Subset Games Forum

Bombs seem rather lackluster to me in comparison to, well, basically every other type of weapon. Granted, they don't take that much energy but they don't bring much to the table either.
First off, they never damage the hull, which, given that they are bombs seems quite illogically to me. But perhaps they are intended to be used in a ship-boarding strategy so it won't matter at all.
But what I find quite irritating is that they can even miss the target entirely and land outside a ship. Strangely that can't happen to a boarding party which also uses teleporter technology so that's illogical as well. Which actually happened on the second time I did use such a bomb... Assuming they'd hit for a guaranteed 100% - would that make them OP?
And the worst is that they use up a missile - which, otherwise could be used to do a good chunk of damage. If an enemy doesn't have a Defense Drone up missiles are also a safe way to disrupt specific systems or destroy a ship easily.

Any thoughts?

LOL, are you now going to open a thread for every single question you have?

But seriously, I think you've summarized it all just fine: The chief advantage of bombs vs missiles is that they cannot be destroyed by drones. Therefore, their hit chances are the same as those of a missile when the opponent doesn't have a defense drone (or other weapons - sometimes a laser can shoot down a missile as well). May be unlogical - but, think about it. If an Ion bomb didn't even have a chance to miss, it would be totally overpowered. One bomb will cut 2 shield layers for 20 seconds - and if your weapons guy is trained, you can fire yet another one before the first one wears off, effectively deactivating ALL shields of the boss. In fact, considering that it only costs ONE energy bar, the Ion bomb is greatly overpowered even as it is IMO. On the other hand, the super powerful breach missile is completely useless against an opponent with a defense drone. Unless, of course, you have the defense scrambler augmentation. In this case, and this case only, does a very powerful missile make any sense in the final boss battle stage 2. (Except for those that fire 2 or 3 projectiles, they can of course still be useful).

And yes, bombs are better for bording strategies, or generally when you want to win a battle by killing the crew as opposed to destroying the ship. And naturally they do eat up resources. So ideally, you want to use them sparingly, and with any luck, you have a bunch of them by the time the boss opponent arrives. I will often end up with 30 or more missiles by the time I entertain the boss. If I have an ion bomb or a breach bomb II, it is a good idea to auto-fire it on shields. Of course, the specific mechanics of the damage must be respected in case you have severel bombs. Small bomb or breach bomb first, ion bomb later.

hehe this forum is in dire need for some additional threads so I see it as my personal duty to help you guys out temporarily

you make some good points. I never had that Ion Bomb but a Fire Bomb and Healing Bomb but got the impression they were for specialized strategies. TBH I thought that the general usage of Ion weapons is deliberately to take an enemies shields down and, preferably, have it in a state of knock-down until the enemy is being destroyed. This is actually what you can do with a lot of direct Ion Weapons isn't it? I mean, take for example the starting Ion weapon of the Engi A "Ion Blast Mk. II" - fires an Ion volley every 4 seconds!!! (which will also raise the experience of the guy sitting at the arms station *very swiftly*). Although that weapon uses up to 3 reactor power so a direct comparison with the Ion Bomb is hard to make.

Is the miss-chance of the bombs directly related to the "evade"-stats of the enemy ship? Basically meaning if I take care of engines or piloting it'll drop down?

Actually I don't use (standard shooting) missiles at all if the enemy has a Defense-Drone in the air - it's just a waste of a stock which is limited anyway. The more you have to replenish that stock the less you can buy other improvements so fireing a missile I consider an investment that should pay off. The only exception would be to fire 3*swarm missiles against a vessel powering up it's FTL drive to prevent it leaving, even with a Defense Drone up most likely a single missile may hit the propulsion system.

I think I need to think more about boarding strategies. I just don't see how they are feasable.... I mean it's very easy to simply wait for enemies boarding parties and kill them with some spare crew. I always get Blast Doors and weaken hostile parties by opening air locks until they breached through. Sometimes you can lure them into the MedBay where they engage in a futile fight. All things considered the Blast Doors give enough time to muster a team which can successfully defeat in a 1on1. And even if not very easy to swap people around and heal weak units.

To board another vessel with only 2 units, especially if the vessel is connected with doors (not that Slug cruiser faildesign) I can't see how I would win. Alot of these ships also seem to have CloneBays. Thing is, even if I can pull that off successfully, most likely by supporting that with Hacking, Bombs or MC. It still takes some time doesn't it? In which a normal just-destroy-that-vessel-tactic would be through so much faster. And the longer a combat takes place the greater is the chance the you will suffer damage from that. Which is exactly what I intent to try to avoid: The less you have to repair back, or, the less you have to buy stocks of missiles or drone parts the more funds are at your disposal to get your ship upgraded to full status.
Under this logic, which is entirely theoretical coming from me, I see the danger arising that the boarding party strategy results in a loss of scrap. If you have to repair your hull more often and also buy alot of additional parts etc pp is it actually worthwhile? (not to mention the micro-managment which is actually a fun aspect IMO)

Boarding is quite a viable strategy. You just got to have the right crew and target the right systems before getting on the ship.
Bombs can help with that. Disable the medbay or clone bay before dropping your elite Mantis crew onboard. Make sure you invade a 1x2 room with your crew to avoid getting overwhelmed. If you have Mind Control, even better as you can hit the shield operator ,then move your crew to the enemy medbay. Hopefully by the time they've slaughtered their own shield guy, you've destroyed the facilities needed to save them.

You might take some damage from enemy missiles but that's to be expected even with a conventional strategy.

So the general aim is to take away their ability to heal and basically kill the crew manually through combat? But what if is too many and I have to return my intruders to heal them, too, in which the opponent would've time to revert my damage done and I'd be back to square 1?

I just unlocked a ship with 2 guys that deplete oxygen from rooms. How swift is that process? Could I use these as well for a boarding party, perhaps targetting the oxygen generator? Perhaps if I find hacking I could use that to disable access to this room. And, if I have to leave and they conmplete their repairing further disable it through said hacking. Maybe these guys could even win a straight 2vs2 if the enemies do suffer additionaly oxygen depletion damage while being in manual fight?

ok let me think this through for a moment. if I engage in a 2vs2 combat and are close to winning, will the AI detract his seriously injured crewmates and send them to medbay and replace them with fitter crewman or not?

and if he has clonebay, I assume this system needs to be either red or actively hacked on the very moment of death in order for this death to be permanent? what if the system is only yellow (so as if I hit it with a single missile). or take the fight directly to the clonebay itself?

would you prefer a clonebay for an active boarding strategy or not?

IDK all in all it appears to me like this strategy needs alot of scrap and micro. the question is whether it pays off in the long run? just destroying ships with coordinated laserbursts, perhaps supported by ion volleys, seems a so easy and very efficient thing to do with alot of enemies. you only pay the weaponmods and reactor + weapon upgrades for a single time and are done. the rest of scrap can go to defensive stuff like shields, propulsion or drones, altogether making sure that my ship doesn't receive that much damage so I don't need that much scrap for repairs.

so if you realize that, scrap is very limited and to use it most efficiently will ultimately make the difference in the last stand having either a 3-phased or 4-phased shield and more evasion etc. that's why I wanna pick up a strat that, all things considered, is also efficient in terms of investment costs. not because I wanna pull off fancy stuff. does looting an intact ship alos increase chances to find some extraordinairy items like weapons etc or just a flat increase in scrap?

and BTW I also usually try to cover all the nebulae jump nodes but in many times sensors are down there. and with limited information about the enemy vessel that seems to be a jump int he blue for my boarding party. perhaps with hacking I could deduce if a clonebay is present or not, but without I may be screwed.

Catburglar wrote:So the general aim is to take away their ability to heal and basically kill the crew manually through combat? But what if is too many and I have to return my intruders to heal them, too, in which the opponent would've time to revert my damage done and I'd be back to square 1?

Always depends of the situation. As stated before, selective usage of bombs can help. Destroy medbay/clonebay, put a bomb where the opponents are. Firebomb can be very useful too, esepcially if you use an all Rockman boarding crew - rockmen are immune to fire mind you (a fire bomb will however still deal them damage as it explodes). Stun bomb, healing burst, etc. An upgraded teleporter needs less time to cool down, so you can send another 2 crewman to the enemy if needed, that can help as well. With a clone bay, you can have your crew killed and "resurrect" it, so long as the clone bay doesn't go offline (dangerous tactic if your opponent has bombs, of course). Also, if you have hacking, you can use this to block certain strategically important places in the enemy's ship. Or you hack the medbay and activate the hack when your opponents are healing. A level 3 hacked medbay will kill all opponents that are currently healing.

I just unlocked a ship with 2 guys that deplete oxygen from rooms. How swift is that process? Could I use these as well for a boarding party, perhaps targetting the oxygen generator? Perhaps if I find hacking I could use that to disable access to this room. And, if I have to leave and they conmplete their repairing further disable it through said hacking. Maybe these guys could even win a straight 2vs2 if the enemies do suffer additionaly oxygen depletion damage while being in manual fight?

Yes, Lanius can totally do that. Beware, though that this depends of the O2 system. A level 3 O2 system will replenish the oxygen fast enough to cancel out that effect. Blocking doors via hacking can, of course, help.

Catburglar wrote:ok let me think this through for a moment. if I engage in a 2vs2 combat and are close to winning, will the AI detract his seriously injured crewmates and send them to medbay and replace them with fitter crewman or not?

Yes they will, if they can.

and if he has clonebay, I assume this system needs to be either red or actively hacked on the very moment of death in order for this death to be permanent? what if the system is only yellow (so as if I hit it with a single missile). or take the fight directly to the clonebay itself?

Correct - although ionization would work, too, as long as the ionization is powerful enough (for a level 3 medbay, you'd need 3 ion damage).

Destroying the clonebay may work as well, if you have 2 Mantis and the clonebay is only level 1. A level 2 or 3 clonebay may not be destroyed completely before an enemy respawns.

would you prefer a clonebay for an active boarding strategy or not?

The best is probably clonebay + reconstructive teleport (+ DNA database just to be safe). However, since scrap is scarce in hard mode (and I haven't played easy or normal for years), I will always use the system that I start with. I might make an excetion and replace my medbay by a clone bay in case I win reconstructive teleport (or the reverse if I get that nanobot healing augment, which is useless with a clonebay). But generally speaking, I stick to what I have.

IDK all in all it appears to me like this strategy needs alot of scrap and micro. the question is whether it pays off in the long run? just destroying ships with coordinated laserbursts, perhaps supported by ion volleys, seems a so easy and very efficient thing to do with alot of enemies. you only pay the weaponmods and reactor + weapon upgrades for a single time and are done. the rest of scrap can go to defensive stuff like shields, propulsion or drones, altogether making sure that my ship doesn't receive that much damage so I don't need that much scrap for repairs.

On the other hand, sometimes the rewards are higher when you kill the crew and leave the ship intact. In particulary, you are more likely to gain additional crewmembers this way.

But large and by, it always depends of your situation and what ship you have. For example, some ships start with 4 crew teleporters, these ships are predestined for boarding tactics. At least in the early and the middle game.

Naturally, it is near impossible to beat the boss this way - killing the crew isn't enough, if you do, it will switch into auto mode. Also, trying to destroy automatic ship this way is very dangerous, except if you have a lanius crew (with Lanius A, I will usually send by 2 Lanius to destroy the weapons first thing).

so if you realize that, scrap is very limited and to use it most efficiently will ultimately make the difference in the last stand having either a 3-phased or 4-phased shield and more evasion etc. that's why I wanna pick up a strat that, all things considered, is also efficient in terms of investment costs. not because I wanna pull off fancy stuff. does looting an intact ship alos increase chances to find some extraordinairy items like weapons etc or just a flat increase in scrap?

In some fights, it does. Like stated above, this is true for crewmembers in particular, which you are very unlikely to find if you destroy the ship. (although there are instances where even that happens).

Catburglar wrote:and BTW I also usually try to cover all the nebulae jump nodes but in many times sensors are down there. and with limited information about the enemy vessel that seems to be a jump int he blue for my boarding party. perhaps with hacking I could deduce if a clonebay is present or not, but without I may be screwed.

Even without sensors, you still know which systems the enemy has. Only thing you don't know is how developed it is (level 1,2, or 3 clonebay?). True, only thing that would help here is hacking.

However, there is a way to see the enemy crew even under these circumstances - all you need is a slug crewmember or the lifeform scanner augment. Beware though, you will only see the crew. If your opponent has a drone system, he may have an anti personnel drone - which you would NOT see before the teleport.

Btw, speaking of drones, one thing I forgot - of course, you can also use boarding drones to support your boarding crew. Just don't attempt this if your enemy has a defense drone.