Way too easy

[shadowcrust]

The Theseus! Such a beauty! Weapons are a bit iffy, but make dealing with medbays slightly easier. Lanius and Mantis for boarders is an odd combination, but lots of potential in that ship. Possibly a bit weak against ships with strong crew, more than 2 crew and clone bays, and rockets.

We set off in the Thessalonica, as I feel Theseus should be from there. Still sector 1, one of the first ships we encounter is a pirate with three crew members, one Mantis, two humans. Lacking other options, my Mantis and Lanius board. In one-to-one combat against the enemy Mantis, my Mantis is slaughtered. Haha, but I got a clone bay! Blam, Artemis kills clone bay the second my Lanius is killed as well. Ok, not so good. Next Artemis kills shields, Heavy Laser sets cockpit on fire. Blam, blam, blam blam blam blam dead.

Second attempt in the Abomination, virtually the same thing happens, but at least I made it to sector 2 this time.

Third attempt in the Theseus: slight variation in the theme, as I battle against an auto scout in sector one which got no shields, but a level 2 Mind control and a Charge Laser I and a Basic Laser. It successfully mind controls my boarding Lanius several times in a row, allowing the three laser shots to penetrate and deactivate my shields, then hit cockpit and then everything else. Barely survive this encounter. Next encounter got an Artemis, finishing me off before my boarders can kill them off.

Fourth attempt in the Unusable meets several enemy ships in a row with Burst Laser Mk II and Heavy Laser or very similar combinations, one of them Zoltans. Dead in sector 1.

Fifth attempt, for some time I can't decide whether I should name my ship Failed Potential or Rusty Tin Can, and then go for the latter.

Again a very rough start, several close calls. I manage to have enough scrap to pick up a Burst Laser Mk II in the first sector, and then it's going well. At least well compared to the previous attempts. In sector 2, my hull is quite diminished and the store I find is at a dead-end, one of so many, many in AE.



I still go there and get my hull fixed up a bit. From then on, many easy enemies with one-shot lasers and beams or similar combinations in sector 2 and 3. Lots of home worlds, Rock home world, Zoltan home world (I get Envoy instead of the Zoltan shield), Mantis home world, where I'm delighted to find out that a level 2 clone bay is also able to successfully finish the Mantis cruiser quest.



Welcome aboard, Kazaaak! I get a Halberd Beam and then a Hull Laser II, the game is a blast, I'm unstoppable. I go to all beacons in reach and slaughter a couple of Elite Fighters.

I get Cloak and finally Hacking and replace the slightly annoying Lanius with another Mantis, and even such foes are no match (poor guys):



Before the flagship, I have maximised most systems.



I've got some useful augmentations, funnily enough Kazaaak also provided the Mantis Pheromones again after I had sold them earlier, and since it's nice enough to speed around I keep them to the end. Zoltan Shield Bypass allows me to have a flawless victory despite having no hull repair drone and no Zoltan shields.



New high score, finally a boarding ship at the top! Still not a very good score, though, but at least decent.



Theseus: loss, loss, loss, loss, win (1/5)



My win/lose ratio is down the drain, but it was fun!

[shadowcrust]

And we're back with the banana slug! I'm not much into Mind Control, but overall a good ship, it even got a weapon! - Which isn't overwhelming, but still. Can't go wrong with Hacking, and the last system should be a cloak.

I set out, and I played the ship totally wrong. On the verge of destruction in sector 4, I realised I should actually upgrade my Hacking. I turned it around and arrived at the flagship with level 3 Hacking, four shields, five engines, Chain Laser I, Hull Laser I, Heavy Laser I and an Ion Bomb. No cloak available, but got a teleporter.

Flagship incarnation 2 obliterated my poor ship. Missile to cockpit, two flames, burns out, drone surge causes 10 hull damage in a tenth of a second. Second drone wave mirrors the first, dead. Hasn't happened for quite a while that the flagship proved to be a worthy opponent. Yep, a cloak would have been useful.

To spite the game, in the second attempt with the Ariolimax I also got a teleporter instead of a cloak. Actually, the game spit me, as only teleporters (and drone control) were on sale. Bought a weapon pre-igniter in sector 3 or 4 and eventually got two Flak I, and a Halberd Beam from the Rebel Stronghold. Was weak on defense for a long time, but it was a good run, waltzing over even this guy without a scratch:



Upgraded engines to 7, just to be sure. Drone surge still got me a bit and set half the ship on fire, but as my weapons were decent, the flagship was gone after the first surge, and the third flagship got three surges in I think, or maybe only two, it was over fast.





New high score, again with a teleporter, although I only got it in the last store in sector 7.



Ariolimax: loss by drones, win (1/2)

[Mendel]

I still dont see anyone with an advanced mode hard highscore higher than mine (6717) What is this??? I wasnt trying to make a high score, I honestly just wanted to beat the game with frigatidae on hard






actually... how exactly is the score calculated? anyone got the formula?

[shadowcrust]

It's certainly a score to be proud of! I remember seeing higher scores on Hard AE, though, so better don't get complacent

The score is calculated like this: 20 points for each defeated ship (accepting surrenders doesn't give you points, go figure), 10 points for each new beacon visited (beacons taken over by the rebel fleet don't count) and 1 point for each scrap point you collect (earning scrap by selling equipment doesn't count, but more scap earned using a Scrap Recovery Arm does count). This score is multiplied with 1.25 on Normal and with 1.5 on Hard.

I figured this formula out by solving multivariable equations using the session stats (but of course someone else had done it before); I was quite disappointed that crew hiring or killing doesn't give you anything.

Also, I'm not sure if you get any points for defeating the flagship, or if it counts three times or only once; I guess it's the latter since you actually only defeat it in the last phase.

[Mendel]

I agree, no reason to get too proud before I can learn the art of grinding and replicate those >40000 scores I have seen done on the vanilla normal

Also I just calculated my score from beacons visited, ships killed and scrap collected and I get the correct result with your formula, so thanks!

[shadowcrust]

I agree, no reason to get too proud before I can learn the art of grinding and replicate those >40000 scores I have seen done on the vanilla normal

Haha, I'm famous! Although those scores are from times long past, and the new challenge is to get 100k+ points on Hard AE

Just finished a run with the Tektite, and boy did I start it poorly... first I lost my Crystal crew member to the clone bay. It was my fault, because I didn't healkill him before jumping to the next beacon... he was hit in the shields with a flak spray, and the same flak hit the clone bay next... some jumps later, I lost my just acquired Slug also to a timely defunctional clone bay. I'm pretty sure that the clone bay is one of the preferred targets in a ship carrying one. I also noticed that most boarders directly beam to the backup battery, and with two boarders it will just get destroyed before it can be deoxygenised... I tested it 5 or 6 times.

On the other hand, I got very lucky with a dropped Vulcan (sector 3) and a Burst Laser Mk II (sector 5 or 6). Didn't find a cloak anywhere, so I settled for Teleporter and Mind Control in sector 7, Vulcan and Hacking carried me a long way. I accepted lots of surrenders, adversely affecting the score, but got a new visited beacon record, still not very impressive.

Flagship hacked my oxygen, and the only volley of missiles I allowed was hitting the level 2 oxygen, setting it on fire on two squares. I had to hurry a little to finish the fight. Drones were harmless, no scratch. Last stage hit me with one more missile.





Tektite: win (1/1)

[shadowcrust]

First attempt with the Simo-H started very promising: the Anti-Drone missed the enemy Beam Drone twice, and the latter in turn deactivated drone control and weapons, helped by a Heavy and a Basic Laser, starting merry fires. Run over.

Second run: shields by sector 1, cloak by sector 3. Sector layout didn't really help the cause, though - I have a feeling the (often awful) sector layout is more decisive whether you succeed or not than your strategic decisions - what if I had needed that store in sector 2? Scylla or charybdis?



Sector 4 revealed that I failed the last Stealth cruiser achievement once again (fifth attempt), have I already mentioned the not-quite-ideal new sector layout?



The first beacon I jumped to in sector 4 revealed that monster:



Thanks to shields, cloak and some luck, I emerged without another scratch from that fight - I guess a shieldless run would have been over by now.



Still sector 4, I lose my two Mantis to a single Rebel Invader with Hermes and a clone bay. The loss was also due to me usually not killing my crew members to restore full health, so the rebels just had enough manpower to overwhelm one Mantis and a Hermes missile exploding the clone bay in the second they blackbelted my other Mantis - it was a 4 vs 2 fight even, and my four laser shots missed one of the two shield bubbles for the first 5 or 6 rounds, so the Hermes was gleefully wrecking my systems - and of course heading to the clone bay just in time my crew is killed, very reminiscent of the struggle with the Theseus. Next beacon after my Mantis were gone? Boarded by 4 Mantis.



From then on, I think 4 out of 5 beacons had boarding events, this run took forever.

Clone bay isn't all bad, though, it saved me from a Mantis-in-the-pod kill and spiders and a burning space station, I think. The event text is curious, as it suggests there's proximity of the corpse needed to make the clone bay do its work.



No new crew members to replace the Mantis for a very long time, and also no better weapons than the custom Charge Laser, Mini Beam and a Chain Laser I - which was good enough with Hacking anyway.

Got an Engi by event and bought three more crew in sector 7, last shop of the game. By sector 8, I had received by random drops: a Burst Laser Mk II, a Hull Beam, a Hull Laser I and II, a Chain Laser, a Charge Laser, a Breach II and then a Glaive Beam. I decided to make it an all-beam ship and one-shot all opponents, including the flagships.













For phase 2, you can almost imagine the beams drawing a Z on the flagship's body
In these screenshots it is also apparent that the cloak overlay is shifted to the bottom left for some pixels.

My attempt for having a flawless victory was thwarted when all shots of the laser surge hit its target in phase 3. Three hits into shields and them burning, I decided to unsynchronise the beams and went for an unspectacular finish.



Wasn't a bad run with a solid ship, mostly thanks to the Long-Range Scanner, the best augmentation of the game.



Some statistics!

In the current profile, 31 of 50 runs were victorious, all played in Hard AE. Including the two all-Hard AE profiles that were wiped by game, it is 37 wins out of 60 runs, so slightly better win rate than 60% (slightly down from 100% previously ).

In the current profile, I won in the first flight with 18 ships, which is also slightly more than 60% of all ships:

all Kestrel cruisers
DA-SR 12
Basilisk
Vortex and Tetragon
all Federation cruisers
Stormwalker
all Rock cruisers
all Zoltan cruisers
Bravais

In the current profile, I have less than 100% win rates in descending order for:

Nesasio: 66.7% (2/3)
Bulwark: 66.7% (2/3)
Kruos: 50% (1/2)
Shrike: 50% (1/2)
Carnelian: 50% (1/2)
Ariolimax: 50% (1/2)
Simo-H: 50% (1/2)
Gila Monster: 33.3% (1/3)
Torus: 25% (1/4)
Man of War: 25% (1/4)
Theseus: 20% (1/5) (worst ship)

Over all profiles, the picture is slightly changed for the following ships:

Kestrel: 57.1% (4/7)
Torus: 40% (2/5)
Vortex: 50% (1/2)

I also lost my very first flight with the Kestrel in the first Hard AE profile, but won the first flight with the Torus, and lost the first flight of the Vortex in the second Hard AE profile.

Most difficult to unlock ship achievements were for the Kestrel, Rock and Stealth cruisers, where I needed additional runs to unlock type B.

One ship achievement is still missing for the

Kestrel cruiser (United Federation)
Stealth Cruiser (Tactical Approach)
Mantis cruiser (Battle Royale)
Federation cruiser (Diplomatic Immunity)
Rock cruiser (Ancestry)
Zoltan cruiser (Manpower)
Crystal cruiser (Clash of the Titans)
Lanius cruiser (Loss of Cabin Pressure)

which means in turn I only got all ship achievements for the Engi and the Slug cruiser.

Five of the game achievements are missing:



Scores: all pretty low, mostly due to not taking excessive risks during most flights.

Over 6000 points: 10 of 31 winning ships (10 of 37 winning ships all profiles)
Over 5000 points: 14 of 31 winning ships (17 of 37 winning ships all profiles)
Over 4000 points: 7 of 31 winning ships (10 of 37 winning ships all profiles)

And 9 of 31 wins (9 of 37 wins all profiles) with fully intact hull at the time the 3rd flagship exploded.

[META_mahn]

Easy thing to do.
AI manipulation.

[shadowcrust]

Note that on almost all of the screenshots there are Engi visible. And on those where they aren't visible, they are most likely hiding in the cargo bay. Just saying.

[META_mahn]

Note that on almost all of the screenshots there are Engi visible. And on those where they aren't visible, they are most likely hiding in the cargo bay. Just saying.

The Conspiracy is Real.