Spacelines from the Far Out

2/1/2023
Just wanted to update the solution as the game may have been patched from when I played it. Big thanks to Darth Hawk CZ!

"1) Find parcel with customization, don't fully open it, just peel the corner.
2) Press start (3 lines button), quit to main menu, press Xbox button, select the game, pres start and quit the game entirely
3) Load the game, open the parcel. For the progress to count, wait a bit until it shows.
4) DO NOT QUIT THE GAME IN THIS STEP!. Xbox guide, select game, press start, manage game, scroll down to saved data, delete your save from console only.
5) Load the game
6) Repeat 3-5

I started spawning with some random name after 5 tries. Quitting the game before I opened the parcel fixed this for me." - Darth Hawk CZ

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You will unlock this by opening up the Customization Parcels that you may get at certain stops. There are currently only 2 Customization possibilities which are the Company Color Palettes (uniforms) or Company Logos (airlines logo). You can get this by progressing the game and not losing your ship, but if you don't want to deal with going all the way through to the end Gambulon V, I ended up testing out a 3-stop way to work towards this achievement that works well for even SOLO running it.

Keep in mind, it is RNG with the routes it gives you (Split routes usually end with getting employees over customizations). We didn't always get the correct parcels, but I would say 3 of 4 times you will.


Make a new save. It seems to typically go like this:

To 1st Stop: (Gray) Money
• You don't need to get gas
• Aim right at the destination, occasionally glancing at the radar to avoid asteroids
• Entertain guests so they don't sabotage the ship

To 2nd Stop: (Blue Middle unless its a split, just choose blue) Can be Customization or Employee
• You don't need to get gas
• Avoid asteroids
• Entertain guests so they don't sabotage the ship

To 3rd Stop: (Purple Middle or Green if only choice) Customization
• You NEED to get full gas on this trip
• Avoid asteroids
• Entertain guests so they don't sabotage the ship

To 4th Stop: Run out of Gas
• I suggest running out of gas because I believe you lose only 1 heart while crashing your ship may possibly be more (I haven't confirmed this)
• You can run out of gas for these 2 achievements.

With the 1.6 Patch Released to PC/Xbox in April 2023, the most efficient method for unlocking this achievement has changed from the excellent guide written by BenderWin.

In short, these customizations must be unlocked on the same save slot. "Customizations" do not include ship paint jobs despite sharing the same parcel icon when opening them. Customizations also do not include employees, blueprints, or system upgrades. The only two parcel types that count for this achievement are Company Color Palettes and Company Logos. These parcel types can only be found in White, Green, Blue and Purple parcels.

Although the color palettes and logos do not have rarity colors associated with them in the selection screens (white, green, blue, etc...) there is an internal tiering that prevents you from unlocking all 58 of them with white and green parcels only. After doing a few full runs to Gambulon, and then attempting a large number of short runs as the other solution recommends, I found that ALL of my white and green parcels contained only money once I reached about 20 customizations left to unlock for the achievement.

To finish this achievement, I had to rely on blue and purple parcels. These parcels also contain a glut of employees and paint jobs and can lead to very frustrating runs where you make little to no progress. Orange parcels can only contain ship system upgrades and ship blueprints, neither of which count for this achievement.

Your ultimate goal is to make full runs to Gambulon while prioritizing green, blue, and purple parcels to complete this achievement.

My "Speedrun to Gambulon" ship consisted of the following...
Ship: Starter $400 ship with the Luxury Seats
Systems:
1) Fully upgraded reactor/battery (the 2 white ball version)
2) Asteroid Defense System (lasers)
3) Luxury Seats
4) Toilet
5) Mop
6) Unbreakable Radar
7) Unbreakable Navigation
8) Advanced Warp-Thrust Nozzles (engines)

I found that the fully upgraded thrusters (they take 3 battery icons to power) paired with the asteroid defense system meant that I could cruise through most of the routes in half of the estimated arrival time with minimal risk.

At the very start of each route, dance for all passengers until they each give you 2 thumbs up and then they can be largely ignored if you make it to your destination quickly enough. However, you will need to keep an eye on passengers in the later, longer routes (starting around ~1200 AU) needing additional dancing as they will become bored and nonsensically break systems or steer the ship.

The asteroid defense system allows you to shrug off comets or hit a single asteroid without taking any damage. You will need to wait for the pink shield to re-appear around your ship before it is considered to be armed and ready to take another hit. Having a toilet and mop helps manage bathroom requests and cleanup. Unbreakable radar and navigation matter late-game when everything is breaking and you barely have time to fix the reactor, gravity, and phone. Also, you should always buy insurance if you have the opportunity to and do not already have it. Once you have an ideal speedrun ship, you do not want to risk losing it!

Personally I think the infirmary, TV, cooking laser, and vending machine are not required for speedruns. You will always receive the "arrive on time" bonus that usually outweighs the negatives from not feeding passengers. Additionally, you do not have enough power, even with the fully upgraded reactor, to power all of those systems. Juggling power between systems mid-flight can be overly cumbersome and this configuration allows you to mostly focus on not running out of fuel.

Note that it is no longer possible to "save scum" this with a single parcel since the 1.6 patch. Opened parcels now save immediately to your profile and will not re-appear when you restore your save from the cloud. What does work however is to make a cloud save before you are about to take a fork where you have multiple paths with a needed parcel. Choose one of the destinations, fly there, and then open the parcel. If it is not a customization that counts for this achievement, delete your local save and restore from the cloud to choose the other path. While there is no guarantee that the other path will be any better, you can cut down on full runs to Gambulon this way.


Thanks to kiasano for offering me some tips and info to unlock this post 1.6 patch.