Suggestion for The Last Stand

[Ruger10]

As it stands now, I feel a majority of the game is deliciously difficult and balanced in all the right ways.
The Last Stand however I have some concerns with.

*spoilers and all that*

To start, the repair stations are usually taken over by the time I begin my first encounter with the Rebel Flagship. Once or twice I may get lucky and one might be perfectly adjacent to my position after round 1 (the one round I can get through nearly unscathed of course), but in most cases I'm not that fortunate.

I'm ok with having to duke it out with a fighter ship to get some use out of the station, but if those stations are going to be advertised on the map I'd like them to be a somewhat viable option to plan for.

The second encounter however, is where I feel some improvements could be made with regards to combat. There are times where I can't find a stealth system, which when the flagship starts releasing the armada of offensive laser/beam and breaching drones I get overwhelmed. The enemy crew are so numerous that efforts to sabotage the drone station are usually negated too quickly to count.

A simple idea to balance this out for someone who has drones instead of cloaking, is to allow the defensive ship drones to shoot down offensive laser/beam drones along with missiles. Make it require 2-4 shots, but it would allow for different defensive options that players can consider.

These are just my thoughts, and maybe I've failed to consider alternative options.

[All4n]

I killed the boss without the cloaking, and with it.

It is hard but I find that the right combo of weapons and defence plus a lot, yes really a lot of evasion is important

It gets easier when you know it weaknesses, for example get rid of the triple rocketlauncher, that one is always taking me down if I don't break it.

[Mr. Mister]

if you're planning go without cloacking, and you're not on a totally-offensive tactic (pre-igniter+2x auto-reloader), then you must get a shield recharge booster.

[Maze1125]

The drone swarm doesn't kill on its own. 4 Shields and moderate evasion (or 3 shields and high evasion) is enough to avoid damage from it entirely the majority of the time. The reason the drone swarm will kill you is because you get hit with other weapons at the same time, thereby depleting your shields and the drones break through. To avoid this, take out the bosses other weapons as quickly as possible.

[Derakon]

If you don't have stealth, ideally you'd have a crew teleporter and the wherewithal to take out most of the flagship's crew in the first phase. If you do that then the second phase becomes defensively trivial, since the ship can't dodge or repair its systems. That said, my first victory in the game (on Normal, even) was with a burst/heavy-laser ship with no extra systems -- no cloak, no teleporter, no drone system. I brought so much fire to bear on it that the flagship simply couldn't dodge everything, while my crewmembers ran around fighting fires and keeping my own ship operational.

If the flagship's weapon systems are taken out, then the droneswarm is definitely survivable. If those weapon systems are still operational then you can take serious damage. It might actually be worth focusing on the heavy burst laser (second from left) and glaive beam (far right) instead of the missile launcher, since your priority is to keep your shields up. Of course the usual recommendation is to leave only the crewmember manning the burst laser alive, and if you do this then you might kill them (causing an AI to take over the ship).

[Char;y]

if you're planning go without cloacking, and you're not on a totally-offensive tactic (pre-igniter+2x auto-reloader), then you must get a shield recharge booster.

I have completed this many times without any of those systems, but you must be kitted out with the correct offensive weapons.

With an undamaged hull, its pretty easy to take down all three incarnations. But you need to have the weapons loadout to penetrate the shields. and then deal out damage to the sheilds and the tripple barreled rocket launcher. As long as your ship has full shields when the drones attack en masse, you should make it through without taking too much damage.

Its after the second stage that you will probably need some healing, and 9 times out of 10, that there will be no repair stations left, and the shop will be either gone or out of reach.

Unfortunately the randomness of the game can screw you over. One thing I would suggest is being able to pass trhough the repair stations without taking the supplies, as quite often they are on a flight path you need to follow

[Hissatsu]

You have a lower chance to get systems in shops in S3 - onwards, they say. I always buy them earliest possible (meaning i hardly upgrade my ship until i bought all systems) and this works for me - this means, more shops with both "screens" filled with goodies. Generally, you want to have 80 scrap to buy one of the systems by the time you reach your first shop, and 230 scrap to buy remaining two by the time you reach your second shop. Of course if you find an awesome weapon like burst II you'd delay that, but the longer you take to buy them, the less you get out of the shops (and eventually, can never get a chance to buy it again).

[Ruger10]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.
I normally don't play games since the old golden days of mechwarrior, so the premise of this game was somewhat a breath of fresh air. Obviously I still have a bit to get used to.

I'm still partial to the idea that defensive drones should be able to attack offensive beam/laser drones as well as missiles/asteroids though, anyone have thoughts on this?

[Char;y]

Of course if you find an awesome weapon like burst II you'd delay that

I just had an awesome playthrough where I had 3 burst twos, and an ion bomb, such an amazing loadout, but I had such a poor run through for scrap though. I really struggled to get systems up and running. Just about got my 4th shield in time for my first encounter with the flagship. Got an excellent final shot in just as he fired his killshot, and both our ships were consumed in a firey death. Still got the win though

[Char;y]

I'm still partial to the idea that defensive drones should be able to attack offensive beam/laser drones as well as missiles/asteroids though, anyone have thoughts on this?

Not sure, although I would quite like to understand the mechanics of this myself, as drones seem to randomly stop working for no reason. Not a big fan of drones. I am guessing they are better for a stealth strategy