Question for the 99%-100%'s

[WilliamAntares]

So just curious on what a successful strategy would have worked in my current play through. This is directed at folks that say they can win all or nearly all their play throughs:

My third combat jump (4th jump total but the prior jump was empty)
I have not found a shop yet at this point and have only 60 scrap.

A rebel ship launches an assault drone that fires 3 times before my standard ship's burst laser charges, destroying my weapon room and causing a fire. I vent atmosphere through the central room out to the bottom half of the ship (wanting to keep my engine room stabilized). The rebel fires a missile which destroys my door control rooms tarting another fire there (which now I cant vent). I juggle my crew between the med bay and weapons room (due to damage from air loss) trying to get that repaired first, now that the fires out. However the drone has also knocked out my shield room, causing another 2 squares to spread. I repair the door control room and close my bay doors to seal in atmosphere as another missile hits my cockpit, destroying it and the drone takes out my engine room. (At this point I am at half hull). I figure this is a lost cause but continue to play just to see what happens.
The ship fires another missile into my weapons room, killing the staff there. And the drone has disabled my cockpit. O2 and door controls again.

I'm just curious as to what you would have done differently, as apparently every play through can be successfully vanquished by you fellows (and ladies).

[WilliamAntares]

My next play through went a little better. Even got 2 engi's and a Zoltar crew member as additional crew. Didn't find any equipment or shops that had anything (the only shop was on the 2nd jump out in the first sector... I have 40 scrap to spend, pass).

Got to the 2nd sector- lvl 2 shields with 30 scrap leftover.

2 jumps into the sector were empty, my third jump was a fight that I won 17 scrap and some missiles from. My 4th jump was a pirate who wanted a 44~ scrap tribute. No way! Combat starts, before my missile can go off I'm hit by his
missile which blows up my weapons room and starts a fire. I send my engi's in to put out the fires and repair the room. His secondary weapon penetrates my shields and blows up my o2 gen, followed by a missile which hits my door controls, both are destroyed and suddenly all my ship's doors open (bug or from the control room being destroyed?).

My crew all rushes to the medbay, but their death is of course, unavoidable.

The only possible option I could see in this scenario would be to either try to jump away- which wasn't possible as I couldn't charge my engines that fast (Charge rate was about 6/10's when the crew died, and my cockpit was blown up shortly after the o2 and door controls) or to have paid the scrap tribute, which would have left me with 3 scrap leftover. The 2nd choice would have allowed me to pass, but I feel as though making choices like that keeps you alive in the short term, but ends up crippling your game anyway. (As nothing prevents me from say, winning 3 fights then running into an identical ship setup immediately after- demanding all my loot).

Things like this dramatically point to the RNG being a significant contributing factor to death/"fun" even when everything is done correctly (or as other pro-tip forum posters suggest doing) As I'm sure the computer ship had a better score for weapon recharge (my missile was about 3/4s done charging when theirs hit)

[UltraMantis]

First scenario:

I don't belive there is a soul out there that could have survived the exact same order of systems being disabled.
If the weapon room had taken 1 hit, it still would have been possible to swap the BL2 and missile to try and recharge the BL2. No idea if this would have it ready in time, or if the fire could be stopped in time. Probably not, not even if you sent all crew there.

The combination of attack drone constantly barraging, crew having low skills in keeping shields up and dodging shots, the enemy having a missile (and it sounds like a nastier one too) and weapons being knocked out before they could disable enemy drone control or weapons, that pretty much makes it unwinnable even without the fires. At this stage of the game, the FTL recharge would also be too slow to flee. The enemy had two rooms to target and your weapons were lost early, and on top of that you had a fire. That would delay anyone's weapons long enough for the enemy to knock out other systems or possibly knock out the weapons again.

I would have done exactly as you did and gotten flattend just like you did. And thought: "Woah, that was quick."


Second scenario:

Any battle that somehow delays your weapons firing is going to be dangerous. I hate the Zoltan enemies for this reason, but it can also be caused by the weapons taking a hit. While you are waiting to damage the enemy and knock his weapons offline there is no telling which of your systems will get struck. Losing the o2 room is not so bad if you can finish the enemy off in time. Losing door control is tricky of you had airlocks open. The danger mostly comes from the enemy having the pleasure of attacking without you being able to fire back.

I would never pay tribute unless i had <5 hull left and weak offense, so i would have been in the same boat. One thing i like even more that shields though, is fast engines. Because even though the chances are slim in the beginning, it's possible to dodge missiles and FTL is recharged much faster. What really killed you was the airlocks opening up... i have never heard of this. To my knowledge it is not possible to have them opened by a hit. Door just get stuck in their current state when the system is destroyed. Bug?

A good way to spend scrap is to invest it in o2, door control and helm. Not because you want the added abilities, but because those systems can absorb more damage before being destroyed. Usually there are other thing you wanna spend scrap on, but upgrading these can help out with stray shots, and stray shots can ruin games. The same applies for having extra system upgrades for shields and weapons, two critical systems. It's better to have the enemy toast a shield you arent using anyway, and a godsend to have extra weapons power when the room takes damage.

I don't belive there are 99-100%'s. I win approx. 0.7 out of 10 games with various ships. 3 or 4 out of 10 may be possible, not 9 certainly.

EDIT - Enemy ships have randomly assigned system/reactor power and randomly distributed skills. It is possible for them to have a superior gunner. Or any other crew skill. Not sure about AI ships, i belive they have a fixed skill level.

[UglyBastard]

It's totally possible to get 80+% winratios on normal in good and stable ships like Kestrel (any) or Crystal A.
You can always lose to bad RNG, but that does happen rather seldom if you play good.

RNG-dependant ships like Stealth/Mantis B/Engi B are a totally different thing.

No one claims to have 100% winratio on all ships.

[DryEagle]

For the first scenario, I would suggest, as soon as you get 50 scrap, immediately buy level 2 shields. It doesn't matter if you don't have enough power for it, you can always do something like disable weapons to have the extra shields up while you charge FTL and run from a very tough enemy. Level 1 shields don't really do anything for you. That would probably have saved you from the drone, and at that point a missile hitting your door control wouldn't have mattered much.

[UglyMug]

Even lvl 1 shields should be enough to defend against a lvl 1 attack drone. It generally can't get through but randomly (I'd say with about a 20 - 25% chance) will do a very quick scoot and fire fairly close together in succession and that can get through lvl 1 shields.

I'd say it was a mistake to vent weapons - though that depends on how many squares you had. Since you need to wait for depressurization and repressurization, without venting you could've got your other free crew member in there to fight the fire and start fixing immediately.

[UltraMantis]

Even lvl 1 shields should be enough to defend against a lvl 1 attack drone. It generally can't get through but randomly (I'd say with about a 20 - 25% chance) will do a very quick scoot and fire fairly close together in succession and that can get through lvl 1 shields.

Well it also depends on what other weapons the enemy has. If they have a beam, it really sucks to have your shields downed all the time. And with the low skill of your crew it's very possible to take damage from a single attack drone.

[BMacZero]

There's a hotkey that opens all doors (Z or X I think). You might have hit this on accident.

But yeah, to have an anti-ship drone get through your shields by itself is unlucky. To have it then hit weapons of all rooms is very unlucky. To have it also start a fire is very very unlucky. It happens.

[NewAgeOfPower]

I find training your crew is the most important aspect of winning the game reliably. As soon as you can do it safely (usually level 2 shields and/or a cloak in the first three sectors) find some nice enemy ship that has no missiles. Sit your crew there. Do not open fire until training is complete.

Your shield-officer, Captain, and Engineering officer will receive enormous amounts of exp rapidly. After they gold-out you may want to rotate/cross train them in case some nasty freak accident wipes out some crew (happened to me before). Use cloak whenever a hit is about to come and your shields aren't going to re-energize in time.

Manually turning your shields on/off also grants exp, as long as an enemy ship is nearby. Turning them down to 0 is not recommended however, unless you have excess resources and a store is nearby. If you are feeling lucky, you can even train repair this way.

[BitMaiden]

A rebel ship launches an assault drone that fires 3 times before my standard ship's burst laser charges, destroying my weapon room and causing a fire.
[...]
I'm just curious as to what you would have done differently

I rarely empty the oxygen of burning rooms if it requires to open more than a couple doors or I can't spare a crew member and the fire must be extinguished quickly. In your case I would have probably moved all crew not required for evasion/charge FTL to extinguish it.