Subset Games Forum

That time when you take down a 3 layered shielded ship that should of been impossible to defeat because you don't have enough firepower or missiles to breach the shields. Followed by the next five jumps you only have 5 Hull points and somehow managed to kill 5 other ships with only one Hull Point remaining when I had reached a store to repair myself.

dark33hawk wrote:-this a experiment to start writing on this forum, if you have any tips please let me know(i am thinking of a long term story)-


one very common "Holy Crap" is when you get the crystal ship without even trying.(seasoned players i can fell the rage)

Getting a Vulcan drop from an auto scout

Plus getting a random drone recovery arm on Engi A

This is kind of minor, but somewhat amusing.

So, Rock C, early in Sector 3, and I'm still stuck with the beginning weapons. I usually try to get a new weapon and sell the Swarm Missiles ASAP, but no such luck so far.

Fighting a Rock ship, which has a cloak and two layers of shields. So I have to use the Swarm Missiles, or the Heavy Crystal is useless. But I didn't take the time to familiarize myself with its charge time, so of course I wait for three shots before I fire, then the Rock ship cloaks. D'OH! It didn't have much evasion, because I still got a hit, enabling Heavy Crystal use when it came out of cloak.

Eventually, I get enough damage done that it tries to run away. And it got the Shields repaired while dodging some Heavy Crystal shots, so I have to use the Swarm Missiles again. And of course it gets to JUMP IMMINENT, so I forget about the timing and charge it to three and fire - and, of course, it cloaks!

I fired the Heavy Crystal anyway, luckily targeting just in time, and I still got a missile hit, so the shields were down to one, and the crystal shot killed the ship! Holy crap! Usually, when it's down to the wire, my last volley comes just after the ship jumps, at least in recent memory.

Last night in stealth cruiser A. Easy run, but didn't get a lot of scrap. Ended up with 2 Flak I's and an Ion Blaster II. My secret weapon? 2 Lanius boarders! My defenses were OK (4 layers of shields, 6 in engines and a defense drone + the power to juice it all). Easy goings until sector 8.

Flagship phase 1. O2 hacked. No probs I think, it's level 2. Then a missile hits it. Damn! Repair crew in (2 humans), but it takes a while, since the doors are jammed. Same thing on their way out, so they die. Damn! My whole ship is now in trouble due to lack of O2, so I need to jump. Luckily I had a safe spot, but two more of my crew die.

Retry, phase 1. This time I didn't forget to launch my defense drone immediately, so the first few hacking drones are shot down. Eventually they hack my piloting. I send the Laniusses in to destroy the missile launcher, ion gun and beam weapon, so I'm safe for this round. I decide I want to take out the rest of their crew as well, except for the laser guy, so I aim my Flak's at the medbay and the ion II at the shields. I hit the medbay a couple of times. Due to the big red aiming circles of the Flaks, I think the medbay is destroyed and send my laniusses in. I was WRONG! The medbay was still orange and my Laniusses are getting killed by 3 humans that get healed through their suffocation and the laniusses damage. Laniusses killed. My babies! I just killed it after this.

At this point I'm down to 3 crew, 2 stages to go.

2nd stage was rather easy. I send 2 crew in (rock and mantis) to destroy their missile launcher and beam weapon and pull them back. Killing it here was no problem.

Then phase 3 hit.
Zoltan shields. Damn, no teleportation. Missiles hit me, despite of my drone and my own crew starts killing me with mind control. Damn. I start to panic. Power surge. I forget to cloak. Shields, doors, sensors and teleporter on fire. I have some green left in the last bar of my teleporter, so it still works. Their Zoltan shield is down now. I decide to send my Mantis and Rock to their missile launcher, leaving me with just the human pilot on board. I get hit again by a few missiles. Everything is on fire now, except the weapons, they are still fully functional, surprisingly. They keep hitting the flagship and are doing a bit of damage.

I send my pilot to the doors system, so I have some hope of venting the O2 from the burning rooms, but no success. He's just burning up. In the meantime I keep getting hit. Just one layer of shileds left and still burning. My weapons keep hitting him as well. Power surge incoming, my weapons fire again and BOOM I get destroyed. And BOOM he gets destroyed! Got the victory

Holy crap FTL. That was intense.

The Captain wrote:- Snipped killing a cloaked ship that's trying to get away -

That right there? That should be an in-game achievement.

5thHorseman wrote:That right there? That should be an in-game achievement.

Heh. At least it wouldn't be as silly as some of the other ones.

Door upgrade - Cheap!


Sector 6, Mantis Controlled - Figured it was the right time for a Door upgrade.


Well this sucks! Red Tail at store, 0 scrap, 1 fuel, nothing to sell.


Er - at least I can get to the exit.


Holy crap! Fuel! Stuff! And a 2* Shields Engi!


Figured I'd continue to train my Shields Human, as he was on his way to 2*, but it's nice to have a 2* backup if he had to go repel boarders. Also, big improvement to my damage control, as I didn't have an Engi, just a Human. Oh, and the Rock has 2* Repair, but he'll get there mañana.

I'm not sure if I got this correctly or not but on one run with the lanius A . It was a good ship with cloaking and three shields and five shields in sector 6. The rebel fleet caught me and the anti ship battery was firing on me. And as soon as I cloaked the anti ship battery and it still hit (in a empty room though ) with 102% evade. Not mad (after a day or two just looking at it)...just holy crap

Edit: don't worry, I made it alive to a slug controlled sector with eight hull and no fuel...launching distress beacon now

Maybe not "Holy Crap," but might as well put this here:

ALL YOUR HULL WEAPON ARE BELONG TO US

The Pincer - Tale of a Mantis B, or "Have Zoltan _____, Will Travel" (continued from here)

Sector 4, Zoltan Homeworlds. I picked up a replacement Engi. Then I had a Mantis join my crew. I got the Small Bomb online with the Flak Mk I. Things are looking up. Then I defeat an autoship and get a sector scan. Holy crap! There are only three beacons where the quest could be.

Zoltan Quest, Ho!


It turned out the quest was to the south, right where I had put the cursor. And I bought a Halberd Beam at a store, though it would take a little time to get online.

In the next sector the early going was kind of rough - my hull was in the red. But I picked up a Pike Beam and stuff right before the quest. And I got a Zoltan Shield! (Didn't take a screenshot, though.) Feeling much better about the run, I eventually got the Halberd Beam online. I had an Ion Bomb, Ion Charger, which I held onto for a while. Eventually, I sold both bombs, because I was down to 5 at the time, and wasn't getting many more, and also the Pike Beam.

It was sometimes rough going with only the Flak and Halberd, especially when two frags miss against three Shield layers. And I didn't always board right away, wanting to take out Med- and Clone Bays. My Engi eventually got 2* Repairs, and both starting Mantises were a few points over 1*. The System Repair Drone I had kept even got some work. (I would have sold it, but I never was able to buy a Beam or Combat Drone.)

Took a beating against the boss, but I ground out a win.

Zoltan B Hard run, limping along. Weapons have been scarce or out of my price range this whole mission. The only time I bought one is when I went to a store, saw a Burst Laser Mk II, didn't quite have enough, jumped out and won a fight, then jumped back, sold off my two Ion Blasts, and bought it. So I had it and the Pike Beam. And Hacking, and an Auto Reloader, for offense.

Sector 7 was hostile, and the only store I found didn't have any weapons or systems that I wanted, so I hired a 2* Shields Rock, and a Mantis. I had L2 Hacking, L6 Engines back from when I screwed up my jump planning and had to run from the Rebel fleet. Still hoped to find the Sector 8 store.

Which I did. I started at the top left of the pic below, and the store was the next beacon. I decided to risk jumping to the beacon below to earn some more scrap, and the store was still there after. But no Cloaking, no Drone Control. I picked up a second Auto Reloader. IIRC I could have gone east, but would have been trailing the boss. The next jump south was a Repair Station, which I hit up for the free stuff. Then continued southeasterly.



And reached a point where I would have to rush past the Rebel Fleet twice to get to the base. So I spent my scrap.



I had upgraded Hacking to L3 at the start of Sector 8. Now I upgraded Engines to L7, as well as Shields, and got L2 O2, too. Probably a couple Reactor upgrades, to L17, I think.

This was the lightest I had gone in to face the boss (at least since I got good enough to beat the game). Only L4 Weapons! No other additional systems besides Hacking - maxed, though. L7 Engines and L7 (and Zoltan) Shields for defense.

Engines got hacked in round 1, but fortunately that's not coordinated with shots. With two Auto Reloaders the Burst Laser Mk II, Pike Beam and Hacking had pretty good timing: First BL2+PB volley was sent after Hacking, then two more while Hacking cooled down, then the fourth after Hacking again.

The Zoltan Shield doesn't last too long in round 2, but L7 Engines do help. While more damaging than round 1, it's so nice to watch all the boss' shots whiffing. When the Boarding Drone arrived in O2, I sent the Shields Rock and Sensors Mantis to be Security, with a 1* Shields Zoltan taking over.

Round 3 my Engines Zoltan got Mind Controlled, but I had many levels there, so wasn't too worried. I got boarded in the Medbay, too. Ha! And my Security team shot him in the back, while he tried to get out and go to Engines. He got out of the Medbay, but not the next room. I forget if I got boarded again, but once they were taken care of, I sent the Engi to distract the MC'd Zoltan, until he recovered.

And, Holy Crap! I won!