Update version v1.2 is out - 27 October 2025

This is a collection of tips gathered during my hundreds of hours playing the game. It will be updated so check back every now and then.

I'm open to comments and feedback, so do feel free to jump into the comments section. I'll be sure to amend, adjust or correct my information should we all find a superior method or tactic.

Ever wanted to grab all that loot after an intense battle? But wait, after just a few minutes another wave of enemies are going to jump in... what to do?

If the enemy fleet includes a FIXED target (e.g. station or platform), try to lure the other ships as far away from it as possible. Get at least 1500m away so that the railguns of the fixed enemy can't reach you before engaging in combat so that your looting ships won't be harmed. As long as one enemy is available on the map then additional reinforcements won't jump in (I've gone days and weeks on the same map with this method).

If there is more than one fixed target, kill all except one before trying the above. Feel free to adopt hit-and-run tactics if you are overwhelmed or need to exit for a quick repair.

Fig.: My specialized looting ship scooping stuff in safety. Over 1500m away ensures I'm safe from the enemy station's railguns.

Sometimes when you have too many wrecks, it could cause interface issues, your PC slowing down and crashes if you try to jump in more than one of your ships.

1. Wreck names will fill the right side of your tactical display until you can't select other ships. When this happens you can switch back to the normal display to select another ship.

2. Farm in another system until the wreck names time out. The loot will still be there for you to take.

3. To speed up wreck vanishing, you can leave one target (e.g. a stationary station) and go out of range with a ship and stay in the system.

Figure: Too many wrecks will push your ships names out of screen and cause lag

When looting (or mining) you'll have cases where some drones get 'stuck' and just stay in space.

To manage this, always scoop up your dones every 1-2 loot areas. To do so, simply go to the map and point at another sector and then 'Prepare to Jump' - you'll see the Jump status window plus how many drones are in space. The stuck drones will then head towards your ship.

UPDATE: From experiments and discussions this seems to always happen when your drone tries to salvage another drone. Thus you will have pairs of drones (yours and the targeted salvage drone) stuck in space. Make sure you have enough drones to compensate for the stuck ones, and/or move to areas where loose drones are not floating around.

Figure: My dedicated loot ship is scooping up a long line of 40+ stuck drones (the line of green dots headed towards it) from the past 2 ship wrecks, before heading to the next wreck.

One tactic to deal with overwhelming forces in a system or when you jump in is to lure them away from the jump-in area with a fast ship.

I use a light ship with 10+ engines and a small crew for this purpose. It also comes with 6 rear-facing gatling guns - this is to deal with fighters that some ships and stations will launch at you. Normal reactors and plenty of thrusters round it off, don't bother with Deuterium reactors (due to the added weight) and don't forget shield walls facing the back to absorb any enemy fire (mostly railguns).

Pick a spot at the edge of the area and make a run for it.

Figure: Upon jumping into a heavy enemy presence make a run for the edge

Once the ships are spread out, or by the time your ship starts getting in range of faster ship rail guns, the enemy ships by now will be more spread out. This makes it easier for you to jump in your forces to pick off stations or slow capital ships without having to deal with the entire enemy force.

Figure: Luring away ships from the jump-in point also spreads them out

This is how I handle fuel loading and storage.

• Assign a few dedicated fuel storage areas (Yellow arrows) so that fuel barrels will be placed there.
  
• Robot arms then load them onto a conveyor belt (winding arrows).
  
• The length of the belt itself both acts as storage for the fuel, and automates moving them up the chain.
  
• At the end there's another robot arm that feeds the belt onto a loader (red arrow).
  
• For larger ships I have multiple fuel loaders at the end of the belt, and also 1-2 fuel loaders not attached to the belt (in case of a power failure which will affect the belt and arms)
  
• Lastly, don't forget to add tanks (e.g. 1-2 huge tanks) nearby so you can queue up and store excess fuel.

Figure: Fuel storage, loading and management setup

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You can do the same with just robot arms. Below shows the setup as such and note that the floor spaces that hold the fuel are designated as Storage > Fuel spaces - the advantage of this layout is that if there is a power cut, the fuel won't be 'trapped' (compared to tracks) since they are on the floor.

Figure: Fuel setup using just arms

How would you like to not have to buy, sell, load, unload O2 and CO2 cylinders anymore in the game?

I've found this layout to be stable so far for ships with up to 80 crew (including Weapon Specialists). If you need more crew just add 1-2 more air ducts.

It consists of x4 CO2 Scrubbers next to x4 Air Reprocessors and going to x2 Air Ducts. A huge tank holds spare Oxygen while a smaller tank for excess C02.

The huge tank is attached to the Oxygen O2 coming out from the processors and into the 2 air ducts - the tank will maintain a stable level of 6000-8000 Oxygen units. If you find the oxygen tank always empty or always full, attach a loader next to it and unload/load oxygen and add/remove air ducts, processors and scrubbers until you find the sweet spot - I've only had to do this roughly once every 50-90 hours on each ship.

(e.g. To remove the "Oxygen Low" warning, buy a few cylinders of Oxygen and a Loader to top off the huge tank at the start, or turn off a reprocessor if your O2 production is too much)

There is a small tank is attached to the CO2 pipes from the scrubbers (though I've not seen this small tank used at all, it's there to prevent all the pipes from jamming).

This layout negates the need for Oxygen Loaders and the need to manage Oxygen and CO2 cylinders. It'll run by itself in one corner of the ship while you get on with your business.

From Right to Left:
CO2 Scrubbers > Air Reprocessors > Tanks > Air Ducts

Taking inspiration from one of the enemy ships, you can layer your weapons (cannons, rails, gatlings) with a 6-square gap between layers, and an 8-square gap for tools like Deflectors and Hyperspace scoops.

This also has the added advantage of shielding your inner weapons so that the outer weapons will have a higher chance of taking damage first (e.g. placing railguns on the outside then when CQB happens your cannons on the inside are still working etc).

Imagine now 120 weapons facing the same direction consisting of 80 cannons and 40 rail-guns, while your other 3 sides are also covered with 40+ weapons - a true Battlestar Galactica flak spam!

EDIT: I forgot to mention, you can put guns on the INNER walls facing the opposite sides too. I like to put Gatling guns so that when fighters pass through they get demolished.

Figure: One section of one side of my battleship showing the layers of weapons and tools

1. For combat, scouting or luring ships I have 2 FTL drives so that one is always charged when you jump into a system for a quick get-away.

2. Most have a small storage crate with robot arms to automatically load charges into them (this saves your crew from walking and doing this function)

3. The storage crate is set to 'Crew Unloading - OFF' so that I can sell excess FTL charges. NOTE: If there is a power failure you need to turn this off since your robot arms won't work and your crew can't unload the charges then.

4. For what I call my 'shopping ships' I have 3 or 4 FTL drives set up, so that I can jump into a system, buy what I need (mostly tracks and crates) and jump out over consecutive systems without needing to wait.

Any of your equipment facing and exposed to the outside (weapons, utilities etc) will be more prone to damage from incoming fire. Create a 1-2 thick wall extending out from the equipment (6 gaps for weapons and 8 gap spaces for utilities).

This will ensure your weapons have a better chance of surviving incoming fire so they can dish damage out in return.

Figure: This shows the outer shield wall taking a lot of hits that would have hit my weapons

TLDR keep drone containers near or next to drone bays. This will make it faster for your crew to load them into the drone bays. In addition, whenever your drones collect and salvage other drones, these drones will be re-launched into space via the drone bays faster too.

Think of the 3-square width of the drone bay as divided from left to right called spaces #1, #2 and #3. The 1st position is for crew or robots arms to load drones, while the 2nd and 3rd positions are for unloading loot.

I use Smart robot arms to automatically load drones back into space in position #1 so that crew do not need to do this function. Also, there are Smart robot arms going into the drone containers to extract drones from the main conveyor belt.

Figure: These are drone bays in my master looter ship. Short robot arms in position #2 and #3. grab loot items from the drone bays onto a conveyor belt (the two down arrows for each bay). I also show you how to use a Smart Robot Arm in position 1 (the up arrow) to load drones back into space after grabbing them from the drone storage crates.
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Figure: Showing layout of drone containers beside drone bays - note this layout does not include the arms that load the drones back out into space in the #1 position. There are smart robot arms beside each drone storage container - these are programmed to grab drones automatically into them.