Interesting Bankrupt Starts

[Bill Huntington]

TC is still interesting after many months of play throughs. I'm making some observations for the benefit of newer pilots. I've spent some time with two starts that I never did much with before. The Goner start allows a fast start when you sell the Ranger you start with for $3 Mil.

I've given the Bankrupt Assassin start a closer look lately and find it's got a lot to it. You start in a central location with Hatikvah next door and Jump Drives two sectors away. You can get some starter money by selling your HEPTs and picking up 8 IREs. You have the Teladi Trading Station in Akeelah. Sometimes you can turn off the bounty hunters when you buy the Teladi Security License. Sometimes it doesn't work and sometimes it has unusual results.

Anyway I got interested in the game past the bounty hunters. The first thing I noticed is that you have a bad pirate rating if you simply killed them all. That led to the usual consequences later in the game: serious pirate attacks on everything. In the next game I took longer and led the bounty hunters to the Argon police or the Orbital platforms. They killed them rather than me. I ended up with a much better pirate rating and better pirate missions later to recover further.

You start Bankrupt Assassin with an equipped Mamba. The one thing I do that isn't vanilla is turn on 'Additional Info' from the Script Editor. Anyway I capped a lot of red Paranid and Boron ships with the Mamba, anything with a morale of 10 or lower. The big Paranid TS sells for $1 Mil. An M3 also sells for $1 Mil. I took Boron in Hatikvah, not Argon space. Even playing with care, I had a good set-up by hour 9 of the first day. That's good Argon and Teladi rep, a Kestral, a Chok, and a now fully equipped Mamba. I did that simply with capping ships and selling them, usually in Light of Heart or Legend. The Kestral makes it possible to run past hostile Paranid sectors. Then I started up Niv mining in Seizewell, and capped numerous TS target in the Teladi sectors surrounding it. I could have just bought them but it was more fun to cap them. I stopped with 14 of them. I sent them to EQ Dock in Seizewell to get their Ore and Special software. By hour 10 I'm showing $10 Mil in cash and I can expand that to a lot more.

It isn't that hard to recover Paranid and Boron rep. You begin by taking their missions outside of their sectors. Then you have to open each sector in your personal ship. I think one of their stations turns red for each ship of theirs you cap. But you have money then. You just pay to turn them blue again when you get a choice.

With the Goner and Bankrupt starts in TC I can get to top rank with all the races in the first 24 hour day. With Niv mining I can have $100 Mil in my account.

FYI. Good Hunting!

[jlehtone]

The Goner start allows a fast start when you sell the Ranger you start with for $3 Mil.

Heretical. Thou shalt not depart with thy Preacher. When one fights with the Ranger, one fights like no Split would. It is perfectly possible to both spread the good news and become awesome. Just a couple hours longer.


So many ways to have fun ...

[KMcr]

Thanks for the info, was thinking of trying the Bankrupt Assassin on my next start. It'll be a while yet though....

[RAVEN.myst]

The Goner start allows a fast start when you sell the Ranger you start with for $3 Mil.

Heretical. Thou shalt not depart with thy Preacher. When one fights with the Ranger, one fights like no Split would. It is perfectly possible to both spread the good news and become awesome. Just a couple hours longer.

LOL!!!! And I completely agree - to sell the Ranger in the name of expediency seems, to me, contrary to the spirit of the start. To me, it's much more interesting to try to make that ship actually WORK for me - and only then gradually and inexorably slip into the depravities of materialism and violence... (Of course, I would maintain at least the semblance of pacifism, as much as possible... clean hands, you know... After all, I can't be held responsible for the actions of my misguided acolytes, now can I?)

[Snafu_X3]

Other than (to my mind) cheesy/exploity Nv mining this sounds like a reasonable strategy, altho as others have mentioned, selling the Ranger is a bit.. off-base; just keep it when you can upgrade (it's not actually a useless ship, just.. different to the normal tactics you may use)