Evochron Mercenary (e)

Cover
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.