Unbalanced ships

[Twinge]

they always fire first by a decent amount of time which as I said leads me to belive that they either come with fully maxed out skill crew or that alongside an automated reloader for them to fire that much faster than I do.

To be perfectly clear: this doesn't happen to ANYONE ELSE. The AI cannot ever have a Reloader.

[5thHorseman]

3 - Somehow I don't think this would be the cause. If there was a problem with the instalation then it should at very least have given me problems like crashes or anything and it never played any less than perfectly.

However the fact remains that you are experiencing issues that not one other person who's ever played this game is experiencing. You have a truly unique problem. It literally does not happen to anybody else.

*something* has to be the cause.

[shadowcrust]

This is almost painful to watch. There won't be any proof of these super low numbers of visitable beacons. The game can be infuriatingly insidious, leading to all kinds of hair being pulled out, and there's no shame in admitting to having been wrong or having exaggerated a little bit about some bad experiences. But it won't do any good painting the devil on the wall with shadow play and insisting it's the real thing.

[Jerjare]

Re: fast weapons, what's happening is you are seeing weapons with short cooldowns.

Leto missile, heavy laser, mini beam, ion blast small bomb all have pretty short cooldowns. Chain laser, vulcan laser get bonuses to cooldown after each shot.

Many enemies have these "lighter" weapons. If you're in Stealth B, Mantis B Fed cruiser C, for example, most if not all enemies are going to fire before you.

What makes the game winnable is more than dumb luck, it's knowing what to prepare for. 50 scrap is going to be spent differently depending on the ship (level 3 cloak for stealth B, a second shield bubble for others, more engine power for slow ships, etc).

What makes it challenging is you have to be both tough and killy by endgame. Halfway through, you will have to have a way of getting through 2+ shield volleys, mitigate enemy damage consistently, escape "Kobayashi Maru" situations, and plot your course to both maximize events yet not run out of fuel or get stuck in a dead end with the fleet at your tail.

[BaloneyOs]

Level 3 cloak with Stealth B guarantees that you won't take any damage unless you're up against Laser Chargers, Ion Charger / Ion Blast II, Drones, an unlucky hack on your weapons, or asteriods. Also, I'm sure many of you already know this but you can guarantee a Glaive Beam hit on a Zoltan ship weapons system on the first shot (straight through the supershields).