I just got this awesome game 3 days ago and slowly, i was able to crawl my way through sectors till i arrived at the flagship. After numerous tries, i started to wonder how in hell do people pass boss's 2nd stage. I have failed about 7 times at this stage where he just throws about 10 drones at you while your ship is under missiles, beam, and boarding drone barrage. I can get pass stage one without taking any damage but when the drones got out they instantly overwhelm me even if i had level 3 stealth, or full shield/full engine. I have tried ion weapons with beam / lasers, pegasus with dual hall lasers, i cant seem to stop the drones no matter what i tried. Some runs i was only able to see mark I drones in all shop without any augs. I had a fully ranked up crew member in my weapon control room yet i hit the drone control like 1 in 20 hits. Is stage 2 more like a time attack on destroying the enemy, as just got for its shield and hull?
thanks in advance
Boss stage 2
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Re: Boss stage 2
Hello and welcome.
The 'power surge' is a boss super ability and it cannot be disabled. Not even by damaging the drone control system. It is designed to overwhelm defenses and it will certainly do some damage even to maxxed out ships.
The best way to avoid the drone surge is to use the cloaking device. It's expensive at 150 scrap, but it should be commonly available in stores (unlike some rare weapons for example). Without cloaking, the best hope is to max out your engines and shields and hope to avoid incoming fire enough for your shields to stay up. Beam drones cannot penetrate shields. Normally you want to stay cloaked as long as possible, but in this case you should try using only the lvl1 cloak because it is shorter and your device will recycle in time for another surge.
One very usefull way to attack the boss is to teleport you crew into the weapon bays and disable the weapons. Without weapons the only damage you'll take is from the power surges. The boss is not the hardest enemy in the game, but it has nasty surprises in store for you. If you have the weapons for it, try to take it out as fast as possible.
Best of luck in your effort! I hope you see the Mothership crumble like a cookie.
EDIT - Enemy boarding drones can be shot down by your defense drones, but expect a few to get through. If you upgrade your doors, all enemies will have to break through so this can buy you some time.
You can check my video of the Torus (stage2 is at 46:00) to see how i dodged quite a lot of damage. Ultimately i failed because i could no longer sync the cloak with the surges, but i managed to avoid a hell of a lot. The first cloak was an attempt to dodge a damned boarding drone. It didnt work.
The 'power surge' is a boss super ability and it cannot be disabled. Not even by damaging the drone control system. It is designed to overwhelm defenses and it will certainly do some damage even to maxxed out ships.
The best way to avoid the drone surge is to use the cloaking device. It's expensive at 150 scrap, but it should be commonly available in stores (unlike some rare weapons for example). Without cloaking, the best hope is to max out your engines and shields and hope to avoid incoming fire enough for your shields to stay up. Beam drones cannot penetrate shields. Normally you want to stay cloaked as long as possible, but in this case you should try using only the lvl1 cloak because it is shorter and your device will recycle in time for another surge.
One very usefull way to attack the boss is to teleport you crew into the weapon bays and disable the weapons. Without weapons the only damage you'll take is from the power surges. The boss is not the hardest enemy in the game, but it has nasty surprises in store for you. If you have the weapons for it, try to take it out as fast as possible.
Best of luck in your effort! I hope you see the Mothership crumble like a cookie.
EDIT - Enemy boarding drones can be shot down by your defense drones, but expect a few to get through. If you upgrade your doors, all enemies will have to break through so this can buy you some time.
You can check my video of the Torus (stage2 is at 46:00) to see how i dodged quite a lot of damage. Ultimately i failed because i could no longer sync the cloak with the surges, but i managed to avoid a hell of a lot. The first cloak was an attempt to dodge a damned boarding drone. It didnt work.
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Re: Boss stage 2
@ acnyc2000
Don't bother destroying the drone control unless you have good firepower or killed off all the crews not manning the weapons beforehand. You will waste a lot of time doing so for very little benefits.
Why didn't you fire back?!
You can fire your non-beam weapon while in cloak to get rid of the excess cloak duration in order to help keep it in sync— in fact, it's safer to use cloak lv.2-3 shortly before the drones arrive and then fire your guns once the drones begins taking position to fire the 2nd shot. Your cloak will ends right after the drones are gone if done it right.
Alternatively, you can try using Zoltan to powered your cloak and then move him away from the cloak room once the drones are gone.
I preferred lv.4 Shield instead though...
Don't bother destroying the drone control unless you have good firepower or killed off all the crews not manning the weapons beforehand. You will waste a lot of time doing so for very little benefits.
UltraMantis wrote:You can check my video of the Torus (stage2 is at 46:00)
Why didn't you fire back?!
UltraMantis wrote:Ultimately i failed because i could no longer sync the cloak with the surges
You can fire your non-beam weapon while in cloak to get rid of the excess cloak duration in order to help keep it in sync— in fact, it's safer to use cloak lv.2-3 shortly before the drones arrive and then fire your guns once the drones begins taking position to fire the 2nd shot. Your cloak will ends right after the drones are gone if done it right.
Alternatively, you can try using Zoltan to powered your cloak and then move him away from the cloak room once the drones are gone.
I preferred lv.4 Shield instead though...
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Re: Boss stage 2
BKT wrote:@ acnyc2000 - Don't bother destroying the drone control unless you have good firepower or killed off all the crews not manning the weapons beforehand. You will waste a lot of time doing so for very little benefits.
For no benefit. Destroying the Drone Control doesn't stop the power surge.
BKT wrote:Why didn't you fire back?!UltraMantis wrote:You can check my video of the Torus (stage2 is at 46:00)
Attack what? I did disable the Tri-Missile launcher but then had to send my fighters to deal with pesky boarding drones instead of shutting down the boss' offense. Had that sorry excuse of a defense drone done it's job, things could have ended very differently. I couldn't ignore it and let it smash up the engines or my evasion would have gone to hell, and there was very little hope that 2 Engi and 1 Zoltan could stop it's rampage on their own.
BKT wrote:You can fire your non-beam weapon while in cloak to get rid of the excess cloak...UltraMantis wrote:Ultimately i failed because i could no longer sync the cloak with the surges
That's no better or worse than using just 1 level. It also wouldn't work if you had stealth weapons (Stealth cruisers have this ability as well).
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Re: Boss stage 2
- Destroying the drone control does helps removes 2 drones (the one that not parts of the powersurge) which helps make the drone swarm somewhat easier to tank, and also stop the boarding drone never-ending onslaught on your ship. However, it would be much wiser to simply attack the hull (that is, Shield) as hard as you can to get it over with; and while at it, you might be able to take down a few enemy crew as a bonus while they're fixing the Shield if you got the right tool (Here's an example ... Funny that the drone swarm seem to be glitching somehow and stay with me for the whole battle! )
- You could at least deployed Anti-ship drone + put the Ion 2 on auto-fire on Shield or something..
It doesn't require any micro'ing or attention to deploy those and it can potentially destroy the ship outright; while unlikely due to time constrain, at least it's something!
- Both Stealth ships don't start with Stealth Weapon augment.
- You could at least deployed Anti-ship drone + put the Ion 2 on auto-fire on Shield or something..
It doesn't require any micro'ing or attention to deploy those and it can potentially destroy the ship outright; while unlikely due to time constrain, at least it's something!
- Both Stealth ships don't start with Stealth Weapon augment.
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Re: Boss stage 2
BKT wrote:Both Stealth ships don't start with Stealth Weapon augment.
They have it hardcoded into them, so they can fire while cloaked without decloaking.
And you guessed right that i couldn't pay attention on attacking and defending at the same time. Besides that i didn't quite have enough energy to power all weapons + attack drone. You know how the boss likes to dodge shots i needed everything (Ion Blast + 2 shots of Heavy Laser + attack drone) to let the Hull Beam through. Some defense would have to be sacrificed for that. I was gonna pummel it as soon as i disabled it's weapons (except beam), but my fighters were busy clearing the boarding drones and it never happened. I know it's weird to go to stage 2 with weapons powered down
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Re: Boss stage 2
Hmm I always have 4 shields and around 50% evasion at the last stand. Never had much of a problem with the power surges even without cloak.
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Re: Boss stage 2
The Cloaking ability helps a lot with the Power Surge in the boss battle.
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Re: Boss stage 2
UltraMantis wrote:They have it hardcoded into them, so they can fire while cloaked without decloaking.
Are you sure you're not talking about beam weapons? ... I'm fairly sure that, without the Stealth weapon augment, firing any non-beam weapons while cloak will reduce cloak duration, Stealth ship included.
Tested it just now— I still saw a noticeable dip in stealth duration bar when firing Dual laser compared to Minibeam.
PS. Just finished another Engi_A runs; probably the most entertaining playthrough for this ship thus far!
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Re: Boss stage 2
Well i haven't paid attention to that. I know they won't decloak instantly but dunno if the cloak runs out any faster.
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