Poisoned Paranid Start

[Bill Huntington]

I enjoyed playing pirate this time with the Poisoned Paranid Start. It took three tries but I finally made it to Bad Debt from Preacher's Refuge. Bad Debt and Ministry give more opportunities for trade and an easier time to upgrade in Teladi space. Ministry of Finance provides many chances to buy and sell Energy, Ore and sometimes Silicon. Sometimes I'm offered a used M4 for sale when I get to a higher Teladi rep. This time I earned enough to buy a Kestral in Ministry and began my pirate career with this one, with a PAC and an IRE in front.

The PP start makes target ID easy: the Paranid are all red. There's no significant rep penalty for taking a Paranid prize. In regular games the rep hit can be several levels until you get high rep. I usually go for high value targets in a regular game to minimize the rep hit. In the PP start, I can take all values of targets without worry. I take any M3 with a morale of 10 or lower. The low Paranid rep is erased when you pay your $25 Mil and collect the Hype. I'm at $33 Mil now and I've collected a big TS fleet for later in the game: 5 big TS, 4 Mediums, 5 Smalls, and a Hermes. I've got a lot of the AP universe mapped but I can't get Sats up in Paranid space until later. There's still plenty of Paranid in the rest of AP space. I took a few Goner Rangers and couldn't resist a Split Chimera when I saw it in Hatikvah.

How have pilots raised their $25 for the PP start?

[pjknibbs]

Wish it was only 25, would make it a whole lot easier.

As I recall, I got started pretty much how I always do--general trading and missions to bump up my race and trade/fight ranks until I got high enough that second-hand ships were offered for sale, then looked for some bargains I could fix up with my suit laser and sell for mucho loot, while continuing to do missions and occasional trading. I don't ever sit down and just do one thing in the game because I get rapidly bored doing that, which is why I never tend to build super-complexes--I prefer to be mobile.

[Honved]

The only real drawback to the PP start, at least after you escape the sector you start in, is that there are absolutely zero Teladi or Argon Equipment Docks on that entire East side of the map where you can buy Remote Trade Extension software. Without that, unless you really luck out and cap something with the software package, you're primarily a one-ship operation. Eventually, after you've secured a bit of credits, and possibly a combat ship, you can head north into Teladi space from the Boron region in the SE corner, then west into Argon space, boost your reputation a bit, and pick up the needed goodies at either Interworlds or Omicron Lyrae.

Until then, it's a rather tedious game. After that, it borders on a "cake-walk"; I had plenty of time left to do all the early Terran Conflict missions up to "bugging" a TL and fighting a bunch of Split, and still meet the deadline with 12 hours to spare.

The only down side to attacking Paranid ships during that period is that some ships and laser towers will remember their animosity toward you. The ships aren't a huge problem, but you can't apologize to a laser tower.

[Nanook]

The only real drawback to the PP start, at least after you escape the sector you start in, is that there are absolutely zero Teladi or Argon Equipment Docks on that entire East side of the map where you can buy Remote Trade Extension software....

East side? You start in a Paranid sector on the west side of the map. Then you've got Ministry of Finance three gates away, or Ianamus Zura 6 gates away. Both have equipment docks. Or there's Light of Heart 5 gates away.

Were you thinking of the Tormented Teladi start?

[pjknibbs]

I think the starting location for PP is at least partially random? It always starts you in a Paranid sector a few kilometres from a gate to a non-hostile one, but it can be east or west side of the map.

[Nanook]

It's always started me in one sector, Preacher's Refuge, on the west side. There actually aren't any Paranid sectors on the east side. The ones around Third Redemption are in the middle of the map, closer to the west than the east.

Roguey's X3AP Map

[ajax34i]

Plenty of ways to raise the 25 mil:

1. Peaceful: sell shields buy M5 sell transport buy Iguana. Do missions, collect some missiles, use the nearest Boron or Teladi Stock Exchange to get to about 10 million. Get some transports, make them into sector traders, do more missions.

2. Combat: As above, get to about 5 mil, get an Iguana, get a decent M3, get some marines, go capture the easier Paranid ships in the pirate sectors, sell for profits.

3. Cheat:

Spoiler

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As above, get to about 5 million. Find a Nividium roid, mine it, and abuse the Nividium stock markets. This can get you there in a few hours.

EDIT: As far as the Poisoned Paranid starts, there are only two possibilities, you either start in Preacher's Refuge or in Heaven's Assertion.

- Preacher's Refuge, if you go East, you easily reach Boron, Argon, and Teladi shipyards, plus jump drives in Legend's Home.

- Heaven's Assertion, only survival option is to go East, for Split, Boron, and Teladi shipyards, jump drive really easy to reach in Queen's Harbour. Closest trading extension software is Belt of Aguilar, not really that difficult to reach.

Spoiler

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EDIT2:
Took me 50+ tries, but I managed to get a PP gamestart with 19 engine and 19 rudder upgrades (can't save to check the upgrades unless safely docked at a station, so that was a pain). Then it took me some 150+ re-rolls on the Hyperion to get a 246 speed one (thankfully, programmable keyboard to automate it).

[pjknibbs]

It's always started me in one sector, Preacher's Refuge, on the west side.

Could have sworn it started me in Heaven's Assertion (bottom middle) on at least one occasion, but I may be confusing it with some other start.

[X2-Illuminatus]

It's always started me in one sector, Preacher's Refuge, on the west side.

Could have sworn it started me in Heaven's Assertion (bottom middle) on at least one occasion, but I may be confusing it with some other start.

Both start locations are possible and randomly selected at gamestart.

[Honved]

Both tries, I started in Heaven's Assertion, and the only viable option was to head east into Split territory. On through two huge devastated wasteland sectors into Boron territory from there, where there's another shipyard (in Queen's Retribution?) and a Corporate HQ where you can pick up several nice goodies, but no place with Remote Trade Extension software. Then you head up through a line of Teladi sectors all the way to Argon territory at Belt of Aguilar, with not a single Teladi Equipment Dock in any of them. Not sure if you can buy that software at the Corporate HQ in Belt of Aguilar; I had to go all the way to Interworlds to pick it up.

You've covered roughly 15-20 sectors (don't have the map with me) by that point, with the two biggest of them early on in a slow freighter, and only THEN can you finally start making use of a trade fleet consisting of more than a single ship.

After that, it's "easy mode".

The Western PP start sounds a lot simpler, but I never got that one.

[RAVEN.myst]

Honved: there is a partial way around lack of Trading System Extension, and that's using some of the Trade Command Software 1 & 2 commands - those which most people have probably never used because they appear "weak"/"underpowered" - but they become VERY useful when lacking the TSE, as you can still remote operate the ship in this manner. From what I recall (I've been on a break for a while - temporary only! ) "manual trade run" or something similar is among these commands. As mentioned above, it's a partial workaround - for instance, you still can't see exact prices, but you can guesstimate those from stock levels, being an experienced player. So, not optimal, but certainly workable (I recentlyish played a couple of games where I had to use this method quite heavily, due to early unavailability of the TSE, and I found it to be a fresh new mini-challenge, as well as enjoying the satisfaction of learning something new within the game.)

[Honved]

Honved: there is a partial way around lack of Trading System Extension, and that's using some of the Trade Command Software 1 & 2 commands

Thanks, Gracias, Danke, and all that. Next time I try the PP start (if ever), or some one-race game where I don't deal with the Argon or Teladi, I'll keep that in mind.

First time I tried PP, I took advantage of the abandoned Boron Advanced M3, which provided me with enough of a credit head start that the plot was trivial. I never got the Hyperion out of the sector, however, because one of my captured bails (which I had flown to the Trade Station to complete the plot) had apparently gotten a response fleet after it some time before I captured it, and that Boron fleet begam toasting all of my assets (including my freshly recovered Hyperion) only minutes after I completed the plot. Get the Hyperion, save the game, exit the station, and get a message that "One of your ships is under attack.", which as it turned out was right in my sector, and I was the next target of several large capital ships. AAAAAUGH!

Second try, no exploit allowed, and I had to sell my fighter drones at a military base for enough working capital to make decent trade deals. Eventually I scraped up sufficient capital for an M5, and started running missions, which quickly led to a couple more bailed M5s. From there, I had to head into Argon space and do a few missions before I could enter their core sectors, and finally begin to fully utilize what I already had, namely the Demeter. Being able to send it on a few runs without my babysitting it constantly and showing up at the stations to buy or sell would have been a lot less tedious. Too bad I didn't realize that the basic Trade suites included some of that functionality.