Just found a couple of good hires at Nirgenduo which grew my caravan to a 10 person one. Though I might eventually dismiss some of the underperformers. For now, 10 person might put me in a good position to win battles without fear and protect my caravan even more.
I've finally hit the stride with this game. My 8 person caravan has some aces in the team and everyone uses a heavy armor, M4 weapons and has a few grenades in hand in case of trouble and I've started to visit other cities more confidently and my cargo is several tonnes. I have learned to save more frequently to give me redoing opportunities in case of trouble as the game is pretty random and on a second chance you might manage to escape trouble. If I remember well, I used this one time to save the effort once my lead killer and lead character died in a sort of ambush. I haven't had to face really big battles yet and I mostly want to visit different cities to know what they need/offer and stuff. I travel at 3 km/h and have to face all kinds of bandits. ;-)
When I went farther with it, I went to the city that has all sorts of modern guns/weapons grenades and stuff. I mistakenly progressed north to another city and was met by what some of you seem to call the army, who launched those grenades on my five-person caravan to destroy it soon. The thing is, I was stuck earning money in the first 3 cities we are told to use and went north just to find a horrible death. ;-) And was devastated by that. But most times I do something risky and the game punishes me soon. Like me shooting my own team because they end up in the line of fire or when I try to save buying more guns soon. ;-)
This game is pretty tough and penalizes small mistakes given there is generally no rollback, caused by players missing to save it before every other journey. The hardship does add up to the lure of playing it, even if to give up soon and start again as you never expected to die so fast.
Just accepted an assassination mission to kill 5 Opressors. Reward over 20,000 money to give an idea of the danger. I managed to escape from two vortex bombs they released on me. And another time I felt it pulling me in from afar and managed to avoid going there. I finished it real quick. But the funny thing was that I had to skip one sector that had the blackhole in it and the plot told me to go right through that sector but now that I have the map I just went around it altogether with zero risk. Funny mission developer.
When you accept a mission the course is plotted automatically. Some missions take several visits to sectors before they are complete, mainly when you rich advanced levels. I accepted one "Top Secret" mission and was sent to 6 or so sectors to fully complete it. As there can only be one plotted course, you need to go with the main one or not use autopilot to circunvent potential problems like blackholes.
There's nothing more exciting than to survive the attack of a Vortex Bomb. I do not know whether folks know it, but sometimes if you keep your ship off of the very center of the Vortex you lose fewer shield points. What I do is to frenetically press the X key while pointing my ship outwards the vortex. My survival score is probably under 50% of the time though. Other exciting things to do is to kill an ambush of drones with one Thunder Bolt proximity usage. I also get a kick of lining up several kills with thunderbolt mines.
Starcraft, I am not sure about joining a gang yet. I went to your base and saw your gang listed and if I join one it will be yours. I want to know whether I will be playing this game after I get past the 6401 kills milestone. I am close to doing that, BTW.
To get money in the bank: use 1.6x top speed engines so you can run away for your life; whether we like it or not, we often work as a magnetic lure to enemies with a big target painted on our backs so be ready to use the shortcusts "x" (speed jump) and "c" (transfer energy to shields) and LASS Stealth System; the closer to the enemy you stay, the more trouble you'll face, so long ranging ships/weapons can save your ass until you get to pick the Hydra with its 300 shield.
With the Hydra I get to catch most kill bonuses which helps to keep its weapons loaded for the battles. I've had to adapt to using more variety of weapons as I am not used to having more than a couple. ;-) While fighting the aliens it has been usual for me to even drive the ship backwards in order to find angle for the laser beam. I cannot use some other weapon that not the laser beam given the alien ships can make rounds against me faster than I can nail one down if I had some other weapon that was not instant.
Current status is over 5000 kills and over 1 million in the bank. Goal is to get to 6400 kills which gets me another promotion and a map that tells all the planets, blackholes and so forth.
Been playing with the Hydra Destroyer lately, switching away from the Warship. I have had fun with the Hydra coupled with these: Laser Beam, Thunder Bolt Torpedo, Energy Cell (2x), LASS Stealth System (2x), Thunder Bolt Mine, Thunder Bolt proximity, Vortex Bomb, Pulse Core Engine (1.x top speed), plus buying a hyperspace charge whenever I go out so I can go to some fun place faster.
The ultimate boss, the red and scary ogre lord, is no more!
The game seemed buggy for me so I was always saving and continuing when the glitches made the screen go unstable.
All in all, it was fun and exasperating at the same time.
Thanks for the game!
I was in the mood to keep playing but then after this problem I am looking into switching games now. ;-) Then again, I think I am going to try to advance some levels to kick the anaconda's ass more rapidly.
Somewhat fun. 3/5. I was just affected by a bug though, caused when I was in the "Jungle" fighting snakes. I was trying to fight at most two at a time so I went to the part of the map where the snakes would fit just in two tiles next to me. Problem is, during the setting up, one anaconda that was to attack me became stuck between the anaconda I was attacking and a third snake so it couldn't move but was supposed to in its turn.
On the minus side I found using the warrior's 2 to 6 skills to be kind of unworthy it and kind of a mess so I had confidence in only using the default skill, but upgraded.
 "Caravaneer"){kind=icon}
 "Starfighter: Disputed Galaxy"){kind=icon}
 "Ultimate Tactics"){kind=icon}
 "Hands of War"){kind=icon}