Engi Variant B

[TaiidanHeavyCruiser]

Snip

Yeah, how you got it set up is good, Im just saying do the door thing because on that ship, especially with only one starting crewmember, you will get eaten alive by boarders, especially mantis'. Venting is a good way to keep you focused on ship to ship versus having to micro your pilot to avoid death while getting pounded. RNG for me at least, loves teleporting people on my ship.

[Aerowind]

The Engi B's starting weapons really aren't that bad. Your heavy ion will lock down shields for quite a while and your heavy laser will knock out the weapons system of anything early game. Nothing should really be evading your shots much early game. About the only advice I have for you is to make sure you fire in volleys. Don't just set both your guns to autofire whenever. Wait til they're both charged, then fire the ion. If it hits, and it usually will, then blow up their weapons. Should be a cakewalk then.

[draeath]

The heavy charges faster than the ion, so just fire the ion, wait a moment, and fire the heavy. No need to watch if the ion will hit or not - either it does and the heavy passes through, or it doesn't and you'd have to wait another cycle anyway.

[Vind]

Engy Buseless against lvl2 shield ships - so if you are not procured more powerful weapon AND upgraded reactor you are totally weaponless in sector 2+. I cant remember another ship which cant take lvl2 shield ships.

[hborrgg]

I gained my first victory in this ship so I'd say that it's pretty decent.

The main advantage I found is that once you get hold of a defense drone Mk I (stay away from the Mk II, it'll hurt way more than it helps) the combination including a repair drone and AP drone ends up being a really strong, yet cheap and flexible defense (just send 2 energy bars at whatever is the most pressing issue).

Early game though does tend to be a bit of a pain. If you time it right as mentioned earlier you can get off two shots with your laser for every one ion hit so use that to your advantage. Also if you have both your repair drones powered on at once then combined with the speed boost they can deal with system damage extremely quickly. Other than that the main strategy is just to save up scrap until you are able to find a shop or something with more firepower, sell the ion cannon if you have to.

[Redfoot]

Getting a good Engi B start means making the most out of that Heavy Ion & Laser combo. Sounds kinda simple but what I kept doing wrong was thinking in terms of faster recharge 1 point ions - i.e. Engi type A.

Since it does 2 ion damage instead of one, it keeps things locked down longer - so you can switch room targets.

[Nihy]

The Vortex needs 4 drone slots, 2 weapon slots and an anti-ship drone to start with if we're supposed to use drones for everything.