Adder start: No kidding it's hard!

[naja]

Just been working my way through the broke adder start. Took me 'til my fourth attempt to not get destroyed by pirates or Rock hermit patrols before getting a credit. However, its incredibly satisfying once you get going. Got my first foothold by taking on two pirates. It's amazing how difficult they find it to hit you if you jink up and down a bit. What seemed more surprising is that even the missiles seem to struggle to hit you if you keep moving. Getting 70 credits from taking out the two pirates was easily enough to get trading. Currently on 73rd move between planets/stations. Have a good set of equipment (d. computers, ECM, military laser, cargo extension and passenger bay). Making piles of cash by working out of T-taxi stations using Taxi Galactica OXP. Not sure why these folks want to give me so much cash and trust me to ferry them around in an Adder. I have 22K Cr so far and should have enough to trade up to a Cobra Mk III soon. But I'm not sure I want to. Being limited to forward mounted weapons, 1 missile and 1 energy bank, really makes battles more exciting.

[Cody]

The Adder is an agile little ship, and therein lies its strength - it can be hard to hit.
I have an iron-assed Adder in my hangar - it's purple, and great fun to fly!

[Anonymissimus]

Does the Adder survive the impact of any missile (such as cobra 3, when running away from hit and hit from the rear, even without any upgrades) ? Got killed the way I expected to: A pirate gang with a ship with injectors, tried to ourun, didn't work, wanted to make the one with injectors flee and ourun the others, then it fired a missile from close range, bang. Albeit I immediately tried to inj́ect away from the missile.
When viewing the ship library ingame, there's a property "shields" weak, very weak, strong etc, to what property in shipdata.plist does that refer to ?
I never managed to avoid the missile in the tutorial too - without injectors to outrun it and without a rear beam laser too shoot it down. And for that some distance is needed as well.

[Layne]

When viewing the ship library ingame, there's a property "shields" weak, very weak, strong etc, to what property in shipdata.plist does that refer to ?
I never managed to avoid the missile in the tutorial too - without injectors to outrun it and without a rear beam laser too shoot it down. And for that some distance is needed as well.

As far as I know (and I know far from everything) the shields listings there are ballpark figures based on energy bank levels and recharge rates-- there's no separate property for shields in any plist.

They beefed up missile damage in 1.82; and they hurt a lot more now. Oy, do they ever hurt. Which is /sort/ of a good idea, since missiles didn't seem very useful before, and I never thought they were worth the cost. Even a cheap missile is worth more than the bounty on most ships, not to mention it'll pop like a soap bubble at the first whisper of an ECM. But at least now if they do hit, somebody's teeth will rattle.

[Anonymissimus]

Does that mean that the maximum shield strength (fully regenerated) is the same for all ships then (aside from equipment) ?

[Norby]

the maximum shield strength (fully regenerated) is the same for all ships then (aside from equipment) ?

For player ships, yes. NPCs has not any shields in the core game, but [wiki]CustomShields[/wiki] add similar ones.

[Bogatyr]

Aside from the obvious (ie do NOT get in a fight while flying an adder... 1 energy bank? eep!) there is the matter of it being so ungoddamnbelievably SLOOOOOOOW. Wow. By the time I can afford witchfuel injectors to speed things up I'll be an old man.

But one question: How is anyone supposed to even get started with Harder (no money Adder start). With no fuel you can't even leave the system to even do a courier job for initial money, and there is no Black Monk to get a loan from around Lave (that I could find).

I just started a broke adder game, as self-imposed penance for exploiting the Feudal States hunting lodge to build up a fully loaded Cobra MkIII in no time at all, and deciding that's just not the way to play the game, it's not actually much fun. The fun is in the gradual build-up, and in the exploration.

While yes it's slow, there's something oddly therapeutic about the change of pace compared to juggling a slew of tight parcel and passenger delivery times or jumping endlessly back and forth on a computers/fur milk run at a frantic pace.

For one thing, I discovered that there's way more to Lave system than just being a place you immediately leave at the start of the game. Upon reading some advice on how to spot asteroids (easiest against a large solid background: a sun or planet). There's a lot of stuff out there in space that I never suspected! And playing with the intention of ironman (we'll see if I can stick to that), it's given me pause when I had the temptation to see if I could take out a lowly Worm with my lowly Adder. Plus having some added sympathy for those fellow poor souls trying to eek out a meager existence out in the lonely far reaches of the system. So far so good, I have enough creds for a jump to Zaonce taking along some cheap cargo, in case I get bored of waiting for a free ride around Aegis.

[Bogatyr]

Made the jump to Zaonce and continued in on eradicating the asteroid population. The thing is, Rock Hermits look a lot like asteroids from the back and pissed him off by shooting at him. I actually took out the first of the two Cobras that came after me by dodging like mad, and survived the first missile hit. I dodged the first missile shot by the 2nd Cobra but couldn't dodge the second one, so Press Space, Commander. OK, lesson learned, 2nd broke adder attempt coming up.

[Bogatyr]

Encountered pirates on the last three incarnations of "The Long Slog" (my broke adder ship), and beat every group each time only to succumb to the final "spite missile" of the final dying pirate. The adder is a nimble fighter, out-turning just about everything. I've uninstalled Towbar to hopefully avoid this dying missile shot but that didn't seem to help. That's OK, I'll just remember to keep dodging the last ship until shields and energy make it back to maximum. Oh boy when I make it to that ECM purchase it is going to be SWEET. Not to mention retribution: there's going to be some serious payback coming to the Lave asteroid belt when The Long Slog finally gets a decent kit going.

Up to The Long Slog #5, same thing on #4: dying pirate missile death, sigh.
Same thing #5, missile from pirate.

The Long Slog #6 got a lucky free ride to Zaonce on first launch. Now he's really in for the long slog!

[Cody]

Without ECM, missiles are a problem... but with practice, one can become pretty good at shooting them down.

[Bogatyr]

Without ECM, missiles are a problem... but with practice, one can become pretty good at shooting them down.

A rear gun mount and injectors help in acquiring that practice, I'm sure . Without injectors and with a front-only laser mount, you've basically got one shot at most it seems.

[Cody]

I love my injectors, but I don't think I've ever shot a missile down with my aft laser.
Shooting missiles down is a knack worth acquiring though - ECMs get damaged.

[Anonymissimus]

I don't think I've ever shot a missile down with my aft laser.

Seriously ? You don't happen to mean your front laser ?

There are things shooting hardheads only, such as the orca class destroyer from aquatics OXP. Useful for acquiring missile shooting practice.

In an Adder, basically avoid all combat until you have injectors. Any missile that hits you is an instakill, basically. There are some ships that don't have missile slots though. Since an ECM can never guarantee to destroy the missile in time, or even at all, it's no argument.

[Bogatyr]

I don't think I've ever shot a missile down with my aft laser.

Seriously ? You don't happen to mean your front laser ?

There are things shooting hardheads only, such as the orca class destroyer from aquatics OXP. Useful for acquiring missile shooting practice.

In an Adder, basically avoid all combat until you have injectors. Any missile that hits you is an instakill, basically. There are some ships that don't have missile slots though. Since an ECM can never guarantee to destroy the missile in time, or even at all, it's no argument.

Yes shooting missiles with your front laser is pretty ballsy. Doing so in a vanilla Adder many more times so!

This is certainly good advice, but pretty hard to do if you're starting Broke Adder and don't want to wait around for a free wormhole out of Lave. The Long Slog #1 in fact cleared all the Lave asteroids without once encountering a pirate (but accidentally shot a rock hermit in Zaonce, oops!), giving the mistaken impression that "Hey this Broke Adder thing isn't so hard after all, just slow." But #'s 2 through #5 got wacked by pirates every time in the Lave asteroid fields, usually after taking out several of the pack first. Interesting that a couple times it seemed that a missile hit took me down only about 1/2 energy, and once all the way to just above zero (it looked like zero energy left) without actually killing me so I recovered from that. (Do missiles that explode nearby do only partial damage?).

[Cody]

I don't think I've ever shot a missile down with my aft laser.

Seriously ? You don't happen to mean your front laser ?

I meant exactly what I said.