Welcome one and all to a guide to Delta V:Rings of Saturn. This is a guide that pulls my research and experience to help people looking for a more in-depth guide to this game, something it is severely lacking. I may or may not update it as the game grows and evolves.

Feel free to shout at me in the comments if something is wrong or you have other helpful tips to add.

The formatting is going to be bad, and I apologize.

Starting out, fresh as a space pilot can be. Everything is confusing, nothing makes sense, and there's a lot of things going on. Let's break it down.

[Mineral Market]
This is the stock market for minerals. Mineral prices will go up and down depending on (As far as i know) random chance. At first, you don't have to listen to it if you don't want to. Most of the time you'll be fine just selling everything you get, but if you want to make the big bucks, it can be worth it.

Default pricing for minerals (E$ per ton/1000 kg) are as follows
Water(H20) = 100E$
Beryllium (Be) = 20,500E$
Iron (Fe) = 900E$
Palladium (Pd) = 2500E$
Platinum (Pt) = 2700E$
Vanadium (V) = 3000E$
Tungsten (W) = 6600E$

I personally don't mess too much with the mineral market unless I know one of my minerals is severely underpriced.

[Repairs]
This is where the fun begins. Whenever you use equipment, it will have wear and tear. If you bang your front right RA-K37 thruster, it'll get misaligned. You can repair it, or you can replace it. Repairing is cheaper, but takes more time and can NEVER go back to 100%
Replacing is more expensive (Less expensive if you repair first), but fully fixes the issues.

[Services]
I stlll don't know what this sucker does. Never used it, never needed to.




[Tuning]


If you want to get every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ounce of efficiency from your ship, this is the place. You can adjust thrust, the higher the thrust the higher the wear from use. You can adjust weapon power, which depending on the weapon can do different things. Most of these have a tooltip for them that will explain.

There's also your reactor target temp. Higher target temps mean less margin for error if your reactor gets a few wholes, but it means more power. I like to stick between 3,500 and 4k. Experiment and find out what works for you.

[Equipment]
Now we're talkin.
The equipment page is where you customize your ship. NOT EVERYTHING IS A DIRECT UPGRADE, READ CAREFULLY.

There are some that are really vague. The mining companion is a little drone that will mine and then head home, it doesn't take nanodrone components, and is a nice and easy source of guaranteed income most of the time so long as you deploy them.
The claim beacon lets you jump back to it, and can attract attention from pirates and such.
Some are mostly cosmetic, the heads up display or HUD is mostly cosmetic as far as i can tell, i think using the one you like the most is important.

Cargo bay, this is your refinery, i recommend getting one as early as possible, and my personal favorite is the Nakamura MPU, it's very efficient on minerals and you still get your remass back (fuel).

Other important notes:
The manipulator arm is not only useful for mining, but can be used to tow derelicts, or escape pods. IF YOU HAVE ONE, DON'T LET YOUR CREW BOARD THE SHIP, JUST GRAB IT AND HEAD BACK. Otherwise you risk exploding the ship, and derelicts are usually worth around a cool mil.
I recommend always keeping a ship around with a Manipulator just for derelicts.

[Dealer]
Welcome to the used and New car dealership. The first four ships will almost all be NEW ships, and thus very expensive. Everything after will be used, and many will be damaged in some way. Though they may come with many different types of equipment. If you own more than one ship, it'll also come up here. As well as any derelicts you haul back.
Check often, most ships have different variants with different hardpoints, cargo bays, and other little things. Find one you like and shoot for it.

Early options:
Your starter ship is decent, you can stick with it for a while. The two common upgrades are either the Eagle prospector and it's variants, or the Cothon 212 and it's variants.

The Cothon is a slow space barge with space for days. Very good for a haul drone setup. If you like slowly drifting through space while you gather and refine resources, this bad boy is great especially the cothon-211 or "Chonker"

The Eagle is a smaller, faster craft. It has less cargo bay storage by three tons, but double the processed cargo storage, that along with the built in asteroid grinders makes it fun to bash into a ring and gently saw it apart.

After that, go with whatever you want, take your time and have fun.

[Crew]
You don't want to fly alone. Different ships have different crew sizes, always check yours. Each crewmember does something.

The geologist is an incredibly useful person to have, i recommend getting one ASAP. They can help predict mineral prices, both in the market and when you're in the ring, telling you how much your haul is worth. They can also tell you what minerals are in ore chunks flying around. Very nice.

The Pilot is nice to have around, with adrenal slowdown causing ALL TIME to slow down when in danger, e.g about to slam into a 'roid when you're going mach 10. They also help to let you know if youre going to slam into that 'roid or if you avoided it by a too close for comfort margin.

The astrologer is nice, but not required. They increase the amount of time that Points of Interest last, making it easy to jump back to them, especially if they have good mineral fields around them. They also highlight ships nearby. Great for derelict hunting.

The mechanic is the last but for sure not the least. They increase your repair cap. E.g increasing the 85% repair limit to up to 98% (that's the highest i've gotten). They also make jury rigging more effective in the field, more on that later.

[Logs]
Not important.
[Launch Ring Dive]
This is where you choose where to go. You can launch deeper into the ring, though it's more expensive. You can stock up on propellant (fuel), ammo, and nanodrone components. Very straight forward.

This section will contain all about the menus, how to play the mineral market, and other such things. Will edit once I get back into the game a lil more.

Shoot any ideas or tips if you have them!

Baby's first Dive! you did it!

Make sure your controls are how you like them.

Firstly, that's a lot of weird things on my screen, what the heck! Your top left is your minimap, along with your velocity (speed) and other similar things. Bottom left is cargo hold, shows what's in it by colored dots. Bottom right is the condition of your ship, and how much fuel you have left, along with battery and how your reactor is doing.

Top right is where it gets crazy. Your top right box is the keybinds for all your ♥♥♥♥, along with their condition. Green good, yellow okay, red bad.

Below that is your main info tab.
Propellant is fuel.
Tramsit reserve is your backup juice. Transit time is how long it takes to get home. Triangle V or Delta V is your potential movement, and basically a reflection of your fuel. Ammo is self explanatory, as is nanodrone components. Total ship mass is your fuel + ammo + drones + ship weight + cargo weight. It's everything. The heavier the ship, the more sluggish it'll feel.

POWAH!
Power draw is your consumption
Supply is production
Balance is your net power
Ultracapacity is basically a battery
Reactor temp is how hot you're running.

MENUS!
If you hit J, there's a lot. The first menu is for jury rigging. Drag one bar higher and it takes from the other two. Easy.
Astrogator is astro navigator, head home or head to POIs.
Geologist is where you teach your drones or arm to grab the right things, setting value and compositions. You can also see where certain minerals are nearby.
Pilot is where you talk to other ships, very important as you can use this to detect pirates you can't even see yet. Always talk to other ships and try to be friendly, you may find a cool opportunity because of it.

[What to do]
Making money is simple. Mine rock, put rock in cargo bay, sell rock later. Early on, you may not want to be picky and just collect everything. Later, you might not go for anything under 2k value, It's up to you. For the most part, mine rock, get rock, sell rock. I recommend upgrading from the driver to a laser or microwave as soon as possible. Pirates are rare and you can usually outrun them or bribe them, and ammo is expensive.

DERELICTS
This is the big gamer money move. Occasionally you will find derelict ships. If you have a manipulator you just grab that sucker and head home.

If you don't, you may get lucky and have a crewmember '''volunteer''' to go onboard. They'll take ten tons of fuel, and either take it home, explode the ship and wound themself, or the ship is dead and you'll need an arm, or to destroy the ship and get the lifepod. I have yet to see a ship sell for under one milly. It's ridiculous.

Edit: I just had a ship sell for 350,000ish, i don't know if it's because i repaired it or if the ship was ♥♥♥♥.

MINING
The deeper the better. The further into the rings you go, the better it gets, the bigger the rocks the better the nuggets, and so forth. Don't go too deep, it's not usually necessary.

OBONTO HABITATS
Sometimes you're gonna meet a spinny station and they will buy a REFINED mineral from you for double to triple the price. If you have a refinery, this is how you make bank. Mine, sell to them, mine, sell to them, head home, come back. Very, very good source of money.

Sometimes out in the ring you'll run into an Obonto station. These will always want some refined resource and will buy it for a million zillion credits. Kidding of course, but it still does want to buy whatever resource for a pretty penny; Not to mention there will be a good amount of that resource in the surrounding area of the station. Docking with the station is relatively easy if you're using a smaller ship. Personally, I have an almost impossible time doing it with my massive Antonoff-Titan K225 the Raven Fist. She's a little hefty and the arms don't grip quite hard enough.

They will almost definitely talk to ya, open up a comm channel and tell you what it is they've been needing. Be it palladium for their carbon scrubbers or something else.

The Stations do have microwave turrets that shoot down nearby asteroids, I'd make sure they're mostly cleared out nearby before you go docking, just in case they decide to shoot you because there's an asteroid through you. (I've never had this happen, but thank you to @Arexach for this piece of advice

They're also how you can get a few specific safety turrets, so that's pretty sweet. Though I've never really wanted to use what they've given me.

Bounty Hunting.
I'm brand new to this aspect of the game. Though my current setup has been more than adequate.

Currently, I have a k37 with two mass drivers, use whichever type you like. I have some good thrusters and great main propulsion engine. I also have a manipulator arm, as with the mass driver, you usually disable the ship and can then recover it.

USE YOUR RANGE. The ai for whatever reason doesn't always fire even if it could potentially hit you at range, so most of the time you can tickle them down from afar.

Speed and maneuverability is really important, bounty hunting with a bulkier ship is not recommended.

From the looks of things, the derelicts you make sell at a lower price than regular derelicts, so be careful out there. Any damage you take is lost profit!

Ganymedian Anarchist Outpost - you can sell mass driver ammo, 7.5k for 1000kg, pretty easy profit and you can grind relationship with the anarchists.

This section, once I finish it, will contain the whopping 2 (two) ships I use with any regularity, plus all the modifications.

This is stuff that I don't quite think fits under other sections.

Moonlets are big ol rocks you find and usually have an opening somewhere, fly around the outside. They can contain uranium, a bar, and other things?

Big carbon chunk, don't know what it is, but it looks cool and has good minerals around it.

Racer can hook you up with some rad speedy thrusters and engines but they wear really fast.

Bounty hunters can hook you up with a license to thrill kill. Very nice.

Speaking of, Pirates aren't great money, the damage is usually more than the money you make. Feel free to try though.



If you think you have good advice, shoot em at me in the comments! I hope to keep updating this guide even if I haven't played the game as much.