Gameplay tips Thread - Void of Darkness

Hi everyone, some tips for getting going. (NOTE:All of this is covered in detail in the manual, but trying to give you the tl:dr version. )

1) First you might have realized after reading the (long) starting message and flying around a bit, the war is really on and ships are constantly jumping in and coming in to attack and military patrols are dealing with them. You can salvage the wrecks left behind after or during these fights (if your brave) they give quite a bit salvage which sells well, sometimes high end salvage. The tractor beam doubles as a salvager, if the debris is outside the range of the salvager, the beam will bring it closer. If it is already in range, the beam won't activate.

2) Speaking with the aliens, they will give you places to investigate and other general information which drives the story of the game and will help you find artifacts and other technology.

3) In relation to number 1, it is best to upgrade your ship to the best components. When you decide to explore further out, there'll be less military patrols, and you'll be on your own (except when aliens respond to your distress call). The better equipped you are, the easier it will be to handle the alien warships. Additionally, invest in the special weapons at Nova Station (starting station). Cluster torpedo, and others.

4) Buy a jump drive to round out your ship. You can them jump to anywhere. You will discover the locations of other alien homeworlds by asking the nearby ones (the Eurians) about other races. You should make a note of these for future, or you can review your conversation log with the Eurians using the log reviewer.

5) You can track your reputation to the other races (how they view you) by perusing the captain menu. Some are set in stone because of the war, such as the U'Guul.
But for others, you can repair your reputation or get it higher, by destroying pirates who are located inside the territory of that race. Example: If my reputation to the G'Lani is low, I jump to their space (by inputting the coordinates of their home world in the jump computer, as given to me by the Eurians). Then you use the starmap and search for a nearby base inside their territory. All you have to do is open the navcom, click on the base you want to jump to with the mouse, and it will in put the coordinates for that base automatically. Remember that your crew will lower your shields to jump, so you should raise them as soon as you jump in.

Every pirate you destroy will increase your reputation slightly. Be warned that these bases are protected by several flights of vanguard ships and some have turrets. The pirates also have an engine disabler, which really hangs you out to dry for a few seconds. The nova engine updrade from Nova Station is immune to that engine disabler (it is the purple effect they shoot).

Crew
6) Crew skills, every time you go through an anomaly, sell resources gathered, destroy a U'Guul or pirate ship, your crew will increase in experience. The higher their experience, the higher the passive bonus they give to the ship. These bonuses are detailed in the manual. So a highly skilled crew in a fully upgraded corvette even is a very powerful ship. And the heavy cruiser/battle cruiser would be 5 times as powerful as that. But the corvette is very maneuverable and fast, and I prefer it sometimes to weave into and out of big melees, picking my targets.

Your crew can become 'stressed' if you engage in too much combat, their morale drops and if they are 'stressed out' they no longer offer their passive bonuses to the ship during that period. Their stress slowly lowers over time so long as you are not in combat. (I left out this stat as an oversight, it will be viewable in the next patch)

When speaking to an alien race, if you have hailed or speak to them in the wrong way your crew will prompt you, the manual contains an intelligence brief on which posture to use as well.

7) You might be receiving distress calls about stations under attack etc, but until you get your jump drive these might be a bit far off, although the nearby distress calls you are receiving are probably only five minutes away at max warp. Just fly towards the coordinates given by the aliens, your current coordinates are specified at the top of the screen. X: Y:

If you run low on fuel, fly to a planet, click on it to target it, get near and activate your fuel extraction device.

Prestige & Rank:

Every resource gathered, exploration and combat adds to your prestige which you can track in the captains menu. When you have achieved a certain amount your rank will increase. The various ships require certain ranks, but you do not have to actually pay for the ship. Once you achieve that rank, you can 'acquire' the ship. And switch back into any as you like.

Only the Frigate and up can have point defense. This will be an item you can buy instead of finding during exploration (change in patch 1.0.7.4)

Rations

Your crew eats, when they reach a hunger threshold of 50 they go to the galley and eat, you can see their location by clicking on them in the crew window. They also go to the barracks when tired.

Based on the above pointers, while engaging in any of these activities, quick reference to either the manual, or the ingame tip system will guide you.
Remember if you have disabled tips, you need to re-enable them, before clicking on the list of tips on the left will work.