So…I finally got the nudge I needed from one-too-many people saying “but the wall of text is just TL;DR!”

So…I made my first Tutorial video instead.

https://youtu.be/BZtf1BujkgY

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Including the original Wall-o’-Text for posterity.

Step 1: Get both the Economy & Conflict scanners from the Anomaly’s Ship-Tech vendor. You’ll need a Walker-Brain for the Conflict Scanner.

Step2: In GalaxyMap, sort by Conflict, and choose the red stars. THEN you’re looking for the stars with the pirate symbol (that’s the skull). Travel to that system. You’ll want a bunch of those systems (15-20).

Go to Pirate Systems.

Buy Banned Goods from the vendor on the far-left if you’re looking at it from the Teleporter (under the yellow junked ship).

Buy tech & weapons packages from same dealer (not the next dealer over that sells ‘em for nanites).

Go to a NON pirate system by cycling through one of your bases (you can’t go directly to a Non-Pirate space station from a Pirate system or vise/versa). Sell off the Banned Goods immediately, don’t just fly around with that stuff (a system Scan will get you popped & chased by sentinel ships).

Open all the tech & weapon packages. Sell those to one of the Tech Dealers across on the other platform for nanites.

Lather/rinse/repeat.

Hit a few Freighters IN THE PIRATE SYSTEMS ONLY for more banned goods to sell, to keep your $$$ headed north…so you can keep buying those tech packages. Don’t hit the free-floating Cargo Pods or you lose Standing with whatever Race is dominant in that system.

Develop a LIST of Pirate systems & hit them regularly, they’ll regenerate their inventory for you to buy again about every 30 minutes to an hour. I’ve got 20 in my list. It takes me 30-45 minutes to go through the whole list & nets me about 50k Nanites per rotation.

I keep track of which ones I’ve done by going through the whole list of pirate systems (while in pirate systems, ONLY Non-Pirate systems will say “unavailable” something to that effect), then cycling back to sell off.

That keeps them in order so I can go back for another run later.

I started out crash-landed on an alien planet and had to repair my starship. The game was kind enough to walk me through that, but I kept running out of heat protection and had to constantly scrounge up more sodium. Thankfully there were plenty of plants.

Once I got my ship fixed, I flew into space and hit hyperspeed…and accidentally went way past my objective and had to turn around. On the way back, I ran out of hyperspeed fuel and I thought I was boned, but the asteroids surrounding me were full of fuel. Hooray! I was able to make it to the second planet!

After landing in the wrong place, I made it to my destination and built a tiny little cabin where I could wait out the heat storms (and also hide from the Sentinel drone that kept chasing me around. Leave me alone! Those aren’t your plants!) Of course, I had trouble finding copper deposits, and I also ran into my first real problem: I got too far away from my ship and couldn’t find my way back for a while. I’m hoping I’ll eventually get a map or beacon or something so I can roam farther.

Then I went to a space station full of aliens! I couldn’t talk to most of them, but some of them taught me a few words, and a few offered to come work for me (though I didn’t have the necessary buildings.) Tonight I’m going back to my log cabin and I’ll see what else this planet has in store for me.

This game feels like it’s going to be me wandering around cluelessly, punctuated by a series of amazing discoveries. I’m stoked!