Tips and Strategies

[ErrantConstruct]

Anyone willing to share their tactics or rules of thumb they follow? I'm loving the game, but I am too bad at it to actually beat the boss.

[joshuabees]

First off, the only difficulty I find enjoyable at the moment is Easy. If you haven't tried that yet, I recommend it.

Secondly, there are a few threads here discussing boss strategies, which I highly recommend. My strategy nearly always involves cloaking, boarding parties, and a good mix of lasers & missiles/small bomb.

I would say my overall strategy is to visit as many nodes as possible in each sector, and make sure you have enough scrap on-hand to buy good equip when you hit a store. I'm sure there are much more detailed strategies out there, but that's my main philosophy.

Hope this helps!

[Gomisan]

I dont get too complex with my strategies. Knock out their shields, knock out their weapons then finish them off. If you can get through the shields without needing to target them, even if it's gradual just go for their weapons and eat away at the enemy while they cant shoot back.

Later on you'll need to vary it up a bit, but the basic goal is the same, take as little damage as possible.

[Nox]

Here's my basic method of engagement :

I rely very heavily on overwhelming firepower. For most fights I employ multiple burst lasers (at least 6 shots of lasers)

My opening attack sequence at mid-game is :

bring out anti-ship drone
allow all weapons to charge for volley fire
wait for first enemy volley, and cloak to avoid it.
open fire all weapons aimed at enemy weapons
if I am fired on with missiles and cloak is not available, I raise all power to engines to help avoidance, stripping power from shields / O2 / drones

if you suppress enemy weapons enough that your shields can cover you, next target is either enemy drones or weapons depending on which is causing you more problems.

next is enemy engines/o2 then finish up on whatever.

I tend towards hull laser II's if I can find them. Each hull 2 is 6 damage a round PER slot which ends a fight very quickly once the enemy shields are down. Two HullII's and one burst laser II is 9 shots per volley which overwhelms anything.

assuming the primary mission is

1) suppress enemy attack
2) destroy enemy offensive power
3) mitigate damage
4) avoid damage
5) deal with contingencies
6) exploit opportunity
7) deliver intel to improve decisionmaking about 1-6

In evaluating the above I also consider -

1) How much will it contribute to the primary mission
1.a) How situational is it?
1.b) Does it have secondary/tertiary uses?
2) what is the opportunity cost of getting it?
3) what is the upkeep?

That being said, my goals in obtaining equipment are :

early phase :
1) rapid fire lasers (at least 6 shots per round)
2) shield to 2/3
3) cloak (and upgrade to 2)
4) drone control system (anti-ship & sys repair drone)
5) scanners, door upgrades
6) scrap improvement upgrade (x as many as possible)

mid phase : (I define mid-phase as having most of my ship upgrades done and looking for final weapons)
1) rapid fire lasers (to 7-9 shots per round)
2) max cloak
3) second antiship drone and tp bomb or other shieldbypasser standby weapon
4) upgrades (in the following order, and will sell to upgrade to equip the top 3)
4.a) weapon precharger
4.b) scrap recovery arm x2
4.c) fire rate improvement
4.d) stealth firing module
4.e) long range scanner
4.f) drone recovery arm

late phase : (all upgrades done, all weapons dialed in)
1) upgrade shields and engines to max
2) doors to max
3) power to max
4) obtain two antiship I or II drones
module priority :
* weapon precharger
* stealth firing module
* fire rate improvement

also I try to train up a master gunner asap, and have a secondary fallback gunner handy. My primary choice for race for my crew is :
engi: primary gunner, engines, shields
slug : pilot
the remaining two crew should be human or bug and I'll train up a backup gunner as well

happy to answer questions about why any of the above.

[Wintersong]

Based on my experience...

Autofire is good when using weapons with same times or against weak enemies. Otherwise, it seems better to wait for the desired weapons to go green and then fire them at the same time (quite important for taking down some strong shields using different types of lasers).

Remember that once your FTL drive charges, you can leave the battle if things are going wrong.

Beam weapons do damage as soon as you select the target if there are no Shields up. Feel free to pause the game as soon as the last Shield point drops to use your beam weapon. Also make sure that you don't select the target until that happens. Even if you know that your other weapons are about to drop the Shields, remember that beams are instant.

Scrap Recovery Arm is best as early as possible to get as much scrap as possible. Stealth Weapons (normally, shooting while in stealth reduces the time you are stealthed) and Weapon Preigniters are also nice options.

Weapons? A mix of missiles and lasers is best for me. If I must choose between teleporting missiles (the bomb types) or missile launchers, I choose the launchers. The Pegasus launcher requires 3 energy and has a long timer but shoots two missiles by paying just one, so it's my favourite if I can get one. For Lasers, Hull Laser II and Burst Laser II seem the best types/priced. I don't bother with beam weapons (except Nesasio) due to their need of no shields on the enemy. But if you have a good laser/missile support to drop shields (and maybe some attack drones), they are certainly very nice to use.

There is not enough energy to power up everything so keep that in mind when planning what to use in your ship. Weapons that require 4 energy, for example, may seem very good but they consume lots of energy and are more vulnerable to a weapon system damage.

Ships:

• The Kestrel: it can deal with early enemies (1 or 0 Shield points) just with the initial laser weapon. Go for the weapon system of the enemy and destroy them while saving some missiles and negating them the chance to attack you.
• The Nesasio: lack of shields is deadly. Asteroid Fields are your doom and so are the beam weapons. Getting Shields asap can be very useful but expensive. Getting a Drone system is cheaper and will deal with enemy missiles and make Asteroid Fields bearable. For enemy bean drones you need Shields and/or hitting the enemy's drone system asap (focus fire if needed).
• The Osprey: it has 4 slots for weapons so use them!! Just remember that the max level of the weapon system is 8. That means that you can use 4 cheap weapons at the same time or, for example, two strong one at a time. This last case is good when you have different kind of weapons (start with missiles to drop some systems then switch to lasers, for example).

[Silemess]

Teleporters, Engi's and Mantis'. Also, I may be a bit a aggressive.

I try to get Engi's to man my weapons, shield and engine, in that order. If it's already manned by someone, I'll move the Engi down to the next unmanned. Failing that, to the next one not manned by an Engi. Their repair is great at getting the critical systems back up and running, their lack of hand to hand is offset by...

The Mantis crew! Mantis (or rockmen in a close but slow second) are excellent boarding/repelling parties. Especially critical is to get the teleporter and get your boarding parties trained early on. The problem with rockmen is their slow walking, a mantis can run over, get healed and be back on the teleporter far ahead of the Rocky.

I'll take slugs over humans if I can't get Engi crew, they're good for when sensors are gone and are otherwise just like humans. ZIP on the walking green triple A batteries. They play too much havok with my systems when I have to run them to the medbay to get healed. Since they keep adding and then removing their power bonus, it screws up a ship that's already unbalanced by the latest disaster.

Carry _a_ bomb. Fire bomb or the strong Ion, either works. You just need something that will disable the opposing ship's med bay (and can be used elsewhere as needed). You don't want it being shot down by a defense drone, nor blocked by shields.

I usually try to boost my medbay and my teleporter ahead of the other systems. Faster healing and quicker cycling of boarding parties? Great! Not to mention the occasional event makes them very useful. I only bother getting enough power to run one or the other at full. Either the boarding parties are away and don't need the healing, or they're back and don't need a standby rescue beam.

Engines will get the occasional upping when the rebels start closing too quickly. I don't usually add more to shields unless I'm really getting shredded or I already have a crew member manning it. Once the medbay and teleporter are full, it's evens back and forth increasing the shield and engine. I buy the power needed for the improvement at the same time. Not much reason to increase it when you don't have the spare energy on hand to use it.

Missiles can be good, but I usually settle only for the Pegasus. I'd rather save my missile ammo for bombing runs. Carry missiles until you have a bomb or Pegasus. You never know when you'll hit those enemies whose shields can ignore your beams.

Finally, cloaks' great. I use it far more than drones. One point is good enough for most things, but you can use all three when you want to stall.

Don't run around at full health. 2/3's is safe enough for most things (Usually, I have wept bitter tears that I didn't invest more in healing) and it gives you a buffer when someone wants to reward you by repairing.

Augments: Scrap Recovery, Reinforced Hull plating, both are musts. Thus far, their effects stack. We'll see if that holds true later.

The other mods are dealer's choice. I've enjoyed the weapon's pre-igniter, but it's only good for that first jump in. Weapon speed, shield speeds have been useful, but not compared to my top two picks. I don't have much experience with hull repair, I'll have to see if it's useful or not. Removing my scrap bad, but making sure I have a little more health at the end of the fight? Drone recovery is great if you're going with drone combat, but I prefer weapons and boarding. Same with the use of stealth weapons (not that it's quite necessary yet). Long sensors is useful, but I'd toss it just below the weapon/shield boosters. It's great when you're choosing where to jump, less valuable in saving your skin when someone's found you.