Earnin Plex, there has to be a better way.

So I've been playing the heck out of this game and I love it. It reminds me of a newer more awesome version of Subspace Continuum...That being said I'm broke as broke can be and trying to earn Plex at a decent rate is proving difficult for me. Any tips for a noob?

Playing scenario missions with Prebuilt Ships at the highest difficulty you can handle is what I would recommend. Once you have enough to build a decent Rank 5 ship, you can start using it instead of a prebuilt.

We have plans to slightly quicken the rate of loot acquisition in an upcoming patch.

I've actually found that the Scenarios are worth less than just repeating Black Box Affair over and over. It only takes about 2-3 minutes and nets me 7-20k Plex. Just kinda gets old. I tried the Zombie mode but it wasn't that fun because the grapplers were constantly taking away my control of the ship. Stunlock isn't fun :<

Certain ships will do better in certain scenarios. I'd recommend the C5 Manta prebuilt for zombies.

You should be able to get near that plex per minute in most scenarios, though it may be a bit harder to accomplish. It will certainly be less repetitive though.  

I'll have to take a look at the Black Box Affair mission, as scenarios are intended to have a slight edge on plex vs campaign missions.

If you haven't already, there are fairly hefty plex rewards for completing all campaign missions at various difficulties.

Oh...I see...hmm does the difficulty you play on affect how often mobs drop bonus Plex? I generally only play on Sage difficulty. I use a Maven, it's a sweet ship! Any plans for more ships/abilities?

Yep, the difficulty plex multiplier applies to all plex gained during a mission.

If the game gets greenlit onto steam and gains some more momentum we would definitely continue adding new ships and equipment, most likely as free updates.

Woohoo that sounds awesome, I wish I could vote more than once for it...does Steam give you guys any indication of how many more votes you need to get on Steam?

There isn't a magic number of votes, but we are in the top 100, which is one of the major requirements for being greenlit.

I just noticed something else that makes earning plex in zombie mode extra hard. Zombies are constantly looting my plex powerups   Is that something that can be fixed?  

Zxypher wrote:I just noticed something else that makes earning plex in zombie mode extra hard. Zombies are constantly looting my plex powerups   Is that something that can be fixed?  

They're only taking the ones dropped by crates and other debris, which anyone can pick up. The powerups dropped from Zombies cannot be taken by Zombies (because that would be silly).

Frankly the plex gain from powerups isn't that significan either. I end up only having gotten 1/10 of the final plex value from actual Powerups.

EvilNinjadude wrote:

Zxypher wrote:I just noticed something else that makes earning plex in zombie mode extra hard. Zombies are constantly looting my plex powerups   Is that something that can be fixed?  

They're only taking the ones dropped by crates and other debris, which anyone can pick up. The powerups dropped from Zombies cannot be taken by Zombies (because that would be silly).

Frankly the plex gain from powerups isn't that significan either. I end up only having gotten 1/10 of the final plex value from actual Powerups.

Ah, my bad. I guess I should have figured that out considering it only ever seemed to happen when something off-screen picked it up.  

Zxypher wrote:

EvilNinjadude wrote:

Zxypher wrote:I just noticed something else that makes earning plex in zombie mode extra hard. Zombies are constantly looting my plex powerups   Is that something that can be fixed?  

They're only taking the ones dropped by crates and other debris, which anyone can pick up. The powerups dropped from Zombies cannot be taken by Zombies (because that would be silly).

Frankly the plex gain from powerups isn't that significan either. I end up only having gotten 1/10 of the final plex value from actual Powerups.

Ah, my bad. I guess I should have figured that out considering it only ever seemed to happen when something off-screen picked it up.  

Zombies. They keep flying into Crates.

I'm currently compiling the results of my various games into an excel-sheet, for the purposes of maximising dosh - and perhaps gaining some insight.

If you feel like helping, write down the map played, raw plex gained (before the difficulty multiplier is added), research progress in HH:MM:SS, map duration in HH:MM:SS, difficulty played at, and the completion status (did you win?). Tables recommended.

For the sake of keeping track of things, I'll also need the game version, as found in lower-left corner of the main menu. I expect PC and console versions to be identical, and thus wont need game platform.

More information means more accurate results, and thus more knowledge for the community.
First version will be public once I've gotten the maths down.

Blurb wrote:I'm currently compiling the results of my various games into an excel-sheet, for the purposes of maximising dosh - and perhaps gaining some insight.

If you feel like helping, write down the map played, raw plex gained (before the difficulty multiplier is added), research progress in HH:MM:SS, map duration in HH:MM:SS, difficulty played at, and the completion status (did you win?). Tables recommended.

For the sake of keeping track of things, I'll also need the game version, as found in lower-left corner of the main menu. I expect PC and console versions to be identical, and thus wont need game platform.

More information means more accurate results, and thus more knowledge for the community.
First version will be public once I've gotten the maths down.

I'm gonna start doing afk farming and post my match results here then.

Zombie Survival, 31480, N/A(forgot to do research cuz I have everything already), 00:15:39, Flooded Gate, 556 Zombies
killed, 1.0.1.0
Zombie Survival, 32480, 1:46:17, 00:17:59, Arch Sage, 690 Zombies killed, 1.0.1.0
Zombie Survival, 1970, 00:04:50, 00:04:41, Sage, 91 Zombies killed, 1.0.1.0
Wave Survival, 4210, 00:17:13, 00:11:23, Flooded Gate, Defeated at Wave 13, 1.0.1.0 (My afk set up takes significantly longer to do wave survival than normal ships)

Guys...don't you think cracking the black box is a little futile here? Why not just ask Paul to tell us the algorithm and update the wiki? I'm sure the parameters change as Paul sees fit. If you really have that much time to collect all the results, you'd better off enjoying the game and grabbing all achievements.

Unless the devs happen to keep logs of what I'm asking for, they can only be of little help.
Earning plex isn't just about getting the lucky drops (which devs can help with), but also about picking the missions that give profitable achievements - without being overly difficult or time-exhausting.

Those are matters in which the help could go the other way, as it's a matter of tweaking gameplay.
...Unless they're already keeping logs, and have done the math - in which case I'd really like to see it.

As far as enjoyment goes, I find that playing the maps that I want to far more entertaining, than the head-bashing that follows my attempts at getting more difficult achievements.

I'd like to add that the "you failed this mission" screen is somewhat lacking in information compared to the victory screen.

I've found that the first mission in the Shaverenda system titled "Real-Time Security" is the easiest way for me to gain Plex.  Just put two Triage's in your hanger bay and two high DPS Ships, then set the difficulty up to flooded gate, and beat the mission in 4 minutes by doing nothing...  And you get around 16000 Plex.
Now I do feel like this might be a problem because I can have my game run in the background and check on it every 4 minutes and boom.  + 16000 plex and 20 some odd minutes of research.

While it's certainly an advantage that Real-Time Security can be run without supervision (could probably write a simple macro to make it repeat itself), the real gain per second isn't very impressive compared to For Crumbs in the Void, where I get about 50 (raw) plex per second.

That translates into more than 150k for a 15-minute run on The Union - then add four hours of research.
While I've by no means covered a significant amount of the various missions, and still have some way to go in terms of perfecting my methods, I'll say scenarios are rather ineffective when it comes to making plex.
The Zombie and Gladiator modes aren't bad, but I suspect there's a lot of missions which're better.