The Torus - underpowered or misunderstood?

[irongamer]

***spoilers****

I finally managed to best the end boss with the the Torus on normal. Used 2 anti ship drones, 1 ion, and 2 blast lasers (level 1 and 2 I think). I also had cloak, 4 shields, and 48% dodge. Straightforward nuke of the missile launcher weapon system followed by shields system. Cloaked out of all the special attacks. Nothing fancy just chewed down their systems while keeping mine functioning. I did have a gold bar crew member at each station.

[Al_Ka_Pwn]

I'm really kind of under the opinion that any one that beats the game in a torus would have had a lot easier time beating it in any other ship.

The fact of the matter is that unless you get some lucky fights like single shot laser and beam for the first galaxy, that you'll spend so much darn money on repairs from the constant barrage of missiles that you won't have a lot of money to upgrade at all leaving your stuff vastly under powered by the 2nd or 3 galaxy.

As the engi ship you always have to get a defense drone, you always have to buy new weapons, if you don't do those things you will die and it's honestly a ton more resources than you can afford while taking huge amounts of damage every battle b/c you aren't able to take down their shields and then their weapons fast enough with a stupid little drone that you can't give any commands to. And it requires a whole lot more resources to be competitive than any other ship I've played with thus far.

[Gorlom]

I'm really kind of under the opinion that any one that beats the game in a torus would have had a lot easier time beating it in any other ship.

The fact of the matter is that unless you get some lucky fights like single shot laser and beam for the first galaxy, that you'll spend so much darn money on repairs from the constant barrage of missiles that you won't have a lot of money to upgrade at all leaving your stuff vastly under powered by the 2nd or 3 galaxy.

As the engi ship you always have to get a defense drone, you always have to buy new weapons, if you don't do those things you will die and it's honestly a ton more resources than you can afford while taking huge amounts of damage every battle b/c you aren't able to take down their shields and then their weapons fast enough with a stupid little drone that you can't give any commands to. And it requires a whole lot more resources to be competitive than any other ship I've played with thus far.

I prefer 3 anti ship drones and stealth upgrade. get a drone recovery arm and just vomit the drones and autofire on the ion cannons. Throw in a teleporter strategy or a bomb/missile system and you can focus on surviving the special events rather than breaking the enemy ship.

(I've only beaten the game on easy with the torous x2 and the federation ship on easy. havent beaten it with the kestrel or stealth ship yet. they don't really suit my playstyle, much like i suspect the torous doesn't suit your playstyle)

[Al_Ka_Pwn]

I'm really kind of under the opinion that any one that beats the game in a torus would have had a lot easier time beating it in any other ship.

The fact of the matter is that unless you get some lucky fights like single shot laser and beam for the first galaxy, that you'll spend so much darn money on repairs from the constant barrage of missiles that you won't have a lot of money to upgrade at all leaving your stuff vastly under powered by the 2nd or 3 galaxy.

As the engi ship you always have to get a defense drone, you always have to buy new weapons, if you don't do those things you will die and it's honestly a ton more resources than you can afford while taking huge amounts of damage every battle b/c you aren't able to take down their shields and then their weapons fast enough with a stupid little drone that you can't give any commands to. And it requires a whole lot more resources to be competitive than any other ship I've played with thus far.

I prefer 3 anti ship drones and stealth upgrade. get a drone recovery arm and just vomit the drones and autofire on the ion cannons. Throw in a teleporter strategy or a bomb/missile system and you can focus on surviving the special events rather than breaking the enemy ship.

(I've only beaten the game on easy with the torous x2 and the federation ship on easy. havent beaten it with the kestrel or stealth ship yet. they don't really suit my playstyle, much like i suspect the torous doesn't suit your playstyle)

I'm playing on normal and I quite frankly really do find the torus fun IF you get lucky because it really requires that you do get lucky and find a good weapon on normal b/c here is how 70% of the games go. Something ridiculous will happen in the first galaxy, like fighting a pirate with 2 heavy lasers in front of the sun and your ion cannons will miss over and over again and your ship will be taken down to below half health, and then when you get to the next vendor and see a shiny weapon you either buy it and hope you don't take any more damage (this usually leads to death) or get repairs and don't get the weapon which means that in the next sector once again you'll take tons of damage again and have to spend more money eventually leading into a death spiral. The 30% of games where you get lucky and find a nice weapon and can use that scrap to repair are the good ones.

The fact of the matter is that ion cannons just do not scale as well as any of the other things in the game, nor do they have the utility of other weapons. Missiles can be used to instantly disable weapons and bypass shields, this means that the kestrel can make it through the first 2 galaxies without taking any damage and can spend everything on upgrades.

The Gila Monster teleporter becomes more powerful with use because your mantis guys gain levels the more they fight and boarding stuff gives you insane resources to quickly buy any short comings the gila monster has.

The Nesaio has stealth that can instantly make it negate all damage and on its attack it can disable the weapons and make it through the first galaxy with no damage, not to mention its hardened hull and insane engine means it can evade a lot of fire

The ion cannons with the torus on the other hand must always plink through shields, and disable the shield first and then the weapons meaning that ships even in the first galaxy have a good chance to do good damage on you. And ion cannons scale horribly into the other sectors becoming almost unusable by the 2nd or 3 sector when ships have 2 shields, meaning that you're always on a time limit of getting better weapons by the second sector, or getting a defense drone and a good amount of shields to wear other ships down by attrition. This is a whole lot more pressure and a much smaller window of time than the other ships have. If you get good dice rolls you can over come this and get good stuff but the Torus is waaaaay too easily screwed over.

I think this could easily be overcome by giving the Torus a level one defense drone in addition with the level one anti ship drone so that the torus can actually gain some momentum in the first couple of galaxies without relying on awesome dice rolls all the time, also giving it an extra drone slot and reducing the power cost of repair drone, and anti personnel drone to one power would go a long way to making the torus better as well. The kestrel has 4 weapon slots so it seems fair that the Torus should get 4 drone slots since it is the one that specializes in it.

[irongamer]

[Normal Difficulty]

I'm not sure how others are playing the Torus but I don't understand how people are taking damage while playing the Torus. Between the Kestrel, the Osprey, and the Torus the Torus takes the least damage in combat with my play style. The ion cannons can pretty much lock down the enemies ability to fire while your drones pick away at the shield / hull.

When I defeated the boss with the Torus I was still running 1(or 2) basic ion blast, 2 anti-ship 1 drones, and I believe 1(or 2) burst laser 1. I hardly took any damage. My experience with the Kestrel and Osprey is I tend to get ravaged by missiles throughout the entire game.

The Torus seems to be the most efficient in saving your ship from damage if you are willing to play it a bit more defensively. The fights are drawn out but you tend to come away unharmed and often never even hit.

[Al_Ka_Pwn]

[Normal Difficulty]

I'm not sure how others are playing the Torus but I don't understand how people are taking damage while playing the Torus. Between the Kestrel, the Osprey, and the Torus the Torus takes the least damage in combat with my play style. The ion cannons can pretty much lock down the enemies ability to fire while your drones pick away at the shield / hull.

When I defeated the boss with the Torus I was still running 1(or 2) basic ion blast, 2 anti-ship 1 drones, and I believe 1(or 2) burst laser 1. I hardly took any damage. My experience with the Kestrel and Osprey is I tend to get ravaged by missiles throughout the entire game.

The Torus seems to be the most efficient in saving your ship from damage if you are willing to play it a bit more defensively. The fights are drawn out but you tend to come away unharmed and often never even hit.

Well the thing is you have to keep their shields down to do damage and you need another ion blast to make one of the weapons go down, so fights are always like being forced to fire 2 shots at their shield system so that one hits then firing 2 shots at the weapon system to be sure that both of their weapons don't fire and then 2 shots at the shields to make sure they stay down, and then firing one shot at shields and one weapons to make sure they both stay down.

You need a far larger amount of ion blasts to score a hit than any other ship needs to land hits. Ion blasts must constantly hit over and over again throughout the entire battle in order to negate damage, in comparison to the kestrel which needs only a few missiles a fight to keep systems down, and since they do damage they keep systems down much longer.

Because you have a greater number of shots per fight that NEED to land in order to keep systems down to avoid taking damage, statistically you're at a higher risk of taking damage which is why the Torus is weaker in the early game than the other ships and which is why it can create a death spiral with bad rolls.

[irongamer]

[Normal Difficulty]

I'm not sure how others are playing the Torus but I don't understand how people are taking damage while playing the Torus. Between the Kestrel, the Osprey, and the Torus the Torus takes the least damage in combat with my play style. The ion cannons can pretty much lock down the enemies ability to fire while your drones pick away at the shield / hull.

When I defeated the boss with the Torus I was still running 1(or 2) basic ion blast, 2 anti-ship 1 drones, and I believe 1(or 2) burst laser 1. I hardly took any damage. My experience with the Kestrel and Osprey is I tend to get ravaged by missiles throughout the entire game.

The Torus seems to be the most efficient in saving your ship from damage if you are willing to play it a bit more defensively. The fights are drawn out but you tend to come away unharmed and often never even hit.

Well the thing is you have to keep their shields down to do damage and you need another ion blast to make one of the weapons go down, so fights are always like being forced to fire 2 shots at their shield system so that one hits then firing 2 shots at the weapon system to be sure that both of their weapons don't fire and then 2 shots at the shields to make sure they stay down, and then firing one shot at shields and one weapons to make sure they both stay down.

You need a far larger amount of ion blasts to score a hit than any other ship needs to land hits. Ion blasts must constantly hit over and over again throughout the entire battle in order to negate damage, in comparison to the kestrel which needs only a few missiles a fight to keep systems down, and since they do damage they keep systems down much longer.

Because you have a greater number of shots per fight that NEED to land in order to keep systems down to avoid taking damage, statistically you're at a higher risk of taking damage which is why the Torus is weaker in the early game than the other ships and which is why it can create a death spiral with bad rolls.

The drones tend to keep shield low or down. The drones also fire once or twice before either ship can even fire (unless you have that pre-loader upgrade). By that time I can almost always score a hit on the weapon system. Also an ion blast that hits the shield (not the shield system) slows regen regardless of what system you are targeting. Yes, it takes longer to kill the ships but I find that with the Torus I take way less damage than with the other two as I mentioned.

Later on yes, you are required to have some burst laser or a missile to take down shields quicker but I find that if I go all lasers with no ion's I start taking more damage like the other two ships.

[Volthar]

Well the thing is you have to keep their shields down to do damage and you need another ion blast to make one of the weapons go down, so fights are always like being forced to fire 2 shots at their shield system so that one hits then firing 2 shots at the weapon system to be sure that both of their weapons don't fire and then 2 shots at the shields to make sure they stay down, and then firing one shot at shields and one weapons to make sure they both stay down.

It seems to work better if you split up your ion targets initially; one on the shield, one on the weapons and just leave them on autofire for the entire battle. That will usually get me through sectors one and two with minimal damage even if I don't find any weapon or drone upgrades.

If you don't get lucky with an early weapon or drone find, you do need to upgrade your defenses asap. Buy an extra shield bubble and one or two engine upgrades and adapt to the longer fights. Those fights aren't necessarily bad, my crew tends to be better trained on a Torus than an Osprey since they're actually being shot at occasionally.

For me, the main downside of the Torus is that it can get expensive to run if you don't fine a drone retrieval arm. That, and the starting crew is pretty wimpy. The upside is that it gives you a lot of flexibility. You can go drone, weapons or defense depending on what equipment you find on your travels.

[Nox]

the two ions really makes the early part difficult.

that however is not far removed from the other ships and their particular peculiarities, really.

[Justin]

Not sure if anyone else mentioned this, but the key to using the Torus is to cycle the two ion blasts: Turn on autofire, fire the 1st, wait for the 1st be halfway charged, then fire the 2nd. If you target both on the shields it can easily bring down and permanently keep down the enemy shields of any level. Then it's just a matter of having drones to carve them up.

Also, people ask about individual autofire for weapons. For now here's a tip on how to do it without that functionality: When the missile (or whatever weapon you don't want auto-firing) is ready, choose its target and fire, afterwards click it again while its charging (or press the # key) and then right click. This will remove the auto-target for that weapon.