you already have from a black hole. In fact if you use the scanner stuff during the black hole you'll see ships having nothing when they would have carried the artifacts you already have. Important to know if you want a 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) copy of an artifact for your droids. Artifacts that a droid carries don't count IIRC even if the droid itself is in your hold.

Artifacts a droid carries? What do you mean?

Android hulls?

 

[Average Manatee]

Droids are AI ships that you can carry in your hull and release to attack enemies and/or pick up shit for you (e.g. after a dominator battle they'll scavenge and a few of them will dump all 3k of shit they get on a planet for you to sell later). The droid itself is a ship of something like 400-700 hull size with normal item slots and everything, you can even upgrade its skills with your own experience.

I think they can appear from any source that would normally give an artifact, but are probably rarer (or maybe its tech based and you only get them at the end of the tech tree? I never find em early but I always start running across them later in the game). Droid hulls gotten from normal planet missions will have a race, those from the black holes are null. As you can see this is a nice null hull with 12 base damage reduction + (5 from the zoopie * 2 for null hull) = 22 damage reduction, after the already high 46% shielding. And of course another 5 top of the line weapons is pretty OP.

Also if you ever get the chance to arm droids with the Aegis AMS and a null radar, do it. Fantastic missile screens.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

Damn, that is crazy. Well by the end you tend to be OP anyway so I am not sure they are necessary but they would be cool to have.