What is NCU?
NCU is Nano Controller Units. The air is filled with nanobots that will obey your every command. Want to hurt someone? Program the nanobots to deal damage. Want to be stronger? Program the nanobots to help you lift/push/whatnot. The effect is very similar to spells, but it's not spells. It's nanotechnology. Anyways, what about these NCU? Well, as I said, there's bots all over the place, but there is a limit to how much you can use. The more NCU you have, the more programs you can keep running in your vicinity. ((The more NCU you have, the more, bigger buffs you can have)).
When you arrive on this planet, you have a natural NCU-area that allows you to control 8 NCU. 1 NCU is a number of bots, 2 NCU is twice that number of bots. I've never counted how many bots 1 NCU is, but everything is counted in number of NCU, and that's really all you need to know. For now.
Great! You got 8 NCU. What to do with them?
You can buy a nanoprogram that will make you stronger, like this Augment Strength that adds +6 to your strength, and take up 2 NCU of space in your field. When you get better at it, you can buy and upload a bigger strength buff, Strength Boost that adds +12 to your strength, and requires 3 NCU.
There's a ton of nanoprograms available. Some are available to all, most are only available to a certain profession, but every profession has their set of programs. You might want to investigate the sites linked to above for more info about that.
Ok, I understand that I need NCU now... how do I get them?
First off, you're gonna need a Belt Component Platform, normally referred to as "belt". There's six main versions of the belts.
Belt Component Platform Ti-100X. Gives you 1 Belt deck.
Belt Component Platform Ti-200X. Gives you two belt decks.
Belt Component Platform 300X. Gives three belt decks.
Belt Component Platform 4IX. Yes, that's correct, four belt decks.
Belt Component Platform 5000. Gives five belt decks (start seeing a pattern here?)
Belt Component Platform 6K-X Gives 6 Belt decks, which is the maximum number of decks you can have.
Belt decks is also sometimes referred to as "computer deck".
Now, as a new player, I would reccommend getting a belt with 2 decks. The first one, with just 1...well, you can get it, but you ight as well save the money until you can equip the second one, which adds 2.
Equipping a belt
The belts are really sci-fi stuff, and you can't just go around using them all at once. Like the 6-slotter... you probably can't use that yet. See, the thing is that they require a skill called Computer Literacy. The higher QL(quality level), the more comp lit is required (see the way I went from the actualy phrase to the commonly used lingo in just two sentences?). You'll need complit for the actual NCU-chips, so you might as well concider maxing that skill.
So, I got this fancyswancy belt that is supposed to give me two deck, (whatever that is), what do I do now?
Righto, assuming you went for the 2-slotter, you got room for 2 chips.
First to the database and check for info.
Available memory
They range from ql1 to 200. Requires 6 complit for a ql1 that adds 2 NCU memory, and requires 750 for a ql200 that adds +64.
You should equip as high ql as you can, to increase your NCU as much as you can.
Please note that equipping NCU chips has to be done manually. Rightclicking the memory will replace the one in slot 1 and not put anything in slot 2,3,4,5,6. Also, equipping/unequipping belts and memories takes time. Some times the progress bar doesn't show.
OK, so now I got my belt equipped along with two of them memories. I got 20 NCU instead of the normal 8 I started out with. So what? My buffs only require 3 NCU total when I use them all!
As you level up, you'll get new buffs, better buffs that replace/add too your current ones, and they WILL require more NCU. Also, when teaming up, it's common that the team buffs eachother, giving them more hitpoints, making them take less damage, cracnking up regeneration-rate, making them run faster etc, etc... all those require NCU, and if you don't have enough, then, well, you won't get that buff, simply because there's no room.
Oh, I get it. So these belts and chips are the only way to increase NCU, then?
Not entirely correct. There are many items, armor and even buffs that gives you more NCU, as long as you have the item equipped/buff running. But that's not for this guide. This was made to explain the basic NCU stuff.
-edit-
Added some stuff, thanks to constructive feedback.
Also, if for some reason someone thinks this'll be a good thing to put up on a website, feel free to do so. If I didn't want to share this, I would probably not have written it in the first place.
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Originally Posted by patoliver
