spacecadet13 wrote:I've run into the ASB often enough, nearly always by choice, sometimes because I messed up, sometimes because I got unlucky. When you mouse over the hazard marker ' ASB Danger" on the screen, it says " An anti ship battery on the planet is targetting you"...so it definitely isn't on another rebel ship. Guess if you get your own planet, it comes with an ASB too?
With beacon paths shown, there is - almost - no reason to face an ASB or the elites, UNLESS you choose to. Sometimes you might run into a event that speeds up the fleets pursuit, or have a ship jump away and advance them towards you faster than you've budgetted for, but even then, with a reasonable level of engines, you might take one hit from the ASB before you can jump away, and with 5 or more (and/or Advanced FTL Nav) you can jump away before it even locks. What's too hard about that? It would be unbalanced if you had no choice in the matter, or no chance of not being hit by it.What you're doing is like playing the DA-SR12, seeing an asteroid field in one of the beacons ahead with the LR Scanners, choosing to go to that beacon and then complaining that the asteroids destroyed your ship!
And yeah, sometimes through no fault of your own, you might end up having to face an ASB when you really, really don't want to. Yeah, it's unfair, cruel, mean. Kinda like the whole rest of the game, right? I like that it makes taking in those extra beacons risky, especially early on when you're relatively weak; are the rewards of those extra beacons really going to be worth the risk of facing the ASB and an elite? And the extra pressure NOT to run out of fuel by blowing all your scrap on repairs or upgrades, or to take out that auto-scouts helm before the sucker jumps and advances the fleet.
And elites tougher than the flagship? You can just jump away from elites, no harm, no foul. Jumping away from the flagship just postpones things at best, at worst, game over. And if your ship can't handle an elite, how is it going to handle the flagship?
It is a generic message which they only made one rather than one for the rebels and one for the other events... Consider this. Many beacons are far away from planets. Sudenly they are all near planets when you face the rebel fleet even though before they weren't near a planet? No, that's ludicrous of course. More importantly pay attention to the background and exactly where the shots are coming from. Or as diet water said, there is sector overview warning.
Beacon paths are shown, but it does not cover things like, going into shops, distress and quests which are very much where you gain most stuff. Often paths that look like they should be possible to take end up having no connection after all. You weren't planing to go there so you didn't checked the movement at the intial scan of the system and path planning but circunstances ended up taking you there... Other times you have maybe 10 jumps until the fleet gets to the beacon, but the only path available to get there allows for no more than 7 or 8 jumps hich means lots of wasted scrap cause you had no choice but abandon beacons for the safety of getting out.
And no, the rest of the game isn't unfair. I've never felt at any point that the game was unfair. Cruel and mean at times... Sure, RNG will do that... Actually that is a lie. I've had only one complaint about how unfair the game was prior to AE and that was the requirments to get the crystal cruiser. It was a completly unfair quest in how much RNG tied into it. It is solved in AE, but now there is the ASB which is completly game breaking. There is a much poorer sector seeding which makes it very hard to always get your full number of jumps before leaving. The exit beacon now can be closer to the fleet than before which means now you have a chance for losing even one more jump than you could before. Last but not least the game now adjusts the enemy ships towards the ship you are piloting. This is especially noticable on the mantis B which gets a ton more ships which boarding is not gonna cut it and especially the stealth B which now get tons and tons of ships with drones, especially the beam kind and beams of their own, add usually fast firing weapons, dodging less than what it normally should and being hit in your weapon system a lot more frequantly than with any other ship.
My problem with the stealth B will be solved as soon as I unlock the C version cause I'll never touch it again though it just feels that as it is a ship that became a waste of development type since a ship which was already used very little cause it offered so little when compared to others got majorly screwed for no reason.
The ASB and map seeding problems however is something of a problem no matter what ship I play and it seriously sucks the fun out of playing the game... I rarely get caught by the fleet but if I see I even have to go through 2 sectors of fleet I just quit the run immediatly. If I have to go through one sector of enemy fleet I am already feeling itchy to just quit though I endure it with soul aggravating consequences.
And yes, Elite ships are more dangerous to me than a flagship now. True you can flee from them but that isn't the point. The point is that the flagship isn't even scary compared to an elite ship + ASB. Sure speaks to how overpowered the ASB is.
First stage of the flagship usually deals no damage
Second stage usually deals no damage either.
Third stage usually gets some in because I have to blow through the super shields first.
Elite ships + ASB if I'm fighting to kill just like I do on the flagship will usually deal more damage than the flagship at any stage... Prior to ASB they dealt a little bit less damage than the flagship but then again you are not fighting the supposedly tough boss, more like something between normal ships and a boss so it's fair... Without the ASB that is.