Exploration

[maxmurder]

What is the best way to explore sectors?

My strategy has been, if there isn't a distress beacon or a store, to jump to the star that will reveal the most connections. This maximizes the chance that you will see a store or beacon. It becomes especially effective if you have long range scanners, as you will be able to see exactly what is at each beacon and allows you pick your battles.

As for sectors to explore: Nebulae allow for maximum grind, however they can be extremely dangerous as ion storms can ruin your day; Civilian sectors are usually relativity tame and offer more stores; Hostile sectors can be very dangerous, but seem to pay off with better loot. Also you need to take the right path when jumping. I try to take the branch with a good civ to nebula/hostile ratio, so I can jump to a civ zone if things are looking bleak.

[mrfatpockets]

I am pretty sure there is a difference between the nebulae you find on the local beacon map and the ones you find on the sector map. According to the beacon descriptions the uncharted nebulae sectors don't provide a bonus while the beacons in regular zones do.

Also, you can get stuck going to the exit. I have done it a few times where I needed to backtrack several beacons into rebel occupied territory to get to the zone exit. Plan accordingly. The distance does matter and there might only be one beacon that connects to the exit.

[maxmurder]

I think you still get a bonus if you are in a nebula sector, it's just not as good.

[Aufklarer]

the rebel fleet does not advance as fast when your inside nebula, i always grind nebula where possible for scrap and at the start of an uncharted sector map i spend all my scap on spare power for when I hit an ion storm. Its annoying when you hit a store early on and you have no scrap but to be honest extra power is never wasted.

[Redfoot]

On the subject of Ion Storms does the AI's power get cut too? Seems to me like they're still at 100% while I'm the one shutting everything down. In late sectors these have been absolute death traps for me, I lost half my crew on my best Torus run so far to a missile in the engine + beam across helm..

[maxmurder]

I believe their power gets cut. I've seen ships with the majority of their weapons powered down when in an ion storm.

[TheAzryte]

On the subject of Ion Storms does the AI's power get cut too? Seems to me like they're still at 100% while I'm the one shutting everything down. In late sectors these have been absolute death traps for me, I lost half my crew on my best Torus run so far to a missile in the engine + beam across helm..

They do, I've damaged one's engines and it's activated an extra weapon as a result, therefore ion storms do indeed effect them.

[Derakon]

That doesn't necessarily indicate anything -- their reactor wasn't sufficient to run their engines at full and that additional weapon, but you can achieve that easily yourself without needing a storm around.

I met an enemy ship in a storm using three weapons simultaneously while also having a two-layer shield, when my own ship had only 4 bars of energy to work with. Even if we assume that the enemy ship had a better reactor than I did, there's no way it should have had that much more energy to work with. I don't think that storms affect the enemy.

[Harlequin78]

Three weapons and 2 layers of shields needs 7 energy to run minimun, doable if he had 14. Ion storms do halve enemy power as well and if he was a drone he had no O2 to worry about and very few systems as they only have 5-7 rooms on average and some of thm are indeed empty.