Getting the most out of the game

[hybridfive]

I think it's amazing that this game holds up over a long period of time. I'm up over 500 hours of play now, which is well worth the value of the game. Realistically, I probably had all achievements recorded by 300 hours. In order to keep it interesting, I set some additional goals.

For every ship beyond the Kestrel, I tried to beat the game within the first three attempts of using that ship. If I did, I stopped playing that ship. I liked having a win plus blank spaces on the high score board. I did that for Redtail / Starter B, Nisos / Cruiser B, ManoWar / Slug A, Shivan / Rock B, and Noether / Zoltan B. I did Cruiser B on the first try, thanks mostly to first turn Horse-insects with a blue Slug option, then third turn distress with a blue Engi option. Although it's not obvious, I consider ManoWar /Slug A to be a bigger accomplishment. It means I unlocked Slug B in three tries.

For most of the ships, it took me more than three attempts. For those ships, I tried to get four normal wins. Again, for high score purposes. I like not having losses on the scoreboard. Once I had all wins, it made sense to replace the easy wins with normal ones.

Now that that's done, I'm replaying those ships in order to try for a high score of over 6000. I'm trying to do that without artificially inflating it by rebel-hunting.

I find that trying to do so preserves the original feeling of the game, without artificially removing the knowledge you've gained in the past. It's easy to avoid trap events and events where the risk is greater than the reward. But it's harder to have purely good things happen to you. Getting to 6000 seems to require a significant amount of good luck. I have a lot of runs where I think I'm doing well, only to end up in the 5800-5999 range.

[The Captain]

Not being a rebel hunter, I've only got a couple scores over 6K. But I think that you will have to fight them as part of maximizing beacons explored (and possible encounters), not because you are rebel hunting. If the exit is early, you still want to make some extra jumps before leaving the sector. Early on this means judging when your ship can survive an encounter with the rebs long enough to jump away with minimal or hopefully no damage. Later, when your ship is better, you stick around and defeat them.

I'm pretty sure my high score came when I was trying to get Clash of the Titans on normal. I'd be in Rock sectors trying to hit every beacon possible. Didn't get the achievement that time, but I think I did go through the Crystal Sector. Now that I think about it, maybe I did that in my second high score, too. Going through it is a good way to have more beacons to explore (as long as the gate isn't too early in the Rock Homeworlds).