Anti Ship Battery in sector 2 on easy?!

[5thHorseman]

Getting 1 or 2 additional levels of engines running cost just 35, 45? scrap, while to get 2nd level of shields it's 90.

If you're going to add the cost of reactor to shields, you should add it to engines as well

Engines levels 3 and 4 cost 15 and 30 scrap, which is 45 plus the 40 scrap to power is 95. Shields level 3 and 4 cost a total of 50 (I don't think I've ever just bought level 3 and yes I know there are benefits) plus 40 for power or 100. However, I frequently just spend the 50 on the shields. Why? Because if you have 50 scrap, you can power down your engines in about half of the battles (maybe more, I've not done an analysis of it) and take ZERO DAMAGE. If you instead spent 45 scrap on 2 engines, you'd have the option to... take down your shields to up your dodge to 30 percent.

Yeah I'll take the shield, please

Even if you don't want to change you gameplay style you can easily avoid rebel fleet and not worry about scrap issues just by not being greedy, no matter if you are playing on easy or normal.

On this we completely agree. One of the few things totally, completely controllable by the player in this game and they complain about it.

[Elhazzared]

As the 5th horseman already made the case for me on the costs, let me tell you about the leaving earlier problem.

It's not as if i just want to farm a few more beacons and go back through the fleet. I've never done it except for the case of a quest. I especially don't like getting to the exit beacon with the fleet there because often, exit beacons have very good rewards.

The problem is that many times for me to get to he end beacon without getting caught by the fleet, I have to leave 2 or even 3 jumps earlier than the fleet catching up to the beacon and that is an immense scrap loss... Before it was easy for that not to happen as you had multiple paths to get to the exit beacon and the exit beacon usually had several adjacent places to go, so you could keep on jumping around until it was time to leave. Now the end beacon often have 1 or 2 stars nearby and one path to get there... Again, I don't mind this too much if I could fight through the rebel fleet but fighting the rebel fleet should be a lot more doable than it currently is.

Let's say you run out of fuel? You had no chance of fuel drops, no stores nearby. Fleet catches up... GG. Before you at least had a fighting chance with the elite ship so long as your ship wasn't badly upgraded.

ASB is an ok thing as a rare event. But as a rare event! Not as a standard, get your ship owned everytime the fleet catches up.

[5thHorseman]

ASB is an ok thing as a rare event. But as a rare event! Not as a standard, get your ship owned everytime the fleet catches up.

Then someone would make a "Has the rare ASB event made fighting the rebels too RNG?" thread.

[Elhazzared]

As a rare event. i've done quite a few playthroughs and I found ASB in events like, 2 or 3 times at most. If it was removed from the rebel fleet and remained strictly in those. What would be the problem? Beside, sometimes the ASB in events fires on both or strictly on the enemy.

One hard event is ok. The problem comes when there is too much.

[Elhazzared]

If you are lucky, like the last run I did last night. It only happens once and it's 2 beacons lost out of the whole run. If it's a more normal situation, you'll probably lose somewhere i nthe house of 10 beacons in the whole run and that already hurts a lot. If you're unlucky you might just lose 2 to 3 beacons per sector as all of them will present you with a, leave now or be caught.

Even on my last run I was caught on ector 6 I belive, one unfortunate even where the ship managed to flee, doubling the fleet persuit and eating the exits a turn too early. The only reason I managed to survive was engines level 4 (yes I had it at level 4 because I was already at sector 6) and even then. I had no fighting chance in hell against the elite ship, let alone the elite ship and the ASB. I just never found good weapons in the run and had to make do with mostly my starting weapons. I took 3 points of damage from the ASB and of course the hull breach, fortunatly in a systemless room and I took 5 points of damage from the elite ship. This on engines level 4. I didn't even tried to fire back, I knew I wouldn't even do damage in the time it would take me to charge up the FTL drive.

This leads me to say the same thing again. The elite ships are more than strong enough! There is no need whatsoever for the ASB. It's overkill!

[project_mercy]

4 out of 5 elite ships are a joke, and that's primarily focused around the foolishness of AI missiles/bombs, especially with their breech/hull missile fetish. If the elites are causing you issues at any point, it's highly likely you won't beat the Flagship. Agreed, occasionally you have droughts of weapons (especially with the AE dillution issue) and they may be a problem, but at worst you can just bust out. 4 engines and up, you're only eating 1 ASB shot, and that's only hitting 2 out of 3 times.

Elites are especially terrible when combined with a ship with a 4-man teleporter. It might as well be a fuel 7-11 at that point.

As 5th has pointed out, it's sometimes a good idea to buy shield-4 engine-4 and just have enough to power either at 4/2, because early on the ship EITHER has lasers/beams or missiles/boms, and you can usually tailor your needs to fit the ship. Worst case, you have to drop your O2 power every missile/bomb shot to temporarily kick up engines.

Before the ASB, the end of the sector was more a question of "Am I up on life? Do I have repair drones? Let' see how many elites we can farm before we move to the next sector". As mentioned, it's nice that the rebel fleet actually provides some gravity to the threat now. Honestly, I don't see why they used manned ships at all, since the unmanned ships are vastly superior. I would propose the true "Elite" rebel ships are the AI ones.

As an FYI, nebula systems don't have ASB.. though they seem to sometimes develop Ion Storms when they didn't previously have it. I'm not sure exactly why. So, rest assured if the exit (and any path back you want) is all nebula, then feel free to test the elites that way without the ASB.

[obliviondoll]

As an FYI, nebula systems don't have ASB.. though they seem to sometimes develop Ion Storms when they didn't previously have it. I'm not sure exactly why. So, rest assured if the exit (and any path back you want) is all nebula, then feel free to test the elites that way without the ASB.

Why?

Maybe because the nebula got all stirred up by an entire fleet worth of ships jumping in all at the same time?

Lore-based handwaving: Complete.

[project_mercy]

Lore-based handwaving: Complete.

Gold Star

[Elhazzared]

It kinda makes sense for the nebula, if sensors doesn't work then it's harder to maintain contact and proper fleet positioning.

As for the elite frigates... Lol you're joking right? 10 times out of 10 they are way more dangerous than the flagship.

Granted a crew teleporter makes them a lot easier if it's a 4 man, if it's not well, it can go eitehr way. They have healing bays, they can dodge your bomb or missile, multiple times in fact. With bording you quickly render the weapons useless and crewless for the next fights.

Blow up the drone room and the time which the super weapon works in the second stage is like a couple seconds.

But fight weapon for weapon with an elite ship and you are just gonna take more damage than fighting the flagship at any stage except for the 3rd and even then, it's only because of the supershield which I might add. Even with an underpowered ship, I got there twice and owned it before the super shields recharged... No, the elite ships are way more dangerous.

Now, could you fight as many as you wanted before with impunity? Well you could if you had a good run to outfit you properly for it. But what does it matters? You gain 1 fuel only, it's not like it's even worth your time and if you're just artificially farming score. Well again, make elite ships just give 0 points and problem solved. Personally I never cared about them. In fact in the last sector I don't even fight them if I managed to make enough money to get all I wanted, I just rush for stores, repairs and the flagship. Couldn't care less for elite cruisers. Couldn't care less for high scores either. For me the pleasure is in the jorney, not how much a game scores my run.

Kleckas - I am debating my opinion here, I don't expect to change anyone else's opinion as we all pretty much ran through these scenarios multiple times in our playthroughs and each came to different opinions over it. Just because someone says that they don't think the same it won't change your own opinion. If it was a case of me completly missing out something obvious which by doing so would completly change the whole event. But no, aside from being told that it's possible to dodge it, even though I never managed to reguardless of whatever level of engines I had, nothing really changed and even a small dodge chance is not good enough to make ASB balanced. It just isn't. It's a quick fire weapon which hits too often for 3 damage, hull damage and ignores shields. That to me is just unacceptable when the elite ships are already amoung the deadliest things in the game, in fact more deadly than the flagship.

[Elhazzared]

The reason I don't want to spend aditional scrap early on is because every single time I do, it comes to bite me in the ass. Every single time I spend scrap on engines early on (and I do end up spending it, just not early on as it's unviable to me), it means I left behind a BL2 in a store, or I couldn't upgrade my weapon systems in time for a hard fight coming ahead. That comes to bite me in the ass later on as my ship just get wrecked in every single single fight. Early on every little bit of scrap is imensily valuable and has to be put towards being able to fight the normal fights so that you can have a normal run through and get to the end. If I spend it upgrading the engines just so I can flee from the rebel fleet, what will happen is that I will be able to flee from them, but fleeing becomes the theme of almost every battle later on and fleeing gives no scrap, no scrap no upgrades, no upgrades and you're dead.

I don't treat this fight as an ordinary fight. I treat it as being already one of the hardest ones, the reason I'm not going to say it's the hardest is because on rare circunstaces some ships even worse appear, I think the so called mini bosses introduced in AE. If we discount that which is a rare event. They are the hardest fight which gives you nothing but 1 fuel. No reason to fight them as most likelly you will already take a load of damage just doing in... I know some people farmed elite rebel ships but this happens on monster runs where they just get everything right in the first couple sectors and the ship is so incredibly overpowered that yes, Rebel ships don't stand a chance. But more often than not you get a decent run, not a monster run to be able to do that.

I have enough experience fighting it, both before AE and after AE. Heck in the last run where I unlocked the federation C, I purposefully let the fleet catch up to get one extra beacon, this because it was a nebula and I had engines at 4... I was already by sector 6. I still ran and I still took some 3 or 4 points of damage. My weapons weren't even up to scratch to fight an elite ship. The only reason I took the fight was because I had enough hull to go and explore one more, maybe it would be worth it which in that case turned out to be as I got a hul drone, fuel and quite a bit of scrap... Even then if I was to fight the elite ship I would have taken a pounding, defintly not worth it and if there was an ASB I probably wouldn't even have a chance to win the fight making run the only option... Let's add the possibillity of running out of fuel and being forced to stay and fight the rebel fleet for fuel and yeah, it sucks.

What I am saying is that people already have a very good reason to run the hell away from the fleet in the first place without the ASB. The ASB just makes the fight completly unbalanced and if you don't have the engines upgraded yet (because it's still early in the game) then it's a game over screen. And that is frankly a problem and the game could do without.