How do you like to build the slug cruiser?

[Neoviper]

I unlocked it as my latest ship after going after every slug homeworld I could, and now it just seems like the antithesis of my usual style. I tend to focus on weapons to overwhelm the enemies defense, and boarding if I spot an opportunity to successfully utilize it. I have a pretty good win rate with other ships, however I consistently get stomped using the slug ship. I have one victory with it, and essentially how that came about was I got lucky, receiving all the tools I needed to use my typical playstyle.

So, I was wondering what sort of advice people who have had success with the slug ship despite a lack of good fortune. I'd really like to learn how this ship is meant to be played, I imagine if you can get past the early game the additional scrap income from crew elimination can really help out later on. That's always my problem though, having only two crew and highly specialized weapons seems to regularly get me killed or severely damaged early on. Is it one of these ships where you just have to hope for the best in the first sector, or are there any tactics that can be taken to mitigate the weaknesses it has?

[BKT]

To quote myself :

For any new players who have problem with fires and boarders (most likely while using Kestrel_A) and sick of it... Try to get a Slug Cruiser (A) and give it a go... Its strengths and weaknesses are almost the polar opposite of that of Kestrel_A and its gameplay is extremely bizzare, yet somehow still work beautifully!

I always play it with the focus on the Bio-beam and zapping people to dead, just to keep with the spirit of the ship. And here's my feeling about it.

The Good :

• Able to kill enemy crews on all kind of ships since the beginning, so you get lots scraps and all sorts of stuff early on.
• The layout an augment made the ship extremely resilient to being cripple by fire/breach/boarders— air can be quickly vent out from most of the vulnerable/important room with very little risk, and enemy boarders can be 'herd' into the medbay very quickly and easily.
• Breach MK1 allow you to quickly cripple some of the particularly pesky automate ship.
• You get some unusual helpful blue option from Slug and the Bio-beam that can, surprisingly, save you a lot of headache, and slug's telepathic is kinda nice.

The Bad :

• 2 crews ...
• Its weapons are terrible at disabling enemy's system, particularly the weapon system, combined with the fact that you only get 2 slugs to manned your system, meaning that you will get shot, a lot...
• Automate ship can be very annoying at time, since the Bio-beam is useless against them and you may need to spent a lot of missile on Breach Mk1 if you want to win the battle as quickly as you can.
• Finding store is serious business. You'll constantly running out of resource, missile in particular, and also fuel, not to mention to sell stuff and to repairs your hull...

.....

The Slug_A does tend to give player a constant feeling of being 'under pressure' from the early to mid game before you get more crews, system upgrade and weapons, and you may have this urge to just rage quit at some point along the way (which I did exactly that on my first 2 run; I was like "*phuck this sheit!, how the hell are you supposed to play this ship!" and then rage quit lol), however, one must be persevere and keep at it, and you may realized later on that, even though you keep getting shot again and again and have to spent a lot of money on repairs and resource, somehow you can still keep on going and just won't die... It's like zombie!

[Mataza]

Slug A is one of the many ships that needs another weapon rather soon to fight against well shielded ships. It has the Dual Laser though, which is good throughout the whole game.

The Bio Beam is very good early on, but should be phased out later for other weapons. It is in some regards better than an early teleporter.
-doesn't need spare crew to operate
-poses no risk of losing your crew early.
-can damage zoltan shields
Later, when you get more crew/weapons you can put it to an inactive weapon slot for situational use and eventually sell it.

If you don't pause during battle and manually fire your weapons together, you should definitely start doing that. If the shield is down, you can at least hit 1 guy with the beam. Remember to disable the medbay before trying to kill the crew(duh).

The Breach Bomb I is pretty nice too, but more as a crutch than a weapon you want to use. Hit shields if you can't get through with your normal weapons. If the enemy has a medbay and you disabled it with the Dual Laser, you can make sure it stays broken by keeping the bomb on standby. If it gets repaired, fire the bomb into the medbay, damaging the repair crew and the bay and potentially putting a breach into it.(breaches prevent other repairs until the breach is sealed.
It eats into missile supply though, so use think before using it. Sometimes you can make do without the bomb.
Especially in sectors 1 and 2 a regular fight is probably worth ~15-25 scrap in loot, which is around 4 missiles worth(unless you get lucky and get a weapon drop). Getting a surrender for 3+ missiles is often worth taking.

As with other ships, if you notice a fight will be not worth the effort, you should flee. If you know you will need more missile than you can get in loot, then it doesn't matter if the enemy ship can't even hurt you.

If you can, save around 80 scrap before visiting shops. Most decent weapons come for 80 scrap or less. To deal with shields, you need more lasers or alternatively at least 2 ion weapons.

[BKT]

With a bit of creativity of the Slug, there's always a way to zap all the crews on any enemy ship in the game without ever using teleport.

In my latest run just now, I can only fire 3 shot (1DualL+1HeavyL) and no Ion weapon or launcher. End up having to use the Glaive to disabling the shield and Boarding drone to distract and kept the crew busy + draining their health for easier zapping with the beam.

Oh, and I got new high score (5675) too!

[marted]

on my best run with the slug ship I got breach 2, a fire beam and a rockmen boarding crew.

[Kalir]

Figure I'll ask here rather than making another thread.

Why would anyone play the Slug B ship if they have any other boarding option available? Sure, you start with Healing Burst, but it combines the missile reliance of Rock A with a lack of a medbay, and Slugs don't make very good boarders? I guess a workable strategy is to missile where the crew is, teleport in and attack, but that just seems so horribly clunky.

[UglyBastard]

The same reason why you would play Engi B or similar:

For fun.

It certainly isn't the best ship available, but its setup demands to poke at the game from another angle. Might be fun for some.

Regarding the slug cruiser buildup:
As always, upgrade your defense early and try to win using the AntiBio Beam as often as possible to claim bonus rewards. When the enemy ship poses no real threat use the AntiBio at all costs.
Try to get another weapon beside the Dual Laser (which is IMO best weapon in the game).

[Neoviper]

Thanks for the advice, it helps to have a different point of view looking at this ship. I never payed much attention to exactly how much more scrap you get from crew kills in sector one, seems that the rougher early game is countered a bit by greater earning using the bio beam. I tend to feel the run is becoming unsuccessful when I have to repair and buy missiles just to keep moving, but it seems the slug has different standards of success than other ships. Definitely something increasing my respect for it was watching a friend of mine get their first normal victory ever using it, after trying for quite a while. I've played a few more games on it since posting, and it seems to definitely gain power with decent luck very quickly; a little luck on crew and some means of getting shields down, and it becomes very viable. I'm just not used to this whole crawl along on fire and pummeled to dust until you get the things you need.

Anyway, I think I have what I need to give the slug a better shot, thanks guys!

[BKT]

A few more Slug_A tip from me :

- When you still do not have a good firepower yet, don't try to wait too long or until you felt 'safe' enough before you powering the Anti-bio beam and start zapping enemy crew; zapping them as soon as you can will usually mean that the ship will be rendered 'harmless' much easier as the battle went on then trying to focus on disabling the ship first.

- Everyone might already knew this;— All non-ion dmg dealing weapon in the game can also do damage to the crew (1 dmg = 15 dmg to crew), not just the zapper beam. So don't focus solely on the beam alone.

[oldslipjones]

I've read this somewhere on the forum and it has been very useful for my playthrough with the slugs : automated ships cannot repair a breach.
So if you start the fight by breaching their weapons, you have all the time you want to get rid of the rest of the ship.

It was not a natural gamestyle for me either, but I now have a lot of fun by killing ennemy crew