i think my favourite part is also you can do combat the way you like the game world campaign, like i seen youtubers playing as they mainrole as the flagship and others that prefer being frigate pilots while doing major dmg to the enemy, i also seen some prefering to play as phase ships and doing hit and run tactics and others that like play as carrier commander, our be like this guy and put all your points to be a admiral and focus on strategy of the overall battle rather than being a pilot, there so many ways you can do combat and its truelly amezing

I'm really sorry about the whiskey, that is a tough hit. On the bright side you are about to enter a time warp and soon it with be time for the next budget.

I literally bought the game because of FJ and I just mess about in game waiting for new FJ video. Francis please start piloting. Even if you are just driving the missile boats around.

At least video games are better for your liver 🤣

Man I feel you. This game is so addictive.

To be fair, you could have saved your whiskey money because there are a couple places you can get a free key, and im not talking about piracy. Game developer is a cool dude that just wants ppl to play his game.

Newer player here! I am curious how you tuned the fleet, would you be able to share? Thanks! Game is amazing, there’s just SO MUCH to learn even without mods😂

Tried doing that in a sector recently and pulled in about 80k-100k over the course of the bounty without leaving the system. Nice little money maker for early on.

@@FrancisJohnYT it can be even better if you use friendly fleets as meat shields, I crawled out of a hole created by starting my colonies with 1 mil that way

Thank you!

Added to description thanks for the chapters.

@@FrancisJohnYT yw. it's pretty easy to do it while i watch one for the first time...the difficult part is focusing enough to remember to do it. lol

just remember, wolf is called wolf for a reason, it works best in packs

@@siluda9255 Once I get my first good ship building colony with a nanoforge, I spam wolfs. Not many things can handle a woldpack. I also play with a mod that allows for larger fleets dependind on DP size. "Fleet Size by DP"

Flux is heat, is really all you need to know. Then it's just a matter of figuring out what generates heat and what doesn't (which is fairly intuitive).

I am kind of surprised their are not more fleet guides out there. All the ones I could find were single ship designs or how to pilot a ship to take on huge fleets. Could not find any general all purpose fleets.

I hear ya, those 14th battlecarriers can mount two large missile launchers, I'm looking forward to putting them in the field once I figure out how to do fighters right.

@@FrancisJohnYT I look forward to that toutorial.

Figured I had to try it: The previous Dominator tip works really nice for Eradicator (P) aswell, so the ammount of them on the market is actually a bit useful 🤣 Switching my piloted ship to an Eradi (P) instead of Dom from here on 😁

It's a gem I never knew existed and I can't get enough...getting my Gazillionaire fix :D

> because the devs don't want to put an unfinished product there. If other companies followed that principle, there would be about 7 games on Steam. The great thing about Starsector is how you keep discovering you can do more things, that in other games would just be background systems (or pure RNG). Wait, I can change the loadout of my ships? Wait, I can colonise planets? Wait, I can build factories on my planets and manufacture my own ships and ammo? Wait, my planets can have defence fleets? Wait, my planets can have orbital fortresses? Wait, I can take over my grandfather's farm, fight ghosts in mines and marry one of the villagers? Okay, that last one is actually from Stardew Valley. For now.

I love that their is an actual market in game. Their are only about 7 planets that make fuel and the big boy is the Sindrian Diktat, if you start making your own fuel and raid the Sindrian Diktat production facility you can cripple supply and get more market share. Of course if you start making fuel they might send a little fleet your way to mess with the new player on the market. It's little things like that, that suck you into the game.

@@FrancisJohnYT Nachiketa is probably the best planet for bulk cheap fuel.

The Astral (50DP/6 Hangers) can be mighty in player hands with a loadout of Daggers, but it's wasted DP in AI hands IMO, since the AI is pretty meh at properly using its special. For AI carriers, bring Herons instead (16DP/3 Hangers). 3 Herons bring 9 Hangers for 2DP less than 1 Astral.

Vortexs I find are great in ai hands and enmasse. Fill me with fighters and their ability is pretty damn crazy

There's a pretty comprehensive wiki. And googling "starsector fits" will turn up several guides and forum posts (older ones might be slightly outdated, since ships / weapons get rebalanced now and then).

I still don't think I know enough to do that yet, I have read the wiki and gone over the weapons, hulls and consumed every guide I can find. Knowing stats does not equal knowing what to build, even the best guide I found does not really cover things the way I would like. There is a difference between building a good ship and building a good fleet. I need a bunch more experience before I can make a good general fleet building guide. docs.google.com/document/d/1d3Xvnw9-rcedZpP7e7lChHSvMUnTyDL7o08dlVPTvuE/edit#

@@FrancisJohnYT Thank you. Regardless, keep up the vids. Really nice to see some Starsector.

It was not my best idea, I took them out in later versions as they are better off being able to angle their shields.

Absolutely! And it's a PD beast, with the built-in flak cannons. I use Monitors to basically soak and distract excess enemies, even [REDACTED] and [EXTREMELY REDACTED]. I found the latter to be nothing but frustration until I used a couple Monitors, and suddenly, easy sailing.

I have seen their annoying damage soaking first hand, I'm thinking they are way to good at it. Seeing a frigate soak all the fire power of a capital ship and then run of to vent is a bit crazy.

@@FrancisJohnYT Yea I think they're probably unbalanced. It is highly amusing though.

@@FrancisJohnYT Also, I don't know if you've discovered this yet, but when you go through stormy nebulas in hyperspace, if you hold S and go slow, you don't take any damage.

Hurricane is not great for pressure, but for finishing it's AMAZING, and they already have another missile pod for pressure (they don't need tons of missiles for pressure, just a constant stream to stop active venting and keep shields engaged). I will give you that Locusts are great for shredding enemy fighters, though.

What I like about the Squall MLRS is the length of the volley, it tend to prevent venting. Throw in the Hurricane on top of that and it's nasty. I used to run twin Squall MLRS but it lacked finishing. My issue with the Locust is that it's fragmentation damage, so for shields and armour you have to reduce it's damage to 25%!! That puts it's DPS below the Squall for shield damage. Never mind armour. A smart enemy could just drop shields and let it bounce off the armour, well the bigger ships anyway and a few of the heavy cruisers.

@@FrancisJohnYT That said, fragmentation tears apart hull, so once the armor is down, it will shred. I've actually used flak cannons in that manner.

People tend to be dismissive of Locusts until they are on the receiving end while the armor is breached and in danger of overloading. Not as effective vs capitals but it really helps in downing smaller ships as fast as possible to avoid them being encircled.

If officers are involved in combat they gain experience. So put them in ships and take them into fights. Do be aware that all exp is shared equally even if the officer is maxed, so maxed out officers will soak/waste exp that could go to still levelling officers.

I though battle cruisers were big guns and light armour for speed. Basically a heavy cruiser with the armour removed to make it faster. They can run down and kill most things smaller but can outrun things the same size or bigger. A Battle cruiser vs a Heavy cruiser the heavy would win due to better armour was my understanding.

Pirate first THEN drink!

Just play it. its already more and better than most AAA titles.

When I play a game I tend to get a little obsessed, I have gone through the wiki way to many times. Watched god knows how many videos and read several hundreds of pages of forums. But nothing beats just lots and lots of testing.

Built in hull mods were introduced in the next update I believe. The game has had a bunch of additions since this was released. I think the fleet still works but I might have to go back and test it.

Being friendly with pirates is great to have, since they are a lot easier to make bank with, and will leave you be while they wreak havoc in a pirate raid, and just raid Chicomoztoc in the ensuing aftermath of several armadas taking on a star fortress.

@@Aereto you're going to hegemony jail for this comment

I don't think Francis has much experience piloting ships manually. A lot of these fights where he just grinds the enemies down slowly from range could be finished in a matter of seconds even by a (manually piloted) Hammerhead, let alone a Doom.

I only did a little piloting, I figured learning to pilot the lower level ships while fun would eventually be a wasted skill. So hold out until we got to the bit boys, but now I find the pilot skills are really important. I'm going to have to pick something pilot I think.

@@FrancisJohnYT - Get good with a Hammerhead (in actual fights, not 1-vs-1 in the simulator, that's kind of useless) and you'll have mastered ship combat. It's not what you'll be piloting in the endgame (that will most likely be a Doom), but it's the ideal "learning" ship. Then there's station assaults (where you might want to switch to a dreadnought for the final push), but that's comparatively easier (i.e., it's just smart tactics, there isn't much piloting skill required)..

Nice, keep that map seed number. Always nice to have a know good map seed.

The Pegasus was introduced after this video was released and it looks like a beast of a ship. All those missiles make it a beast of a ship and a great addition. However I would advise against the Dominator it's more of a get in close and brawl ship, it uses it's burn drive to get in close and unload masses of damage. It also tends to rely on it's armour so it can use it's flux to output more damage. Don't get me wrong it's a good ship but it's not designed for the long distance combat of dipping in and out it's got less than half the speed of the Eradicator. But then again maybe with the right weapons you can make it work so don't put to much faith in what anyone tells you unless you have tested it yourself. I mean if you could squeeze on a couple of Mjolnir Cannons it's would be pretty beastly at hurting everything though you are going to want to invest heavily in vents to afford the flux costs.

Naked ranged vs naked brawler and the brawler won, the second part was demonstrating the value of a dedicated captain configured for the ship. I don't know about you but first time I started playing I just kept whatever captains I found and did not custom build any. When building a ship be aware of what you are trying to do and build a captain to match.

I check every shop I stop at, you are only on the look out for three weapon type and I found railguns were the hardest to source reliable.

he said he tried it out but it didn't work out in the comments last episode

@@tetrikitty1686 Ahh, thx. Didn´t see that comment.

I ripped it out later so it would angle the shield better and used "Stabilized Shields" instead. Edit* only had a couple of weeks with the game so there are still some basic mistakes I'm making, but I figure it's a pretty decent guide all things considered.

The only places that sell them are the luddic church and the independents, the independents military planet is in luddic church space "Eos Exodus".

@@FrancisJohnYT I've found out that there was an update for the game some time ago. Earlier the only variants I could find were LC (ammo feeder but no 4 facing small ballistic mounts). Now after I updated the game I've found 3 in one system xD thanks for the reply though. Your fit is really amazing

Depends on the station but the eradicator fleet with Conquests can take all the stations I have went up against. Just form a line at max weapon range from the station and pound away. The station will focus one ship, that ship will pull back out of range to regen flux so the station will switch targets. This will repeat until the station has been pounded to ash. If the enemy has defenders it's best to lure them away first, taking a station with more than a few defenders is difficult.

starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Eradicator?so=search

I don't think it's worth commanding a ship unless you have practice piloting ships, even with no skills you can do good work with some of the ships. But if you are not a great pilot either practice for fun or leave it to the AI if you prefer. So long as you are not hostile you can buy from the Luddic Church, also the independents military planet sells them it just so happens to also be in Luddic Church space.

I found that the conquest is not really a ship of the line, it's shields take extra damage, and it's armour is weak sauce. It's best in a position it can dish out damage without taking return fire or in crushing cruisers or smaller. It just did not have the movement to do that well. But put some eradicators out front to soak damage for it and it can slug away as long as the eradicators do.

@@FrancisJohnYT thanks for the advice 👍 yeah I will definitely give the eradicators a go, I've been looking for cruiser that could soak up damage and stay alive, your right the conquest cant handle brawling close up and once it shields are gone if it cant retreat, its practically dead, seems to do better at longer ranges where it wont get bullied as much 😊

Grind up money to fund your capital ships, to afford ships that allow you to finish end game enemies form some of the quest lines, farm AI cores for boosting your colonies. Maybe you want to build up a few planets? I find Starsector is a bit like Minecraft, ONI, Rimworld, Kenshi, Factorio and Satisfactory the destination is not the point. It's the dumb ideas you decide to try along the way for fun that really matter.

Yeah... messed up a little there.

Can't be doing that, I might start getting addicted to getting paid :)

Use story points sparingly, but try to use them on things that either a) give you 100% xp return (so you'll earn enough extra xp to equal the story point you spent) or b) are permanent upgrades that you never want to remove, such as with captains or your own skills, colony upgrades (which get VERY expensive very quickly, but can massively upgrade various aspects of colonies; best to use them either to fix a massive deficiency or to increase a perfect world to beyond perfection), or your absolute final fleet ship built-ins, which can free up an amazing amount of OP (and if you always make sure they have Integrated Bulkheads mod, they are always recoverable).

The only points I would 100% spend is on mentoring you captains and using them to occasionally get out of fights you know you can't win. If you spend them on ships they are actually recoverable in a way, because if the ship is lost or scrapped you get an exp bonus out of it. Though remember it's a "bonus" so while you will eventually get all the exp back you will first have to earn an equal amount of exp, usually killing things. I still have over a million exp bonus I'm still trying to earn back, at one point I was owed over 4 million in bonus exp. Outside of that I'm still holding off on spending them until I'm a bit deeper into the game and know where I need the help the most.

I'm not sure what part you mean can you provide a time stamp? If it's the green lines on the combat map screen that is just regular orders. As in select the ships and then right click on a location.

@@FrancisJohnYT Sorry around 15:45

@@anthonyreyes2554 That is a right click move command. It should be set to right click by default.

Not sure of the number but I can hold 4k fuel and go from the centre of the map to the edge and back again on one tank of fuel.

Every update Nexelerin gets this game gets closer to the 4X game I've wanted to play my entire life.

And when both the base and Nexelerin hit 1.0, the Java Runtime Engine is going to be pushed to its limits.

Are you doing RTS-style, like Francis, or flying your own flagship?

I'm going to have to figure out how to hunt the remnant myself first. I tried using a full star fortress and luring them in.... it did not go well.

Basically, there's a lot of ways to do it, depending on how you play. I can give a couple examples for flying your own flagship. My RTS game is unfortunately rather weak in Starsector. My personal strategy: get a Doom (35DP) and learn to fly it. That's not a knock on you - it will be a learning curve! The phase mines are the key tool, here, as you can use them to wipe out entire fighter wings at a time. They're also useful for picking off frigates, and for getting Radiants to drop their shields or move them away from where the rest of your ships are shooting from. You'll want an Antimatter Blaster/Missile (a lot of people swear by Typhoon Reapers; personally, the greater ammo capacity and synergy with other ships of the Sabot Pods makes them my own choice) loadout with Heavy Armor, Expanded Magazines, Expanded Missile Racks, and the Phase Anchor. Flux capacitors are more important than vents with this build, due to how Phase Anchor works. Built-in hullmods are a must, focusing on the highest OP costs; Phase Anchor cannot be built-in and needs 30 OP. The rest of your fleet needs a mix of durability and punch. I like a pair of Monitors (6DP each) with Hardened Shields, Front Conversion, Solar Shielding, and every scrap of flux dissipation I can find. I also give them officers with defensive skills; the shield skill must be elite. They're set to harass Radiants or, if there are none, Brilliants. A pair of Herons (16DP each) kept to the rear with Broadswords or Sparks help mitigate the fighter swarm. For the actual killing, I've been using Conquests and Onslaught (XIV)s. A single Conquest with Integrated Targeting Unit and Ballistic Rangefinder provides a lot of dakka when fully loaded, and can sit back while doing it. A Mjolnir and Mark IX per side in the long range slots, with a mix of longer-range ballistics in the small and medium slots. The Onslaughts use Hellbore Cannons in the large slots, Thumpers in the mediums, and Light Needlers in the smalls. Medium slots not pointed forwards get Dual Flaks for massive PD. Missiles are Breach Pods. Heavy Armor, ITU, and BR are must-haves again. If you use built-in mods, you can easily max out vents, get 30+ caps, and still fit Hardened Shields and a couple other mods. Yes, I'm fighting [REDACTED] fleets with a couple frigates (12DP), a couple cruiser-size carriers (32DP), a Doom (35DP), and 3-4 capitals (40DP each). I give minimal orders, typically setting the carriers to escort the Conquest and Monitors to the Onslaughts. Ships are rarely disabled, and since I can put an officer on each, disabled ships are generally straight recoveries with no issues.

Example two, fly a Paragon with a boatload of long-range cruisers and a couple Monitors. The Paragon is there to tank stuff and occasionally snipe something that your other ships have overloaded. Advanced Optics and a bunch of Tachyon Lances work wonders for that.

Have not done the missions yet, going to have to activate the gates at some point.

Officers don't contribute to DP! Both fleets share a common DP pool, configurable in the options (max battle size). Your fleet size ("composition", left on the fleet screen) is compared with the enemy and the larger fleet gets up to 60% DP. Holding objectives during battle will give you a slight DP boost. "Support Doctrine" will lower DP costs for ships without officers.

That's certainly a better analogy than saying "it's your health", "it's your shields" and "it's your ammo" (when it's none of those). :-P

Pretty much, spam them like crazy and everything dies.

@@FrancisJohnYT yeah, i just started playing like, rn and as watching a few videos to have an ideia what to do

Ouch... this game really needs an auto save system.

Mobe quick? Mob quick maybe? Generally your ships mob the enemy when they are winning the Flux war, as in they do so much damage to the enemy they can't keep their shields up and try to retreat. If you do it to most of the enemies they can squashed up in a ball and destroyed.

My bad 4 bad grammar I ment to say move

@@damemer2415 oh could be two things, I installed a time speed up mod for fights and the smaller brawlers have system overides in installed.

Eradicators are pretty fuel efficient, additionally we bring along a couple of salvage rigs. Also helps if you do multiple bounties in an area, bring along 100 transplutonics and build comm relays in all the systems you stop in to find any new bounties that have shown up. Also maybe do the Galatea academy mission line, it requires you to get 50 relations with the contact there.

It's available from the Luddic Church, also the independents stock it quite frequently at their military planet Baetis in the Luddic church systems.

@@FrancisJohnYT been trying to find it but can't get it

The P Falcon looks crazy good, well in a players hands. I would be interested in doing some testing with it.