So here's the story, finally build my small vessel, head in to space, visit the distillery, get the mission to visit the pirate station for the formula.... Cool. On the way I detect a cobalt asteroid. Land and start mining. Got a good haul, I spot a red reading on my HUD radar. So I leg it to my ship and get ready for a hot take off. Expecting a drone or similar. I see part of it sink below the asteroid before I activate he scanner. Its a dreadnaught. Its at 650 Meters. I had to try and keep the asteroid between me and that big bad ship shredder. I lost lost thrusters and turrets that killed my top speed. I flipped 180 and used my reverse thrusters to make more ground. A quick space walk and re configure I was "flying" again. Touched down on the pirate station, where I dropped a plasma drone with my heavy epic sniper rifle. Only to hear thudding minutes latter. When the wireless signal dropped. I knew what was happening. Ship in pieces. Checked the detector another plasma drone. Is it my woeful reputation with the Zirax? my seed, or my simple noob-ness not being prepared enough? Or Just really bad luck. I have just set my eyes on visiting another planet
Sometimes it is necessary to keep a "low profile" if you want to solve missions. The Zirax Empire is the Major Faction in Space (Legacy can't be befriended) so if someone wants to do the Missions without loosing Ships and Stuff someone must keep the trigger-happiness (against Zirax) at ZERO until you have done those Missions. After that...they will need Buckets to catch the Lead!.
Space Drones appear if you approach any POI or Asteroid. They're called from everywhere in the playfield and will move to your location as fast as they can. They really shouldn't do that for anything but Asteroids and zirax POIs since there's no reason for them to be protecting pirate POIs or uncored wreckage.
Unfortunately it seems that your shiny new Zirax PVs tend to appear as well This combined with the horrible way the sensors now seem to work (requiring constant manual pinging to even have a hope of knowing something is near), then keeping a low profile doesnt really help if you have to go into space, which you do eventually. Often the first I know of the damn thing being anywhere near is when my starter SV suddenly explodes (despite alternating a few second of drilling with a sensor ping). I quite liked the new ping sensor when it came in, but right now I hate it. Much prefer the old system for general situational awareness. Also with have this awful 2d display - back in 1984 or whatever I had a MUCH better better situational awareness display on a certain game on my BBC B FFS!
Probably easiest to spend the first 10 levels from when your escape pods lands chopping trees and exterminating wildlife in zirax territory - that should leave you neutral. Exterminating talon is option, but IIRC polaris take a dim view of that Mass murdering lgc is probably the quickest on a swamp start.
I didn't do that totally overpowered mission until I had a T2 shieled CV. Space in my starter system was crowded with Zirax. There was actually a Zirax POI right next to the brewery. I had to systematically wipe the Zirax out before even attempting the quest line. The 1st time I did a flyby they swarmed me. There wasn't a dreadnaught in my game but I think there was a frigate? I wouldn't even consider messing witha dreanaught.
The starter orbit has the same Zirax patrol vessels as any other orbit. You can even get a dreadnaught depending on your seed. I think the starter orbit needs its own patrol vessel group (or just remove it).
Well, saw this coming from a mile away. Owing their uniquely containing story missions that require a lot of loitering, it might be a good idea to have a specific preset OPV along with the traditional POIs for starter planet orbits. Something with a less instantly devastating alpha strike would fit the bill. As far as simple mining, the tactic I've used pretty consistently is to draw the drones some five or so kilometers away from the asteroid, destroy them, and double back to the asteroid well around the OPV. Alternatively, smash those drones and grab as much ore as you can before backup arrives.
I find they just keep showing up - usually with a PV in tow eventually. I gave up and made an armored SV specifically for asteroid mining - you are still screwed if a PV with a load of rocket turrets shows up, but at least it can survive some plasma hits and fend off some drones with its turrets, but still takes alot of damage from them due to the poxy gatlings being massively outranged, so having to do extensive manual repairs get old very quickly. The trouble is a whole bunch of changes since A10 are all piling up together with no compensating changes having been made for the vanilla game player, especially those who play with cpu and limits on and no attempt to make the starting planet, orbit and the starting system more progressive in terms of what you encounter, resources available (which tend to be far too all or nothing) etc.
Yeah, progression out of the starter sector and system really could use another look. It's fine to ask players to build some armor and mine some cobalt on a moon, but neodymium and titanium require warping. You're going to be hand mining asteroids since other planets don't seem to spawn anymore in starter systems (hope your gold deposit wasn't bugged). Barring some very lucky salvaging on your starting planet, your first trip out is going to be in an unarmed tier one warp SV. The only defense you might have is some jet thrusters for boosting. You're very much at the bottom of the food chain starting out. If the wrong part gets shot, it's back to home base for you. There are SV drills, but they take top end minerals. You can fit minigun turrets, but these are barely effective when maneuvering evasively. You can fit fixed weapons, but trying to dogfight space drones while weighed down by a stack of ore is suicide. Plus you won't even have the CPU needed to most weapons until you have a tier two extender, which to build requires the very ore you're sticking your neck out in the system to find in the first place. There are loopholes, of course. Fancy flying and unguarded asteroids can get you and your payload home intact. Polaris always sells first and second tier minerals very cheaply at their orbital trade station. Sometimes you do find really nice stuff in wrecks. Broadly speaking, my advice is to GTFO from that system as soon as you can, preferably to an unclaimed one.
Both RG and my EE mod enable all drills on SVs - I have have several early game mining SVs, some warp capable. It reduces the risk a bit simply because you are already at your controls when zirax show up as well as requiring massively less time on site. But you still get shot up and maybe more so as less likely you will make a good armored mining SV at T2 vs armored shuttle at T2 which doesnt need CPU for drills. Which needs at least a small warp capable CV and close to 1k or so neodynium. Maybe shave that a bit with a micro 6 thruster CV with a warp drive strapped to the outside that really just serves as an escape vehicle
Yeah, but that's RG, not vanilla. Saying a problem is fixed by using an overhaul mod is like saying a problem is fixed by playing a different game. If there are tuning problems in vanilla Empyrion, they need to be addressed in vanilla Empyrion. I recently did a large snow planet start that was pretty brutal. Resource deposits were few, far between, and very well guarded. Even so, I was able to get a CV together by knocking over a few low level Legacy "Unknown" POIs, mining resources in my starting sector, and warping out to find a single unguarded neodymium asteroid. If I hadn't found one, I would probably just bought what I needed from Polaris. I managed to pull this off because I'm resistant to grind fatigue, keep a cool head, and think sideways. I know how to watch for drones and wrangle OPVs. I don't know how well more conventional or inexperienced players would react to such challenges, though. Having a large angry warship in the way of your third mission is a problem. Question is, does it feel like an emergent challenge for a player to solve, or an untended behavior for the devs to solve?
Considering that it could be anything from a small corvette to an end game dreadnaught, I hope it's not intended for the early game missions.
I think way too much of this supposedly release state game is unintended/emergent or just plain accident for better or worse. They cram in features - some great, some awful and given the attention span of a goldfish and rushed out, consequences be damned. None at Eleon as far as I can tell is giving any thought to the overall game. Acceptable when they called it an early access alpha, but not for a a release game. Progression right now is something experienced players can get past, but its a mess that kind of worked at some time in the past, but additions here and there a have pretty much wrecked it and it desperately needs attention. Situations like this just highlight it.
I hate the dreadnoughts. There. I said it. Gotta get it out of my system. Those gorgeous and dangerous behemoths should appear only in the endgame and are too overpowered for my taste. You literally spend too much ammo just to bring their shields down (if you can). But I understand that it must be the ultimate challenge for the experience multiplayer team and that's great. But they should be eliminated from single player or be less powerful in this mode. That being sad, there is an early mission where you need to attack a pirate mining facility. And you know that nobody likes pirates, right? So you just kill everyone, then mine their asteroid and your reputation among every other faction will raise, including Zirax. That helped me a lot in the beginning.
Yes, this was happening to me too. Just at the beginning, at the starting system, and a Zirax Dreadnought was patrolling the space just between the trading base, some asteroids with valuable resources and the Space Club Inferno. To be honest, was a pain in the ass having to hide myself from this behemoth in my small starting SV (a broken SV that I found and repaired near my starting point in the planet). It was very annoying and unimmersive, I remember telling myself... how the game designer think that I will be able to overcome this?... And I though that I would be condemned to mine the asteroids falling to my planet for ever.
I have a new appreciation for dreadnoughts when a) they're not ganging up on you on the same sector and b) definitely not in the starter systems. I see them more often now than frigates and corvettes though.