Pardus/Starting with the Union

Congratulations on joining the union! The union specializes in defensive equipment, and is a great choice for the player beginning Pardus!

To begin
You must first decide what path you want to take in the union! You can either be a trader or a fighter. You can always change your mind, but by having a set end goal, you can make your life a lot easier.

Becoming a union trader is fairly easy. The main ships that the union offers for trading are the El Padre, and also the Junker IV, and to some extent the Rustfire.
 * Becoming a trader

Assuming you're in a Saber, start by selling energy to M-Class plants, and making sufficient money to acquire a rust-fire. Once you've acquired a rust fire, start ranking up. The rust-fire has excellent armor to space ratio, so you can pick up assassination missions as well as cargo missions!

Try and outfit it with 1 mining laser, and 1 impulse or a 1MW particle laser if you can afford it.

It takes about 1 or 2 weeks of hard ranking to get to the rank of collector. Once you are here, purchase yourself a junker IV. If you cannot afford it yet, repeat the FWE procedure - buy food and water at M-Class planets, and sell to Star-bases, then buying energy at star-bases and selling it back to the M-Class planets. The rust-fire's space should be adequate for this.

Once in the Junker, you are free to decide what to do next. You can continue ranking and trading to get into an El Padre, which is one of the best trading ships in the game with 270 capacity. Alternatively, you may choose to just relax for a while, just trading, helping buildings and developing the economy of an area.


 * Becoming a fighter

Becoming a fighter is far easier than being a trader in the union, but it has its downsides.

Once again, we assume that you're in a saber, start by repeating the FWE Procedure(See above) until you make around 100,000 credits. If necessary, purchase a magnetic scoop to carry as much as possible. Once that's done, sell the original mining laser that came with the saber and purchase yourself a 1MW Impulse laser.

This time, you can only take assassination missions since the saber doesn't have sufficient capacity to effectively carry packages around clusters - you can try but it won't be as effective as only doing assassination missions.

Make sure you stack them - travel around the cluster looking for the same type of missions - e.g. If you accepted a mission to kill 2 space maggots, find as many missions as possible to kill around 2 space maggots. It is possible to find almost 5+ of these at the start. Then when you kill ~2 space maggots, it will fulfill all those missions, giving you a huge ranking boost.

Now, get yourself into a rustfire. You should still have around 100,000 credits, (your cost for the impulse laser should have been covered by the missions you did)

Buy and Equip a rust-fire with a 10MW mining laser, and a 5MW impulse laser. Why the mining laser? Because you will need to make more money before you get into better ships and better equipment. At this point, it is advisable to start finding a decent spot to settle down - even if you want to only temporarily settle.

Once done, start by mining ore, and selling it to smelters. The rust-fire has adequate capacity to do this, and then don't stop just there - if you want even more money, consider selling the metal to electronics facilities.

Repeat till you have approximately 250,000 to 500,000 credits (the more the better). Then, start ranking once more. At this point, you should have spent around 1-2 weeks in the rust-fire. Patience! Pardus isn't a fast paced game!

To rank, repeat the process - stack assassination missions. Rinse, repeat. Till you hit the rank of bookie.

At the rank of bookie, you unlock the union's version of the interceptor/Shadow Stealth Craft/Viper Defense Craft. Purchase the Marauder, and you're set.

Where you want to go after the marauder is up to you! If you want to continue on, to become a veteran, it is recommended you get your skills up to around 30ish. Skill off ESDs, once you hit ~26 skills, Saracennias, then finally Experienced Pirates around 30 ish. (Be sure to carry bots just in case).

It is also recommended that you fit your marauder with Particle lasers as these give a lot more gains on your skills.

Once you reach 30ish skills, you should have sufficient experience to get into a mercury. This is a slightly more powerful craft, with more armor, hull and capacity. Now, begin the long process of ranking to a chitin - one of the best ships in the game. By the time you unlock it, you should be fast approaching 100,000 exp, at which point, you can get into a hawk if you really want, but it isn't necessary with the Chitin.

After that, you really are free! You have sufficient skills now to start taking on tougher prey, such as the Crystals, The Energy Bees, X993s etc.