Overview
Guide to Upgrades, Derelicts and Tips for making the most out of each playthrough.
Accessing and Scavenging
Opening doors and getting loot.
Generator Can be Created
Generates power for a Power Inlet. Used by Terminals, Turrets, and opening doors. The drone using this upgrade must remain near the Power Inlet, but can move freely without depowering it as long as he stays less than 1 square away.
‘generator’ – Turns on the Power Inlet in the room that the selected drone is in.
Interface ∞
A essential tool of the trade. Allows access to terminals, which must be in a powder room. All consoles have the ‘shipscan’ and ‘defense’ function, and sometimes may have the survey function.
‘interface’ – Accesses a Terminal in the powered room that the selected drone is in.
‘shipscan’ – Gives a visualization of rooms that are on the same Power Inlet with their Turrets, Terminals, Scrap, and Fuel Points. Does not show hostiles. Like the Scan upgrade, it can reveal unseen scrap, making it useful even in fully scouted areas.
‘defense’ – Toggles ALL powered turrets. This means turrets on other power inlets, and results in s activated turrets turning off, and unactivated turrets turning on. Even when using shipscan, turrets can sometimes not show up. The interface only tells you if no turrets were powered, not if how many were powered.
Gather Can be Created
Gathers nearby scrap and fuel nodes. Note that fuel siphoning can take a moment, while scrap collection only requires the drone to be over the scrap.
‘gather’ – Gathers the nearest scrap or Fuel Node
‘gather all’- Gathers all scrap in a room. Does not explore the room and can miss scrap in unexplored corners
Tow Can be Created
Tows a nearby drone or ship upgrade which must be placed in r1 (Your ship) to be collected. Unless, you ‘Commandeer’ the ship that is being salvaged, switching your ship to the salvaging one. This can be useful if you have a disabled Drone and no tow cable or are too lazy to move boxes.
‘tow’ – tows the object in the room
Pry ∞
Opens a door, powered or not. Useful if you don’t have power or a teleport.
‘pry d#’ – prys a specified door
Scouting
Making sure that there are no living crystals, swarms of bees, or in-laws in a given room
Motion 50/50
Useful for positioning, finding clean rooms, and through clever use of doors, trapping known threats, and recreating Aliens.
‘motion’ – Detects movement in adjacent rooms, although can fail and reveal only some (or none) of the adjacent rooms. Moving to a different room and retrying can yield different results, such as new room being revealed. If the scan lines are red, there are hostiles, and if its green, the room is clear (disregarding Green Goo). Moving disengages the Motion detector
Sensor 50/50
A static version of the motion. Benefits are: It always scans the room its in (I’m looking at you, motion detector), requires no drone to stay motionless, and comes in a 50 pack. Cons are it scans the one room, can only be used in a room you have a drone in, and is finite.
‘sensor’ – Drops the sensor, can not be picked up again.
Probe 4/4
A blue happy face for all your scouting needs! While the probe won’t report what actually attacks it, it does reveal scrap and objects. Most useful for those rooms where your 98% sure there is no hostiles in but want to check anyways. It’s a good backup to a motion failed room. Unfortunately its need for micromanaging doors, it’s non-existent self preservation, and how there only four (the same number as your party) its on the weaker side of scouting. You can get a stealth upgrade though!
‘probe’ – Drops a probe, they go the nearest open door and continue to do so
‘pickup’ – Pickups a probe, be fast as they move around a lot
Scan ∞
Salvager’s must have. Detects scrap that goes unnoticed, even by ship computers. It does need micromanagement to be effective as the drone must be in a room to scan, although using it in every room can yield a good portion of scrap.
‘scan’ – Scans the room for Terminals, Power Inlets, Scrap, Defense Turrets, and Fuel Nodes. Does not point out enemies.
Commandeer
Although its main use is acquire new ships (See Commandeering for more info), the command also can be used to find out if there are any hostiles left aboard. Being unable to commandeer a ship means that there are still hostiles aboard, or uncontained radiation. Thus you check if there are any enemies left alive before you make a decision
‘commandeer’ – Either tells you there is still an infestation, more hostiles to shoot down, or will bring up a yes or no window, meaning that the derelict is clean.
Weapons and Traps
The tools used to combat hostile xenos. Or play minesweeper with.
Gatling 200/200
The only direct weapon for the player. Ready to fire 200 rounds of lead into whatever look at you funny! The drone that uses it MUST keep stationary, and any movement will disable it, even turning.
‘gatling’ – Toggles the Gatling upgrade.
Sonic 100%
Sends out a sonic pulse, repelling enemies. Recharges.
‘sonic’ – toggles on or off repelling nearby enemies.
Trap 4/4
Unlike the mine, which actives based on proximity, Traps detonate at the player’s discretion.
‘trap’ – Drops a trap, ready to go boom.
‘trap boom’ – Detonantes ALL traps, damaging the room the trap is in.
Stun 4/4
Stuns enemies that move into proximity to it. Less useful than other weapons that kill the hostiles, but can combo with other weapons for safety like the gatling.
‘stun’ – drops a stun which stuns hostiles.
‘pickup’ – collects placed lures.
Mine 4/4
Blows stuff up. Be sure there isn’t anything important (Power Inlet, Drones) or they may be destroyed when a hostile trips over it.
‘mine’ – Drops the mine which blows up on proximity with hostiles.
‘pickup’ – Collects placed mines.
Lure 6/6
Lures enemies in adjacent rooms into the room that it is dropped. Useful for attracting hostiles to particular areas, although they destroy it on contact, making it unrecoverable. However, the trap continue to attract them for 60 seconds after it’s destruction, and they will not attack any drones, even ones that collide with the lure.
‘lure’ – Drops a lure which attract enemies.
‘pickup’ – Collects placed lures.
Destruct 4 Drones, 4 uses
Less likely to be used as a weapon, and more likely a mistyped “open door” command. Blows a drone up after 10 seconds, dealing damage to everything in the room.
‘destruct’ – blows that drone who just broke and destroyed your only Interface while take a nap on your ship. Deals damage to the room, hostiles, and drones. May damage or increase enjoyment.
Movement and Defences
Sometimes the best defense, is to run away. Abusing quantum physics with teleportation powers works too.
Health Starter Drone: 80-120
Drone health is essential to drone survival. Without it, they can be disabled or destroyed by the many dangers of Duskers. It can be repaired for 1 scrap and 10 health and can be upgraded for 5 scap for 10 max health. Max health can be upgraded up to 500. Note that drones can go into missions without any health, although they are wet tissues if anything so much as sneezes on them.
Speed Boost I ∞
Boosts the attached drone’s speed. By a lot. If anyone knows exact amount, please message me. Also drones can also get a one time 35% speed increase for 5 scrap, stacking with the speed module.
Teleport ∞
The best upgrade. Else than Interface. Allows a drone to teleport to a specified room. Instantly. No cooldown, uses, or even delay. This gives it a scouting use, for quick teleports to check if a room has hostiles, and then teleport right back to your ship if there is. Cuts down on travel time, and makes navigate command inefficient for a bot that has this upgrade. Combined with a recharging shield, and you have a drone doesn’t even cost repair scrap.
‘teleport r#’ – teleports the drone to a specified room. Does require the room to be visible on the schematics mapmode
Stealth 100%
Cloaks a drone in stealth camouflage, rendering them invisible to hostiles. Not turrets though. Recharges and can be upgraded to recharge quicker but last shorter.
‘stealth’ -stealth drone rendering them invisible to hostiles
Shield 500/500
Protects a drone from damage. The shield only costs 1 scrap per 100 shield, 10x cheaper than repairing the drones health, which costs 1 scrap per 10 hp.Note that the shield does NOT recharge unless given the proper recharge upgrade, which reduces its max health to 100.
‘shield’ – activates the shield. It does NOT start activated. I recommend appending the begin alias to include it on any drones with the upgrade
Ship Upgrades
Remote Power
Remotely powers a specified room with a Power Inlet. Useful for power rooms that are dangerous to drones. Note that it is not possible to use multiples of the same Ship Upgrade, so you can use two Remote Powers.
‘remote r#’ – powers specified room’s Power Inlet.
Reroute Power
Allows the player to transfer power from one room to another. Can only be used on rooms that are adjacent to existing powder room. Useful when a room is connected to inaccessible room’s power grid, yet adjacent room has an accessible power grid.
‘reroute r# status’ – displays how many rooms a power grid inlent can support
‘reroute r# r#’ – the first room is the one that is chosen power grid inlent and the second is the room that is being toggled on/off
Transporter
Gives the player the ability to teleport drones to specified rooms, marked on the map by a transporter icon only seen with the upgrade equipped. These signals can be strong, weak, or disabled and can change states throughout a salvage. New signals can also be created, and the game tells the player when no more signals will be made. If on an Outpost, this can lead to drones being permanently stranded by having no more transporter rooms. Note that while a transporter upgrade is required for the boarding of Outposts, a teleporter will work just a well in mission to get drones where they need to go. Although the transporter is still needed to start the mission technically, and without conventional transport, power inlets won’t work. Required for outpost salvaging.
‘transport # # r#’ – Transports selected drones to a specified room.
Long Range Scanner
Allows the player to see and jump to systems up to 3 jumps away on the galactic view. The far sight does allow for long term planning of jumps, but being able to jump further away is mostly a waste of fuel that could be used to hop between more systems that would result in more scrap. Never equip unless planning jumps, it wastes a ship upgrade slot and can break in mission!
Ship Surveyor
Scans the derelict that is being salvage, giving the floor plan of the entire ship. Combos well with teleporting drones and ships scans, and shows all docking ports available.
Enemy Types
There are four types of enemy, each designed to make you salvage operation go awry.
Purple Guardbots Bizarro Reverse Doppelgangers from Dawners
These little guys are purple and not the friendly kind of drone. They will shoot your drones after a small delay, dealing some damage. Any weapon will suffice against these scrubs, although locking in them a room, preferably with a defense turret, is usually the most efficient method.
Gatling: 4 Bullets
+Ranged
+Invulnerable to Sonic and ignores Lures
-Slow moving and delays before firing
-Weak
-Has a noticeable flashlight cone, and cannot see behind it’s back
Red Crystalmen Red Ragers
Big crystalline creatures that can deal serious damage in melee. They do however die like any other punk to defense turrets. They can charge to quickly bridge the gap to your drones, making unprepared door entrances a dangerous proposition.
Gatling: 8 Bullets
+High Damage
+Charges at drones
-Slow when not agro
Green Goo A Slow Player’s Worst Nightmare
Self duplicating globs of green. Does not move but can reproduce, letting goo migrate between rooms. Gatling ammo is waste and can run out before killing a single group, and there is no way to force goo into Defense turret rooms. Loot the room the Goo is in, then vent that room with radiation and send the glop out an airlock.
Gatling: 8 Bullets per square
+Can create more of it self
+Slows drones down when then move over it
+Not picked up by motion detectors and ignores lurses
+Can spawn into new rooms
-Can’t move
-Low damage
Grey Swarms Anti-Door Brigade
Highly mobile and damaging, swarms are the scariest enemy to those who group their drones in a single room or hide behind believed to be impervious doors.
Gatling: 40 Bullets for swarm of 20
+Can destroy doors
+Can move through Enemy Vents (Read about in Derelict Objects)
+There are 20 of them
-Makes an audible buzzing noise
-Can clip through walls, making them visible from adjacent rooms.
Derelict Objects
Airlocks a#
Airlocks are how you access derelicts. If left open to the void, radiation will seep into the connected room. Also vents any drones or hostiles into the depths of space, instanly destroying them, along with randomly destroying other objects like consoles or power inlets. So be careful.
‘dock a#’ – Docks your ship with the specified airlock.
‘exit’ – Leaves the docked derelict. Any drones not onboard r1 (Your ship) are lost. The excited derelict will no longer be boardable.
Doors d#
Doors act as barriers for both the player and enemies. Most doors on any given ship will be closed initially, although one is always opened to the room that is accessed by your ship. They can only be opened if they are powered by their respective Power Inlet or are pried open by a Pry upgrade. Swarm type enemies can also destroy doors. Doors can be randomly breakdown, prohibiting the player from opening or closing the broken door. They also prevent radiation from leaking into other rooms, so make sure to close doors often incase RNGdiation does not favour you.
‘d#’ – Toggles the specified door.
Generator
Produces power for Doors, Defenses, and Terminal. Requires either Generator drone upgrade or Remote Power ship upgrade to activate.
Terminal
Allows access to a derelicts Shipscan, Defense, and Survey commands. Requires a Interface drone upgrade to use and be powered. Read Interface to learn what each command does.
Defense Turret
Shoots anything that enters the room its in. Requires power and a drone to have interfaced to activate it. Note that the defense does not deal damage so much as INSTANTLY kill anything that moves into it’s room. Doorways that lead to the defended room are safe, and the turret does not always destroy drones, it can disable them too. Just be sure never to walk into a room that has one of these on.
Radiation
RNG’s bff. Will occasionally spawn randomly on a derelict, spreading to any adjacent rooms that have open doors. Deadly, but does not instantly kill like Defense turrets. A shield upgrade is an effective hazmat suit for your drones, when you really need to get that irradiated scrap. Can also be used by the player as a weapon against hostiles by tactically opening airlocks, although can make salvaging difficult and any drones in the room are instantly vented into the black void of space.
Asteroids
Occasionally the player will get be notified in the console that asteroids are on a collision course with the derelict. They have a percentage chance of hitting a some specified room. Unknown how lethal an asteroid hit is.
Enemy Vent
Allows Swarm enemy types to move between rooms, even if they are blocked off by doors. No longer needs to be scanned to be seen. Very dangerous.
Fuel Node
Can be collected for Propulsion or Jump fuel by a drone with the Gatherer upgrade.
Scrap
Can be collected for scrap by a drone with the Gatherer upgrade.
Map Objects
NOTE: Most of this section is based off of assumptions and what I have noticed. If you disagree or have evidence to the contrary, comment away.
Derelicts
Class What type of vessel, determining what is most likely on it, and how large it is.
Barge- Drone Upgrades
Salvage- Scrap
Tech- Interfaces
Private-Fuel
Military- Defenses
Space Station- Ship Upgrades
Outposts Outposts require the Transporter upgrade to be accessed, see Ship Upgrades
Observation- Very small
Research- Interfaces
Rebel-
Military- Purple Guardbots
Defense- Defenses
Greenhouse- Green Slimes
Mining- Scrap
A B C D
larger<->smaller
Infestation Types How many different aliens you can encounter on a given derelict.
Age How old the ship is. I’m older ships have lower integrity and more infestations.
Distance: How much fuel it takes to get to the object
Trading Post
Allows the player to exchange upgrades and fuel for scrap and vice versa. Best to be visited last, when (hopefully) you have the most items to trade.
Stargate
Allows the player to jump to other galaxies. Use when a given galaxy has been salvaged completely.
Upgrades Breaking
My stuff keeps breaking, and I am not even using it?!?
The game randomly at time decide that it wants to break one of your upgrades. This is not based off of use, but how long the upgrade has gone without breaking. Sometimes it may also decide after a few moments to destroy the upgrade as will, making it impossible to repair. This part of the guide is to help players avoid and minimize the impact of broken upgrades.
REPAIR OR SCRAP?
1. If you don’t need it, don’t bring it
Simply put, anything that will not be used in a mission is a waste of upgrade slot that can be used for taking new ones off the cadavers of destroyed drones. It also gives the random god of breaking stuff more targets.
2. Duplicates can be a good thing
Some upgrades, interface, tow, motion, can be essential to a enjoyable experience. If they are broken and destroyed within the same mission, you lose them permanently. So keep that fourth interface just in case, because you may need it.
3. Repair when required
Never repair broken upgrades unless you are using them in the next mission. Broken upgrades in the inventory never get destroyed. A more important upgrade may need the scrap or that drone who got mauled by a Swarm,
4. Sell broken upgrades, don’t scrap them
As said in profiting off of shops, ALL items will sell for 3 scrap, no matter their condition or uses left. So dont use the scrap anything unless it still breaks down into 3 scrap.
5. Drones don’t need health to go into a mission
Its true. Drones can be sent into mission with 0 hp, and still perform as any other. So maybe spend your scrap on your damaged scout rather than the drone who sits on a generator, twiddling his robotic no thumbs all day
6. Make it fast or leave now
Broken upgrades can be destroyed if a salvage operation goes on longer. So make whatever you’re doing quick, or if the upgrade is particularly important (your only interface) leave immediately because that junkheap derelict probably has nothing worth losing such a vital upgrade.
Commandeering
Requirements of Commandeering
1. No infestations, no enemies. Even a single glob of Green Goo will make block commandeering
2. No uncontained Radiation. This means airlocks that are open and leaking more radiation in. Radiation that is NOT spreading currently is fine, such as the kind that can randomly spawn. Don’t open airlocks to rooms that power airlocks, as Radiation kills Power Inlets and makes it impossible to close again
3. Type in the command ‘commandeer’ into the console and then hit ok.
4. Cannot be an outpost (six pointed hexagons). Any class of space ship (the pine trees) works, even space stations.
What to Look For
More upgrade slots or to complete specific objectives. To determine how many Ship Upgrades slots a ship has, observe how many attachment points it has, represented by white squares. These can have blue or red boxes within them, blue meaning a functioning ship upgrade and red meaning a destroyed useless Ship Upgrade. Age, integrity, Terminals, defenses, they all do not matter when commandeering as you can never use them when salvaging another derelict.
Also note you do not have to tow upgrades if commandeering, as they will be gained upon commandeering, and that any currently attached upgrades will transfer over to the new ship.
Aliases
Alias are macros that run a pre-written script of commands.
Begin
Begin opens the door a1, which is awayls the first airlock your ship is docked with when starting a salvage operation (execpt on Outposts). It then navigates all 4 bots out a1 into whichever room is connected to it. The reason it does this rather than say ‘navigate r2’ is beacuse the room numbered r2 isn’t awalys the room you enter after ‘r1’. It then activates a generator on drone 2, the drone who is awalys assigned a generator at the start of the gemae. It then tells which ever bot has a interface to activate any Terminals in the room. Finally it brings up the status of the ship in the console, reminding the player what they are going into.
begin=open a1; navigate 1 2 3 4 a1; generator 2; interface; status
End
End is the only other inital alias else than begin, and it is a PANIC button. It tells all drones to make a run for the hills, which is very useful when somthing goes wrong.
end=navigate 1 2 3 4 r1
Writing Your Own Aliases
1. Type ‘alias’ into console.
2. This will bring up a text file, where you can type new aliases.
3. The first word is what activates the alias
4. After the activator word must be an equal sign to indicate that the next part is the actual commands
5. If you want more than one command to be actiavted, use a semi colon, ; .
(what you type to activate command)=(what you would type to activate a command normally); (another command that actiavates after the first one)
Tips
GET INFINTE CA$H! APPLY NOW! EASY! FAST! EXPEDIANT!
1, Don’t wait. Before the devolpers (and my local law enforcement) find out and bust this bug, you can get INFINTE scrap. Call Now. Or read this part of the guide.
2. Get more than six drones. Yes I know they only come in six packs at the store so you might have to stuff one in your bag while the shop clerk isn’t looking.
3. Go to drone config, then modifications, scrap that offscreen little chicklet
4. Board a stargate to jump, then back out
5. Now you have an error under modify, scrap him, then go back to jump, back out, repeat
6. INFINE GODLIKE CASH IS YOURS
HOW TO PROFIT OFF OF SHOPS
1. Buying ship upgrades cost 3 scrap. But scraping the upgrade gives you 6 scrap, netting you another 3 scrap!
2. Broken, destroyed, and used up upgrades sell for the same as mint conditioned. So trade in your broken 2/50 motion detector for a perfect new one
3. If you want to sell unwanted upgrades, but the shop doesn’t have anymore money, buy their upgrades and scrap them for the same amount.
4. If there are no places to propel after the shop or you need some fast cash, sell your propolson. Maybe even do it anyway for that sweet 5 per P fuel, which can be better than another dangerous salvage run.
GET A TELEPORT
Now. Get one. Try it. Love it. Worship it.
The teleport has INFINITE uses and is instantaneous. This makes it vastly superior to most other scouting modules such as probes, sensors, and motion detectors. Add in a shield module, and your drone is nigh on invincible teleporting god machine that cost only a scrap per 100 hp. With the auto-recharge, that 100 hp is free. Create a new alias like “to=teleport r1” and at the press of the key your back to the safety of your ship. Also, because Purple Guardbots start in the middle of the room and are ranged, being on top of them makes them take a minute to target you when teleporting in. It can also be used as alternative to Transporters on Outpost salvaging, allowing you to select a more advantageous starting room. I can’t stress enough how good this upgrade is, and it’s only rival is the Interface for usefulness
WHEN IT ALL GOES WRONG
1. Could you go on in your current situation and get back on your feet, or does the benefits of the salvage outweigh the loss?:
Use the ‘end’ command- it tells all drones to return to the ship, making a fast ‘exit’ easy.
2. Lost too much?
Exit the game. It doesn’t save your progress in the salvage but means that you can retry the mission. Bassically save scumming.
3. Out of fuel, drones, scrap, etc.?
Hit escape and press R to reset your game. This will generate a new random galaxy, three drones with a tow, generator, gatherer, and a random upgrade. Only keeps your completed objectives and known upgrades.
4. Hate the bad loadouts of a Reset? Need an easier start?
The starting loadouts are terrible. They can have no Motion, a great scouting tool, which the first game always has. More often not, they will also not have a interface, with is necessity. Go to the main menu. Hit C. Clear your game. Go through the four tutorial ships (they always have the same layout) and gain a much better loadout and a starting balance of scrap from some easy missions. Yes you lose objectives and knowledge of upgrades, but that only matters if you care about the story.
Conclusion
Have any questions not answered by this guide? Feel free to leave a comment and I will address it as ASAP.
Things I am not 100% on:
What derelicts types mean
Upgrades that do not work on enemy types