Overview
This is my experience with Endurance, the first ship I play from launch, but you get the general ideas :
Tips and tricks
link to weapon stats in game : [link]
– get a lab robot in the beginning for your DIY lab so you get free money when you run around
– the cat pet is mostly useless so I craft a DIY cryo recorder and let him sleep all the time for more free money from dreaming
– switch to laser / EMP weapons as fast as you can to save resources
– the mining lasers when scraped can give you a ton of exotics for trade (20-30 exotic for dual/triple mining laser IIRC). If you see them sold in starbases, buy them all for ~150-250 each and scrap them for exotics
– keep all the people who need more than 4-5 food in your gardens or cryos when not in combat,
save a peace template and a combat template in the left menu so you can switch around when situation change
– buy the engine with less fuel consumption and keep the engine with best combat stat in your storage so you can switch back to them when something attacks you, you can save a lot of fuel with that swapping item tactic
– don’t warp to nearby cluster system if you can move there directly with your most efficient engine, I figured out that I can zoom out in the galaxy view and move around the camera to nearby systems following the directions showed in the sector view. Sometimes, direct route without 2-3 jumps can save you a ton of fuel
– when you have a good food supply (now i get +3 food balance with a crew of 17 peoples using 3 gardens type A with 4 slots each, and I got that stat in the beginning of 5th sector), the fuel combinator becomes very easy to maintain because synthetic is the most abundant resource you can get
– stock your ECM / artifact with combat bonus / armour plate in your storage and switch them with your gardens / labs only when combat starts to minimize you food consumption and maximize your money printing capacity.
– you can kick out the unwanted crew when you dock in most of starbases, you need to zoom out in hangar mode to see the option to move your crew out of your ship
– try to get a fuel converter, 3 last sectors have much less starbases to shop so you need to have another option here, SOS and late game gas planet farming can stack up a lot of permanent damage which cannot be repaired by your crew
– if you go heavy in explosive weapons, stealth detection is a must to avoid warp lifes because you can lose ~40 explosives to escape them
– replace cryos with gardens as much as possible (normally I have 3 T4 garden in my ships). No food consump is good, but have surplus food to transform to fuel or money is even better
– aim to have at least enough crew for all your bridge, weapons and shields (it is good to put your best shooter on point defence in some encounter) and some 2-3 guys as backup for nasty losing crew events, buy many robots as you can afford, they are cheap to maintain and act as cannon fodder vs boarding and fires (i have like >20 robots in the end)
– DIY nukes and DIY EMP guns are some of the best weapons in the game (one is cheap and one has ~45 DPM vs shield, do your math)
– for weapons, favor the ones that have good ROF, multishot, ignore deflect, ignore shield
– for shield favor, the ones cost you less power, you want at least 2 shields to be effective
– don’t be greedy, most of 12 slot containers will be your 2nd setup for combat and 1-2 back up generators, normally I keep only 2-4 open slots to store loot
– don’t be shame to store the food/fuel container if you are on low on thoses resource, leaking due to damages early game can be nasty for your life