Help required on what to spend scrap on

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Char;y
Posts: 23
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 2:09 pm

Help required on what to spend scrap on

Postby Char;y » Sun Sep 16, 2012 2:18 pm

Hello

I am on my second playthrough, and have built up what I think is a half decent ship, although I am concious I got whipped the first game when I reached the boss.

I currently have a Kestrel with :
5 crew
4 Shields
Artemis / Burst laser 2 / Heavy laser 1/ Halbeard Beam
def drone 1 / antiship drone 1
all fuly powered
plus a large stock of missiles drones and fuel

I have just entered sector 7, so I do not have much time before the final boss.

Should I be looking for a cloak, better weapons, or upgrading other systems of which I have not spent anything on? I know eveyone has their own style, but I am still very inexperienced, and am interested in what other people would do
LNQ
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 4:22 pm

Re: Help required on what to spend scrap on

Postby LNQ » Sun Sep 16, 2012 2:43 pm

If you got the scrap, go for cloak. Cloak is very useful against the Flagship. Just save the cloak until you really need it (missile attack that you can't handle, or the Flagships special attacks), and you get almost guaranteed misses.

Also, upgrade cockpit to max level so that one hit to the cockpit won't set your Evade to 0%. Upgrade other systems as well to have a buffer against damage.

Your weapon setup seems good to me. If you manage to find one, I would switch the heavy laser for another burst of any kind. Now you only have a volley of 5 lasers (3x burst, 1x heavy and 1x drone), so it might be difficult to penetrate the Flagship shield.
DarkenDragon
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 1:58 pm

Re: Help required on what to spend scrap on

Postby DarkenDragon » Sun Sep 16, 2012 3:34 pm

LNQ wrote:Also, upgrade cockpit to max level so that one hit to the cockpit won't set your Evade to 0%. Upgrade other systems as well to have a buffer against damage.


was gonna say this is a bit of false information but I now understand what your saying. in case anyone else read it the way I did, i'll explain further, upgrading your cockpit will give it auto pilot and can absorb extra damage and can keep a fraction of your evade up even if the pilot isnt there. this also means when hes fixing the system.

in all honesty you shouldnt really need lvl 4 shields. its more efficient to keep shields and engine fairly even.

at the very least get shields to lvl 3 and engine to level 5-6 (which ever one stops getting 5% evasion per level)

if your pilot and engine guy gets to rank 2 in their systems, you should have about 45% evasion.

what that will do is help evade shots and missiles so that they dont eat up all your shields, and even if your shields do get hit, you'll have the evade help buy some time to bring it back online.

shields should be at level 2 by the end of sector 3, and level 3 by the end of sector 5. thats my rule of thumb at least, those are the points I find the enemies having stronger weapons and shutting down my shields.

though this only depends on what kinda play style you are going for. because if you have stealth, of course you dont need the shields as often or as high. if you have some sort of repair arm, then taking some damage wont be much of a factor. or if you have something to increase your evasion by a ton then shields become less important.

so yea depends on your play style, but those rule of thumb are there such that you dont spend too much too early. cuz if you went for lvl 3 shields at the beginning, your just wasting money that could have been spent on buying new weapons or augmentations that you'll rarly see.
Char;y
Posts: 23
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 2:09 pm

Re: Help required on what to spend scrap on

Postby Char;y » Sun Sep 16, 2012 3:36 pm

Thanks. Is there any article that explains how damage is appllied?

From what I have worked out. Missiles ignore shields. Lasers hit shields first and then cause damage, and beam weapons wont penetrate shields. Ion weapons just temporarily cause system shutdown.
Gorlom
Posts: 519
Joined: Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:06 am

Re: Help required on what to spend scrap on

Postby Gorlom » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:35 pm

Char;y wrote:Thanks. Is there any article that explains how damage is appllied?

From what I have worked out. Missiles ignore shields. Lasers hit shields first and then cause damage, and beam weapons wont penetrate shields. Ion weapons just temporarily cause system shutdown.

bam weapons penetrate 1 shield bubble per base damage of the beam, but will at the same time lose one point of damage per bubble penetrated.
A beam dealing 3 damage per room can penetrate 1 bubble and deal 2 damage per room or 2 bubbles and deal 1 damage per room. technically it can also penetrate a third bubble but then it deals 0 damage per room :p
a beam deals damage to a room if it hits one pixel of the room so crossing corners helps hitting more rooms.
DarkenDragon
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 1:58 pm

Re: Help required on what to spend scrap on

Postby DarkenDragon » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:50 am

each system's health is based on the amount of upgrades it has. each upgrade = 1 hp

your ship has 30 hp total.

Laser shots will eat up 1 shield per shot, regardless of the amount of damage each shot does. these shots can miss and can be shot down by defense drone II, each damage = 1 hull damage if it hits.

Ion shots do no damage at all, they will instead lock 1 unit of a system for 1 cycle per ion damage (not sure how long each cycle is, but its a little above 4 seconds, might be 5). Each shot will refresh the duration and lock another unit of the system. once the lock expires, all units of the system will be returned to normal. so keep shooting the system if you wish to lock it down. these weapons also do double damage to all forms of zoltan shields.

Beams will do damage per room and they very in length of their shots. they will only penetrate shields (but no damage them) based on their damage is, every shield there is reduces the beam by that much damage. from what i've seen so far, these weapons never miss.

Missiles will ignore enemies shields. they use up 1 missile regardless of what kind of missiles they are. these can miss their shot.

bombs will also ignore enemy shields and will not do any hull damage, instead they can damage the crew or the enemy. you can also use them on your own ship to help destroy the enemy. they will also deal damage to the system itself.