As my 0 sum game progresses I have now made it to the first planet in Terracore. After balancing my defense a bit to not reach leaderboards too quickly within a claim period. I focused on putting all my scrap into favor, after about two weeks I had the 1000 favour to finally go to Oceana.
Obviously, that is when I realised I need a ship and Flux, fortunately, I had a Common Ship but I had to buy some flux.
For my very first exploration of Oceana I got a crate with an Uncommon Ship as a reward.
This is fully beginner's luck because twice after I got nada. I think it will be tricky now to balance earning enough scrap to upgrade but to also sell for Flux to travel more.
If only based on my engineering rate I should be able to buy 2 Flux a day for a 0 sum total. I would probably focus a bit again to push my defense higher first and hopefully get lucky with my attacks to balance the scrap loss from being attacked more often till then.
I was busy with a botty but it was kinda tedious so I pretty much add to it when bored at work, however, it will be critical to at the very least claim when possible.
As the game progresses the effective automation of claims will help a lot, I am not so concerned with automating the attacking since I do like to stack those.
It might be that neutralizing the main difficulty mechanic which is time to claim vs engineering rate will turn it into something like RisingStar which I kinda forget to open but fortunately, I still need to go do some attacks and upgrade so that is something.
Actually, now that I think of it I am going to remove the new ship which adds too much engineering and put back my old ship which only added some defense.
If anything a lower engineering rate will help me maximize full claim periods.
See ya.