CAREER MODE: Final Score, Travel Route and thoughts

[mjbroekman]

Wow! Totally amazing work! That is totally amazing that you completed the star system travel and made pretty amazing progress in all of the other categories as well. You were so close to maxxing Marik and Magistracy reputation also. Truly amazing.

Went for Hard Enemy strength, I think this is quite important for achieving a high score, it allows us to find heavier mechs quicker, hence start doing high star contracts earlier

This is, I think, a super critical point that your score reflects.

One important thing about the Urbanmech though. With the change to shops in 1.3, you will only find it in Black Markets and in Capellan space.

Lyran Commonwealth contracts are very common in Marik space and slightly less so in Liao / Marik border worlds. It was pretty easy for me to find Steiner / Liao and Steiner / Pirate contracts in order to avoid hurting my Marik reputation while I was working on my Steiner rep. On the flip side, I couldn't find many Draconis Combine contracts in either direction in Davion, Taurian, or Liao space. It was just brutal.

 

[mjbroekman]

I also suspected this, and if I read the data files right, there is no systems with ContractTargets Kurita or Steiner.

Correct. There are 11 systems where you can accept contracts from Steiner and 9 systems where you can accept contracts from Kurita, but no systems where you can target them.

This seems like an oversight though as both Marik and Davion would likely have missions against Steiner and Kurita (respectively) within their own space for things like killing spies, capturing / destroying convert bases, and dealing with covert lances.

 

[ninte000]

From what I found in my last career, the training pods don't take a starting pilot (2/2/3/2) beyond having 27,550 xp so there's a deficit of 2,450 xp per pilot

This is interesting to know. During my quick testing,
a pilot of (2/2/3/2) stops gaining xp at 27550, you get points for 100*4+400+27550 = 28350 xp
whereas (100+400)*4 + 900 + 27550 = 30450
a pilot of (4/4/4/6) stops gaining xp at 12350, you get points for (100+400+900)*4+1600+2500+12350 = 22050 xp
whereas (100+400+900+1600)*4 + 2500 + 3600 +12350 = 30450

This seems totally like a bug to me. It seems the game has counted level 1 in each skill tree as 100xp, level 2 as 400xp and so on. The correct way is count level 2 as 100xp, level 3 as 400xp and so on.

so the shorter the time to complete the star system path, the better

I don't agree with this. If you complete star systems too early, then you are doing unnecessary jumps, which seem to be wasting time. Unless you have a good loop to go through afterwards.
I understand you want to leave some room for rep completion, but I think 50 days should be more than enough for that.

 

[ninte000]

Have just planned out a route for my next playthrough

Obviously, I was highly influenced by my route during the last playthrough. There probably are a lot different possible travel routes you could take to achieve the same result.

It is unlikely for me to follow this route exactly as shown, I probably have to adapt my route depending on the spawn of flashpoint, reputation status, etc.
Some flashpoints seem really important, it is probably worthwhile to waste a few jumps just to get those.

But for the purpose of this exercise, I have drawn out a plan with extreme efficiency.

Starting from Arn (blue line in neutral space), you will not have to stop at any (even with Ishtar, the last system on the route), except the 7 end planet labelled in red circle (which you could not avoid).

Only 4 systems, namely Joppa, Argos, Mystras, Ahlat, have been visited twice.
You will not be able to improve this further, unless you end your journey at Hellespont (bottom right). But, that would require you to time your journey and reputation exactly right, so that you can end in Hellespont at almost 1200 days, without the need to come out again.

Similarly, you can end your planned route at any other "end planet" to save some travel time, if you can time your journey exactly right. The most beneficial one besides Hellespont is probably Coromodir (with the highest Jump Distant).

Yellow number is the "Jump Distant" extracted from .json files. This represent the number of days to travel from/to Jumpship to/from the system without any argo upgrade.
Argo drive seems to replace itself when upgrading, so at full upgrade you only get a modifier of 0.7
I am not entirely sure how the rounding works, take Hellespont for example, 5*0.7=3.5. But with fully upgraded argo, sometimes it appear to take 4 days to enter the system, sometimes 3. Maybe it has something to do with where you have started?

Anyway, without argo upgrades, the full route takes 173*3+3+(5+3+9+6+5+5+4)*2 = 596 days
If you have fully upgraded argo drive by the first end planet, it takes approximately 574 days

General tips for route planning.
I would advice part plan sections of the map, especially corners, edges, and around other "end planets".
Then work inwards towards top of restorations/bottom of Capellan, where the most options are. In worst scenario, you can always stop at a restoration system (since most of them only have one possible employer) .