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[Cody]

Bottleneck systems are a cool feature of the game, but they do present problems - especially when a max jump is involved. Extra fuel OXPs are an option - I use one, though I've butchered it to only allow 0.5lys of fuel (which on a max jump makes very little difference). If you've got an aft laser (a must-have in the courier business), then you fly an evasive pattern and attempt to discourage the assassins with it while you head in-system. Depending on their numbers, if you can pick-off a couple with the aft laser, and lob hardheads at another couple, then you have a fighting chance.

As an aside, the best ship for an interstellar courier (IMO) is the Wolf MkII - but I stick with my Cobra MkIII (for sentimental reasons).

[Anonymissimus]

Extra fuel OXPs are an option - I use one, though I've butchered it to only allow 0.5lys of fuel (which on a max jump makes very little difference).

0.5ly is about the amount needed for putting a bit of space between assassins and you, dropping a bomb and heading away from it.

With enough extra fuel addons it's no problem to head from the witchpoint with fuel injectors permanently active all the way to the sun, shoot with the aft laser, refuel when I'm there and perhaps burn some assassins in the corona. Are they equipped with a heat shield like me ? Probably not. And fuel scoops ? Probably also not, doesn't make that much sense for assassins with little to no cargo space. And a "scooping fuel at the sun ai" probably doesn't exist. I once was lucky enough to arrive with a full tank after using an existing wormwhole so did that. And then I could hyperspace out or run to the station in similar way. Although with a full tank I can hyperspace right away as well, but I probably wanted to dock.

[Smivs]

Are they equipped with a heat shield like me ? Probably not. And fuel scoops ? Probably also not, doesn't make that much sense for assassins with little to no cargo space. And a "scooping fuel at the sun ai" probably doesn't exist.

Some NPCs can and do sunskim - they have the NPC equivalent to the players' Heat Shield and the trader/courier AI (and perhaps others) includes this feature. Assassins probably don't however, but I haven't checked.
And seriously, lose your dependence on Q-bombs. They are expensive and indiscriminate WMDs. There are far better ways of dealing with these hazards as you will find. There are plenty of 'tactics' threads scattered around the Board which are worth tracking down.

[cim]

And a "scooping fuel at the sun ai" probably doesn't exist.

Almost all Oolite AIs will sunskim for fuel if they're out of fuel, have a scoop, a hyperdrive, and sufficient heat insulation to skim, need to be in another system, and don't have a suitable station to dock at instead.

In practice, while they mostly can, the "suitable station" and "heat insulation" requirements mean that it's usually only the NPC parcel/passenger couriers who do.

Does this apply to all assassins or only on a per-pack basis ? I seem to have outrun one or more packs at times and fought the rest.)

Generally if you can get all the assassins in a pack out of sight, they should be okay.

So parcel runs are for the excitement only, basically.

That is partly true, though once you have a high reputation you get a lot more of the five figure contracts appearing (and you also get offered more contracts in general, so you can often find three or four high-four figure contracts going from one region to another region, and maybe pick up another couple along the way) and it becomes much better paying than a safe trade route (plus you can still do some semi-optimised trading/bounty hunting/piracy/salvage along the way, if you're only taking parcels)

I am attacked by pirates anyway if I only carry platinum/gold/gemstones. They want me to drop the cargo but it's not possible.

Pirates can tell how much cargo space you have - to prevent them making demands for 10 tonnes from a 5 tonne ship. They don't know how much of that space is in use, though, so if they think you're acting like a trader, they'll assume that your hold is full of trade goods.

[Layne]

If I may, I'd like to offer an alternative to extra fuel tanks, which I find too unbalancing myself:

http://deephorizonindustries.com/Advanc ... puter.html

Deep Horizon's Advanced Navigation Computer. It's a very interesting mod that trades off the advantage of cutting your fuel use by up to 10% per jump at the expense of a vectored Witchspace jump that takes about three times as long to initiate than the usual one. Because of this, it's got an in game 'cost' of extra time for every jump-- you can't use it if there are pirates on your tail or they'll shoot the heck out of you-- but you wind up with a little extra fuel in your tank for taking the time to let the computer run your jump. Additionally, from a purely fun angle, you get a very interesting auto-vector where the computer takes over the controls and 'aligns' your ship with the proper jump co-ordinates. With the OXP installed this operates even before you purchase the computer upgrade and adds a nice touch of realism to Witchspace jumps. (The extra-long jump countdown does not take effect until you purchase the upgrade with the fuel savings at a shipyard, until then it's just a cosmetic thing.)

Since even on a full seven light year jump the fuel savings is less than one light year, it provides, at best, only slightly more than even Cody's modified .5 ly fuel tank, but the tradeoff of needing the longer prep-time for a jump helps to provide some game balance to it.

[Cody]

<nods> Cheyd makes good stuff - have you tried his Emergency Witchspace Initiator? His nav buoy is excellent too!

[Layne]

<nods> Cheyd makes good stuff - have you tried his Emergency Witchspace Initiator? His nav buoy is excellent too!

I have looked at many of the others on that site, and in fact I'm using his Systems oxp to add extra planets and moons, and his Gas Giant Skimming upgrade is very well done. (Though I do seem to recall spotting a typo in one of the in-game messages it generates, I'd have to look through and see it again. I'm pretty sure I went into the OXP and corrected it already in my own copy.)

[Anonymissimus]

Generally if you can get all the assassins in a pack out of sight, they should be okay.

So, let's say there are 3 packs of 4 assassins each (12 in total, pretty common), and I run until all 4 of the first pack are out of scanner range, then only the 2*4=8 of the 2. and 3. pack will continue chasing me (which is a manageable amount) ? Unless I get unlucky in them finding me, which happened once IIRC. But I'm referring to the typical assassin who begs for mercy while fleeing and then comes back again to kill me since he miraculously knows where I am, being told about that by his fellows or something.

That is partly true, though once you have a high reputation you get a lot more of the five figure contracts appearing (and you also get offered more contracts in general, so you can often find three or four high-four figure contracts going from one region to another region, and maybe pick up another couple along the way) and it becomes much better paying than a safe trade route (plus you can still do some semi-optimised trading/bounty hunting/piracy/salvage along the way, if you're only taking parcels)

Don't think so. A single cycle on a safe trade route can easily yield 2000 or more, with cargo hold 35, and I didn't guess/calculate this using ideal values. This is computers from a high-tech rich industry world to a low-tech poor agrarian world, and furs in the other direction (not wine/liquors, that per tonne gain is only second best). This is tedious, but the risk of attacks, and notably the repair costs due to attacks, are minimal. On the other hand, I was the most famous parcel courier in the galaxy, but going through the dense system field in the top right corner of galaxy 1 at the start of a courier run to the bottom left corner still yields at best 2 contracts with more than 10000.

If I may, I'd like to offer an alternative to extra fuel tanks, which I find too unbalancing myself:

I've raised the cost of the pylon-mounted one to 2500 (same as the bomb), that kind of balances it, as it's basically an alternative to launching the bomb and expensive for a one-time use object. The other fuel tanks that provide sufficient fuel so you can outrun assassins at least have a cost that hurts a lot once you upgrade your ship.

[Layne]

Don't think so. A single cycle on a safe trade route can easily yield 2000 or more, with cargo hold 35, and I didn't guess/calculate this using ideal values. This is computers from a high-tech rich industry world to a low-tech poor agrarian world, and furs in the other direction (not wine/liquors, that per tonne gain is only second best). This is tedious, but the risk of attacks, and notably the repair costs due to attacks, are minimal. On the other hand, I was the most famous parcel courier in the galaxy, but going through the dense system field in the top right corner of galaxy 1 at the start of a courier run to the bottom left corner still yields at best 2 contracts with more than 10000.

But, do you play the game to grind safe systems for pure profit, or do you dare to eat the peach?

I have a pretty good parcel reputation and I'm turning a very nice profit on runs, usually a chain of eight to twelve parcel drops as I move across the length of Galaxy one-- start with two or three and add more as you go. With the Advanced Navigation Computer I linked, I've never had a problem with enough fuel for the injectors. Another strategy to consider-- buy the attackers off. If you've got cargo space, carry a few tons of something cheap like food and /dump it/. Even assassins will break off to scoop cargo. Five tons of food costs less than even the cheapest non-hardened missile. If you don't have cargo space, Broadcast Comm. OXP lets you wire credits straight into the accounts of pirates and assassins to bribe them to break off the attack. And it really does work. For a few credits they'll stop firing long enough to put some distance between you.

Q-mines aren't the best strategy-- in fact I removed them from shipyard purchase in my own game, because they're seriously over-powered in my opinion and I can't see GalCop selling potentially planet-busting weapons on the open market like that. You should have to get them through illegal channels and pay a /lot/ more for something like that, in my view. But, that's neither here nor there regarding your own use of them.

[Redspear]

Pirates can tell how much cargo space you have - to prevent them making demands for 10 tonnes from a 5 tonne ship. They don't know how much of that space is in use, though, so if they think you're acting like a trader, they'll assume that your hold is full of trade goods.

Just another one of those 'thought' things that keeps interrupting me from flirting with sanity...

Do the pirates know what cargo you're carrying?

(apologies if this has all been said before... or even implemented...)

I'm imagining a galaxy with both opportunist pirates and more organised ones. The opportunists get what they can, when they can. Meanwhile, the 'big boys' might have contacts at the nearby stations providing them with details of who bought what recently. So if you've just filled your cargo bay with furs then they'd likely be waiting for you. If on the other hand you'd stocked up on food and textiles then they likely wouldn't bother - they'd have bigger fish to fry.

Might be a reason to trade in some of the cheaper goods: half (or whatever fraction) of the pirates wouldn't be interested in you. That way furs and computers have the big profits but also the big risks. Cargo type as well as government (and whether or not you had any cargo at all) could be a factor to consider regarding pilot life expectancy.

'Computers to a Multi-Government system? I don't have the ship for that run, maybe to a Confederacy...',
or perhaps even,
'Firearms to a Democracy? I wouldn't get past all those Vipers... but there's a Communist world not far from here...'

Not sure how consistent the >cost = >profit model holds out with the other goods (e.g. slaves are cheap but 'illegal') but it could be one way to make many of the available goods viable and even strategic choices for the traders out there.

...returns to flirting with sanity...

[Anonymissimus]

I've never had a problem with enough fuel for the injectors.

Traveling between bottom left and top right in galaxy 1 (you probably don't want bottom right, very unsafe there) there are 2 long jumps near the bottom left corner, one of which I usually had to take; one is Lave-Zaonce IIRC, Lave being a pretty problematic dictatorship, and the other one worse IIRC, when heading eastwards from Onrira. And both too long to be able to jump out if ambushed by thargoids anyway. Just an example.

If you've got cargo space, carry a few tons of something cheap like food and /dump it/. Even assassins will break off to scoop cargo. Five tons of food costs less than even the cheapest non-hardened missile.

Interesting. I never considered giving them anything. What likely is expensive about this is not the cargo itself but the fact that this "emergency cargo" consumes cargo space that could be used for profitable trade goods. However, with the Boa cruiser I have now, I often have free cargo space, and if not, I usually have less profitable goods on board.