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Pay Off Loan in 5-10 Minutes
By ajk1139
Cargo Deliveries take hours of micromanging gameplay to pay off your debt,
Trading takes 30 minutes of painfully uninteresting button-pushing,

But capturing pirate ships takes less than 10 minutes!
   
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Created by
ajk1139
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Category: Gameplay Basics, Loot, Maps or Levels, Secrets, Walkthroughs
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
15 Apr, 2018 @ 1:37pm
13 Nov, 2020 @ 9:15pm
1,150 Unique Visitors
29 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Preparation 
Farming Pirates 
The Clipper 
The Quicksilver 
Starting the Campaign 
Notable Parts of the Campaign 
Credits 
Comments
Preparation
  1. Start a new game.
  2. Buy a shuttle.
  3. Click outfitter, scroll all the way down, and buy a star map. (Do this whenever you land and there's an outfitter).
  4. Go here:
    (Wei)
  5. Go here:

    (Kornephoros)
  6. Land and refuel.
  7. Go here:
    (Sagras)
  8. Land, go to the outfitter, and buy 6 frag grenades.

    (You will go bankrupt, but that's not a problem).
  9. Go here:
    (Alniyet)
  10. Land, hire 5 crew.
  11. You're ready to farm pirates. Proceed.
Farming Pirates
  1. Depart.
  2. Get some distance from the system center:

    (Honestly, you should be fine, you're a small, fast shuttle).
  3. Wait for pirates to jump in.
  4. Wait for the militia to kill them.
  5. Fly around, and avoid combat. (If you die, press Esc, L, and L again to reload).
  6. Spam the B key.
  7. If you wait long enough, a pirate should get disabled.
  8. Board the pirate. (The B key will set your autopilot to do this).
  9. Capture the pirate:
    (Attempt capture -> Attack until they die).
  10. Go here:
    (It has a shipyard)
  11. Land, go to the shipyard, and sell the ship you captured:
    (I got a hawk, any small ship is good).
  12. Go to the bank, click pay extra, and pay most (but not all) of what you earned.
    (250k out of 299k).
  13. Hire back to max crew.
    (they probably died in the fight or were transfered to the ship you captured).
  14. Go back to that system.
  15. Repeat. By 2-5 cycles (depending on the ship you capture), you will have paid off your loan.
The Clipper
If you stumble upon a clipper when farming, keep it!
It's a good, fast ship with 9 crew and 70 cargo, so it's much better than the shuttle for capturing and looting. (Looting is done by boarding and clicking "take").

If you find a clipper, sell your shuttle and use the clipper instead. (Buy back the frag grenades, though)!

There are also two variants of the clipper; a regular variant and a deep variant. The deep variant has deep equipment (atomic engines, heavy lasers), so if you get a deep variant and you have a regular, use the deep variant.

Make sure your clipper is equipped with 9 Frag Grenades, not 6.

Combat
Note: You now have weapons!
This means that enemies will target you, but you can also attack them.
If you get shots off at an enemy, and you start to board it when your allies (the militia) diable it, they will not kill it.

You may want to sell your missiles and replace them with lasers.

To attack:
Press R to target
Fly towards your target (direction shown by the arrow by the target display),
Press Tab to shoot once in range.

Your new strategy is more complicated.
1) Fly around the system.
2) Wait until a pirate flies in.
3) Once you board it, look at your chances of capturing it. If they're good, capture it. If they're not, loot the top-most stuff (that has the highest price/ton).

The rest is normal.

Continue farming.

If you want a Quicksilver, proceed to "The Quicksilver."

If you don't feel like you need one, proceed to "Starting the Campaign."
The Quicksilver
If you feel you need more firepower, use this section.

Once you have a little more than 2 million, take a trip to syndicate space:





Then, go to the shipyard, scroll to the light warship section, and buy the Quicksilver. It's faster and more powerful than the clipper, but has only 6 crew and 10 cargo space. (6 crew with frag grenades is still more than enough to capture small - and possibly medium - ships).
Starting the Campaign
The first part of the campaign is before the Free Worlds announcement (you'll know it when you see it).

Here's what you do:
Go to the Aldhibain system:

(The one with the shipyard)

Push spaceport. (The P button works, too).

You should be offered a mission for the "One Thousand Eyes" program. Do the dialoge and accept it..

Do the mission.

Check back for more, and do more of those missions.

General rules concerning missions:
Every time you land, press spaceport (P). You might find something intresting.

If something is offered to you, don't turn it down unless it's mundane.

Examples of mundane missions:
  • "Recreational Pharmaceutical" delivery
  • Smuggling
  • "Deliver these legal documents here..."
  • "There's no way I can get my rush delivery [to somwhere] in time. Captain, can you deliver it for me?"

Examples of worthwhile/intresting missions:
  • Archaeology
  • Get this band to Tazared (Look up TMBR)
  • Terraforming
  • Anything concerning military
  • Anything concerning the Free Worlds

Never, under no circumstances, stop a mission chain. Do the entire mission chain. Never turn down a mission. Never quit. Never say 'I don't want to continue.'


The Real Start of the Campaign
When you get the announcement about the Free Worlds (you will know it when you see it), go to the Aldhibain system and land on Glaze.

(Yes, Glaze is sort of an important world).

Press spaceport.

The mission chain is pretty straightforward, but there are some hard parts. See the next section for those.
Notable Parts of the Campaign
I'm not sure what order these are in, but if you're stuck in the campaign, check this section.

Battles
Whenever you go into battle with a fleet, the best strategy is to run away from combat.
Face it, your ship is probably no more than a light warship, and it'll be crushed if you try to go up against heavy warships.

Liberating Pirate Worlds
Let the pirate worlds be independent. If given the choice, don't invade the worlds, but take the diplomatic solution instead. Why?

Simple.
  • The more worlds you leave independent, the more worlds you can dominate later on without getting important people mad at you.
  • If you go against the council's decision, there are repercussions.
  • The diplomatic solutions are favored by the game. You get some technology faster, I think.

The Breaks in the Campaign
At two points in the Campaign, they will tell you to go be a civilian for a while. These breaks last 100 days, and you can use them to your advantage.

How? Simple. The Men system.

The Men system has:
  • Pirates litterally taking off from the planets and jumping in.
  • The militia and the independent forces attacking the pirates.
  • A shipyard.

It is the perfect farming location at this level.

Obtaining the Electron Beam
At one point, they will ask you to obtain an Electron Beam from a navy gunboat.
This is hard.
You will die many times.

If your ship is too weak for this, farm in the Men system until you can buy a fast but powerful ship. (It needs to be both).

The system you should go to to attack the gunboat is right of Wei.

Every time you jump into a hostile system, turn and go forward until you wheelie your ship in a direction away from the system center, then run away until they enemies stop being intrested.

Once you so far that the enemies ignore you, wait until most jump out.

Go closer to the system center so they target you, but keep (a lot of) distance.

Wait until a gunboat comes close to you. If it's alone, take it on.

If you are hopelessly outgunned, you will need to farm for a better ship.

If you defeat it, board it, take the electron beam, and wait outside the range of other ships until your shields recharge.

Then, jump to Wei, wheelie your way out of the system center, wait until your shields recharge, jump to Kornephonos, land, and go to where they want you to deliver the beam.

Syndicate Defector
At one point in the campain, you'll decide if you want to hand over the Syndicate defector or defend him. Your decision will matter. A lot.

If you don't hand over the defector, there's a lot less combat, it's probably easier, and you get the opportunitty to get a cloaking device.

If you do, you eventually get to buy:

The Ionic Afterburner

The ionic afterburner was designed by the Syndicate to compensate for the primary weakness of an ordinary afterburner: namely, that it consumes hyperspace fuel at a prodigious rate. Ionic afterburners instead use a small amount of fuel combined with a large burst of energy from your ship's batteries to achieve the same effect.
Atribute
Ionic
Normal
Price
340k
70k
Mass/Outfit/Engine Space
24
15
Afterburner thrust
104,400
90,000
fuel/s
6
30
heat/s
720
600
Energy/s
306
0
*Note that these can be captured later on, from Marauder ships.

The Nuclear Missile

[Nuclear missiles are a one-shot weapon: each missile occupies a gun slot, and after it is fired, the slot it was in is left empty.]
The important stuff:
Category: Secondary Weapons
Price: 1,000,000
Mass: 10 tons
Outfit Space: 10
Weapon Space: 10
Gun Ports: 1
Missile Strength: 200
Lifetime: 13.33s
Range: 4800
Homing: 4
Radar Tracking: 50%
Optical Tracking: 100%
Reload Time: 6.67s (0.15/s)
Trigger Radius: 30
Blast Radius: 150
Shield Damage: 9000 → 1350/s → 135.0/s⋅ton
Hull Damage: 7000 → 1050/s → 105.0/s⋅ton
Hit Force: 4000 → 600.0/s → 60.00/s⋅ton

(Stats taken from the Endless Sky Outfit Spoiler[sigma.tejat.net])


If you protect the Syndicate defector, you get the cloaking device, which uses consumes fuel while making you basically invulnerable. (You can't shoot when cloaked, though).


Basically, the choice is down to:
Do you want 1M credit, one-shot, massive damage nukes, or a fuel-consuming invulnerablitity device?

Hint: 1M is a lot, and invulnerability makes a lot of stuff later on a lot easier.


Syndicate Nukes
It's nuke or be nuked!
If you chose to protect the defector, you team up with the republic to persecute Syndicate officials. Getting into Syndicate space is easy, getting out, well, means dodging nukes.

This is why I reccomended you get a quicksilver. It's fast and manuverable.

If you're stuck there already, you can still get a quicksilver, you just need to bribe a planet that sells them.

Outfit it with the most powerful engines and turning you can fit.

Then, jump to Scheat, turn donut away from the system center, and continue speeding away until you're safe. Then carefully open the map, select Sol, and carefully jump through Delta Capricorni into Republic space.

Pug
Some of the battles with the Pug are hard. I can't really do anything about that. Just RNG your way through, I guess.

Don't forget to steal all the Pug's jump drives and Pug seekers, those are quite useful. Don't try to capture their ships though. They have insane bio-defenses.

"Final Battle"
At one point, the Republic, Syndicate, and Free Worlds send you a ridiculously large fleet. DON'T WASTE IT!

If you jump into the system and land, like you're supposed to, the fleet will disperse.

Instead, take the fleet on a little detour.

And by "little detour," I mean take them on trip to visit all the scenic pirate planets and their defense fleets. (hint, hint..)

If you don't know what I mean, just travel to all the pirate systems, and the fleet will follow you. (They might lag behind, though). Every time you get to a pirate system, click Shift + T, then click "Demand Tribute." If your combat rating is high enough*, they will deploy their defense fleet, which your huge fleet will spawn-kill.

Then click Shift + T, and click "Demand Tribute," again. If you killed their whole defense fleet, then they will surrender and pay you some number of credits every day.

Do this for all the pirate planets, and don't forget the Men system. (That has two planets to conquer, by the way).


You can also farm Korath with the jump-capable warships... (To the right of Syndicate space).

*Your combat rating increases the more ships you kill.

Cloaking Device
Once you're done exploiting the huge fleet they give you, return to the planet you were supposed to go to, and complete the campaign.

When they ask you if you want to persecute the Syndicate for their crimes, SAY YES!

You will go on a very short mission chain that gets you a cloaking device.
Credits
Images
Screenshots: Me
Thumbnail: Endless Sky

Content
The shuttle pirate-capturing strategy: I think I adapted it from this guide
The outfit stats: the Endless Sky Outfit Spoiler[sigma.tejat.net]
The rest of the stuff: My own experience and the community's help.
9 Comments
< >
Durandal 21 May @ 11:08am 
Something wrong with the pictures? I can't click on them to get a better look
KcefLef 28 Jun, 2022 @ 9:14pm 
i just ended my debt after spending 6 hours doing missions
Khan 27 Apr, 2021 @ 4:41pm 
i like using a similiar method, although i always finish the starting mission
ajk1139  [author] 4 Jan, 2021 @ 12:25pm 
Unless I'm totally misremembering and that requires the seeker gun things from the Pug, in which case that's a thing for after the campaign....


Looks like I have a lot of things to revisit after I finish college applications if I want to make an extended speed-progression guide...


But yeah, apology accepted, no hard feelings. It does require a bit of luck / chance (and sometimes some savescuming) to get ships you can actually capture at any given moment, and being unlucky for a few minutes in such a tense environment can be really frustrating.
ajk1139  [author] 4 Jan, 2021 @ 12:25pm 
It's fine lol, I probably should have been more clear that the 10 minutes only applies to the loan. From my experience, you can get an Argosy in about 30-45 mins with this method, but after that it makes more sense to play the campaign normally, unless you're really deadset on spawncamping till you get a heavy warship, I suppose you could, but I'm not sure this is the most profitable method.

Once you have a heavy warship (esp. the shield beetle), you can do a similar thing with the stray Korath warship / capital ship quest in the Remnant sector, whittling down its health until you can board it (iirc, ion cannons help), stealing all the valuable equipment, selling it, collecting quest money, rinse and repeat. But again, that requires a really solid heavy warship, and there isn't a great way to bridge the gap between the 1-2 M from a half hour of this method, and the 30-60 M that would require.
ICP8 3 Jan, 2021 @ 11:12am 
Ok. After having more than enough time to think about stuff I came to an interesting conclusion. I highly misinterpreted this tutorial. The only promisse in the pirate farming section is to pay off the debt. And after trying again today (and having RNG smile upon me for once) I got two ships that combned sold for a bit over 474K in less than 10 active minutes playing. So, yes, I was wrong in ranting about the title being misleading. The thng I tried to do the first time was get as rich as possible using the info here, but as mentioned there is a lot of luck involved in boarding ships on this game, so even though it is possible, it might not be that quick depending on how many militia/merchants/republic ship are around. I apologize to the author for taking my frustrations on them.
ICP8 1 Jan, 2021 @ 8:44pm 
From what I read online aboutthis issue it is something to do with how the AI is designed. The problem isn't your strategy or how anyone plays the game. It's a mix between "it's meant to be like that"+neighborhood+RNGhell... Guess I just pulled the really short stick that day. Might give it another shot soon.
ajk1139  [author] 30 Dec, 2020 @ 10:55am 
I've done this several times and I don't think it's taken me longer than 15 minutes. Maybe something changed since the newest version?
ICP8 2 Dec, 2020 @ 12:39pm 
5 to 10 minutes? Hell, more like hours. Every time I try to take a ship after being disabled I get outrun by the merchants or militia who simply shoot them until exploding. Even if said ship has been disabled for a few seconds, not being a danger to anyone else anymore. Spent my whole afternoon trying this out and the only real upgrade to my fleet was BUYING a Clipper. Sure, was fun as hell when I luckily managed to board one or the other of the really small ships, but those were so few and far inbetween that I shut off the game in frustration.

In the end: fun challenge to try, but title is absurdly misleading.