You should probably consider the Lanius Cruiser A in your list, too - hacking is actually reasonably reliable as a method of killing off a ship's crew, and can make the final boss much easier.
Hacking takes far too long to kill a ship's crew, and is virtually impossible if they have more than level in life support. With one level in life support, you can drain it, wait, drain it again, then damage it. With two levels, it'll have recovered in the wait time, so you are better off just draining once then immediately damaging it. In either case, it still takes far too long. And that's with Level 3 Hacking mind you.
Hacking is not reasonably reliable. It takes a long time, during which your ship might get shredded, and can be complicated by numerous systems, and even if you succeed, you are still spending 8 scrap per Hack, in addition to the 80 scrap unlocking it for for most ships, which in either case is a lot of scrap on hard. Slug A, by comparison, will generally take less time, while not using up any missiles/drones.
Hacking is not reasonably reliable. It takes a long time, during which your ship might get shredded, and can be complicated by numerous systems, and even if you succeed, you are still spending 8 scrap per Hack, in addition to the 80 scrap unlocking it for for most ships, which in either case is a lot of scrap on hard. Slug A, by comparison, will generally take less time, while not using up any missiles/drones.
If you know what you're about, Hacking is actually pretty good.
I'm kind of choked because I had a very nice no-porter Rock B run going, but tripped up on the flagship's final stage... the missile launcher got lucky.
I'm kind of choked because I had a very nice no-porter Rock B run going, but tripped up on the flagship's final stage... the missile launcher got lucky.
Drone Control comes with a free Defense Drone I. I'm next to the exit for Sector 2. Page 2 is crap. Not sure what to do here. I could:
1. Spend 60 scrap for the Drone system while selling the surplus drone, thus giving me a hard counter to missiles and soft counter to Hacking.
2. Spend 110 scrap for as above, but picking up the Drone Recovery Arm as well.
3. Spend 135 scrap for as above, but keeping the second Drone, which would be applicable mainly to the Flagship's triple missile and Hacking.
4. Spend 150 scrap for the Cloaking instead, which given my maxed out crew, is basically a hard counter to missiles as well, and then some.
Getting both is doable, especially if I sell the miscellaneous crap. Backup battery is also usually a strong pick unless you are saving up for other things. I don't really need to save scrap for upgrades at this point, as two shields is fairly solid, while the Flak II and Biobeam alone could theoretically take on any ship in the game, though it'd have serious issues even with the supporting weapons against some, especially vs the Flagship.
My inclination is to grab the Cloaking. It'd stop missiles almost as well as the Drone System would, but moreover it would buy me time in general to get the Bio-Beam and Flak II charged up. Still not sure how I'm going to handle the flagship. Getting Hacking seems like it'd be best, as in conjunction with the Medbay, it provides the two punch to the Biobeam's one punch. Of course I have no idea when or if it'll show up.
Oh and Page two had a Small Bomb, a Breach II, and Burst Laser MKIII. Like I said, useless.
I get a lot of use out of hacking. I usually go for the shield room on a ship, for obvious reasons. But a really powerful unintended use for it is to be able to cut enemies off from their med-bay. You know those times when you're trying to take out a ship's crew and they keep retreating to the medbay, and you don't want to take out the med-bay with dakka because you don't want to take off too many hull points to avoid killing the ship? Just use the door control that comes with hacking a room to slow down enemy retreats back into the med-bay long enough to kill them. This is super useful on the flagship. Hack their shields, 'port onto the bridge, and then the rebel crew will just slowly try to get to you and then get their retreat cut off by the doors of the shield room. It's been my main strategy for killing the crew of the flagship.
First run with the Engi A : Got a second ion weapon quite early, and a teleporter (with Mantis and Rock crew member) with reconstructive teleport soon afterwards. Drones took up a secondary role from that point (I still got a defence drone that proved to have limited use until the flagship here it was invaluable). The one time my boarding crew couldn't get thing done, I managed to ionize the enemies oxygen's reserve until asphyxiation. Fun time.
Flagship took up a long time, because all of its weapon were soon destroyed, but my weapons were 2 ions, and a small bomb, so I had to let my drone kill it a shot at a time. At one moment I managed to reduce it to 0% O2, but I couldn't shutdown the medbay at the same time.
Was playing on easy, though, so I'm not sure how well it would have worked with more difficulty.
Another fun thing is putting the enemy ship on fire and immediately mind-controlling one of the guy who come to put it out.
Also, getting the "go to sector 5 without upgrading the reactor" achievement for the Zoltan B is harsh. Especially since I lost one of my crew-member less than five jump into the first sector to an event. In the 4th sector, I had to power off everything except my shield to power the burst laser 2 I had acquired earlier to put down the shield enough to use the halberd-beam.
Yeah, that Zoltan achievement's a tricky one. It helps if you can get more Zoltan crew, but they're hard to come by. I'm not sure how the random event reactor upgrades interact with it. If you're going for it, one course is to rush the sectors, preferably with a long-range scanner, and rely on upgraded engines and/or cloak to let your Zoltan shield eat the fire until you can bail. It won't let you win-- a number of the achievements are counterproductive to that goal-- but it'll net you the achievement and ship unlock.
Yeah, that Zoltan achievement's a tricky one. It helps if you can get more Zoltan crew, but they're hard to come by. I'm not sure how the random event reactor upgrades interact with it. If you're going for it, one course is to rush the sectors, preferably with a long-range scanner, and rely on upgraded engines and/or cloak to let your Zoltan shield eat the fire until you can bail. It won't let you win-- a number of the achievements are counterproductive to that goal-- but it'll net you the achievement and ship unlock.
Biobeam wore out its welcome by the Sector 5 difficulty shift, too risky to be worth. My new strategy is flak you! Just reached Federation Base...
Can send 17 flak heading my opponents way as soon as the battle begins or their cloaking drops, then get a 20% firing rate boost from both the crew and augments, which means something on the order of 15 seconds for the next volley. I also got maxed shields, engines and cloaking enough to 100% dodge volleys, plus hacking and a battery. Debating what to buy with my 321 remaining moolah:
Its interesting as this ship is basically the polar opposite of the boarding model now. Its sole purpose is do massive volleys that can wreck ships superfast. The Rebel Flagship has 20-22-20 HP in each respective phase. Assuming a 50% missrate and no systems damage, I still kill it in 3 volleys. I suspect I should got Shields, Cloaking, Shields. My biggest concern is that it'll hack my Weapons system, which I can't counter hack because the bastard cloaks as soon as it arrives. Assuming I'm not doing counter-hacking, I might be better off just Hacking their Cloaking rather than their Shields.
If you're cloaked, it can't hack you, either. You've got preigniter, so cloaking won't help you on the charge (except for the charged ion), but if you cloak as well, you'll force the hack drone to delay. If you time it right the hack drone will still be en route, the flagship will decloak first, and you can then guarantee a full volley and launch your own hacking module. This presumes you have a fully upgraded cloak, but I'd take that for sure.
Yeah, flack is the way to go if you aren't boarding. A flak 2 and a flak 1 together will break the flag's shield and deal damage, and because the flag is so bighuge it is hard to miss with flack. The fed C has a built in flack 2, and the metal monster B has a special version of the flak 1 with reduced power consumption.
Now my advice for anyone who is struggling with the game is to focus on unlocking ships more than beating the flag. I did personally look up the details of all the unlocks, but the benefits seem to be worth it. First off getting the various tasks done, especially the crystal mission, will do a good job of letting you know what is a good strategy for you. Second, the new ships allow you to try different starting setups and specialized tactics, at a minimum get the B version of the starting ship as it is a much better jack of all trades.
Now for a question, how many here had gotten all the base game ships before advanced was released? I know that I did, but from the discussions of this game I am getting the impression that most people don't think they haven't finished until they see a full hanger listing. Was I unusual for putting more of my effort into getting all the ships rather than killing the flag?
Thanks. Though to be frank, I still had to use crew-kill tactic the first half or so the game to get adequate moolah, and then managed to luck into a facility which was selling both a second Flak II AND the Weapon Pre-Igniter, after running across a Flak I and Flak II on free pickups. I'd have never bought the Pre-Igniter for just the singular Flak II plus Flak I, and I had to sell every other weapon I had to get it including the precious Dual Laser, but it was worth it.
The Stormwalker is still the more impressive win, given its pathetic starting setup, especially seeing as normal might be easier to win, but has a lower point multiplier. Speaking of, why are your Lanius runs so much less points?
The Stormwalker is still the more impressive win, given its pathetic starting setup, especially seeing as normal might be easier to win, but has a lower point multiplier. Speaking of, why are your Lanius runs so much less points?
A combination of going for the scrap-hoarder achievement for the ship unlock, doing those when I first got AE, and needing to run away from a fair few encounters; I think on my scrap-hoarder victory run, if I recall correctly, I still hadn't upgraded my shields by the end of sector 5; I was relying on cloak and hack drone to no-sell all the enemy weapons fire.
EDIT:
The nice thing about the Stormwalker is that at the time it was the only ship that started with both a teleporter and weapons. With AE, the Shrike does as well.
Just finished a Lanius Run (lost by mismanaging the second phase, and because my weapons were meh by that point. Lack of cloak didn't exactly help thing either)...
It is amazing. Who need boarders? Asphyxiating the ship is great with hacking. Add in mind-control for added fun, and if you feel like killing them horribly in a different way, trap then into the hacked medbay (the problem is launching the hacking just at the right moment, because otherwise they blow the door, heal and leave before it trap them inside). Though I guess if needed, you might send a few boarders to speed things up.
By the way, is there anyway to recall the hacking to target a different room?
Was thinking about how there are about four basic strategies Volley=Destroy ship quickly with concentrated fire. Backup ace for unusually tough/dangerous enemies. Overwhelm=Destroy ship slowly but reliably after ratcheting up ROF or Ion-ing shields. Surgical=Kill crew from a distance when possible. Fast(Bio-Beam+Bombs) or slow(targeting O2). Boarding=Kill crew with your crew, weapons to break Zoltan Shield, finish off Auto-Ships, anti-Medbay.
Overall, boarding is both a bit too strong, a bit too repetitive, and a bit too little synergy with the other strategies. As it stands, there really isn't much point in getting a Teleporter unless you intend to go full-on Boarding strategy because the rate of systems damage is piddly and generally requires you to slaughter their crew first, and there isn't really much point in getting much in the way of weapons for a full-on Boarding strategy except to crack Zoltan shields, finish off de-shielded Auto-Ships, or disable systems critical to crew defense.
I think making crew initially weaker, then adding a Armory subsystem with equipment slots would work wonders, or maybe just overlay it on the Doors subsystem. The Armory subsystem would also block teleports first to itself, then to other systems relevant to boarding, then to important systems. Meanwhile the equipment slots let you develop crew into anti-crew boarders OR anti-system/hull boarders OR anti-boarders OR simply support your ship functions better. This would lead to more hybridized strategies like: Saboteur=Uses crew to punch holes in vital systems and rooms, then fall back and let your ship finish them off. Checkmate=Uses weapons to take out defensive systems, thus leaving ship ripe for an easy crew-kill.
With sufficiently good weapons or crew equipment, you could probably just bull through on a pure ship-weapons or crew-melee strategy, but there would be greater diversity as a whole.
No, you're stuck. For the boss I like to hit the shield room just before my weapons finish charging, because it leaves the thing wide open, especially if you've got beams.
Also, having the first stage of the boss hack your weapons is a real irritation.
