A little help here? Kinda stuck.

[astrosteve]

I'm not sure how many sectors you travel through in game (I read it's only 8 total. ie, the end of the jump map. No idea if that's correct) but I know the game is pretty much impossibly hard for me by sector 5. (And that's with the Krestal. I'm lucky to make it halfway through sector 2 with the Torus. My play style and the Torus just don't mesh, I guess. Haven't unlocked any other ships yet.) I play on Normal.

It seems I spend almost all my scrap repairing my hull and buying more fuel. I seem to have nothing left over to buy anything else. By the time I make it to sector 5, if I've bought one additional weapon and spent maybe 40 scrap on ship upgrades, I feel like I've bought a lot. But I get destroyed in sector 5 regardless, as I said. But I don't see any way to buy more than that. There just doesn't seem to be enough scrap in Normal. Toying with the idea of turning around and flying into the rebels pursuing me to get more scrap. (Assuming I can defeat those ships.) Haven't tried that yet, but maybe I will soon. Hmmm. That may actually be a good idea.

Anyway, I also read (from the same possibly unreliable source as the 8 sector thing) that you should have a fully upgraded ship by the middle of Sector 3, by sector 4 at the very latest. This seems totally and completely impossible. Even if I didn't spend anything at all on repairing my hull, it still seems like there isn't enough scrap to do that. I try to explore as much as I can while staying ahead of the rebels, but they're pretty fast.

So, any advice on how to get some extra scrap?

[TenLetters]

Hey,

First of all, you never get a fully upgraded ship, let alone by sector 3 or 4. That's completely baloney. You may get full energy by one of the final sectors.

The first thing I had to learn is that you want to leave the sector just barely ahead of the Rebel ships (You do not get anything for killing them in the "WARNING" area). So spend the time and explore the sectors, amassing as much scrap and stuff as you can. And be smart about it -- don't go to shops when you don't got any scrap or don't really need to buy anything. That's just a waste of scrap you could have found. Sometimes it's even worth it to keep exploring until the rebels permeate the area, and just fight through them to the EXIT area. I'd only say it's really worth it once you have enough defense (cloak or shields 3/4 or whatever) that you feel confident you won't take very much hull damage getting out.

Also, be sure to sell stuff you don't need. You'll be picking up weapons/drones/augments along the way, and just sell the ones you don't want. Really good scrap.

If you're getting hurt that much that you're only repairing your hull, you might want to just change tactics. I find getting a second level in shield very quickly works wonders, but I'm sure other people play differently. That and aiming for their weapons first should prevent a lot of hull damage, and thus save you a lot of scrap.

[Tempest2097]

I find that oddly enough engines actually help a lot in terms of resiliency. After all, if it misses it's like they never fired it at all. I tend towards putting one person on engine, one on shields and one as pilot so I can survive longer. I've still only seen sector 8 once, and even then I died before I even got to the flagship. On easy. It'd be awesome if they gave you upgrade ships through two conditions, including number of deaths or something so you could eventually be awesome even if you're like me and suck.

[TenLetters]

Engines are great, but you need the energy to actually give you dodge, which I usually don't have too much spare of early on.

Another small tip is to turn stuff off you don't currently need. So, when starting out, turn off your medbay to put more energy into your engine. Or, when you see them fire, turn off your offensive drones or weapons and put all that power into engine. If their weapons aren't synchronized, you can even turn off your shields to switch power to engines to block missiles. Stuff like that helps a lot, and saves you an early scrap investment of power.

[VladePsyker]

Engines are great, but you need the energy to actually give you dodge, which I usually don't have too much spare of early on.

Another small tip is to turn stuff off you don't currently need. So, when starting out, turn off your medbay to put more energy into your engine. Or, when you see them fire, turn off your offensive drones or weapons and put all that power into engine. If their weapons aren't synchronized, you can even turn off your shields to switch power to engines to block missiles. Stuff like that helps a lot, and saves you an early scrap investment of power.

you can even turn off the Oxygen for at least 2 weapon volley before the atmosphere gets a little thin, and actually this can help with fires making venting quicker to put them out. if your in the Engi ship the remote healing means you can run pretty close to vacuum without losing anyone works a treat in solar flare becons , no air no FIRE

[astrosteve]

Thanks for the advice so far, everyone. As it turns out, I was completely misunderstanding how systems upgrading worked and was doing things that made no sense. (I thought putting points into subsystems made that subsystem generate its own power. So, put points into weapons and it'd start generating its own power for weapons, thereby freeing up power from the main generate for the rest of the ship. So I'd never put anything into the main reactor and just put all my scrap into subsystems when I had it. Then I'd start getting pissed off because it wasn't making a difference.)

Also taking the other advice in this thread and feel like I'm doing a bit better. Still can't get past sector 4 most games (made it to 5 once but that's it), but hopefully I'll be able to eventually.

Edited to add: Rather than starting a new thread, let me ask this here: What is everyone's opinion on the Fire Beam? I keep getting them (for free) in recent games and trying them out, and they just don't seem worth it. Thinking I might start selling them instead of keeping them. I suppose I could, in theory, kill off the other crew with fire if I did it right, but the ship always breaks up before that happens. I killed the crew and left the ship intact only once so far, and the fire beam wasn't involved when that happened.

[Gorlom]

Well fire beams are good for distracting and occupying enemy crews. fire deals hull damage as well I think so I'm not sure it's intended to be an antipersonnel weapon.

I'm not entirely sure this is right but beam weapons seems to be most efficient if you have other weapons that break their shields first. (does beam weapons deal damage to shields at all?)

[TenLetters]

Beams do nothing to shields.

Fire does hull damage if it breaks a system (I believe).

[VladePsyker]

The Halberd Beam can bypass 1 shield bar which reduces its damage to 1dmg/room