[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[WuDeN]

Try doing some missions maybe. It gives good opportunities on bail and loot. I tend to find "From Scratch" too easy now, so I guess there's a learning curve

Well now that I've 'got' you I probably speak for everyone when I say, what's YOUR starting procedure ? I'm extremely curious

[Joubarbe]

Deploying Ad. Sat. myself, doing some missions if I'm in a fighter, otherwise trading. Looking for bailed TS (I sell most Fighters at the beginning), and micro-managing the first trades, I often pick the No food consumption perk to avoid worrying about that. I quickly go for a second and a third sector to anticipate sector specialization, I kill pirates and Xenons, setup a global Collector ("Collect wares in universe"). I use Couriers, Station and Dock agents, at least in early game. I also go either for miners or UTs if I need reputation and money. And I always keep an eye on company missions.

I think the thing is that I'm pretty fast when I play. It's never calm and quiet, there's always something to do. But I've seen many savegames from guys who play the mod a lot better than me.

[Fureimuu]

Drop a few adv. satellites and look for pirate freighters. When you attack them, they drop drones. Kill drones - increase your fighting rank. The higher your rank - the more money you get paid for combat missions.
I am rank 21 atm, sometimes I run into 500-750K credits station protection missions. You don't even have to do anything, jump into a populated sector (Argon Prime for example), take all the station defence missions and leave the sector. The local forces will kill everyone for you and you still get paid. Or take part in the action, target smaller ships (M5 and M4 + drones). You also have a docking computer that allows you to dock instantly by pressing Shift+D, make sure you are 4-5 km away from the station though. If things are going badly - dock and wait until your shields regenerate.

[Nefasi]

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.

[WuDeN]

Drop a few adv. satellites and look for pirate freighters. When you attack them, they drop drones. Kill drones - increase your fighting rank. The higher your rank - the more money you get paid for combat missions.
I am rank 21 atm, sometimes I run into 500-750K credits station protection missions. You don't even have to do anything, jump into a populated sector (Argon Prime for example), take all the station defence missions and leave the sector. The local forces will kill everyone for you and you still get paid. Or take part in the action, target smaller ships (M5 and M4 + drones). You also have a docking computer that allows you to dock instantly by pressing Shift+D, make sure you are 4-5 km away from the station though. If things are going badly - dock and wait until your shields regenerate.

Lol you're psychic, I was looking at J's comment before an was talking about combat missions and noticed there was a lot of capitals in the sector so I was like at worse I can lure the enemy to them but they respond faster than I do. So yeah was just accepting all defense missions, already started gathering for my solar station and done several combat missions mapped sectors. Finally ran into an advanced satel so I'm going to make the stray fighter I picked up load up and distribute them.

It bothers me that Joabarbe said that he deploys them personally. Now I don't know, do I make the ship do it on its own or do I fly to each sector and 0,25k,0 it..

All this in 3 hours game time. Ok looks like this start is getting better. Gonna read the rest of the suggetsions now. Good tips so far. Plus the enemy is quite weak in the beginning I had no idea. You can cut through fighters quite quickly and easily

[WuDeN]

Deploying Ad. Sat. myself, doing some missions if I'm in a fighter, otherwise trading. Looking for bailed TS (I sell most Fighters at the beginning), and micro-managing the first trades, I often pick the No food consumption perk to avoid worrying about that. I quickly go for a second and a third sector to anticipate sector specialization, I kill pirates and Xenons, setup a global Collector ("Collect wares in universe"). I use Couriers, Station and Dock agents, at least in early game. I also go either for miners or UTs if I need reputation and money. And I always keep an eye on company missions.

I think the thing is that I'm pretty fast when I play. It's never calm and quiet, there's always something to do. But I've seen many savegames from guys who play the mod a lot better than me.

Would love to see you livestream you'd get a lot of viewers you and litcube. What do you deploy the satellites personnally ? Is it because the AI doesn't do a good job or because there's specific sectors you want mapped first ?

[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.

This is really good thank you! How do you setup jump beacons though

[Falcrack]

What guide? If you mean a guide for vanilla lasers, get rid of it. LU's lasers are pretty balanced, and I didn't change much except velocity and range.

Oh Joubarbe ! Thank you very very much for your contributions mod-wise. Really enjoying this game. It's just... difficult! lol Trading I'm pretty good at and I think I understand the station building mechanics.

When it comes to lasers, missiles, ships and constructing a fleet I'm at a total loss. I don't understand how people have fleets ready before the invasion. Keep in mind I'm starting from 'scratch'. I really like the concept of starting from nothing, although obviously it's harder.

Missions give good cash, you could theoretically just do missions continually and buy the resources for station construction materials until you have your own production capacity set up.

I think solar power plant are a really good first station. It essentially prints free money, you could sell the excess or use it in your own construction projects.

[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.

[Falcrack]

This is really good thank you! How do you setup jump beacons though

As far as I know, jump beacons are provided in sanctuaries through the "upgrade ships" panel. It requires 1 black crystal, so either get lucky in mining, or purchase them for about 12 million from a mining outpost.

[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