[AP] Pious Paranid or Humble Merchant?

[Adoombray]

I want to start as Pious Paranid, to give early access to Empires Edge. (Not only is it the easier place to level up a sector trader, it's the easier place to level up yourself fresh out the gate - you can make 200k before affecting the price of energy)

what i'd like to do is shoot enough argons and borons to get the terrans on my side and play as Trade Guild / Terran ally. I'd also like the Terran HQ over the Argon one. I'm told that you can't get Terran plot unless you specifically start as Terran. is this true?

If this is true, how easy is it to gain rep at the start? when I float down to Paranid sectors on my humble merchant they won't even let me dock. I don't really want to devote hours and hours to changing rep ; that's why I used the registry edit trick to unlock Pious Paranid in the first place. I'd rather just be paranid from the get go, lock down the pirate sectors with a space weed empire and eventually go to war with the hippies and the fish for the terran side

[Manks]

For the Terran HQ, yes you need the Terran start. Getting the required rep for commonwealth races is a breeze if you just do missions for the respective race, as these can be offered at any race's stations. Terrans start out near Teladi space with border docking rights, so a mission in Scale Plate Green and you'll have them in the bag. The exception is for starts that have a race at the minimum rank, as missions do not influence that. So for the Terran start, getting your Argon rank to something reasonable takes a bit of effort.

If you do the Terran start, your first ship is a Katana. If the commonwealth is your true interest, pawn that for however many million, buy a valk with cargo life support, and you'll have all the races loving you after a few short transport missions. You'll even have enough left over to fully kit out a trader or two. And as for the Argons, a) screw them, they make a decent enemy, or b) kill Xenon in Blackhole Sun or sell them illegal goods and you'll get above minimum rank in short order. Much easier than running E-cells from station to station.

[TTD]

If you don't mind a slightly modded version of the game you play...(causes a modded tag on your save file)...try the link in my sig.
You can
Start as Terran,to get your Terran PHQ mission,and
set your relations with various races
Also set your starting ship/s and Sector
along with Race reps.
plus a few extra erm...cheats.

[Adoombray]

thanks for the tip on border space being dockable, i was in core sectors frustrated i couldnt trade.

I ended up just going with the terran start and immediately bought a Valkyrie and booked it out of earth space. didnt know where I was going, exploring Xenon sector in a valk was fun. Ran the blockade in Omicron Lyrae, had like 50 missles incoming as i hit the warp gate. What I ended up doing is transferring the Katana's Jump Drive to the Valk and playing hot potato with the Jump Drive via Freight Exchange to bypass both the hostile Argon sectors and the pirate sectors between Teladi/Split northern areas and the Paranid Prime area. I should probably figure out where to buy new jump drives, but whatever i am used to swapping it everytime i change ships now lol.

pirates were happy to sell me a freight scanner and I made 1.2 million following the trade lanes from Split Fire through Brennan's Triumph in one cargo scan mission. A few trade runs in a Baldy made the Trade Guild factions open up real quick. Bonus: Human Shipyard has always had L class trade ships, which come with fighter drones, which has made starting sector traders in Teladi space a breeze.

[Sabrina Bergin]

Try sucking up to the Borons in rhe SE qaudrant they have jump drives at Atreus HQ.
It doesent take lomg and the Teladi are close by so you can also do missions for them.