I feel like I am wasting my time

[fireraptor1101]

I feel lime I am wasting my time with this game. I haven't really been able to get anywhere. This game could be fun, if I could actually progress. I am currently playing on easy

The farthest I got was sector 5, and that was once in 30 tries.

My problem is that everything goes great, until I get to a system where I just get in a no-win scenario.

The last game I was in, I lost in sector 2 when 3 rock people came in. I only had 3 humans, so I vented everything but doors and engineering. Well they took out doors and when straight for engineering. I took them out, but now I had no doors, and a crew with almost no health.

Other times I lose when I jump near a star or an asteroid field (I don't always get the option to take the long range scanner upgrade), I lose my shields, get a fire in engineering, and just have no way to put out fires fast enough before I take more damage then I can repair.

I honestly don't know what I am doing wrong.

The first upgrades I take are medical 2, doors 2 shields 3 and 4, engines 3 and 4, oxygen 2, and possibly some weapons at that point. The only things I purchase from the store other than hull and fuel are drone control, and long range scanners.

I usually get destroyed somewhere in sector 2, 3 or 4 when I already have most of the above upgrades. I farm sectors as long as I can before the rebels overrun the exit. I get to the exits usually just before the rebels get there. (I haven't had to fight rebels to get out for a while)

When I fight a ship, I don't use autofire, I make liberal use of the pause key, I vent space when I am boarded. I hit their shields with a missile, and then I hit their weapons. Once those are down, I usually just use lasers on other parts until they are destroyed.

I honestly don't know what I should try next. It just seems that no matter what I do, I eventually run into a no-win situation. If anyone has any suggestions on what I can do to actually progress, they would be greatly appreciated.

[IConquer]

medical 2, doors 2, and oxygen 2 are often upgrades that you can skip out on. That's a lot of scrap added together and it sometimes means the difference between life and death via other relevant combat tactics.

many "no-win" situations are actually beatable. For example, you said that you vented your whole ship except for the doors and engineering? Try venting everything except for the medibay. You funnel your foes into the medibay and they're just going to sit there in a fight they cannot win. usually two humans in the med bay will beat 3 rock men, and that leaves your third to leave and go back to the pilot seat once the intruders have settled in combat.

In general, you want to have two shield bubbles by sector 2 and 3 by sector 5, hopefully sooner if you're doing a good run. Other scrap should be spent on trying to get a defense drone to negate missiles and boarding drones.

[fireraptor1101]

Thank you for taking the time to answer me IConquer. Unfortunately I am not sure how venting everything except my medbay can help if I have more than 4 crew members. Also, I seem to have problems where even if I vent everything except one room, I still end up losing weapons or shields with no way to repair them.

[The Captain]

Depower your O2 when venting, so rooms that don't have an airlock lose air more quickly. It's possible you will lose one bar of some sytem, but boarders usually start moving towards air when the room they're in is vacuum. You could even run one or two guys in briefly so enemy boarders fight rather than damage the system, then head for the Medbay when air is gone. You don't necessarily have to vent the whole ship, just where the boarders are. If you have more crew than space in the Medbay, hopefully you can leave another room with air.

When faced with tougher boarders, the priority is saving the crew, then worry about the ship. Yes, you may have to pull your pilot, and your systems are getting shot up by the enemy ship, but if you have crew alive, at least there's the possibility of repairing things. And sometimes there isn't, but maybe next time the RNG won't be so cruel.

As IConquer said, get that second layer of Shields first. Preventing damage means less scrap spent on repairs, which means more scrap for upgrading systems. Then upgrade Engines to L4. Then you can get L2 Doors (possibly sooner if you have an early Mantis sector). Third layer of Shields, then L5 Engines. Then see about better weapons, Drone Control, etc. L2 Medbay and O2 can wait. When I get a Teleporter, I upgrade that to L2 before eventually getting Medbay to L2. L2 O2 often happens after I beat the boss in the first round.

[5thHorseman]

What ship are you using? I suspect the Kestrel? My big problem with that ship is the missile. Drop it as quickly as you can replace it with another laser. It comes with the single best weapon in the game (the Burst Laser 2) and a pretty good version of my least favorite weapon class in the game (Missiles). If you could sell the Artemis for another Burst Laser 2 (and get lots of upgrades to systems of course), you can beat the final boss. I kid you not. That Artemis is just a resource sink.

Here is my personal checklist of things to do. I try to follow it with most every ship:

Before the end of sector 1, 2 shields (4 bars) and 2 engines (most ships start with this)
Before the end of sector 2, 4 engines.
Before the end of sector 3, 3 shields (6 bars)
Before the end of sector 4, 5 engines.

Also, you need to have a way to get through:
Before the end of Sector 2: 2 shields (Most ships can do this)
Before the end of Sector 4: 3 shields (This usually means you need to buy weapons or a teleporter in sector 3)
Before the end of Sector 7: 4 shields (or the Boss is gonna suck)

Note: to get through 2 shields, you need to do 3 laser shots. Or have 2 ions and a laser/beam/whatever. Or have a teleporter. Or a bomb. Doesn't matter what.

THEN I start thinking about upgrading other things, like doors and O2 and medbay and stuff.

Most of the time I don't reach these milestones, and I end up not getting my 4th engine until midway through sector 3 or something. No biggie, as long as you keep trying.

Never, ever, ever, EVER buy missiles. Unless you simply must because you've not found a way to get rid of your missile weapon. They are the single biggest resource drain in the game if you buy a lot. The next big resource drain is repairs. Any time you show up at a store needing a ton of repairs, that's a weapon you can't buy, or drone control or a cloak or long range scanners or who knows what else.

If I may humbly suggest, I've beaten the game on camera with every ship in the game (and a few mods) on Normal and while I get into (and out of) some sticky situations, for the most part I walk over the bad guys because I stick to what I've said above. I have a Kestrel run that I did way back when I started and while I'm not very good, I did win the game with it. I would suggest you not watch episode 8 so you're not spoiled. The enemy flagship should be experienced first-hand. Check out my thread here.

[Iranon]

Much of the game is resource and risk management.

If you spend scrap unwisely, get shot up as a result and need to spend scrap on repairs rather than the upgrades you should have gotten in the first place... things can get difficult to recover from.

However, the game gives you lots and lots of small opportunities to eke out an advantage.
Will expending a missile or two at the start of combat drastically reduce the likelihood of taking heavy damage? If I vent most of the ship to fend off intruders, and a stray missile hits my door system... will I be in trouble? Can I kill the enemy crew without an unacceptable risk? Should I kill this enemy at all, or lob a missile at their weapons (or helm if it's a scout that wants to jump away) and escape? Should I put out a fire by hand, or vent those parts of the ship? Can I render a ship harmless by putting identical weapons out of sync?

Play things out, even if they seem hopeless. You'll still lose, but not without running into amusing situations that make for good war stories (Everything that has air is on fire... but I can still run by setting up relays between pilot seat and medbay. Onward!).

[Vuelhering]

The last game I was in, I lost in sector 2 when 3 rock people came in. I only had 3 humans, so I vented everything but doors and engineering. Well they took out doors and when straight for engineering. I took them out, but now I had no doors, and a crew with almost no health.

That's why you have a medbay.

Cycle your characters from the fight to medbay before they get too low, especially if there's no O2. Also remember that if medbay is full, you can't move a character there. Never fight with uneven odds. Try to have more people than they do, even if it means moving rooms. Also, watch medbay capacity -- I've lost people when I clicked to move them to medbay, but forgot it was occupied... so they stood there and got pummeled. Nothing worse than the sound of your zoltan getting dispersed because you couldn't get him out of the room in time (yes zoltans can fight, but there's no room for error).

Other times I lose when I jump near a star or an asteroid field (I don't always get the option to take the long range scanner upgrade), I lose my shields, get a fire in engineering, and just have no way to put out fires fast enough before I take more damage then I can repair.

Vent it. On nearby suns, vent everything except where people are. If you have to jump out of a fight, do so.

Med 2 and oxygen 2 are luxuries (O2-2 is useful in nebulas, I guess, and on ships that do control rather than onslaught). If your crew is weak, door 2 or even door 3 is a necessity imho, but I tend to play weaker characters like engis.

I've won the game several times on easy (trying on each ship that I've unlocked - four or five plus the two versions), but haven't really played much on normal (except by accident a couple times when I was wondering why it seemed more difficult to get scrap).

[Maya]

What ship are you using? I suspect the Kestrel? My big problem with that ship is the missile. Drop it as quickly as you can replace it with another laser. It comes with the single best weapon in the game (the Burst Laser 2) and a pretty good version of my least favorite weapon class in the game (Missiles). If you could sell the Artemis for another Burst Laser 2 (and get lots of upgrades to systems of course), you can beat the final boss. I kid you not. That Artemis is just a resource sink.

(...)

Never, ever, ever, EVER buy missiles. Unless you simply must because you've not found a way to get rid of your missile weapon. They are the single biggest resource drain in the game if you buy a lot. The next big resource drain is repairs. Any time you show up at a store needing a ton of repairs, that's a weapon you can't buy, or drone control or a cloak or long range scanners or who knows what else.

If you waste your missiles, then don't be surprised if you need to spend tons of scrap for it. Just use them if you really need them and they're the stronges support-weapons you can get, it can even keep up with ion-weapons within the first few sectors and later on, they are perfect to take out medbays even against ships with strong shields and high evade-stats, while your lasers can't ensure to take out the medbay all the time without risking the ships integrity (especially not, if you're just runing lasers with a high dmg-output).

And later on, a breach- or fire-missile can even prevent the boss from using his medbay once the fire damages everyone who tried to safe the medbay or when the breaches caused an vacuum, where the enemy won't try to go in anymore.

So if you use your missile weapons wisely, you can spend even more scrap on defensive parts, while you don't need to unlock tons of weapon-slots for expensive lasers

[NewAgeOfPower]

Resource management is super important here. The others have given you great advice; missiles are difficult for newbies to utilize correctly unless you have the innate aptitude for it, so I'll give you different advice.

Maximize your crew's skill immediately. Have your engi do all the repairs. 'Last-hit' with your Mantis.

Have one guy become a gold-rated pilot. Another crew member a gold-rated engine officer. Perfect shield engineer & perfect fire-control operator.

How? Find a ship that can't kill you, no matter what it does (i.e, something that can't get through your shields) and use a basic weapon that can't kill it (ions are amazing for training purposes) and just repeatedly hit their shields. Leave your training weapon on autofire and go watch a video or eat some food (remember to switch the autofocus settings).

A max pilot gives you 10% more evasion. A max engine-tuner will grant another +10% evade. This is free 20% damage reduction, for no power consumption and no scrap spent!

A max fire-control officer will grant a 19% bonus to charge rate. This is even stronger than an Automated Reloader augment, and doesn't take one of your augment slots nor 40 scrap. Similarly, a maxed shield operator will grant a 29% shield recharge rate- this is almost as strong as not one, but two Shield-charge boosters! That's a 90 scrap value, without consuming a single augmentation slot!

You have hundreds of scrap in value lying around in your crew member's skills. Abuse it. I have about a 70% win rate in vanilla games I actually bother to complete, partly due to this.

[fryet]

To the OP, I don't think this game is a waste of time if you don't beat it. The fun part of the game imo, is the journey. I haven't beaten it myself yet, but I am having a blast playing it.