Subset Games Forum

Originally I thought that each battle would be unique but it seems that it doesn't make sense to attack anything but enemy weapons every battle -- Am I missing something?

Your're missing...

• ...taking out the shields first so your charge weapons don't need to charge.
• ...taking out the cloak so you don't have to wait.
• ...cloaking through their first volley to give yourself time to do the above.
• ...upgrading your shields and dodge so you can avoid the next volley or two, allowing you to concentrate on the above.
• ...shooting out their cockpit, and therefore...
• ...their ship! Due to them dodging your shots.

The list goes on but hopefully that'll give you a little to think about. There are times to start on the weapons, and there are times to not.

Thanks Horseman -- that was very helpful -- it's nice to know there's more strategy here than first meets the eye.
Blue

Sometimes hacking and oxygen are worth taking out, also. With the right arsenal you can asphyxiate the enemy crew for extra scrap, even without hacking their oxygen system.

If they've got hacking on your shields or weapons, that is often the first thing to try to take out.

If they've got a lot of shields and not much damage potential, I'll go all out for the shields first, then bridge.

If they've got a lot of damage potential, but not much shields, I'd go for that first. This can be either drones or weapons.

If they've got mind control, this is also a valid early target especially if you don't have that many crew members.

If they've got cloaking and quite a lot of damage potential, cloaking can be a good first choice.

I don't usually bother trying to suffocate them unless I have a fire weapon, or it's obviously the right tactic half way through.

It's also worth mentioning that damaging the shields by 1 keeps enemies from manning the shield system, reducing the shield recharge rate. This can be a huge boon for drone-based ships, since now the drones can keep the shields down much longer and beam drones have a better chance of sneaking their hits in before the first shield bubble can come back up.

I've won with every ship on normal, half of them on hard and I somewhat agree with the thread title. Damaging weapons control is usually too good to pass up. There are situations where some other room is a better target, but enemy weapons control is the default more often than it should be. Taking a small chunk out of that keeps your opponent from hurting you much of the time

Hard mode helps this somewhat due to the very sudden FTL escapes enemies can make on that difficulty. It gives you a strong incentive to knock out engines/piloting in case the ship you're fighting decides to make a run for it. I sometimes find myself leaving enemy weapons online even when I know I'm going to get shot up so that engines/piloting definitely stay down.