Subset Games Forum

I figured that my first post here might as well be my own Strategy of how I beat the game. Note that I'm not a professional or anything and I don't promise success - hell, the first time I did this I only barely survived, but it was the first actual time I beat the game, so I think it has some viability.

You're gonna need to unlock Red-Tail for this, because it all boils down to using your four starting lasers to decimate everything. Note that you always want to use laser weaponry for this one - no beams or bombs. If you happen across a better laser, then equip it if you can spare the scrap for upgrades, but you're gonna want to save up your scrap for a Drone system. Purchase one when you find one, and make sure you have an Anti-Ship Drone Mark 2 (If you can't power it, Mark 1 works fine, but Mark 2 is better for obvious reasons). You don't need to find any better or more drones, but if you want some then get them. Weapon Pre-Igniter and Automated Re-Loader is useful, but not necessary. Zoltans are your best friends with this, but a Mantis or two are good for fighting (duh).

The trick is to essentially always target your enemies' shields and let the drone do it's work. And that's it! It allows you to focus entirely on fixing everything that's breaking on your ship. The Last Stand will really, really suck, I won't lie. I sincerely recommend getting a burst laser or two to get the shields down a bit faster. But once you get those shields down, you've got four clear shots on 'em, and the Drone is exceptionally useful.

Hope this helps. Back to lurking around.

Just replace one of the weapons with a bomb that can wrap in to disable his pilot. Or else you can easily get killed waiting for successful hits at later parts against ships with high dodge rates.

Attack drones are terrific against enemies whose shields have been removed. They're not nukers; they can't punch through shielding very well - a Mk II anti-ship might sometimes punch through a 1-bubble shield but that's it. But their damage-per-second (DPS) is very high, so when a target's shields are disabled, then yes, they will do marvelous damage. Drawbacks of course being the consumption of a drone part (can be nullified with a Drone Recovery Arm) and the fact that their damage is random, meaning you can't rely on them if you want to take out any particular system. And they're also really bad to have when you're boarding because they can shoot your own guys.
And yeah, Anti-Ship Mk II is probably the best because it takes only 1 slot and 1 part while maintaining pretty much the same DPS-for-power output as 2 Mk Is. And Beam drones have the advantage that they can't miss and they shred Zoltan shields. But even the standard attack drone is pretty good.

However, when playing a droneship, I don't rely on lasers to break shields. Take a leaf from the Engi Cruiser Type A's book and use ion weapons. You want as much ion weapons as you can to break shields, and keep them down. It's impossible to repair ion damage, all it needs is for your ion weapons to keep resetting the stun timer. Once enemy shields are down you can (depending on how good their evasion is) set one of your ions to target weapons or the helm. In conjunction with ions, a heavy laser II or hull laser is also useful to snipe systems and cause fires/breaches, or a beam is good to do even more raw damage to the shieldless target.

With lasers the best thing to combine them with I'd suppose is more lasers, as much laser as you can pack, and just send volleys of fire. I'd generally target weapons to prevent getting damaged.

I think I've gotten good at killing crews WITHOUT boarding, especially in the later sectors where I have quite a bit of leeway in terms of hull points. Knowing what the AI takes priority in fixing is key.

Most of the time, it's by simple laser spam, preferably with a Hull Laser II involved. Focusing 7 or so laser shots usually sets something on fire, so I just let the crew simmer in the heat before wiping them clean in the Medbay. I've also found that a Glaive Beam can do about as much personnel damage as a Anti-Bio Beam if you angle it right, and hit only a few rooms to avoid meaningless hull damage.