While I did not start out hunting for medals or as I see them achievements it turns out they are quite rewarding. I would also be getting quite a few of them while out running kill missions and looking for the random pirate to take down along the way.

Early on in the game, I ended up getting a medal for mining a resource. While a bunch of other resources all have their medals. That is not where my focus this time around ends up being. Although I have been keeping an eye out for a decent mining ship. I’ve discovered it can be quite a pain to find ships you want. While you can search a database for places you have already stopped at.

While out running some further kill raider missions I ended up earning exploration assistant. I was quite blown away, it was 25k credits and most importantly 20 skill points. At this point in the game, I had explored quite a few systems heading off to different missions.

Up until this point, I had not gone out just to go exploring around. I had just explored new systems on my way to different missions. Any time I had a mission in a system I had yet to discover I'd get a small bonus. With how much of the map I now had uncovered those mission bonuses were starting to become quite infrequent.

There was also another expected outcoming playing out on the map. There were little pockets of a system or two that were just getting missed out in an otherwise well-covered region of the map. There were also areas of the map I was not getting missions that sent me that far out into.

I decided that getting further metals could only get even more rewarding. It was now worth it just to go out and start targeting down systems I had yet to be at. While I would take the occasional mission as well. I wanted to see how rewarding the medal system was in this game.

Exploration and mining were also not the only types of medals either. I ended up noticing by checking my stats I was closing in on getting one for laser operations officer. I decided to go out and hunt for some stuff to finish off that one as well for another 25 skill points and some quick credits.

Like many times before I was also checking out any space station I could. I was hoping to find some better battle-class ships. I was starting to stockpile some credits and I was still not finding a ship I wanted.

I did find a decent little transport ship that I had the skills for. At this point in the game, nearly a million credits for it were no longer a huge deal. One thing I had yet to focus on in this game is station trading. Some stations were paying a high price for goods and others selling those goods at a low price. Still to this day that ship sits there unbought as I never felt a need to partake in that part of the game.

The search for a laser gunboat would continue. I was getting a bit frustrated at this point not finding something to burn my credits on. I had yet again been on my current ship for a lot longer than I was expecting.

I did not even buy the ship I'm on due to it being something I wanted either. It was more of a something is better than nothing. I can only hope I'd not be dropping millions of credits on something better than nothing ship. I was, however, getting close to feeling I was going to need to with how hard combat missions were starting to become.

After some distractions, I was back out hitting up new systems. It was a good thing I not only have the credits now to buy any locked gate I come across. Even better the kill missions I'm starting to get paid more than they cost to acquire.

This came in quite clutch when I ended up hitting a system that had a massive Raiders invasion going on. I did try and snipe a couple of kills. There were far too many of them for me to do much of anything other than get killed. So, I more than welcomed spending some credits to use a gate to escape this death trap of a situation I had found myself in.

Shortly after, I ended up getting the next exploration medal for officer rank. Netting me a cool 40 skill points along with 200k credits. At this point, those kinds of credits did not even surpass my mission kill rewards.

I was, however, in quite need of skill points. My laser weapons could deplete my total energy in almost a blink of an eye with the game speed turned to max. I’d quickly go back to a station that had skills I could train in further reducing my weapon laser costs and improving the overall energy efficacy of my ship's power systems.

Final Thoughts

While I still have a couple of random spots here or there left to explore. I’d soon be finishing off them and earning the last exploration medal I'd need. I was not expecting this game to have such a huge map. It’s no wonder I had quite a challenge trying to find certain systems and how much time I've spent just warping around from system gate to system gate.

There are also many other metals to hunt down and obtain. A lot of them have to deal with combat and using different kinds of weapons. For those I feel finding somewhere with some heavy raider activity in a much better ship would do the job. So those are going to have to wait for the time being.

Other Content

• Astrox Imperium | Pirates And The Debt Collector

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Astrox Imperium.