Vega Conflict: From Zero to Hero

I’ve been playing this game for some years now. My base is mature; nothing needs upgrading or refitting, I have all ships and tech. Things have gotten a little slow; I am sort of in maintenance mode, except for the acquisition of new technology.

So, in the small hours of October 23rd , 2019, I created a second account – an “Alt”, in game parlance – to see how the game has changed for beginners in the past four years. To show my derision for the publishers, along with my talent for punnery, I gave this account the imaginative name of “KixArse”.

One thing that I did not see the first time round was that new players get a massive “Startup Bonus” for the first fifteen days:

The first couple of hours were spent playing tutorials and introductory missions. I had not intended to spend any money, but an introductory offer for 500 coins for $2 was too good to pass up. One thing to note here is that this offer is not available for long; this offer could be redeemed twice, but when I looked back a day later, it was gone, replaced by different offers. That’s a shame, as the second one would have given me a Commerce Module, which produces coins. Ah well…

The other big mistake that I made was to redeem the rewards for the initial missions, which included ship build, refit and repair tokens. These expired before I could use them, since the starting bonus made most of these operations instantaneous. Nevertheless, it was annoying to watch as scores of time tokens vanished in a puff of logic. Lesson learned…

Campaigns:

To help with the massive effort required to reach the higher tech in the game, Kixeye have designed a series of Campaigns.

• Each Campaign introduces the player to a new Faction: Rebel, Vega, VSec, Iron Star, Demon Corps, and Xeno Division.
• Each Campaign consists of four missions, which must be completed within 24 hours.
• Mission 1 gives you a resource fill-up, so it is best to start when you are low on resources. Sometimes it upgrades various modules in your base.
• Mission 2 gives you access to all of the ships in that faction.
• Mission 3 gives you a pre-built fleet of ships from that faction.
• Mission 4 gives you access to all of the tech in that faction.
• Missions 1-3 are relatively easy. Mission 4 is much harder than the other 3, but can be handily done with the fleet you got at the end of Mission 3.

Two months on, I have the following advice:

• Purchase both of the $2 introductory offers right away. They may not be there later. The coins will allow you to fill up storage which will save you farming times, along with unlocking the commerce module. This is probably the best value you will ever get for $4.
• Do the missions, but do NOT redeem the ones that reward you with Time Tokens until you need them. This will be after the introductory speed-up bonus wears off.
• Research basic Genesis Cruiser, Cargo V, Rancor Battleship, and Revelation Cruiser as soon as possible.
• Set up a farming fleet. A fleet of Ospreys with 3xCargo V can haul away 8M at a time. A fleet of Exterminators with 3x Armored Cargo Hold III can haul 40.4M. A “Cargo Peg” Pegasus with 5x Armored Cargo Hold III
• DO THE CAMPAIGNS! You will get massive rewards and shortcuts that will save you MONTHS of grinding.
• Be careful what ships you research and build. Because the campaigns catapult you all the way to Xeno Division, a lot of the lower-end ships will become obsolete very quickly indeed.

I was luckier than most; from time to time Kixeye gives away free ships, and I was fortunate enough to receive Five Manticore Battlecruisers, Five Trojan Cruisers, and one Gargoyle Carrier (all pre-fitted) which helped massively.

To coin, or not to coin?

In gaming parlance, a “coiner” is a player who has amassed a large number of coins from in-game purchases (or cheating), and uses those coins to dominate over by other players by instant-repairing their fleets and returning to battle. This is generally looked down upon by “free” players and, as a result, “coiner” is something of a derogatory term.

Having said that, game developers cannot survive without money, and any game that cannot attract dollars from the player community will ultimately fail. So my philosophy is to slip the developers of good games a few dollars when they offer good value, but don’t use coins to dominate over other players. My in-game purchases thus far have been as follows:

• Introductory $2 purchase of 600 coins (good value)
• $5 purchase of a ship upgrade (a mistake, as I could easily have farmed it)
• $10 “max-out” upgrade which saved me months of farming and upgrading, as well as giving me a fleet of six Bastion cruisers, which came in *very* useful for farming.

• 10 for a pre-fitted Manticore Mk III Battlecruiser (not really necessary, but a nice-to-have for completing my free fleet of five Mk I Manticores)
• $10 for a pre-fitted sovereign (Definitely worth the money in terms of time saved, as you only need one and do not need to farm to unlock the ship)
• $10 for two pre-fitted Paragons (useful but not necessary)
• $10 to upgrade the free Gargoyle to Mk V. (saves me having to build out a fleet of Ogres and upgrade them to Mk IV+, then farm the parts) — definitely worthwhile, though I wish they had included the Elite upgrade in this offer

Recommended ships:

It is not recommend that you build any Rebel, Vega, VSec, Iron Star, or Demon Corps ships, unless you need to build them to complete missions. The reason for this is because you are progressing through the game so fast that these ships will become obsolescent within a matter of days as better ships and tech are becoming available every couple of days. Even Xeno ships are of limited use once you have unlocked the equivalent AXIS hull. The one exception to this is the suppressor, which retains its usefulness as an anti-swarm/carrier-defense ship. Another is a fleet or two of Exterminators, but for combat they are outclassed by Liberators.

• Altairian: Get Bastions, Zeuses and a Sovereign Carrier. Not sure about Ajax.
• Umbra: You need Valrayvn, Ogres, Medusa, Wraiths, Gargoyle Carrier.
• Pharmakon: This is still in the air, as Pharmakon recently got nerfed, but I would recommend Operator, Daemon Battleships, Plexus Carrier and Omega.

The good news is that you can get deep into the game very very quickly. In a few short weeks I have been able to gain access to ships and tech that took years on my first account. The bad news is that you miss out on a lot of the enjoyment that came with taking the scenic route, such as Frigate fun (before the Great Rebalance™) and Co-op missions against Aliens using Manifold Missiles.

The future?

This account is for low-end fun; I do not see myself getting any dreadnoughts on this account; the amount of farming necessary to get one is prohibitive, let alone upgrading them to the point where they become useful. But who can tell?

See you out there in the Big Black™

Nancy, are you listening?

Let’s start with a joke:

• Knock knock!
• Who’s there?
• Jeremy Corbyn
• Jeremy Corbyn who?
• A week’s a long time in Politics…

It has been a week since the United Kingdom Parliamentary Election returned the Conservative Party to Westminster with a stunning victory, and handed the Labor party the most crushing defeat in nearly a century. While I am delighted, I cannot say that I am surprised; the commentary that I have heard from British voters has been less about “keeping BoJo in” than it has been about “Keeping Corbyn out“.

Following the awful news, Mr. Corbyn said “I will not lead the Labor party into another general election”. That’s a typically English understatement; barring unforeseen circumstances, the next election is five years away. After the pasting he has taken, I would be surprised if he is still leading the party in five weeks. After all, Margaret Thatcher was ousted by her own party for far less.

Large swathes of lifelong labor voters have held their noses and voted Conservative; many for the first time in their lives. But why did they do it?

Reason #1: Corbyn: Jeremy Corbyn has a documented history as a Marxist. Under him, Labor has embraced such socialist stalwarts as re-nationalizing everything, free education, tax increases (but only for those evil wealthy people, honest!), etc. Many labor supporters, and almost all Conservatives, are aghast at this.

Reason #2; Brexit: Boris Johnson has campaigned on a “Let’s Get Brexit Done” platform. In the past, Corbyn has tried to push for a second referendum, a stance which is highly anti-democratic — if you need a second referendum, then the first was not enough. If one referendum was enough to get us into Europe in the first place, why is it not enough to get us out? And that is the crux of the matter; too many folks are trying to re-write history and overturn the expressed will of the people, with repeated calls for vote after vote until they get the result they wanted in the first place. This isn’t Democracy, it is fascism.

What is interesting is that Scotland moved away from Labour to vote overwhelmingly for the Scottish Nationalist Party, which is pro-remain. So north of the border, at least, it wasn’t about Brexit, it was about Corbyn.

The moral of this cautionary tale? If you allow your party to become hijacked by the hard left, you run the risk of being destroyed at the polls as moderates turn their backs on their party en masse. You have been warned.

Watch This!

All together now: “Smartwatch! HOOH!. What is it good for? Absolutely…” quite a lot, really.

Ever since I was a boy, I have always had a watch. My first was a Timex that I received as a Christmas present at the age of seven. For most of my life I have always sported one on my wrist. One of my most prized possessions is a gold watch that belonged to my father, who passed away some years ago. I wear it on special occasions.

A few years ago, When my last watch — an Accurist — died of old age, I stopped wearing a watch on a daily basis… coincidentally, just around the time when the first Apple Watch came out. I did not care much for the Apple Watch. It was big, it was bulky, it was expensive, and they seemed to be bringing out a new version every year, which was not very encouraging to those who had splashed out hundreds of dollars on something that became obsolescent before its first birthday. Besides, I have always had Android phones, and had no wish to mix devices that were designed to operate in different ecosystems.

One day I found someone selling a Gear S2 online. Turned out that this person was switching from Android to Apple and was thinking the same thing. Long story short, I picked up a gently-used Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch for a very reasonable price ($60, in case you were wondering). Since they were selling for more than 100, I figured that I could sell it if I didn’t like it and make a little profit. As it turned out, i needn’t have worried, as the device has found a place in my heart and my life.

Pass the Remote: The best way I can describe a smartwatch is as a write-mounted remote control for your phone. This particular one talks to an app that runs on the phone that allows you to load add-on apps and faces to the phone, as well as transferring screenshots and pictures to and from the phone. But it is so much more than that…

It’s a watch! It has taken me a while to get used to looking at my wrist when I want to know the time; to this day, I still occasionally pull out my phone. However, the watch has a huge variety of faces. Many can be installed to the watch, and a few of my favorites are shown below:

Some of the watch faces are even customizable, as you can see from the following examples:

It’s a Fitness Band! I’ve never been much of a fan of FitBits. Not because of anything inherently wrong with them, but because of the kind of people who tend to wear them. Like Starbucks Coffee, I have always associated them with the Trendy Hipster lifestyle. However, this watch allows me to track workouts (such as the occasional bike ride and even-more-occasional run). Which helps me explore the abyss between how much walking I think I did and how much I actually did.

It’s a sleep monitor! If worn all night, the phone can monitor your heart-rate and movement, and hence determine whether or not you are asleep, and whether your sleep is deep, light, or restless.

It’s an Egg Timer!

Yes, really. One of the built-in apps is a countdown timer that I have found useful on all sorts of occasions, from brewing tea to… timing eggs. This is perhaps my most-used feature as I am notoriously forgetful. It comes in especially useful when I am brewing tea.

It’s a Heart Rate Monitor! Of course, as part of its fitness tracking capabilities, it can also continuously monitor your heart rate.

It’s a text tickler! Another neat feature is that you can receive and reply to texts using the watch. This is particularly useful when in meetings, driving, or out and about in inclement weather where you cannot or do not want to take out your phone. The interface is too limited for complicated replies, but most of the time a simple reply is all you need.

Bottom line: perhaps the best sixty dollars I have ever spent.