Subset Games Forum

Yeah, those systems can be tough. Everyone here is giving you good advice, so I'll quickly summarize it:

1. You can vent sections of your ship to space by opening up their doors. This will put out fires without you having to send people to the affected areas.

2. Rockmen are immune to fire and can put it out wherever they find it.

3. Upgrading to blast doors will keep fire from spreading through closed doors.

4. Your FTL won't charge unless someone is manning the helm of your ship (at the pilot station). Also, your FTL and engines need to be undamaged.

5. If you have fires on board, make sure you keep your O2 system safe. If it gets fully damaged, you are going to start losing oxygen from the fires and from venting your ship's atmosphere, and nothing will be replenishing that oxygen supply. Your crew will start to suffocate and will be racing against time to repair the O2 system. So really make sure that you repair it and protect it.

6. Engi are weak in combat, but they repair at 2x speed, so if one of your vital systems (particularly the O2 system) goes down in a low-oxygen or flaming compartment, send an Engi to repair it because he will get the job done faster and take less total damage.

There are three vital systems you need to protect when you're in a solar flare system (with two others that are important but not vital to your escape):
A) Your Oxygen so you can safely vent compartments to space
B) Your Helm so you can jump away
C) Your Engines so you can jump away
and
D) Your Blast door subsystem so you can open and close doors
E) Your med bay so your crew can heal in between fighting fires in areas that you can't vent

It takes some managing, but I'm a relative novice at the game (~8 games played) and I can do it, so you should be able to as well.

The only time a solar flare system has killed me was last night when I was simultaneously fighting a ship with impenetrable shields. It kept knocking out my engines and weapons, so I couldn't go anywhere and the fires were startin faster than I could vent them or put them out. For me, the hardest systems are the ones with the magnetic storm (or whatever) that takes half of your energy.

My first interaction with flares was most definitely a death sentence, for 1 main reason. I had a human only crew and the first flare set my doors system on fire. I panicked. There was a hostile ship engaging me, my FTL was very slow to recharge and my damn doors system was on fire so I couldn't remotely open the doors to purge the fire.

I opted to ignore the hostile and put 2 of my 3 crew into the engine room to try to get the FTL online faster (does that work?) and make getting out of the system a priority. Once out of that system and fortunately with no hostiles, I had to deal with the fire. Unfortunately it had spread to my sensors room so I was blind as to what I was walking into. It looked like any second my medbay and my shields would go offline as well. I sent my 2 crew members to the doors room as that seemed like the best system to get back online first. Walking through the medbay, sure enough, it was also engulfed in flames now. My crew walked through the blaze to the doors system and started trying to put out the fire. The first crew member sustained too much damage and succumbed to the fire. The second was about to die so I sent him to the engine room, out of the path of the airlock in case I was able to successfully get the doors system repaired. I brought my pilot back to finish off the fire. He did and started to repair the doors. That's when I noticed the O2 system was offline. Fuck. The fire had spread all the way back. I knew then I was toast. It was a matter of seconds before both remaining crew members were dead.

God Damned Solar Flares.

Oh and thank you, CloudKiller for the tips. My doors on my next playthrough were the first thing I upgraded. Didn't realize how useful they were.

setaside wrote:Oh and thank you, CloudKiller for the tips. My doors on my next playthrough were the first thing I upgraded. Didn't realize how useful they were.

Getting at least the basic Blast Doors upgrade is pretty much mandatory, really. Not only is it one of the only effective ways to fight fires, it slows down any boarders by a huge amount, meaning that they spend that much more time in vacuum - and you have that much more time to organize a resistance.

a tactic I used during one rather poor run where I had only 2 crew members, I would open all doors and drain the entire ship of air cept for the two rooms that held my crew. So when the solar flare hit, the fires would go out instantly, there is obvious risks to this tactic, but honestly, with a crew of 2, I was screwed either way.

I wonder if you could do that to be immune to boarding and fire. Leave your ship open to the vacuum of space and just use sys repair drones to keep your stuff working.

setaside wrote:I opted to ignore the hostile and put 2 of my 3 crew into the engine room to try to get the FTL online faster (does that work?)

No, having more than one person man a system doesn't improve the system, though having an extra person there can be handy for repairs.

cybrbeast wrote:No, having more than one person man a system doesn't improve the system, though having an extra person there can be handy for repairs.

Cool. I had my suspicions when I realized there were no other terminals and the guy just stood in the room twiddling his thumbs. I'm guessing was just a placebo effect that made it seem like the FTL drive was spinning up faster. Thanks.