Who has actually beaten this on normal?

[CocoaRobbins]

I was pretty proud of myself today, I made it to the second stage of the mother ship battle on normal. Then it launched 5 drones at me simultaneously. Has anyone survived this? Whats the third stage like? I was dead in seconds. Who has actually beaten this on normal difficulty? and if you have, how?

[joek0]

Many Kickstarter backers played this during beta. They have said to be players who beat Normal difficulty. The key is knowing good strategies and a little luck getting the right items and upgrades. People have said to beat Normal since the launch version. I suggest beating the game on Easy first in order to know the enemy strategies and to learn the basic strategies and mechanics of the game. The third stage of the boss is basically the rebels boarding your ship agressivly and a heavy barrage of 3 missles. It starts with a more powerful Energy Shield.

I beat the game on Easy with 3 out of the 4 ships I had unlocked. An average run on Normal for me is to about sector 5. I have gotten to sector 8 twice. One time was with the Kestrel ship where I was very underpowered and lost to the first form. Second was with the Osprey (the ship you unlock by beating the game on any difficulty) where I had an optimal setup. I beat the second form easily and had a good chance of beating stage 3. But I screwed up on the star map and lost because the rebel ship reached the base. My closest to a victory on Normal. I suggest picking a ship that matches your playstyle and sticking with it.

[icepick]

I have beaten it on normal twice. This is out of a LOT of runs, though, haha.

Wasn't a beta tester per se, but I was the lowest tier ks backer, so I got in two weeks early. (shrug)

It's hard, but not impossible. Max shields and engines help a TON. Also a def drone, but that's not as key. You also need a really solid weapons loadout (though I did it with 3 burst II's and an ion bomb... barely... :p )

[Raxxman]

beaten it on normal crew reporting in

kestrel A, really underscrapped, no augs, level 3 shields, basically no evasion.

beat the game because of 4 burst laser 2s, simply just went into a slug fest and the mothership can't tank 24 damage per volley every 12 seconds.

[PirateCat]

Almost did it. Had 3 burst laser 2s and a fire bomb. Set everything inside on fire and kept shooting until it bit it. Until the third stage with the mothership, when I got it down to 1 hull point and got killed right as my weapons turned green.

[Vind]

After ~ 36 hours of play i finally managed to kill the boss but only using basilisk mantis cruiser. Relying on boarding party as main weapon instead of random weapon shops. AS the boarded ship gives way more resources then captured and many more chances for new crew members - boarding is the easy way to go.

[Choggomac]

I've beat it on Normal with a number of different tactics now, personally, I found a heavy boarding party ship to be the easiest route, as you gain additional scrap for capturing ships, plus it doesn't matter how good the enemies shields are when you destroy it from the inside out.

Against normal ships, I typically don't even focus on the ship and just kill off the crew, it's much faster to just kill off the few defending the ship than to take out their systems, and if you run into a ship with a large crew or that has a healing bay, and the AI is pretty stupid so it's easy to occupy the enemy with 1 group while another goes around destroying all the systems. again the AI is pretty dumb, once you have a few systems down, they will focus on doing repairs while you run to the med bay and take it out. Once the med bay is down, you own the ship.

As for the boss fight, the trick is all about disabling the weapons, once you get that done, the rest of the fight is a joke. I typically just focus my fire on their med bay, and station my guys right outside the room.

One thing to keep in mind is to focus your ship on 1 specific tactic, if you try to be a jack of all trades, you'll just end up sucking at everything. You don't need every sub system, or most sub systems. I'm not really a fan on the the cloaking device, it's useful vs missiles yes, but the 150 scrap cost is very expensive for the small perks it provides, I find the drone bay much cheaper and much more versatile. I personally am a fan of high evasion, the less you get hit, the less you have to spend on repairs, and a little scrap came make all the difference in normal.

[Harlequin78]

Well after 78 plays on normal (haven't tried easy) I have 1 victory to my name and actually reached the boss 5-6 times. Mainly due to trying out different ships and strategies but this game is hard.

Hard not so much in the mechanics but you have to constantly evolve and change your strategy and playstyle depending on what you find along the beggining sectors. I think that's why I love this game as indeed no 2 play troughs are the same (and yes sometimes you are just shit out of luck and are killed by sector 2)

[swixel]

I wish I'd kickstarted this ... but I wasn't around on kickstarter (yet).

73 normal runs, 68 victories.
15 easy runs, 14 victories.

The only times I tanked out were ridiculous first section things where events rolled my crew.

Apparently, today, the dice aren't trying to kill me. Apparently they love me at the moment. I'm so screwed in the next D&D session =\

EDIT: No, I'm not counting my mod runs, they're on a different system.

[ice]

I've only beaten it four times on easy, but I have some tactics on how the boss works:

Whenever you see a warning that reads "Power surge detected", it means the boss will launch an insane amount of power right at you. At stage two, it's five to six more drones and at stage three, just lots and lots of heavy lasers.