Posted August 07, 2013
high rated
There is a lot of advice scattered around various topics, so some of this will inevitably sound familiar, but I suppose it's safe to share some things I've learned from experience. Some of this information certainly won't be found in the in-game list of tips. Please excuse me if it gets long-winded! If I think of anything else, I will add it later. Feel free to add your own tips, which may be incorporated into the original post for convenience (with your permission). In general, the following advice is universal, not ship-specific, and does not include any spoilers regarding random event choices or the final boss. :)
1. Explore.
Don't rush through each sector. The more beacons you visit, the more battles you fight, the more scrap you will earn, and friendly encounters may even give you a weapon or augment or new crew member for free. Ideally, you will want to exit each sector just barely before the rebel wave catches you. Remember, though, if you DO get caught, you must fight an elite rebel fighter, which earns no rewards and can sometimes be devastating. Don't risk your ship over greed to explore one more beacon.
-- Don't worry about fuel too much. Battles and random events often drop fuel, and you can buy more at a store if you're low. Keeping a dozen fuel units in storage whenever possible is a good idea, though, as it can preserve you from a temporary dearth due to bad luck.
2. Things to have early on:
-- One extra shield bubble early (requires two shield system upgrades) can save you a lot of repair bills later. Just remember it will need reactor power too.
-- One or two additional crew, preferably all of different races, can greatly boost your resistance to boarding, and your system repair and fire-fighting ability, as well as allow you to use racial traits in special events.
-- Upgrade your ship's doors at least once. Blast doors hinder fires and intruder movement, allowing you to trap them, and giving you more time to react effectively. Both can even be suffocated by evacuating the room's oxygen through a nearby airlock. Without door upgrades, the greatest danger is small fires getting out of control while your crew is distracted with intruders or repairs elsewhere. Always respond to fires promptly, either by venting oxygen or sending multiple crew to extinguish them.
-- Start training each crew member to a specific task or ship system early. Keep all systems manned whenever possible, and always with the same person. Of course, it's inevitable that they will sometimes have to leave to help with repairs or combat. That's okay. And if they must go to the medbay, or if they die, having a rookie on the controls is better than no one at all. Just remember the veteran won't take the controls upon return unless the rookie leaves the room. It's also better, if you have extra crew, to have idle rookies moving to hotspots around the ship and repairing things, than to interrupt a veteran's work.
-- Humans have no special abilities, so if you have any human crew, make one of them your pilot - they'll rarely leave the cockpit, because the ship can't fly itself or dodge by itself without autopilot upgrades.
-- Having just one engine upgrade increases your dodge chance, which will also increase your pilot's skill faster!
3. Keep some scrap in savings.
Beyond the aforementioned things, don't spend all of it on ship upgrades immediately. You will find stores throughout your travels that may be carrying something you want to buy, like extra fuel and shiny new weapons. Everything costs scrap. Cloaking, one of the most helpful systems (though not absolutely necessary), costs a whopping 150 scrap, so start saving up! You can also sell off unused equipment or equipment that you'd like to replace with a new purchase.
4. Pause often.
This will give you time to think and plan, and to react each time the enemy makes a move. You can change your weapons' targets, reroute power, open/close doors, and move crew at leisure.
5. Power can be rerouted.
Not all systems need to be fully powered at all times. The medbay and engines can especially be switched on and off when needed.
-- Try only powering the engines when actively dodging incoming projectiles - or unless you are clearly outgunned and need to quickly charge the FTL drive and escape.
-- You can cut the oxygen for a few seconds to give the engine a slight boost when dodging as well. This won't hurt your crew. Just be sure to turn it back on! If the oxygen system becomes damaged, also check on it after it is repaired. It won't always power-up automatically.
-- You can even de-power one of your shield bubbles if necessary. Turn it back on as soon as the enemy fires a laser, and the shield will have recharged by the time the projectiles hit.
-- Cloaking can be kept unpowered until the instant you need it, however, power cannot be removed from this system while it is recharging.
-- A particularly fast-charging weapon can be worth deactivating for a second or two as well.
-- All that said, don't spend an exorbitant amount on reactor upgrades, but nonetheless be sure you have enough output to power oxygen and one engine bar (plus at least one shield and a weapon, if you wish to fight), should you get caught in an ion storm. It will happen eventually.
6. DO NOT always use autofire.
Timing is important. If you have more than one laser or ion weapon, allow them all to charge up, then pause and manually target the enemy ship with all of them. Firing everything at once like this will overwhelm the enemy's shields instead of allowing them time to recharge between your volleys. If you have a beam weapon, wait for it to charge, then create an opening with your lasers or take out the shields with a missile or bomb. Pause before any of their shield bubbles recharge, and draw the best line you can across the enemy's hull.
7. Some weapons are more power-efficient than others.
A Burst Laser Mk. III may fire five bolts, but it needs a lot of power, and by the time the fifth bolt hits, one enemy shield bubble will have recharged. Two cheap dual lasers can do the same job for less power, BUT will occupy more equipment slots. This has not been a problem for me.
-- The Ion Blast II (comes standard on Torus) deserves a special note. It is one of the few weapons that benefit from autofiring. The 3 power bars needed to operate it are well worth it. If manned, it fires fast enough to wear down even the most powerful shields all by itself. It takes time, but if you too have good enough defenses, this can be a workable strategy. Keep the ion targeting the shields to keep them down while a drone or a second weapon tears into the hull. Once the shields are fully disabled, there's actually time to fire one or two ion bolts at different systems before resuming bombardment of the shields.
-- Missiles and bombs, since they ignore all shields, are also useful for knocking out shields and delaying enemy weapons. Just remember they use ammo, so use them sparingly and don't run out! Enemies use them too. They are the reason you will need to upgrade your engine for dodging, not just your shields for blocking. An ion bomb only uses 1 power and does no damage, but will disable fully-upgraded shields (or any other system) for several seconds, allowing a devastating barrage from your other weapons. Other types of bombs can injure crew or start fires.
8. Sometimes accepting surrender is profitable.
You'll usually get more scrap for simply destroying the enemy ship, but when they get scared, the items they offer might be more valuable than the scrap, depending on your situation. Surrenders often offer quite a lot of fuel, missiles, or even a new weapon or crew member.
That's all for now. I hope it helps!
1. Explore.
Don't rush through each sector. The more beacons you visit, the more battles you fight, the more scrap you will earn, and friendly encounters may even give you a weapon or augment or new crew member for free. Ideally, you will want to exit each sector just barely before the rebel wave catches you. Remember, though, if you DO get caught, you must fight an elite rebel fighter, which earns no rewards and can sometimes be devastating. Don't risk your ship over greed to explore one more beacon.
-- Don't worry about fuel too much. Battles and random events often drop fuel, and you can buy more at a store if you're low. Keeping a dozen fuel units in storage whenever possible is a good idea, though, as it can preserve you from a temporary dearth due to bad luck.
2. Things to have early on:
-- One extra shield bubble early (requires two shield system upgrades) can save you a lot of repair bills later. Just remember it will need reactor power too.
-- One or two additional crew, preferably all of different races, can greatly boost your resistance to boarding, and your system repair and fire-fighting ability, as well as allow you to use racial traits in special events.
-- Upgrade your ship's doors at least once. Blast doors hinder fires and intruder movement, allowing you to trap them, and giving you more time to react effectively. Both can even be suffocated by evacuating the room's oxygen through a nearby airlock. Without door upgrades, the greatest danger is small fires getting out of control while your crew is distracted with intruders or repairs elsewhere. Always respond to fires promptly, either by venting oxygen or sending multiple crew to extinguish them.
-- Start training each crew member to a specific task or ship system early. Keep all systems manned whenever possible, and always with the same person. Of course, it's inevitable that they will sometimes have to leave to help with repairs or combat. That's okay. And if they must go to the medbay, or if they die, having a rookie on the controls is better than no one at all. Just remember the veteran won't take the controls upon return unless the rookie leaves the room. It's also better, if you have extra crew, to have idle rookies moving to hotspots around the ship and repairing things, than to interrupt a veteran's work.
-- Humans have no special abilities, so if you have any human crew, make one of them your pilot - they'll rarely leave the cockpit, because the ship can't fly itself or dodge by itself without autopilot upgrades.
-- Having just one engine upgrade increases your dodge chance, which will also increase your pilot's skill faster!
3. Keep some scrap in savings.
Beyond the aforementioned things, don't spend all of it on ship upgrades immediately. You will find stores throughout your travels that may be carrying something you want to buy, like extra fuel and shiny new weapons. Everything costs scrap. Cloaking, one of the most helpful systems (though not absolutely necessary), costs a whopping 150 scrap, so start saving up! You can also sell off unused equipment or equipment that you'd like to replace with a new purchase.
4. Pause often.
This will give you time to think and plan, and to react each time the enemy makes a move. You can change your weapons' targets, reroute power, open/close doors, and move crew at leisure.
5. Power can be rerouted.
Not all systems need to be fully powered at all times. The medbay and engines can especially be switched on and off when needed.
-- Try only powering the engines when actively dodging incoming projectiles - or unless you are clearly outgunned and need to quickly charge the FTL drive and escape.
-- You can cut the oxygen for a few seconds to give the engine a slight boost when dodging as well. This won't hurt your crew. Just be sure to turn it back on! If the oxygen system becomes damaged, also check on it after it is repaired. It won't always power-up automatically.
-- You can even de-power one of your shield bubbles if necessary. Turn it back on as soon as the enemy fires a laser, and the shield will have recharged by the time the projectiles hit.
-- Cloaking can be kept unpowered until the instant you need it, however, power cannot be removed from this system while it is recharging.
-- A particularly fast-charging weapon can be worth deactivating for a second or two as well.
-- All that said, don't spend an exorbitant amount on reactor upgrades, but nonetheless be sure you have enough output to power oxygen and one engine bar (plus at least one shield and a weapon, if you wish to fight), should you get caught in an ion storm. It will happen eventually.
6. DO NOT always use autofire.
Timing is important. If you have more than one laser or ion weapon, allow them all to charge up, then pause and manually target the enemy ship with all of them. Firing everything at once like this will overwhelm the enemy's shields instead of allowing them time to recharge between your volleys. If you have a beam weapon, wait for it to charge, then create an opening with your lasers or take out the shields with a missile or bomb. Pause before any of their shield bubbles recharge, and draw the best line you can across the enemy's hull.
7. Some weapons are more power-efficient than others.
A Burst Laser Mk. III may fire five bolts, but it needs a lot of power, and by the time the fifth bolt hits, one enemy shield bubble will have recharged. Two cheap dual lasers can do the same job for less power, BUT will occupy more equipment slots. This has not been a problem for me.
-- The Ion Blast II (comes standard on Torus) deserves a special note. It is one of the few weapons that benefit from autofiring. The 3 power bars needed to operate it are well worth it. If manned, it fires fast enough to wear down even the most powerful shields all by itself. It takes time, but if you too have good enough defenses, this can be a workable strategy. Keep the ion targeting the shields to keep them down while a drone or a second weapon tears into the hull. Once the shields are fully disabled, there's actually time to fire one or two ion bolts at different systems before resuming bombardment of the shields.
-- Missiles and bombs, since they ignore all shields, are also useful for knocking out shields and delaying enemy weapons. Just remember they use ammo, so use them sparingly and don't run out! Enemies use them too. They are the reason you will need to upgrade your engine for dodging, not just your shields for blocking. An ion bomb only uses 1 power and does no damage, but will disable fully-upgraded shields (or any other system) for several seconds, allowing a devastating barrage from your other weapons. Other types of bombs can injure crew or start fires.
8. Sometimes accepting surrender is profitable.
You'll usually get more scrap for simply destroying the enemy ship, but when they get scared, the items they offer might be more valuable than the scrap, depending on your situation. Surrenders often offer quite a lot of fuel, missiles, or even a new weapon or crew member.
That's all for now. I hope it helps!