Transcendence Constellation Class Auton Armada Guide

Wstęp

In my personal opinion, the constellation frieghter and Auton strategies are the most OP in the game. Jednakże, it may not be immediately obvious to new players so here is my guide on how to maximize the power of your auton armada. In older versions (this guide is based off 1.9), auton strategies were considered pretty weak and most of the commentary you can find on the subject reflect that. That may have been true then, but that is outdated now.

If you upgrade your autons they can actually become very powerful and make some of the more difficult encounters much easier. And that includes in the late game if you do it right, although it does get harder by the very late game. In this version the new Q shortcut menu makes managing an auton armada much easier which also contributes to the desirability of this type of run. Here are some suggestions for a playthrough building an Auton Armada. Mainly focused on the start, because after that you will figure out what you like and don’t like for yourself.

Pierwszy, what is the Auton bay? This is a cargo bay expansion which takes up a device slot and was added in the Corporate Command DLC. I believe this is now included in the base steam version and is no longer a DLC. It adds 150 tons of cargo capacity and also lets you repair and upgrade the equipment on your autons. That is, the weapons, tarcze, zbroja, and in some cases a miscellaneous device such as a patcher arm or longreach point defense system. It also let’s you recall deployed autons back to your main ship so you can do these things. If one of your own autons gets completely disabled, you can salvage the wreck and repair it. A player’s auton will always make a wreck when disabled, third party autons only sometimes (which you can also salvage). These wrecks can be completely destroyed if they are hit again by physical weapons. Również, the wrecks can sometimes fly pretty far from where they got disabled, so sometimes you have to search in a pretty large circle to find where it ended up. The Auton bay comes equipped from the start with constellation class freighter. I have seen the Auton bay available for purchase, meaning you could start this on another ship and you might get lucky and have it spawn in a shop. But its pretty rare, and it might of just been the beta next build that did that. Haven’t seen one in my latest non beta playthrough and I am almost at the end of the game. Its better to have it immediately. You can always take it with you later if you want to change ships during your run and you can switch to any of the starting ships eventually. I have read in older versions you couldn’t do this, but that is not the case in 1.9.

The constellation ship is a freighter. Its a little on the slow side, but speed boosters easily make up for that and it doesn’t take too long to find one. Ma 10 slots for devices, which is more than most other starting ships. It also lets you use up to 4 of those for weapons, which is better than the other starting freighters. Dla mnie, 4 weapon slots is enough. These specs to me make it one of the best ships you can pick even outside of the auton bay.

Starting system

• Always name your autons to help you keep track of what is what. I name them after whatever weapon is on them. Or in the case of mules what I store in them. This mule for ore, this mule for illegals, this for weapons, etc etc. I tend to leave Autons that haven’t been adjusted default until I get something on them. It helps a lot with management and will save a lot of time in the long run. You can do this when the auton is in your cargo bay or when docked with a mule.
• When you start with the constellation in Tau Ceti, check the auton seller (it has autons flying around it and is near your starting spawn) and make sure it has a couple of mules and my preference is also few aegis autons. The later isn’t needed, but I find their longreach point defense useful especially when it isn’t wasting a slot on my main ship. Restart new games until it has these. Having more space with the mules is generally useful, but at the start the main reason is it lets you store illegal items until you can sell them. Also save at least one illegal until you find a hotel to get your blackmarket ID card, the rest can be sold for the most credits at corporate enclaves. Auton playthroughs tend to be quite expensive with all the extra equipment you need to buy, so maximizing illegal profits early is helpful. On that note, it is almost always worthwhile to buy everything from tempus labs, even if you don’t know where the next enclave is, because you will make a profit 100% of the time when you do sell it at an enclave. Plus, those items don’t take up very much space on your mule so its easy to store lots of them. The efficiency here is much better than trading in non-illegal products, which I only sometimes do. Naprawdę, handlowy (buying from one station to sell to another for profit) is fairly tedious and doesn’t gain much money usually so I rarely bother with it. Maybe if a corporate enclave is right next to a manufacturer or ice farm but that is about it. Później, you will need storage space for weapons, armors, tarcze, etc that you are collecting to set up new autons.
• Although autosentinels kind of suck at the very start you are very short on cash and having 3-6 of them is better than just 1 extra 300d. I wouldn’t generally get more than that because they don’t have shields which means you have to take them back into your ship every time they get damaged for repair. Its a bit tedious. Autons with shields tend to actually get damaged armor a lot less so you don’t have to repair them as much. Eventually you will trade them up when funds are sufficient. They are useful enough for the first 5-10 systems. Jednakże, in the Q menu, if you hold ctrl, you can select all the damaged autons only and have them all return at once so managing their repair is easier than it used to be. Chociaż, a button that just had all damaged autons return would be even better. Hopefully that will be added at some point. Its worth noting Autosentinals can only use light armor. Other autons can use medium or light. One can use heavy which I will talk about later.
• Doing the missions for corporate command and/or Domina in the starting system will get you the raisermeiser smart cannon. This is a better weapon than the moskva turret because it has much better range so put it on your own ship. Jednakże, don’t sell the turret. You can put it on your starting 300d auton and it handles the range issue without difficulty since the AI will just have it get in range automatically. The main reason do this is the moskva turret has the WMD attribute and the turbolaser doesn’t. The moskva turret should be traded up eventually, but for now when you don’t have much money its best to use it on your 300d. Plan to keep it there for a while because you will buy new autons for new weapons in priority of trading up on this one.
  

Weapons and Armor

You should always update your armor, shields and weapons on all your autons.

• Prioritize weapons with the WMD attribute. Weapons without it won’t work well against large ships or stations and that is where you want your autons to be most effective. Your limitation is how much power the auton produces. The only WMD weapon an autosentinal can handle is the heavy recoilless cannon. You should try to switch your autosentinels to it when you can. The starting stations generally have a few of these for sale, and you are likely enough to recover some from wrecked enemies. Its a common weapon to find in the first few systems, don’t bother restarting for it. The 300d and aegis have 25 MW power so you have a lot more options. Again try to focus on WMD weapons. Things like the slam and heavy slam cannon, the Kuma repeater, the moskva repeater, Ocena 1 howitzer etc. Some exceptions include if you happen to get an undamaged penitent cannon and the EMP cannon. The EMP effect is useful and works on most big ships too until the late mid-game. The penitent, while it doesn’t do much damage, has the dark damage type which virtually no armors have resistances to. Oczywiście, if you find a weapon better than the starting one even without wmd and you are low on cash stick it on your auton until you can afford better. W końcu, don’t put weapons that require ammunition on your autons. They don’t work, so don’t waste money or time on them. Don’t bother buying non-WMD weapons for your autons. Its fine if you find a free one, but not worth actually paying for.
• Mules and explorers have on open device slot, but they don’t use weapons even if you install them. If its a newer version than 1.9, you should probably check if this has changed.

• Higher level is obviously almost always better, but in my experience damage resistances tend to outweigh HP most of the time. Na przykład, the advanced reactive armor is better than the starting plasteel armor because it has better resistances and you are pretty likely to find it on downed enemies. Speaking of armor you find on enemies, you can install damaged armor and fix it on your autons so you can get a better price for it. It costs some fuel to do this by increasing your energy consumption slightly, but fuel drops are pretty common. At the start its pretty worthwhile for that extra cash. And more stores will buy fixed armor. W końcu, you will be making so much cash in other ways you won’t bother. Również, od (most) armors don’t have energy consumption you can put the highest tier armors on even the weakest autons, meaning their damage soak will always level with difficulty even if their damage doesn’t. And if the enemy is hitting an auton, obviously he isn’t hitting you. Z tego powodu, people who say autons aren’t good in late game haven’t really tried that hard to make them useful.
• For autons that can’t use shields, like your autosentinels and later the lumiere sentinel, I would give them armors that have regen on them. This is mainly for convenience so you aren’t always having to pull them back for repairs. In the starting system, if you are lucky, you sometimes get drops of light chimera armor with regen during one of the missions. Not the best stuff, but I always put it on my autosentinels if I get it. Doesn’t always happen though. If you don’t mind the repair, there are better armors than this though. My thought is I don’t really care if the autosentinel gets destroyed because I won’t be having them around all that long anyway so I go for convenience.
• I always switch my mules to light armors, light tevlar being the one first available that is an improvement over plasteel. I put light armor on them because it makes them faster so they keep up better. I also use light armor on lumiere battle autons because they are slow. But you can use up to heavy armor on them.

• The check on energy use is per item, weapon and shield, So you can put a 20 MW shield on the same 300d auton as a 24MW weapon. It won’t cause either to turn off from too much energy usage like it would on your own ship with a 25MW reactor. Please don’t nerf this. Its a fun “exploit.”
• The number of autons you are setting up compared to available to buy shields tends to make which shield to use a moot point until you are well out of the early game and you will probably have figured out your play-style well enough by then. Although for this tier I like the Mammoth 25MW shield the best. Just get whatever 20MW shields are available and you can afford (15 MW or less for mules). That is until later when you get access to higher level Autons, but it tends to be midgame before you get Autons with higher energy caps.
• Mules and explorer drones can take patcher arms and defense cannons which do work, unlike weapons. Patcher arms on your mules is pretty useful because you often won’t be able to fit them in your cargo bay easily when they are full and also its the worst to loose when its full of expensive things. Patch spiders also work and don’t take up a slot so they can be put on any auton you want. I generally save them for mules, but would be good for lumiere sentinels. I don’t know if they get damaged on an auton like they will on your ship. I haven’t seen it happen, but my mules rarely get their shields taken down. Mules only have 15 MW so what shields you can put on them is limited. I think the ceratops is best because it has damage resistances, but really it doesn’t matter that much. When fighting in a system, go to a friendly station and tell your mules to wait on top of it so they won’t get attacked. Use the Q menu and ctrl to select all the mules easily. You can also have them wait in the previous system to be extra safe, and also not have them be affected by the form up command in the Q menu.
• The aegis auton is the only one with 3 device slots. Naprawdę, I think there should be an upgraded version for this for later in the game, but it isn’t there now. It comes stock with a longreach auto-cannon. Some people sell this for a quick 15,000 in the starting system. Which can be helpful. Jednakże, I tend not to because I like having it on my auton to protect my ship and other autons from missiles and other physical projectiles. To powiedziało, you can switch out other devices for it such as a patcher arm or a cannon accelerator if you want to. The later increases kinetic damage by 50% and pairs really well with the ballista cannon (see pic below). The ballista is a slow firing WMD kinetic weapon with base damage of around 60 which is increased to 90 with this device. Its a very good combo, but kinetic damage falls off in mid-game thanks to high resistances on enemy armors. So eventually you want to switch this out. Upgrade to sunflare and particle accelerator at that point.

• Rom enhancements are useful for auton runs, especially the weapon and shield efficiency enhancements. A 30MW shield or weapon can be put on your 25 MW autons when you use these enhancements on them. Aby to zrobić, you have to equip it on your main ship at a station, use the enhancement, then unequip it so you can put it on your auton. This is admittedly tedious, and costs money, but it does make your autons more powerful. Example weapons are the thorin repeater and the sunflare cannon you can scavenge from heliotrope ships. A few sunflares are useful since they are one of the few particle weapons that have the WMD attribute. I also like to use the optimizer roms on the sub 25 MW weapons, but that is pretty optional. I never use any of these on my main ship weapons anyway because I use the damage enhancers that stack on my weapons. Such as the hexegene booster. Upgraded versions of roms occur later in the game.

Making Money (general)

Ironically, this section is in the longrun the least useful and is mainly for the early game. Past a certain point you will probably switch mainly to using mining and capital ship farming to make money. But in the first couple of systems you will probably be stuck with this because there aren’t many capital ships and you are too weak to fight them anyway. Również, you might not immediately get a mining cargo bay drop. Although you might. Its pure RNG. Eventually one will spawn though. They are fairly common.

• Do missions from all the friendly stations. Never destroy any enemy stations in a new system until you have scouted all the friendly stations and checked if they are offering money to do missions. You might as well get the mission fee on top of the stations loot. Its generally not all that much money, but it is helpful in the early game.
• Sell whatever you can to corporate enclaves first. They almost always pay the most. Jednakże, items you sell to them disappear forever so you can’t buy it back later. For most items this doesn’t matter, the biggest exception being certain ores discussed further in the mining section.
• Store illegals in a mule so they don’t get confiscated. Sell them to corporate enclaves by going to the maintenance level. That is the most profitable place to sell them. Tempest labs sell drugs for cheap, which can then be sold at the corporate enclave for a decent profit typically. To access tempest labs you need a blackmarket ID. These can drop from outlaw ships, but the easiest way to get one is to go to the restaurant at a hotel station with an illegal in your cargo hold and have a conversation. Corporate stations and hotels don’t confiscate illegals regardless of what cargo hold you have. If you sell enough illegals, you can skip the annoying mission for blackmarket stations where you have to go to st. kats and also get free weapons and shields from them. DON’T sell slave coffins because they are more useful given to domina for domina powers and also you can randomly be sent to prison if you sell too many. If you have enough money you can buy your way out, but its very expensive. If you don’t its game over.
• Fix Light and medium armors on your autons so you can make more money and sell them to any station. Once you get the lumiere battle auton, you can also fix heavy armors. Whether or not that is worth the time at that point of the game is up to you to decide.
• While I don’t recommend it, you can buy Aegis autons for around 3000 credits then remove and sell the longreach autocannon for 15,000. I think the longreach is pretty useful and there are plenty of other ways to get cash. But its a trick you can use. This can actually be done with the weapons and armor of any auton. The weapon and shield you can just take off, and you can switch in a cheap armor and sell the good one separately. The auton price doesn’t change in 1.9.

Making Money (Górnictwo)

Having capital is the main obstacle to having a good armada, so being efficient on making money is important. The two main ways I have found for generating a lot of cash is asteroid mining and capital ship farming. I do both. I have already mentioned how to make money on illegals and some other things, but honestly it isn’t nearly as lucrative as these two methods. Although I still do that stuff in the early game.

For asteroid mining, you will need to buy a mining cargo bay and an anhi mining missile launcher. These can spawn at any station that sells devices and weapons, but mining stations almost always have them. Don’t worry that these missiles don’t have WMD because you are setting up your autons to have WMD instead and one of your main weapons should have WMD too. I always work at getting the Dual mark 3 howitzer from a tinker as the next upgrade to the smart cannon. Although you could always just switch out launchers depending on if you are attacking or mining, but I don’t bother.

Niestety, you will have to switch out cargo bays quite a bit between when your are mining and when you are working on autons, but its manageable. It would be nice if there was a higher level “advanced cargo bay” added which could do both, but for now that doesn’t exist. You can be more efficient if you clear out the system of hostiles first with the auton bay repairing as needed, then when most enemies are gone you can focus on mining and not worry so much about repairs.

The mining bay shows you which asteroids you have already mined or not, and also lets you just fly over ore to pick it up rather than docking with it. Również, you lose some ore if you try to pick it up without the bay. The anhi launcher is better than other mining weapons because it has tracking missiles starting with the tier 2 Steelrain missiles. Później, you get access to titanfall which mines 3 asteroids at a time, and later yet you get access to another missile I forget the name of which does 5 asteroids at a time.

Omnidirectional mining weapons are comparable, but the only one available until late game is the laser, which can’t mine very high level ore so don’t bother with it. It may seem like you are spending more on missiles, and you might be a little bit, but keep in mind weapons that don’t have ammunition use a lot more fuel so the extra cost isn’t as much as you might think. The overall convenience and speed is worth it. You will be doing a lot of this, so anything that speeds it up is worthwhile. As you mine more, you get up to a 50% buff in yields, its worth mining the earliest systems completely until you get that buff in full so it is applied to the better ores in later systems. Not strictly necessary, but it helps. You are informed of the buff at mining stations, but I think it applies whether or not the mining station tells you about it.

If you have the eternity port DLC, you can choose to have its systems also accessible in the Domina questline and it is worth saving ore for the nanofactured armors available in the kibo system. Another reason to have mule autons so you can store good ore until you are ready to use it. These armors are among the best in the game and are useful for both you and your autons. Ores that you should save include Plasteel, cerrallox, xenotite, orthosteel, ithalium and neutronium and also save your meteorsteel dust barrels if you are lucky enough to get some of that. Nanofactured armors get unlocked at the forge as you take damage while having them equipped.

When I first get to kibo, I equip my ship with nanofactured titanium armor and hopefully have a patcher arm equipped. This armor sucks, and is probably a downgrade for you at this point but there are better armors that use plasteel and orthosteel after just a little bit of damage so I don’t like wasting that ore. I turn off my shields and leave my autons at a friendly base and soak some damage until the 2cnd tier armors are unlocked. The armor progression I like for my main ship is nanoforged blast plate (6 plasteel and 1 xenotite), Nano carbide (4 cerralox and 2 orthosteel), then nano meteorsteel (1 meteorsteel dust, 4 ithalium, I 1 orthosteel). For that last one, you can’t use shields but I typically stop using shields as soon as I have any of these armors and a patcher arm. Extras go to the autons. Neutronium armor (1 neutornium ore) I put on autons. It has way more HP and lets you use shields, which I want on autons so I don’t have to repair them as often, but in my opinion the higher resistances of meteorsteel are way better for my own ship. Keep in mind the second tier domina power fully restores you armor instantly and can be reused every few minutes, which makes ditching shields at that point a no brainer (Donate domina items at domina stations to upgrade powers, I is the shortcut to use powers, Slave coffins advance you the most). Shields eat up way too much fuel and with all your uber-autons, you shouldn’t be taking all that much damage anyway as they will end enemies quickly as well as soaking up shots.

OSTRZEŻENIE: Don’t make any of the military armors until after you have a military ID. They will get confiscated if you don’t have one and they disappear so you can’t even buy them back. The easiest way to get a mil ID is to do a militia mission or two in st. kats, which is the next system. Naprawdę, to jest błąd, because they shouldn’t make them for you in the first place if you are not supposed to have it.

Making Money (Capital ship farming)

For capital ship farming (the small ships will get you some money, but its the big ones that really pay off), there are several types of stations that you should

NIEdestroy when you find them. These include Urak fortresses (other urak stations don’t matter), Marauder outposts and strongholds, heliotrope bases (każdy), and outlaw havens. We wszystkich przypadkach, the thing you are going to make the most money on is fuel rods. You will end up farming more of these than you will ever need. Lumiere stations should also not be destroyed but for a different reason I’ll get to later.

If you destroy all the ships around these stations, more will spawn in from the nearest stargate and travel to the station. Na przykład, you can see the marauder raiding platforms below.

Fortunately or unfortunately, by the time you find these stations your armada should be very powerful and able to destroy most stations very quickly. Which you do not want in this case. You can set your autons to wait anywhere along that line between the gate and the station, just make sure they aren’t near any other stations you don’t want destroyed or friendly stations you don’t want to accidentally turn hostile because of stray shots. Autons wont fire if it might hit a station, but that doesn’t help if a friendly ship flies in front of your auton’s fire. Z drugiej strony, it may be simpler to just farm with your main ship only and leave the autons somewhere safe.

I didn’t list absolutely every station that spawns capital ships. By the late-game you probably won’t need to farm nearly as much, but there are a few others which spawn capital ships which you could also farm if you wanted to. I will leave that mystery up to you. I will say you can get all the money you need from the stations I have already listed.

The outlaw heaven will probably be the first one you will find, and is the easiest to farm because the ships are weaker and spawn much more quickly. You can do it with your smart cannon and lvl 6 zbroja (nano blast plate is what I use). Those ships drop smart cannon rounds so ammo isn’t an issue. They also drop a lot of illegals. Selling these is a bit more tricky, but they take up very little space in your mule so its easy to store them for later if there are no corporate enclaves or black market stations nearby. There are some WMD weapon drops which are also OK for your autons if you have nothing better.

For the others, I wait until I have nano-carbide armor and a dual mark 3 howitzer, preferably with a makeayev weapon enhancer, a few hexegene booster enhancements, and a high speed howitzer loader. But go ahead and tackle them when you have the loadout you think is good. I preferentially go for Urak destoyers because they seem to have the best rare drops, and occasionally drop the meteorsteel dust I want and is super hard to find. Ponadto, the advanced Urak weapon that always drops on these can be used as a wmd weapon on your autons. Useful if you have gotten to this point but don’t have all your auton weapons upgraded yet. I don’t really think its all that good, but free is its own kind of good. There is always at least one Urak fortress in the Urak system, go figure.

Heliotrope farming can also be useful for their sunflare cannons as well as the heliotrope fuel which when used will sometimes enhance your ships reactor for free. Takes a few refills sometimes. Ogólnie, I don’t find them as lucrative as Uraks, but I always do it a bit for both of those things. With a weapon efficiency mod, Sunflares can be put on your Aegis and 300d autons.

Maurader platforms are pretty good, but I don’t think the drops are as good as the Urak destoyer. Jednakże, one of the smaller ships occasionally drops a working EMP cannon, and if you feel you need a few more of those its worth going for.

Często, you can find several of these stations all in the same system and can make a circuit between them to farm all of them at the same time. Except for Outlaw havens, it often takes a little while for new capital ships to spawn in.

If smaller ships make it past you and to their station, you will need to go up to them and destroy them to make sure a new spawn happens.

OSTRZEŻENIE: Don’t let too many wrecks build up at one time. I have occasionally gotten errors and crashes that I think are caused by having too many things on the map at one time. Each wreck adds to the count and if you get enough it can cause problems with loading everything. So occasionally you need to use physical weapons to blow up the wrecks that you have left with the farming to keep the count down. Zasadniczo, just fire at old wrecks until they disappear. I wish there was a destroy wreck option in the docking menu, but there isn’t.

Employing both of these strategies should have you rolling in enough cash to buy the best weapons, zbroja, and shields available for 30+ autons. A million credits in an hour is possible, at least with the capital ship farming. It is a bit faster than mining. Please don’t nerf this kronosaur. Once you get to this point, your armada should be basically unbeatable.

The different types of Autons

There is no upper limit to the number of autons you can use. At least that I can tell, Mam około 30-40 in my most recent playthrough. Również, please don’t nerf this.

There are several types of autons you can buy, if they spawn in shops. But mostly you are going to be getting with 300d autons and maybe some aegis until midgame. There isn’t much reason to get rid of an auton you have already set up once new ones become available because you just add the new ones to your growing fleet. Również, when you go back to previous systems, its worth checking to see if any autons have spawned in shops you have already visited. Even though shops have been static in the past, it looks like new 300d autons will spawn in shops you have already visited. This is something I only noticed in my most recent playthrough.

You don’t need to purchase every single 300d you see, I tend to only buy new ones when I have the armor, broń, and shield I want to put on it already.

I buy almost every Aegis I find because it has three device slots. The starting long reach is useful, but it can also be swapped with, Na przykład, a particle accelerator which goes well with the effeciency enhanced sunflare. Or a ballista with the cannon accelerator. After farming heliotropes you probably have a few working sunflares. Really its a great weapon for your autons. [See screenshots of these autons earlier in the guide.]

Później, you can purchase 2 more autons which are a bit better still. the 1m Battle and 1m/i battle autons. These autons have a max of 45 MW, so your choice of weapons and shields expands a bit. Obviously you can make these a lot better than the 300d as a result. Szczerze, I don’t bother much with the 1m because its particle beam weapon isn’t that great and by the point it shows up, you are just about able to get something way better for free. the 1m/i on the other hand I tend to buy every one because it comes with an EMP cannon which will disable most/many ships for a short time when hit. It seems to work pretty far even into the late-game and even works on a lot of the capital ships. Charon frigates, including the Kronosaur, are trivial when you have a few EMP autons going. I definitely like having a few autons equipped with it. Jednakże, I don’t leave it on the 1m/i. It is only a 20MW weapon so it can be put onto one of your 300d or Aegis autons and a better weapon can be used on your the 1m/i.

The explorer auton is really useful, although you only need one. It explores the entire system showing you the location of all non-mission spawned bases. I typically put the strongest armor, tarcze, and first patcher arm on it so it can survive a few potshots. Assuming you do so, it is basically guaranteed not to be destroyed and will reveal the whole map to you. There is a mission from the university in st. kats which will always give you one but it will also sometimes be for sale later in the game. Its typically safer to explore the interior of the system first then have it explore the rest. It depends on how beefed up it is if you want to risk sending it around a completely unexplored system. I recommend NOT sending it to explore jiang’s star because of the unique layout of sung citadels in that system only which force it right through enemy stations. At least not until you have cleared most of the system.

W końcu, there are two more autons which aren’t available for purchase. In the system north of st. Kat’s or further, lumiere outposts and strongholds will spawn. These bases continually spawn new autons every few minutes or faster. If you destroy them and they leave a wreck, you can salvage and repair them and use them yourself. They create wrecks at a certain rate, which is less than 50%. Just keep farming until you get as many as you want. Również, I suggest using either particle or ion weapons without WMD so you don’t accidentally destroy a wreck when it comes up. Though if you are careful you can use any weapon. The two available are the lumiere sentinal Auton and the Lumiere battle auton. The later is the best auton in the game, and can very easily be equipped to be very useful all the way to the endgame.

The lumiere sentenals, like the auto sentinals, can’t use shields. This doesn’t mean they are entirely useless, Jednakże. They take weapons up to 60MW and can use light or medium armor. I end up selling off most of these, but I do keep as many as I can find regen armors or patch spiders for. Either with regenerating nanos enhancement or the raisermeisser v300 power armor for regen. Both of these are pretty limited, Jednakże, and you will probably end up with more sentinals than you have armors for because you are really farming for lumiere battle autons. Don’t forget to unequip the muon cannon from them so you can sell it separately! You still get 2700 credits for each L sentinel even if it doesn’t have a weapon.

The lumiere battle auton can use weapons and shields with up to 100MW power requirements. Needless to say 10-20 of these with that tier of weapons and shields should be useful all the way to the end of the game. The biggest problem with these is that they are slow. Więc, like with my mules, I restrict them to light armors which improves their speed. There are a number of high tier light armors available as you go on, but the most convenient at the time you start getting the auton typically is the light gosoku armor available at busihido merchants. Its a tier 7 light armor and each merchant tends to have around 30 z nich. This auton can use up to heavy armor, Jednakże, but I don’t think the slowdown is worth it. It can be useful for repairing heavy armors to sell, Jednakże, if you find yourself in need of cash at that point in the game. The dual muon cannon you pull off your L. battle auton is one of the exceptions to the WMD rule. Their armor penetrate ability is pretty nasty, and it could be worth saving a few of these for you other autons as its only a 20MW weapon and can go on any of your autons.

Warnings and things to watch out for

This is just a few things I have noticed which can be especially problematic in an Auton playthrough. Although in the case of Nasser its everyone’s problems whether you have autons or not.
• There is a domina mission you get after St. Katherine’s star system in which you switch to a penitent ship briefly for a spy mission. There is a bug that causes your autons to attack friendly stations when you make the switch, so you need to leave them in another system before starting this mission. If you have followed these guide, you autons can easily kill most stations and you get to keep the negative faction hit even after you switch back.
• Anton Nasser is a dirty SOB. He doesn’t care about collateral damage in the slightest. His 4 mark V howitzers will be fired no matter how many friendly ships are in the way. Anton Nasser doesn’t give a $%@#. That includes you, your autons, and any other friendly ships in the area. If killing you means he gets that pis$@nt anarchist ankle biter firing a worthless laser cannon that can barely chip paint, he is going to shoot his mark v howitzers right through you to see that the scum meets his end. He is a dangerous MFer and you don’t want to be anywhere near enemies when he is around. Pay attention to which system this ultimate teamkiller is going to be in next and leave your autons and wingmen waiting until his mission is over because its very difficult to prevent them from getting in his way. As for yourself, Stay way behind him and let him kill everything and focus exclusively on dodging anything he sends your way. One hit kills are very possible. Use your domina power sustain if you have to. Believe me, he can handle all the enemies all by himself. And he is going to because I am not getting team-killed by him again.
  
• There is one annoying mechanic where in the sirius system, and possibly 1 Lub 2 other systems there is a high gravity well mechanic. Its kind of annoying, and I am not sure what the point of it is otherwise, but it will accelerate you and your autons towards the star where they will be destroyed. I recommend never bringing your autons in these systems at all except to pass through to the next system. Its very easy to accidentally lose half your fleet to that nonsense. Don’t wait your autons in these systems. If they are close enough they will fall into the star. Potentially millions of credits down the drain depending on how decked out your fleet is.
• This isn’t related to Autons, but Volkov is a wingman you can get who works much like an auton except he uses full ships, which can be upgraded at shipyards. He will permanently leave your service if he happens across the freighter of his dead wife which always spawns in a system after St. Kats. I think its random where it spawns, but you might want to avoid bringing him to the stars north of st. kats. I have been meaning to see what would happen if you destroyed that ship before bringing him to the system to see if that event doesn’t get triggered, but haven’t actually tested it out yet.
• Don’t have a military grade armor manufactured for you, in kibo for example, unless you already have a military ID. They will happily make it for you then immediately confiscate it from you the next time you dock. And it doesn’t get added to their inventory so you can’t buy it back later. Military IDs can be gotten from doing commonwealth militia missions as well as the european, asian, and african missions. These are all factions you run into.
• DON’T sell (illegal) slave coffins because they are more useful given to domina for domina powers and also you can randomly be sent to prison when you dock with a station if you sell too many. If you have enough money you can buy your way out, but its very expensive. If you don’t its game over.
• Don’t let too many wrecks build up at one time when you are farming. I have occasionally gotten errors and crashes that I think are caused by having too many things on the map at one time. Each wreck adds to the count and if you get enough it can cause problems with loading everything. So occasionally you need to use physical weapons to blow up the wrecks that you have left with the farming to keep the count down. Zasadniczo, just fire at old wrecks until they disappear using something physical like blast or kinetic. I wish there was a destroy wreck option in the docking menu, but there isn’t.

Różnorodny

Things that didn’t really fit elsewhere.

• I have already mentioned it before, and it should be self explanatory anyway, but for completionists sake I want to really highlight how important using the Q menu is to getting the most out of your autons. In the Q menu, which you get to by pressing the Q key, jest “break and attack” rozkaz. You need to use this to get your autons, and wingmates, to properly execute an all-out attack on a station or enemy fleet. Otherwise they only shoot at what happens to go directly in front of them as they hover around you. Which is good, because you don’t want to destroy every station the first time it hits the edge of your map. Ponadto, after executing this command, if you want them to return, you also use the Q menu and the “form up” command to bring them back into formation around you. Bądź jednak ostrożny, because this command also applies to your mules and explorers. I wish it didn’t, ale tak jest. And it might cause them to fly through other enemies and get destroyed. This issue can be avoided by having them wait in a different system. The C menu, which you get to by pressing the C key, does something similar to the Q menu but not as well. Play with it if you want.
  
• Neuroplague missles don’t affect autons. They attach to them and make a really scary display, but don’t actually do anything. So having a bunch of autons in the way significantly reduces the chance you or your wingmen will meet a grissly death from these annoying little buggers.
• T31 Armored transports are sometimes available for a ship trade at blackmarket shipyards. With their 600 ton cargo capacity, its easier to take in a lot more of your auton fleet at a time. The device layout is the same as the constellation, 10 I 4. Jednakże, its pretty slow so you need at least the titan 440 drive booster upgrade unless you don’t care about that.

Wniosek

Following this strategy, it is easily possible to become the king of your own demented armada, and work with them all the way to the endgame. Management is probably the biggest issue, because it takes awhile to sort everything out and keep track of everything once you get enough autons. But the Q menu makes this much easier than previous builds, so veteran players should at least take a look at it. Ponadto, if you end up with too many, you can always get rid of some of the older and weaker autons to make it more manageable again.

Let me know if I missed anything and I will add it. Also let me know if you have any different strategies.