Early game progress is much too slow

badken · Post by **badken** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 7:56 am

I'm sorry to say that I'm pretty much done with this game until it gets some kind of balance update or something. I just finished hour 12 with my first pilot, and it took me that long to earn enough to upgrade my ship to a marginally better design. I just don't feel like I'm making any progress.

I should say that the game looks great, the interface is very good, flying around is a lot of fun, and exploring planets is pretty cool, too. The variety of available missions is great. The problem is that most of them actually cost money to complete.

I started as an explorer, and I couldn't find any explorer-ish things to do that might make me any money. In the starting system, there are only a few different missions that are actually profitable. Doing most of the missions you will lose money because you spend more to refuel than the mission pays. Mining isn't an option with only one cargo bay, because a single trip with 25 units of even platinum won't pay for the fuel it takes to mine them.

I dont' know if the early ships should be more efficient or fuel should be cheaper or mission rewards should be higher, but something has got to give. I spent twelve hours doing two or three different kinds of missions. BO-RING.

I did try exploring a bit and ended up in some contested systems which were too dangerous for me. First, I'm not very good at combat, but more importantly, the starter ship isn't really equipped to do much damage. So the patrol and escort missions offered in contested systems, while a bit more lucrative, were not really an option for me.

I really want to like the game. It has all the features I'm looking for in a game of this kind. It's very solid - never crashed a single time in twelve hours of play. Right now, though, there just isn't enough I can do in the game to keep my interest, as a new pilot with a starter ship and little cash.

Maybe the game gets better with more different and more profitable missions as you progress through the systems. As it stands right now, though, I'm never going to get there, because the start of the game is just way too grindy for me.

[Edited on 2016-1-21 by badken]

MiaZ · Post by **MiaZ** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 8:26 am

Probably one of the first ship upgrades you should do if making money is your goal
is the cargo bays. They don't cost much to add more.

Check the prices around the place before you sell. You might be able to make a lot more just
be jumping through one or two gates.

When I started the game, mining was making me money a lot faster then any of the missions.
The mission pay does get better though.

You really shouldn't be using that much fuel that a mission cost more in fuel than the pay you get.

Are you flying alot where you could instead jump to the waypoint?
Maybe you could try using inertial mode more too

badken · Post by **badken** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:17 am

I figured the first response would be that I was playing the game wrong.

Yes, I jumped to waypoints. Yes, I kept inertial on while flying.

Making money wasn't really my goal, as I started out as an Explorer. However, everyone needs money to upgrade and to replenish consumables like fuel, missiles and countermeasures. I couldn't find a way to make money by exploring.

Flying to the platinum asteroid field near the starting planet uses about 300 fuel. That costs about 20000 to refuel (fuel at the Pearl station was 69 per unit last I saw). The 100% price point for Platinum is 700, so a hold full of 25 is 17500. It has to be at 115% just to break even. Mining is not profitable with only one cargo hold.

The only missions I could run that made more money than I spent in fuel were the biological collection ones planetside, because they paid so much, and refueling stranded ships, because it is a decent reward and uses very little fuel (just a jump to the ship and a quick approach, trade and then jump back to the station). Everything else, races, surveys, tracking down lost gear, paid less than 10k. The cargo run missions (water, med supplies, etc.) require delivering 50 of something - more cargo than any of the starter ships except a miner can carry.

Jumping through a gate in my starter ship proved fatal each time I tried it. I resigned myself to staying in the first system until I had upgraded my ship.

So, I ended up chasing down birds and ferrying fuel to stranded ships for twelve hours.

If I was "not doing it right" it wasn't for lack of trying.

I prefer to ease into a game, getting some easy rewards early on to get a sense of momentum, and then gradually piling on the challenges. The first ship upgrade in Evochron Legacy is a major hill to climb - a million credits, 10-40k at a time. It would be nice to have more graduated goals along the way. I don't want everything handed to me on a platter, but I do want at least some minor sense of accomplishment without investing hours and hours repeating the same tasks.

The starter quest line is nice as far as it goes. It provides a nice introduction to the start area, pointing out a couple of useful areas. However, it doesn't provide much guidance on just how to proceed, other than to say "trade things and mine things."

[Edited on 2016-1-21 by badken]

MiaZ · Post by **MiaZ** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:38 am

Sorry, I didn't mean to say you were playing the game wrong in anything but the fuel usage doesn't seem right.
Using 300 units to fly to platinum asteroid field near the starting planet and back does not sound right.
About 25 to 35 units fuel for that flight would be about right.

Then again about cargo, it may be not be obvious at first that you can upgrade your cargo bays a lot earlier than buying a bigger ship.
Try going in the shipyard into the frame config and have a look at the config options.

A mercenary starter ship can have 4 cargo bays right away.
For the starting ship if you plan on mining you can do without the crew slot and the secondary weapons too, that will free up another 3 slots, so 7 cargo bays before you have even left the station for the first time.

[Edited on 1-21-2016 by MiaZ]

Munshine · Post by **Munshine** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:06 pm

From post: 183003, Topic: tid=12249, author=badken wrote: Mining isn't an option with only one cargo bay, because a single trip with 25 units of even platinum won't pay for the fuel it takes to mine them.

I dont' know if the early ships should be more efficient or fuel should be cheaper or mission rewards should be higher, but something has got to give. I spent twelve hours doing two or three different kinds of missions. BO-RING.

[Edited on 2016-1-21 by badken]

I can say that you are doing mining wrong with only one cargo bay. You need to modify your assembly points in the frame config until you get at least 5 cargo bays even with a Talon frame.

Then look for the market prices in the quadrant map in which medium/high tech system you can have the best revenues.
For example, with the Alliance side, it's more interesting to sell ore at Capella. Metal is rubbish but one unit of diamond pays 750 instead of 200.

I think the game is balanced. You won't earn much in a poor system and need to search for better opportunities, that's all.

SeeJay · Post by **SeeJay** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:47 pm

If you visit my site: http://www.evochron2.junholt.se/ and check the Mercenary 2/Guide section.

There is a "Hints and Tips Guide" created by DaveK.

Lots of the stuff in there is useful even for Legacy, especially if you haven't played any game in the series before.
Use that until updated versions in the Legacy section pops up.

Bodega · Post by **Bodega** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 2:15 pm

I'm sorry you feel this way. I really hope Vice doesn't change it to make it faster. In EM, the predecessor to this game there were many loopholes and high paying, extremely easy trade routes where you could make a couple million space-dollars in a few minutes. If you look at SeeJay's site, go to the guides section and check out the hint & tip guide. There are spoilers in there for Evochron Mercenary but I was told the economy has been fixed and a lot of the loopholes closed.

You should be able to upgrade your ship to a pretty decent one for 200K. I was able to do that after about 3 hours of playing. I have C5 Fulcrum drive, C5 Cargo Scanner etc. Remember different regions have different prices. Go to a tech heavy region for better prices on ship components.

I would hate that if after 12 hours of playing I had all the best equipment, wouldn't give me anything to work towards. I do appreciate your opinion and hope that you find a way to satisfy your expectations. Maybe you'll find a really lucrative trade route, there should be a lot. (Hopefully nothing like EM had though. Go read the guides and you'll see). And don't worry, the spoilers in the hint and tip guide are light gray to avoid accidentally reading them.

Hope I see you out there, peace.

Bodega

[Edited on 1-21-2016 by Bodega]

Stardog765 · Post by **Stardog765** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 4:00 pm

Yes I would say I am sorry he feels that way too but I really really hope there are not changes made to make this sim more instant gratification.

There are far too many of those games already out there.

This game requires planning and thought not just in what you do but how you do it and that is part of what makes this game what it is.

badken · Post by **badken** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 8:46 pm

Thanks for the tips! I didn't realize I could reconfigure my initial ship - I thought I would have to buy a new one. I should also mention that I looked over the "new pilots" board here and I didn't see anything that was particularly applicable to what I was doing. A lot of the information is still about the previous game, which I never really played much at all. It's very hard to know what carries over, because after reading the design notes for Legacy, it seems like many of the major systems were redesigned and improved.

I'm really not looking for instant gratification. I would be disappointed too if there was some way to get millions of credits in minutes, or have the best gear possible after ten or twelve hours. I don't want things to be made super easy, but playing for hours and hours before you can get even a minor upgrade just doesn't seem right. The game should give at least a little guidance on how to do the things it asks you to do. It is not clear at all that you can reconfigure your starter ship, for example.

The game shows you how to add new types of equipment to an existing design, but not how to get more cargo bays. The training even tells you that more than one cargo bay is important. When I tried to reconfigure my ship, I was looking for something like "cargo modules" or some similar kind of add-on. I was not at all interested in designing a new ship, at least when starting out, because I had no idea how the components worked or how they interacted, and the otherwise excellent training doesn't cover ship design at all. For example, I had no idea that you could make a ship with zero crew slots - I thought at least one crew slot would be required for the pilot! It also doesn't help that three of the four starter ships only have one cargo bay. Apart from strictly combat pilots, a starting pilot is going to need more than one cargo bay to make any money, so those configurations work against someone new to the game.

If it's necessary to visit other systems early in the game, something should be done to make that easier. Every time I went through a waygate I was killed in minutes, so that taught me that it's a dangerous galaxy out there and that I need to be well prepared and well outfitted before I venture away from the starting area.

As for fuel usage, I think what I'll do is start a new explorer pilot and make a video of what I was doing to demonstrate. If I'm using ten times as much fuel as I should be using, then I *am* doing something very wrong, and I'm pretty sure I'm just flying the way the game taught me to in the extensive training sections.

My experience was very frustrating. A lot of players would have just given up after an hour or two and put a bad review up on Steam and moved on. I'm trying to provide feedback to maybe help prevent that happening. This looks like a great game and I would love to see it succeed.

[Edited on 2016-1-21 by badken]

Bodega · Post by **Bodega** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 8:54 pm

Badken,
Enter the hanger in the station and choose reconfig frame. You can reassign your capacity points. Also, upgrading is riskfree because you're always trading, so if you buy a bunch of upgrades you can carry them to the next frame and you always get your money back.

Also a lot of the old information carries over into this. I'm glad you've stuck with it, it's worth it. I'm relatively new to the series honestly just started playing EM a few weeks ago but it's easily the best one out there. There is a learning curve but it's good because other games in the genre just bore me after a few hours or become repetitive grindfests.

Feel free to keep asking questions, check out the manual in the game folder, check out www.evochron2.junholt.se and the flight school there, the guides, even if they're for EM, some still apply.

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 11:22 pm

If it's necessary to visit other systems early in the game, something should be done to make that easier. Every time I went through a waygate I was killed in minutes, so that taught me that it's a dangerous galaxy out there and that I need to be well prepared and well outfitted before I venture away from the starting area.

It is easy ... once you learn the "trick" to safely transiting hostile star systems. Notice that, whenever you exit a gate, you're facing north with your ship's nose level with the galactic horizon. Since all gates face north-south, you're already in perfect position to enter the next (hopefully safer) star system via another gate. So ... when you exit into that hostile system, keep your speed up. Add afterburner for a second or two if needed to avoid hostile fire. Then open your Navigation console, find the next gate, right-click on it ... and jump!

badken · Post by **badken** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:38 am

Marvin, it's interesting that your tip got me to thinking about what I might be doing wrong, and it hit me, so I tested it out. My problem was too much afterburner.

The flight training cautions against setting a jump point *on* an object, because you're likely to crash into something. I had to see for myself, so the first time I tried some jumps I put them right on the target, and sure enough, I crashed pretty much every time.

So I got in the habit of putting jump points a few pixels away from my destination. In practice, this ended up landing me somewhere between 100k and 200k distance from my actual destination. To close that distance, I would turn on IDS, go to max speed, turn off IDS, then hit afterburner for 10-15 seconds until my speed was around 7500 or so, then I'd coast from there. That got me to the destination in a reasonable amount of time without the risk of smashing into anything. When I was about 25k away from the destination, I turned IDS back on and it would brake me down to a reasonable navigation speed.

Of course, now I realize, doing this gobbles up a lot of fuel. So everywhere I went, I burned up more fuel than I needed to, because the ship's top cruising speed is too slow, causing most of my play time to consist of waiting during transit rather than doing interesting things.

So now my question is - why does the jump system work the way that it does, and why do I have to use afterburner to get to a reasonable cruising speed? Why would the jump system, by default, put the ship in a dangerous spot? It seems to me the way that it works is backward. The default setting should be to safely drop you far enough away from your actual destination that you have time to slow down and avoid hitting anything. If you really want to, you could be able to override that to jump in really close to something.

And don't even get me started on the autopilot. Modern jet airliner autopilots are sophisticated enough to do an entire flight - takeoff, cruising, and landing - without any human intervention at all. Surely a spaceship autopilot should be capable of approaching a starbase or planet base and docking by itself. Pilots that want to do it manually could still do that, of course, but I think the autopilot should be a little more auto.

Anyway, after experimenting, and armed with this new knowledge, I'm starting a new pilot and hopefully it'll be a little more satisfying. Evochron Legacy has a lot of great features, but after my experience, I don't think it is very friendly to new players at all.

Post by **Marvin** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 7:25 am

When transiting a star system via a jump gate, right-click on the gate icon (Nav console) and do not adjust the jump point. When I'm transiting from a friendly system into an unfriendly one, I keep my throttle at maximum ... even though inertial is engage. That way, when I exit the gate into the hostile system, I'm already going fast enough to defeat most attacks. If not, a quick burst of afterburner (still under inertial and heading north out of the gate) is all I need. Ever. Even in a small ship.

Janus · Post by **Janus** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 7:27 am

I've been going between Virgo and Ruckers. Ruckers was selling fuel for 50 and Virgo was selling it for 110. I'd sell my fuel back at Virgo by entering a negative number into the fuel input field. Last time I tried it though, fuel had went up to 100 at Ruckers, cutting the profit by a hefty margin. You can also take food from Virgo to Ruckers and also bring some stuff back. You do need to note down prices, but I'm up to more than 250k and I've only been playing it for a day or 2.

49rTbird · Post by **49rTbird** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 7:46 pm

When you can afford one, buy a fuel converter and mine fuel from the corona of a sun. Sell this at a high cost station as you have done before for pure profit. Just increase the size of your fuel bays.

CS-ACI- · Post by **CS-ACI-** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:12 pm

Hello,

I am not going to spoil it for everyone, but in 3 hours, 12 mins and 2 seconds I made enough money to have a ship equipped as a builder.

So you understand what that means or what I did without spoilers.

I wasted no money on ship upgrades, ships, crew, fuel or weapons.

That profile has done 14 contracts only.

The ship is equipped with a Build Constructor and has 10 cargo bays.

You have to know what too do, where too go and be fast.

Steve

Bodega · Post by **Bodega** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:49 pm

yeah no spoilers, but if you pay attention you can easily make millions. No exploits either, just a little work and paying attention.

Brian Paone · Post by **Brian Paone** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:47 pm

I came from Elite Dangerous. It took me approximately 840 hours to grind up to an exploration-grade Anaconda. I didn't enjoy much of it.

Here, I have a very well-appointed diamond miner outfitted with build and deploy constructors. Took me about 24 hours or so of playtime, and it only took that long because I wasted a number of hours on a planet chasing the sunrise and flying wingman with a bird.

I'm not saying the sentiment is incorrect or anything - just saying that I'm grateful it's not an ED-style grind.

Bodega · Post by **Bodega** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 1:38 am

Yeah, Vice has said that money really isn't the point to this game. I guess it's whatever you make the point. I need to get a Terrain Walker, never had one of those in EM. I had just built up some money in EM when EL came out. I'll be looking for the plans to one, that'll be my next goal I think.

DeathTech · Post by **DeathTech** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 6:48 pm

From post: 183003, Topic: tid=12249, author=badken wrote:I'm sorry to say that I'm pretty much done with this game until it gets some kind of balance update or something. I just finished hour 12 with my first pilot, and it took me that long to earn enough to upgrade my ship to a marginally better design. I just don't feel like I'm making any progress.

Start with trader.
Go into shipyard and max out cargo space.
Mine for diamonds and fill up. (You may want to swap asteroids untill you find one that drops a steady supply of diamonds)
Go back to the station.
Sell diamonds.

Working on defaults here:
Diamonds standard = $800 / unit
25 * 800 = $20.000 per cargo slot

Default slots= 3 so thats $60.000 per haul.
If you maxed them lets assume 6 slots.
That would be $120.000 per haul.

If you play smart, find a place that has a diamond deficit. You can sell them at 1000 a pop.
1000 * 25 = 25000
25000 * 6 = $300.000 per run.

That means it should take you about 2 - 4 runs to acquire over $450.000 (default price of a fuel converter)

Then you buy a fuel converter. And you should already posses a mining beam. Use the mining beam inside a nebula to scoop free fuel.

Now there is no way you ever should spend money on fuel again, hence you bank balance can only go up.

From this point on you should be able to acquire the funds easily to upgrade your ship to be able to explore to your hearts content.

How long does all that take to get to this late game stage?
Around 2 - 3 hours maximum.

Radikal · Post by **Radikal** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 8:10 pm

When you jump, ramp up your IDS multiplier to maximum setting (x9) as this is the speed to which your ship will slow to after your jump (or gate transition). This way you are travelling as fast as reasonably possible with little fuel use.

Post by **DaveK** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:12 pm

Going to a station: set pitch to 0 and heading to one of the entrance directions marked on your compass (NOT 0!!); set speed to around 1500 and jump (don't wait to get to 1500, just jump) - you'll arrive just outside the entrance heading in the right direction and travelling quickly enough to enter in no time

Going to an asteroid field: Click on the field to set it (or click on the asteroid marker in the Left hand side of the Nav map. Set pitch to 0 and heading to anything. Set speed to zero and jump (again don't wait 'til you stop, just jump. You should appear in the field slowing down quickly and are very unlucky if you hit and asteroid and go boom. If you are heading straight for an asteroid, hard left (or right or up or down) and hold it there until the control kicks in.

Each journey takes a couple of units of fuel if in a sector and one until of fuel per sector for longer journeys

That should help with running costs!

Modify your ship's loadout as suggested above and find the best selling spots and you should be well on your way in a reasonable time