Love the game, hate the random

[BKT]

But yeah, not a bad idea but that probably wouldn't be much of an added challenge; I'd still expect to win roughly every game like that.

In the same sense as the 'no pause' challenge, it just made the game more tricky in a more 'organic' way, kinda like playing the Vortex— the game still play and feel the same way as before otherwise.

If you're looking for a more 'artificial' kind of challenge, you can add some sort of restriction on top of that ... Here's some of the thing you can add on top of it without feeling like yet another luck-dependent challenge:— range from a mild case like using a lower tier ships or your score must be at least xxxx when you win or that you must win x time in a row or not to run from any battle, to moderate case like no new crew or no def drone and/or cloak or any engine upgrade, to the more extreme (and ship-specific) case like no oxygen or that you must capture every non-automate/rebels fleet ships (tons of fun to do with Rock B!, very easy but still fun to do with Slug A, and very tricky and need a lot of luck+specific item to do on Engi A ... not sure if other ships can do it).

[Twinge]

Oh I know, I've done a variety of challenge runs in the past. (Also, if you wanted a score limitation, you should aim for a maximum score, rather than a minimum - score is higher when you're doing well and have plenty of scrap, basically.) Here's some I've done:

• Shieldless, The Nesasio (Easy)
• Speedrun, Carnelian (Easy; everything else is on Normal. This is a 19:00 run, the current world record.)
• Pauseless, The Nesasio
• Hot Potato, Red-tail (Hot Potato means when you obtain any new crew/equipment above the limit, you must replace the oldest with the newly gained item.)
• No Crew Healing Run, The Stormwalker (I never healed my crew the entire game - sold my Healing Burst and never bought a Medbay.)
• One Man Wolfpack, The Vortex (Kept to only 1 crewman the entire run.)
• Boarding Only, Carnelian (the ONLY way I killed ANY ship was by boarding; I never used any weapons or drones the entire game, except for a single Heavy Laser to take out the Super Shield on Phase 3.)
• Boarding Only* with no Medbay, The Stormwalker (*I audibled into this challenge early in a run; I believe I killed exactly 1 auto-drone with missiles early on and everything else with boarding.)
• Fire Only, Noether (I modified the ship to start with a Fire Beam instead of a Pike Beam - killed everything with only fire and nothing else the entire game.)
• Drones & Ion Only + Pauseless, The Torus (just did this one tonight)

I've attempted and failed: Shieldless on Normal (come quite close, but inevitably die to flagship Phase 2), Pacifist (most likely will not attempt again - even on Easy it's incredibly luck-heavy and dumb), Missiles only (basically a slightly less gimped pacifist run - still unfun and awful).

[UltraMantis]

That phase 2 brother.

[Nevill]

Some of these runs are of a kind that you don't honestly expect to win (or progress far enough) every time when you start one. They are tons of fun, but I prefer something that resembles the actual game: Shieldless, Pauseless, One Man, Drones&Ion. These screnarios can actually happen if one plays the game normally.

I never tried to see myself how far can you go with just starting weapons + boarding, so I suggested that. I can't think of any ship but Kestrel (and maybe Rock cruiser) that can go all the way and win the game this way.

[The Captain]

It's nice when the random works out in your favor: I had a Stealth A run where I bought three Burst Lasers Mk II (I think only the second time I've had three) and an Auto Reloader. Unfortunately, no Stealth Weapons or Weapon Pre-Igniter.

The first time I saw a BL2, I had acquired (forget how) an Ion Blast Mk II, which I decided to keep, even though it'd be awhile before I could power it. I left the store, made a couple jumps, came back and bought the BL2. In fact I think this was at the end of sector 1, and I got shields in sector 2. I ended up keeping the Ion Blast Mk II but never using it, finally selling it with my Long Range Scanners in sector 8 for an Antiship Drone Mk I, which I didn't need either, but hey, it starts chipping away at the boss' Zoltan Shield sooner.

Even though I wasn't boarding much yet, I had enough extra scrap that I hired two Mantises in a mid-sector store. (At one point I had three Humans and four Engis.)

Got my eighth highest score, almost 400 pts better than previous ship best, and it was my first Stealth to break 5K.