Lone Wolf challenge

General discussion about the game.
Jerjare
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:45 pm

Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Jerjare » Tue Apr 09, 2013 11:17 pm

There is already a challenge to beat the game with an unshielded Stealth B ship (quite hard). How about beating the game with Engi B and no additional crew? That too would be pretty difficult; I imagine the best way to manage is to upgrade your doors/helm ASAP, try to get 3 antiship drones, drone recovery arm, and an additional ion weapon.

Try to find an enemy that cant hurt you and use your lone engi to farm up gunnery skill. When you get cloak, max it out. Cloak, have engi man weapons, let drones pelt enemy, use ion to strip their shields and disable weapons.
VanguardOfValor
Posts: 205
Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2012 6:24 am

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby VanguardOfValor » Wed Apr 10, 2013 2:16 am

I posted a challenge like this a while back (Sole Survivor Challenge) although I made it so that you could use any ship as long as you could only have one crew. The thing about the Engi Type B is that you need so many things to make it feasible, and keeping yourself at only a single crew just makes things worse. Using another ship allows you to add that challenge to a ship you actually like playing. :P

With regards to the actual Engi B, I don't think it really matters too much what you find, as long as you find a lot of good things. As far as I know, if you're unmanned and cloaked, any shots fired before you cloaked are 100% to hit (although they obviously can't fire anything new).
Various Valorous Videos, should you be interested...
Jerjare
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:45 pm

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Jerjare » Wed Apr 10, 2013 3:25 pm

True, but I think that the Engi B would be the most challenging ship for this particular challenge. And since it already starts with drones (and drone control isn't a 'mannable' station) it makes sense to focus on drones.
Dralax
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:32 pm

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Dralax » Thu Apr 11, 2013 10:10 pm

It's a lot easier than unshielded Stealth B. Stealth B needs a lot of luck to pull off, while a single crew member works quite reliably on most ships.

My Engi B Sole Survivor run

Regarding the most challenging: it's definitely not engi B. I'm actually trying to pull this challenge on all of the ships and the worst ones are:
Mantis (both) - TP down? YOU LOSE No weapons by sector 2? YOU LOSE Oxygen on fire? YOU LOSE Enemy has rockets? PREPARE FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE
Slug B - it looks so awful for this challenge that I haven't even tried it yet
Rock B - 2 boarders? Prepare to lose a bit of hull. 3+ boarders? YOU LOSE

As far as I know, if you're unmanned and cloaked, any shots fired before you cloaked are 100% to hit

They fixed that in some patch. Cloak now adds 60% evasion, no matter if helm is manned or not.
Jerjare
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:45 pm

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Jerjare » Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:14 pm

I'm surprised you didn't upgrade your engine at all. You must have gotten cloak early on to deal with missiles. My idea was to have level 3 helm and max out engines, that way to could use your sole engi to repair or man guns vs weaker opponents.

A combination of stealth 3 and stealth weapons would also work well- cloak, man weapons, fire, run back to helm till cloak recharges.
Dralax
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:32 pm

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Dralax » Tue Apr 16, 2013 11:25 am

No engine upgrades was an additional challenge, proposed by some user on those forums before. IIRC I've got cloak around sector 3.

Max engine + helm 3 is a bad idea. It's way too expensive on normal and very unreliable. The trick with single-crew playthroughs is to have sure ways of avoiding damage - shields, def drones, cloak or (preferably) overwhelming firepower. Without full crew you very rarely can afford to repair anything in combat. Repair drone helps but can quickly become overwhelmed when 2+ systems go down.
Jerjare
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:45 pm

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Jerjare » Tue Apr 16, 2013 3:45 pm

It also occurred to me that a defense drone is more energy efficient than engines.

But I would still at least want Helm 2, and put my only guy on weapons because the weapon cooldown bonus is going to be critical.
Dontmindme
Posts: 85
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:22 pm

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Dontmindme » Wed Apr 17, 2013 7:39 pm

Your one crew is going to have to be riveted to the pilot seat. Helm 2 or helm 3 is not enough.
Max engines + trained crew in both pilot and engines gives 55% evasion.
Now take away engines (only 1 crew) you are down to 45%.
Take the guy out of the pilot seat its 35%.
Now helm 3 is 50% evasion, so that's a stellar 17%.
And helm 2 is 1/4, so a whopping 8% evasion!!!
And that's with full power to engines...
Even cloaked, 77% or 68% is certainly no guarantee.

Moving the crew to weapons is a big mistake (unless the enemy weapons are weak enough they can't get through your shields anyway), in which case it doesn't matter.
Jerjare
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:45 pm

Re: Lone Wolf challenge

Postby Jerjare » Fri Apr 19, 2013 7:45 pm

I had a pretty good run with Engi B, using only the sole Engi. I made it all the way to Sector 7 before I made the mistake of picking a fight with an unmanned ship that had a ton of drones. I managed to get Glaive Beam, Pegasus Missile, autoloader and Weapon Pre-Igniter along the way. I got stealth probably around sector 5. My general strategy would be to Alpha Strike then immediately cloak. While cloaked I would zip over to weapons control so that the next salvo would charge up faster.

I have since discovered the 'autopilot' tactic isn't worth it- you're right, you simply don't get enough evasion for the scrap investment. However, if you have max rank cloak and stealth weapons, then it is worth it manning the weapons, and also using every opportunity you have to farm up your weapon skill. Similarly, in 'safe' situations, I'll have my lone engi do the repairs instead of the repair drone so he can level up his repair skill.

Engi B has the advantage of having 3 drone slots; ideally a defense drone and 2 antiship drones, then just spam cloak and fire off whatever weapons you have available.