When you fail to complete a bounty you can use a black box to save a piece of loot you earned on that specific bounty hunt.
Seconding all the comments about this being fun. I'm also finding ship combat a bit difficult, particularly when I do harder wormhole missions. Is there a particular level of ship that unlocks that is good for combat? I am around rank 12 only now and all of the unlocked ships seem strictly worse than the starter ships, which is annoying. Maybe I am ignoring range or other pertinent factors though.
On my iPad 3, my bigger issue with ship combat is that because it uses 3D models, everything slows down to a crawl (including touch response) when wormholes are opened during space combat. That aside, there are actually several good ships aside from the base one, although the base one is decent. The only problem with the stats is that it doesn't show the range of the weapons. Also please take note that each ship has a special ability, and a potential second ability once it levels up. You can improve a ship's stats by upgrading its various parts, and when you complete a tier (e.g. all the 2-star parts), you get the option to level up the ship (granting it a star and either improving an old ability or gaining a new one). Character abilities also give the ship an extra special ability. Honestly the best ship I've used is the Venom, which unlocks at Level 33 (I'm only 31). It comes with the $4.99 starter pack, and is probably one of the biggest boosts you can buy. (I can literally win fights with the mothership + upgraded predator).
The privateer is much better than the starter ships. On paper it looks like just a bit more health and speed, but it's weapon range is much larger. It's special ability isn't particularly useful though. The ironclad which unlocks pretty early doesn't offer much offensively but it is still a very useful ship able to soak up a ton of damage. I am close to unlocking the Executor which looks to be a great ship. As stated above the Venom is a total beast if you go with the starter pack. Basically any of the ships are far more useful than the starter ships just because the auger has such terrible weapon range. It becomes essentially useless very fast.
I really don't like the way ships that are blown up are gone for the whole campaign....seems like a terrible mechanic.
From what I remember if you have an excess amount of ships you can use those for the next level in the campaign if you were still able to apprehend the criminal despite losing some ships. Which is why it's a good idea to have plenty of good quality ships in the hanger to cover your losses. I think it's a fair mechanic that stings less and less as you build up your collection of ships and crew.
I got the 5 star Voide-Chief Sharpe from the Scion Kidnapping event. She's a mechanic, but she has the Snap Shot skill. I wonder if this is a bug. One of the loading screen tips even specifically says that gunners are the only ones able to interrupt a charging attack.
I don't know if she's the exception, as she's the only character I've gotten so far that breaks the class rules (since all characters have the same 1st skill based on class). So could be an exception, could be a bug.
They don't all have exactly the same primary class skill. A few have elemental variations (like spark head shot), and there is a 5/6 star medic with a totally unique skill (adrenaline shot instead of blood shot) as well, but those still don't cross the class boundary. I just looked through all the characters listed in the crew quarters and there is only one other exception, a 1 star pilot named Mickey Madsen who also has snap shot. I still think it might be a bug or oversight, but I hope it isn't fixed. I like snap shot better than buck shot.
I'm finding this surprisingly enjoyable and decent F2P. Like Royce said, i dismissed it immediately because of DeNa until i read all the positive comments here. Only played half a day, but so far so good
Update notes said they fixed it but it looks like they only changed 5 star Sharpe to buck shot, not 6 star.
Hmm.. i purchased the starter pack thinking i could switch out my mothership for the Venom, since they are both large high health. It turns out i can't, and the starting mothership has to occupy one slot. Is there something i missed or is it like this for the whole game?
Yes the starting mothership is permanent from what I can tell, although I am not as far along as some. I wouldn't be surprised in the future if the developers allowed more customization options for the mothership since it seems to be a permanent fixture. The Venom is a great ship though that it well worth using with almost any configuration.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The only ship that I've unlocked so far that even comes close to it is the Triton. Early on when your other small ships are weak, you can use the Venom to help your mothership absorb damage
The mothership can't be replaced. It can only be upgraded using Gold schematics. If you lose your mothership during the campaign, it's immediately game over. It also determines how many items you can carry. (This number increases when you level up your mothership.) Other upgrades include 180-turn and double damage. Venom is probably the best ship in terms of range, damage, and rate of fire. (There are probably other ships that excel in other areas, but not all three, compared to Venom.) Venom is pretty much my end-game ship.
How do you upgrade crew abilities, and have max leveled them even promoted them and can't seem to find out how to improve their abilities. Troops can be promoted only once, correct? So to get a 6 star tooper, you would need a legendary and promote them?
You need to train a crew member using another crew member who has the same skill at the same level. So if your skill is level 2 you need another crew member with the same skill at level 2 to raise it to 3. This makes it much more difficult to raise the unique skills of some of the higher rarity crew members, and means that some of the 4 and even 3 star base (5 and 4 max) crew members can be competitive unless you have tons of the rare characters to raise their skills to max. You are correct about promotion.
Wow really? How did you find that out? I haven't seen any specifics about upgrading skills other than a short tip that disappears so quickly that i can't read it all.
