Subset Games Forum

I just briefly skimmed the thread so some people may have covered these things already (and I'm also fairly new myself, so maybe I'm still doing it wrong), but some things that have helped me a lot:

- Try to keep a minimum of 40 or 50 scrap at all times. If there's something super rare and awesome in a store then get it; but there's a lot of encounters that'll get you repairs, equipment or crew members at a reduced price and it sucks when you can't afford them.

- Level 2 shields ASAP. Many ships simply won't be able to break through, which means you go from taking as much as 4 or 5 hull damage per fight to 0. On easy (which I recommend playing until you really get a feel for the game) you really shouldn't need to upgrade past that until the last two or three sectors. I also recommend upgrading blast doors early on as it's really cheap and buys your crew members time to heal if they need to retreat from intruders.

- Unless you're so low that you're worried you might die in a fight, don't bother repairing hull damage at stores. There's tons of encounters that give you free or discounted repairs. Also, if you happen to find a hull repair drone then it's cheaper to buy drone parts and use hull repair drones than to actually pay store price for repairs. Don't buy the drone at the store though, it's not worth it.

- Try using Engi A, as its starting ion weapon has a ridiculously good fire rate. If you aim it at their shields, they won't have any...but I personally prefer to aim it at their weapons so they can't shoot back and I can just take them down at my leisure. Once all their weapons are disabled, switch targets every shot between weapons and something else - it shoots fast enough to keep them both ionized. I usually switch between weapons and shields just to make battles quicker, but sometimes they'll have another system that's a pain like drones or a teleporter. IMO if you're using Engi A and taking any hull damage at all in the first few sectors, you're doing it wrong (or you just got unlucky with misses ).

- Don't use autofire with missiles, it's wasteful and not really necessary. I usually just toss one at their shield room so that my other weapons can start doing damage, then leave it at that. Honestly, I've never really found missiles too useful except for hull breach.

- Fire weapons are awesome...fire not only disables systems, but forces crew members away from their stations to put it out (and hurts them while they do it). Fire drones are especially awesome because they have a high fire rate...they'll burn the ship up faster than the crew can put the fires out.

- Killing the crew while leaving the ship intact gives you greater rewards. Fire weapons are great for this, or you can just ionize the O2 system until they die (or both!).

- Mind Control is god tier. Just MC their pilot and they lose all evasion...on top of that, he'll start attacking systems like a boarding party and other crew members will leave their stations to fight him.

- Take your time with beam weapons and aim them well...against most ships, if you're hitting less than 4 rooms per shot there's probably a better way you could aim it.

- Dedicate one or two crew members to all repair tasks, so that they level more quickly and can repair faster. You can always dump more crew into a room in an emergency.

- I've never once upgraded my medbay and don't really see the point. Same goes for O2.

- If you have the opportunity to pick up a Zoltan crew member, DO IT! That's less scrap you have to spend on reactor upgrades.

- Timing of shots can be very important. For instance, the Engi A strategy I outlined earlier requires proper timing to work well. Target their weapons with your ion blast, then launch your combat drone about a half-second before the ion blast fires. The drone will hit their shields, dropping them so your ion blast can hit their weapons. Now here's the beauty of it: your ion blast and the drone have slightly different fire rates, so this cycle of "drop shield, hit weapons with ion" will continue for a few shots but then your ion blast will start arriving when the shield is up, which ionizes the shields and lets your drone do damage.


That's all I can think of for now, hope it helps. More experienced players, call me out if I'm wrong on anything

*EDIT* Just got reminded of this one (Fuck you, FTL): Avoid nebula sectors unless you REALLY need to slow the fleet down or there's no other path. Ion storms will ruin your day.

L2 Medbay has an increased healing rate (1.5x?) and provides some blue options. (I don't know if L2 Clone Bay provides those same options; maybe there are different ones? Upgraded Clone Bays heal more HP per jump and clone faster.) If you're boarding, you might consider eventually upgrading to heal faster - especially if you only have one team of boarders, who come back to heal, then reboard to finish the fight. If you're not boarding, then upgrading isn't really a priority.

There are a couple blue options for L2 O2, but I often don't upgrade till the boss fight, and it's about the last thing left. If you have one breach, L2 O2 will enable you to open all your internal doors and fix it without taking suffocation damage (or very minimal). This is also useful when fighting boarding drones in the room that they breached.

L2 also means you have a one-hit damage buffer. But these are more nice to haves, not really need to haves.

I prefer getting at least level 2 for all the secondary and passive systems. Even if it doesn't seem useful, it helps act as an ablative buffer for damage, and can facilitate asphyxiating boarders without letting them destroy the system or give them something to fart around with. As mentioned, you also get the blue options in a few cases, which more than make up for the investment, especially with the AE encounters.

To the OP, in addition to the great suggestions here; there's a lot of playthroughs on Youtube. They usually talk about what they're doing and why. You can learn a lot by just watching someone flip through it.

The Captain wrote:L2 Medbay has an increased healing rate (1.5x?) and provides some blue options. (I don't know if L2 Clone Bay provides those same options; maybe there are different ones? Upgraded Clone Bays heal more HP per jump and clone faster.) If you're boarding, you might consider eventually upgrading to heal faster - especially if you only have one team of boarders, who come back to heal, then reboard to finish the fight. If you're not boarding, then upgrading isn't really a priority.

There are a couple blue options for L2 O2, but I often don't upgrade till the boss fight, and it's about the last thing left. If you have one breach, L2 O2 will enable you to open all your internal doors and fix it without taking suffocation damage (or very minimal). This is also useful when fighting boarding drones in the room that they breached.

L2 also means you have a one-hit damage buffer. But these are more nice to haves, not really need to haves.

Oooh, those are some good points. I do believe clone bay gives you the same blue options as med bay, because I know I've had them come up before (I do upgrade clone bay when I get it). If upgrading the medbay also improves healing in other rooms when you've got the med bot dispersal augment then I can definitely see it being worthwhile to upgrade...will have to try it I actually haven't tried boarding parties at all since I got the game right around the time AE came out and the teleporter seems like a waste when you can just get mind control instead.

Extra levels in Medbay do not help Engi Medbot Dispersal.

One thing that hasn't been covered by anyone else yet.

ABUSE THE *#&$ OUT OF YOUR PAUSE BUTTON.

Any time ANYTHING happens, or looks like it's about to happen, pause and take note of the situation. Get ready, plan your next move, set crew in motion, set targets for your weapons... whatever you're doing, do it while the game is paused.

Eventually, you'll get confident enough to do a lot of things "on the fly", but the more comfortable you are with pausing the game, the better, especially while you're still learning.