Aeohrtas Help Thread [OnGoing]

[Khorius Irelius]

Due to the absence of major documentation for this amazing game, I find myself having a lot of questions that I cannot find definitive answers to anywhere but here. So, instead of starting a new thread every time I need to know something, I will just bump this thread  ;)

 

So, with all that being said, question one...

 

I know there are lots of turrets with the + Damage to Shield modifier, or penetrating, etc. I am wondering what weapon archetype is most effective against shields in general? Tesla turrets or nah?

[Shrooblord]

Good idea for a thread like this! Will you compile all the answers in the first post / post a link to the replies that contain answers in the first post?

 

As far as I've noticed, Plasma Turrets work the best against shields. They have a huge inherent bonus to shield damage and especially if you can find one or two that don't overheat too quickly (wait, do PTs overheat?) or draw too much energy, you're in business.

 

Furthermore, I've noticed that high rate-of-fire Chainguns, while not necessarily king of shield destruction, do a pretty good job at tearing them down quickly regardless.

 

What's also interesting, though, is taking a look at Railguns and Pulse Cannons. These guns have a chance to completely ignore shields and go straight for the squishy goodies inside. For Railguns, this chance is lower than Pulse Cannons, but if I've got it correctly their hull damage is also much higher, so it's a bit of a trade-off on that department.

[Khorius Irelius]

Thanks for the info Schroob.

 

Good idea for a thread like this! Will you compile all the answers in the first post / post a link to the replies that contain answers in the first post?

 

EDIT: Yes sir! I intend on organizing/indexing them in some fashion  ;)

 

I spent the last few hours building and testing some plasma turrets, and from my experience I can indeed confirm they are highly effective against shields (even the basic material and rarity versions).

 

This actually leads me to my next question:

 

In my solo game I am playing as a pirate, and I am curious (before I go ruining my alliance reputations), is it worth the extra time it takes to deal the necessary damage to destroy factories/stations? Do they drop turrets/upgrades? Do they spawn reinforcement fleets? What happens if I destroy a factions' headquarters?

[Ravien]

Check out this mod. Gives you much better tooltips on turrets, including DPS when taking overheating into account.

 

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1635.0.html

 

As far as stations go, I never destroyed one so I'm not 100% sure but you get the cargo it has on it and you can also salvage it for resources. It will also mean traders will no longer spawn to trade with it. I think most people go after the cargo ships instead of the station itself.

 

I don't think anything happens if you wipe out a headquarters. I believe though if you destroy every station in a sector and then build your own station, that you'll "own" that space. I assume they have some faction warfare and territory control stuff planned for the future because a lot of the base features needed are already in the game.

[Shrooblord]

In my solo game I am playing as a pirate, and I am curious (before I go ruining my alliance reputations), is it worth the extra time it takes to deal the necessary damage to destroy factories/stations? Do they drop turrets/upgrades?

As always, my answer is it depends. It depends highly on what your gameplay experience is, what your preferred style of play is, whether you like to experiment (like I do), whether you want to invest the amount of time it takes to take down a Station (cuz' woo, boy, does it take time - especially when it has shields), and whether you have any mods installed that rebalance the game like Wayleran's Galaxy Mods.

 

Personally, I have taken down one Pirate Shipyard, and dabbled in one act of piracy myself raiding an Outer Rim Sector of its Mining Stations. I found both experiences to be quite rewarding. It poses a different sort of challenge than the battles with regular fleets does, because you need to output a decent DPS at a constant rate to the Station to even scratch it, or hope to complete your mission within a meaningful timeframe. I set all my fighters on it, and fired with every gun I had, and still I had to whittle down that Station for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. This is also because of reinforcements, Pirate and Xsotan attacks which distract me; the worst is if they distract you long enough for that Station to start regenning its shield. Be wary of that: those boys regen 200k of their 5 mill shield within 4 seconds. You don't want to be investing that much more time into an already gruelling process by having to output more damage than anticipated. My tip: the instant you see a shield regenerating, hit it with a bullet and you'll stop its regen. That'll buy you a little time to get in position to fully take it down again, and won't have you looking at its hit points rising by the thousands within a split second...

 

Anyway, I'm rambling.

 

My answer is: yes, for me, it was worth it. Killing a pirate Station (and who cares about those anyway, amirite) gave me 1.5 million Trinium in Salvage and who knows how much cash. Killing Mining Stations was fun because it was a different experience, and also they gave me a ton of Mining Robots, which, even after unbranding at a Smugglers', will still earn you a decent couple of millions in "quick" cash.

 

Would I do it again? Probably not, at least not until I get a proper fleet / strong ship. It takes a lot of time if you can't output the DPS that's required for such an undertaking.

Also, I'd only target Outer Rim Sectors I think for the goods haul, and Pirate Stations for the Resources. I don't feel like crippling a Faction forever, not while regeneration and recuperation is not yet implemented in this game, and every single Station you destroy is effectively permadeath for the whole production line.

 

In a PvP setting, perhaps. It may be fun to have a little Faction war between players. See where it goes. See how things evolve under the pressure of battle and raiding. I'd like to play a bit of an arms race with someone at some point. Sounds exciting.

 

Do they spawn reinforcement fleets?

Yes and no. They don't specifically spawn reinforcement fleets while under attack, i.e. they don't call the reinforcements like they would if you were to witness a Faction war, but military vessels do spawn into the Sector from time to time and are instantly aggro'd to your location.

[Khorius Irelius]

Check out this mod. Gives you much better tooltips on turrets, including DPS when taking overheating into account.

 

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1635.0.html

 

Thanks for the info and the resource, but I have committed to playing Avorion only its original form, as released by the developers. I have decided that I will not be modifying or altering my client in any way.

 

As far as stations go, I never destroyed one so I'm not 100% sure but you get the cargo it has on it and you can also salvage it for resources. It will also mean traders will no longer spawn to trade with it. I think most people go after the cargo ships instead of the station itself.

 

Okay, so I spent a good six hours last night experimenting with this in the outer rim where everything is generally weaker. I am here to tell you...destroying stations is 100% worth the time and effort.

 

Every single station I destroyed rewarded me 50 to 150k worth for resources (Iron and Titanium where I was), around 10 to 15k in credits, and 4 - 6 turrets/upgrades. The turrets and upgrades were mostly vendor trash, but often with high rarity (still low stats) increasing their vendor value.

 

Once destroyed, stations drop their cargo. Destroying trading posts, resources depots, and equipment docks are very profitable. I found and destroyed a Body Armor S factory, which dropped 234 Stolen Body Armors. After unbranding them at a Smugglers Station, I sold them to a military outpost with +40% mark up for a 58 million credit profit (my single biggest trade by far in Avorion thus far).

 

I don't think anything happens if you wipe out a headquarters.

 

Confirmed. Nothing special happens. Headquarter stations actually have significantly lower health than other stations in the same sector, and drop the least amount of loot/resources.

 

I believe though if you destroy every station in a sector and then build your own station, that you'll "own" that space. I assume they have some faction warfare and territory control stuff planned for the future because a lot of the base features needed are already in the game.

I tried to do exactly that. The game seems to think that the faction I evicted still owns this space. Their cargo ships and defense fleets still warp in, and attack my stations. I do not advise anyone to build stations in sectors where they have destroyed stations, because the ships in this region will now all be Abhorrent with you, which means they will not trade with your stations, and you will waste your money.

 

All in all, it was a very rewarding and entertaining experience, which I will be repeating.

[Kamo]

Yup, same kind of experience.

• To destroy a station, a lot of omicrons are necessary but also at least 4000+ cargo units worth of freighters to actually loot her.
  
• If you are the main damage dealer, fire at the generators to either destroy them quickly (by total system failure) or (if the generator is load-bearing) to avoid firing at the cargo bays. All cargo still in bays after the conversion to wreckage can be salvaged and looted without being considered stolen, yielding full value.
  
• The station spawns three guards when damaged by a sixth of her health, but can only do so every 15 to 30 minutes, which usually only happens once.
  
• A last tip: when attacking mines, fire Mining Lasers. The huge stone part generally adds a huge amount of health but can be whittled away quickly with appropriate firepower.
  

P.S.: Weird, the color tag doesn't work.

[Khorius Irelius]

• If you are the main damage dealer, fire at the generators to either destroy them quickly (by total system failure) or (if the generator is load-bearing) to avoid firing at the cargo bays. All cargo still in bays after the conversion to wreckage can be salvaged and looted without being considered stolen, yielding full value.
  
• A last tip: when attacking mines, fire Mining Lasers. The huge stone part generally adds a huge amount of health but can be whittled away quickly with appropriate firepower.
  

 

Wow, thank you!

I wish I had this information last night, I could have significantly increased my return! Thanks!

 

:)

[Khorius Irelius]

Next question.

 

I have decided to get into production now to produce good for the upgraded turrets I require. The first factory I am build will be a Service Factory. Doing some research on them I noticed this:

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/Zzhfn

 

So, does that mean that I have to build my factory in a sector where there is an aluminum mine, as well as place all the required materials in the stations' cargohold?

 

Seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of return...

[Cygnus001]

 

 

as for omicrons, this value is utterly flawed (cooldowns are not factored in, fire rate aswell me thinks)...

I had a 6k+ shredder, my new 3,5k oms blocky beauty does deal way more damage in the same time since I removed:

lasers (too little range imho) and cannons (fire rate on these mostly suck) and rocketlaunchers (they deal heavy dmg, but the time it takes to reach the target -meh-)

 

I got a lot of exotic to legendary plasmas and chainguns, some pulsers...range still sucks a bit but 4km+ is better than 2 km or even below

 

I killed about 3 pirate shipyards so far (which does plain nothing to them spawning like...less), 2 of which got me a lot of ores, cargo and some modules

 

keep in mind that bigger blocks take flippin´ ages to salvage, that is why I never bothered to salvage those 3M Titanium/Naonite wrecks I found...I simply won´t hold down "fire" for like an hour or so (guess this can be circumvented using independent targeting or something like that)

or I could come back much later with much better gear...a bit pointless however

 

I prefer to have others do this, e.g. fighters

 

lessons learned here:

 

keep them as slow as possible, otherwise (due to limited range) they´ll end up firing for a very short time and then they turn around, repeat...with little to no dmg done

 

keep them small, albeit making things expensive it is totally worth it (I figure that is the hangar capacity X to Y, largest fighter to smallest fighter, e.g. you either can put 30 large fighters which are cheap or pay up and have a full 120 fighter detachment in the same size of hangar), not sure if it affects AI targeting too (as in harder to hit)

 

don´t buy prefab fighters...they suck (mostly)!

go to a research station with a crapton of mining/salvage/whatever-you-need turrets and start researching.

I got a nifty trinium mining turret with about 63% yield after using up hundreds of lower grade turrets to get this yellow beauty (which I instantly lost (after having it put into a blueprint) due to an asteroid...damn you, you stupid rock, that took ages and a lot of luck!!!)

hint: the last type of turret you put in is the most likely to come out again, imho and you can, with some luck, create really weird modules (hyperspace range +9, radar +9, deepscan +5, cooldown -20% - all in one module!)

 

Then take that to a fighter factory, build it, and use that as a blueprint (and pray that the kraken does not kill your ship, cuz then...it´s all gone).

 

Strap a ridiculous big assembly to your ship and have a lot of ore (in my example that fighter was around 18k Trinium, 60 times 18k equals > 1M), don´t worry about having not enough mechanics, just delete it if your ship is close to becoming a wreck and/or to this close to a repair station

 

my mining fighters get attacked, whereas my previous salvage fighters did not draw fire for some reason (same size, speed etc.), but I´m closer to the center now

 

 

ok, so some questions:

 

force turrets? for what? any good use for these? maybe like pushing a wreck in a still functional station?

 

armor on shielded ships? do or don´t? also: thickness? so far I use them for estetics only

 

way to big ships that won´t fit jump gates: any chance a protruding rod up front would trigger the jump? sort of like that:

 

                     

SHIP SHIP SHIP

SHIP SHIP SHIP                --Gate--

SHIP SHIP SHIP-verylongandthinrodhere                --Gate--

SHIP SHIP SHIP                --Gate--

SHIP SHIP SHIP

 

quite sure more to come^^

[Khorius Irelius]

Thanks for the info!

 

ok, so some questions:

 

force turrets? for what? any good use for these? maybe like pushing a wreck in a still functional station?

 

armor on shielded ships? do or don´t? also: thickness? so far I use them for estetics only

 

way to big ships that won´t fit jump gates: any chance a protruding rod up front would trigger the jump?

 

I put force turrets on my auxiliary combat ships in my fleet because they have short range weapons, so force turrets are useful for pulling targets into damage range.

 

I put armor on shielded ships as well, but not much. I find that having around 8k hull is more than sufficient. And yes, thickness (volume) does effect how much armor a block will provide.

 

That's a good question, I too have lost ships on the small gates. You should build the ship you drew and run an experiment and then let us know!  ;)

[Shrooblord]

Thanks for the info and the resource, but I have committed to playing Avorion only its original form, as released by the developers. I have decided that I will not be modifying or altering my client in any way.

Fair enough, and I will not be here to try and convert you (as I am someone who adores modding my games and also making mods myself), but I will say that there are some mods out there that are straight-up bugfixes that have yet to be integrated into the main game code. Just something to keep in mind; it may be worth looking at a couple of those from time to time. Some of them tend to get integrated into the game code eventually, but the main game's update cycle is quite slow compared to modders' fervent output. Which is fine of course; but if you don't want to wait around...

 

Then take that to a fighter factory, build it, and use that as a blueprint (and pray that the kraken does not kill your ship, cuz then...it´s all gone).

This is why my first step of making Blueprints is always, always first sitting there next to the Fighter Factory, or going to some safe part in space devoid of as-- giga cannons, and producing one or two of those fighters, then putting those Fighters as Blueprints in two other ships, who will then also produce a couple of them, effectively making a back-up of those Fighters.

Maybe I should even invest in a Fighter "storage bay", which is plainly a ship sitting in a dull and neutral part of space with a lot of hull and a lot of hangar space, and houses 120 different varieties of Fighters I may want to have for safekeeping... hmm...

 

So, does that mean that I have to build my factory in a sector where there is an aluminum mine, as well as place all the required materials in the stations' cargohold?

No, not necessarily, but building an Aluminium Mine in the same Sector is the most efficient way to do things.

 

You can buy just the Factory you want, and request that Traders come and drop of the required materials, and Traders come and pick up the produced products for (hopefully) a profit.

 

However, producing an Aluminium Mine to feed into your Factory will significantly boost your monetary output for two reasons:

• Your Aluminium Mine can now produce the required materials for your Factory to work. Give it some Cargo Shuttles (specialised Fighters), and it'll be able to drop off the materials at your Factory itself. Neato. Now you can scrap those Traders that were delivering you the raw materials off the equation, netting you more money per production cycle.
  
• The excess that the Aluminium Mine produces (which will be a lot) can be sold, effectively for free, to Traders, too. I've noticed that Aluminium is, coincidentally, one of the materials that sells for quite a pretty price, at least in my region of space. This may differ depending on your location and surrounding Factions, or be universal per type of goods. I have not experimented enough with this or snooped through the code to know that yet.
  

 

While building an Aluminium Mine will require a large start-up cost (> 7 mill if I'm not mistaken), you will quickly make a return on your investment due to the fact that it will be selling Aluminium to Traders for 200k per trade after its conception, with about a 10-15 minute trade cycle. Plus, it will supply your Factory with the components it needs to make product, which will also be selling goods, now at a lower production cost since you have an Aluminium Mine that produces Aluminium "for free" and with zero drawbacks once it's up and running (there's no depletion mechanic or real significant upkeep cost to speak about).

[Khorius Irelius]

While building an Aluminium Mine will require a large start-up cost (> 7 mill if I'm not mistaken), you will quickly make a return on your investment due to the fact that it will be selling Aluminium to Traders for 200k per trade after its conception, with about a 10-15 minute trade cycle. Plus, it will supply your Factory with the components it needs to make product, which will also be selling goods, now at a lower production cost since you have an Aluminium Mine that produces Aluminium "for free" and with zero drawbacks once it's up and running (there's no depletion mechanic or real significant upkeep cost to speak about).

 

I went ahead and built my servo factory before anyone replied to this. However, I built it in a sector of space where I have excellent relations with the owning faction, and they have 2 aluminum mines already operating. Will it work the same way since I don't own the aluminum mines?

[Shrooblord]

You can request goods from the Factory interface (use the third tab on Trade Goods when you Interact with the Factory; only accessible if you own the Factory), which should request Cargo Shuttles from the selected Station.

 

I'm not sure if you can request goods from Stations you don't own. I assume not, since this would be a very easy way to game the system and steal assets from Factories you don't own, crippling productions chains.

 

But I don't know, because I haven't tried it myself. Give it a swing!

 

Note though that Cargo Shuttles can only be supplied by Stations that have a Fighter Bay, and Fighters that are Cargo Shuttles.

[Ravien]

You can deliver goods to npc stations using cargo fighters but I don't think you make money that way. Not sure if you can also request resources from them.

[Khorius Irelius]

Interesting. I will be working a lot with stations over the next few days and o plan on coming up with a brief guide or.some kind of documentation about stations and production.

[Nachtu]

Interesting. I will be working a lot with stations over the next few days and o plan on coming up with a brief guide or.some kind of documentation about stations and production.

 

These might help, sure helped me:

 

Production chain map:

http://svgshare.com/i/bd.svg

 

Factory Calculator:

https://avofactory.scrap-yard.org/en/factory-calculator.html

 

Goods overview:

https://avofactory.scrap-yard.org/en/goodsoverview.html

 

Factory Overview:

https://avofactory.scrap-yard.org/en/factory-overview.html

 

[Kamo]

The Factory Overview is awesome, because of the amounts' presence :D !

Most of a faction's trading is made by NPC ships which, at the moment, spawn out of nothing: the dummy stations I made for my arena are supplied by a faction more than 500 sectors away. So technically, for the moment, you can make any station you desire and it'll somehow get materials from the void ::).

Of course it's always smart to try to make "production chains" and "analyze the market", for the future when economy'll get updated to an actual working dynamic model.

 

So a Servo Factory will need: steel, aluminium, conductors, plastic, scrap metal, coal, energy cells, gold, platinum, zinc, oil and raw oil, in varying amounts: it needs a lot of things as Servos are a lowtier industrial good: beginning in the agro-chemical sector or making mines (PC mines have no needs, so they break the game and the factions' industrial paralysis) seem to be the simplest but grindiest way to go, while "patching holes" in NPC production ability requires either a lot of intellectual effort or a corresponding amount of risk, while paying much better than agro-chemical basic production, because goods which are higher on the model are higher priced.

 

Beware: non-basic stations need some time and money to start producing as they need the first batch of goods. For example, Power Unit Factory needs more than 5 million to start up ! But then it started making me 2.5 million an hour.

[Khorius Irelius]

Nachtu, thank you for the great resources! I use Factory/Goods Overview on a daily basis already!

 

New question: I remember reading somewhere that there were trading system upgrades in the game that would allow you to trade with stations in your sector without being docked at said station. I have worked my way up to an exotic Salesman Trading System and still no such mechanic.

 

Was I given false information? Is this only possible through the use of modding?

[Ravien]

Nachtu, thank you for the great resources! I use Factory/Goods Overview on a daily basis already!

 

New question: I remember reading somewhere that there were trading system upgrades in the game that would allow you to trade with stations in your sector without being docked at said station. I have worked my way up to an exotic Salesman Trading System and still no such mechanic.

 

Was I given false information? Is this only possible through the use of modding?

 

Not possible in the vanilla game. The trading upgrades only let you see trades at all the stations in the sector at a glance, buy/sell price margins, and shows you detected trading routes in the last X sectors you've visited.

[MWire]

Ooh, I like this thread. I'll do a piggyback if you all don't mind.

 

So, I've got a simple production chain setup:

Water collector, Solar power plant, Potato farm, Carbon extractor (from the potatoes), Steel Factory, Ore and Coal mine.

In theory, this should be a self-sufficient production chain that outputs steel at the end, plus excess items here and there.

In practice, however, I've suddenly noticed that the throughput is really bad, since I used primarily cargo fighters to transport the goods from/to every station. Each cargo fighter (irregardles of size) seems to only be able to hold one item, and each station can only send out 20 cargo fighters at a time. This means that something like the potato farm which needs more than 100 items supplied every 5 seconds suddenly grinds to a halt because the total of 40 fighters (from request and supply routes) seem to be too slow.

 

At this point, the dumbest yet most elaborate solution comes to mind- force turrets. I've pushed the first 4 stations to about 3 km from each other (any closer and I'll have a panic attack trying to slow it back down). Now the cargo fighters travel much less distance, but they're still too slow, and the whole sector now drops my framerate down to 9 fps if I look at a bunch of asteroids in the distance where my mine is at. So what I'm up to right now is looking for materials to craft 0.5MN force turrets to push my coal and ore mines away from the low framerate asteroid belts. That is, except you have a better idea of how to solve my throughput problem.

 

TLDR; Cargo fighters suck at their jobs. Currently pushing production stations together with force turrets to make decent throughput. I'm open for any better ideas.

[Khorius Irelius]

Next Question:

 

TURRET SYSTEM UPGRADES

When you replace a (for example) 6 slot armed turret system, equip the turrets, and then replace the upgrade system with a (for example) 3 slot armed turret system, the turrets stay equipped and seem to have no loss in effectiveness. Is this a glitch?

[Shrooblord]

I'm not sure what you've been experiencing, but personally, when I had 4 turret slots available, then dropped to 2 slots, I can keep my 4 turrets, but only 2 of them will fire.

[Khorius Irelius]

I'm not sure what you've been experiencing, but personally, when I had 4 turret slots available, then dropped to 2 slots, I can keep my 4 turrets, but only 2 of them will fire.

 

I investigated further and I guess you're right, some of them do not work. Although, it appears to select the turrets to keep at random. Thanks Shroob!

 

Next Question: Insurance

 

Is there a limit to the number of ships that a player can insure? I have a lot of fleets, with each ship being fully insured. I just assembled a new fleet, and the option to insure them is completely gone (both while piloting the ships, and by selecting them from another ship).

 

Anyone have any information on this?