How do you make friends with the Lyran Commonwealth?

[Curtis Cook]

This is similar to my previous 'How do you make friends with the Pirates?' thread (which had some very good advice which I am trying hard to follow… with some success), but the real question is:

Where on the map do I go to find missions offered by the Lyrans?

I'm over 850 days into a Career and so far I have found zero missions offered by the Lyrans. I have accepted zero missions offered with the Lyrans as a target, so I'm still at the relationship with them that I started with. I know there is one Lyran Flashpoint; it hasn't come up yet, which is probably just as well as my force likely couldn't handle it (it's a 4 or 5 skull mission).

 

[MarkDey]

I have a post in my signature that will be helpful for this! BT System Summary Sheet and Script

If you download that .zip file, you'll see a file called careerBTsystems.xlsx, and if you open that, you'll see a list of all of the systems in the game. If you filter it on column F, where Steiner = Yes, then you'll see that there are 35 systems out of the 219 that exist where they appear as an employer - all in Marik and Liao space.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Wonderful! Thank you very much!

EDIT: Well, almost wonderful. What app do you recommend to read that file? Adobe Acrobat just says 'sorry Charlie', while Notepad, Notepad++ and Wordpad make the attempt, but just produce gibberish.

 

[MarkDey]

What app do you recommend to read that file? Adobe Acrobat just says 'sorry Charlie', while Notepad, Notepad++ and Wordpad make the attempt, but just produce gibberish.

It's a .zip file, so WinZip should work. Or, you should be able to download it to a Windows computer, and it will understand that it's a file archive, and will treat it like a file folder. The file itself is an Excel file, but Google Sheets should let you read that once you get it out of the .zip archive.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Yeah, unfortunately with me and computers nothing is easy. I can't read your XLSX files. I did a Google search for 'programs to read XLSX files' and it came back with 3 results. I tried Google Sheets and couldn't figure out how to download it. I tried Excel Viewer and was informed that since 2018 it was no longer usable.

I tried Excel and it told me I couldn't download it because I already have it, but when I search for it on my computer it can't find it, and it doesn't come up as an option under 'select an app to open this .xlsx file'. Adobe has this to say: "Double click the file. If you already have a compatible version of Excel installed on your device, the file will open automatically." Double clicking the file only opens the 'select an app' menu, none of which will open it.

I really hate computers. Anyway, thank you for trying. I'll try looking in Marik and Liao space.

 

[MarkDey]

Sounds like ComStar interference. Try looking at this Google Sheets version that I just uploaded instead.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Wonderful! (Or for Steiner should I say 'Wunderbar!'?) This is a great resource, and thank you so much for both the effort put into creating it, and for your patience in dealing with my computer illiteracy.

I'm very surprised by some of the results. I never would've guessed there were so many places to find Davion contracts, or so few for the Combine. I guess I spend most of my time in the Kurita-intensive section of the Periphery… which would explain why I'm not running across the Steiner-involved systems.

Also, there are ComStar contracts? I'm closing in on 2150 hours of gameplay and have never run across one; I'll have to check those out.

A couple of the columns do not appear self-explanatory. How are the Jump Distance and Skull Ratio columns used?

 

[MarkDey]

You're welcome! Glad that you find it helpful.

Also, there are ComStar contracts? I'm closing in on 2150 hours of gameplay and have never run across one; I'll have to check those out.

I don't think that they actually exist. I've run across ComStar as an opponent maybe three times in all of my hours of playing, but never as a random contract employer. If they wanted a job done, then they'd probably work through a front organization anyway.

A couple of the columns do not appear self-explanatory. How are the Jump Distance and Skull Ratio columns used?

Jump Distance is the number of days it takes to travel from the planet to the jump point. Skull Ratio is the skulls divided by the Jump Distance, which gives a rating on how efficient the system is when considering where you want to spend your limited number of days - mainly useful for Career mode. The BT Starmaps for Route Planning post in my signature shows a few maps that color code the systems in the base game. I found that very useful when planning my route to try and get a Kerensky rated career (also a link in my signature 1200 Days - Gramps' run at a Kerensky rated career)

One note on the Skull Ratio math: the lowest rating in the game files is 1, which equals a half-skull system. When I calculated the Skull Ratio, I subtracted 0.5 from the Skull rating that's listed before dividing it by the Jump Distance.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Thanks for the explanation. Oddly, I had tried dividing jump distance by number of skulls, but not the reverse.

As a a result of you twice mentioning things in your signature, I have now turned on 'view signatures' as a default. In a couple of the earliest forums I visited (over twenty years ago) either the posters had signatures that were longer than their posts or thoroughly obnoxious ones (often making comments about other posters). As a result, I routinely turn them off. Supposedly that also makes pages load faster, but I couldn't swear to it.