Void Destroyer 2

[Galdred]

I have seen someone describe this as space Mount and Blade, would that be correct?

In a way: the battles are instanced as in MnB, and you can join an ongoing battle on the map.
There is also a light X3 production aspect to it (but much simpler).

 

[ArchAngel]

I have seen someone describe this as space Mount and Blade, would that be correct?

In a way: the battles are instanced as in MnB, and you can join an ongoing battle on the map.
There is also a light X3 production aspect to it (but much simpler).

But can you lead "armies", join factions, conquer bases and have your own "kingdom" ? Those would be hallmarks of M&B
Can you also trade to earn money?

 

[Galdred]

I have seen someone describe this as space Mount and Blade, would that be correct?

In a way: the battles are instanced as in MnB, and you can join an ongoing battle on the map.
There is also a light X3 production aspect to it (but much simpler).

But can you lead "armies", join factions, conquer bases and have your own "kingdom" ? Those would be hallmarks of M&B
Can you also trade to earn money?

You can lead a fleet or task force, yes. They will always be your ships (except maybe for storyline missions). Either mercs you need to pay, or people from your own player created factions with ships you built.
So yes, you can build bases and have your own "space empire". You can then fight over asteroid fields, or take over other bases.
I don't think you can join factions (you have to take command of your own faction at some point), but you have a standing with each, and can do missions for them.
To earn money, you can trade indeed, or sell the production of your own bases

Edit: One key difference is that there is a storyline in Void Destroyer 2, and it drives a lot of your options (you get your first station, and your station, by following the story).

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Edit: One key difference is that there is a storyline in Void Destroyer 2, and it drives a lot of your options (you get your first station, and your station, by following the story).

This is true for the base game, but there are two DLC that allow you to start the same campaign as a sandbox. In the base game, I have been playing for ~30 hours and still haven't got my own base, but I suspect I am taking things very slowly...

 

[Galdred]

Edit: One key difference is that there is a storyline in Void Destroyer 2, and it drives a lot of your options (you get your first station, and your station, by following the story).

This is true for the base game, but there are two DLC that allow you to start the same campaign as a sandbox. In the base game, I have been playing for ~30 hours and still haven't got my own base, but I suspect I am taking things very slowly...

I don't remember how long it took me to get there, but the beginning is not that easy with some storyline missions requiring you to have a pretty strong setup to stand a chance. It took me 100 hours or so to complete the campaign.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Yeah, I have found that a lot of the difficulty is not even related to building up your forces, given the ship class and fleet restrictions on a lot of the story missions. Many of them are just plain hard.

Definitely enjoying the game though; it scratches an itch for me that I haven't really satisfied since X2. Although I also own various versions of X3, I just couldn't bring myself to commit to playing them...

My biggest complaints is that the concepts and controls are fairly complex/obtuse (but at least are well documented and can be fully remapped) and the game is not particularly stable. Despite the fact that it has a great auto-save feature, I have found myself crashing at the end of a difficult mission enough to piss me off.

 

[ArchAngel]

I started playing it yesterday. I am confused by UI of the game. And other stuff.
I tried hiring a cargo transport, then bought some stuff on that station for 32k (almost all my money) that was loaded on that transport and then what? I cannot command it and it didn't want to move anywhere on its own. Outside the station it just followed me around but with snail speed. So I tried to use that fast travel with Overworld to get to another station and when I entered that station I was at 0 credits and cargo shit disappeared... later I learned you pay upkeep for your hired stuff each time you enter some station.. so I guess all 32k went puff because I could not pay upkeep for that transport..
So how is this shit trading supposed to work? You hire slow ass useless ship and super slowly with snail speed make him follow you to next station?

Then to recover I did a bit of smaller missions and then took my first escort mission.. fuck! I got stuck with another of those slow ass snail speed transports as it traveled with 77m/s towards somewhere... this game hates me... only good thing was that there was enough pirates on the way to earn some money from bounties but I lost a hired cheapest wingman during it.
Is there a way to make this mission less painful or should I just ignore them?

Then I upgraded to Heavy Fighter and went to sleep.

 

[ArchAngel]

Also how do you give orders to your ship on the Tactical screen? I was trying to tell my ship to follow the transport through that screen but could not find it. In the end in just selected transport in ship screen and pressed alt+a for autopilot.
Does the game pause when on tactical screen? on overworld it not only does not pause but goes faster as soon as you enter..

It would seem that hiring miners could be good. From what I read ingame they just move towards some mining belt and do their thing. Do they return to nearest base after that and sell it automatically? Do they do this unlimited number of times until they get blow up by pirates or you cannot pay for upkeep? :D

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Okay, I will try to answer the above but can't be arsed individually quoting each section.

• Read the in-game guide; its sensibly arranged and provides the basic information required to drive each view/function.
• Hired ships can only be given very limited orders. They will basically follow you and do their one thing (repair, trade, mine, fight). For trading, you load it up (as you have done) then fly to the station you want to sell at (you can see the price for loaded goods by hovering over a station in the overworld), then unload. When you are finished with your trading, just dismiss the hire.
• Yes, trade ships are slow. Just use time dialation to speed things up. When you buy your own traders later, you can upgrade their speed and set them to use boost fuel to move things along. You can also give them full orders if you want to, but I just set them on auto and let them do their thing.
• You need missions to get money at the start and increase standing with factions, which allows you to buy better ships. The mission variety and relative difficulty also scale with level, so it helps to keep the game interesting.
• Orders on the tactical screen are for the most part, just a right click on the target (contextual). e.g. Select fighter, right click on friendly transport, fighter will escort.
• The game does not auto-pause anywhere; if you need to slow things down in ship or tactical view, enable time dilation (Shift+T).
• I think hired miners will just mine until full, but then wait for you to take them somewhere to sell the ore. Purchased miners are far more autonomous.

It took me 2-3 hours to get familiar with the different interfaces and the general behaviour of hired/purchased ships. After that I become relatively effective at managing my resources, but the game is certainly not intuitive.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

To save yourself some time, there are two basic routes to money making; trading/mining or capturing ships. I went for the former, because it basically runs itself while ship capture relies on heavy micro-management. It also takes a while to get a fleet that allows you to do it effectively.

As soon as I could, I bought a Caterpillar MK2, a couple of Leos and a Taurus MK2. I put them all in a fleet and set the Caterpillar to auto-trade. Ends up netting about $500k per upkeep period, assuming the escorts can keep it alive. Later, I added some mining tugs and Hercules' and these make even more money. At that point, you can just potter around doing your own thing for a bit and progressing the storyline.

 

[ArchAngel]

Okay, I will try to answer the above but can't be arsed individually quoting each section.

• Read the in-game guide; its sensibly arranged and provides the basic information required to drive each view/function.
• Hired ships can only be given very limited orders. They will basically follow you and do their one thing (repair, trade, mine, fight). For trading, you load it up (as you have done) then fly to the station you want to sell at (you can see the price for loaded goods by hovering over a station in the overworld), then unload. When you are finished with your trading, just dismiss the hire.
• Yes, trade ships are slow. Just use time dialation to speed things up. When you buy your own traders later, you can upgrade their speed and set them to use boost fuel to move things along. You can also give them full orders if you want to, but I just set them on auto and let them do their thing.
• You need missions to get money at the start and increase standing with factions, which allows you to buy better ships. The mission variety and relative difficulty also scale with level, so it helps to keep the game interesting.
• Orders on the tactical screen are for the most part, just a right click on the target (contextual). e.g. Select fighter, right click on friendly transport, fighter will escort.
• The game does not auto-pause anywhere; if you need to slow things down in ship or tactical view, enable time dilation (Shift+T).
• I think hired miners will just mine until full, but then wait for you to take them somewhere to sell the ore. Purchased miners are far more autonomous.

It took me 2-3 hours to get familiar with the different interfaces and the general behaviour of hired/purchased ships. After that I become relatively effective at managing my resources, but the game is certainly not intuitive.

OK, so will hired transport go at same speed as you when you turn on Overworld? From what I have seen time dialation boosts your speed to few thousand m/s and transports cannot go that fast.

 

[Galdred]

Okay, I will try to answer the above but can't be arsed individually quoting each section.

• Read the in-game guide; its sensibly arranged and provides the basic information required to drive each view/function.
• Hired ships can only be given very limited orders. They will basically follow you and do their one thing (repair, trade, mine, fight). For trading, you load it up (as you have done) then fly to the station you want to sell at (you can see the price for loaded goods by hovering over a station in the overworld), then unload. When you are finished with your trading, just dismiss the hire.
• Yes, trade ships are slow. Just use time dialation to speed things up. When you buy your own traders later, you can upgrade their speed and set them to use boost fuel to move things along. You can also give them full orders if you want to, but I just set them on auto and let them do their thing.
• You need missions to get money at the start and increase standing with factions, which allows you to buy better ships. The mission variety and relative difficulty also scale with level, so it helps to keep the game interesting.
• Orders on the tactical screen are for the most part, just a right click on the target (contextual). e.g. Select fighter, right click on friendly transport, fighter will escort.
• The game does not auto-pause anywhere; if you need to slow things down in ship or tactical view, enable time dilation (Shift+T).
• I think hired miners will just mine until full, but then wait for you to take them somewhere to sell the ore. Purchased miners are far more autonomous.

It took me 2-3 hours to get familiar with the different interfaces and the general behaviour of hired/purchased ships. After that I become relatively effective at managing my resources, but the game is certainly not intuitive.

OK, so will hired transport go at same speed as you when you turn on Overworld? From what I have seen time dialation boosts your speed to few thousand m/s and transports cannot go that fast.

It has been a long time, but I think you don't have to babysit your transports, though. You can slap an escort group on them, and have them run their trade routes while you do some other stuff. If you stay in the vicinity, you should have enough time to jump in and help.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Yep, AI escorts and automation are the way to go for your auto-traders as per my spoiler post. Not helpful for hired transports though.

Hired ships are kind of annoying in terms of grouping in overworld, because you can't add them to your fleet and you can't escort something that is trying to follow you... I very rarely used them.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yep, AI escorts and automation are the way to go for your auto-traders as per my spoiler post. Not helpful for hired transports though.

Hired ships are kind of annoying in terms of grouping in overworld, because you can't add them to your fleet and you can't escort something that is trying to follow you... I very rarely used them.

So basically just do pew pew missions until I can buy my own trading ships?

 

[ShaggyMoose]

That's what I did, but I was also making sure I took missions which increased my faction rank at the same time for added benefit (mission description clearly states whether this is the case or not).

 

[ArchAngel]

That's what I did, but I was also making sure I took missions which increased my faction rank at the same time for added benefit (mission description clearly states whether this is the case or not).

From what I have seen if you press +Difficulty they all give you faction rank.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

This is true for a while, but eventually some mission types won't provide faction rank even on expert difficulty.

 

[ArchAngel]

I found this unofficial FAQ, seems useful: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1999145210

 

[ArchAngel]

OK, I found that bounty hunter faction with Lion base and decided to go the route of buying their ships and doing their missions. I replaced my standard Heavy Fighter with their Heavy Fighter. It seems powerful, comes with shield and when upgraded now has 250 shield.
I started using and abusing anti fighter missiles and instant shield regen abilities. I was able to solo big groups of pirates and scavengers with this. I just dodge and run and fire missiles to take down all the weaker enemy craft and then do dogbattles with the rest.

As for missions, it seems patrol is only mission worth doing. You get decent base reward and there are always easy enemies to blow up during it for even more rewards. And they are fast and don't take a lot of time to do so you can spam a lot of them to get rich faster.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I am currently stuck on a story mission, getting carved up like a fucking turkey.

 

[ArchAngel]

I am currently stuck on a story mission, getting carved up like a fucking turkey.

maybe you need to grab some better ships and friends for it? :D

I did a priority mission for bounty hunters, it would have been tough if I didn't have this tactic as game kept spawning 5 craft in waves and you cannot repair in between.

 

[Galdred]

OK, I found that bounty hunter faction with Lion base and decided to go the route of buying their ships and doing their missions. I replaced my standard Heavy Fighter with their Heavy Fighter. It seems powerful, comes with shield and when upgraded now has 250 shield.
I started using and abusing anti fighter missiles and instant shield regen abilities. I was able to solo big groups of pirates and scavengers with this. I just dodge and run and fire missiles to take down all the weaker enemy craft and then do dogbattles with the rest.

As for missions, it seems patrol is only mission worth doing. You get decent base reward and there are always easy enemies to blow up during it for even more rewards. And they are fast and don't take a lot of time to do so you can spam a lot of them to get rich faster.

From what I recall, bounty hunter ships are good for player, but weak ish for AI, because they rely more on active systems than other ships. But they are also pretty fast, so they work as your "party", but lack staying power as automated AI fleets(and I think they are rather on the expensive side).
But in player hand, they can punch way above their weight.
I ended up stealing ships from the Reborn pirate factions for the mainstay of my fleet (they also have good capture ships iirc).

 

[ShaggyMoose]

maybe you need to grab some better ships and friends for it? :D

Unfortunately I am already using the fleet size allowed.

I did a priority mission for bounty hunters, it would have been tough if I didn't have this tactic as game kept spawning 5 craft in waves and you cannot repair in between.

You can always use the repair active (upgrade must be installed).

 

[ArchAngel]

maybe you need to grab some better ships and friends for it? :D

Unfortunately I am already using the fleet size allowed.

I did a priority mission for bounty hunters, it would have been tough if I didn't have this tactic as game kept spawning 5 craft in waves and you cannot repair in between.

You can always use the repair active (upgrade must be installed).

Repair active disables everything while it is active and new wave spawns a soon as old one is dead, you don't have time for that when you are their only target.

 

[ArchAngel]

OK, I found that bounty hunter faction with Lion base and decided to go the route of buying their ships and doing their missions. I replaced my standard Heavy Fighter with their Heavy Fighter. It seems powerful, comes with shield and when upgraded now has 250 shield.
I started using and abusing anti fighter missiles and instant shield regen abilities. I was able to solo big groups of pirates and scavengers with this. I just dodge and run and fire missiles to take down all the weaker enemy craft and then do dogbattles with the rest.

As for missions, it seems patrol is only mission worth doing. You get decent base reward and there are always easy enemies to blow up during it for even more rewards. And they are fast and don't take a lot of time to do so you can spam a lot of them to get rich faster.

From what I recall, bounty hunter ships are good for player, but weak ish for AI, because they rely more on active systems than other ships. But they are also pretty fast, so they work as your "party", but lack staying power as automated AI fleets(and I think they are rather on the expensive side).
But in player hand, they can punch way above their weight.
I ended up stealing ships from the Reborn pirate factions for the mainstay of my fleet (they also have good capture ships iirc).

Well I am still in phase of doing stuff solo so they are awesome. Atm I don't even know if I want to move into other phases as UI is pretty bad and I might give up on that part of the game.