Overview
This guide covers the entire galaxy in 0.9.8, so it includes: Spoilers! A full, annotated map of the galaxy, The Korath (4 factions), The Remnant, The Coalition/Heliarchs, Information on how to get to all the factions, And highlights of what they have that’s useful.
A Note
Because this game is, among many other things, a story game, I will not give away too much lore, because that would take away from the experience of playing the game, and would be unneccessary, as this guide shows you where every species is, so you can access them yourself – and do the storylines for them yourself – which would be boring if you already knew them.
Besides, MZ, the creator of this galaxy, does story way better than I, a mere explorer, can.
Also, that cuts down on walls of text.
The guide will list groups roughly in the order you can meet them.
It will list the hyper-drive-accessable species first, then the jump-drive-only ones.
The guide’s geography is that of the post-Free Worlds, pre-Wanderer campaign galaxy.
The Map
You cannot reach the Coalition, Wanderers, and Korath without a Jump Drive.
The Coalition doesn’t sell anything particularly useful, and the Korath will kill you on sight.
The Wanders sell some very neat equipment, if for a rather hefty price.
Either way, the Jump Drive is very useful, so there’s information on how to get one later in the guide.
But first, the species that don’t require jump drives!
Human Space
We’ll start with the Humans, because that’s what you are, young traveler.
Overall, human equipment is less powerful than other alien equipment you can obtain, but the humans have a huge selection of equipment, and it’s that variety that distinguishes them.
Not much exceptional is found in the Republic. I has some pretty decent warships, though. (*Not available for purchase, mind you).
Although techincally part of the Republic, the Deep is much more technologically advanced, and has some of the best human weapons, small-profile power generation outfits, and, of course, engines.
With crew, outfit space, and cargo space all in the hundreds, this ship is, no doubt, the most useful flagship in the game.
*With the exception of the virtually un-capturable Korath World Ships.
The syndicate is basically the “backbone of the galactic economy.” Its frieghters are cheap and efficient, but they don’t sell exceptionally powerful equipment.
…unless you make cerain decisions in the campain, in which case they sell you more efficient afterburners and nukes. In a different part of the campain, they give you a Jump Drive and, if you choose the right option, a Cloaking Device.
At one point, the Free Worlds secede from the Republic, and form their own government.
During the campaign, they develop some good weapons.
Plasma weapons are useful because they do heat damage, and, if spammed enough, they can make a ship go into thermal shutdown, making them easy targets.
Plasma turrets also have the highest DPS of any human non-missle weapon, so they’re a very attractive option. (That is, if your ship can handle the energy and cooling requirements).
This thing’s purpose is to spray burning fuel at the target, overheating it.
This is what you want to spam if you need to disable a ship.
Pirates are found in all the corners of human space.
They have two uses.
1) Farming. If you aren’t strong enough to farm aliens, pirates are the next best thing.
Possibly the best system for this is Men, one it becomes independent.
It has pirates taking off from the planets and jumping in, and both the militia and independent forces fight the pirates.
It also has a spaceport where you can sell your freshly ‘aquired’ ships.
It’s like the place was made for farming.
2) Hand-to-Hand Weapons
The pirates sell both the strongest legal and strongest illegal hand-to-hand weapons in the game.
The frag grenades are what you need in most cases.
…less legal…
…option.
A comparison of the 3 offensive hand-to-hand weapons:
*Note that if authorities find you in possession of any canisters of nerve gas, they will fine you 1M (Does not scale – 1 can is a 1M fine, 245 cans is a 1M fine. Fine is paid as a loan).
There are also pirate-hunting missions offered, if you have a high enough combat rating.
There are also a type of upgraded pirates, Mauraders, that have better equipment than other pirates, and they have some exclusive equipment, like shield generators, that you can only obtain from hunting them.
You can find mauraders through Maurader-hunting missions, much like pirate-hunting missions. These missions require a rather high combat rating, and will specify that the enemies are Mauraders.
The Quarg
You’ll find that one of the most advanced species in the galaxy is right at your doorstep.
The Quarg are the chosen species of the Drak, the ultra-mysterious species that likely controls the galaxy’s borders, keeping all the different species nice and segregated, so that they don’t go to war with each other, or mess with each other’s development.
Of course, you don’t care about that. You want a Jump Drive so you can mess with the aliens and benefit from their technology.
Alright, back to the Quarg.
The Quarg are very advanced, and have super-effiecient technology, most notably their skylances and batteries.
(Yeah, we’ll get the sprites for them eventually…)
The skylance is the most powerful (obtainable) weapon in the game.*
The batteries are ridiculously space efficient, necessary for the skylance’s insane energy usage (that goes hand in hand with their insane DPS).
*Excluding the Pug Arfectas’ Gridefire turrets, but there are only 9 of those in existance, so…
The Quarg are also found in various other regions of the galaxy, protecting those species/groups that are (relatively) peaceful.
*cough* and also making sure they don’t become too advanced *cough*
The Hai
The Hai are the first aliens that are willing to sell you their technology, that you can access without a jump drive.
They are found across the wormhole* in the Ultima Thule system, far North, to the right and down of Betelguese.
*To go through a wormhole, land on it.
Most of their stuff is just human stuff, but slightly smaller, more efficient, and cooler looking.
However, some of their stuff stands out.
These, however, drain battery charge, a potentially more devastating tactic.
32,000 shielding,
798 outfit space,
333 weapon space,
8 gun ports,
and 4 turret mounts.
It is by far the strongest warship you’ll get for some time.
They also have an Unfettered faction which fights the normal Hai in one of their top-most systems. If you have a strong enough fleet, you might be able to farm them.
The Remnant
The next group you can access is the Remnant, who live beyond another wormhole in the Terminus System.
They are humans that fled human space during one of the Alpha Wars, and have developed independently since then.
Most of their technology comes from stolen alien technology, and is mostly weaker versions of that technology.
However, they do offer you very profitable Korath hunting missions, bringing in a lucrative 15 Million per ship (each mission taking between 2-5 days, depending on how much damage you can deal to the raider before it jumps away), if you invest in a Bactrian with a full crew complement and compimentary nerve gas. If not, but you have ~170 tons of cargo space on your flagship, that’s still 5M per ship.
The Pug
Deneb, the main system of the pug, after the campaign.
The Pug are a very odd species. They influence other species and their development much like the Drak, which you will learn more about during the campaign. They seem to be extremely powerful, capable of pruning hyper-links and creating wormholes, yet, during the campaign, they confront you with warships rather equally matched to yours. They seem to want to fight everyone on their level, like it’s a game to them.
Well, it’s a game to you too, and the Pug have jump drives, so you farm them.
Most of their ships are weak, and all of them carry jump drives.
Make sure to use that opportunity!
They have beam weapons that are comprable to the Deep’s, and missile defenses that are comprable to othe aliens’, but one of their weapons is particularly useful.
It shoots energy projectiles, consuming energy like a normal weapon, but the projectiles seek like a missile and fly very far.
Theses are nice to stick on light/medium warships that you want as long range support.
They also have a game-breaking ship later on, but this is a huge spoiler:
It can cloak. (Invulnerability when cloaked).
It is fast.
It has strong missile defenses.
But most importantly,
It has three AoE, heavy damage, shield-piercing turrets.
This thing is incredibly powerful, and there are only 3 of them in the game.
You can capture them.
The Korath
If you try hard enough, you can probably find the Korath before you have a jump drive, whether through the Remnant or by waiting for them at the edges of Syndicate/Pirate Space.
However, you can only access their systems with a jump drive.
The Korath have four Factions. The biological ones are the Korath Exiles, the ones you’ll most likely meet first, and the Kor Efreti, those that gave up war and now live in peace, with the Quargs’ protection/endorsement. There are two warring factions of Automata, the Kor Mereti and the Kor Sestor.
As you can probably already tell, the Korath are warlike, brutal, and deadly.
Anything you get from them, you’re gonna have to take by force.
The exiles live to the right of the Syndicate and above the Ember Waste.
These are the least deadly of the warlike Korath, and each of their raiders is roughly equivalent to, though probably stronger than, a human heavy warship.
They are particularly fond of pushing people around with their turreted weaponry, which otherwise isn’t very useful.
They care little for niceties such as not having their ships reach temperatures exceeding several thousand heat units.
This has made them very efficient at one thing (and one thing only).
These are the best cooling systems in the game, hands down.
They serve the purpose of shielding, batteries, and, as a bonus, hull repair, in comparable or less space than equivalent shielding systems. (Including Hai and Wanderer ones).
All the Korath factions have these, but they’re the easiest to get from the Exiles.
The large system cores are obtainable from the larger Korath drones, and also their Worldships.
In combat, the Korath Worldships are roughly on par with a well-equiped shield beetle or two, but are capable of acommodating around a thousand crew, and come with at least eight hundred. You stand *almost* no chance of capturing one, even with a Bactrian full of bunks and nerve gas.
It should be noted that, under the best circumstances, you have a sliver of a chance of capturing one, which, if you succeed, would be massively helpful, as such a beast of a flagship would be several times more capable than even a Bactrian.
This beast is a Korath Worldship:
The Kor Efreti are off to the side of Korath Space, protected by the Quarg. They are not very useful, except that they provide refueling and repair in an otherwise extremely inhospitable region of space, some basic outfits, outfits for incorporating automata into one’s fleet, and amunition for the Korath minelayer and piercer weapons, although they don’t sell the weapons themselves.
The Kor Mereti are one of the two constantly-warring factions of Korath Automata.
They use the devastatingly effective combination of weapons that distrupt shields and weapons that cut through hull, making them incredibly dangerous to deal with.
Needless to say, both are quite useful weapons.
They also have a mine-laying missile weapon, which is probably quite annoying at times.
The Kor Sestor are the other faction of Korath Automata.
They use drones in battle, along with piercing missiles.
This weapon has a special effect: it distrupts the engines systems of the ship it hits, rendering it unable to move if spammed enough.
The problem: the Sestor spam them enough.
This thing makes it really hard to get through Kor Sestor space.
It also has really long range. (almost 2000)
The Sestor’s warships are also valued, particularly their largest one, the 349 Kar Ik Vot.
The Wanderers
The Wanderers are located above the Northern Pirate systems, and to the left of the Hai.
There are debates about which reactors are better, the Wanderer or Korath, but the Korath produce insane heat (like, 9000), and Wanderer reactors also have energy storage, so they are better for the most part.
Here are some calculations:
Originally posted by Lt_Duckweed:2 Tripple plasma core + 5 large heat shunts + 3 small heat shunts
10.923 energy per outfit space
150 extra cooling2 Blue suns + 1 large heat shunt + 2 small heat shunts
10.982 energy per outfit space
180 extra cooling
17800 energy storage.Verdict is in blue sun is king.
It is better to have 2 Wanderer ramscoops than one Catalytic Ramscoop, as explained here.
Well into their campaign, they begin developing warships, currently the most powerful purchaseable ones in the game.
Also, they have a pug system hidden behind a star.
This is also where you get one of the Arfectas. The other two show up during the Wanderer campaign.
Wanderer space also has a wealth of people-transport and (somewhat) cargo-delivery jobs.
You can get mission with lots of people, with a repectively large payout.
The optimal fleet for transporting in Wanderer space is probably 2 Bactrians.
Also, the Wanderers sell the best cargo ship in the game, the Deep River, which has 1410 cargo space.
The Coalition
The Coalition is, well, a coaltion of three different species.
The Arachi (spiders), Kimek (beetles), and Saryds (centaurs), each with their own style of ship-building.
They are united under the Heliarchs, the ruling faction (composed of the same three species), which means all the species, while they may have different ships, have the same outfits.
The civilian outfits are not very useful, except that they are very small.
[badpun](Litteraly)[/badpun]
The civilians are not allowed to have weapons (or reactors), and the Heliarchs don’t sell those, so, if you want anything useful from the Coalition/Heliarchs, you’ll need to take it by force.
It’s description states that all of the Heliarch’s weapons exist – in some way or another – only to immobilize a ship so it can be finished off with these.
Some stats:
Compared with the Ion Cannon,
The Drak
The Drak are a mysterious species, controling the development of other species behind the scenes.
Their servants are the Quarg, who do most of the enforcement of the Drak’s laws.
One ‘communicates’ with you while you are conducting an archaeology mission in the Rim.
There are others, found in certain star systems with supernovas. (I’ll expain this once I figure that out – it’s in the story)
The Archons have pretty overpowered outfits.
Unfortunately, Drak ships have the “never disabled” tag, which, as you guessed, means you cannot disable them.
They remain opperational until they die. (Yes, you can kill them. It’s best done by spamming ion damage, as they have 100 times the heat dissipation of a Bactrian, so flamethrowers won’t work here).
The explanation for why you can’t loot them is that they’re living creatures, so you can’t stick a Archon head on your ship and tell it to fire.[github.com]
So, to recap, the are powerful, you can’t loot them, you can’t capture them, but you can kill them. (Which will anger all the other Archons, so you’ll have to watch your back in the other systems with Archons).
The Best Equipment?
For starters, this guide is more about where to find the useful stuff, not for comparing everything in detail.
If you want a comparison between a couple very similar outfits, especially if they have advantages in different aspects, (e.g. Atomic vs. Pug engines, Wanderer vs. Korath reactors, etc.), look on the Steam Forums, or on Google. How did you think I found this stuff out?
If you want a multi-variable comparison that isn’t on the Forums (yet), ask Derpy. He has a spreadsheet of all the outfits, so he can compare them in much more depth.
That being said, here’s a recap of all the best stuff:
Korath Heat Shunts. No doubt about it.
For reactors, it really comes down to the aforementioned comparison.
Ignoring the heat, they have the best energy/outfit space ratio.
However, once you factor in all the heat shunts you have to add to counteract the heat generation, the ratio becomes similar to its counterparts. (Ignoring outfit expansion inefficiency, because then the drop is much more dramatic).
Originally posted by Lt_Duckweed:2 Tripple plasma core + 5 large heat shunts + 3 small heat shunts
10.923 energy per outfit space
150 extra cooling2 Blue suns + 1 large heat shunt + 2 small heat shunts
10.982 energy per outfit space
180 extra cooling
17800 energy storage.Verdict is in blue sun is king.
The small system cores are slightly less efficient than the hai equivalent, but the large system cores are more efficient than their equivalents.
Counting in the extra benefits, however, the Korath ones are much better, because they add a lot of energy capacity, (which would otherwise have to be achived through batteries, adding weight), and have the slight bonus of hull regeneration, which is marginally helpful in major battles, but incredibly helpful while exploring.
The alternative is probably human/hai batteries, but, if you heed the above advice, you will probably find that Wanderer Reactors and Korath System Cores provide more than enough energy capacity.
Finally, something humans excel at!
Nerve gas is by far the best hand-to-hand weapon in the game, but if you don’t need as much firepower, and wish to avoid fines, frag grendades are for you.
Engines are difficult. Quarg stuff is probably the best, again, but it’s hard to come by, and will probably be subject to rebalance.
If you’re looking for energy efficiency, ion engines are probably up your alley.
If you want the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, you might like the pug engines.
*Korath engines technically have more thrust/mass, but the heat…
There are also some engines which are best for some situations, like Wanderers if you really need some extra cooling, or Coalition for space, but they aren’t very efficient otherwise.
I’d go with Atomics, honestly, but Hai engines are more mass efficient (though smaller, so less thrust overall):
Originally posted by Cronatos:The largest Human atomic is 127 mass, 3960 thrust/mass, 6.28 energy/mass and 13.75 heat/mass. The largest Hai atomic is 104 mass, 4157 thrust/mass, 6.29 energy/mass and 13.73 heat/mass. If you can fit the biggest human atomics, can’t fit anything more and want the most speed possible, you may want to use them, but otherwise Hai stuff is just better. Most notably, the largest Hai engines (thrust+steer) are exactly large enough to fill the Bactrian’s engine capacity.
If you can obtain them, the Quarg Skylances have the highest DPS, and the Pug Arfectas’ Gridfire has great splash damage, but both are extremely hard to obtain, and so are not options for most people.
Of course, effect weapons, like the flamethrower, ion beam, distruptor, and detainers are unrivaled in their respective niches, but aren’t always optimal in a setup. They can, however, be used to overpower an enemy if you are the underdog, eg. using 20 ion-equipped shield beetles to beat a Archon (as per Kiko’s competition).
Some weapons also have push/pull effects (Korath and Heliarchs), the Pug have a nice seeking blaster, but overall, it really comes down to what you have and who you’re up against.
Credits
Aside from the parts where I have links/quotes that, well, are citations themselves,
Name of the Guide – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Book)
Guide Writing – Me
Information in Guide – Community & My Experience Ingame (a lot of which was enabled by the community)
Images – Game
Game – MZ
MZ – Pug Magic
Feel free to tell me if any part is outdated, or if I got anything wrong.