IXION - Useful Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks

Take your time, really. IXION is great at inducing feelings of urgency and tension, which is awesome atmosphere, but the game really is more forgiving than it seems, I promise. You can hang around in systems a lot longer than you might think. It’s more important to gather resources, research and prepare.
The most important resources in the game are Alloys and Food. Food keeps people alive and stable. Alloys let you do literally everything else: increase stability, make food, keep the hull alive. Yes, Trust is also a mechanic that can kill you, but worry first about feeding people and harvesting alloys so that you can make structures that help stability and keep people alive. Polymers and Electronics are essential, but Alloys let you build structures to generate them. Harvest iron, refine it into alloys with two or three Steel Mills. As long as the Steel Mills are running, you can reverse almost any bad situation. Simple!
The game will require you to rescue, revive and house a few thousand people – not just to work your buildings but to progress the plot. It sounds staggering but it’s totally possible without OCD min-maxing. Just be ready to build lots of housing and research housing upgrades.

Another item is to totally avoid any colonization tasks because the game screws you with the people whining that they always fail.
Also to get at least 3 of those Waste Treatment plants to convert to whatever resource you need currently.
I found it to be a bit unfair that towards the end you need over 400 polymer without knowing it ahead of time. Even my 2nd play, I forgot about this and had to load a save.
Before the first fight you need two probe launchers so that one of them can be dedicated to missiles.
My layout the 2nd play was much better and I was lucky that Sector 6 was 2/3rds empty for all the batteries you suddenly need.