Unbalanced ships

General discussion about the game.
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5thHorseman
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby 5thHorseman » Thu May 08, 2014 10:30 pm

Kleckas wrote:I don't get why "everyone prety much dislikes" stealth B.


Not me. I love Stealth B.
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Elhazzared
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby Elhazzared » Fri May 09, 2014 1:08 pm

It's simple. It doesn't has shields!

When I cloak I still get hit a lot more than I should at 75% evasion. Everytime you pick it the number of drone carrying ships increases tenfold and usually beam drones and ships with beams.

Cloaking against shots is usually ineffective because not only you tend to still be hit after you cloak, but many times you cloak after the enemy fires, the cloak expires and they still fire again before you do.

The likelyhood of being hit in the weapons when flying the stealth B is astronomicly high.

How can anyone like it?.. If the game wasn't deliberatly setup to screw you with the ships it throws at you whenever you chose that ship. If you actually dodged shots properly as you should. If the enemy didn't constantly target your weapon systems and if the weapon charged some 5 seconds faster. sure, i could see myself liking the ship but never like this. It's just a massive dose of frustation.
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Jerjare
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby Jerjare » Fri May 09, 2014 1:28 pm

I really don't find Stealth B nearly as bad as Engi B. In fact Stealth B is so viable you don't even have to be in a huge hurry to get shields ASAP (I prefer to get level 3 cloak and a 5th tick of weapons first).

It is an extremely specialized ship and you have to play it as such. Time your cloak to dodge their shots. Many enemy ships have weapon setups that fire simultaneously (Missile and laser, or 2 heavy lasers). If you evade both, then you can fire your Glaive beam and often destroy them outright in one pass. You can do this for the first two sectors, during which you are upgrading your cloak to level 3 (which helps deal with beams by cloaking earlier in the fight) weapon to level 5 (to avoid having glaive completely knocked out from a hit to weapons room) and evasion to 20% (to get cloak giving you 100% evasion)
Elhazzared
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby Elhazzared » Sat May 10, 2014 12:46 am

They are both pretty bad, I'll give you that but for some reason the engi B didn't took too much atempts to get to sector 8 and even beat the flagship... The stealth B rarely gets past sector 1 (granted, if the run is not going decently like taking too much damage in a single fight, I'll just restart it).

Again dodge is dodgy at the best of times. Oh here, he fired the two weapons, engage the cloak... Both hit... Really...

Then ships with beams by the ton.

Ships with drones (especially the beam kind) by the ton. And these are EXTREMELLY rare when you run any other cruiser.

Ships with both lasers and missiles that will at least fire twice. One which you will hopefuly dodge if your cloak isn't acting like a jerk and a second time after your cloak expires before your beam is ready to fire.

I do go for level 3 cloak first and thentry to get engines at 4 but it just never works out. My weapon is too slow to charge and I always take damage. Worst is that in almost any fight that I take damage (and I take damage in almost all fights), the vast majority of times the weapon system is always hit.

The stealth B is just the worst ship ever in the game. Through a combination of the wrong weapon for the type of ship it is. To the way the RNG is purposefully altered to throw the absolute worst type of ships against you and finally to a screwy tweeked AI that when facing that ship will almost always try to hit your weapon system.

The only way this ship would work is either to have shields or a weapon pre-igniter... The later would be overpowered but again one of the few ways I see it working.

Quite frankly the ship is so incredibly bad that I think that from here on out I won't even go for cloak 3 to try and get my awesome run. I'll just restart as often as necessary till I am able to get the weapon pre-igniter so very early on that for the first 2 or 3 sectors I'll oneshot everything right at the start of the fight.
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itg
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby itg » Sat May 10, 2014 6:00 am

Elhazzared wrote:They are both pretty bad, I'll give you that but for some reason the engi B didn't took too much atempts to get to sector 8 and even beat the flagship... The stealth B rarely gets past sector 1 (granted, if the run is not going decently like taking too much damage in a single fight, I'll just restart it).

Again dodge is dodgy at the best of times. Oh here, he fired the two weapons, engage the cloak... Both hit... Really...

Then ships with beams by the ton.

Ships with drones (especially the beam kind) by the ton. And these are EXTREMELLY rare when you run any other cruiser.

Ships with both lasers and missiles that will at least fire twice. One which you will hopefuly dodge if your cloak isn't acting like a jerk and a second time after your cloak expires before your beam is ready to fire.

I do go for level 3 cloak first and thentry to get engines at 4 but it just never works out. My weapon is too slow to charge and I always take damage. Worst is that in almost any fight that I take damage (and I take damage in almost all fights), the vast majority of times the weapon system is always hit.

The stealth B is just the worst ship ever in the game. Through a combination of the wrong weapon for the type of ship it is. To the way the RNG is purposefully altered to throw the absolute worst type of ships against you and finally to a screwy tweeked AI that when facing that ship will almost always try to hit your weapon system.

The only way this ship would work is either to have shields or a weapon pre-igniter... The later would be overpowered but again one of the few ways I see it working.

Quite frankly the ship is so incredibly bad that I think that from here on out I won't even go for cloak 3 to try and get my awesome run. I'll just restart as often as necessary till I am able to get the weapon pre-igniter so very early on that for the first 2 or 3 sectors I'll oneshot everything right at the start of the fight.


If you're struggling with Stealth B, you're probably not playing it right. The trick is to buy level 3 cloak with your first 50 scrap (literally), then cloak at the beginning of every fight, unless you see combat drones. That works because the glaive beam charge time is less than 15 seconds longer than almost every weapon in the game, an in particular every weapon you're likely to see in sectors 1-2. Note that you can steal power from oxygen and engines to power the cloak.

When you see combat drones, you have to tank the fire few hits, unless they're aimed at weapons or cloaking. It's possible to get screwed and take an unavoidable hit to weapons, but it's very unlikely if you do things right.
Baxta54
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby Baxta54 » Sat May 10, 2014 8:41 am

Personally, I really like the Stealth B.
I suggest tanking your hull till you have enough for 2 layers of shields,
only then think about improving engines and cloaking.
(10 seconds of 80% evade is fine for the first couple of sectors).
Always start your beam in their shield room and try to stretch it across to their weapons room.
Don't cloak till they fire something that's going to hurt you. This is very important.
If you come up against drones, early, then watch carefully where they are aiming
and only cloak if they are going to hit your weapons or cloaking room.
Obviously the first couple of sectors can be tricky so it may take a couple of restarts.
I would always recommend exploring as many nebulas as possible, as you visit more sectors.
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Elhazzared
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby Elhazzared » Sat May 10, 2014 2:24 pm

itg wrote:If you're struggling with Stealth B, you're probably not playing it right. The trick is to buy level 3 cloak with your first 50 scrap (literally), then cloak at the beginning of every fight, unless you see combat drones. That works because the glaive beam charge time is less than 15 seconds longer than almost every weapon in the game, an in particular every weapon you're likely to see in sectors 1-2. Note that you can steal power from oxygen and engines to power the cloak.

When you see combat drones, you have to tank the fire few hits, unless they're aimed at weapons or cloaking. It's possible to get screwed and take an unavoidable hit to weapons, but it's very unlikely if you do things right.


That is what I usually do and by the time I have the 3rd level of cloakI have taken 10 to 15 damage already because of all the reasons I stated above.

Cloak first is the wrong thing to do. Claok first means that it's guaranteed that you'll take a volley from the enemy ships every single time. You have 25 second charge on your weapon, even with 15 second cloak... Enemy ships short duration weapon fire in some 6 or 7 seconds cooldown so you'll always take a hit... And yes I've tried.

I'm not saying it's not possible to have good runs with it. It is however impossible to get consistent results with it because it's highly dependent on luck. You need a way to change weapon really quickly or a weapon pre-igniter.

Again the problem is how the whole deck is stacked against the stealth B. Not only you get all the enemies with the short cooldown weapons, but you get beams by the ton, especially in the form of drones and you also get hit a lot in the weapon system completly reseting your 90% charged shot.
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Ghaleon
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby Ghaleon » Sun May 11, 2014 12:19 am

Stealth B actually looks like a good ship to me. But I can't get the darn unlock achievements (I got the one where you dodge like 50 shots in one cloak but not the other 2). I can't see how people can possibly have a hard time with a ship that starts off with a beam that can 1shot nearly everything in the first 2 sectors, and that which it cannot can probably completely disable their weapons or something. Just get cloak 2 soon, and wait for them to shoot their first volley (tank a laser if they have a burst 2 behind it or something), cloak, and then your glaive should be charged by then.
project_mercy
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby project_mercy » Sun May 11, 2014 1:19 am

Elhazzared wrote:Cloak first is the wrong thing to do. Claok first means that it's guaranteed that you'll take a volley from the enemy ships every single time.


I'm also in the "cloak first" camp. It's 75 points (counting the energy pip) and it will generally let you get off the glaive shot, which will usually cripple the other ships. The only exception to this rule is ships with beam drones or zoltan shields.

You can actually get pretty far without shields as long as you don't run into an asteroid field.
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5thHorseman
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Re: Unbalanced ships

Postby 5thHorseman » Sun May 11, 2014 6:28 pm

Elhazzared wrote:That is what I usually do and by the time I have the 3rd level of cloakI have taken 10 to 15 damage already because of all the reasons I stated above.

While that seems like a high amount of damage (I think I usually take 5-10 max, at least on Normal. Haven't played it enough on Hard to get a feel but 10-15 may be normal), once you get that 3rd cloak you should take almost NO damage for the rest of the next 2 sectors. And if you get the right weapons that can carry through to further sectors. If you don't get the right weapons, a shield means you can wait to cloak until something IS going to hit you.

What's the difference taking a damage or two every other fight with other ships for 15 damage at the end of sector 2, and taking 15 damage by the halfway point of sector 1 and then not taking any more until the end of sector 2? NOTHING, that's what.

Elhazzared wrote:Cloak first is the wrong thing to do. Claok first means that it's guaranteed that you'll take a volley from the enemy ships every single time. You have 25 second charge on your weapon, even with 15 second cloak... Enemy ships short duration weapon fire in some 6 or 7 seconds cooldown so you'll always take a hit... And yes I've tried.

Cloak first IS the thing to do, unless the enemy has charge weapons or heavy lasers. Again, I've not played enough on AE to know for sure but I think that's it. And if it's not, try this: Note which weapons fire before you can even with a L3 cloak, and then when those weapons are on the enemy ship, don't cloak first. If they're not, you know you can cloak first. A note on charge weapons: you can cloak immediately after they don't fire that first charge shot.
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