In Hard space: Shipbreaker, space is the final frontier, and it will take a lot of brave people to tame it. Are we going to pay them a fair wage for sticking their necks out in the bleak depths of space? My God, no. And they better not even think about unionizing. Don’t they know how much we care about them?
Scrapping old hardware is dangerous work in Hard space: Shipbreaker. He must work safely to stay alive with nothing but a bit of glass and cloth separating him from the void. Of course, dying means, the Lynx Corporation starts another one of your clones and sends you back to work, but doesn’t it give you the creeps? Also, it adds to your pocket. Here are some tips to get to and from work with a minimum of workplace accidents.
Having logged over 60 hours in space and erased millions of my debt on Hard play: Shipbreaker during its early access period, I eagerly reviewed the final release build. If not, to finally free me from debt to LYNX, at least pass on my “expert” knowledge so you can pay for yours. With an extra 20+ hours in space, here’s what I came up with
Don’t sweat the debt.
You’re saddled with colossal debt right out of the gate in Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Over a billion in costs just for taking the job. It’s a great way to give all the adults playing instant anxiety. Stay calm. Although you’re given the goal of paying off the debt and starting to make money at your job, other purposes open up in later chapters that are a lot easier to feel optimistic about than digging your way out of a mountain of debt and the daily reminders of it.
Don’t be cheap
Again, Hardspace: Shipbreaker pushes the financial side of things in your face, but like how you shouldn’t worry about the crippling debt, you shouldn’t be afraid to spend your money. Your life is more valuable than that. Your deaths will rack up more costs than if you maybe refill your oxygen and tethers before they’re critically depleted. It’s tempting to try and pinch every penny, but there’s a fine line between thrifty and foolish in space.
Take it slow
The quicker you try to work in Hardspace: Shipbreaker, the faster you’re likely to die. Cut open a ship without first depressurizing; it might get blown into a wall. Reel something in too fast, and it will smash your visor (an additional tip is to tap the reel button rather than hold it to prevent an item from picking up to much velocity. Push the limits of your oxygen supply, and you’ll see how the blue colour looks on you. Jet around too recklessly, and you might soon know the panic of trying to haul yourself out of the processor’s pull. There are a lot of hazards to look out for, and rushing in is the worst way to find out what they are.
It’s a good idea to do an exploratory search of the ship before you start cutting. Depressurize its sections, find where all the fuel tanks are, flush the pipes, and check if it has a reactor. It’s easier to work once you know everything is safe. Pull that reactor, safely dispose of the fuel tanks, and make sure an errant cutter beam isn’t going to send you on a longer spacewalk than you expected.
Look around the ship before you cut anything.
Most of the ships you are going to encounter will have sealed airlocks. That means you’ve got plenty of oxygen since your supply won’t deplete while inside the boat. So, make sure you take your time and plan. Shut off fuel lines, locate any spare oxygen tanks for later use, and open all the airlocks once you’ve depressurized the ship.
Almost anything will fit with enough tethers.
There are some things that your cutting tool won’t damage, and that’s fine so long as you have ropes. Attach enough to something, and it will fit into one of the processing areas. And if you can’t get the angle to make something fit, cancel the ropes and then make more tethers aiming to get it into the processing area opposite! That’s why there are two of each!
Take your time
I know this is technically a rehash of the first point, but if you’re clearing enough salvage to offset your debt, you’re fine. If your debt increases by 800,000 credits per shift, apparent 1,000,000 credits worth of salvage! If it takes you three changes to properly slice up a ship, it takes you three shifts; cutting corners will increase your debt because cloned spare bodies are not cheap.
The Guardian Cut
Something mentioned off-handedly by one of your team members is that you should “use a Guardian Cut” as it has saved them several times. However, you’re never told what that is! They offer to show it to you but never follow through. So let me explain it: make an asterisk pattern with your cutting tool. When you cut into a pressurized area, you get explosive decompression as air escapes through the hole you made. Whether done by accident or on purpose, as soon as that alarm goes off, you need to make at least two more cuts at angles to the original one that intersects with it. If you can manage more, great; if not, you’re probably going to have to repair your spacesuit or print a spare body.
Hold on tight
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, meaning it’s pretty easy to get thrown around in zero gravity. Explosive depressurization and the decoupling of parts can lead to your tiny mass getting crushed or slammed around.
You have two buttons that bring out your grabby hands. By default, these are X and Z. Using your mitts, you can latch onto objects much more significant than you to avoid getting tossed around in the vacuum of space. It can also be helpful to add to your mass when you want to get something much more significant to budge. Sometimes, thrusters aren’t enough to keep you stable. Note that your character is right-handed, so if you want to keep working with your tools, you’ll need to grab hold with your left hand.
Don’t leave critical rewards untouched.
There’s technically no real penalty for stripping a ship of its most expensive parts and dumping the rest. You can start a new workday and select a different ship to pull apart. However, you will be missing out on the higher-level rewards. Early milestones in ship deconstruction are pretty simple to make, as long as you put scrap in the right bin. However, you need to be careful about what gets destroyed to get the last couple of rewards.
This is especially important since the last and second-to-last rewards are the most valuable. It’s the most considerable XP and usually comes with a bonus repair kit. Remember when I said that your debt isn’t necessary? Progress in Hardspace: Shipbreaker is primarily based on your level, so sucking every bit of experience from every ship is more important than value. Remember that the next time you want to cut corners and shove everything into the processor.
