If you read this, please give me some suggestions, and thank you for your time.
HARD MODE (PLEASE HELP)
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Brian Shadowrider
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2015 11:17 pm
HARD MODE (PLEASE HELP)
I have recently been trying out Hard Mode. I have some experience beating the game (17 wins). I just cannot get through to sector 8. No matter what I do, defensive builds, all out offense, boarding, all the like. Even with the glorious Shrike, I still fail hard. It seems every ship I meet has so many missiles. I take more damage than I can repair. I invest into engines for early evade as well as shields. I mostly use the Shrike (Yes, not the Carnelian) so I upgrade mind control to compliment my Lanius boarders. I try to get every jump to maximize scrap. Am I missing something?
If you read this, please give me some suggestions, and thank you for your time.
If you read this, please give me some suggestions, and thank you for your time.
I will have my revenge, one day...
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Leylite
- Posts: 86
- Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2014 4:21 pm
Re: HARD MODE (PLEASE HELP)
Missiles are a fundamental problem for just about any ship in the game (unless you're a Zoltan ship or are lucky enough to find a Zoltan shield, but most of the time you won't have that luxury). In sectors 1 through 3 you'll be dealing with mostly Leto and Artemis missiles, which are annoying but can mostly just be tanked as normal (especially with cheap repair costs).
Eventually, however, you're going to run into some nastier missile ship. Maybe it'll be a Rock ship with cloaking and a Hermes missile, or maybe some pirate ship with a lot of crew and aforementioned big missile. Or it could even be a ship with two Artemis missiles.
So, my benchmark is to try and get one of the following four options by sector 4 or 5. These are ranked roughly in order, but of course priorities can change.
1. Drone control + some defense drone (could even be defense drone II, if one drops for free earlier)
2. Cloaking
3. Hacking
4. Some other form of overwhelmingly fast offense, such that the weapons system can be destroyed before a big missile fires. Note that this still won't work if the enemy has cloaking, a Zoltan Shield, or a Defense Drone II.
If you don't get any of these four, you can still get through the later sectors and win, but the nightmare scenario of running into a bunch of ships with missiles in a row weighs a lot more heavily. In fact, in such cases it's probably better to repair all the way up to 25 hull instead of 20 hull.
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All of that said, in my experience missile ships aren't usually what do a horrible amount of damage to me - often it's some ship with laser drones, or a ship with a tough laser loadout in an asteroid field (particularly with heavy lasers). So even if you do get a Defense Drone, remember to upgrade your engines to level 5 anyway.
Eventually, however, you're going to run into some nastier missile ship. Maybe it'll be a Rock ship with cloaking and a Hermes missile, or maybe some pirate ship with a lot of crew and aforementioned big missile. Or it could even be a ship with two Artemis missiles.
So, my benchmark is to try and get one of the following four options by sector 4 or 5. These are ranked roughly in order, but of course priorities can change.
1. Drone control + some defense drone (could even be defense drone II, if one drops for free earlier)
2. Cloaking
3. Hacking
4. Some other form of overwhelmingly fast offense, such that the weapons system can be destroyed before a big missile fires. Note that this still won't work if the enemy has cloaking, a Zoltan Shield, or a Defense Drone II.
If you don't get any of these four, you can still get through the later sectors and win, but the nightmare scenario of running into a bunch of ships with missiles in a row weighs a lot more heavily. In fact, in such cases it's probably better to repair all the way up to 25 hull instead of 20 hull.
--
All of that said, in my experience missile ships aren't usually what do a horrible amount of damage to me - often it's some ship with laser drones, or a ship with a tough laser loadout in an asteroid field (particularly with heavy lasers). So even if you do get a Defense Drone, remember to upgrade your engines to level 5 anyway.