Postby Number43 » Wed Nov 07, 2012 11:42 pm
There is a lot of things that help.
First of all, cloaking is very helpful, if you use it right before the power surges in stages 2 and 3. In the first stage just use it to dodge the missiles. Keep in mind you probably only want 1 power in cloaking, as an extra 5 seconds cloaking duration means an extra 5 seconds of cooldown, so you can only use it every other power surge.
Teleporters are very useful, as you can beam people in to kill the crewmembers in the weapon rooms and disable the weapons. Bear in mind any crew members you kill in one stage will stay dead in the next stage. It is possible to kill the entire crew sometimes, though you likely won't be well equipped enough to do so (it's easiest if you have a crystal crew so you can prevent them from running away to the medbay). If you think you have a shot at that, try doing so in the first stage, as unlike the other stages you'll have plenty of time as it can't damage you after you disable its weapons.
Bear in mind if you kill the entire crew the autopilot takes over, counting systems as manned and giving it auto-repair ability. For this reason it may be best to leave one crew member alive (best to do it on the laser weapon guy, as you definitely don't want to leave missiles up, and the other ones are gone in the later stages. The laser weapon alone can't hurt you if you have 3 shield bars.) If you kill the entire crew like this you should be able to easily finish it off by teleporting guys in to take out their shields, piloting, and in stage 2, drones.
Defense drones are very useful. Defense drone 1's will help limit missile impacts, and defense drone II's should significantly reduce how much overall damage you take. You may even want to use 2 of them. Bear in mind if you are using defense drone I's, deactivate it after you take out the missile launcher and put the power elsewhere, except in stage 2 as it can shoot down boarding drones.
As for weaponry, make sure you have enough weaponry to somehow damage it through 4 bars of shields. You don't want to rely entirely on a missile launcher due to the defense drone in stage 2. You may be able to take down the shields with ion weaponry, but you'll need multiple ion weapons to do so in stage 1 as it will have a chance to recover whenever it cloaks. Bombs are very helpful both for damaging the shields, or if you try to board, taking out the medbay. If you get enough burst laser weapons you may be able to simply power through the shields and do damage by firing them all in one volley (wait for them to all charge, then pause and aim them all before unpausing).
Lastly, if you find a hull repair drone, but need all the drone slots, keep it in storage and pull it out to heal to full before jumping onto the next phase, as it won't always be possible to visit a repair station before continuing. Confronting it early may make it more likely you can do so, but don't be afraid to spend extra jumps to visit an extra repair station or store before hand, or if you need just a little extra scrap for some very crucial upgrade. Do be careful though as some of the sector 8 enemies are very powerful. They may still give good rewards though provided it isn't a beacon that it says was taken over by rebels (then you get only 1 fuel like being caught by the fleet in earlier sectors). Once I even had an encounter reward me by them setting up an extra repair post.
