Tals tips including TRAF guide

It's rather hard doing a Tals guide, coz theres just so many things...things to remember: try not to attack anything unless it gives a reward other than normal cash/exp from a battle; the most important thing in tals is how you setup your seers. It's very hard to have a certain setup at a particular time because u leave/enter patrol so many times, and you're pretty much certain to die every now and then, so everyone's seers will have various different levels. Its best to work out what stats you will get by upgrading so and so tech/uplink on your seers and putting on so and so mods on paper or a text document, and then using the best one. If u need any help with it just ask :)

TRP (talsian rank points) and accolades are the next most important...until u get to around 15k trp, then mrp (mission reward points) are the most important :P The most you will get out of higher TRP is 7500 exp per MRP, at 18k TRP.

The faster u get the more trp in the beginning, the more exp you will get overall. In case you didn't already know, your trp is the main factor in determining the amount of exp and cash you get from mrp, up to 18k. BM is also a factor, up to 14 mil. In the end, the exp you earn from cashing in mrp will far exceed anything you earn from normal battles, even with x10 exp chips.

Only hire mercs when you need them, and generally that's ONLY in Alpha sector. If you die too much without using mercs, think about getting better AI for your bots or re-outfitting mods, or lowering BM.

Other stuff: you can enter Alpha sector @ 750 trp; Plasma and Storm techs both cost 2250 accs each, Oblits are 1k. I find it best to buy Plasma first, then 1 Oblit, then get Storm; levi is @ 3200 trp, you get Rayden when u do 100 missions regardless of success rate, you get Pneumatron when you kill 50 warships or have 299 guerrila align, you get the option to buy advanced master fire director mods when u do 200 missions with a minimum of 80% success.

Don't change a mission when it's a cruiser mission unless you're past 18k trp, it's pretty much the best for trp. Don't do free patrol its not very good, unless u need some quick accs/mrp. Same for chassis, except you get no choice :(

Important part of Tals are TRAFS. Ok this is how trafs go, 1st level is 2 uplink commands, a bunch of rhinos and 2 FGSI turrets. Uplink commands project 9k shield each, and very high shield and armour deflection. The rhinos do 5k damage, and 15k with crits (not too common so dw about it) and the FGSI turrets do shield damage and DRAIN. Basically, they crit quite a bit, and can drain your bots quite easily. What u do is drain both uplink commands first, then kill them. Then you kill the rhinos, because the fgsi turrets are unhittable-they stop operating when u kill the uplink commands.

Stage 2: bigger drain turrets that you can hit, reinforced wall, 2 uplinks (3 with much higher bm, say over 14 mil), rhinos again. The drain turrets crit quite a bit, everything else is easy. HOWEVER, the reinforced wall gives a lot of drain deflection, so u cant drain the SR180 turrets or the uplink commands until you kill the wall, not just drain it. So, all attack the wall first, until it's dead, then drain the uplink commands and then kill the SR180 turrets, drain then kill the rest. Note: it's really hard to kill the reinforced wall if u dont have a high-critting or multi-hitting oblit on crus. You need that to break enemy deflection and hurt them.

Stage 3: same as last time, except you get tanks against you. Don't worry about them, they're not too much extra trouble so just do the same as last round.

Last round: Don't stop or recover unless your reap/sent is drained here...coz if u do you'll have to fight another lot of the same as last round. TG time... OK the True Guard and manium firespray units do 6k damage with crits, and they crit a lot. Storm Bringer tanks deal 10500 with crits, but they dont crit as much. Still, they're most dangerous if you can deflect 6k no prob aftter the drain turrets. There's also SR180 turrets here, so watch getting drained. Cortex tanks are TG version of seers, they give deflection and firerate and lots of it.

First thing, put your reap on the true guard shielding 1, and another drain bot on tg shielding 2 (levi with 2 immobs or more, or a basilisk). You get 3 TG shieldings sometimes with high bm (14 mil or so +), so if you want to do traf then, hire another basilisk, or have Rayden on reap so you can target in between 2 TG shields. Ok, once you've set bots to drain each shield, continue and they should be drained. If they aren't, set reap(s) onto the one(s) that isn't/aren't. after they're drained, set your crus onto a target where it will kill the most storm bringer tanks in 1 shot. After that, just keep the tg shielders drained and kill the SR180 turrets and true guard units asap. Manium firesprays you can leave for 2nd last, the shields themselves last.

You can hire remus (9 shield def and 11 drain def) or eclipse (1600 shielding) or basilisk (1800 drain x 2) to help you with trafs.

My recommendation is you be able to deflect 10k shield damage or more (including mercs), have oblit on crus with more than 20% crit, and have 75% drain deflection or more on your sent, and preferably have pneu on it too.

Happy traf hunting :)