Why must the boss cheat?

[esdin]

Just got through an otherwise very satisfying game with a well kitted boarding Torus.
The unstoppable drone swarm was my end.

I copied the continue file after beating the boss's first phase so I could try various strategies against the flagship, but without the ability to shut down the overcharged drones, my ship fell every time, even as boarders eliminated systems and shipboard cannons whittled away health.

I think the biggest problem with the boss right now is how limited you are in what can and can't defeat it. While I understand a desire to make the fight difficult, I don't agree with eliminating the effectiveness of other tactics.

Currently, without cloak, winning against the flagship, even with the best tactics, comes down to luck. In games where I don't come across it, the final sector is unexciting, and the lack of alternate tactics is frustrating.

One possible solution for this might be to adopt a 'Warning Forever' inspired adaptive boss layout; i.e. a table of flagships which are built to respond to certain tactics. On the scale of a single game, this could be used to eliminate one of the player's routes of attacks but not all, forcing them to think on their feet. More interestingly from a design perspective, this could be used across multiple games to discourage players from repeating the same strategies, by increasing traits that counter the player's most common tactics.

[esdin]

Addendum: I'm not saying that I want the boss fight to be "fairer" or "easier". Rather, that I'd like other tactics to (potentially) be viable.

Even if a dynamic system wouldn't be possible, selecting from one of several boss types would prevent a "best path" solution. As other threads have mentioned, players could even be clued in to the nature of the boss for their current game with a backstory intro or information gleaned from in game sources; for example, an intro message describing your escape from the rebel fleet, or battle descriptions at Federation stations. "It's missiles completely overwhelmed our defenses" or "Those shields shrugged off everything we threw at it"

[ssarekcuf]

It's a conspiracy dude, all the bosses are given special abilitys (why there dicks are always bigger than yours) to keep you playing their game so you spend time trying to beat him instead of somebody else.