Escape Velocity hints and strategies:

1. To improve your citizenship rating in Confederate, Rebel, or Independent systems, start by hiring three light freighter escorts. Fill their hulls full of supplies. When you leave the planet a bunch of pirates will come after you. Keep destroying these pirates and your rating will go up in the system you are in. (hint: to keep your freighters from fighting and getting destroyed, press "V").

2. If you are in combat and you don't have a missile jammer, get one! They are rare but some outfitting stores have them. If your ship has a maximum speed of at least 300, with the missile jammer, you can successfully elude all missiles fired at you from an enemy ship. Unfortunately the missile jammer doesn't have any effect on torpedos.

3. Space bombs are the ultimate in conquering worlds. First you make sure you have a deadly combat rating. Make sure there are no ships in the area. Plant one space bomb directly over the planet. Then you press "L" as if you were going to land on a planet. Press "Y" to hail them. Next you select "demand tribute" from the comm window. Then you just watch the planetary defense fleet crumble! You may need more than one bomb to conquer worlds with more than just Mantas or Patrol Ships. (note: you may need to do this several times before their fleet is totally wiped out and you can begin receiving tribute).

4. Kestrel owners! Do you want to make some serious money! Just sell the Lightning Fighters you have in your Lightning Bay, and go out and capture enemy Kestrel's Lightnings. Disable the Lightnings, get on top of them and press "B". Sell those Lightnings for $1 million each and start the process over again.

5. If you want to start getting tribute without turning everyone against you, take over the pirate worlds. You get the money you wanted, plus because of the fact that people like it when you destroy pirates, your ratings in the adjoining systems go up!

6. A good non-combat way of making money is to hire out Light Freighters and do commodity exchange. Buy low sell high is the motto. (note: be careful with the daily escort payments, you can drive yourself to the poor house).

7. When you finish playing for a while take the time to select your saved game and duplicate it as a back-up.

8. Have you ever died without a back-up pilot to go back to? Don't worry! Just a couple simple steps and your good as reincarnated! I call it the "Last Pilot" trick. Every time you load a new pilot the game puts an alias of it in the Pilots Folder, it is called Last Pilot. The only reason this trick works is because the game only saves your pilot when you land on a planet. If you die you will find yourself in a shuttle craft outside of Levo Spaceport. DON'T LAND!!! Press escape and go to the Finder. Trash the Last Pilot file and go back into the game. Go to Open Pilot and select your game. You will find yourself at the planet you last landed at before you died.

9. If you want to clear your record in Confederate space, go to Pirate's Haven in the bottom right of the map. There you can buy a fake ID. (note: only Pirate's Haven has fake ID's).