Last night I finally made it off the bloody dark planet. I think it was depressing me in real life, so please excuse the laziness of the pizza box SV. I had an idea... and then just slapped blocks together until it would fly. I've wanted to see these moons since @ravien_ff first started teasing pictures, and dude, they are awesome.
... Oh boy. I think I missed a big change in Alpha 12 when I first tried out vanilla, since I spawned in my fleet. The only way to leave this rogue system is with a CV, correct? Sv warp drives can't do LY jumps? Is this correct or am I doing something stupid?
You are not doing something stupid. It is CV only for all solar system-to-solar system warping. SV's can only warp within a solar system.
That was my intention with my Pizza Box Sv, but alas, I didn't read the release notes and patch notes like I should have. Now that I know, gooooooooo JOE! Went to the rogue ice moon to start collecting supplies to start on a CV, and found one of the crashed drone carriers. That was an awesome experience. Short story long: I saw a zirax POI in the distance while exploring with my light tank, Scooby Dooby. Couldn't tell what it was from that distance, radar couldn't label it, but I could see 4 or 5 drones hovering near it and it was BIG. I had a gut feeling that Scooby Dooby wouldn't be up for the task, but I hadn't used her for anything but blitz maneuvers on makeshit watchtowers. So I backed up my save, tried to get in range to find out what it was and pull the drones away from the POI. Gas tanks blew up in about two seconds, don't know exactly what hit them, but I'm guessing some kind of aoe damage because they were buried in the center of the tank. There was a lot of stuff shooting at me. Reloaded and went back to where I had buried my SV and miner, grabbed the miner, took it within 1k of the carrier, and tunneled all the way to that thing. Came out beneath it a bit, used the drone to build up some earthworks around my chosen point of entry, then preceded to hunt for the core. I should mention that I forgot to load food on to my sv fridge before this trip, so hunger was building. Started piecing together a nice meal as I killed zirax defenders, jetpacking my way past open areas of this heavily damaged carriers, taking fire from drones and cv guns here and there, barely avoiding death. Used my drone for scouting, which is rare for me, because as good as I am at cutting corners there were just too damn many corners and open spaces. Eventually I made it to what was looking like the command area, figured the core would likely be nearby. That's when I noticed my O2 was getting dangerously low. My miner had O2 in it, but no O2.... thingy to refill my suit, and the 4 emergency bottles I had on me weren't going to last long. I started blasting doors near the bridge, hoping to find the core quick, so that I could refill with the POI's O2.... thingy. Interrupted my miner's rock to ore conversion to build a core, moved to the last room before the bridge.... and a zirax commander started minigunning me through the wall. Backed off, popped out my drone to figure out where he was wallhacking me from, and saw the core. Out came the plasma cannon I had been lucky enough to find, boom went the core. The commander and a couple of his buddies rushed me after that, took them out, and with 9 oxygen left and about 100 health I put down my core and went to the O2.... thingy. I seriously can't remember what it's called. "Turn on power to use this device"; y, y, ....Y! WHY!? 20000000 cpu, efficiency 0%, no O2 for me. Rushed back into my tunnel, hopped into my defenseless miner, drove back through the tunnel because the area was still hot with drones and troops, and traveled 5k or so back to my sv and tank. Only to find that a cannon drone was hovering over the cave where I'd parked them, so I had to tunnel into that cave too. Finally made it back to my tank, which did have an O2.... thingy. Loaded up the Sv, flew back to the carrier, cleared the drones and troops with my tank, and I'm now ripping everything apart to build a CV. Long story short: This is my favorite Project Eden start yet. There's a nice feeling of progression going from dying seemingly every 5 minutes(I'm at 20+ deaths now for sure, haven't checked recently) to having the tools to get the job done, even if it takes forever and complete failure is only one step away.
I'm searching for Gold currently and no planets in the starting system appear to have Gold Deposits. So, I made my way to an Arid planet and found a huge Oasis biome surrounding a lake. I've set up camp there and am exploring looking for Gold rocks in this biome - a standard tactic in vanilla. However, I'm finding precisely ZERO gold rocks despite a lot of exploring. Does the Oasis biome not spawn Gold rocks in PE? Gold really is my limiting factor currently, as I cannot create the high-tier combat HV I want to. Scoob.
The standard arid planet is the same as the one in the normal game (except it uses SSOR ore deposits and is set to PVE). You'll probably have to explore other stars for some gold. If you completed the mission Make Contact with Terran Forces you'll have new info in the Empyriopedia in the PDA.
If it's the same as standard, bar SSOR deposits, shouldn't the distribution of ore-bearing surface rocks be the same? Oasis biomes on Arid planets have always been the go to location for gold. I have made contact with the Terran ship, but decided to explore a bit more of the starting solar system first before leaving. Scoob.
Hmm, wonder why I'm finding nothing then? I've visited several Oasis Biomes - indeed, they seem rather more common place on this Very Large Arid planet - yet not a trace of gold rocks. I used to do the Arid start quite often in vanilla, so I'm used to finding gold rocks in them, albeit the Oasis themselves weren't quite so common on those smaller worlds. Scoob.
Many prior vanilla games I've played have had Gold rocks in Oasis biomes on both Arid Starter planets and those I've visited after starting elsewhere. I've often sourced the Gold needed to craft my first EVA boost - if I don't find one beforehand - on these starts. I might be best hitting POI's then in the hope of finding Gold. In my prior PE start - Snow Dwarf - I ended up with LOTS of Gold from loot, but never progressed to needing it for CPU extensions. Scoob.
It looks like they removed the gold, at least from that specific biome on the arid planets. I just checked the default playfield files.
I seem to remember them being in the Oasis biomes in previous games with the Arid start, however there are no longer any gold rocks in any biome on Arid planets anymore. They aren't even in the playfield files at all anymore for any of the Arid planets. They are still in the Oasis biome in the Temperate starts though. I don't know if they were removed on purpose from Arid or if my memory is just failing. They are not there any longer though.
Thanks for checking @ravien_ff and @krazzykid2006 - I guess I just missed the change when I last played vanilla. Come to think of it, my last Arid start was likely early A12 on the Experimental branch. On another note. Remember I mentioned before that Turret on captured POI did not work for me? Well, I just captured an "Advanced Spaceport" POI with all Turret intact. While these Turret did start tracking the remaining Drones around the POI, they just did the "click click click" thing of no ammo. Yet these turret had not once fired since I discovered the POI. I tunnelled underneath in my Mining HV (I know, pure cheese) then used its Minigun Turret to make my own entrance from below. Due to pure luck, I was one block from the Core, so blew it before any internal Spawn Pads triggered. Nice. So, basically, I captured a fully intact POI and the Turrets didn't have any Ammo remaining in them at all. I'd hoped they'd at least have enough to take out the three Drones, but it looks like this POI spawned totally empty, ammo-wise. Scoob.
It's possible the way the turrets work is they need to "reload" before they get any ammo, so since they never tried to shoot you they never got ammo. I'm just guessing though.
Yeah as @ravien_ff said I'm pretty sure since the turrets never fired at you they never "loaded" their ammo in the first place, so none for you. I've had the same thing happen with multiple POI's recently. All turrets that fired at least once before I took the POI over had ammo in them, and turrets that never fired just went "click click click".
Worst CV i've built since my first hour with empyrion, but I'm finally away from that dastardly rogue system, And what an amazing difference it is. Sunlight! Hotdogs and water!
Question to the "Great Maker": Am I missing here something? Found nothing within the 24km Detection Radius after entering the Sector
This likely explains why POI's I capre NEVER have working Alien Turrets - I've been taking a more stealthy approach for the most part. Only since I got my shielded CV did I go in all guns blazing. Scoob.
