Subset Games Forum

Citronvand wrote:Since you can beat it otherwise 99% of the times, have you tried hard mode?

I have. Here's a screenshot of my first win:

I've yet to win it while recording video, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

I completely agree. The luck and randomness is part of the game, but the fact that one event can change a fight from very easy to literally impossible is not fun.

I was playing a game on easy where I was able to max every system on the Stealth Cruiser including Cloaking except for Drone Control, and I had Flak II and Burst Last III. My weapons system was hacked and the hacking alternated with the flagship's cloaking perfectly so I literally could not fire. If any other of my systems had been hacked I could easily have won with the firepower I had. I suppose I could have prepared for this situation by bringing lower cooldown weapons or instantly targeting the flagship's hacking, but I had no idea the enemy hacking would make the fight literally impossible.

I do think I was especially unlucky in that game, but I definitely would like to see a change to the flagship's hacking.

Hacking only happens on the first phase which is the easiest by far since you just TP in every weapon and then the ship cannot do anything to you.
And if you have hacking yourself, then just hack the hacking is goes on something bad.

I hadn't really had a problem with with hacking during my first 4-5 times getting to the flagship, but today I had a doozy.

This afternoon I decided to unlock Zoltan C so I started Zoltan B run. It started slow, but eventually I got a solid weapon system, strong defenses, and some decent extras like Defense drone and Mind Control. I think I only had one challenging ship before Flagship. So I'm really confident going into the first phase. Defense drone out, things are going well. My first volley of Flak 2 + 4 charge laser take out the missile launcher and the guy inside. Defense drone is preventing what damage my 45% evade, Zoltan shield, and 4 shields don't catch. Then a hacking drone gets through. It hits my weapons. I can no longer damage the Flagship. Period. The Flak 2 takes long enough to charge that by the time they've cloaked and its nearly charged their hacking kicks in again. Obviously Charge x4 isn't enough to do anything. I give it about 3 cycles to make sure, and I have to give up the attempt.

I FTL away and then back to Flagship for attempt #2. Things are going well but AGAIN hacking slips through and AGAIN it nails my weapons. Only 1 round left before they destroy base. Game over.

If defense drone wouldn't have failed, I would have won. If they would have hit any other room with hacking (except maybe shields), I would have won. But they hit weapons twice so I lose. And I played flawlessly. Bad design.

Off the top of my head, I think this may only really be an issue with phase 1 because of the combination of cloaking and potentially catastrophic hacking. It really needs to be fixed, though. Like the OP says, it just leaves too much randomness in difficulty ranging from trivial to 100% guaranteed loss.

I have never personally run into the situation of a calamitious hacked weapons and cloaking cycle synchronization. I wonder how viable would it be to depower the weapons for a cycle, then repower at the start of the Flagship cloak.

Also, "Space Chicken" is the moniker of my Kestrel A ships, so huzzah!

I just ran Stealth A and got a flak 2 for the very first time, and the boss hacked my weapon's systems.

Basically hacking the weapon systems isn't that big an issue if your weapons don't have a long charge time, however for the flak2, it was absolutely crippling because it would NEVER get a chance to shoot. halting their charge and saving it for after the hack/cloak would accomplish nothing, because it could never get charged once to begin with.. it'd charge to half, boss would cloak, boss would hack, become empty. charge to half, repeat.

I didn't have a hacking bay of my own, nor did I have a transporter bay, nor did I have any drones....I had mind control though, and while my original intent was to mind control the missle dude until I could mantually destroy it (and kill him), that only led to a perma stalemate. So then I changed tactics and mind controlled the guy manning the cloaking bay, in turn he'd damage it partially before other crew came there to kill him, and that shorter cloak allowed me to charge my flak2 faster than the hack would deplete it (slightly, it would still take like 4 cloak/hack phases before it oculd pull off a single shot). This took along time, and the boss was whittling away my health all the while (since I couldn't disable or destroy anything during this hack/cloak fiasco)...But in the end, I managed to kill off that missle dude with my beams, and once he was down, I could focus my efforts elsewhere and the battle turned around...I had 1 hull point left.

That said, hacking the weapon bay is only a big issue if you have really slow charging weapons like flak2, glaive beam, etc. And even then it shouldn't break your game unless you have no mind control, OR hacking, OR transporter, which I strongly do not suggest. I suppose even a drone bay would work too since they can attack independent of a weapon hack.

Ghaleon wrote:Ihalting their charge and saving it for after the hack/cloak would accomplish nothing, because it could never get charged once to begin with.. it'd charge to half, boss would cloak, boss would hack, become empty. charge to half, repeat.

Theoretically, by depowering for a cycle, then repowering during the cloak, the hacking pulse should hit when your weapons aren't charged, and cannot begin to charge due to the cloak. They then should be free to charge without interruption for 20 seconds (with a manned system, only the Glaive Beam might still be problematic).

Oh I see what you mean. I don't think the cpu cares if your weapons are powered or not when it hacks though. I think it just hacks as soon as it is able regardless of that, much like it cloaks even when your weapons are powered or not. So you basically cannot manipulate the syncronization between the cloak and the hack.

Also, I had zolton shields that game, so I guess without it's actually less of an issue because the enemy will both cloak and chuck a hacking drone at you at virtually the same time. However my zolton shields caused the boss to stagger between the two since it couldn't fire the hacking drone right away..

Moral of the story, Zolton shields are bad! (ok no not really lol).

I've still haven't personally experienced the never-able-to-fire pattern problem caused by the flagship alternating between weapon hacking and stealth, but I do think such a pattern is a bit anti-fun. Jumping and returning is a viable strategy to overcome the problem, but that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating or annoying. Hacking the pilot room or the shields hacked can be pretty dangerous, but I don't think they have the same kind of 'unfair' quality to them that hacking the weapons can have.

From my point of view, the core of the problem (if there even is a problem) is that the flagship has both hacking and stealth together. So I think the easiest way to fix it would be to swap hacking and mind control, so that the first phase has stealth and mind control, and the last phase has hacking. -- That would be a bit of a shame for the last phase, because mind control suited the AI's mass boarding strategy, but at least it wouldn't have the hacked-weapons & stealth combo.

I dunno, like I said I was able to solve that problem simply by mcing the guy in the cloak room numerous times. It can also be beat by having a good boarding tactic, and it can also be beat by hacking its hacking bay, AND it's not as bad if you don't have zolton shiels (so that it'll hack at the same time as it cloaks pretty much making it so you can charge longer).

Getting to the flagship without a transporter bay OR hacking bay OR mind control thing AND have slow firing weapons? Seems a bit demanding to write off this as broken or whatever.

hacking your oxygen bay is insta-death for you pretty much if you still have oxygen 1, and that's a far less demanding set of circumstances, but nobody thinks it's bad once they learn l2 oxygen is all you need to counter it.