Subset Games Forum

Elhazzared wrote:Right now what is pissing me off to extremes is how freaking hard it is to get the damned crytal cruiser.

I have played 623 games. I have never gotten the set of circumstances that give you the crystal cruiser. I cheated to unlock it and don't feel bad at all.

I ran 3 sector 1's in the DASR12. These are not my best 3 runs, or any 3 in a row from a set. These are the 3 I ran. Linked are the save files.

Run #1: I made 2 big mistakes and one little one. I didn't upgrade my cloak, and then forgot to power it once upgraded. I also didn't take missiles for a bribe and then could have traded those missiels for 15 scrap. I also lost my pilot and gained an Engi. Ending haul: 80 scrap. Anti-Bio beam, L3 cloak and 1 power. +1 Engi, -1 Human. 9 hull left.
Run #2: Horrible 1st fight, cloaked auto ship. Took 6 damage. Again forgot to buy cloak, but this time I forgot twice :/ With 11 damage, traded 20 scrap to fix 10 of it. Ending Haul: 19 scrap. L3 cloak and 1 power. 15 hull left.
Run #3: Had a zoltan I couldn't take their weapons out on the first swipe. No bigs, but I took a bit of damage. After promising myself I wouldn't forget, I forgot t upgrade my cloak. Tried to get a crew member, got hull damage instead. Got long ranged scanners, which was broken down to 25 scrap. Sweet! Took a slave from slavers, an engi. Ending Haul: 47 scrap, L3 cloak and 1 power. +1 Engi. 19 hull left.

So I had some luck and some non luck. I made mistakes, and was in danger of dying once but got through it. The run where I ended with the most damage, I had the most scrap.

Maybe I'll try the Nesasio next, but I'm starting to tire of the analysis

Elhazzared wrote:I've done a few tests to know how many jumps I can get before the enemy reaches me (and most of the times I forget to count them cause I'm an idiot) and the average is 10.

Are you counting the exit beacon itself? It's guaranteed to be a non-nothing beacon (*unless it's on a nebula, in which case it's guaranteed to be nothing) and is often quite nice. Did a few quick tests and I was slightly off - I thought you couldn't get a sector with only 10 safe hops; it's possible but uncommon. My original estimation is pretty close though - you're looking at 11 safe hops in most sectors if you ignore nebulas completely, with some sectors having 10 and some having 12. Counting nebulas (which halve pursuit), you're looking at a little over 11 average per sector.

And of course, this assumes you don't want to fight any Rebel Elites at all - fighting Elites can absolutely be the correct thing to do, especially when you have high Engine levels and Cloaking. I wouldn't generally recommend it in Sector 1, but afterwards it's often a good choice to nab 1-2 extra beacons. In the 4 quick tests I just did, I got 10, 11, 12, and 12 safe beacons - but in the first two I could've fought 1 Elite for an extra 1 or 2 beacons respectively.

Elhazzared wrote:In average I get around 5 battles and 1 to 2 distress signals leaving 3 to 4 jumps useless or on stores.

There's can never be more than 2 strictly 'nothing' non-nebula beacons in Sector 1 (average ~1.5). If you're hitting half of the beacons in a sector (average ~20 not including start/exit beacon), you're hitting a little less than 1 of these on average. There's also the various trade events, which we'll assume are worthless in the 1st sector. There will be exactly 1 of these on average in the sector, so you'll encounter 0.5 per average game. Then we'll assume you visit 1 of 2 possible stores since you have no reason to visit the 2nd if you don't have the money to spend.

Putting everything together, that should give us an average of about 8.5 profitable jumps in the first sector, or 9.5 if we don't go to a store at all.

Twinge wrote:

Elhazzared wrote:I've done a few tests to know how many jumps I can get before the enemy reaches me (and most of the times I forget to count them cause I'm an idiot) and the average is 10.

Are you counting the exit beacon itself? It's guaranteed to be a non-nothing beacon (*unless it's on a nebula, in which case it's guaranteed to be nothing) and is often quite nice. Did a few quick tests and I was slightly off - I thought you couldn't get a sector with only 10 safe hops; it's possible but uncommon. My original estimation is pretty close though - you're looking at 11 safe hops in most sectors if you ignore nebulas completely, with some sectors having 10 and some having 12. Counting nebulas (which halve pursuit), you're looking at a little over 11 average per sector.

And of course, this assumes you don't want to fight any Rebel Elites at all - fighting Elites can absolutely be the correct thing to do, especially when you have high Engine levels and Cloaking. I wouldn't generally recommend it in Sector 1, but afterwards it's often a good choice to nab 1-2 extra beacons. In the 4 quick tests I just did, I got 10, 11, 12, and 12 safe beacons - but in the first two I could've fought 1 Elite for an extra 1 or 2 beacons respectively.

Elhazzared wrote:In average I get around 5 battles and 1 to 2 distress signals leaving 3 to 4 jumps useless or on stores.

There's can never be more than 2 strictly 'nothing' non-nebula beacons in Sector 1 (average ~1.5). If you're hitting half of the beacons in a sector (average ~20 not including start/exit beacon), you're hitting a little less than 1 of these on average. There's also the various trade events, which we'll assume are worthless in the 1st sector. There will be exactly 1 of these on average in the sector, so you'll encounter 0.5 per average game. Then we'll assume you visit 1 of 2 possible stores since you have no reason to visit the 2nd if you don't have the money to spend.

Putting everything together, that should give us an average of about 8.5 profitable jumps in the first sector, or 9.5 if we don't go to a store at all.

Yes I count the exit beacon as the 10th jump and I don't usually do it under the enemy fleet presence because fighting an elite cruiser is a waste of time. It may or may not give damage, many times it will do cause they are just better armed and that measn you can't take off everything, usually not enough to completly avoid damage, not in the first few sectors... So yeah, 10 jumps to have completly safe trip, at the 10th you'mm be inside the area they will capture next, 11 if the becon happens to be really on the edge.

Now as for the exit becon being worthless... No, just plain no. A lot of times for me it has something
either a ship to fight (usually the kind that are optional to fight but hey, given the chance of more scrap I go at it) or just a straight up reward event like an abandoned station or a federation ship there who sees you pass by and aids you with scrap and a weapon. I never ignore the last becon unless I really have a priority like for example, a store I need to go desperatly. A becon is one of my most trusted sorces of getting a new weapon, it's still as RNG as hell, just as the game is anyway, but hey, it a fairly more likelly chance to get something than jumping even into a straight up fight with another ship and then have to deal with the damned elite ship on the way back.

And sorry, but there is more than 2 straight nothing non nebula becon. In fact I had a game in which I got to the end becon by jumping through 5 straight nothing non nebula becons, a store, 2 distress which awarded me exactly nothing, in fact one awarded me damage and a fight which I had to port out because as it turned out, mantis B which as you can see, got absolutly nothing so far and couldn't bypass a zoltan shield for it's life... Fortunatly it couldn't bypass my shield and anti missile drone either. So i jumped into sector 2 with absolutly nothing for show... Oh and if you're wondering why it was only 9 jumps, because when I did somewhat mess up the route and at a point it was worthless to just go back and going foward would only allow me so much jumps.

As something that is kinda funny in a wrong way and will be on my current playthrough. I jumped into a sector where there is a beacon completly isolated from all other with absolutly no way to jumping there cause it's too far away from all beacons lol.

5thHorseman wrote:

Elhazzared wrote:Right now what is pissing me off to extremes is how freaking hard it is to get the damned crytal cruiser.

I have played 623 games. I have never gotten the set of circumstances that give you the crystal cruiser. I cheated to unlock it and don't feel bad at all.

I probably wouldn't feel bad to cheat in order to get it. But I don't belive I'm at that point yet. I just would like there to be an option which would be called. Crystal cruiser run in which the game would generate the universe in a way that you could always get the frigging ship. Like 7th jump will always be rock homeworld, having at least a decent generation that would allow you to get engi, pirate and rock controled early on and good odds of getting engi r zolton midway... It annoys me to all hell that I have a friend that got it in under 100 games, no sweat. I think he didn't even looked at the wiki, he was just straight up the fuck lucky.

Elhazzared wrote:Yes I count the exit beacon as the 10th jump

Not really sure what else to say then - there can either be 10, 11, or 12 safe jumps (without ever fighting Elites) depending on where the exit beacon is generated; 11 is almost definitely the most common, but 10 might be more common than 12.

Elhazzared wrote:I don't usually do it under the enemy fleet presence because fighting an elite cruiser is a waste of time.

Obviously, not always a waste of time; if you get 1 or 2 extra beacons you wouldn't get otherwise it will often be well worth the extra 2 fuel and small amount of damage incurred. Though as I said, would not generally recommend in Sector 1.

Elhazzared wrote:Now as for the exit becon being worthless... No, just plain no.

Not actually sure where you misread me here - I said the exit beacon is often nice and guaranteed to have something there =) (unless the exit it inside a nebula beacon, in which case there's always nothing there.)

Elhazzared wrote:And sorry, but there is more than 2 straight nothing non nebula becon. In fact I had a game in which I got to the end becon by jumping through 5 straight nothing non nebula becons, a store, 2 distress which awarded me exactly nothing

You sure you're talking about strictly 'nothing happens' events? Messages like 'You jump into an unremarkable system. No life signs detected within scanning range.'? There's a handful of potential trade offers and such that are worthless early but aren't the same type of event; it's unlikely but possible to string together a lot of those. AFAICT it should not be possible to see more than 2 strictly 'nothing' events in Sector 1, though there are a few thigns about sector generation I don't fully understand yet.

I have started another quick run to verify how many beacons you can visit before the rebels catch up with you.

It turned into something else midway. I found not one, but two beacons with suns, sitting right next to each other. So I wanted to demonstrate that flares aren't the most dangerous of hazards around. I didn't upgrade, to show that you can deal with this stuff right off the bat.
http://s22.postimg.org/yu64rfri9/2013_07_27_133122.png

The first ship was a mantis scout equipped with 2 beam weapons and a laser. Nasty, right? Not when you take two weapons in one salvo, it isn't.
http://s22.postimg.org/h987g2l8h/2013_07_27_133150.png
http://s22.postimg.org/ot1ai4ef5/2013_07_27_133246.png

It was a good haul, all things considered, so I accepted. I ran out of there before the first flare hit. No damage. I even took my time for the cloak to recharge.
http://s22.postimg.org/kp0bpmigx/2013_07_27_133341.png

The next one was an automated scout without shields. Sadly, I could not dispatch it in one salvo, and got hit by a flare for 2 damage. The fire did a number on my weapon system, up to a total of 3 damage.
http://s22.postimg.org/ia8g57281/2013_07_27_133446.png
http://s22.postimg.org/u1wbfzwu9/2013_07_27_133611.png

The next encounter of interest was a rebel rigger with a beam drone and a beam weapon.
http://s22.postimg.org/t3kjrg8w1/2013_07_27_133809.png

It wasn't exactly the stuff from nightmares, either. You need to monitor drone movements. When it ignites its thrusters to slow down (it is very nice of the game to provide a clear visual feedback), that is when you cloak.
http://s22.postimg.org/thlvr1szl/2013_07_27_133851.png

It still got off 1 shot, because I didn't upgrade my cloak. If I had cloak lvl2, I would not have been damaged at all.
http://s22.postimg.org/cv4bhz01t/2013_07_27_134234.png

Next ship was another rigger, this time with an anti-ship drone, repair drone (damn!), and two weapons.
http://s22.postimg.org/s546p5vk1/2013_07_27_134639.png

The drone hit me for 1 damage, same as with the ship above. I disabled it with my first salvo, and they offered me a surrender right before their beam fired.
http://s22.postimg.org/x7lijy4u9/2013_07_27_134756.png

I could have accepted to minimize damage, but what would be the fun in that? The beam hits me in the weapons, disabling my own beam. Their attack drone comes back online with the combined efforts of their crew and repair drone, but only for a split second, before I shut it down for good. Then I finish them off.
http://s22.postimg.org/l4g6wdts1/2013_07_27_134821.png
http://s22.postimg.org/9hw2v96gx/2013_07_27_134853.png

And then I find a shop, and buy a Scrap Recovery Arm, and an extra weapon. Since I have the capability to pierce up to 4 shields, I am set for the endgame. All in the course of the very first sector.
http://s22.postimg.org/79hwdwzcx/2013_07_27_135122.png

I believe Zoltan ships are the only thing this run lacks to illustrate my point.

Twinge - I dunno, for me it's normal to be 10 jumps, 11 if it's right at the edge. I don't belive I ever got 12 jumps before getting off the sector, but I can be wrong there.

It is a waste of time even if you get 1 or 2 extra beacons, this ties in nicelly to what the exit beacon may have which sometimes is a nice weapon... And Yes, I did misread you earlier, sorry about that.

And yes, stricly nothing happens messages, or planet under quarentine and you just wait for ftl drive to charge, those kind of messages., one sector with 5 of those... Not exactly in a row, but there was 5. There was no traders or whatever non-sense in the way... Now granted, this happened to me once in a few hundred games, but I still find these more than twice even on sector 1... In fact, I find more ships later on than in the first sectors.

Nevill - You got really lucky for them to give up so quickly and well, you accepted the trade even though you have nothing at the point that uses missiles and the scrap would ahve been more useful... though useful vs potential damage was of course a wise choice. Still it's luck hitting you.

Second jump you got flared as the enemy blew up. Lucky there, were you flared on the weapons with the enemy still there and weapons ready to fire at you, the story would have been different... I'm not saying you'd lose, I'm just saying you would take a lot more damage and possibly way past what it's acceptable so again, lucky.

Third fight, only 1 damage? Lucky it only hit one room, good thing it didn't hit the weapons before you fired either or you'd take a lot of damage.

4th fight, while you didn't accept surrender this time. What the hell is with you and they surrendering with 3 hull? they only surrender at 1 hull to me, most of the times. Anyway you took a bit more damage there than desirable, but since you were lucky enough to manage to avoid damage earlier on. I suppose that counts.

I belive there was more fights you didn't put in there cause they were the easy types of kills that stand no chance of even damaging you... Now I't's not like i'm saying that the nessario is absolutly terrible. All I'm saying it's terribly prone to RNG, had those fights gone slightly different. Like the first one not surrendering and forcing you to take a flare and damage. Had the second one not been blown as you were hit by a flare (because unshielded auto-drones are not just unshielded, they have a very weak hull) and you weapons disabled would count a different story. Third fight was lucky where the beam drone hit but to be honest, not much of a concern here because it's a rebel rigger so it got weapons, shields and drones nicelly packed up for the beam tough had you been hit by the beam in the weapons, then it would be a different story on how much damage you'd take, especially if the rigger had 2 weapons instead of just one. Last you took more damage than necessary for that fight but again, not really terrible all things considered, good thing the drone also didn't hit your weapons... As I said before, the only problem it's it's terrible prone to RNG. Some people get hit more by RNG than others unfortunatly. Something I learned playing warhammer actually and when RNG hits you you just lose. I happen to be hit in this game by RNG a lot, so are other people so I hate something that is that prone to RNG.

It's time for the second video.

0:29 Tough choice. There is no right answer to this one - you either gamble, or you don't. The scout can be beaten easily, but it is a question of how much damage you'd sustain. A map of the sector probably isn't that useful for a ship that has Long Ranged Sectors, anyway.

1:07 Full repairs were probably unnecessary. I favor offense over defense, so I'd take a Halberd Beam over Shields (best DPS weapon in the game, and you can find Shields later), but that depends on a playstyle.

2:27 You still could have attempted to dodge that missile by dropping the shields and returning power back to the engines.

3:35 Excellent attempt at cycling melee fighters. But the wounded crewmember could have stayed in the room and helped fighting from a safe distance. If your second melee fighter weren't a Rockman with 150 HP, you could have been in trouble.

6:18 Your Rockman could have totally died there, you know. To avoid that, you could have vented the air from the room you were fighting in (and from the cockpit, too), and forced the boarders into the weapons room, where you would have had 3-to-2 advantage.

6:37 We have a winner! Maybe that will provide a sufficient incentive to upgrade the weapons.

6:59 You could do well without power upgrades by constantly juggling power. But that only comes handy if you are trying to amass scrap to buy something else.

8:01 I would have upgraded the cloak and tried to squeeze some scrap out of that last distress beacon. Repairs are only 2 scrap per hull point, and it would have probably rewarded you with ~20. Might have been worth it.

And Uncharted Nebulaes are awesome for The Nesasio. I try to plot my course to hit as many as possible. You don't get lost in them due to upgraded sensors, you will find extra crew by trying to rescue damaged Federation ships, cloaking can get you some nice items from space stations, you come into Plasma Storms prepared, and the pursuit is slower, allowing you to visit more beacons.

10 jumps seems low to me. I haven't always kept track of endgame stats, but since all my "mosts" were taken over by scores from Infinite Space, when I went back to regular FTL, I started to do so, in order to have an idea of what my regular game results were like. I have 39 of my last 40 or so winning stats.

I averaged ~98.2 beacons explored, or ~12.3 per sector. I think the average for the first 7 sectors is probably a tad higher, because if you're more or less beelining for the boss in sector 8, I don't think you're getting as many jumps (not that I've counted).

Elhazzared wrote:Well I never saw mor than 15 scrap being awared for a kill except of course, by boarding in sector 1. I've played several hundred games hence why I say it's impossible. The average I get per fight is around 11 or 12. I've also never played on easy, not even just to see how it was.

I hate to keep coming back to this, but I watched your first video and you got more than 15 scrap in a normal fight there. I wasn't watching every fight, I just noticed that one.

Also, at the end of the first sector you had accrued 139 scrap, 90 of which you spent upgrading your shields.