Tormented Teladi

[crgray]

Not played in ages and have just stated a new game in Albion Prelude as a Tormented Teladi.

I've discovered I'm rubbish, any tips?

So far I've tried:
- A patrol mission, which sent me in to Loomankstrat's Legacy where a Galleon spammed my Harrier Hauler with missiles for 10 minutes before I got away.
- An assassination mission where I didn't even make it out of the sector before Ir an out of time.
- A defend the station mission where I discovered that without a targeting computer I can't even land a shot on a 400m/s Fujin from my 137m/s Harrier
- A recover a stolen ship mission, Disco raider, good result I figured I may as well nick the ship rather than recover it...but the git didn't bail and I ended up destroying it.
- Pirate hunting, not managed to find any groups small enough to attack, ideally I want 1 or 2 M4's, and M5's are too quick for me and M3's splat me
- Piracy, tried attacking a Duke's dangerous transport and a few other transports...I can get their shields down but my IRE's only manage to polish their hulls

I guess the next thing to try is pirating some M4's?

So far I'm 3.5 hours in to the 12 hour mission and have a grand total of 3500Cr!

[Sirrobert]

Try trading to get some cash up, and than buy the software you need. Energy cells is always an easy trade target, and all ships can carry them.

Also keep an eye out for the dificulty of missions. Easier means you have more time (and usually easier enemys), but pays less

About the patrol missions, you still get payd even if you don't kill the mission target. As long as it dies. So just run away if there is something to big to take on, come back to the sector later and you'll get your money.

For defend stations: You can again still get payd if you don't kill anything. The only requirements for succes for this mission is that you and the station survive. And a couple of scouts will NEVER be able to kill a station.

For piracy, pick a safe trade lane through an empty sector, and start shooting at transporters. Damage them, then comm them and tell them to drop freight. Repeat until they drop freight (or bail). Pick up and sell. Repeat.
???
Profit.

A freight scanner can help you pick targets. Fighter drones can be deadly in big numbers. And pick which race(s) you want to piss off.

If you buy a mineral scanner, you can take astroid scan missions. Those are generally good money.

Return stolen ships is dificult as they need to bail. Return abandonned ships is much easier. And you hardly lose any reputation if the timer runs out (because you kept the ship for yourself).
Just remember that police will spawn to destroy the ship if this happends, so dock it at a shipyard before the timer runs out and sell after the timer runs out. Easy money.
Remember: If you sell the ship BEFORE the timer runs out, it'll count as if you destroyd the ship. The rep loss will be equivilant to how much rep you'd lose if you destoryd the same ship belonging to the race itself.

If you get higher reputations, the missions will start to pay more. At high race standing, people will even call you to return M7s.
I've even seen a normal station ask for theyr M7 back. Forgetting that an M7 can't even dock at theyr station. It's like they WANT me to steal it

[pjknibbs]

Don't go after difficult targets, would be my advice. What I would do is take a couple of station defence missions for the same race each time (e.g. the person giving you the mission has to be the same race)--you'll only have a few M5s to deal with and they'll be concentrating on the station; the faster ones will like as not crash into it and destroy themselves, so you can concentrate on the slower ones. The idea here is to increase your rank with a particular race to the point at which second-hand ships will be offered for sale in their sectors (look for the credit symbol above a ship flying in space)--find cheap, badly broken second-hand ships for sale, repair them with your suit laser, and then sell them for a goodly profit.

Your other (far more dangerous) option would be to head over to a war sector and try to pick up some of the spoils left over from ships getting destroyed there, but that option might be better left until you've got some engine tunings on your ship and have the option to run away!

[crgray]

E-cell trading is how I'd usually start a game, but figured it's probably a bit slow for this start.

The Defend station mission I tried only made me a few hundred credits, but I hadn't thought about doing them to increase my race rep to get better stuff, I'll give that a go.

[Threesixtyci]

TP route is what I always go for.

Manual Energy cell trades and if lucky, abandon cargo pickups, to get you going.... and Weapon dumping to Equipment Docks if you happen to see a factory fully loaded, and happen to have enough to buy some.
Then a cargo life support system
(every pirate base has them for sale and they're pretty cheap. You do have to find a pirate base, though.)
(until you get a TP ship stay away from all Taxi missions that say Passenger Transport, or Luxury anywhere in the title or body text).
Then earn enough for a Disco or Kestrel.
Use it for Taxi missions, and upgrade it as you earn.
Then make enough for a mineral scanner for Asteroid scan missions.
A Jump Drive about here, would be good....
From there earn enough for a TP.
And you're pretty much home free after that...

You may be able to buy an Asteroid factory and expanded it with 1M or 5M shields and/or IDE (edit: I meant IRE's) production and earn more than enough before you run out of time.

Same goes for Poison Paranid....

the other way is knowing where all the free ships are... and selling them/using them. But that's unsatisfying.

[mistervec]

What pjknibbs suggested is the easiest way to go from my own experience.

Basically, you'll want to think like an opportunist. Keep your sector map open as you travel around and keep an eye out for the following flavors of opportunity:

-Ships without race or job prefixes (Buster, as opposed to Argon Buster). These are free ships. In AP these are usually Kha'ak ships, so keep an eye out for names like "interceptor" or "corvette". Claim, repair, strip, and sell.

-Ships with little C signs next to their names. These are ships for sale. In general, you'll want to go ahead and buy anything at less than 90% hull at first. Repair, strip, and sell. Also: Fighters are more time-efficient than transports as transports take much longer to fix and don't usually sell for more than a few hundred K.

-Stations with any sort of sign next to their name. Once the ship offers start coming in, go ahead and check stations with any sort of mission indicator on them for docked ships. IF the docked ship is a basic "race name / ship class " go ahead and check the info for it. If it's damaged at all, it's probably for sale. Usually these show up as little yellow C icons, but sometimes a station has more than one mission available and it'll pop as a combat, build, or think icon. This helps you figure out if any ships are for sale without having to get within comm range of every single station in a sector.

-Blue Ovals. Salvage, usually missiles left behind by unlucky pirates or e-cells from unlucky traders. Sometimes you get lucky and pop into a sector only to have two capitals slam into each other. No matter how they show up, they are basically free money.

-Defend Station missions. These have a great risk/reward ratio as the payout is the same no matter what and the attacking ships don't pay you much attention, freeing you up to take them down one by one. Also, the ships have a set target, so even a slow ship can take down speedy M5's simply by keeping themselves between the attacker and the station. These can also net you the occasional captured fighter, which is always a bonus.

-Red Triangles. While I'd be hesitant to tangle with roving pirates or Xenon, someone eventually will. Red guys will die, leaving behind free missiles, including the occasional image recognition warhead (26k apiece). Freighters they tangle with may also die, leaving behind additional loot.

It's not hard to make a few mil this way over a couple of hours, even if all you have is a Discoverer. It's just a matter of constantly moving and keeping an eye open for free money. Feel free to add any other missions you are comfortable with doing into the mix, like taxi missions or what have you. Those are simply additional flavors of opportunity for those with the skills to pull them off.

[delstars]

You can use the stock market to make money also. However u need like a mil before you start making money at a decent rate. However the stock market just feels like cheating as it is rediculously easy to make money once you know what you are doing. I could tell you what exactly to buy, but I don't want to spoil the game for you if you don't want to use the stock market or figure it out yourself.

[Timsup2nothin]

I guess the next thing to try is pirating some M4's?

This would be my move. 'Civilian ships' are mostly M5 with a fair mix of M4, are unarmed, and their pilots are not usually interested in going down with the ship. Cap three, sell two, equip one. Pick a race you aren't interested in being friends with short term.

[Tohron]

To start out most games, I head to the war sectors (Circle of Labor and Heretic's End) and start picking up missile crates - first with S sized missiles like Remote Guided Warheads and Poltergeists, then, once I've made enough money selling them to the Omicron Lyrae equipment dock to buy a discoverer (m-sized cargo), you can start picking up Spectres, Hammerheads, and Firestorms (among other things) - which should be able to get you to 500 - 700K credits in a reasonable time.

Once you get to that point, your options branch out - I used the stock market to finish the Tortured Teladi plot (look for the naturals market in Teladi stock exchanges, and try to buy low & sell high, reloading if you get stuck) - other options include getting a freighter (jumpdrive & docking computer are priority equipment) and trading and/or running missions.

Or you could get an M4+ like a Solano and do fight missions - though you may have trouble reaching 5 million in time doing that.

[Focker]

Best guess I would have is scrape your way to a TP ship via missions or stock marketing, then get the TP and take it to the war sectors and save before some big ships die and keep reloading the game until you get a good drop like PPC's or PSP's and then go pick them up = profit.

[CTHM]

Best guess I would have is scrape your way to a TP ship via missions or stock marketing, then get the TP and take it to the war sectors and save before some big ships die and keep reloading the game until you get a good drop like PPC's or PSP's and then go pick them up = profit.

I made millions with my M4 around Omikron Lyrae collecting missiles, but never saw weapons dropped.

[CTHM]

However u need like a mil before you start making money at a decent rate.

The rate is linear as is the rise or fall of stock worth. That means the profit is also linear. The factor doesn`t change, whether you buy 1 stock or a 1 mil stocks.
The initial investment worth is subjective, but there is no failt in that.

EDIT: Yep, i`m wrong, disregard my commend.

[firestorm79]

Yep, best way to make quick money for tormented teladi is:

1. stock market - but that may be a problem for you because, a) the teladi stock market is usually the first stock market people break into because of its qualifying requirements are fairly low, and b) you need more than a few grand to make money there! So let's put that aside for now.

2. Return abandoned ship missions - if the reward is less than the value of the ship don't return them, sell them.

3. I would also troll a few TS (make sure they don't have drones on board). Either kill them or get them to jump ship.

4.

Spoiler

Show

Pick up the abandoned Kha'ak ships - you can get a Kha'ak M3 which will be better for assassinate missions, sell your harrier. You can use the findware script, which will show you where all the abandoned ships are - then make a note and reload your save before you ran the script and you won't have the modified tag. Can you sell Kha'ak ships?? Don't think you can... but you can sell their weapons.

Once you've completed Tormented Teladi, stop playing and restart with Poisoned Paranid. You will be seriously bad ass once you complete PP. Trust me.

[crgray]

Well I've headed up to Omicron Lyrae and Heretics End to do some looting, with a recover an abandoned ship mission along the way. Traded in the Harrier for a Disco Vanguard and have 300k in the bank, but only 7 hours remaining...

[firestorm79]

Well I've headed up to Omicron Lyrae and Heretics End to do some looting, with a recover an abandoned ship mission along the way. Traded in the Harrier for a Disco Vanguard and have 300k in the bank, but only 7 hours remaining...

the money made will be exponential once you get some momentum... but things are looking tight! keep us posted!

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

300K is enough to equip your Disco with a full complement of IRE, shields and Freight scanner. With that you have everything you need to go pirating weapons transporters.

Ideally what you're looking for are the ones carrying Mass Drivers as they're an S-class cargo, about 100k or so apiece and you can fit quite a few in a Disco cargo bay.

[crgray]

Weapon transporters like a good idea, but I've just been running around TwoGrand/PatriachsKeep and all the weapons dealers I've scanned have had 10 or more fighter drones on board!

[Threesixtyci]

Disco's are M class, and number of units per item isn't tied to cargo class.

[Timsup2nothin]

Weapon transporters like a good idea, but I've just been running around TwoGrand/PatriachsKeep and all the weapons dealers I've scanned have had 10 or more fighter drones on board!

Put trader on monitor so you can find him once drones are dealt with.

Option A) Attack trader while near asteroid. He dumps drones, run to the asteroid, their attack logic and collision avoidance logic will be in conflict, greatly reducing their effectiveness. Pick them off, keeping an eye on your shields. As you thin out drones your shield loss rate will slow down, but if it gets to about 25% and is still dropping too fast hit the jump drive and pop across the sector. With the asteroid for cover shields should be able to keep up if you get them down to four or five quickly enough.

Option B) Attack trader. When he dumps drones hit jump drive and pop across the sector. Put one drone on other monitor and avoid getting killed while jump drive spools up. When you come out of the jump turn away from the scene and run like mad. You have a big lead, a fast ship, and a drone on monitor. Drones will run out of gas before they catch you. When the drone you are watching disappears so do all the others.

Return to now droneless target and get down to negotiating. As soon as his shields are stripped comm him and demand surrender...repeatedly. He will generally spew far more cargo than he would drop if you just blow him up.

In multiple games I have found that Paranid weapon dealers like to run PACs to Kingdom End for some reason, passing through the strip from CBSW to Three Worlds. Picking up between ten and thirty PACs is pretty serious coin if you are a lowly M5 pilot.

[Sirrobert]

Weapon transporters like a good idea, but I've just been running around TwoGrand/PatriachsKeep and all the weapons dealers I've scanned have had 10 or more fighter drones on board!

Put trader on monitor so you can find him once drones are dealt with.

Option A) Attack trader while near asteroid. He dumps drones, run to the asteroid, their attack logic and collision avoidance logic will be in conflict, greatly reducing their effectiveness. Pick them off, keeping an eye on your shields. As you thin out drones your shield loss rate will slow down, but if it gets to about 25% and is still dropping too fast hit the jump drive and pop across the sector. With the asteroid for cover shields should be able to keep up if you get them down to four or five quickly enough.

Option B) Attack trader. When he dumps drones hit jump drive and pop across the sector. Put one drone on other monitor and avoid getting killed while jump drive spools up. When you come out of the jump turn away from the scene and run like mad. You have a big lead, a fast ship, and a drone on monitor. Drones will run out of gas before they catch you. When the drone you are watching disappears so do all the others

I don't think he has a jump drive yet though, those still cost some coin.
That said, I like the extreme costs of jumpdrives in XRM. I don't concider it such a piece of advanced tech is so cheap (or small)