[Suggestion] Make Sector 1 less of a headache for Mantis B:

[Mister Sammy]

I'm a big fan of the Mantis B. The guide I wrote over in the strategy forum is enough of an indication! But I'm not the most patient hunter in the world, and sector one really grinds my gears sometimes. Several times I take the "defend the civilian ship" yada yada yada and lo and behold: ZOLTANS!!! I mean, sure, the random encounters are fine as they are, but where you have a choice to engage you should at least be able to get SOME intel!

Like, "You see a civilian ship being chased by pirates in a stolen ZOLTAN VESSEL.", or "Our friends have turned to piracy and stole a ZOLTAN SHIP, and we can't punch through those shields." I'd just like to KNOW that the beacon's a lost cause and not have to sit there twiddling my thumbs while the engines charge. I mean, if I jump into a beacon with a Rebel Rigger with a basic laser, an anti-ship drone, a mini beam, and a medbay, that's my own damn fault for not being careful.

Also on the subject of "LOL ZOLTAN ENCOUNTER", the CRUSHED PIRATE EVENT. Why can't I just jump away from them? Oh no, it's either I risk hull damage firing my imaginary guns; or risk angry pirates showing up. And more often than not? ZOLTAN SHIP.

(Ideally i'd like boarding drones to do 1 damage to super shields on each deployment, but hey, a man can dream.)

[UglyMug]

Lot of the unlockable ships have these type of unwinnable encounters in sector one. Zoltan B for instance, hit ANY ship with a beam drone and that's it - restart. Unshielded automated, maybe you got a chance. Beam drones burn down the Zoltan shield before the ions can even fire and you have to allocate your ions to shield + drone (hoping drone control only has two bars) and it's not even 100% effective - the drone gets a shot in between the ion cycles. And of course since you ioned the drone (you pretty much have to) you're now eating all their weapon fire sans zoltan since the drone burned it down. And hope between the drone and their weapons that miraculously, somehow, the weapons room doesn't take a hit and reset the pike. And you better hope both those ions hit, or Jesus - you are doubly screwed.

Much rather face those guys in the Stealth B, Take about two hits, cloak, saw the ship in half, nice and simple.

As far as the events concerned above are concerned, while there's many events where you get to see the ship you're fighting before you choose to engage, I think part of the idea of those events is that you have to agree before you see who you're fighting. Comensated by the fact that they have a chance for double rewards.

[StarWarsOZ]

The thing is, the Mantis B is a very OP ship late game, when you have got weapons etc.
It needs to be hard to start with, otherwise it just becomes too easy.
Get weapons first, then you really dont have to worry about anything else for the rest of the game.

And I like the way that we can get suprised by random encounters, it means you are always wary, not just sitting back saying: 'I can beat this one, oh I can't beat this one, lets skip it'

They are very annoying sometimes, but the game is very annoying always, so we can't really complain

[FreedomFighter]

try Stealth B, i can't finish the game with this one.......hard to earn scrap, hard to make it out alive without taking damage, hard to find the freaking SHIELD SYSTEM to install.