[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Falcrack]

Jump beacons deploy the same way as Advanced Satellites. Shove em out the airlock. They are expensive though, 11m credits but it makes your logistics network work ssooo good.

The perk for quantum jumpgate extension is a "must have" for any sector in which you plan to produce ships.

I tend to collect a lot of random freighters early on. Then, to make them work 1000% better, I produce a few Rangers (cheapest ship I know) which will be made with the quantum jumpgate extension. I have them give all the software they can to my collected freighters, then recycle the Rangers. Much cheaper than the cost in crystals to upgrade the freighters with quantum jumpgate extension.

[WuDeN]

Jump beacons deploy the same way as Advanced Satellites. Shove em out the airlock. They are expensive though, 11m credits but it makes your logistics network work ssooo good.

The perk for quantum jumpgate extension is a "must have" for any sector in which you plan to produce ships.

I tend to collect a lot of random freighters early on. Then, to make them work 1000% better, I produce a few Rangers (cheapest ship I know) which will be made with the quantum jumpgate extension. I have them give all the software they can to my collected freighters, then recycle the Rangers. Much cheaper than the cost in crystals to upgrade the freighters with quantum jumpgate extension.

I can still build the recycling facility if I don't have the perk yes ? I'd sac the extra engine tuning for that or the complex blueprint if not.

Moar tips plz ! You guys are good ! Already talking to you few this playthrough is totally different I'm actually accomplishing stuff.

What about price setting ? Do you leave everything at default or undercut nearby sectors ? If so by how much ? For exmple I think the default Ore price is say 128, so if I build an ore factory and sell at 120, will traders passing by buy it ?Anybody know what the deciding factors are if traders are going to stop at your stations ?

[Falcrack]

Jump beacons deploy the same way as Advanced Satellites. Shove em out the airlock. They are expensive though, 11m credits but it makes your logistics network work ssooo good.

The perk for quantum jumpgate extension is a "must have" for any sector in which you plan to produce ships.

I tend to collect a lot of random freighters early on. Then, to make them work 1000% better, I produce a few Rangers (cheapest ship I know) which will be made with the quantum jumpgate extension. I have them give all the software they can to my collected freighters, then recycle the Rangers. Much cheaper than the cost in crystals to upgrade the freighters with quantum jumpgate extension.

I can still build the recycling facility if I don't have the perk yes ? I'd sac the extra engine tuning for that or the complex blueprint if not.

Moar tips plz ! You guys are good ! Already talking to you few this playthrough is totally different I'm actually accomplishing stuff.

What about price setting ? Do you leave everything at default or undercut nearby sectors ? If so by how much ? For exmple I think the default Ore price is say 128, so if I build an ore factory and sell at 120, will traders passing by buy it ?Anybody know what the deciding factors are if traders are going to stop at your stations ?

I personally never want to rely on slow boat NPC traders to sell my stuff. My sanctuaries and factories are always closed to NPC. Instead, I have dock agents set to sell at NPC factories at the best price possible. They will hunt around for the highest price to sell goods, provided you have good satellite coverage to see the prices.

[Nefasi]

Jump beacons deploy the same way as Advanced Satellites. Shove em out the airlock. They are expensive though, 11m credits but it makes your logistics network work ssooo good.

The perk for quantum jumpgate extension is a "must have" for any sector in which you plan to produce ships.

I tend to collect a lot of random freighters early on. Then, to make them work 1000% better, I produce a few Rangers (cheapest ship I know) which will be made with the quantum jumpgate extension. I have them give all the software they can to my collected freighters, then recycle the Rangers. Much cheaper than the cost in crystals to upgrade the freighters with quantum jumpgate extension.

I can still build the recycling facility if I don't have the perk yes ? I'd sac the extra engine tuning for that or the complex blueprint if not.

Moar tips plz ! You guys are good ! Already talking to you few this playthrough is totally different I'm actually accomplishing stuff.

What about price setting ? Do you leave everything at default or undercut nearby sectors ? If so by how much ? For exmple I think the default Ore price is say 128, so if I build an ore factory and sell at 120, will traders passing by buy it ?Anybody know what the deciding factors are if traders are going to stop at your stations ?

I'd leave factories/sanctuaries separate from the universe economy. UT/NPC/ST traders not allowed to trade with em. If you want universe wares, you can set DockAgents at sanctuaries to "acquire" (I normally leave it at average price). Those factories are more for churning out your fleet ships than generating credits. Credits aren't as valuable as raw resources for ship building in my opinion. If you need credit income, you can cap ships and sell to shipyards or setup some UTs. Freighters arent expensive to build, and sending them to a Teladi Equipment dock for best buy best sell equipment is good practice (until you got enough credits to not care about buying red crystals or mining them yourself).

Recycling Facility is a perk. I'd recommend you put it on a sanctuary that has marine barracks and skilled marines perks. You can even put a tugging on it to strip the ships you capture as well. You can then recycle ships into raw resources to build ships you prefer. (I prefer having a fleet of Ventis rather than a random assortment of fighters, also MLCC prefers standardization). Ships you find in the wild also have problems in their ship equipment, like jumpdrives, or quantum jumpdrive extension, etc. Or missing weapons, shields, its annoying to "fix" their problems for the small reward of a single fighter.

If you do marines, you can send them at an abandoned TM (satellite monitoring can toggle between the abandoned class types to make finding one easier/quicker). Knock down the shields to less than 10% or less than 50% (if you researched the shields) and send them in squads of 8. You'll need to send multiple squads as the default equipment is crap and you have no "scrap" resource to get better equipment. For your first squad (8 marines) try to equip them with Gear Tier 0 or Tier 1, and then Tier 1 Weapons/Ammo. Then slowly upgrade them to Gear Tier 2, and Weapons/Ammo Tier 2. Then recruit another 8 marines and give them the old squads stuff. If you get the research upgrade fast action (makes your marines SPEED through ships) you'll mostly be able to cycle 3 squads of 8. Gives you 24 marines. Gear them up to Tier 3 Armor and Tier 2 Weapons/Ammo before attempting M1/M2/M7 captures. Those are very difficult, and you will want the research upgrade Fast Action (my marines took 3.5 hours to capture the M2 Boreas with fighting 100). Each "capture" will grant 10 skillpoints. So leveling up fighting skill shouldn't take too long. If marines do die, or squad wipe, send more. You can pickup the gear your marines died with and floors cleared out will remain cleared. Marines recruited with the perk Skilled Marines will have sufficient hacking/engineering/mechanical when capturing M6/TM/TL to not require skill points invested in them. So invest fighting first.

Gear (protection for your marines) is simple. Tier 0 and Tier 1 is interchangeable, I'd advise starting at Tier 1 though.
Name - Protection - Resistance - Weight
Tier 0 : 1 - 1 - 1
Tier 1 : 2 - 2 - 1
Tier 2 : 3 - 5 - 1
Tier 3 : 6 - 10 - 1

Weapon and Ammo. Weapons should have maxed stats for the 3 different calibers. Not much thinking to do there. Weapon Caliber and Ammo Calibers have to match, so caliber 1 weapons with caliber 1 ammo, etc.
You want to "pierce" the enemy armor to do your "stopping power" damage. Otherwise you deal very low stopping power. Enemies have 5hp AFAIK and after a kill the marine will stop and reload, ideally you want a marine to kill a full health enemy by themselves.
Tier 1 : Caliber 1 - Mass 10 - Penetration 0 (mostly you dealing 3 shots 1 damage each, highly unlikely you will penetrate enemy armor)
Tier 2 : Caliber 2 - Mass 10 - Penetration 1 (mostly you deal 2 shots at 3 damage each, highly likely you penetrate armor, and end up with a kill each time a marine lights an enemy up).

Rifts will use Caliber 3 weapons, no idea yet the best weapons for that.

[WuDeN]

The perk for quantum jumpgate extension is a "must have" for any sector in which you plan to produce ships.

I tend to collect a lot of random freighters early on. Then, to make them work 1000% better, I produce a few Rangers (cheapest ship I know) which will be made with the quantum jumpgate extension. I have them give all the software they can to my collected freighters, then recycle the Rangers. Much cheaper than the cost in crystals to upgrade the freighters with quantum jumpgate extension.

I can still build the recycling facility if I don't have the perk yes ? I'd sac the extra engine tuning for that or the complex blueprint if not.

Moar tips plz ! You guys are good ! Already talking to you few this playthrough is totally different I'm actually accomplishing stuff.

What about price setting ? Do you leave everything at default or undercut nearby sectors ? If so by how much ? For exmple I think the default Ore price is say 128, so if I build an ore factory and sell at 120, will traders passing by buy it ?Anybody know what the deciding factors are if traders are going to stop at your stations ?

I'd leave factories/sanctuaries separate from the universe economy. UT/NPC/ST traders not allowed to trade with em. If you want universe wares, you can set DockAgents at sanctuaries to "acquire" (I normally leave it at average price). Those factories are more for churning out your fleet ships than generating credits. Credits aren't as valuable as raw resources for ship building in my opinion. If you need credit income, you can cap ships and sell to shipyards or setup some UTs. Freighters arent expensive to build, and sending them to a Teladi Equipment dock for best buy best sell equipment is good practice (until you got enough credits to not care about buying red crystals or mining them yourself).

Recycling Facility is a perk. I'd recommend you put it on a sanctuary that has marine barracks and skilled marines perks. You can even put a tugging on it to strip the ships you capture as well. You can then recycle ships into raw resources to build ships you prefer. (I prefer having a fleet of Ventis rather than a random assortment of fighters, also MLCC prefers standardization). Ships you find in the wild also have problems in their ship equipment, like jumpdrives, or quantum jumpdrive extension, etc. Or missing weapons, shields, its annoying to "fix" their problems for the small reward of a single fighter.

If you do marines, you can send them at an abandoned TM (satellite monitoring can toggle between the abandoned class types to make finding one easier/quicker). Knock down the shields to less than 10% or less than 50% (if you researched the shields) and send them in squads of 8. You'll need to send multiple squads as the default equipment is crap and you have no "scrap" resource to get better equipment. For your first squad (8 marines) try to equip them with Gear Tier 0 or Tier 1, and then Tier 1 Weapons/Ammo. Then slowly upgrade them to Gear Tier 2, and Weapons/Ammo Tier 2. Then recruit another 8 marines and give them the old squads stuff. If you get the research upgrade fast action (makes your marines SPEED through ships) you'll mostly be able to cycle 3 squads of 8. Gives you 24 marines. Gear them up to Tier 3 Armor and Tier 2 Weapons/Ammo before attempting M1/M2/M7 captures. Those are very difficult, and you will want the research upgrade Fast Action (my marines took 3.5 hours to capture the M2 Boreas with fighting 100). Each "capture" will grant 10 skillpoints. So leveling up fighting skill shouldn't take too long. If marines do die, or squad wipe, send more. You can pickup the gear your marines died with and floors cleared out will remain cleared. Marines recruited with the perk Skilled Marines will have sufficient hacking/engineering/mechanical when capturing M6/TM/TL to not require skill points invested in them. So invest fighting first.

Gear (protection for your marines) is simple. Tier 0 and Tier 1 is interchangeable, I'd advise starting at Tier 1 though.
Name - Protection - Resistance - Weight
Tier 0 : 1 - 1 - 1
Tier 1 : 2 - 2 - 1
Tier 2 : 3 - 5 - 1
Tier 3 : 6 - 10 - 1

Weapon and Ammo. Weapons should have maxed stats for the 3 different calibers. Not much thinking to do there. Weapon Caliber and Ammo Calibers have to match, so caliber 1 weapons with caliber 1 ammo, etc.
You want to "pierce" the enemy armor to do your "stopping power" damage. Otherwise you deal very low stopping power. Enemies have 5hp AFAIK and after a kill the marine will stop and reload, ideally you want a marine to kill a full health enemy by themselves.
Tier 1 : Caliber 1 - Mass 10 - Penetration 0 (mostly you dealing 3 shots 1 damage each, highly unlikely you will penetrate enemy armor)
Tier 2 : Caliber 2 - Mass 10 - Penetration 1 (mostly you deal 2 shots at 3 damage each, highly likely you penetrate armor, and end up with a kill each time a marine lights an enemy up).

Rifts will use Caliber 3 weapons, no idea yet the best weapons for that.

Ok we'll deal with the marines in a minute because that's just a massive can of worms lol. I thought dock agents work in the sanctuary, when you set them to 'acquire' how do they purchase the materials ? Do they send your own freighters or something ? i'm going to re-read the dick agents part on the features page on litcube maybe i missed something.

[Falcrack]

I've never done anything with Marines in Mayhem, and only bothered with them in X3:TC for official storyline stuff. I would much rather make my own fleet than steal stuff. There's enough junk abandoned ships around the universe that I can simply hope to get lucky for a good M6. If I need a particular scan for a good M7, M2 or M1, I will hang around battle zones between two factions, and hope to find one ship in particular that I can tell is going down, and scan it before it gets destroyed, or claim a sector that has a ton of passing traffic and get the EMP and HADS perk. I hate being at war with major factions, so I wouldn't want to make any of them my enemy by stealing their ships. And Pirate/Yaki/Xenon ships are generally garbage in my opinion, so while I don't mind offending them, I wouldn't want their ships polluting my fleet anyways.

But, I am going to experiment with them in this playthrough, just for the heck of it.

[Nefasi]

Ok we'll deal with the marines in a minute because that's just a massive can of worms lol. I thought dock agents work in the sanctuary, when you set them to 'acquire' how do they purchase the materials ? Do they send your own freighters or something ? i'm going to re-read the dick agents part on the features page on litcube maybe i missed something.

Dock Agents working Sanctuaries are different from Litcubes. You can tell them Acquire or Distribute, and then select the ware, and the source, either from factories (local or from a specific sector), sanctuary, or trade (usually with NPC, but also any other places you have trade with DA set to "yes"). When trading, both buy and selling, they will use the station's credits. Check the logistics tab in the Sanctuary menu.

[Fureimuu]

Buying jump beacons off major factions is 2KK cheaper, you need rank 8 though. Militrary outposts sell those and they are almost always in stock.

[Pax Empyrean]

B) Once you get some credits in the bank, and some satellite range/exploration done, look at unclaimed sectors. You'll need to specialize the sanctuaries based on what the sanctuary has. My setup is thus.
1. Shipyard (sector needs to have max population in order to get the most bang from producing ships). Perks will be hangar, faster engine, quantum jumpdrive, increased specialization. Goner perk comes later (declare permanent war to get up to 2 additional perks (ATF/Terran only count as 1 perk increase)). Last perk will probably be insurance (if thats a thing). Just leave it blank unless you find a perk that increases ship production. If you do ascension and get a super sanctuary, you can throw on laser/shield and parallel production.
2. Outpost (low population sectors, the sanctuary won't produce anything, only claimed for factory support, research lab, and MLCC dock). Perks will be faster research. If the place has Marine Barracks (and skilled marines) then include recycle so you can turn ships you cap into juicy resources to build your actual fleet ships. Eventually you won't care about credits from selling ships and will want more resources for more ships. If you do complex ship components perk, then build only those things in there.
3. Equipment (sector needs okay population, max pop should be shipyard to build lasers/shields/missiles). Perks will obviously be laser/shield/missile/increased specialization/optimal parallel.
Should get you an idea.

Also, you only need one OTAS McCallam Dock for the MLCC M6 and TMs. Starliners can only support so many ships. Put these in your "outpost" sectors. Production sectors should use their dock slot for goner temple.

C) Ore/Silicon mines are torture for your dockagents. Lots of flying. Invest in jump beacons (black crystal) and deploy them near the mine for quick jumping to. Including in this point, setup your factories near a jump point. I've set them up from the gate, and then going 7km to sector center, and then offsetting it by another 7km left or right, and 7km up. Then I make a grid of each additional factory being 4km from the other. Also, your freighters work better when you are out of sector. ESPECIALLY when they are trying to dock in the sanctuary. Complex Hubs will put the "connected" factories up and below them, and the dock rings will generally face a certain direction, save/reload so you know which way they face to figure out where to build them at the jump point, and then build em in a line.

D) Dock Agents aren't that smart. Keep the limit per job low. You don't want 5 freighters going to the same Solar Plant to pick up E-Cells. Wastes time. Doing multiple jobs around the clock is far more efficient.

E) Universe Traders make LOTS of money. Setup a few and roll in the dough.

F) M3 fighters are the best way to fight above your paygrade. PACs are cheap, fighters are cheap. Good for early game when you don't have MLCC running yet. M6s I find to be decent tanks, or a good option to strafe the shields off a ship to teleport in the marines before calling the retreat.

G) Jumpdrives to avoid pirates are the best thing to do, or enemy forces. If they aren't attacking you, you can ignore them. Let them be someone else's problem.

H) If you do need to fight, numbers make a BIG difference. Splitting up the enemy firepower among multiple ships will drastically increase your fleet's chances of victory, and your personal survival. If you are by yourself against multiple ships, someone will get on your tail and have high uptime in shooting you.

It would have saved me a lot of time if I had read this before coming to most of these conclusions on my own the hard way. I'll throw in my own advice as well.

My Shipyard sanctuaries are the same: Hangar, Specialization, Quantum Jumpdrive, and Engine Tuning. I also put the two Marines perks on the same sanctuary as my Recycling perk, using my marines to regularly capture ships and send them back to be ground up and turned into new ships. Same approach for outpost sectors. If you've got an extra perk on a Sanctuary that isn't otherwise building things, consider just taking Missiles. They can still churn out Flails and Chaff all day. It's good money, if nothing else.

Regarding Dock Agents, I've had good success using multiple jobs for the same task, with scaling priority levels. So I'll have a set of one-ship priority one jobs, then another set of one-ship priority two jobs, and only after that will I have a few more jobs with higher limits to have the leftover Dock Agents doing whatever thing needs more logistical support at the moment. I'm experimenting with an even more layered setup; highest priority jobs get priority 1, 2, and 3 jobs with one ship each, less important jobs would get priority 2, 3, 4, and so on.

Another thing I've found to be really useful is to assign a Station Agent for each of my Solar Power Plants. In general, my experience with Station Agents is that they are ****** retarded and will wander all over the goddamn place looking for shit even if I set their range to zero, but SPPs don't require any inputs. They will just run Energy Cells directly to your other factories all day long, instead of taking them back to the sanctuary and then out to the other factories. Congestion is less of an issue when Energy Cells aren't clogging up the queue. I like using Caiman Tankers for this, since they are nice and fast (with excellent acceleration, which is probably as important as top speed for TS) and their cargo capacity matches up pretty well with the productive output of a single SPP cycle. They're on the cheap side at ~2.4 million as well, so you don't need to waste the resources on a TS+ or even a mid-tier TS like the Enhanced/Advanced/Prototype/Super Freighter variants. I'll also add that I love Nexus Super Freighters. They're fast, agile, carry nearly 12,000 cargo, and you can put a dozen Phased Repeater Guns on them in turrets spaced evenly around the ship. They're expensive for a mid-tier TS, but they make incredible universe traders and are the only TS in their price range that can reliably **** up an M3.

When using M3s, I always put decent weapons on them. The lowest I'll go are Energy Bolt Chainguns; great range for a fighter class weapon plus okay speed and bullet size, both of which are hugely important for dogfighting. PACs are garbage; not enough damage, basically nonexistent bullet size. The Phased Repeater Gun is an excellent option for taking on other fighters, having a good mix of damage output, bullet speed, and bullet size so you can land hits that actually matter. Pretty energy efficient as well. While the damage output isn't going to be as good as a Plasma Burst Generator or High Energy Plasma Thrower, they'll murder fighters without wasting a lot of shots like a PBG or HEPT would. Save those weapons for anti-corvette or anti-capital duty since they miss so many shots that their effective damage output against fighters is worse than what a Phased Repeater Gun will get you.

For M6s, Phased Shockwave Generators are reliable since their shots are very fast and have decent bullet size. One volley kills an M4 or cripples an M3, and there are M6s that can dogfight like an M3. The Dragon is a good example; it's got eight guns on the front, one gun in a turret, it turns as fast as an M3 and outruns the majority of them with a top speed of nearly 200 with Engine Tuning, so it fights like an M3 with 800MW of shields and significantly more firepower. If you swap in Ion Railguns, it makes for a great boarding vessel; find an M6, chase it down with your superior speed, strip the shields and send in the marines. Then jump back to base, grab another load of marines, remove a shield and re-equip it to recharge your shields, and go find another target. You can easily have three captures going simultaneously this way. When you capture a ship, warp back to your marine/recycling system and grab the marines off of the ship with freight exchange; no sense wasting time waiting for it to dock and unload the marines when you can just grab them and go right back into it.

For capital ships, I love Gauss Cannons, Cluster Flak Arrays, and Phased Laser Arrays. Cluster Flak is the best way to handle fighters thanks to massive 27 volume bullets fired at over 5 km/s and isn't that bad against capital ships (roughly 15% lower damage and 1 km less range than Phased Laser Arrays), Phased Laser Arrays do an okay job of popping fighters while being marginally better against capital ships and are the most powerful weapon available before energy/damage efficiency falls into the toilet at the high end, and Gauss Cannons have fast enough projectiles and rate of fire to be useful against anything within their impressive 9 km range. They don't have the big alpha capability of Photon Pulse Cannons or quite as much range, but they can reliably land hits from farther away than any other weapon. PPCs at 11 km can miss a maneuvering M7, and a maneuvering M6 even at short range. Gauss Cannons start popping corvettes all the way out to 9km.

[WuDeN]

I've never done anything with Marines in Mayhem, and only bothered with them in X3:TC for official storyline stuff. I would much rather make my own fleet than steal stuff. There's enough junk abandoned ships around the universe that I can simply hope to get lucky for a good M6. If I need a particular scan for a good M7, M2 or M1, I will hang around battle zones between two factions, and hope to find one ship in particular that I can tell is going down, and scan it before it gets destroyed, or claim a sector that has a ton of passing traffic and get the EMP and HADS perk. I hate being at war with major factions, so I wouldn't want to make any of them my enemy by stealing their ships. And Pirate/Yaki/Xenon ships are generally garbage in my opinion, so while I don't mind offending them, I wouldn't want their ships polluting my fleet anyways.

But, I am going to experiment with them in this playthrough, just for the heck of it.

Well I DID notice that some of these bigger ships have massive hulls but their shields tend to be easier to bring down. I think the marines might be more of a way to 'destroy' huge ships that you otherwise wouldn't be able to take the hull down on. I don't know enough yet though

[WuDeN]

Hi everyone !

Total noob I've poured like 30 hours into LU/mayhem so far and I'm just not getting anywhere. I've tried to find guides and stuff but I dunno something is lacking. Can I get some advice ?

I start on 'from scratch'. So I cap a freighter and start doing ore runs while I move around placing advanced satellites. Yeah I made about a million or so, found some abandonned ships and brought them back to my home sector. But it seems like the universe is overrun by pirates lol. In order to move around I need a proper escort fleet or something but about a million isn't near enough to do that. Station perks I'm not sure what to pick, I pick the 'doesn't consume food' cheaper stations, blueprints and higher spec levels.

Just feels like I'm not accomplishing anything though. It feels like people build fleets, complexes and stations much faster than this. I don't think I would even stand a chance in a dogfight at this point. Also how soon do I pursue my ascension ? Because usually the first objective is to declare war on 2 factions. Although you can wait like 5 hours before doing so, can you really handle it that early ? Plus you have like 24 hrs before the first OCV invasion, so how are you supposed to have a fleet ready for that I'm still mapping out the universe.

Also the xenon and pirates yikes, they're really going to town. Now don't get me wrong I absolutely love the difficulty, I find games like this really fun. Problem is I don't think I know what i'm doing no matter how many guides I've read. There's nothing really that sets you up right from the beginning guide-wise specficially for LU/Mayhem I find.

Sooo any advice would be appreciated thanks

My advice: (Completely irrelevant for intruder gamestarts, as the strategy to deal with no jumpdrives is different)

A) Early game capturing ships and selling the stuff on the ship is at shipyards yields quite a few credits. Most abandoned ships have wares onboard, easily racking up 1+ million credits. Find one, get some satellites and expand your range.

B) Once you get some credits in the bank, and some satellite range/exploration done, look at unclaimed sectors. You'll need to specialize the sanctuaries based on what the sanctuary has. My setup is thus.
1. Shipyard (sector needs to have max population in order to get the most bang from producing ships). Perks will be hangar, faster engine, quantum jumpdrive, increased specialization. Goner perk comes later (declare permanent war to get up to 2 additional perks (ATF/Terran only count as 1 perk increase)). Last perk will probably be insurance (if thats a thing). Just leave it blank unless you find a perk that increases ship production. If you do ascension and get a super sanctuary, you can throw on laser/shield and parallel production.
2. Outpost (low population sectors, the sanctuary won't produce anything, only claimed for factory support, research lab, and MLCC dock). Perks will be faster research. If the place has Marine Barracks (and skilled marines) then include recycle so you can turn ships you cap into juicy resources to build your actual fleet ships. Eventually you won't care about credits from selling ships and will want more resources for more ships. If you do complex ship components perk, then build only those things in there.
3. Equipment (sector needs okay population, max pop should be shipyard to build lasers/shields/missiles). Perks will obviously be laser/shield/missile/increased specialization/optimal parallel.
Should get you an idea.

Also, you only need one OTAS McCallam Dock for the MLCC M6 and TMs. Starliners can only support so many ships. Put these in your "outpost" sectors. Production sectors should use their dock slot for goner temple.

C) Ore/Silicon mines are torture for your dockagents. Lots of flying. Invest in jump beacons (black crystal) and deploy them near the mine for quick jumping to. Including in this point, setup your factories near a jump point. I've set them up from the gate, and then going 7km to sector center, and then offsetting it by another 7km left or right, and 7km up. Then I make a grid of each additional factory being 4km from the other. Also, your freighters work better when you are out of sector. ESPECIALLY when they are trying to dock in the sanctuary. Complex Hubs will put the "connected" factories up and below them, and the dock rings will generally face a certain direction, save/reload so you know which way they face to figure out where to build them at the jump point, and then build em in a line.

D) Dock Agents aren't that smart. Keep the limit per job low. You don't want 5 freighters going to the same Solar Plant to pick up E-Cells. Wastes time. Doing multiple jobs around the clock is far more efficient.

E) Universe Traders make LOTS of money. Setup a few and roll in the dough.

F) M3 fighters are the best way to fight above your paygrade. PACs are cheap, fighters are cheap. Good for early game when you don't have MLCC running yet. M6s I find to be decent tanks, or a good option to strafe the shields off a ship to teleport in the marines before calling the retreat.

G) Jumpdrives to avoid pirates are the best thing to do, or enemy forces. If they aren't attacking you, you can ignore them. Let them be someone else's problem.

H) If you do need to fight, numbers make a BIG difference. Splitting up the enemy firepower among multiple ships will drastically increase your fleet's chances of victory, and your personal survival. If you are by yourself against multiple ships, someone will get on your tail and have high uptime in shooting you.

B) Once you get some credits in the bank, and some satellite range/exploration done, look at unclaimed sectors. You'll need to specialize the sanctuaries based on what the sanctuary has. My setup is thus.
1. Shipyard (sector needs to have max population in order to get the most bang from producing ships). Perks will be hangar, faster engine, quantum jumpdrive, increased specialization. Goner perk comes later (declare permanent war to get up to 2 additional perks (ATF/Terran only count as 1 perk increase)). Last perk will probably be insurance (if thats a thing). Just leave it blank unless you find a perk that increases ship production. If you do ascension and get a super sanctuary, you can throw on laser/shield and parallel production.
2. Outpost (low population sectors, the sanctuary won't produce anything, only claimed for factory support, research lab, and MLCC dock). Perks will be faster research. If the place has Marine Barracks (and skilled marines) then include recycle so you can turn ships you cap into juicy resources to build your actual fleet ships. Eventually you won't care about credits from selling ships and will want more resources for more ships. If you do complex ship components perk, then build only those things in there.
3. Equipment (sector needs okay population, max pop should be shipyard to build lasers/shields/missiles). Perks will obviously be laser/shield/missile/increased specialization/optimal parallel.
Should get you an idea.

Also, you only need one OTAS McCallam Dock for the MLCC M6 and TMs. Starliners can only support so many ships. Put these in your "outpost" sectors. Production sectors should use their dock slot for goner temple.

C) Ore/Silicon mines are torture for your dockagents. Lots of flying. Invest in jump beacons (black crystal) and deploy them near the mine for quick jumping to. Including in this point, setup your factories near a jump point. I've set them up from the gate, and then going 7km to sector center, and then offsetting it by another 7km left or right, and 7km up. Then I make a grid of each additional factory being 4km from the other. Also, your freighters work better when you are out of sector. ESPECIALLY when they are trying to dock in the sanctuary. Complex Hubs will put the "connected" factories up and below them, and the dock rings will generally face a certain direction, save/reload so you know which way they face to figure out where to build them at the jump point, and then build em in a line.

D) Dock Agents aren't that smart. Keep the limit per job low. You don't want 5 freighters going to the same Solar Plant to pick up E-Cells. Wastes time. Doing multiple jobs around the clock is far more efficient.

E) Universe Traders make LOTS of money. Setup a few and roll in the dough.

F) M3 fighters are the best way to fight above your paygrade. PACs are cheap, fighters are cheap. Good for early game when you don't have MLCC running yet. M6s I find to be decent tanks, or a good option to strafe the shields off a ship to teleport in the marines before calling the retreat.

G) Jumpdrives to avoid pirates are the best thing to do, or enemy forces. If they aren't attacking you, you can ignore them. Let them be someone else's problem.

H) If you do need to fight, numbers make a BIG difference. Splitting up the enemy firepower among multiple ships will drastically increase your fleet's chances of victory, and your personal survival. If you are by yourself against multiple ships, someone will get on your tail and have high uptime in shooting you.

It would have saved me a lot of time if I had read this before coming to most of these conclusions on my own the hard way. I'll throw in my own advice as well.

My Shipyard sanctuaries are the same: Hangar, Specialization, Quantum Jumpdrive, and Engine Tuning. I also put the two Marines perks on the same sanctuary as my Recycling perk, using my marines to regularly capture ships and send them back to be ground up and turned into new ships. Same approach for outpost sectors. If you've got an extra perk on a Sanctuary that isn't otherwise building things, consider just taking Missiles. They can still churn out Flails and Chaff all day. It's good money, if nothing else.

Regarding Dock Agents, I've had good success using multiple jobs for the same task, with scaling priority levels. So I'll have a set of one-ship priority one jobs, then another set of one-ship priority two jobs, and only after that will I have a few more jobs with higher limits to have the leftover Dock Agents doing whatever thing needs more logistical support at the moment. I'm experimenting with an even more layered setup; highest priority jobs get priority 1, 2, and 3 jobs with one ship each, less important jobs would get priority 2, 3, 4, and so on.

Another thing I've found to be really useful is to assign a Station Agent for each of my Solar Power Plants. In general, my experience with Station Agents is that they are ****** retarded and will wander all over the goddamn place looking for shit even if I set their range to zero, but SPPs don't require any inputs. They will just run Energy Cells directly to your other factories all day long, instead of taking them back to the sanctuary and then out to the other factories. Congestion is less of an issue when Energy Cells aren't clogging up the queue. I like using Caiman Tankers for this, since they are nice and fast (with excellent acceleration, which is probably as important as top speed for TS) and their cargo capacity matches up pretty well with the productive output of a single SPP cycle. They're on the cheap side at ~2.4 million as well, so you don't need to waste the resources on a TS+ or even a mid-tier TS like the Enhanced/Advanced/Prototype/Super Freighter variants. I'll also add that I love Nexus Super Freighters. They're fast, agile, carry nearly 12,000 cargo, and you can put a dozen Phased Repeater Guns on them in turrets spaced evenly around the ship. They're expensive for a mid-tier TS, but they make incredible universe traders and are the only TS in their price range that can reliably **** up an M3.

When using M3s, I always put decent weapons on them. The lowest I'll go are Energy Bolt Chainguns; great range for a fighter class weapon plus okay speed and bullet size, both of which are hugely important for dogfighting. PACs are garbage; not enough damage, basically nonexistent bullet size. The Phased Repeater Gun is an excellent option for taking on other fighters, having a good mix of damage output, bullet speed, and bullet size so you can land hits that actually matter. Pretty energy efficient as well. While the damage output isn't going to be as good as a Plasma Burst Generator or High Energy Plasma Thrower, they'll murder fighters without wasting a lot of shots like a PBG or HEPT would. Save those weapons for anti-corvette or anti-capital duty since they miss so many shots that their effective damage output against fighters is worse than what a Phased Repeater Gun will get you.

For M6s, Phased Shockwave Generators are reliable since their shots are very fast and have decent bullet size. One volley kills an M4 or cripples an M3, and there are M6s that can dogfight like an M3. The Dragon is a good example; it's got eight guns on the front, one gun in a turret, it turns as fast as an M3 and outruns the majority of them with a top speed of nearly 200 with Engine Tuning, so it fights like an M3 with 800MW of shields and significantly more firepower. If you swap in Ion Railguns, it makes for a great boarding vessel; find an M6, chase it down with your superior speed, strip the shields and send in the marines. Then jump back to base, grab another load of marines, remove a shield and re-equip it to recharge your shields, and go find another target. You can easily have three captures going simultaneously this way. When you capture a ship, warp back to your marine/recycling system and grab the marines off of the ship with freight exchange; no sense wasting time waiting for it to dock and unload the marines when you can just grab them and go right back into it.

For capital ships, I love Gauss Cannons, Cluster Flak Arrays, and Phased Laser Arrays. Cluster Flak is the best way to handle fighters thanks to massive 27 volume bullets fired at over 5 km/s and isn't that bad against capital ships (roughly 15% lower damage and 1 km less range than Phased Laser Arrays), Phased Laser Arrays do an okay job of popping fighters while being marginally better against capital ships and are the most powerful weapon available before energy/damage efficiency falls into the toilet at the high end, and Gauss Cannons have fast enough projectiles and rate of fire to be useful against anything within their impressive 9 km range. They don't have the big alpha capability of Photon Pulse Cannons or quite as much range, but they can reliably land hits from farther away than any other weapon. PPCs at 11 km can miss a maneuvering M7, and a maneuvering M6 even at short range. Gauss Cannons start popping corvettes all the way out to 9km.

This is really good thank you ! I had a feeling to equip HEPTs on my Eurus but I'm afraid of the energy consumption. How do you know how many 'units of energy' your ship would have ?

As for the rest of the post that stuff is around the corner for me I'll see how it turns out.

[lighters]

This is really good thank you ! I had a feeling to equip HEPTs on my Eurus but I'm afraid of the energy consumption. How do you know how many 'units of energy' your ship would have ?

As for the rest of the post that stuff is around the corner for me I'll see how it turns out.

Here you can find the ship and weapon stats for LU: http://blubb.najut.org/x3/
Mayhem changes some weapon stats, but not ship stats I think.

Look at the Weapon Energy Total for a ship - this is the starting amount. Weapon energy recharge rate - this is how much gets regenerated per second. At the weapons page look at Energy consumption - this is how much one weapon spends per second when firing.

[Fureimuu]

Just boarded Argon One after over an hour of playing with the Argon armada. Worth it.

[Nefasi]

...
Regarding Dock Agents, I've had good success using multiple jobs for the same task, with scaling priority levels. So I'll have a set of one-ship priority one jobs, then another set of one-ship priority two jobs, and only after that will I have a few more jobs with higher limits to have the leftover Dock Agents doing whatever thing needs more logistical support at the moment. I'm experimenting with an even more layered setup; highest priority jobs get priority 1, 2, and 3 jobs with one ship each, less important jobs would get priority 2, 3, 4, and so on.

Another thing I've found to be really useful is to assign a Station Agent for each of my Solar Power Plants. ... They will just run Energy Cells directly to your other factories all day long, instead of taking them back to the sanctuary and then out to the other factories. ... I'll also add that I love Nexus Super Freighters. They're fast, agile, carry nearly 12,000 cargo, and you can put a dozen Phased Repeater Guns on them in turrets spaced evenly around the ship. They're expensive for a mid-tier TS, but they make incredible universe traders and are the only TS in their price range that can reliably **** up an M3.
...

How do you setup your DAs? When I setup a job "Distribute Energy Cells - Local - Priority 5 - Max Agents 4, I notice sometimes that it'll send 4 Nexus ships at the same Ore Mine, even though it cannot hold 4 Nexus ships worth of E-Cells. Maybe a screenshot of one of your sanctuary DA's will get me an idea how to refine mine.

How do you have your station agents at the SPP deliver E-Cells to your factories that need them? And the Nexus SF is a sexy ship, that or the Lotan but the Lotan is generally overkill. I've been using regular Nexus for my DA jobs. I don't bother with weapons and just pray they jump out in time.

How do you calculate laser weapon DPS? Or see the bullet size? I've been trying to use the in-game encyclopedia but something seems funky. I multiple the shield damage entry with the rounds per minute, and capital weapons seem to do less damage than fighter weapons, so....what am i doing wrong?

[Pax Empyrean]

How do you setup your DAs? When I setup a job "Distribute Energy Cells - Local - Priority 5 - Max Agents 4, I notice sometimes that it'll send 4 Nexus ships at the same Ore Mine, even though it cannot hold 4 Nexus ships worth of E-Cells.

This is basically what I'm trying to avoid by having a larger number of smaller jobs of varying priorities. For example, if you've got four DAs and four jobs that need to be done, and you set the limit at 4 per job, the AI will throw all four at whatever thing happens to be highest priority. If you set the limit at 1 per job, they will each have one working on it all the time.

But not all jobs can be adequately done with small numbers of ships. Energy Cell distribution requires numbers, which leads to traffic jams like you describe. Using Station Agents for your Solar Power Plants helps with this somewhat, since they are each constrained by the output of their own Solar Power Plant, so they tend to stagger their shipments a little better than Dock Agents do.

How do you have your station agents at the SPP deliver E-Cells to your factories that need them?

They do it automatically. Assign a ship as a Station Agent and you're all set.

And the Nexus SF is a sexy ship, that or the Lotan but the Lotan is generally overkill. I've been using regular Nexus for my DA jobs. I don't bother with weapons and just pray they jump out in time.

Stations tend to have capacities that are increments of 5,000 volume, so I like to have ships that match up with that. A 5,000+ capacity freighter can carry a full load plus jumpdrive fuel and shields and empty or fill a small factory. Medium factories take the 10,000+ ships to do the same. The regular Nexus falls between those two extremes, so it's usually either wasting space or not fully taking advantage of a factory. The Caiman SF is another ship that hits the same volume niche, with similarly good acceleration, but it's a bit lower top speed and isn't nearly as able to defend itself, so if you just want to hope your ships can jump out in time, you might be better served with the Caiman SF instead. They're quite a bit cheaper.

On the other hand, the regular Nexus only costs about 2/3 as much as the Nexus SF, has 2/3 as many shields (and 3/5 as much shield regen), and has the same gun count and hull strength, so they're marginally more combat effective for their price. If you don't need speed, they cost about as much as a high end M3+, but have similar firepower (and entirely turret based!) and shields. It might not actually be stupid to have a few of them following your capital ships around; you can get like five of them outfitted for the cost of a Hyperion.

How do you calculate laser weapon DPS? Or see the bullet size? I've been trying to use the in-game encyclopedia but something seems funky. I multiple the shield damage entry with the rounds per minute, and capital weapons seem to do less damage than fighter weapons, so....what am i doing wrong?

The encyclopedia already takes rate of fire into account. Their damage entries just say damage, but are actually DPS.

[WuDeN]

B)

For M6s, Phased Shockwave Generators are reliable since their shots are very fast and have decent bullet size. One volley kills an M4 or cripples an M3, and there are M6s that can dogfight like an M3. The Dragon is a good example; it's got eight guns on the front, one gun in a turret, it turns as fast as an M3 and outruns the majority of them with a top speed of nearly 200 with Engine Tuning, so it fights like an M3 with 800MW of shields and significantly more firepower. If you swap in Ion Railguns, it makes for a great boarding vessel; find an M6, chase it down with your superior speed, strip the shields and send in the marines. Then jump back to base, grab another load of marines, remove a shield and re-equip it to recharge your shields, and go find another target. You can easily have three captures going simultaneously this way. When you capture a ship, warp back to your marine/recycling system and grab the marines off of the ship with freight exchange; no sense wasting time waiting for it to dock and unload the marines when you can just grab them and go right back into it.

haha found a bailed dragon yay. Gonna outfit it like that.

So what about missiles ? for the m6 and fighters ?

[Pax Empyrean]

I'm certain that Rapiers and Dragonflies are bugged or had changes half-implemented. They are still categorized as seeker missiles, have stats like seeker missiles, and were seeker missiles in earlier versions, but now they lack seeker capability: they just don't turn. Compare the Dragonfly (a lightweight dumbfire missile) to the Firefly: the Dragonfly does 220% as much damage per missile, has 80% higher DPS, and is 57% faster. The Dragonfly costs a little less than 50% more per missile and they take up the same amount of space. The only advantage the Firefly has is range, and good ****** luck hitting anything with a slower-than-it-should-be dumbfire missile at 28km out. Whatever use I'm supposed to get out of a missile that is harmless to anything bigger than an M4, has no guidance, and can't be mounted on anything smaller than a TM or M6, I have no idea.

Anyway, with missiles you've basically got a gradient of increasing cost, volume, and damage, with decreasing speed. What I keep an eye out for is useful breakpoints in terms of logistics; a missile that costs 1 quantum tube will cost 0 if you have any specialization. Also note that if you loop production, it produces no more than one item per five seconds, so looping the really cheap stuff will dramatically reduce your output. In terms of combat, keep an eye out for breakpoints in volume and the number of shots it will take to kill your intended target class. With that in mind, here are some notable missiles:

Thunderbolt: most powerful missile that only costs 1 quantum tube (0 with specialization). Pops any M3 with only 50k shields, and cripples one with 75k. Has good speed for its size. Drawback is relatively high volume relative to its damage output (Thorns are the same size and do ~2x the damage), but what else are you going to use that cargo space for?
Silkworm: like the Thunderbolt, but worse. M3s can use it though, so if you want a serious missile barrage and can't afford an M7M yet, this is your missile.
Rapier: useless as a combat weapon, but only costs 1 warhead (0 with specialization). You can spray them all over the place to make enemy missile defenses go crazy and ignore your real missiles. Good for dumping into stations by the hundreds as either a weapon or trade good thanks to their good price/cost ratio (sell to the Teladi equipment docks; you'll fill them up fast, but it's a headstart). Like the Dragonfly, these are "seeker" missiles with the seeking ability removed, making them really ****** dumbfires. M3s can't use these for some reason. Just a hilariously awful weapon outside of its narrow niche uses, but good as a distraction since they cost almost nothing.
Wasp: occupies a role between the Rapier and Silkworm. Not as cheap as the Rapier, but still very cheap, and they are a swarm of 3 missiles. You can throw them around with abandon and distract enemy missile defenses since they don't fly in straight lines. Dangerous to smaller ships since the swarm will acquire new targets after the original target dies. M3s can use these.
Sting: when an M5 gets past your jumpgate camp and you don't want to chase it down to the station to finish your combat mission, throw one or two of these after it. Not fast enough to actually catch the faster M5s, but it's got ~30km to try. M3s can use it.
Firelance: basically a dumbfire version of the Silkworm, but M3s can't use it. Ideal for finishing off M3s if you've got a dogfighter corvette like a Dragon or Appallox loaded with Ion Railguns.
Thorn: your anti-M6 dumbfire. Basically the Firelance with triple the damage in the same volume, but takes 2 quantum tubes, so you'll still need to source those from somewhere even with specialization. They are the cheapest missile that can kill an unshielded M6 in two hits, and anything that can do that in one hit costs at least twice as much, takes twice as much space, and isn't dumbfire so it's more likely to be shot down.
Remote Guided Warhead: the biggest stick. High volume, slow, and expensive, but they also do just under a million damage each. If you want to kill an unshielded M7 in one hit, this is your missile. For best results, cram your M6 way up an M7's asshole so only the rear turret and none of the side/top turrets can hit you, and shoot these until it goes away. Most fully shielded M6s will be crippled by just one of these; use it at point blank so it doesn't get shot down or dodged.

[Fureimuu]

Wasps against fighters, dumbfire missiles (for M6s) against bigger ships. I usually use Auroras as they are cheap and deal 140K damage.

[Pax Empyrean]

Wasps against fighters, dumbfire missiles (for M6s) against bigger ships. I usually use Auroras as they are cheap and deal 140K damage.

Auroras are Thorns-But-Slightly-Worse.

Their cost is virtually identical: 31 warheads each, 2 quantum tubes each, Auroras cost 219 energy vs Thorns 217.
Auroras are slightly faster: 812 vs 732.
Auroras take 3 space instead of 2.
Auroras do 134,000 damage vs 162,000.
Auroras have 3.256s cooldown vs 3.421s.
Auroras have 11.6km range vs 13.5km.

Overall, their performance is very similar, but Auroras have 11% faster speed while Thorns have 21% higher damage, 15% higher DPS, 21% higher damage per cost, and 81% higher damage per volume. Thorns are competitive with the other dumbfires; if I had to change one thing to bring Auroras into line, I'd just reduce their volume from 3 to 2. If I had to design them from scratch, I'd make them a dumbfire version of the Thunderbolt in much the same way that the Firelance is a dumbfire version of the Silkworm. Similar damage, same volume, same quantum tube cost, but higher speed and no guidance.

[Fureimuu]

Aren't Thorns Terran exclusives? If you play ATF/Terran - sure. But not all commonwealth corvettes support those.

UPD: just checked it - Thorns are supported by MOST commonwealth corvettes. I don't know when it was changed.