Anti Ship Battery in sector 2 on easy?!

[LoWang]

Hello, let me tell you how excited I was when I finally unlocked the zoltan cruiser Adjudicator. I was quite lucky even with the first game with it - got halberd beam, pike beam and a small bomb, so nothing really could stand against me. I also somehow got 6 members of the crew in sector 2! And I also got weapon pre igniter! Cool! I thought that since this is my first try with this ship I will be merciful and let all the enemies live if they ask not to be destroyed. And maybe it will give me some luck later if I am so nice It felt good, but then what the heck? I was about to leave sector 2, but it happened that I could explore one more sector behind exit beacon and they get back to it while the rebels get there too. Naturally they were no match for me with my equipment, so there was just a little risk doing so, but WHAT THE HECK, something was firing at me like crazy form the planet! First I said to myself, wow that looks nice and certainly adds to atmosphere, BUT PLEASE why is it so fricking deadly? No ship has any chance against this in sector 2 unless it has put many points into engines so it has fast enough FTL charge to flee! As I said, I was really lucky and got such a good equipment and I was playing on EASY. I could not do almost anything even with my zoltan shield against this silly thing! I thought that maybe there is some hidden karma value which should be on my side since I let the enemies go with their lives, but it definitely was no use for me this time and I got shredded into pieces in a few moments.
So I guess you now want players to avoid rebel fleet at all costs because they will be afraid of this ASB right? What is the purpose of this change? I hope you will soon release a patch and balance this a bit, because killing a player and spoling fun from a promising progress with this totally unfair and unbalanced event is not nice...

And it seems I am really not the only one thiking so :-]
http://steamcommunity.com/app/212680/di ... 970928/#p1

[Reptile]

Yea I agree with you. Before it wasnt really a rsik getting catched by the fleet now its almost a certain death, they might aswell put game over when you get there. It should be balanced a bit, maybe decreased firing speed, less damage or something. I also got destroyed by it even though my ship was pretty good.

[5thHorseman]

I thought they disabled the ASB in easy mode but I know they were weighing the options.

The idea is, this is the entire rebel fleet. You should be TERRIFIED to face them. And you shouldn't be able to get an infinitely high score by farming them. The ASB solved both of those problems.

Just consider this one of the many lessons about the game you'll learn over the next few weeks/months of playing. Remember thinking spiders was unfair? This is exactly the same.

[r543]

It might be a glitch. Someone found a auto scout with high equipment(like 2-3 shields and a lot of weapons) in sector 2 on easy.

[Elhazzared]

I don't think there was a problem with the rebel fleet before. Yes it was possible to farm infinite points by going between fights with it on the early sectors but that happened when you got a starting monster game. You needed to have a really good ship to reliable do it without taking any damage whatsoever. Usually they had even in the first sector a missile, burst laser 2, a couple shields and even brought more stuff than just that. So really, was it that necessary to do that ABS or whatever firing at you? Now you cannot make the smallest of mistakes cause being caught by the rebel fleet equates to starting a new game. Even on 3 engines early on you still get hit frequently enough.

The whole problem with this is just how damn overpowered that it. There are no effective means of defense against it and it makes absolutly no sense. You are a cruiser who are fighting other cruisers, but suddenly the cruisers in the background happened to have a stellar converter to blow the hell out of your ship... They get to have a weapon that is far more deadlier and devastating than the mothership... Really, who cares about a mothership? The fleet is infinitely more dangerous than the mothership and I am probably not the only one who finds this wrong... If all they wanted to do was stop the farming of points when you had to fight the rebel fleet then the anser is simple. No points for killing an elite frigate so you can't score attack it. Sure, kill as many as you want, you don't get a bonus and there is no overpowered weapon of mass destruction firing at you.

[Ghaleon]

No offense but this is another "i made a very bad decision and its the game's fault for not not handing me a "you're winner!" Screen anyway!" Complaint if ever i saw one.

Even at sector 1 it should only fire twice at you in the time you can run away, maybe 3 if you left your engines at rank 2 or something. At rank 4 engines you can often flee after just 1 shot.

Frankly i find that the game constantly throws leto missle equipped enemies early game over and over way more unfair since there's nothing the player can do about it, or avoid it... Not sure if thats just me though, but seriously, like 9/10 ships i face have those effing missles that fire before a basic laser.

[Elhazzared]

I dunno about you but me, I never upgrade engines early on. Why? Because they aremostly useless in the begining. What you want is to destroy the enemy guns before they can do damage to you and upgrade the shields to level 2 so you can stay mostly safe.

Every single time I've run into an elite ship in the first 3 sectors either I died between the fire I take from the elite ships and the fleet BS cannon or I flee on the red which is just as well as GG because odds are you are going to be taking more damage before you find a shop or maybe you do find a shop before dying, but goodbye to all the scrap you had and good luck now trying to play catch up.

This is not wanting an "I win button" This is wanting the rebel fleet fights to be slightly more fair... It still isn't because the elite ships will be far superior to your ship 9 out of 10 times. Sometimes you might have a monster game in the beggining and be able to kill them easly but this isn't what normally happens. Before when I had to fight the elite ships early on I either had had a monster game and it was a fair fight or I had a normal run and I took some damage. On the worst starts I had to flee but you know what, I managed to take between 5 and 10 points of damage before getting away. That was ok, that was perfectly balanced. Now it just isn't balanced. It's game breaking inbalanced!.. Now you can't even take calculated risks in facing the rebel fleet to get just one more beacon before getting out.

As for lots of ships with missiles now in the first sectors... I notice a slight increase on normal difficulty. A big increase in hard, but hey, it's hard... If anything I don't find the missile being there a problem, I find the speed at which it fires being slightly annoying as I'd like to be able have a chance to at least get a shot into their weapons system before it fired... But that is not really much of a problem to me.

[Ghaleon]

Oh no, those missles were always very common (at least for me), and are in fact why i like getting some engine upgrades early since that is the only thing that can reduce their damage.

Also even without that i disagree about engines being useless. The dodge% doesnt boost your durability as much as shields (against non effing missles, but its ALWAYS the effing missles for me) sure, but your pilot and engine officer skill up with each dodge, and that combined with a decent engine result in a pretty nice boost before long imo.

Incidentally i still voluntarily take abs rebels on at the exit beacon it it means i can get an extra beacon or two explored all the time (unless im near death and no shops are around). But I definately wont take 2 or 3 kf those encounters just for 1 extra beacon like i did before.

[Nevill]

ITT: people who don't upgrade engines complain about inability to dodge ASB or outrun rebel fighters. Meanwhile, with engines at level 4 it only locks on you once before you are able to jump away. And you can have lvl4 engines in the 1st sector, complete with lvl4 shields (for those ships that start with them).

[karadoc]

Unless you accidentally follow a dead-end path, its very easy to not get caught by the rebel fleet. For that reason alone I think it's fine to have the anti-ship battery even on easy. If you're playing on easy then there is less pressure to maximise the number of beacons you visit, and so avoiding the rebels is somewhat easier.

Before the rebels had the ASB, they weren't any kind of threat at all. Before AE, I'd routinely visit the far corners of every sector and then back-track through rebel territory - because that was simply the most effective way to win (and not just in terms of high-scores).

With the ASB, the rebels are a threat - and that's as it should be. Without the ASB, the rebels were a farce.