Space Rangers 2.. on Impossible!

[Svlad]

Stay a while.. stay forever! (If this makes no sense to you, which is extremely likely, ignore it.)

So, having defeated Space Rangers 2 a month or so back, I found my enthusiasm for the game awakening once again, spurred on by the occasional thread here.

I tried playing it again on regular difficulty, but found that this presented an insufficient challenge. The knowledge I'd acquired made building a powerful ship a quick task, and I found that I felt like I was mainly just waiting for technology to advance enough to let me win the war.

I am now in year 3 of a game on Impossible, and am finding it much more to my taste. I find, however, that the Impossible difficulty game is very different from the regular difficulty one. I therefore find myself struck by the desire to hear what strategies or observations people have about life on Impossible.

For instance, the 'missions' money-tree has been burned to the ground. Missions are still not appearing with any frequency in year 3, and the ones that are available are uniformly awful - kill missions are overwhelmingly common, and what few courier missions are available are uniformly low-paid, with close deadlines, and at extraordinary distances. I've managed to get one that was reasonably doable so far.

Further, attention needs to be spared to fight the Dominators. My first Impossible game ended catastrophically when systems fell to the enemy in such a way as to render the only science base in the universe inaccessible.. and this was in December of the first year! So I've spent time showing up and helping out with fights, even if all I have is a puny missile launcher. This seems to have at least slowed the fall of the Coalition, and raises my first actual question: Is it just me, or does player intervention in a fight seem to have effects on the outcome of that fight out of all proportion to the actual participation of the player? In other words, in attempt #1 when I was ignoring fights the Coalition fell quickly and nastily. Attempt #2, I'm showing up but not really doing a whole lot, but I've made it to year 3.

So, missions aren't pulling in large piles of money and I have to spare large chunks of time to fighting Dominators. This means that my new primary source of money is trading. Dandy. I'm currently just keeping an eye out for large stashes of cheap luxury goods, searching at information kiosks as I travel around seeking fights with Dominators. This pulls in fairly large chunks of cash on a regular basis.. relative to the missions that still only pay out 1500 credits or so, anyway. Even doubling mission payouts would still leave luxury runs way out ahead, especially considering the degree of difficulty of most of the missions I run across. Does anyone have any bright ideas for improving my income given the adverse circumstances?

Does anyone have any guesses or observations pertaining to the exact effect of having the Luck difficulty category set to Zero (ie, the most difficult)? I've noticed that trade goods I intend to buy are vanishing with dismaying regularity, good hulls seem less common, and pirates seem to have lots and lots of idle time to spend trying to harass me. (It doesn't work. Missiles to force them to waste their time shooting nothing and boost to get me away if that fails solve all pirate problems.)

And, finally, does anyone else have any other advice, insights, observations, strategies, etc, that pertain to succeeding despite the increased difficulty?

[hitbyambulance]

Stay a while.. stay forever!

[Inverarity]

Another visitor....

[Svlad]

Discussion threads on Space Rangers 2 and the new version of Mount and Blade, threads about every MMORPG known to man, people who actually claim that they read my essay-length posts, actual intelligent responses..

..and now this place even has people who recognize stupidly obscure ancient gaming references.

I don't know if I can handle it if this forum gets any cooler.

[Darkie]

I think you probably want to use a few hardy ("almost industructable") satalites to toss up and give a bit of cash every once in a while...

[DireAussie]

I think an all-impossible game would be too tedious because of the limited ways to make money. The returns from trading is bad enough even on normal. You'd be pretty much limited to killing dominators to make money. That's why I play my games with normal missions and easy trading.

Interestingly, having scientific research on impossible level is actually helpful. Handing in dominator items is the quickest and easiest form of making cash, so by being able to hand in more items means more money to you.

Having stores on impossible makes for a more interesting game too because it makes you hunt more for better equipment.

[Svlad]

I'm now on year fifteen or so; I'm not at home, so you'll have to bear with my memory..

MIssions are still pretty much useless from cash, except for the odd lucky courier mission. RTS missions are the exception, since planets are changing hands all the time.

Trading is actually pretty lucrative; the slider for that category doesn't seem to have as severe an impact as I'd feared. I can still get over 100 profit per hold on Luxuries.

But yes, Dominator hunting is the way to go. In fact, I think Impossible encourages it, since there seems to be a lot more combat going on than I ever saw in Normal.

Having stores on impossible makes for a more interesting game too because it makes you hunt more for better equipment

So you've confirmed that Luck alters store output? Or (not at home, can't look) is there a difficulty slider that explicitly alters it?

I do think that the "most fun" way to play the game is probably some hybrid of the various settings.

[Kraegor]

i never played on default impossible cuz i felt some of the settings were asinine.

but i did play with dominators maxed and others maxed. the only settings i left at normal was ummm (dont recall real setting) Equipment decay at normal (avg). equipment "availability?" at normal.

anywho, yeah i found dominator scavenging to be my first step. Basically dominators were knockin on my front door pretty much at day one. So I would just hop over to the next system, scavenge and run out.

once i had some weapons (scavenged from dominators) i would snipe on the small/speedy dominators 1 vs 1. until i finally got a ship upgrade with decent space and gear. then started takin on invaded systems solo. usually would take 3 solo invasions for me to whittle things down to a point where i could conquer the system. at this point all i was doing was maintaing status quo...i.e. halting the dominator advance.

I then went huntin for Keller. Once i killed keller I was able to make forward progress on recapturing strategic points. But I found the easiest way was just to hold status quo until research was done. Once i had research on the next dominator leader...I did some quick system hopping (with that auto-refuel addon thingy) until i was in the home system. Killed the leader which would then make retaking that dominator's systems much simpler (dominator leader dead so no reinforcements, no advancement).

the NPC rangers were only useful for providing a distraction. And i always spent cash on getting those Stations up. Warfare/Science/Ranger/Economic. basically anything to increase civilian traffic in a system.

gotta take down Keller asap. it really relieves pressure when yer only fightin a 2 front war.

[Darkie]

I do think that the "most fun" way to play the game is probably some hybrid of the various settings.

I agree - I was most impressed with the amount of detail and options available for difficulty.

For example, I hate the hyperspace sequences, so I'm glad that can be individually adjusted...

[Svlad]

Kraegor, thanks for the useful advice, especialy the notion of killing Keller first. I wish I'd thought of that!

[Quitch]

Further, attention needs to be spared to fight the Dominators. My first Impossible game ended catastrophically when systems fell to the enemy in such a way as to render the only science base in the universe inaccessible.. and this was in December of the first year! So I've spent time showing up and helping out with fights, even if all I have is a puny missile launcher. This seems to have at least slowed the fall of the Coalition, and raises my first actual question: Is it just me, or does player intervention in a fight seem to have effects on the outcome of that fight out of all proportion to the actual participation of the player? In other words, in attempt #1 when I was ignoring fights the Coalition fell quickly and nastily. Attempt #2, I'm showing up but not really doing a whole lot, but I've made it to year 3.

I think it's just the distraction you provide. Battleships do a ton of damage when given the chance, but tend to be overwhelemed by Dominator groups. Missiles mean that a lot of shots that would be hitting ships are probably being used on your missiles, and some ships which might be fragging the coalition are probably chasing your ship. Drawing some Dominators away from the coalition is often a good way to help free a system.

But yes, Dominator hunting is the way to go. In fact, I think Impossible encourages it, since there seems to be a lot more combat going on than I ever saw in Normal.

I'll have to try this soon then. I haven't finished the game yet, but I think I'm going to win my current game on Normal (though I believe there are multiple paths to victory) as we seem to be slowly winning the war (even had the treat of being in a system as Keller invaded... good to see they really do come out... you know )

Anyway, I tend to ignore missions mostly and only do trading when I've picked up goods in space. I prefer to trade in Dominator items, and for the first time I actually seem to be doing it in a way that's making me money rather than costing me a ton in repairs. Getting stuck into the Dominators ASAP is always my goal. Got fighting in the first year this time around and already made a dent.

This is just such a great game

The best bit is, even having read the initial impressions thread, I'm still finding new things not mentioned in there.

[a burn]

I did notice something when playing hard, the success of defending the coalition territory is really linked to the number of military bases you have on your side. Let's face it, 6 battleships and a mobile fortress is plenty of help whichever part of the game it is. The bad part about them is the stupid tendency to use this kickass firepower againt the dominator brains at the very first instance. Figures since the Maloq or Peleng seem to run these places >_<.

Last night, I was wondering wtf my end was losing so much territory around year 15 when it was some 71% owned the last time I checked at year 13 [down to half the map]. The reason: there were no military bases around to organise the counterattack. Seriously, if you don't get them to fight back by ordering the attack nothing gets done. If you do, something like a dozen rangers [usually not wimps] and about 6 battleships will get together somewhere and bash a Dom filled system. This crew is usually enough to deal with the peons and cruisers fairly quickly, anything larger needs an unhealthy dose of virus to drop their shields and weapons.

So any chance to buy a military base is a good one. Just make sure you also order a few offensives before they get themselves killed.