Anti Ship Battery in sector 2 on easy?!

[Elhazzared]

ABS doesn't makes it a bit harder, it makes it rather unbalanced. Yes you are supposed to be fleeing from them but it's not supposed to be game over if they catch you and you don't have overly powerful engines. Again, going for engines gets my ship wrecked early on, no matter which ship because the dodge chance is no matter what still too low to come into play effectively enough.

It's just not worth to upgrade engines that much early on and late game I get 3 power on the engines at best! Between, shields, weapons, teleporter, mind control and drones there isn't much left is there? Even then I'm operating the sub systems at bare minimum levels. Drones at 2 for either hull drone or defense drone. Mind control at 1 to remove dodge abillity of the enemy ship just long enough to rip a volley through or to wrestle control of my own crew members back. Teleporter at 1 cause there isn't a need for more unless you are going into airless ships and you don't really tend to do that, that often.

The problem isn't just the weapon hitting a specific room at a bad time, the problem is the weapon hitting too often for 3 damage, damaging whatever is in that room and even doing a hull breach when I'm already fighting an overpowered enemy ship (by overpowered read a ship much stronger than that sector usually has to offer, which is considered to be a balanced level for where you're at).

[project_mercy]

You're not really supposed to keep all your systems powered up at the same time. You also don't need to destroy the ships at the beacon (outside of farming points). All you get out of it is 1 fuel.

So, you can unpower teleporters, O2, medbays, etc (or leave 1 point up on a clone bay if you're worried about dying), and push it all into shield, engines, and cloak. Sometimes it's worth it to increase a system that you don't plan on powering regularly. Even if you never power it, that extra system acts as a damage shield for the more useful ones. Auto-piloting is a great example of this.

Speaking off, a cloak basically lets you avoid the first ASB shot, which gives you plenty of time to charge your engines and jump before the second one. When you hear the ASB warning, just count 2-3 seconds and hit the cloak (you have some wiggle room so you can use it to dodge some shots too).

[5thHorseman]

ABS doesn't makes it a bit harder, it makes it rather unbalanced. Yes you are supposed to be fleeing from them but it's not supposed to be game over if they catch you and you don't have overly powerful engines.

Aha! Now I see where we disagree.

I think the game SHOULD be over (or at least you should take a HUGE pummeling) if the Rebels catch you and your ship is not ready for them.

[project_mercy]

I think the game SHOULD be over (or at least you should take a HUGE pummeling) if the Rebels catch you and your ship is not ready for them.

Seconded. The farming of the rebel fleet always seemed silly to me. The ASB is one of the better additions to AE for me.

[r543]

ASB to stop Rebel Farming is ok, but make it appear if you fight a ship like the 4th or 5th time in a row and not on the first one ? What if I ran out of fuel or if the beacon map was generated bad ? I try to avoid them all of the time, but sometimes I need to fight one of them, their ships are always stronger than your ship in the first few sectors, which makes them already difficult.

[stvip]

I reject the assumption that the ASB was added to contravene point farming (which I doubt concerns the developers, and is easily nullified otherwise). It's there to make the Rebel Fleet truly dangerous, both for reasons of story flavour (one of the very first things you're told in the game is that avoiding it is a necessity) and game mechanics (you now better plan your route carefully, and usually have to forego the significant advantage attainable by exploring a few extra beacons, then fighting your way back). Claims about it being unfair or unbalanced means it's fulfilling its intended goal.

[obliviondoll]

I reject the assumption that the ASB was added to contravene point farming (which I doubt concerns the developers, and is easily nullified otherwise). It's there to make the Rebel Fleet truly dangerous, both for reasons of story flavour (one of the very first things you're told in the game is that avoiding it is a necessity) and game mechanics (you now better plan your route carefully, and usually have to forego the significant advantage attainable by exploring a few extra beacons, then fighting your way back). Claims about it being unfair or unbalanced means it's fulfilling its intended goal.

And I reject the assumption that there has to only be one reason for the addition of ASB.

-It's a cool extra feature.
-It helps to reduce the viability of point farming against the Rebel fleet.
-It makes running into the fleet dangerous the way it should be.

I think ALL those reasons are valid and were considered by the developers when they added it.

Also, why are so many people talking about brakes? ABS is "Anti-lock Brake System". Unless you think "Ship" starts with "B" and "Battery" starts with "S", that is...

[Elhazzared]

You're not really supposed to keep all your systems powered up at the same time. You also don't need to destroy the ships at the beacon (outside of farming points). All you get out of it is 1 fuel.

So, you can unpower teleporters, O2, medbays, etc (or leave 1 point up on a clone bay if you're worried about dying), and push it all into shield, engines, and cloak. Sometimes it's worth it to increase a system that you don't plan on powering regularly. Even if you never power it, that extra system acts as a damage shield for the more useful ones. Auto-piloting is a great example of this.

Speaking off, a cloak basically lets you avoid the first ASB shot, which gives you plenty of time to charge your engines and jump before the second one. When you hear the ASB warning, just count 2-3 seconds and hit the cloak (you have some wiggle room so you can use it to dodge some shots too).

Nothing that I haven't thought of before but the problem lies in the fact that you are going to be spending quite a bit of scrap just to upgrade your engines to be able to outrun the rebel fleet, even without spending on the necessary energy to keep them at full power all the time... Now you might thing, it really isn't that scrap and you're right, when you take into account how much you make in the last sectors, but for what you make in the first sectors? It's quite a bit. First sector is upgrade shields to level 2 and save everything else for another weapon whenever you get it. You really need another weapon, preferably a decent one by the next sector at worst and you might need to buy it at a shop, plus upgrade your weapon system and then your reactor to have energy to keep it running... This is an absolute priority as the 3rd sector already bring enemies on 2 levels of shields, heck I've seen 3rd sectors with 3rd level shields and 4 weapon loadout on enemy ships. I just can't aford the engines. I've tried to aford it a couple times and the results were always the same. I lost because then I didn't had the required weapons to be able to get through fights and if all I do is run in every fights, then i don't make scrap and I'll just lose sooner or later... Engine upgrades are important to cloack ships which do not relly on shields but then it's ok because you're not spending on shields... Not early on anyway.

[project_mercy]

Well, colossal bad luck aside, I think you need to look more at the paths you take through the system then. Even on hard, I generally have shields-2 and engines 3 or 4 (depending on if I found a shop and had something interesting in it) before hand.

It helps if you pre-plan your route. Yes, occasionally quests and shops can throw your plan off, but an initial route is best. If the system is laid out in such a way that traveling back through the fleet seems appropriate, then it's in your best interest to get your engines to 4 ASAP, even if that means leaving shields at 1-bubble. You don't need the power to run them always, you just need 4 when you're jumping through ASB spaces. It means you only get shot at once, and there's a 1 in 3 chance it won't even hit. I think I've traveled back through the fleet in the last 5 games I've played in sector 1. I do it pretty often. Out of those games, I got totally rocked once and lost about 10-15 hull, but the other times I got off pretty light.

[Elhazzared]

Again, that will just burn me in the mid game, at least that is what happens in my experience every single time that I tried to upgrade the engines. Leaving the shields at 1 is just not an option especially if you go through the enemy fleet. The ASB is not going to hit you more than once, true, but the elite ship is going to wreck you in that small amount of time and if you have to go through 2 or 3 jumps worth of enemy fleet... Well might as well restart.

I do plan my jumps... I don't really count the jumps, but I plan where I move to and where I am going to just farm jumps to try to make it as close as possible. But yeah, quests and distress beacons just wrecks it.