[D'rek]

This is the best game EVER.

Somehow, last night, I got a stream of incredible luck. Every decision I made seemed to be the right one: I supported a fugitive mantis who then joined me, I was able to loot a derelict ship in an asteroid field without getting smashed, and pirates were offering me free weapons systems to stop killing them! I was doing absolutely amazing, thought I had everything upgraded and ready for a bulletproof strategy against the Rebel flagship and picked a civilian sector as my second last-sector just to be safe. I told myself I wasn't going to try and rescue any space stations from giant space arachnids or mysterious plagues, nor speak to giant monoliths. I might even let any pirates or rebels I run into surrender, just in case they have something up their sleeve.

So then I get into the second-last sector, starting in the top left. I jump rightwards to a store, fix up my two points of damage and jump right again. Nothing there but empty space, so I go to jump again and... huh? There's nowhere to jump to except back to the store? But from the store I could only jump back to the start or left-and-down, and the rebels are already there...

Yup. I got a sector where it didn't look like it, but the only way to get to the exit was in a back winding arc around the left side and then bottom of the map. But the top *looked* like it would work, too... no dice. So then I had to try and fight through 5 overrun nodes in a row, facing a triple-sheilded, double-missile bearing rebel ship in every one. I could beat every one of them handily, of course, but each one managed to get off a couple missiles before going down, and slowly I watched my ship's hull meter get lower, and lower and lower, while my crew frantically doused fire bombs in oxygen-less rooms and fired everything we had at the enemy weapons systems, hoping against hope to prevent any further damage.

I warped in to face the fifth rebel ship with 5 hull points remaining. The rebel ship not only had a triple shield like the others, but tossed out a defense drone, too, to stop my breach missiles from striking its weapon systems through the shields. With no way to overcome the outer defenses, I frantically teleported 2 crew, and then another 2 crew to the enemy weapons system room, while one last crewman piloted the ship in a futile bid to avoid the enemy fire. The enemy crew rushed into the weapons chamber but had no med bay to retreat to, so the battle was nearly even. One of my humans died, but my loyal mantis companion disembowled the enemies, leaving me 3 crew on-board the enemy ship, all clinging narrowly to life. The final rebel started moving towards the weapons room, but he'd be no match for my 3 boarders. Before he got there, though, the rebel's enormous missle fired and struck my shield generator. As the shields dropped, a huge beam fired across my hull and I watched my ship explode into a fiery death. My surviving crew killed the final rebel, but couldn't override the enemy systems, leaving them floating helplessly on the rebel ship, able to watch through the windows as the rest of the rebel fleet came into range and blew them into dust.

Goddamnit this is the worst game EVER.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 22 July 2013 - 08:53 PM

[Stalker]

I know the feeling of going from best to worst game ever. There have been so many random things that have killed me out of the blue, on an otherwise fantastic run.

I finally got my first win last night, when I got a weapon pre-igniter from a distress signal. Add that to some really powerful guns, lvl 3 shields, and a maxed out engine... so it was easy to save the galaxy. Plus I even got a random event and unlocked another ship! The RN gods favored me, which means I'm going to lose the next many games horribly. It already started when I tried out the Federation Cruiser, lost in the first sector.

[D'rek]

Stalker, on 22 July 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:

I know the feeling of going from best to worst game ever. There have been so many random things that have killed me out of the blue, on an otherwise fantastic run.

I finally got my first win last night, when I got a weapon pre-igniter from a distress signal. Add that to some really powerful guns, lvl 3 shields, and a maxed out engine... so it was easy to save the galaxy. Plus I even got a random event and unlocked another ship! The RN gods favored me, which means I'm going to lose the next many games horribly. It already started when I tried out the Federation Cruiser, lost in the first sector.

Nice! Was the Federation Cruiser the one you randomly unlocked? Or is that for beating the boss?

So far, I've got an Engi and a Slug ship and a stealth cruiser that starts with cloaking but no shields, it's awful! There's an event with a famous Mantis captain that I've seen twice that I bet probably gives you a Mantis ship if you do it right but I couldn't figure out how yet, I just kept blowing him up I've also gotten a special uber-blue-rock guy that is like the other rockmen but has a special barricade ability that locks rooms, but other than being a special crew member I didn't see anything related to him.

[Stalker]

Yeah the Cruiser comes from beating the game, the other ship I unlocked was the Zoltan cruiser. I just got lucky to pick the right options. Also have the Engi ship and the Kestral, of course. I hate the engi ship but the second layout of the Kestral is awesome, by far my favorite.

The uber rock crew member I got once too, the ability was cool but I used it stupidly and got the rock killed.There was a quest associated with him, but I never got to finish it because of the advancing enemy. I would guess it is related to a ship, since one of the 8 unlocks is listed as unknown, but I need to try it again to know for sure. I also keep killing the mantis captain, not sure how to get his ship yet either.

I definitely got my $2 out of the game. It is so easy to quickly play a game or two or three and the randomization makes each game interesting. The rogue-like genre is great, I may have to get Rogue Legacy at some point here.

[Cause]

The blue rock is a crystal alien! his kind has not been seen for millenia. If your lucky you will randomly find an ancient jump gate that if you have one on your crew will teleport you to his home sector. His kind is distrustful and will attack, beat them all back and be merciful and eventually they will reward you with a powerfully advanced crystal ship!

Game is great no matter how powerful your ship it will have a weakness and any game encounter with the right circumstanced can be deadly. I lost a beast of a ship to slugs who hacked my oxygen generator and teleported a hundred fire bombs aboard. It was also handed badly by me but it proves how every build has a counter. Makes the game damn hard to beat though. Yet to win on easy even after ten hours!

I messed with the save files though to unlock all the ships though because I cant be bothered to play the hundred hours it make take to do it otherwise. The ships are different not necessarily more powerful though so it remains as challenging as ever.

[Tapper]

Made it to the Flagship yesterday, Engi cruiser, near full energy, 3 weapons, 3 drones (1 attack, 1 defense, 1 repair, of which I can keep 2 in the air all the time), a shitload of parts and missiles, and a crew incorporating 2x the energy dudes, 2x mantis, 1x engi and 1x human, allowing me to man every station AND put out fires.

And then, just before combat, I switch out the ion cannon (2 energy) for a 3 energy weapon. That I then can't use due to weapon maximum being reached.
The fight still went pretty well (they had 2 hull remaining by the time they blew me up) , but eventually my crew ran out of oxygen due to the combination of blown up oxygen generators and a missile breach in the oxygen room.

[Kanubis]

Finally killed the end twat last night

It was first attempt after unlocking Layout B for the starter ship, makes things easier because one of the starting crew is a zoltan so you essentially get a free power unit.

It also felt like everything in the galaxy was desperate to throw scrap at me, which was nice.

I think the two main factors at the end that helped were:

- I had a full crew. This meant that aside from the crew manning various stations, I had two free Engis just to run around repairing stuff, and a free rock dude to uh... walk slowly around stomping out fires.

- I had a bomb gun. This was SO helpful, especially in the second phase of the fight. Being able to not worry about defense drones and shields and just blow up their systems was essential.

I think it also helped having upgraded sensors - being able to see what was going on on the flagship meant I was able to actually kill a few of its crew during the fight, slowly their repairs.

Had a quick whirl on the new ship after, think it's probably good after a few upgrades, but a bit dodgy early on.

[Morgoth]

The trick to this game seems to me to get at least one mantis crewman and one mantis/rock and a teleporter early. From there on it's pretty easy to win the game, and especially to defeat the flagship.

Still, I had a lot of fun with it.

[D'rek]

Cause, on 23 July 2013 - 09:21 AM, said:

The blue rock is a crystal alien! his kind has not been seen for millenia. If your lucky you will randomly find an ancient jump gate that if you have one on your crew will teleport you to his home sector. His kind is distrustful and will attack, beat them all back and be merciful and eventually they will reward you with a powerfully advanced crystal ship!

Oh cool, I thought he was just a super-rockman. That seems like you'd have to be very lucky to get all the right steps though - find the stasis pod, then run into Zoltan researchers, and then find the ancient jump gate! I think the Zoltan researchers only show up in Zoltan sectors, too, making them even harder to find... sheesh!

Tapper, on 23 July 2013 - 11:15 AM, said:

Made it to the Flagship yesterday, Engi cruiser, near full energy, 3 weapons, 3 drones (1 attack, 1 defense, 1 repair, of which I can keep 2 in the air all the time), a shitload of parts and missiles, and a crew incorporating 2x the energy dudes, 2x mantis, 1x engi and 1x human, allowing me to man every station AND put out fires.

And then, just before combat, I switch out the ion cannon (2 energy) for a 3 energy weapon. That I then can't use due to weapon maximum being reached.
The fight still went pretty well (they had 2 hull remaining by the time they blew me up) , but eventually my crew ran out of oxygen due to the combination of blown up oxygen generators and a missile breach in the oxygen room.

Ouch, that sucks! Similarly, I ran into a slug ship once that let me choose what system they would hack. I thought I'd be absolutely toast without my weapons or shields so picked oxygen, but then couldnt get through their shields and hull before suffocating

Morgoth, on 23 July 2013 - 06:33 PM, said:

The trick to this game seems to me to get at least one mantis crewman and one mantis/rock and a teleporter early. From there on it's pretty easy to win the game, and especially to defeat the flagship.

It does seem like you get more scrap from defeating enemy crews and keeping their ships intact, so that's one big bonus to it, but I've had teleporter-focused crews wiped out when I ran into enemies with decent shields and a med bay. I'm not very good at managing all the things at once, either, so I've had several incidents of forgetting my weapons were on autofire or that the enemy ship has a fire on it and failing to get my crew off the enemy ship before it explodes!