Settlements recommended for Material Shopping are dark

[Happy Daze]

I recently returned from a 6 month hiatus from the game. I wanted to continue improving suits and weapons for Ground CZs so I watched a couple videos to see where to go. Both sites I visited were dark. No one home, no power, windows shuttered. The latest one posted is at 'Scholey Mineralogic Platform' on planet 1 C A in the 'Ti Wanjang' system. The video is here.

I couldn't find anything in or out of the game to tell me why these sites are dark. What am I missing?

Edit: While writing this message I was attacked at the dark site. So now I know why that site is dark. Pirates!
How can I tell what the status of these settlements are, so I don't bother with sites taken over by pirates?
Looking at the settlement in the left panel it does say the site is 'Bust'. Is that how I tell?
Thanks

 

[Jack Brolin]

I'm guessing they've been farmed to death and the faction's gone bust. They should have power restoration jobs for you where you can loot the place, but the main takeaway is ignore those videos, Odyssey engineering just changed massively a couple of weeks ago, you can get everything you need from mission rewards now, so just do fun missions.

 

[Happy Daze]

Hey thanks Jack! I'll check it out!

 

[Happy Daze]

Hey Jack do you know if / where the update notes are for the material missions is located?

 

[yianniv]

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...e-8-update-18-08-wednesday-7th-august.627151/

 

[metatheurgist]

Dark settlements are exactly what you want. Legal missions to go and loot whatever you want without the trouble of needing to murder everyone at the place. Lots of those around the place too, literally thousands, many of which are far better than the places in youtube vids for certain mats.

 

[Tetra Trash]

If you're having trouble with the scavengers (pirates) you can equip a ship with dumbfire missiles and nuke them from orbit before you land, then go in and safely steal everything that's not nailed down.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

If you look in the system map they can be listed as Abandoned or have a little X next to the symbol. That tells you whether they're active or inactive.

 

[BackToTheMud]

So go to any other anarchy settlement. It doesn't matter which one; it has never matter mattered.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Good luck.. even with the update its a major major grind. I mean the amount of time I've put into this the past couple weeks on the ground and I still don't have enough to engineer 1 item yet. I've unlocked 2 but still can't get the mats I need for what I want. Even if I did I'd have to do it again and again. Like I had looted at least 30 mines and there are 5 things I need from a mine to upgrade a weapon and I've only looted 3 so far. So if I wanted to upgrade all my weapons with this mod I'd need to do hundreds of bases. Yes I power them up too.

Even then if there are rewards for it, its'll be a harder missions for you to do with the lesser suits/weapons anyway. So assasinate X to be able to upgrade your weapon but you need a better weapon to do the mission. Its a catch 22.

 

[Jack Brolin]

Even then if there are rewards for it, its'll be a harder missions for you to do with the lesser suits/weapons anyway. So assasinate X to be able to upgrade your weapon but you need a better weapon to do the mission. Its a catch 22.

All of the weapons are lethal, I'm sure you can manage a single assassination. Hell you can literally just zap them with your energylink. There's also thefts, salvage, transport, lots of missions which require little to no combat. Missions typically pay out far more of a material than is required for a single upgrade/mod. Don't get bogged down looting, if you haven't got the time it's not worth it.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

I sure can, but can I get away? Can I do a mission that doesn't involve a bounty and wanted status? Sure the point is I need to search the galaxy going from port to port never seeing the material rewards I need within a mission that is acceptable. Plus I prefer NOT to kill people unless its a combat zone. So then narrow down trying to find missions for that too.

All of it is too obscure.

 

[Jack Brolin]

Can I do a mission that doesn't involve a bounty and wanted status?

All the ones which aren't marked illegal, and a good portion of those which are. Technically all of them if you don't get caught. Just steer clear of acquire a sample, disrupt production or shut down power cos they're all buggers to do without getting spotted.

 

[metatheurgist]

Even then if there are rewards for it, its'll be a harder missions for you to do with the lesser suits/weapons anyway. So assasinate X to be able to upgrade your weapon but you need a better weapon to do the mission. Its a catch 22.

I managed to upgrade 10 suits and 13 weapons without a single murder. And don't forget you can trade up some mats.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

You can buy G3 gear straight out of the shop, that's plenty to do anything. The mods are QoL.

 

[Shurimal]

Good luck.. even with the update its a major major grind.

Do missions. I've gotten more materials since T8 update than I know what to do with. At this point I'm buying, upgrading and modding equipment just because I can, for hypothetical scenarios that don't even exist in game

Can I do a mission that doesn't involve a bounty and wanted status?

All the delivery, salvage, settlement reboot and larceny missions. If you're any decent at stealth, all missions. If I don't feel like messing around in settlements I see what salvage missions are available and sign up for ones that offer materials I might need or are high value for trading down (weapon components, titanium plating, graphene, tungsten carbide—stuff like this).

 

[Jack Brolin]

It used to take 60 carbon/titanium plating to fully upgrade a suit even if you found a G3 to start with, and you'd have to find and loot that all yourself. And repeatedly shut down settlements for power regulators. I had over 20 fully modded suits before the update, don't talk to me about grind