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Earth Time:10:52:41 Mar 19 2024
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Total players: 31
Online: 1
Game Time:10:52:41 Mar 19 2524

 

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Newbie Guide

A small guide to help you through starting off your ship. Please note this is a guide and not a hard and fast way of starting off, there are many paths you can choose in this game, this guide describes some good ideas how to start on these paths.

Firstly - Username/Ship name
It is important first of all to choose a decent, sensible user name (note to all players, try to create an original name -not your school/work computer access ID, or your email address), you can have whatever user name you want - with in reason, so please no swearing or obscene names and also no names which others may find offensive.

Your ship name (which you can set in the options screen once you start the game) again is down to you to decide but as with the username please keep it clean and sensible, this is for your own good as both the ship name and username are both regularly checked by the admin and if they are found to be inappropriate then you will be warned/banned.

Picking a planet to start on
You can chose any planet within the Sol system but as a recommendation you should start off on either Mercury/Earth/Venus or at a push Mars, this you will understand why as you start getting into the game but to put it simply all of these planets are very close together, and with the engine you start with it takes a long time to move about in the outer planets.

Getting Started
When you first log in you have no rank, 7 days of grace (you cannot attack and others cannot attack you), 1500 credits (not a lot) and a slightly upgraded Hawk (which to be honest, has a survival time measured in seconds if you start picking fights, so keep a low profile for a while after your grace period runs out).

Making your first buck via missions: Whichever planet you start off at there are going to be missions available (normal missions and underground/illegal missions), you should ignore the underground missions for now as they may lead to trouble with the law and with only the starting ship you would be unable to defend yourself against the police. Search the missions list (use the filters to narrow it down to Sol only missions as travelling to another galaxy at this point would take a long time) and find one to any of the nearby planets, but be warned with a Hawk you won\x92t be able to carry big loads and you don't travel that fast so pick carefully, if you are unsure how long it will take to get to a planet use the travel calculator on the travel screen and keep referring back to it to choose which mission is best for you. A good idea would be to look for small loads of Weapons, Narcotics, Robots, Gemstones or anything else that sounds expensive travelling locally, this is where you can get big money. Once you have selected your mission, return to the travel screen and set your destination to that planet, then sit back and watch the stars scroll by! When you reach your destination your mission will automatically be cleared and you will receive a mail telling you how you did and that the money will have been deposited in your account.

Making your first buck via trade: This is harder and may take longer to build up some money but once you get the hang of it can be come a nice little earner. Basically with trading you are taking stuff form one planet and selling it to another. To do this first you want to look at the market screen and note down what this planet is selling and how much they are selling it for, then you should check out the encyclopaedia planetary and check at a few local planets to see which will buy these items and how much they will buy them for. Once you have decided which trade route you wish to take, return to the market screen and buy the goods, then go to the travel screen and set that planet as your destination. When you arrive you will have to return to the market screen to sell off the goods.

Upgrading. A good idea is to upgrade your hull early, you can upgrade from a type 3 to a type 9 hull fairly cheaply (although it will take 4 hours to fit the new hull) and this will provide you with a little more protection from attacks (although be warned this by no means makes you indestructible, just slightly lease easy to pick off). Also you want to upgrade your engine as soon as possible, this will take a little while to save up enough money for but is well worth it, as a faster engine means shorter travel times which means you can finish missions/turn a buck faster.

Not getting shot. Much of this game you will find that you are alone but do not despair, a good way of not getting shot is simply to make yourself known, on the in game message board and in the forums. Most people have a problem with pulling the trigger on someone they have been chatting to and who seems like a nice person and so they will leave you alone.

Choosing a career
Now that you have learnt to make some money you need to make a decision on how you wish to continue playing (note there are no "set" careers so you can pretty much do what you want when you want and you can swap between several careers).

Trader - Simple really, you carry stuff from one planet to another along with completing missions - Trading is quite safe compared to the other careers as your only threat is from pirate attacks, this possibly one of the best careers for making money easily.

Smuggler - Similar to trader but one whose prepared to break the law doing smuggling missions on the U-G board - Though the police don't approve it is rare that you will get caught and even rarer that you will make it onto the wanted list enough that the police will start chasing you.

Miner - Again simple, when you get an in game message allowing mining rights you go to that planet and mine - It does cost a bit of money to mine but its generally worth it, once you've mined go and sell it, you didn't pay much for it anyway so its got to be worth it.

Looter - This is a relatively new career and involves keeping an eye out on the news reports - It involves finding out where someone was destroyed and scooping up their lost cargo, quite a good choice for an opportunist, as you can often find very nice cargo left unscooped amongst ruined ships, beware though, the original attacker may still be near by and may not appreciate you stealing their hard fought cargo.

Pirate - Find someone weaker than you on the scanner, destroy their ship up and steal/scoop their cargo (something a lot of the pirates seem to forget!) - This is a tough way of making money and making yourself feel like a big man also it attract attentions from both the Police and the Bounty Hunters, which probably usually isn\x92t worth the trade off although several people have made a go of this career.

Assassin - Probably one of the most secret jobs, highly paid but carries with it significant risk to yourself - To take up this career you find assassinations mission on the U-G board (note if it involves an NPC its assassination) and go after your target, it is unknown how many dedicated assassins there on AoA because (in the true spirit of assassins) they do not reveal themselves. There is serious money available in the assassination business but it is not recommend for a beginner due to the high risk of you being killed by return fire from the target, or by the police.

Bounty Hunter - Buy a license, hunt down people with a bounty on their head, shoot them down and collect the reward - A lot of money available in this career, though be advised, the biggest bounties are often on the heads of very dangerous people so be careful, this career should only be undertaken by experienced players, plus it takes a large amount of start up capital to buy a license.

Psycho - Not really a career as much a hobby - These people (and there is not to many at any one time) go around killing simply for the hell of it, they usually don't start off like this but one thing leads to another and the pull of the dark side can be quite strong.

After that...
There really isn't an after that, the game is flexible in what you can do and how you can do it, choose the path that you wish to follow and see how it goes, remember you can always change your career the further you get in the game, just have fun and enjoy the game!

Many thanks to theenigma123 (for the words) and Super_Bob (for editing)