Silent Sector HANDBOOK

First steps:

When the game starts, you can choose one of the following strategies:

Buy a ship with two weapon slots and buy a second weapon, then you can try a more action-packed start and, for example, complete more action-packed missions.
Buy a mining device and start mining minerals. Sell them to get money for the beginning. The alternative is to take a ship that has mining equipment built into it.
Avoid combat, taking quests like bring goods, where although enemies may attack you, if you ship fast you will outrun them. Or buy and sell goods.

There's a quest after launch near Vega Station. If you help the pilot, Jane, she'll give you a hook for it. You can use this hook to attract enemy ships in combat. It's very effective, especially in fast-paced battles.

Fast fights are difficult. Choose slow, the game is still fun (and maybe even more fun :). You can do this in Options. You can also select different controls there.

Trade

Apart from newly bought weapons (which you can sell for the same price) and classic commodities, whose prices are set by the base, you can sell other weapons and items for much less than their purchase price.

In commodity shops, items that are priced cheaper than the average price of that commodity in the space are marked in green. Red prices are more expensive. If you want to make a living as a trader, buy green, sell red.

There are several illegal commodities in the game. What's legal in one faction may not be legal in another. If you try to sell an illegal commodity, you may slightly lower your reputation. If you come across a black market in the game (either randomly or in a permanent location), you can sell anything there without penalty.

Missions

At the stations you can view the missions offered. They have different levels of difficulty. The rewards are according to the difficulty. Some them are bonus quests (they have a minimum requirement for the faction's popularity level). These missions are slightly better paid.

Most quests are random. However, in each faction you can do special missions of that faction. For these, as with bonus missions, you must achieve a certain level of popularity with that faction.

The last group of missions are the main plot quests. These are given to you by some of the inhabitants of the universe, or in the Rebel faction menu.

If you take a mission from one faction that is directed against the other faction, you will negatively affect your relationship with that faction. So be careful not to destroy long-established relationships.

Ships

The main differences between ships are in their lives/hull, shields, speed, amount of weapon and upgrades slots and the size of their storage space.

Some ships are made up of several parts. If you lose them in combat, it can disable, for example, a weapon that has been placed in that part.

Usually the bigger the ship, the slower it is and vice versa.

Ships are repaired (including the lost parts) automatically at the docks. Some upgrades such as repair drones are also used for repair.

Ships have different types of slots. Some for weapons, others for upgrades. Large cruisers and frigates have extra slots for artillery cannons. You can see the use of slots by the icons on both slots and objects.

You can add various equipment to the upgrade slots. Some will enhance the ship passively (for example, better plating or shield), others actively - placing such a device in the slot will also give you an action that you can trigger (especially in combat) using the 1-6 key (or the gamepad alternative). These actions take a while to charge up.

Fighting and weapons

Shooting drains the ship's energy, which incidentally is also needed to power the shields. Watch out for that!

In addition to standard shooting, alternate shooting uses more energy. But it makes your shots bigger and stronger.

You place your weapons in three different slots for standard weapons (ray guns, machine guns, lasers), rockets and artillery batteries.

Machine guns - send out a mechanical or energy projectile. Special weapons can hit multiple ships.

Missiles - their detonation is terminated by an explosion that destroys everything in the vicinity. Most missiles have an automatic guidance system, others explode on impact or after a certain time. Some missiles can be shot down, others cannot.

Artillery batteries - these are cannon batteries usually of three to four cannons on each side of the ship. Therefore, usually only the largest ships have them. They can fire large deadly salvos of conventional energy projectiles or cruise missiles at once.

Special weapons are mines, which you can buy at a weapons shop and which you can handily place in a sector before combat.

You can get Super Rockets for completing quests (or for a high price at the shop). They have a devastating effect. However, they are limited in number and appear as small rockets in the bottom right of the GUI.

At the bottom of the GUI, small crosses show signal beacons that you can use to summon your allies into battle. You can earn these beacons by completing quests (Friendly Support).

Mining

In order to mine asteroids, you need to buy a mining laser or a ship that has a mining laser built into it. These are some of the ships of Independent Traders. Then you just need to find an asteroid, of which there are plenty in the universes, and mine.

Some asteroids contain precious metals. You can tell by their different colour. The rarest is Eldorite. These asteroids are green.

Rarer metals are found in asteroid fields, usually around their centres.

Other

Arriving at a friendly base will save the current game state. You can also save it manually in the station menu.

If you want to try weapons, you can buy them and if you don't leave the sector, you can sell them for the same price. Otherwise, they can only be sold for a fraction of their price. There's also an option in Options to display 'Damage per second' and then fly off to shoot some asteroids.

You can get various artifacts in the game. Some improve the ship's features, others are just for fun. You can sell these or store them at your base. You can buy your base from a real estate agency. The agency's location is near Vega station.

Contact the ships that fly by. Some of them will offer you a local map for a fee, others will offer you a map of interesting places in space.

Officials at friendly stations can also inform you of places of interest.

There are all sorts of interesting places in the universes. Some repeatedly, others only once. Some appear rarely and only with a certain level (after 10, 20 and 30).

If you want to make up with an enemy faction, you can do it in the Delta Sector. Tom Smile has a special base there (Tom's faction conciliator).

Don't forget to use up your talent points. Use them to upgrade your abilities.

If you start a new game repeatedly, you can skip the long beginning of the game in the menu.

If you find slaves (usually on pirate ships), you can free them.

Cubes - these are very dangerous visitors from deep space. They are very resistant, you need to get a shield modulator to destroy them, so avoid them at the beginning of the game.

This game makes fun of a lot of things, so I don't recommend taking it too seriously. Just play and enjoy it!