Space Pirates and Zombies SPAZ T+

Galaxy Fitting

Okay so first thing the game asks you to do is create a galaxy. It gives you some help as to how the different choices will affect your game but in case you still aren't sure here's the rundown.

First thing is total stars, this one the game flat out tells you that the difficulty curve in your game is dependant on this. Basically each star has a determined level of difficulty judging how advanced and powerful your opponents will be, and the difficulty scales up as you near the center of the galaxy. Thus choosing 150 stars, the lowest setting, will result in level progression anywhere from 4 lvls to 10 lvls between stars. If you haven't played the game before I can tell you right now this is probably too much for you. Expect to get blown up a lot just trying to get to the next system. The maximum of 300 stars is a better bet for your first time, since the difficulty only goes up 1 or 2 levels between stars. The game will obviously be longer, but once you hit your stride you'll be able to blast through warp gates in just a few minutes (more on that later).

Then there is difficulty, which is pretty self-explanatory in it's choices. Keep in mind however, that difficulty affects the level jump mentioned above, making a a five level increase pretty much standard even in the 300 star galaxy on INSANE! mode.

Next is Bounty Hunter Population. If this is your first time playing, I would go ahead and turn this all the way off. In short each star has it's own populations and memory of your actions. If you blow up a space station, people in that system are going to remember and they will NOT be happy about it. However, due to the disorder in the galaxy no star communicates this to their neighbors. Meaning you could blow up every ship in one system, make a jump and peacefully trade with the same faction in the next sector. Bounty hunters are the counter to this. They remember anything that happens within their region (which can be seen in game by highlighting their base with the mouse) and thus will continue to harass you until you leave their territory or you take care of your bounty somehow. This can be done by paying it off flat, which is usually an expensive option, impressing the hunters, which is time consuming but has other rewards or just blowing up as many of them as you can, which is both time and resource consuming, but is much simpler and also fun if you're well equipped. If you wish to play with bounty hunters on, keep in mind that adding more to your galaxy will mean thier territories are also larger, so it could be hard to avoid places you are already in trouble. Bounty hunters also have a nasty habit of attacking you as soon as you jump in system, putting your mothership in immediate danger and draining resources as you fight them. More on how to deal with them later, if you choose to turn them on.

Lastly there is tech availablity, which is basically how easy it is to find new things to build. Choosing higher tech availiabilty means you get better stuff faster, however it does not make those things CHEAPER TO BUILD. So bear this in mind when starting up, because it can get frustrating sitting on a weapon you don't have the resources to build for half your game. At the same time, choosing low tech availabilty means you're in for a long looooooooooong grind. so bear this in mind.

The Tutorial And A Bit More

So first thing that happens is your ship explodes, taking your escort with it. Not the best of beginnings but you take what you get. You are instructed to press space, this brings you to the ships command systems menu, which you should familiarize yourself with. Not much to see here yet, I know, but remember it anyways before you go to the hangar.

This is the sad sight that greets you when you click on the hangar, you have only "Tiny hulls" to build from as of yet, and of that all you can afford is the short bus. Go ahead and go with their suggested loadout, but take note of where everything is, particularly the upper left where you will see the letters A, B, and C. These are your stored loadouts, whichever one is highlighted is the one that gets saved to that letter. You can reset the selected one with the circle arrow to the right. You wont get much chance to use this right now, but later on having multiple stored ship layouts can save you time and frustration. Keep this in mind when you start trying out new tech, it might be wise to switch to a blank loadout to try tech out, keeping what you know works on another so if the battle begins to go poorly you can rebuild your old standby without wasting much time. The loadouts are not specific to each hull, so if you have one hull under A and a different one under B that is what will be remembered, there is NOT an ABC for each hull, it is remembered universally.

One thing they wont tell you just yet is about the Auto rebuild option, which is at the bottom just below the "Build ship" button. It is highly recommended you check this. It will reconstruct ships that are destroyed in combat automatically based on the last loadout used. It consumes resources, but it's a lot better than being in the middle of combat and wondering where your other ships went. Also each hanger has it's own Auto rebuild option, so make sure you have them all checked if you are going into combat.

After construction it gives you the basic controls. They don't really explain the necessity of stabilizers but TAKE NOTE of that key. There are a lot of things that will push you around in combat and knowing you can secure your position in space by holding the stabilizers rather than fighting those forces manually can come in handy. Stabilizers eventually stop your momentum of course, so more experienced pilots may want to simply counteract with their own thrusters, but if you ever need to get your bearings stabilizing is a good option.

So after you reach the mining facility it gives you a rundown of your first resource, Rez, hereafter represented by "R". There are a few extra things you need to know about this resource. First, in its natural state it breaks down over time, eventually disspearing altogether. It splits into it's subsequent divisions first, so each largest R will go through every smaller version first, but it loses some value each time it breaks down, so collecting it as soon as possible is in your best interest. Secondly, the AI is a bit... miserly. You wont have more than two ships for the time being but even now, the AI controlled ships will hang on to R even though it slows down their movement and refuse to report back to the mothership or beacon until their cargo hold is absolutely full. If one of your AI controlled ships is nearly full and cant carry the larger denominations of R it will continue on until it fills. All of the above applies even during combat, meaning your AI ships could be put at a disadvantage they don't know how to deal with. Luckily they focus on the combat first, so all it takes is for you to quickly switch to that ship and deal with the issue, either by jettisoning the cargo or bringing it to your beacon. Note that while the AI doesn't focus on R collection until combat is over, it still automatically collects R that it flies over and the tractor beams still collect anything that is within range, so deal with it accordingly. If you are in heavy combat, use loadouts without tractor beams and keep track of your AI's cargo load, jettisoning where necessary.

Also not your mining laser scales with the socket it's placed in, so in the short bus, your mining laser will only be powerful enough to cut apart smaller rocks. Larger ships will be able to split rocks just as large as the ones the mining facilities park next to.

In the next mission you will come across Data, hereafter represented by D. D weighs nothing and takes up no room in your cargo bay, it also dissapates after a while, so collection during combat is reccommended. Note that even in ships that are not equipped with a tractor beam D will be drawn towards the ship when you fly within range. Blackboxes work much the same, but dissapear MUCH faster. Both get collected w/o returning to base. Once you get em, you got em.

D lets you level up your tech. I'll cover this more later but heres a few short tips. When you click on a category of tech it shows the levels of upgrades, hovering over each level shows exactly the benefits it gets you and what it unlocks. I reccomend planning ahead towards tech you have but cant use yet or things that you commonly find in short supply during combat.

Also covered in this section is targeting and allies. Luckily this is one thing the AI completely kicks ass at. Firing on friendly ships enough makes your rep with them decline. If you aren't sure about a ships faction alignment, you can put the mouse cursor over it or simply fly close to it and hit the F key. You don't lose any rep for targeting and it's faction and attitude towards you are displayed along with it's shields in the upper right corner. As I said, the AI can take care of itself in this regard, it will almost never fire on friendly targets and even if it hits them on accident it will cease fire soon enough to not get you into any trouble for it. The only time this gets tricky is when you are neutral or slightly disliked with a faction. As soon as you warp to their base your AI will defend themselves, so if you are there to bribe or trade with a faction, make a beeline for the station at top speed. Your AI wont get much chance to damage or piss them off and once you've bribed them into being your allies the AI will treat them as such. Don't just mash the bribe button though, once you dock the combat is paused, so feel free to weigh your decision then on whether you have the necessary supplies at that point.

You may notice when you start blowing up ships that they have a small blast wave, represented by a white circle, upon destruction. This may be inconsequential at first, but take note that this blast wave does DAMAGE to sheilds and hull and bigger ships make bigger blast waves with higher damage. Getting caught in a tiny blast wave will give your shields a dent. Blowing up a larger ship or space station will tear through smaller ships sheilds and hulls in one go, and if your sheilds were damaged in combat there's less resistance to this. For smaller ships this is merely annoying, but it can get costly later on, for example when you are flying a capital ship and fighting another ship of the same size, you may get low hull integrity in a close battle right before you destroy the enemy ship. You have a short amount of time to GET OUT OF THERE because the blast wave can finish your ship off for good. It's a lot cheaper to repair a ship than to rebuild it, so get used to going to full thrust on your most expensive ship whenever you take down a large enemy. Later on there are thruster engines that go faster going forwards than any other direction. These help a lot in the above situation, equip your best ship with thrusters and when the enemy beings to explode, simply fly past them at top speed instead of backing up. This will usually get you clear of danger in time.

Tips For Surviving The Galaxy

So they set you free and it's time to blast your way across the galaxy. Here are some things that will make it easier on you.

Interchangable Parts Depending on the space station, each civilian base has a "convert X to Y" option, where X and Y are Goons, Data, or Rez. The type of station determines the end product. Science stations give you Data, Mining stations give you Rez, and Colonies give you Goons.

Calculated bombardment. In the tactics panel there are many useful option hidden under advanced tactics (represented by a box with a plus in it expanding from a smaller box) Among these are the options to remap your different types of weapons to different firing keys. This can allow you to tactically seperate different weapon types on larger ships. For example blaster weapons for taking down sheilds can be assigned to one button and hull piercing beams to another. Keep in mind the seperation is based on weapon types (beams, blasters, rockets etc.) and not different weapons of the same type. Leech emitters and other beams will still fire simultaneously. The exception to this is turrets. From the same menu you can set turrets to autofire independently. You no longer have control of when they fire, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, a favorite tactic of mine in capital to capital-ship combat is to put Leech emmiters on my turrets and enable autofire. I then maintain a close distance to my opponent, meaning the leech emmiters are constantly draining their energy and feeding my reactor, allowing to fire my other energy based weapons with impunity when they are in range. If you do need control of the turrets you can hold shift to take control even in autofire mode, it immobilizes you but you can control their fire without switching orders, good for taking out cloaked targets you know are there but the AI doesn't and focusing on certain targets. Aside from specialization, having seperate weapon firing systems can also save power, which can be critical in a battle situation.

Drones are fantastic. No seriously, drones are fairly essential in this game. As you only have 2-3 ships for most of the game, being able to swarm your enemy with small, easily replaceable attackers from different angles is a huge advantage in battle. There are counter-measures to them, but it's easy enough to focus attention on those ships first so your drones can wreak havoc. Drones are expensive, and odds are you'll experience the awesome and annoying might of drones from the recieving end first, but it's better you learn now what counters them. Point defense and autoturrets with a good rate of fire do well. Beams are slightly less effective, but still work since their swarm pattern means they will eventually fly through a constant beam. I would reccommend having at least one ship with drones equipped at all times after you unlock them. I'm a personal fan of the Bounty Hunter hull the Raven, as it is the smallest ship capable of carrying drones and lets you have the capital ship of your choice armed to the teeth with whatever else you want. Drones are also a special case when approaching a neutral base as well, as they can be destroyed rather quickly before you can bribe the station to stop firing actively and cloaked drones will be fired upon regardless. For this purpose its recommended you dock your drones before you try to business with a space station.

Mining doesn't have to be a pain. Later on in the game your Rez capacity is enough to cover replacing your biggest ships a few times over. The tricky part is gathering enough to fill your stores to capacity. It can be a time consuming process if you use your regular combat ships. It's recommended you keep one of your loadout slots devoted to this refilling process and have one for each hangar. Two of the ships should have large cargo capacities, the largest in their repective classes. The third ship should have a mining laser, my favorite is the Cyclops, which can equip a mining laser big enough to carve up the asteroids floating next mining stations while still being relatively cheap. The AI will ferry the Rez back while you use the cyclops to help break apart the asteroid faster at any mining station. Keeping the ship stabilized and firing at the asteroid increases how much Rez is mined at a time, so any time your ships come by they should be able to fill up rather quickly unless you have a frieghter, whose full load will fill a good portion of your rez each time. Be certain to switch back to your combat loadouts when you finish mining, as this will consume some of your rez and the remaining gap can be refilled rather quickly even with combat ships. This can take 15 minutes or so, but being able to rebuild your capital ship 3 times over in combat makes it worth the work.

Have a reasearch plan. When you level up you only get a few research points at a time, but bigger upgrades can cost several levels worth of research points, be sure to save up for your bigger guns, the game will pester you about having the research poins laying around, but the payoff for the new tech is worth the annoyance.

Keep multiple saves. Its a good idea to save often. After you make progress and right after stocking up on resources. Make sure to label them in a way you'll remember. It's important to have a save after resource stocking because it is possible to expend so much resources that rebuilding will take hours, forcing you to start from your cheapest ships and mine your way back to the top. In this situation, you can revert to a save with full resources and attempt to better prepare for the battle. On the other hand, saving right after progress is made makes sure you lose nothing to bugs or accidental overwrites. Generally its good to have one full resource save and two progress saves on rotation, this way you can revert to a previous progress save if you regret something you bought or invest in something else that didn't pan out well.

Farming The Suburbs

By the time you breach the first major gates, upgrades to tech will be require more and more D. if you are consitently stuck or just eager to get enough points for that new weapon you just picked up, there is a quicker solution. Just understand that "quicker" is relative in this instance.

By fighting ships of your own level you do aquire more data but usually they will give you a right beating as well, if you're pressed for resources of any kind, never forget your roots. Going back to the outer stars where you started may seem like backtracking and you've probably gotten everything you thought you wanted from them, but the thing is they will always remain at the tech level they started at. This means that you, the space pirate who has slowly amassed enough R to build capital ships with ridiculous guns (or at least a ridiculous amount of guns) can go back and tear them to shreds. You wont get as much D for killing them but considering how much faster you can eliminate them you can hit several more stars in a short time and actually build up resources faster than if you tried doing the same in the inner stars. As I said though, this is relative and mostly a way of saving yourself cost and frustration at tackling higher level stars. Once you level things up enough the lowest level stars wont get you enough resources to make it worth your time and you'll have to move up to the next ring of stars.

It is highly recommended you don't do this to every star however, as you might find yourself in desperate need of someone to trade with someday only to discover that you managed to cheese off the entire known galaxy. A surefire way to do this is to go on a space station scuttle spree (say that five times fast). Dusting a space station will net you more resources all around, but considering you are killing most of the star's population of that faction... well lets just say the survivors aren't going to forget it anytime soon. Also worth noting is that the station respawns when you exit and reenter the system, but it will be at the lowest level and not be worth much. Its best to come back after visiting several other systems (time passes when you jump) to allow them to rebuild, unless you're just feeling vindictive against that system.

The amount to bribe them back from a space station catastrophe is usually so much that it's better just to fly off somewhere where they don't know you. On the upside, the opposite faction will love you for doing this, and as I mentioned the stations can be respawned, so you can do this multiple times if you want to get in the good books with the opposite faction in a hurry. It may be tempting to throw your weight around and go after both factions in a lower level star. DON'T. Seriously you're just making an area where everything hates you and eliminating another area for you to farm from.

On the other end of the spectrum you can also destroy things to clear your name, when you've gotten enough tech you can go back to the Bounty Hunter stations and junk them as well. They will put up a great fight for something that low a level, but with the right loadout and upgrades its fairly easy to survive. I reccommend good shields, hull and at least one ship with lots of either blasters or torpedoes. The end result is all the resources and xp from actually doing the job and completely clearing your name with the bounty hunters in that area for "free," you may have lost some things in the fight but the gain should outweigh this os long as you aren't going through 3 capital ships for each station. Note that this does nothing to your reputation with the UTA or Civs in the areas overseen by those bounty hunters.

The Zombie Survival Guide

So you've been playing for a while and if you haven't breached the second set of warp gates yet you're probably wondering where the "And Zombies" part of this game comes in and really wish they'd just bring them on already.

If you have gotten past the second set of gates you probably look back fondly on the time when the zombies were strangely absent and would join me in advising the former group to be careful what they wish for.

Zombies change the game signifigantly since they don't play by the same rules as you and the rest of the living and its quite easy to get overrun if you aren't on top of the situation. So here are some things you need to know about said situation.

These Readings are Extraordinary When you unleash the zombie threat, infected systems in the map will have dark particles surrounding them and if you highlight these systems the info will now give an Infection level as well. A level 1 isn't so bad, obviously not as good as no zombies, but you can survive easily with even your mining loadout. Eradicating them will take a bit more firepower. A level 2 is more problematic, there will be a zombie presence practically everywhere in the system, even at peaceful space stations, meaning you'll have to help fend off the Zed before you can leave. It's still manageable, but the ships will be bigger and more numerous. If you don't keep their numbers down they can quickly multiply and turn a small skirmish into an extended fight. Level 3 is a zombie ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Expect multiple zombie capital ships who don't give a rats ass about thier own wellbeing, are very hungry and have as many guns as you do. Fun times. No wait the other thing. Run. Run very fast. That's what I meant to say. Seriously, steer clear if you aren't armed to the teeth and have all the tech upgrades and spinning rims installed.

How do you kill that which has no life? Zombie ships, pretty easy to spot, they look just like normal ships if someone ate a ton of grapes and then threw up all over them. Now I've good news and bad news. The good news is that despite wrapping their heads around space travel, advanced weaponry and even cloaking technology, they can't seem to get the shields to work. Your anti-shield weapons are not necessarily useless, they can still be devestating, but if you have blasters equipped, use those. Use the hell out of those. Without shields the zombies are highly susceptible to good old fashioned flying lead and plasma shot. Remember energy burst cannons? Those things you probably tried early on and then wondered why oh why someone decided to fit a giant shotgun to a spaceship? Well now you're fighting zombie spaceships, so go nuts with em. You need to be in close range though, so if you have the particle cannon and enough slots you can get the same job done at medium range. Alternatively, if you've got enough cannon points and the blueprints for the mass driver, putting a pair of these on a small ship will really help you kill zombie capital ship, as it does the highest damage to unshielded targets. Be aware that they bounce off shields though, so the trade off is they'll be useless when you meet ships with living pilots.

Ah yes, and now the bad news, while zombies can shoot at you, the more pressing concern is the green clouds of mucus they fling at you, which do damage and can infect your ship. Ah yes, did I mention your ship can become one of those purple vomit zombie ships? And it still has all the weapons you spent so much time leveling up and now all of them are aimed at YOU?

There's that as well.

Oh and don't think they'll stop trying to turn you when they die either.

For the Horde So when you destroy anything infected, you'll see all sorts of new bits fly off. I could go into detail about each one but honestly its quicker to mention that ALL of it is bad for you. Zombie ships will still drop resources when destroyed though. Anything you don't recognize? Don't let it touch you. Some of them have pointy bits and all of them are contagious. Of particular note are the tiny purple wormlike objects that squirm about and, more distressingly, attempt to board your ship. The good news is they're outside your spaceship and since you have shields and armor, one zombie isn't likely to get in. Bigger eggs and ships release more of these little guys and a swarm of them can easily infect your ship. After which time they aren't your primary concern, its your own crew. With 0 surplus crew you'll lose the ship to infection in a minute or so. With surplus crew aboard the infection will spread faster. On your ships status at the left of the screen an infected ship wil have a purple ringed eyeball next to it. Keep an eye on your ships status and immediately hit the space bar when you see this. At the tactical menu, select the ship and then click the "vent surplus crew" option, indicated by a button depicting people flailing about in space. You'll lose some people on this, but if you do this in time you'll save the ship. Wait too long and even though you still control the ship you wont have the option to vent crew, its only a matter of time before it succumbs to infection and turns on you. Feel free to use your last few seconds of control to steer it into an explosion. Keeping a close eye on your ships is essential in zombie space, because the only thing worse than losing a ship and having to wait for it to be rebuilt is losing a ship, waiting for it to be rebuilt and having to use it to fight a zombified version of itself as soon as it warps in. Even if you usually don't fly your capital ship it's best to pilot it through zombie space as it stands to be your greatest loss and also the biggest new threat. Small ships are cheap and easy to kill. If you can only save one, save the big one.

Bees, man. Bees have hives. Regardless of the level of infestation, those zombies have to come from somewhere right? Well as it happens their ships lay eggs. Not entirely sure how that works and to be honest I don't think I want to know. The eggs themselves are important to keep track of. Up to now the most surprises you've gotten will have been ships warping in when you first start an attack and maybe some cloaked ships you missed, since zombie eggs produce entire new ships, you could be wrapping up an extended fight only to turn towards your beacon and find several new Zed crawling around it. So logically the best way to make a Zomblet is to break a few eggs. Better do it fast though, since they're not technically alive zombies don't have to waste a bunch of time maturing and the eggs will hatch within minutes. So you'll be scrambling (sorry) to take them out mid-fight, especially since cracking a mature egg will still release a fresh new zombie ship. Not necessarily as big of one, but its still quite like making your breakfast and having a baby chick pop out of the egg to try to rip off your finger. To start with, a zombie egg appears as a brown sphere in space.

To the upper right of my ship you see two small dormant eggs.

As a zombie egg matures, the egg becomes more translucent, the ship inside becomes more visible and can even be seen spinning about. When the egg is mature enough to release a ship upon destruction, it will radiate a grayish mist.

To the lower left, there is a mature egg. The ship is partially visible and the mist radiates from its surface. Its going to hatch either way now, but if you crack it open now there are already bullets flying at it.

If you destroy the egg before this happens, you don't have to deal with the ship, but it will still release zombie spores and parasites.

You've Got Zed On You.

So jettisoning your crew not sound appealing? That's fine. You can focus on prevention then. Only keep as much crew as you need and try to evade the spores. Outrun them, outmanuevere them, however you can, avoid them.

Or, if thats too much work, just replace your tractor beams with point defense lasers. A capital ship with 4 point defense lasers can hold off all but the most swarmtastic of spores, the more the better obviously. Yeah you'll have to pick up any R you find by flying through it, but it still beats rebuilding and fighting your own ships.

More updates soon.

You Are NOT Prepared!

You will come to a point in the game where it flat out tells you that there's no turning back. While lots of games have this warning it usually just means "last call for turning in sidequests," while this is still true in the case of SPAZ it also means you're going to need guns, you're going to need tech, you're going to need goons, in essence the game and myself are telling you right here and now:

YOU ARE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BOAT.

There's no overpreparing for this. I had all tech unlocked and a large resource pool and this part still kicked me aside once the scripted story part was over. Everything you've learned up to now is going to be essential.

So I best get started writing all that down for you.

More To Come...

Comprehensive strategies and tactics will be put into this guide as I remember them. Got to play around a while, its been too long since I charged down 5 warp gates in a row.

Update: 7/2014 Wow. Seriously I'm flabbergasted everytime I look at the comments for this guide. Never have I had such a positive response for something I put up on the internet. Its even more suprising considering I stamped this guide out in less than a day after some thinking and really only because I wanted to try writing a guide for fun when the option came out. I only chose Spaz because I loved the game and I wasnt still completely in the dark about it, but evidently a lot of people welcomed even my dubious and wordy excuse for "help."

Now, however, I'm faced with a problem... or three. You see, I'm not all that great at computers and a month or so after I published this guide the computer I was using sort of seized up and never worked right again. The person who built it has gotten it a new OS but for now he hasn't got it working yet so Im restricted to a laptop that isn't technically mine. Which is kinda terrible, considering that I'm now out of practice in Spaz, a game which I wrote a guide for that turned out to be useful somehow despite the fact that I still haven't FINISHED playing it. And there's a Spaz 2 in the works now. And I told all those people in the comments that I would put their hints in which I havent started yet. And my guide isn't very organized, I just ramble on. Albiet somehow in a useful fashion, still not sure how that worked out.

Anyway, my point is, I'm very sorry if you've been consistently checking this hoping for new hints and a guide past the second part of the game. I do want to finish this, but various things have gotten in my way, not least of which is my own steam account which has several other games I'm rubbish at but still play for some reason. I'll try to get this updated more soon. I'd shoot for a complete guide before Spaz 2 comse out, but I'm don't think I'll make that unless I stop looking for a job.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121475819

SPAZ T+