Several ways to beat the Flagship + Lanius challenge playthrough

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thereaverofdarkness
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat Oct 13, 2012 3:21 am

Several ways to beat the Flagship + Lanius challenge playthrough

Postby thereaverofdarkness » Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:46 am

A lot of people feel there's only a handful of ways to beat the flagship. The most popular method is to kill the crew except for the guy at the laser auxiliary weapon. But there are several good ways to beat the flagship, and they work best if you start planning ahead for them very early into your game. By sector 3 or 4 you should already be identifying your strengths against the flagship and deciding which strategies are going to work best for you.

I'll admit that the killing crew strategy is highly effective, and you can reliably get both a cloak and crew teleporter if you put yourself to it. But there are other perfectly good ways to win, even if you never neuter the flagship during the fight. All you really need to do is reduce its hull hit points to zero. Don't forget that.


METHODS TO WIN:
1.) Guns--The simplest and most straightforward way is to use powerful weapons. Double burst laser III, burst laser III plus halberd/glaive beam, flak plus beam, breach missile plus hull laser, all of these are good choices. You want to get a weapon setup that can reliably get rid of the shields and also deal high damage. This usually involves using a combination of weapons, because the best damage dealers aren't the best for getting rid of shields and vice versa. Flak are the exception, they are both good at getting past shields AND good at dealing hull damage (best vs flagship because it's so big) so flak are particularly good against the flagship.

Strategy: once you have good weapons, just let them charge and get a good volley. Bring down the shields, hit the weapons or cloak second, and try to keep important systems down while you blast away at the hull. A hull laser II may seem weak most of the time, but it'll do 6 damage in a volley if it hits an empty room. Cloak is especially great for defense if your weaponry is slow-charging, because you'll have more difficulty holding multiple systems down. You can also mix in combat drones to help keep other systems down while you hold shields down with your weapons.

2.) Boarding--this is widely considered the best way to beat it, but it doesn't work as well on hard difficulty. You need at least 2 good boarding crew but it's best with 4. I actually don't recommend this strategy for newer players because it's too easy to lose your boarding crew due to an accident. It's especially tricky if you have only a 1x2 teleporter. But done right it can work very well. You can also mesh this strategy along with others. You'll want crew teleporter to 3 (2 is acceptable if you have 2x2 OR if you only intend to hold down auxiliary weapons).

Strategy: Beam two units to the missile weapon and start taking it down. As soon as teleporter is ready again, beam two over to either the beam or ion weapon. Once it's ready again, pull back the two in missile room, next send them to the third weapon. IMPORTANT: Do not send anyone to the laser room if you intend to kill the rest of the crew. On hard, you might just kill them all and hold a team inside to jump back and forth between missile and shields, since the two center weapons are connected to the rest of the ship. Once you have it down to only the laser, you should be fully safe. Then you have to figure out a way to get your crew into the main section and kill off the rebel soldiers. The most important thing here is to take out their medbay and hold it down. A fast-charging crew teleporter can help you get two waves of two crew inside before you have to pull them back-reconstructive teleport also saves you time. Second phase is a bit more dangerous but you want to take down the missile first and possibly drone control second, or maybe beam weapon second, depending on your defenses. Third phase is tougher because you have to break down the super shield, so get in there and take that missile weapon offline as soon as possible, and pound that ship up as fast as you can if you can't defend yourself against the power surge. Go ahead and blow it up with your crew on board, you win anyway. Don't sacrifice your game just to save your boarding party.

3.) Missiles/Bombs--You can use missiles or bombs to knock down and hold down the ship's systems while you work on taking down the hull with whatever else you have. You can save up missiles for the end by holding your missile or bomb weapons in cargo for your final sectors and swapping them into weapon slots when you fight the flagship. The breach missile is great for taking out any auxiliary weapon in one hit and can also do a number to the drone control in phase 2. Ion bomb costs only 1 power yet it can incapacitate a system for a pretty long time. You can use one ion bomb to take out the shields and hold them down by stacking up the ion damage. Ion bomb also deals 8 damage to the super shield (tested!). If your weapons crew is well trained and you don't miss, you can hit again in under 20 seconds. The breach or fire bomb are a pretty good way to take out the med bay if you plan to send in crew, fire bomb especially if you're using rockmen. Taking out the medbay is also good just to make sure they can't heal up. Some of the crew may be killed just by your laser attacks, and that'll weaken their ability to repair the ship. If you can get it down to 1 crew, even if you aren't boring the ship, that'll still make it far easier to take the ship apart. If you use a missile, you'll want at least 2 missiles or a pegasus or swarm missile. Fire the weakest missile first, then fire progressively stronger missiles slightly later. The defense drone will fire at the first missile and let the others pass (usually). If you do a bit of damage to the drone system, the defense drone might go offline.

4.) Defenses--There's more than one way to survive the attacks the ship throws at you. You'll want some kind of good defense to survive. A good attack may be all you need, but it's best to combine attack and defense. Max shields and high evasion are great, but alone they are not enough. Cloaking can help give you a big edge. Defense drones can really help keep those pesky missiles, boarding drones, and hacking drones out.

Strategies: If you use one power bar of cloak early enough in the power surge, you can often have it cooled down by the next power surge. Learn to time it, don't just pump three power bars in unnecessarily. One defense drone is good, but two is great. Two will shoot down the missiles so well you might not even need to worry about taking out the missile system. Two can much more reliably shoot down the hacking or boarding drone, which is great because if you get the ship to use up 10 drone parts, it runs out for that phase! Anti-drone drone is great on second phase because it'll take out the attack drones, and the flagship also pays drone parts for those.

5.) Hacking and Mind Control--I'm lumping these together because individually they are pretty simple. They are an offensive system that you can use to shut down the flagship's attack (hacking) or defense (both).

Strategies: Mind control is pretty simple. If you have it up to three bars, you can reliably have the crew kill each other with the mind control until there's only a few left, and it won't involve taking out the medbay! Easy! Hacking can be used in a number of ways. If you hack their shields, it can make up for a mediocre weapon setup, enabling you to better get shots on target. If you hack their medbay, you can use it to kill them once you convince them to run in (works best with crystal lockdown), or just take advantage of the time it takes them to open the door and kill them in the adjacent room! If you hack the drone system on phase two, you can initiate the hacking pulse during the power surge, to balance out the incoming DPS. To get past the defense drone, you should use a missile to distract it, then send your hacking drone right behind it. Or you can shoot out the drone system first, then hack the flagship while the drone system is down. Even if they repair the drone system, your hacking drone stays in place. Just choose wisely where you put it. One advantage to getting hacking is if your plans get changed before you enter battle with the flagship, you can formulate a new plan and choose a different room to hack in order to facilitate the new plan. It gives you flexibility.

6.) Screw the crew--Some plans involve keeping crew alive so the ship can't repair itself. But if you can take important systems (or the hull) down fast enough, who cares? Take out the main guns and butcher the crew in the first phase, then you can board the ship in phase 2 and 3 and run around all you like. If you have enough boarding party, you can hold down multiple system while your shots beat the hull to a pulp. Or with several fast-firing weapons, you can hold down the systems without crew. A halberd beam can hold down 2-3 adjacent systems even while the AI is repairing them. If you spread fire around the ship, like with a fire beam, you can take out the crew WHILE holding down the systems. A fire bomb isn't enough by itself, but a fire beam is if you can keep shields down for it, and a fire bomb plus beam are amazing together! Also, any breach weapon can hold a system down after the AI has taken over.

6.1) Breaches--You can kill the crew and still hold systems down if you put hull breaches in those rooms. Breach missile and breach bomb II are powerful enough for general use, but even a breach bomb I works great if all you want to do is get a breach. Breach bomb I sucks with tons of crew to repair, but once the ship is on AI, breach bomb I is Chuck Norris. You can also get breaches with other weapons. Hull lasers, hull missile, heavy lasers, and crystal weapons all have pretty good breach chance. Just because it's a hull laser doesn't mean you're wasting shots hitting the missile weapon. (But once the HP is low, consider hitting an empty room.) I don't normally suggest using hull weapons, but they mesh well with a breach setup and also with a high damage setup (as per strategy 1).

7.) Artillery Beam--this may not be the best suggestion but it works. If you mix enough defenses (shields, evasion, cloak, defense drones for instance), you can focus on micromanaging your defense while the artillery beam charges. Upgraded door system and engi crew can keep the ship together, you can pretty much ignore the boarding drone sometimes, or blow it up until the flagship runs out of drone parts. That artillery beam can charge in 20 seconds at max level and will deal around 4-6 damage per hit, fully shield piercing. Slap an ion weapon in the weapon slots to take out that super shield, and it's actually not that difficult to take out the flagship this way. One advantage to it is all the power bars you save by not spending them all on weapons. You can apply them to maxing out engine power, for instance. The difference between 45% evasion and 55% evasion might be bigger than you think it is.

edit:
8.) Jump out with Prisoners--On third phase flagship when the crew teleport aboard your vessel, you can jump out and kill them, then jump back to fight the flagship sans crew. This is an easy way to get rid of some of the crew if you have time to jump out and back.





And there are other effective strategies. No one of these is enough, but you want to mix 2 or 3 of them for best effect. If you're used to reliably beating the flagship using one particular method, try some of the other methods instead for a change! I know I need to. My first several flagship wins, I never used the boarding trick but now I feel like I can't win without it. It's like a crutch and past experience tells me I don't need that crutch.

Another suggestion I have is to challenge yourself to get through a game under tough circumstances. I did several plays with strong restrictions, using the ship's starting stats to define the gameplay. For instance, on my favorite one, I used the Engi cruiser B and did a pilot-only playthrough. In learning to play that way, I learned how to take care of my ship without having crew in it. I did another with the Rock cruiser A and limited myself to only using missile/bomb weapons (no lasers/ions/beams/flak) and I found it wasn't that hard to get by. I may have used a crew teleporter to offset missile costs (I don't remember), but I also was careful to use my missiles sparingly and pick up missile launchers that did more damage per missile. I bought missiles in stores--it was spendy but it was doable and I beat the flagship entirely with missiles. I also beat the flagship with Slug B and no medbay, with Mantis B and no upgrades to weapons, with Kestrel B and only 1-power weapons (wasn't even hard), one of the Zoltan ships with no reactor upgrades, and plenty of others. I reached the flagship with Stealth cruiser and no shields but I didn't win. XD



I'm going to attempt a run with Lanius cruiser A in which I purchase nothing at all from stores, not even fuel or repairs. I still get to sell to stores. This should get me the 600 scrap ship achievement as well as the Living off the Land achievement. I'll keep you guys posted on my progress and I want you to design your own challenge and try it here. I want to know how well you pummeled the flagship!
Last edited by thereaverofdarkness on Tue Apr 25, 2017 2:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
thereaverofdarkness
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat Oct 13, 2012 3:21 am

Re: Several ways to beat the Flagship

Postby thereaverofdarkness » Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:56 am

Reserved for Lanius A run details.

Challenge: run Kruos (Lanius cruiser A) without making any purchases from stores, not even fuel or repairs. You may sell to stores, and you may purchase from sales beacons.

Lemme know if you want a crew member named after you!



End of sector 1:
I'm going for the low oxygen ship achievement. Got the human pilot locked up in the piloting room, everything else has no air. So far we're doing alright but I need to maintain a strong focus on ship defense. No hull repairs can get ugly quick so I'm hoping I pick up more weapons to deal with those enemy missiles. We're pretty well protected from fire.

http://i.imgur.com/TJo6pCs.png

I'll stop here for now, and give you guys time to read this and reply before I take on sector 2.
http://i.imgur.com/0bgn0p3.png
Which sector shall I head to?


Since I haven't gotten any responses, I decided I'll just playthrough this on my own. I went to the civilian sector (to avoid missiles). I took some hull damage in sector 2 and am sitting at 18 hull HP. I got a human crewmember but for now he'll just have to sit in the pilot's room. I could put air into another room, but if I get oxygen too close to 20%, it is very possible for me to fail the achievement by getting a room hacked. Once the doors close, it fills with oxygen, and sometimes fills rooms near it. I'm going to need to keep an eye out for that. I just had my oxygen level go up to 12% when my hacking system got hacked. Fortunately it also was hit with a boarding drone, so the room itself didn't fill with oxygen.

I'm choosing uncharted nebula over civilian sector for sector 3.

In sector 3 we got a bad fight that cost some hull HP and lots of empty beacons. At the end we've got 10 hull HP and haven't gained much scrap. We did find a small bomb weapon! Going to Rebel Controlled sector, no option.

In sector 4 we were doing well and found a Burst Laser mk 3, but then had to run from a fight in which we were unable to get past its shields. We really need more scrap to be able to use the weapons we have. Unfortunately we lost 4 HP in that fight and are now down to 6 hull HP. We've got plenty of fuel, drone parts, and missiles. We're jumping into an abandoned sector finally! Let's hope we get a new crewmember!

In sector 5 we got 10 hull HP repaired! We found someone on a planet and took him home, and his family repaired the ship! And then we found a "translator" beacon but couldn't buy the "translator" because it cost 40 scrap. I guess I should learn what options I can get for each text choice, might help a lot in a run like this. I finally got a lanius crewmember from a slaver ship, and we're leaving sector 5 with 5 total crew (2 humans, 3 lanius) and 11 hull HP. We're going to a zoltan-controlled sector so I'm glad I finally got a lot more power into the weapons. Take a look: http://i.imgur.com/ckS4W3s.png

In sector 6 we got a pike beam and weapon pre-ignitor. I sold the pike beam. We got a lot more scrap but also went through some empty beacons. The ship is getting more secure (and we've been lucky to not come across enemies with missiles), but we have only 6 hull HP remaining. I chose Engi Homeworlds over a rebel controlled sector in the hopes we'll find a beacon that can repair us.

The ship got destroyed 2 jumps from sector 8. We had 6 hull remaining and systems were well upgraded when I made a miscalculation and ended up hitting the rebel fleet on the way out. The RSB hit for 3 damage on the piloting right about the same time engines finished charging. Then I hit their weapons room with a small bomb and took their Hermes missile offline a split second AFTER it fired. With no piloting, there was no chance to evade.
http://i.imgur.com/Rx2lZ3b.png