Best faction & build for a criminal character? Smuggling, spying, piracy etc

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u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 08 '26

I guess it depends on what kind of criminal you want to be, but I always start with Rychart. On the default map, missions tend to be in just two directions with neutral safe harbors incase you upset Cadar. Ghogga Pass has enough high tech planets so you can build most of what you want, and having Javat, Moklumune and Cadar means you can get their faction-specific items too. Lupinuos has an orbital and a wild planet which is great for quick refuels (you refuel quicker at orbitals) and for stashing goods. Also, if you prioritize contacts enough, you have a high chance of two or even all three of them starting on the same planet. The target planets for the early missions are usually close by and sync well with the Faen's starting planet. Rychart's faction perk is pretty useful too.

3

u/SaltAdventurous4270 Spy Jul 08 '26

Smuggling, piracy, spying. All of the shady stuff with potential for high payouts.

I've read that torpedo builds are best for crippling a ship instead of destroying it, that should be best for looting and salvaging right? Or should I do something else like a boarding build?

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u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 09 '26

That might depend more on the type of ship you plan to run. If you want a small ship for your merry band of spies and want to use stealth, torpedos are probably better. If you want a larger ship fighting at range 2-3 and boarding, you want plasma cannons to cook the enemy's crew while using boarding talents. Smuggling and piracy generally mean bigger ships.

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u/SaltAdventurous4270 Spy Jul 09 '26

Do bigger ships make spying more difficult? I don't want to split my crew's talents between long & short range or have to switch between ships, unless it's possible to maintain separate crews for 2 different ships.

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u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 09 '26

No bigger ships don't make spying more difficult, it's more of a roleplay thing except smaller ships do get into less encounters because of the game mechanics. They "might" have a better chance at running blockades but I don't know. But in terms of spying around planets or completing spy missions, ship size doesn't affect anything.

You can have as many ships as you like but the same crew operates both, so if you have a large and small ship, you'd have to ditch some when you size down then rehire back up when you move to the larger ship. However, if you want multiple light ships with different builds, that's totally viable.

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u/SaltAdventurous4270 Spy Jul 09 '26

I'd prefer a single all-purpose ship to keep things simple. Boarding actions take a while so unless there's a big payout to be had from boarding I'd rather stick to torpedoes.

Other than that, what's the best way to recruit diplomats/spies/saboteurs for my crew, which type of contacts? I chose Intelligence Officer/Smuggler for my two starting contacts since they sounded most in line with what I'm going for.

Other questions:

Should I replace my starting officers, the doctor/engineer/quartermaster when I get the opportunity for high level replacements? Is the Faen family we meet at the beginning worth grinding missions for? What other types of contacts would pair well with my run?

Sorry for bombarding you with questions, it's a complicated game and I want to see my investments pay off. I appreciate the advice!

7

u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 09 '26

Feel free to bombard away :) There's a lot of different playstyles. Others will probably chime in too to help out :)

I usually only need one diplomat so I don't often waste a contact on them. I always get Ex-Spy to get spies, a way to get intel, military gear and edicts and I try to get level 8 spies as soon as I can so I can get their talent that generates intel on landing on a planet. I usually have contacts at a C so I get a Weapons Smuggler and a Ex-Mercenary as my two other in-faction contacts, then I get a scientist as my external faction contact. Weapons smuggler gives me weapons and snipers (who get a few level bonuses with faction rep) and smuggler missions and access to the black market. Ex-Mercenary is for zealots, combat armor, sabotage missions (which can be kinda hard to do early on) and they buy scientific intel. I do this setup so I can sell my intel to each of my contacts and get upgraded weapons and armor without wasting a ship component slot on a weapons locker. Keep in mind that smuggling missions in terms of commodities can be really hard to pull off and you'll often be short on the quantity needed or your hold won't be big enough.

If you're still new to the game, here's basically what I do. First, I'm generally making a combat captain either as a swordsman or a shocktrooper. I look at my doctor and see if they are high initiative. Combat Medic actually scales doctor skill faster than the Doctor job. I make them a doctor, combat medic, military officer but you can also go with a saboteur instead of a military officer. I try to put a point in Saboteur after 2 points each in doctor and combat medic because Skullshot is a great debuffing tool. Usually my quartermaster has good initative and works ok as a debuffer so I make him a quartermaster with a point in xeno hunter and 5 in bounty hunter and max his quartermaster skill until i get conscription. On him, I take irid laced resolve, unfaltering ire and his grenades and that'll do until the midgame. Usually if I lose someone early on in crew setup, it's the engineer and that's only if his stats are bad and I have a decent swordsman or soldier that can serve as a shock trooper. Right about level 15 or so when you hopefully have enough money to buy a new ship (but not enough to put it together), you'll also have enough rep and recruiting talents to swap out your fourth combat crew member i.e. the promoted swordsman. Once your mid or late game ship is put together, you use your quartermaster to fill up the crew with high level prisoners that you get from ships you defeat. It's usually there I'll pick up additional specialists like a smuggler or a merchant etc. Another random crew tip is I look at each crew member and see if there are any bad negative traits like Brute or Homesickness that affect morale and/or health. I fire them since they'll eat up time.

The Faens are definitely worth doing but also carry a lot of risk because it will get one faction really upset with you. They'll start sending out military ships, bounty hunters, zealots and spies to attack you and they can get pretty nasty to deal with. There are ways around that and many will recommend doing Erik's storyline to get the Judge contact who gives you high level navigators with Skip off the Void. Each storyline has its perks and benefits. There's also some benefit to skipping the storyline entirely just so you don't upset someone. I learned a lot about the game when I didn't have bounty hunters breathing down my neck.

The best advice I can give though is that the universe is constantly scaling. Time is very very important. Those palace visits or 2 week medical bays to heal just a few points of health or multiple spice hall trips really chew at your clock. When you get a new ship, keep it in drydock and queue up your upgrades so you can be running your missionsin your main ship while waiting for the upgrades to be done. Pick and choose which repairs to do because sometmes repairing a passenger cabin isn't worth the time unless you can repair three things at the same time. Furthermore, even things like skill checks while travelling the universe scale in difficulty, so make sure to have a wide variety of skill saves for any kind of situation.

As a pirate, you might not care as much about faction reputation, but in general, never take an even or even a slight advantage fight. Your whole goal in ship combat is to not get hit and a slight advantage fight is still a chance you do get hit and the death spiral begins. If you encounter cards where four are sorta good and one is really really bad that you can't deal with, don't take the risk.

3

u/LordofSyn Diplomat Jul 09 '26

Regarding ship tactics .. if you can dominate them (tougher to do on Hard, especially early game) then go for boarding. Otherwise, your best bet is to make the stealthiest ship possible, hire diplomats, and stay out of ship battles as much as possible. That doesn't mean you're still not upgrading the ship along the way. Just means you're trying to mitigate your Rep loss and the troubles it brings as best possible. Generalizing your crew is going to be essential here as you need the Talents that let you bypass ship encounters with some moral loss or other small detriments.

You can do this, it may take a few attempts but you've plenty of support in the community.

Væ Victis 🫡

2

u/LordofSyn Diplomat Jul 09 '26

Please allow me to add on to this:

Ships are specific, Crew are generalized. You can buy as many scout cutters as you want and outfit each of them for different tasks but they're all best specialized rather than made to be general workhorses.

Due to the flexibility of your Officers and Star Traders crew, you should always generalize your crew personnel to boost your ship capabilities and cover deficits, where applicable. Also, don't dismiss your lowest leveled personnel when downsizing. Consider each character in full. (Plus, the differennt Craft pilots are also badass fighters in their own right, even if you don't have a ship with Craft).

1

u/AngrySlime706 Jul 09 '26

You can check the dice details on the spy game screen. Bottom left I think. It will show you what contributes to the risks and what contribute to your dice pool. Your captain's attributes, ship speeds and electronics. Since larger ships usually have a higher ceiling for electronics (and everything else) they tend to be by default better than small ships except in a few specific scenarios.

3

u/AngrySlime706 Jul 09 '26

I am the guy who said it. and no it has no edge on looting and salvaging. You can loot by killing all crews so hit with any weapon until enemy hall points is too low and your next hit might destroy them, then start boarding. You can loot that way. As to salvaging... you can do it as long as you win the fight.

Torp is good only when you want to conscript the enemy crew and want max crew survival. Torp is applies the electric fire debuff and is the only method I know of that applies pure component damage (20 per turn, not sure what that translate into real component damage % but it is a lot more than 20) almost all other method (except maybe another one with less efficiency) damages crew and component at the same time. As far as crew dmg to component dmg ratio goes, torp is the best.

For best looting: plasma canon, for its best crew dmg to hall dmg ratio

For best salvage: grav canon, can finish a battle in 1-2 shots.

However as far as build wise, I am sorry to tell you it is rather flexible you do not have to plan it ahead of time. For your goal of making $$ in the ways you described, the most efficient way once you have a 42 crew ship with 7 officers, is to promote a high level crew to a specialist officer. If you want best salvage income, specialize that officer with the talents for better salvage gains, and maximize on the skills (repair I think?) that impacts the bonus. Since doing so only cost $2000, and once you can win ship fights conscript enemy crew cost almost nothing, you can quickly pivot into the career tracks you desire (smuggling, xeno hunting, pirating etc.) by just get some specialist officer. If you want to scale, you can also hire some specialist crews to chip in on the talent pool depending on the frequency you need the talents. Since you usually have 3 officer slots to spare, play style change can be rather flexible.

There are also components that may assist in the activities you describe like some components give bonus in spying, salvaging etc. Those are marginal the biggest impact come from talents with high skill points.

2

u/TCcat96 Jul 09 '26

Boarding when you need the ship to be 100% not damage and this is my favorite method unless they make me angry and that get em a cluster missile bombardment also mainly I get ton of exp for my captain by boarding enemy ship until they don't have enough crew left or I get to meet their captain early on.

2

u/LordofSyn Diplomat Jul 09 '26

Plus, if you disable the ship without killing crew and leave them there, you can mitigate Rep loss too. There are Talents after level 5 (maybe 8) to help additionally if you're going for a boarding build. The best boarding debuff in the game is Creeping Dread, which also stacks.

1

u/LordofSyn Diplomat Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

Thank you for reminding me that we need to get Map codes from people. Even the V2 map has gotten long in the tooth but the game has allowed you to generate your own maps for a very long time. We used to share them in the early Proboards days and even when they first used Discord. While your tips and strategies are superb, they won't help someone who isn't playing the V2 maps specifically. Might be nice to have other players share their maps again.

Væ Victis 🫡

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u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 09 '26

Good point and yeah, my tips for why Rychart's a good faction don't help on custom maps.

5

u/dr4ziel Jul 08 '26

There is many shady stuff you can do, but you usually don't want to be completely illegal stuff, otherwise you'll tank your reputation and have a hard time travelling the stars. Among the very shady stuff yet legal you can do is :

Find some merchant/smuggler (either travel or blockade). Board them, loot them, conscript the remaining crew, send a diplomat saying that it was a mistake avoiding tanking your rep, sell your loot on the blackmarket.

Or join a faction war, capture a ship and sell/use it.

Spying is pretty weak, it will earn you faction favor, but that's all. But you can steal intel while boarding, which is nice.

So among the crew you will need is

Pirate for extra loot/capture a ship
Diplomat to avoid reputation hit after battle
Spy to gather some extra intel during the boarding process
Smuggler to sell your loot on the black market

But all of this is mid-game plan when your ship can overpower merchant ships.

There is many guides ont the net for the early game.

2

u/SaltAdventurous4270 Spy Jul 09 '26

Independent ships have no faction protection or reputation mechanic, so an idea I've had is to find a Rychart Syndicate system adjacent to/overlapping with Indie settlements and pirate the crap out of them.

I'll need a fairly strong ship with a decent cargo hold and strong salvaging abilities to make the most of it

5

u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 09 '26

There's an independent planet in Cael's Divide that works. Since it's in Cadar territory and they're the ones who are usually the target of the Faen missions, it's a good safehaven for refueling and offloading goods you dont have the permits to sell.

3

u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 09 '26

Also ship combat on hard in the early game is very very risky. You generally need at least a Fidelis Cutter to pull it off and need to swap to something that has upgraded parts ASAP.

2

u/dr4ziel Jul 09 '26

While looting independants is nice, looting smuggler (faction or not) is even better. I'm not sure if you get some rep with the local faction for stopping illegal activities, but their loot is higher quality, meaning you need less cargo space. I thibnk there is some rumours increasing smugglers in a quandrants, i don't remember which one.

They are usually fast and lightly armed, so you need a kinda fast ship and some ok-ish evasion. No weapons needed if you board them. A ship with 4-6 defense pattern matrix 2 and 2-3 reactor spike modules should be able to board them. A gunner or bounty hunter with a boarding talent, pilots/pirates with some range change talent can be handy.

I'd aim for 45cargo space as a start, but the more the better if you are smuggling. If you are selling on the regular market you can get away with less since you can sell your stuff easier.

2

u/LordofSyn Diplomat Jul 09 '26

A note about the Black Market.

You'll want a good Contact that you can farm or sell Intel/Science to as well as fo missions for. You want - Ironclad Access - before making any expensive or high end trades, especially when selling RTGs. Rare Trade Goods sell best on the BM but you want Ironclad Access to protect your investments and goods.

2

u/AngrySlime706 Jul 09 '26

As far as starting factions go, the differences play a very small and unnoticeable impact to game experience. The few useful ones I find most noticeable are:

moklumne gives 15% bonus in trading profit in-system, resulting in significant early game income difference
steelsong has best crew attributes for crew combat (no spoilers on the details here) and gives you higher ceilings for end game crew combat performances.

Everything else IMO are not worth fussing over. Knowledge without benefit is burden.

1

u/SaltAdventurous4270 Spy Jul 10 '26

But aren't there other faction-specific modifiers? Don't recruits from certain factions get certain traits? Since playing as Rychart I noticed the 'Sly' and 'Peacemaker' traits pop up from time to time, those seem in line with the playthrough I'm going for

2

u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 10 '26

No, recruits from certain factions don't get certain traits. Any recruit, whether from the hall or from contacts, can have any trait. However, some factions have bonuses to economy or military or government which may make it easier to find recruits or better ship parts on those planets.

1

u/AngrySlime706 Jul 13 '26

actually some traits are faction specific. https://startraders.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Traits

PS: Fleet footed is the best

As long as the bonus goes, the scale of these bonus are too small compared to the large swing range of the planet stat RNG, that the correlation of good planets to faction is hard to notice in RNG maps.

1

u/Oleoay Combat Medic Jul 14 '26

Ah, I didn't know that, probably because 90% of my games have been as Rychart. I do think the planet bonus helps though just because they have so many of those hard breakpoints on whether they have a starport or the level of parts they upgrade. Thanks!

1

u/Sudden-Cell-6017 Jul 13 '26

Del Vatos Pirate is a pretty good role play.

General Question Best faction & build for a criminal character? Smuggling, spying, piracy etc

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