>>2116028
>>2116029
i'm autistic so salvaging or exploring or buying anything besides supplies/crew/fuel feels like cheating. instead i've always played permadeath, purely post-battle recovery runs (with starpoc's mandatory story point cost so every recovered/lost ship really matters). mods like exotica and gacha hullmods and bionics are nice alternative money sinks for that style
but man this new update is a game changer with the minimum standing and black market changes. even if it shakes out the same after a few hours, the beginning is so much more grounded and earned. take the bar event for the cheap impounded ship. why require marines? you just buy them from the same station and sell them after. now it's not as simple. the black market is inaccessible without a contact, and marines and almost everything else have reputation thresholds to buy on a stable open market. might sound like aids but you can always make early money trading between open pirate/pather/freeport markets. want some starting frigates to bounty hunt? a commission should at least let you buy as many basic missiles off the military market as you want. assemble a swarm of kites, farm some easy rep off pirates, maybe get lucky and find a half-dead patrol with a real ship to steal. or look for a modded market that's unrestricted (so far i found underworld's roboto is good for this, very limited selection of extra dmodded ships so it doesn't invalidate the system). lots of little things suddenly have more of a point
i still won't salvage npc-to-npc wrecks since it feels lame, and i still need to think of another handicap, but i'm finally going to do a more normal explore and buying-stuff run and see what i've been missing by treating this game like everspace. maybe a nex background would be good i never look at those. thanks starpocalypse forker wherever you are