There is NO reinforced metal plating.

LastChime · Post by **LastChime** » Wed, 4. Dec 13, 14:57

You have to pull them early, like in the first 8-10 hours, you only need what a thousand or so though....idk haven't revisited the plot all my experience comes from free play

Dodgey · Post by **Dodgey** » Wed, 4. Dec 13, 16:08

Come on Egosoft! At least make a bl00dy announcement that you cannot continue the mission at present if you don't secure reinforced metal plating soon enough. It's letting people like me ruin my save games by going too far into the game.

I've cheated my rep with PMC to friendly and of their two construction shops, one of them had 879 for sale. The other, none. I've flown all over the place. I can't find any more. So now not only do I have to hack my rep, I need to hack the quantity too.

I'm getting more pissed off each time I find another problem.

LastChime · Post by **LastChime** » Wed, 4. Dec 13, 16:16

Dodgey wrote:Come on Egosoft! At least make a bl00dy announcement that you cannot continue the mission at present if you don't secure reinforced metal plating soon enough. It's letting people like me ruin my save games by going too far into the game.

I've cheated my rep with PMC to friendly and of their two construction shops, one of them had 879 for sale. The other, none. I've flown all over the place. I can't find any more. So now not only do I have to hack my rep, I need to hack the quantity too.

I'm getting more pissed off each time I find another problem.

You don't have to hack the wares part at least, if you supply the factory with the required inputs, it will produce the plates. Unsure if a legitimate workaround to PMC rep is plausable.....well it is it'd just take a month or 2 (neighboorhood watches and finding the criminal mass traffic come to mind but lol)

Dodgey · Post by **Dodgey** » Wed, 4. Dec 13, 17:12

How do I supply an enemy with the required wares? I thought only PMC stations make the metal?

Also, how do I tell what a factory needs. I fly to all the "i"'s and then look at the station details but it leaves me none the wiser.

Example - I'm looking at BTO ship line 1 as one of my frighters is in for repair, and now has been for days, so I assume it has a shortage of something. I've inslected it but all I see is lots of lines of "Targon Tracer 100%", "Armoury Link 0%", "struct_econ_prod_shipxl_macro 70%" etc etc etc

It just makes no sense

LastChime · Post by **LastChime** » Wed, 4. Dec 13, 17:24

Dodgey wrote:How do I supply an enemy with the required wares? I thought only PMC stations make the metal?

Also, how do I tell what a factory needs. I fly to all the "i"'s and then look at the station details but it leaves me none the wiser

Well you have to make them friendly first.....not sure how locked out of the standard methods you are in campaign, freeplayer personally, but;

The way I mend fences is with neighboorhoud watch (someone like AE/WF should offer something in Lookout Alpha) and vaporising enemies near plutarch stations. Or scanning the mass traffic (this gets interesting when things are really hostile, for the -26 or so no name faction (criminals) and vaporising them for the station)...like I say to get up from -20 or greater rep may take weeks of scavenging for opportunities to be just right (not sure when they stop the Kill on Sight order, but I think it's around -15, and then things get marginally easier) .

As for deciphering what the station needs it's a little bit of fill in the blanks, you're looking for outrages buy offers (i.e. 193097 energy sells (+19%), or 124073 Food Rations (+16%) ) and filling those usualy gets them rolling.

With reinforced metal in specific it's usually some combination of food, energy cells, narcotics, nvidium cubes, and refined metals that brings it to a halt....

So you try to find those resources, in turn you step down the chain one, are there no refined metals available? The Metalworks yards are likely out of something, that requires ore, energy, food.

And you keep following through it like that until you get something turning, you'll likely need multiple freighters and a decent amount of patience to get the gears spinning again.

OrionSnake · Post by **OrionSnake** » Wed, 4. Dec 13, 18:38

From what I can tell, I don't believe you can trade with PMC at -15 rep...I am trying to build up rep with PMC without editing save game. It seems to take longer and longer as you move toward higher number (someone can confirm this).

Dodgey · Post by **Dodgey** » Wed, 4. Dec 13, 18:59

I just hacked myself to friendly. I'll undo it after.

I'm not spending a week looking for non existent wares whilst being pestered by the PMC and my resultant "unprovoked attacks". That's not fun. and I never cheat, normally.

OrionSnake · Post by **OrionSnake** » Thu, 5. Dec 13, 03:16

Someone might want to test this...

Game Start: Campaign

Save game version (from xml):
game version="118"
build="179243M"
time="159237.825"
original="112"

I am currently running "public_beta - 1.18 (released)" version of the game. My PMC rep was originally at -21 and worked my way up to -18. The icons of PMC stations are still red to me and I cannot dock at their stations.

I decided to try something tonight by assigning my Rahanas to my group and guess what....I was able to purchase Reinforced Metal Plating from Forge-Welded Mail in Ascendancy!!

Did anyone experience this?

LastChime · Post by **LastChime** » Thu, 5. Dec 13, 14:46

Is that a PMC construction shop, or is it owned by another faction like LI?

OrionSnake · Post by **OrionSnake** » Thu, 5. Dec 13, 15:10

LastChime wrote:Is that a PMC construction shop, or is it owned by another faction like LI?

PMC Construction Shop 1 in Forge-Welded Mail. In my game, LI only buy reinforced metal plating, i haven't find one that sells it.

VincentTH · Post by **VincentTH** » Thu, 5. Dec 13, 18:26

In my game, I capped an LI Hull-Tech ship and a PMC Hull-Tech ship both in Distress Reek. I am still some 290 Reinf Hull Metal short but that's how I can get mine. Repairing LI rep is easy, just take 2 missions from them to fix it back. Just don't let it slip down further after the capture. Game is vanilla started afresh from v1.18

Dodgey · Post by **Dodgey** » Thu, 5. Dec 13, 18:50

Yeah - starting afresh seems to help, but there is no way I'm doing that so I'll wait for a patch to fix things, and cheat the plating until then.

Orion1632 · Post by **Orion1632** » Fri, 6. Dec 13, 03:11

so what is the latest on this?

is it edit the save file or capture the freighter ?

LastChime · Post by **LastChime** » Fri, 6. Dec 13, 03:44

Orion1632 wrote:so what is the latest on this?

is it edit the save file or capture the freighter ?

It's really a question of the time you're willing to invest in playing the game with it's current quirks.

Lots of time?

-Beg/borrow/steal to get plutarch rep back to the point where you can at least trade with them

-Get at least a Bulk Freighter (preferably an outright miner), Energy Freighter and Container Freighter

-Keep the Metalworks yards turning to make enough refined metal

-Take refined metal to construction shops to make reinforced plating

Medium time and albion economy not stalled?

-Jack hull-tech freighters

Little time/patience

-Edit XML saves

Orion1632 · Post by **Orion1632** » Fri, 6. Dec 13, 03:52

after a bit of looking at Roguey's

Factories for Reinforced metal plating:

Arms Tech Fab (Straining Coppice and Watergate)
Construction Shop (Frozen Circuit and Forge Welded Mail)
Hardware supplier (no where to be found darn it)
Mil Hi-Tech dept (Omicron Lyrae, also useless until you get there)
URV Integration (also Omicron Lyrae)

Zapranoth · Post by **Zapranoth** » Fri, 6. Dec 13, 20:09

I even tried hacking the two Raider stations I've found in Albion, but they just ejected "Unknown Wares" which are worth quite a bit, but I cant find a place to sell them... no metal though. wonder if there's still something we are missing on how to resolve the issue in an anemic universal economy.

As I recall, there is some dialogue about the time we are supposed to get our original freighter back concerning loading it up with needed wares and getting help jumping through the gate. Nothing ever happens with that. Mostly, we don't even get the freighter back. I'm pointing this out simply because it could be the reason for all the heartache surrounding the lack of supplies for the station build.

Zap

DaddyMonster · Post by **DaddyMonster** » Fri, 6. Dec 13, 22:53

I'm determined to vanilla this without touching the xml.... Capping loads of freighters and hoping for some.

It is a wonder what they were thinking when they put this mission together. For a start it doesn't even begin to give you any idea about what you should be doing and then you need materials which are impossible to buy. All they had to do was add the right stuff in a HOA / Neutral facility, put a marker there and bob's your uncle. I think somebody in the dev team was very unmotivated on that day. Maybe his girlfriend left him. Poor guy. Maybe the 150 testers... Um. Mustn't have occurred to them to test this in vanilla. Probably couldn't get past the 100 energy thing.

This isn't a rant, I'm actually having a lot of fun with the game and trading is working ok for me now since 1.18 but it does make you wonder what was happening over there. I guess it was on the list but the list was too long.

werewolves? · Post by **werewolves?** » Sat, 7. Dec 13, 09:29

Just noticed my gigarum was full of reinforced metal plating, not sure if it is enough units for the build, might be a stealth fix...

Madgamer13 · Post by **Madgamer13** » Sat, 7. Dec 13, 19:52

Greetings!

Construction shops create Reinforced Metal Plating to sell, they tend to sell fast though in 1.18. Especially so if you have any trading mods installed.

The two shops in Albion are in Inner World » Frozen Circuit and Ascendancy » Forge-Welded Mail.

If you are hostile to the PMC, you may have to sit and wait for Container ships to try and buy from the station. They'll usually come when the amount in the shop has reached roughly 2000 units.

Follow your target out of the station's range and piggy-back on them when they start their burn, or destroy the jump drive if they try to jump. If you piggy-backed on their burn, destroy their engines mid-burn to force them to stop dead at their destination. They might also stop dead mid-burn or spin out of control for a very, very long distance. Be prepared for either eventuality.

Remember that any container ship will try for Reinforced Metal Plating, even the weapon freighters, so don't assume that only Hull-Tech freighters will go for it. Best advice I can give to watch for is any container ship that pulls up to the plating dock of a construction shop.

That's about it, happy hunting!

DaddyMonster · Post by **DaddyMonster** » Sat, 7. Dec 13, 23:00

@Madgamer13

Many thanks for the tips but I've crawled every inch of both locations and I'm drawing a blank. I even hacked the xml to make the PMC love me, which I was trying to avoid.

Oh Ego, you don't make things easy on your fans... This is like the Hub mission but with added brick walls...

Does anyone know how to edit the xml to get it into one of your ships inventory? I think I've had enough now and I just need to cheat.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

There is NO reinforced metal plating.