Whats the point of hitting engines?

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Max_Damage
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 10:10 am

Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby Max_Damage » Fri Dec 21, 2012 10:25 am

When you can hit pilot room? Engines are there just to have 2 rooms repaired to have evade? I mean it can be that engnes and pilot room both go down. then the crew will have to spend more time getting evade bonus back.

Also do later enemy ships get more evasion in the same manner you do?

ALso, do diffirent player ships have diffirent costs for upgrading certain systtems?
BKT
Posts: 211
Joined: Sat Nov 24, 2012 3:17 am

Re: Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby BKT » Fri Dec 21, 2012 10:47 am

- While there're certainly a difference between the 2... But yeah, for the most part it make more sense to just hit the cockpit IMO. :geek:

- Enemies have higher level engine (which work the same way as ours) as you play along, so the answer would be yes.

- Some ships have special requirement to 'unlock' certain system— for example; Zoltan_B has only 1 bar of Shield at the beginning and it costs 100 scraps to buy the second bar in order to activate the 1st level shield. But after that, each consequent upgrade to Shield will cost the same as any ships.

Apart from these certain ships/systems, all upgrade costs the same.
UltraMantis
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Re: Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby UltraMantis » Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:42 pm

Max_Damage wrote:When you can hit pilot room? Engines are there just to have 2 rooms repaired to have evade? I mean it can be that engnes and pilot room both go down. then the crew will have to spend more time getting evade bonus back.

The engines will take a lot more punishment before being destroyed, but that also means that all of that damage has to be repaired. The helm only needs to be repaired to lvl1 and all evasion bonuses come back. Hitting the engines will keep the enemy slowed down longer than hitting the helm. And there's guaranteed to be someone in the pilot's seat while engines are often unmanned, so someone else (maybe gunner or shields) has to leave their post to go and make repairs.
Max_Damage wrote:Also do later enemy ships get more evasion in the same manner you do?

You should know the anwser to that one, i'm sure you've had plenty of shots miss. :D As you progress through the sectors the enemies have higher and higher caps for their randomly generated systems/reactor. That's why you sometimes see ships with 5 shields or 10lvl engines, and let's not even talk about weapons.
Max_Damage wrote:ALso, do diffirent player ships have diffirent costs for upgrading certain systtems?

No, but there are exceptions:
Mantis A&B must pay extra to upgrade their Weapons system to lvl2 - 60 scrap
Zoltan B must pay extra to upgrade Shields to lvl2 - 100 scrap
Other than that all upgrades cost the same for all ships, and systems allways have the same price at stores. Not all ships start with the same systems, some have no shields or scanners.
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EdenNov
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Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2012 7:36 pm

Re: Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby EdenNov » Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:48 pm

There is a difference in theory, but in practice it's almost never better to hit the engines before the helm.
The only scenario in which it's better to hit the engine first is if the engine and the piloting systems have the same number of power bars (or the piloting system has more), AND if that number is larger than 1. :ugeek:
Gus Smedstad
Posts: 25
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2012 2:45 am

Re: Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby Gus Smedstad » Fri Dec 21, 2012 3:46 pm

Another scenario where engines-first makes sense is if you're using a weapon that does more than 1 point of damage. A Breach Missile or Breach Bomb is much more effective against a 3 point engine room than a 1 point bridge.

I also second UltraMantis's points - even 1 point of helm repaired fully restores both evasion and jump progress. A destroyed engine repaired to 1 point is still damaged, reducing evasion and delaying jump.

That said, helm and engine are low priority targets unless the enemy is fleeing, and if they are I want both of them down. Usually helm first for the quick delay, but I want them both offline so they can't make jump progress by repairing one of them.
UltraMantis
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Re: Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby UltraMantis » Fri Dec 21, 2012 4:51 pm

EdenNov wrote:There is a difference in theory, but in practice it's almost never better to hit the engines before the helm.

Agreed. Hitting the helm stops the ship making it easier for your other shots to hit succesfully, and concentrating fire on the engines is more reliable since more damage can be done to the system and you can miss the helm.

But the question wasn't wheter to hit helm or engines first, it was wheter it's worth hitting the engines at all.
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TJJ
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Re: Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby TJJ » Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:38 pm

If the enemy is fleeing, I'll sometimes hit the engines after disabling the helm - so they have 2 things they need to repair before they can continue charging FTL.
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Mataza
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Re: Whats the point of hitting engines?

Postby Mataza » Tue Dec 25, 2012 6:07 pm

Also in the rare case you want to board either the engines or the helm, the helm always has a guy protecting it and only 2 spaces.
If you for some reason to really destroy the evade chance, you can hit most engine rooms with 4 boarders and if shield/weapons systems are down, there's a good chance nobody will come to repair/protect it.

But I can hardly imagine every getting in such a situation.