Subset Games Forum

I've invested quite a few hours into this game already, I've read a plethora of tips and tricks and I know the gist of what, when, and how to do it in the game. Problem is, I still can't beat it (on normal). It is likely not due to an inability to battle properly, because I already follow all the general guidelines to be successful in that regard. Rather, my failures come most often from being ill prepared for battles in the first place. I just can't effectively choose what to spend my scraps on at any given moment. For example, some will say level 2 shields are a must for sector 2, while others will also say that you should save around 80 scraps at any given moment for good impulse buys and emergencies. Problem is, lets say you end up spending the 80 scraps - no shields for you now! Are there any good tips to effectively choose where to put scraps? Note that I am still playing with the Kestrel A specifically.

Here is my personal checklist of things to do. I try to follow it with most every ship:

Before the end of sector 1, 2 shields (4 bars)
Before the end of sector 2, 4 engines.
Before the end of sector 3, 5 engines.
Before the end of sector 4, 3 shields (6 bars)

Also, you need to have a way to get through:
Before the end of Sector 2: 2 shields (Most ships can do this)
Before the end of Sector 4: 3 shields (This usually means you need to buy weapons or a teleporter in sector 3)
Before the end of Sector 7: 4 shields (or the Boss is gonna suck)

Note: to get through 2 shields, you need to do 3 laser shots. Or have 2 ions and a laser/beam/whatever. Or have a teleporter. Or a bomb. Doesn't matter what.

THEN I start thinking about upgrading other things, like doors and O2 and medbay and stuff.

Most of the time I don't reach these milestones, and I end up not getting my 4th engine until midway through sector 3 or something. No biggie, as long as you keep trying.

Never, ever, ever, EVER buy missiles. Unless you simply must because you've not found a way to get rid of your missile weapon. They are the single biggest resource drain in the game if you buy a lot. The next big resource drain is repairs. Any time you show up at a store needing a ton of repairs, that's a weapon you can't buy, or drone control or a cloak or long range scanners or who knows what else. I never repair over 20 hull points (2/3 full) and sometimes I forego repairs to buy or upgrade something.

If I may humbly suggest, I've beaten the game on camera with every ship in the game (and a few mods) on Normal and while I get into (and out of) some sticky situations, for the most part I walk over the bad guys because I stick to what I've said above. Check out my thread here.

5thHorseman wrote:Here is my personal checklist of things to do. I try to follow it with most every ship:

Before the end of sector 1, 2 shields (4 bars)
Before the end of sector 2, 4 engines.
Before the end of sector 3, 5 engines.
Before the end of sector 4, 3 shields (6 bars)

Also, you need to have a way to get through:
Before the end of Sector 2: 2 shields (Most ships can do this)
Before the end of Sector 4: 3 shields (This usually means you need to buy weapons or a teleporter in sector 3)
Before the end of Sector 7: 4 shields (or the Boss is gonna suck)

Note: to get through 2 shields, you need to do 3 laser shots. Or have 2 ions and a laser/beam/whatever. Or have a teleporter. Or a bomb. Doesn't matter what.

THEN I start thinking about upgrading other things, like doors and O2 and medbay and stuff.

Most of the time I don't reach these milestones, and I end up not getting my 4th engine until midway through sector 3 or something. No biggie, as long as you keep trying.

Never, ever, ever, EVER buy missiles. Unless you simply must because you've not found a way to get rid of your missile weapon. They are the single biggest resource drain in the game if you buy a lot. The next big resource drain is repairs. Any time you show up at a store needing a ton of repairs, that's a weapon you can't buy, or drone control or a cloak or long range scanners or who knows what else. I never repair over 20 hull points (2/3 full) and sometimes I forego repairs to buy or upgrade something.

If I may humbly suggest, I've beaten the game on camera with every ship in the game (and a few mods) on Normal and while I get into (and out of) some sticky situations, for the most part I walk over the bad guys because I stick to what I've said above. Check out my thread here.

you can do that with Stealth B? I can't figure it out

Qli wrote:you can do that with Stealth B? I can't figure it out

The stealth ships (and Zoltans) are a totally different beast.

For the stealth B, goal #1 is getting that 3rd cloak. For the first 2 sectors, cloak-3 is essentially a weapon pre-igniter, and your beam is so powerful you can usually take the enemy ships out with one shot. Learn all the instances where you can't and take out weapons/drones first instead.

Thanks to a save-losing crash after sector 1 in one of my DA-SR 12 playthroughs, I've actually gotten through sector one 3 times on video. I would recommend you watch those 3 videos to see how I did it. Once you get it down it's actually one of the easier ships to use, even on Normal mode.

Now on Hard mode, that's a different story, but that's the case for all ships

I've unlocked every ship few times and i'd say that i'm technical skilled guy.
Having orders of building things won't just work. It all depends on ship, but if you're playing on easy (That's what I do now, because of crazy flagship in AE) then you should invest in 2nd level of shields pretty quickly. It costs 100~ scrap (depends on reactor cost) and it will save you a lot of scrap on repair through first 3 sectors. Because game has a lot of RNG in it, you should create your build with that what you get. For example I always try to save 120~ scrap in first 2-3 sectors, when I know that basic ship is enough, to get maybe pre-igniter (Which is not that rare if you go to every shop and always have the money for it) and decent weapon. I can give you some primary rules what are most important things in your ship:


1. Weapon piercing 3 shields, or Missile build (With augment which gives you 50% chance not to consume missile it's very viable!)
2.Crew. It's very important to get crew in AE, because you get additional level of doors and sensors in addition to repairs and anti-boarders.
3.Defense, like 2nd shield level and some engine power.
4.Utillity goes in this order:
a) Hacking (It makes Only-Beam build viable!)
b) Cloaking (From obvious reasons)
c) Mind control (It's very useful even if you don't have sensors or boarding crew, because it allows you to on its just 1st level stop others mind control, especially 3rd boss fight)
Z) Crew teleporter (You buy this almost always when you have 2 crew waiting for boarding, when you haven't you most of the time ignore it)
Y) Backup battery (Buy this always when you can afford it, but this is lowest priority when you have to make the decision.)
X) Rest like: Healing, sensors, cloning ect. (Almost never swap cloning and healing|Always buy 1st healing system if you haven't one|Sensors are very important without slugs, with them I recommend buying them and upgrading to 2nd level when you can afford it, because it gives you a lot of blue options)
5.Augments:
a) Pre-Igniter
b) Scrap recovery arm
c) Automated reloader
d) Rest
X) Those which allow you to improve your build significantly, for example Drone recovery arm if you have like 3 attacking drones ect.

There's now some tips & tricks from me:
Sectors:
A) Always go to abandoned sector, unless you have only boarding crew.
This sector has a lot of double and high scrap rewards.
B) Engi sector. It's best vannila sector, because it has most shops, most weapons just floating around, most drones schematics lying around ect. In addition engi don't have nothing really so harmful and special in their nature, just double the repairing speed.
C) Pirates, because better rewards from helping outposts
D) Rebels, just more rebels. (A little more outpost rewards)
E) Mantis, because doors are cheap
F) Rocks, because they're though and there's lots of super novas and asteroids.
G) Zoltans! Because zoltan shield is best race abillity in game. (Maybe except crystals)
H) Rest.
X) Always go to homeworlds, because there's no higher risks ect. and you have chance for free nice augment + a lot of scrap from ship quests.
Blue events:
It's always good to have differing crew, because of blue events, but most important things with blue options are:
1. Second level sensors (Easy to come by and cheap to upgrade. Gives a lot of blue events)
2. Get engi (Best rewards and most amount of them, but it's harder to find engi than some scrap)
3. 6? 7-8 weapons level. Even if you don't have enough weapons, do it, because it will save you from a lot of pirate fights. You will get bribe which level is equal to destroying pirate.
4. Anti-Bio beam, because fuck you giant spiders + You can carefully cut pirate ship from asteroids.
There's of course case of placing weapons, planning voleys, speed of projectile ect. but i bet it's too much for beginner and not rewarding enough.

thesuperguy wrote:I've invested quite a few hours into this game already, I've read a plethora of tips and tricks and I know the gist of what, when, and how to do it in the game. Problem is, I still can't beat it (on normal). It is likely not due to an inability to battle properly, because I already follow all the general guidelines to be successful in that regard. Rather, my failures come most often from being ill prepared for battles in the first place. I just can't effectively choose what to spend my scraps on at any given moment. For example, some will say level 2 shields are a must for sector 2, while others will also say that you should save around 80 scraps at any given moment for good impulse buys and emergencies. Problem is, lets say you end up spending the 80 scraps - no shields for you now! Are there any good tips to effectively choose where to put scraps? Note that I am still playing with the Kestrel A specifically.

My upgrade priorities are basically the same as 5thHorseman's, so I won't go over them in detail, but I'd like to emphasize again that defense is more important than offense. You don't want to be taking any damage if at all possible, because every hull point you lose is 2-4 scrap lost, and lost scrap means fewer upgrades, which lead to more damage, which leads to lost scrap... you see where this is going. With nearly every ship, your starting weapons are fine for the first 2-3 sectors, so don't worry about them for a while. Level 2 shields and level 4 engines are early priorities, and they're enough to keep you safe from lasers for a while.

The one thing you usually can't defend against out of the gate is missiles, and you need to buy a solution to that as soon as you can. A single defense drone will pretty well solve the problem for the rest of the game, as will cloaking. I basically always buy drone control if I see it early on when it comes with a defense drone. Cloaking is a big purchase and may not be realistic to buy in the first half of the game. With AE, hacking can help with the missile defense problem, too. I sometimes like to hack the enemy's weapons, to give myself more time to take down the missiles.

As for how much scrap to hoard, it depends on your priorities. If your first priority is to get a new weapon or system, start stockpiling for it. If your first priority is a particular upgrade, spend everything you have on upgrades and avoid the shops altogether. In the first sector, I usually avoid the shops as much as possible, because the core upgrades are clearly more important than new weapons. By the end of sector 2, I'm probably looking for a shop.

I thought i'd share my method of scrap management since its a bit different than what most have said.

first off, I dont upgrade anything on my ship until I have at least 100 scrap left over after upgrading the ship, unless its a very crucial upgrade that I really need at that exact moment. the reason being is that you never want to lose the opportunity to buy a critical item in a store and most items cost less than 100 scrap. an exception would be like buying weapon power and reactor in order to use a new more far superior weapon that you just found or was given as a reward.

my next priority is crew. Having a full crew can make a big difference. you can keep people on their stations and have your system running at full capacity. though I will rarely buy a crew member from the store unless they have very good skill levels, or if I have a system that really requires a manned person on it. like replacing a zoltan from the piloting so his racial abilities can be used better elsewhere.

what this also means is being able to keep those units stationed at their systems at all times, so it's a good idea to upgrade both doors and medbay as soon as possible. the reason being is that the doors will help against boarders by venting out air and the enemies will have to try to bust through doors to get in, allowing your guys to keep their stations manned to keep firing on enemy ships. the medbay is to help avoid unnesscary deaths, there are a ton of events in the game that will have situations where taking a choice will have a chance to kill off one of your crew members, and in those events if you have a medbay you can bypass that all together, such as the charlie event where you save a guy on a deserted planet, he'll either join you or kill a crew. the medbay doesnt have to be powered and its only 35 scrap to upgrade, so its a well worth investment in the early game. especially if it can get you a new crew member.

the next thing I worry about is defense and this will be either increasing shields, or engine. when in doubt, always upgrade engines. otherwise if you find that your handling the area without any issues, save up for shield. getting level 2 shields early is nice if you've had a good string of luck with rewards, since this means you wont need to repair as much.

I'm like 5th Horseman, generally wanting to upgrade defenses (shields, engines) early. Certain ships may differ (like Slug B, for which I want to buy a Medbay [though now have to consider Clone Bay]). I don't tend to stockpile much scrap early: getting that second layer of shields is often top priority. I may even buy the third bar of shields as a buffer.

Of course if I see a store, then I might save scrap and make as many jumps as possible before going to it. But that's also more worthwhile when scrap rewards increase in middle to late sectors. Early scrap spent on defenses means less spend on repairs.