There is an easy way to improve your relative importance to what's happening in the galaxy, just look for the AAR called "Arthur Stone and the Rusty Nail " - an awesome piece of writing and it must be good fun to put in practice tooīy the way, they'll still need you to do most of the heavy-lifting against the 3 biggest & baddest dominators, that alone should give you some challenge? I no longer feel any kind of important to the war effort, which is dismaying. I think there was a pent-up demand by all the Rangers for military ops, and when that base spawned, they went crazy. The galaxy is growing faster than I can explore it. Ever since the Military Base spawned, there has been raid after raid after raid, all succeeding - with only one system being reclaimed by the dominators. Unfortunately, I've been reduced to a "bit player" in the grand scheme now. so maybe it is time to become an interstellar pirate hunter.? I'll even start taking those missions to "Go kill X for polluting our space" that everyone else wants me to do for them. I won't touch Peleng or Molaq equipment unless it's for a VERY good reason (meaning I'll just bribe the officials if I have to). Very early in this game I had problems with the Pelengs because I tampered with their piracy tactics and they started sending battleships out for me every time I jumped into one of their areas.
![space rangers 2 safe puzzle space rangers 2 safe puzzle](https://images.gnwcdn.com/2019/articles/2019-01-25-11-53/resident_evil_2_walkthrough_guide_103.jpg)
As for the Pirates, I'll always go out of my way to take them out - except for the Peleng and Molaq ones simply because I don't want to be excluded from those systems. My losses were purely cash based as I was planning to retire the flimsier Tranculator, and I should be able to replace the items lost with a little time. What was happening instead was that each load seemed to make them heavier or the same, like the game knew what I was doing and wanted to spite me (an artifact might weight 11 the first time and second, but then 12, 13, or 14 as I kept reloading, up to 20 or so times, just testing to see if it changed). Once I figured out that each successive game load seemed to mean more and more inferior items, I stopped trying to load and reload for lighter items. The game hasn't crashed on me once yet, and the only times I had saved was prior to entering Black Holes so I could try to get better rewards from them. I would have lost a couple hours playtime (including the new & better Tranculator) - as soon as it happened, I mashed the "Undock" button (as I was planning to put him in space and see what he had I might want to save, meaning I had to undock) in confusion and terror instead of reaching for the menu button and overwrote my last autosave. It wasn't until I clicked "OK" and heard the *kaching* that I realized what I had done. I found a new Trancluator (13 armor, 350 hull) and wanted to strip the items off my old one (3 armor, 250 hull) and accidentally dropped the old one in the recycle bin instead of activate bin - with all its items still equipped. I think I also discovered, quite unpleasantly, that if you're not paying attention it's very easy to sell things you don't want to. Found a 687 hull Maintenance IV (+20 Droid) "Ideal" hull with 9 armor that cost $76,000 - upgraded to 16 armor.
![space rangers 2 safe puzzle space rangers 2 safe puzzle](https://cms.accuweather.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/crossword-overhead.jpg)
I'm now pretty capable of through a Dominator system - the only thing I improved was my hull. It's funny - I'm actually excited to see "A" class weapons now because they're so rare and I lack the stats for them. I was also going to keep track of when the items first appeared (January 3313, for example) but that started to seem a little too much, even for me - at least on this playthrough. My spreadsheet of equipment is coming along nicely too - I'm logging every tier item and every tech level weapon with their effects. I've fortified the new bases to ensure they stay around a little longer (I had 134 "Intercom" programs to collect at the Military base). The only thing I'm missing is the Business Center now. The issue with bases has finally been resolved - it took 16 years and 5 liberated systems, and suddenly within 3 days of the 5th system being freed a Military, Pirate, and Medical center spawned out of nowhere. It's certainly the best place to store things. I've lost systems to Dominators where I had items stored on the planets, and when I liberated them, everything was still safe and sound.