Subset Games Forum

After several runs with the Federation A cruiser i came to a conclusion.The best defense is the best offense.During my first 5 runs as the Federation A i tried to build the ship as tanky as i could and rely on the Artirery Beam to destroy ships.So instead of getting serious weapons i invested most scrap into shields,engines,defense drones.No ship was able to do serious damage to me and although the battles were somewhat long i managed to get to the last stand easyly and with minimal damage.The weapons i used during my defense runs were mostly bombs,ion weapons and missles(to distrupt the enemy systems such as weapons).However when i got to he flagship my full engine,4 shield,one defense drone and fully trained crew were no match for the flag ship.Its weapons were cutting through my defenses like paper due to shield hacking which was the hacking target most of the times.Still in all my runs with Federation A i managed to beat the first 2 stages of the flagship.The problem is that during the third stage of the flagship,it got a "super weapon" just like the Federation's Artirery Beam but stronger (it is like a heavy laser that fires 8 shots at once).That means that the longer the battles takes the lower the chances are for the Federation A (or any other ship) to lose the third stage.This led me to invetiable defeat during the third stage with my defense strategy runs.Then i came up with an ideea:let's just invest in big cool weapons and decent defenses.I was lucky to find a Flak II , a Mini bomb(the one that deals damage to systems) and a Chain Laser.This was my final devastating weapon configuration.My gameplan with this loudout was :autofire bomb on missle weapons system,wait for the Flak II to charge,mind control pilot ,target other weapons and shield with Chain Laser anb Burst Laser II.First stage of the flagship was over in 45 seconds,the second 1:00 minute,and the last stage 1:30 minutes(because of zoltan shield,bomb goes through zoltan shield still).The damage my ship took after all 3 stages was ONLY 3 HULL DAMAGE!!!!This is the way i am going to build my ship everytime i will play(any ship).The reason i wrote this is to help other people that are frustrated because of the flagship.By investing into weapons you invest into your defenses at the same time ,because a good weapon loadout can lockdown the enemy weapon system faster and easyer then a bad weapon loadout.The end conclusion is that investing scrap into offense is more efficient and rewarding then investing it into defenses.I apologise in advance for any gramatical errors.

Can you please put that into paragraphs? I don't like reading walls of text

I took some inspiration from this, and it got me to stage 3 of the flagship. It is now my favorite strategy because of how much power that 20-second ignore-shield beam helps, even if it becomes a support weapon.

Best strategy ever:
1.Go to hangar.
2.Click on shrike.
3.You Win.

The lesson we can take away from this: Ignoring good weapons you find in stores is never a good idea in almost any ship. Whilst it certainly is possible to kill the flagship by roundabout routes, at the end of the day what you really want by the time you face the thing is a straight up, uncomplicated knock-out punch. The less time the triple missiles and power surges have to screw you over, the better.

The lesson we can take away from this: Ignoring good weapons you find in stores is never a good idea in almost any ship.

Note: This does not mean it is a good idea to fight the flagship with no shields. Using offence as your main defense is effective but don't neglect shields or engines either.