Guile's Beginner Guide to Evochron Mercenary
Table of Contents
Hints and Tips .................................................[HINTS]
Tables/ Data...................................................[TABLES]
Starting out/How to make money..................................[MONEY]
Ship Information …...............................................[SHIP]
Military/Combat................................................[COMBAT]
Hints and Tips [HINTS]
You beam weapon is best for shield damage, your particle weapon is made
for hull. You end up blasting more on shields than armour.
The IceSpear (level 2 gun of 15) ends up being arguably the best
particle weapon for dogfighting because your beam weapon range and
fire rate is tied to your particle weapon. It is odd but pick up
one pretty much anywhere in Sapphire right away and then just get the
best beam weapon you can.
If you want to mine or pick something up with your tractor beam you have
to be really close, 100 distance or less close.
Save waypoints on your nav map. If you are mining, you can stick a
waypoint exactly at the station docking bay when you are there and
exactly at the asteroids. You appear pointing in the direction you
were when you entered the jump a certain distance away from the point.
You end up spending way less time maneuvering to docking ports and the
like doing it this way.
To gain access to good civilian ships you usually have to go to
somewhere like Atlas or Hidden planet in Pearl where things are a little
dangerous
To gain access to military ships (Which tend to be significantly better
for combat) you need to go to a carrier in a war zone. More ships become
available the higher your military rank which you get for doing missions
in war zones. The best warzone to start out in is probably Talison
Conflict. You can view your rank under the news button in the inventory
screen. You gain one point per mission or one per waypoint if it has
multiple waypoints as well as 1 point of rank for every 10 ships
destroyed during a warzone mission.
Crew with less than 100 percent loyalty can leave you if you dock at a
station. Save before you enter and just reload if they leave you. They
probably won't leave you the second time. If you complete missions
successfully with them or pay them more than they are worth their
loyalty will increase. If you do the opposite it decreases. They also
increase their skill with time.
Things like fuel, station licenses, crew pay, and hanger fees cost
more the higher your civilian rank. Buy those station licenses you
want a bit earlier rather than later. You also get paid more for
missions the higher your rank though.
Tables / Data [TABLES]
Go to http://evochron.junholt.se/objectdescriptions/equipmentsobject.htm
for most equipment tables
Rank Ranks Points Military Ships gained
Trainee 0-4 Ferret
Ensign 5-24 Aries
Lieutenant Jr. Grade 25-49 Shadow
Lieutenant 50-99 Wraith
Lieutenant Commander 100-149 Evoch-C
Commander 150-249 All ships inc. Chimera
Captain 250-499
Commodore 500-749
Admiral 750-998
Fleet Admiral Greater than 998
Starting out/How to make money [MONEY]
NOTE: If you want to mine or pick something up with your tractor beam
you have to be really close, 100 or less close. Upgrade your cargo bays
to 5. Also buy an IceSpear and hire a decent weapons
officer. You'll need them later.
Combat is hard without certain expensive equipment in Evochron Mercenary
so you are better off doing noncombat missions until you can upgrade. I
would recommend starting with one of two options:
1. Do the IMG missions until it gives you access to cargo containers
that they replenish and then get the containers and sell the contents
and repeat until you have about 3 million. SAVE YOUR WAYPOINTS. It
speeds things up a lot.
2. Mine the closest asteroid field to your starting position. Get a
science officer. They speed the rate you mine at. Fill your cargo bay
with platinum and diamonds. Left click on an inventory spot with metal
to throw it out to leave more room for diamonds and platinum. Save and
reload at the station if the prices are horrible, but they usually are
fine. While mining you can just leave your computer and get things done
and then come back to filled bays. Mine and sell till you have about 3
million.
The Next Step: Big Money
(I did not come up with this route or the waypoints. I found them on a
pdf online. Let me know if you know the source and I will give proper
credit)
Once you have 3 million, you want to fly to the Pearl System. You can
make the most money trading fulcrum torpedoes, anti-missile systems and
anything else expensive. There will be a lot of hostile ships around so
be ready to jump to a random location to escape.
Two locations to save in your map log are:
Port Oasis Station
X: 18097 3497 :SX
Y: 2240 0 :SY
Z: 980 -1802 :SZ
Pearl Hidden Planet
X: 67038 3588 :SX
Y: 12979 0 :SY
Z: -47513 -1828 :SZ
In Pearl fly to Oasis Station. There will be a lot of hostile ships
surrounding it, so go into the docking bay quickly. You will have to
pay an entry fee because you are unpopular in the system and then hit
the Enter Station button quickly so you don't get shot. Upgrade to a
Fulcrum drive C5 if you can. You can always save and reload until one
shows up. Then buy any tech you can afford:
Constructors, Fulcrum torpedoes, Anti missle systems etc.
**Make sure you have a good 170 000 extra in cash as you will need to
pay a large fee to land at the hidden planet base and if you don't
have enough you have to turn back**
Leave the base quickly, jumping to a random location to escape all the
hostiles around the base. Then click on your map log for Pearl Hidden
base that you saved before and hit autopilot. It will take 5 minutes
to reach there with a Fulcrum drive C 5 so grab a sandwich or something.
It should be safe so you don't have to be back exactly when your ship
arrives.
Land at Hidden Planet and sell everything for about double what you
paid. Buy a Mantis Drive. It is twice as fast as a C5 so the trip will
be about 2 minutes 30 seconds either way instead of 5 minutes. You may
have to save and reload a few times before it shows up for sale.
You do have to pay attention to be around when your ship arrives at
Port Oasis as the ships there will kill you if you aren't paying
attention. Repeat the trip. Buy a station license at Port Oasis after
another trip or two. It makes things 25% cheaper at that base for you
and means you don't have to pay to enter the base every time. Don't buy
one at Pearl hidden base as that will lower the sell price for things
there.
Now you are rich. Keep in mind you can right click on an item like an
Anti-missile system and it will go into your cargo bays instead of
being equipped so you can hold more.
Ship Information [Ship]
What do the numbers mean for ships and how can you compare?
Civilian ships have 4 numbers associated with them
Capacity – This determines the number of crew members, equipment slots,
countermeasures capacity (groups of 25), and secondary weapons slots.
You can trade crew member spaces for equipment slots, countermeasure
slots for secondary weapons, etc in any shipyard under Frame Config
Assembly – This gets used up the more you upgrade your Engines, Shields,
Cargo Bay, Fuel Tank, and Wing Sys. A Starmaster has a lot of assembly
so you could have level 10 shields, 5 cargo bays, and a high level of
engines, fuel tank and wing sys too. A Talon has much less assembly, so
the best you could do if you wanted level 10 shields would be level 1 of
everything else and no cargo bays.
Agility – This determines how fast you can turn. For a good graph of
how agility and wing sys combine to determine time for a 180 degree turn.
NOTE: Low agility isn't all bad. It also means you don't have your ship
knocked as much by enemy fire, so you can keep firing yourself
see this page:
http://evochron.junholt.se/objectdescriptions/equipmentsobject.htm
Armour – The amount of hull damage you can take before you are space
debris.
Military ships have no capacity rating as they all have no crew, 8
equipment slots, space for 99 countermeasures and either 4 secondary
weapons slots (Ferret and Aries) or 8 (everything else). I think the
ship computer acts as a built in weapons officer.
They all also have a special souped up level 1 wing sys, level 10
engine, level 10 shields and 1 cargo bay. This can't be modified. The
only choices you get to make with the rest of your assembly points are
what size fuel tank.
Military ships do significantly better in combat, even fairly low level
ships. I found the Wraith much better than the StarMaster.
When you have a lot of money and want to start doing combat missions
I recommend the following equipment.
Particle Weapon: IceSpear C2 (Weird I know, but it works)
Beam Weapon: Fusion Laser C5
Secondary Weapons:
I use the Excalibur regenerative missiles as I am too lazy to buy
missiles every time, though if there was a difficult battle Exodus
and maybe Leech missiles would be the way to go or if you had a ton
of money and were fighting a capital ship a Fulcrum torpedo.
Equipment:
Mantis Drive – You need to be able to jump and you may as well have
the best if you can. It can go 10 sectors in one jump.
Repair system C3 – For when things don't go as planned. It has the
fastest repair rate.
Shield Boost C5 – I believe it increases your shield power by 250,
which effectively makes you shields a level better. The only way to
turn it to 11.
Shield Recharger – I love this one. It taps into your weapon system
and uses the energy to regenerate your shields fast when you get hit.
You don't have to manually be reinforcing your shields when you are
trying to get the last couple of hits on an enemy fighter. I think
this lets you divert energy to weapons without affecting your shields
much.
Anti-Missile Sys – Missiles destroy you very quickly. This
automatically shoots them down before they can. I hate getting hit
by missiles so much I also use the...
Auto CM Launcher – Same idea as the anti missile system with
countermeasures. Running both of them I haven't been hit since. It
may be overkill, but I like it.
Cannon Heatsink – Increases the firing rate of your particle cannon
Cannon Relay Sys – Doubles the total amount of weapons energy you
can store.
This does mean you have no mining / tractor beam for missions
requiring it so you will have to modify your loadout if you are
doing a mission requiring one of those. You can always store a repair
unit or something in a hanger for a mission to give yourself room.
Military / Combat [COMBAT]
Combat is pretty hard in Evochron Mercenary. Have a decent ship
preferably with something that protects you from missiles before
doing much of it.
Rank up in the military by doing missions in the 4 warzones: Talison
Conflict, Cerulean Warzone, Sierra Warzone and Arvoch Conflict.
Talison is the easiest. Then get a decent ship. You get one point of
rank for every mission done or waypoint of a mission done if it has
multiple waypoints and you get an extra point for every 10 ships you
kill during these missions. Once you have ranked up, get a
decent military ship.
Thin the herd with missiles to start if you can. The earlier you kill
enemy fighters the less they can gang up on you. I usually start with
an Excalibur missile attack immediately upon entering a waypoint if
it has recharged.
A good attack pattern is to afterburner to roughly 1500 a bit to the
side of the enemy group targeting the enemy closest to the edge of
the group. Switch to inertial mode and then fire at your target as
you go past. Go a ways past and switch to IDS to turn around do it
again going the other way. This is conservative but slow to kill
enemies. The idea is you don't want to get surrounded by several
enemy fighters and get shredded while concentrating on one.
Afterburner away if you start to get pounded.
Once you have lowered the enemy numbers or you get a guy on his own
you can do the same accelerate to 1500, fire as you go by but when
he goes past you can switch to IDS and try and keep him in range and
fire at his tail. If you are extra sneaky you can try and stay around
the 660 range for as long as possible where you can hit him but he
can't hit you. Afterburner and inertia mode away if other fighters
surround you.
