Fire Beam + 2x Ion Burst II

[GoldenShadowGS]

This combo does no hull damage directly, except for subsystem rooms exploding from fire damage. I tried this combination on a the Engi ship B. I had the one crewman for a longtime and relied on drones for ship repairs and airless rooms and upgraded doors for boarding defense.

By the mid-game, I had found this firebeam at a store and bought it. I also found a ion burst II to replace the heavy ion you start with and a pike beam to deal some damage. I was capturing ships without boarding them, it worked about 95% of the time, even on rock ships. I burn so many fires and kept the O2 room offline that they asphyxiated.

Its kind of tough at first, get their shields down and set the ship on fire. If they have medbay, set it on fire and hit it with a weaker weapon, like a pike beam to knock it offline. Just keep changing targets and set the whole ship on fire.

When I reached the final boss, I had:
Firebeam
Ion burst II
Ion burst II

Anti-ship drone
anti-personell drone
defense Drone I

maxed reactor, most subsystems maxed.
5 crew
no teleporter
no cloak

To start, I set the ion bursts to target the shields and the 2nd one to target the cloak. Once the shields were down and cloak disabled, I set fire to the weapon rooms. It took maybe 2 or 3 tries before the guys in the weapon rooms burned to death. The fire will eventually destroy the weapons. I switched between the defense drone and anti-ship drone between missile volleys. Since their shields are being kept offline by ion, that anti-ship drone is free to blast holes all throughout the ship, while I'm setting it on fire. With as many crew as the flagship has, it wasn't enough to deal with all of the fires and system damage this one fire beam, and this anti-ship drone were causing.

At the 2nd phase, I targeted the ion bursts at the shield and drone rooms. Put out a defense drone asap to kill the inbound boarding drone, i imagine that would have caused me a lot of trouble if it got it. Otherwise, everything is the same, except I divert power from the drones and into the engines and shields during the power attacks. Light the missile and beam rooms on fire and then light the rest of the ship on fire, let the anti-ship drone pluck down the hull until you win.

For the 3rd phase, its even easier. defense drone to stop the missiles, ion the shields and weapons, then divert all power to shields and engines during the power attacks.

Its pretty damned awesome to see nearly every room of the flagship on fire at once.

I think I only lost maybe 5 hull in all 3 phases using this strategy. Make sure to switch your 2nd ion burst's target to something else if the place it was shooting gets destroyed. It also helps to ion the medbay to keep them from healing and let the fires do their work.

Protip: If you are trying to cause a raging inferno. Don't shoot the O2 room. Your fires will last forever if he has a level 3 O2 room feeding them.

[UltraMantis]

That's fantastic. I suddenly feel the urge to unleash the pyro in me. wow

[boran_blok]

hah, I ended up with this combination a few playtroughs ago.

However I did not have an offensive drone.
So the only way I could deal damage was with the fire beam burning rooms.

I had no choice but to kill all personnel so the AI took over and repaired the ship, only this way I could deal enough damage to kill it.

[UberFubarius]

Got that setup before too! So much FUN!
Only difference is that I also got a measly heavy laser one. So against boss I had the option just burning the shield and helm down before proceeding to slowly pepper it to death.

I don't even bother dropping the medbay. Once I have their shield and weapon ioned, I just keep setting on fire, sooner or later, one or both of the following occurred.
1. O2 goes down, whatever crew NOT in medbay is screwed due to O2 deprivation.
2. Medbay is on fire, the crew slowly get cooked to death.
3. IF their medbay is strong enough to keep them alive even through O2 deprivation... ion the medbay

[Fangz]

This must be a pretty fun setup to play with, but probably won't work on normal because on that difficulty the boss has a pretty high evasion chance (which means you will miss A LOT of Ion shots). If you keep one Ion Blast II at the cloaking system and the other at the shields you will never, ever take down the cloaking system. This is because, as far as I can remember, you can only Ion Blast a system that is not the shield system once the shields are down. Thus, if an enemy ship has 1 shield and you want to Ion Blast its weapon system you need to take down the shield first, and once it is down then you may Ion Blast the weapon system.

So, considering the description of your course of action, the high evasion chance I previously mentioned on normal difficulty, and the cloaking ability of the final boss (which would make his shields recover from the Ion Blast), this would never be feasible on normal. Not to mention, in the meantime, the boss would be throwing missile volleys at you and you said that you have only one Defense Drone I, which shoots down one missile out of the three he is throwing at you in each volley. In addition, the weapon rooms are pretty far away from each other, and although the Fire Beam is lengthy, you would only be able to hit two at a time, leaving the other two unscathed. Furthermore, on normal at least, one human at full health can put out a fire in a room without dying, and the Fire Beam causes no direct damage to personnel.

I'm not saying that you didn't do it. What I'm saying is that you didn't do it on normal difficulty (unless you prove me wrong).

I also don't want to take away your merit just because you played on easy. Even on that difficulty it must have been really hard to pull this off without a Bomb or a Laser weapon support.

I'm looking forward to use this combo. It must be pretty fun - against regular ships.

[GoldenShadowGS]

Dunno why you think its impossible, but heres the proof. You may be forgetting that if you have 2 ion bursts targeting they both contribute to dropping that shield initially, then one keeps the shield down, and the other one keeps the cloak offline. Only if you miss many shots in a row on the same room will you have to start over from full shields.

stats1.jpg

Other thoughts:
I'm not saying I never missed and let his shields reset, that did happen a few times. But once that missile launcher is destroyed, it doesn't matter much. I had the defense drone to shoot down the first and 3rd missile of the volley. The 2nd missile sometimes hit me when evade failed, but never did any significant damage. Usually hitting an empty room, or unimportant system.(not shields or weapons) and got repaired quickly by my crew.

The fire beam works a little different than normal beams. It has a chance to start fires in every tile it crosses. If you make it up-down, it has a chance to light both squares of the missile room on fire, which can't be extinguished so easily. Doing this twice is usually enough to kill the man there and the burning fire will destroy the missile system. So you really only have to tank 3-4 volleys of missiles, The defense drone will eat up 2 of the volley, and leaving one missile per volley, which is about the normal amount you deal with and at least half of those can be expected to be evaded with good engines. If you have full hull HP before you start, theres not really any danger as long if you deal with it first.

[Fangz]

Dunno why you think its impossible, but heres the proof. You may be forgetting that if you have 2 ion bursts targeting they both contribute to dropping that shield initially, then one keeps the shield down, and the other one keeps the cloak offline. Only if you miss many shots in a row on the same room will you have to start over from full shields.

stats1.jpg

Other thoughts:
I'm not saying I never missed and let his shields reset, that did happen a few times. But once that missile launcher is destroyed, it doesn't matter much. I had the defense drone to shoot down the first and 3rd missile of the volley. The 2nd missile sometimes hit me when evade failed, but never did any significant damage. Usually hitting an empty room, or unimportant system.(not shields or weapons) and got repaired quickly by my crew.

The fire beam works a little different than normal beams. It has a chance to start fires in every tile it crosses. If you make it up-down, it has a chance to light both squares of the missile room on fire, which can't be extinguished so easily. Doing this twice is usually enough to kill the man there and the burning fire will destroy the missile system. So you really only have to tank 3-4 volleys of missiles, The defense drone will eat up 2 of the volley, and leaving one missile per volley, which is about the normal amount you deal with and at least half of those can be expected to be evaded with good engines. If you have full hull HP before you start, theres not really any danger as long if you deal with it first.

I apologize. I was wrong. Good job!

[UberFubarius]

This must be a pretty fun setup to play with, but probably won't work on normal because on that difficulty the boss has a pretty high evasion chance (which means you will miss A LOT of Ion shots).
*snip*
I'm looking forward to use this combo. It must be pretty fun - against regular ships.

I will agree that said combo would be difficult against boss, but even a lousy boarding team will make it much, much easier.
I've won against a boss with that combo by using boarding team to disable its weapons, once three of its weapons are down (missile, beam, and ion), I pretty much have all the time in the world to slowly, very slowly set his whole ship on fire!

So if you go for this combo, I strongly suggest getting a teleporter (just get it, don't need to upgrade it) before you face the boss. Oh, and a very cheap damage weapon if you don't use drones (lvl 1 burst laser or heavy laser will work) just to give you a weapon to kill the boss quicker once you got bored.

[GoldenShadowGS]

Thats what the attack drone was for.

[BlueTrin]

In hard mode the weapon rooms are connected, you may end up killing everybody ?