Just beat the boss on easy. It was easy. :P

[dgfv_]

I got incredibly lucky with the Kestrel Type B.

In the end I had two zoltan's, , drone bay, full shields, full weapons, full power, full engines (although I didn't power them all), full med-bay, full-O2, and full crew maxed at their stations. I had 2x weapon reloader (30% faster attacks?), and the primer.

For weapons I had a glaive (amazing! holy shit!) and burst laser and hull laser. One of the two was the "II" type, but I forget which, or maybe both? I'm not sure -- I think not due to energy. I also had defense drone ii, which pretty much kept me going without losing hull or all my shields even once.

TL;DR, I got super lucky with kestrel type B and facerolled the last boss without even taking hull damage.

(10th time's the charm!)

[GoldenShadowGS]

I just lost to the boss ship on normal. I was flying the engi ship. My strategy had been based around boarding and ion bursts. I also had a healing burst to keep my boarding party healthy. I also have a Mk2 defense drone and 3 shields.

I reached the boss ship with perfect conditions. I had full HP, about 12 missiles and 10 drones. I have a full crew of 8, i have 2 mantis and 2 humans that make up the boarding party. Everything went to hell fast. I wasn't sure what to target, so I looked carefully and went for the cloaking device room first. The problem is I couldn't do any damage. They had so many guys rotating through and a 4 space medbay that I never got an advantage. If only I had an ion bomb to shut down the medbay, then I could have camped their medbay and spammed healing bursts on all my guys until the crew was dead. Thats the key piece of technology you need to board the boss ship I believe. repeatedly ion bomb the medbay while your boarding party kills everyone. Then you would have free reign to take out the oxygen and wait for those guys in the top to asphyxiate.

[Gorlom]

I just lost to the boss ship on normal. I was flying the engi ship. My strategy had been based around boarding and ion bursts. I also had a healing burst to keep my boarding party healthy. I also have a Mk2 defense drone and 3 shields.

I reached the boss ship with perfect conditions. I had full HP, about 12 missiles and 10 drones. I have a full crew of 8, i have 2 mantis and 2 humans that make up the boarding party. Everything went to hell fast. I wasn't sure what to target, so I looked carefully and went for the cloaking device room first. The problem is I couldn't do any damage. They had so many guys rotating through and a 4 space medbay that I never got an advantage. If only I had an ion bomb to shut down the medbay, then I could have camped their medbay and spammed healing bursts on all my guys until the crew was dead. Thats the key piece of technology you need to board the boss ship I believe. repeatedly ion bomb the medbay while your boarding party kills everyone. Then you would have free reign to take out the oxygen and wait for those guys in the top to asphyxiate.

Usually people teleport into the top rooms and kill them and destroy the systems first so the big ship can't shoot at you.
Also killing EVERY crew on the mothership doesn't win you the battle. As soon as the last one dies the AI system detects that the ship isn't manned anymore and goes into automatic mode and starts repairing every system simultaneously.

[dgfv_]

I just lost to the boss ship on normal. I was flying the engi ship. My strategy had been based around boarding and ion bursts. I also had a healing burst to keep my boarding party healthy. I also have a Mk2 defense drone and 3 shields.

I reached the boss ship with perfect conditions. I had full HP, about 12 missiles and 10 drones. I have a full crew of 8, i have 2 mantis and 2 humans that make up the boarding party. Everything went to hell fast. I wasn't sure what to target, so I looked carefully and went for the cloaking device room first. The problem is I couldn't do any damage. They had so many guys rotating through and a 4 space medbay that I never got an advantage. If only I had an ion bomb to shut down the medbay, then I could have camped their medbay and spammed healing bursts on all my guys until the crew was dead. Thats the key piece of technology you need to board the boss ship I believe. repeatedly ion bomb the medbay while your boarding party kills everyone. Then you would have free reign to take out the oxygen and wait for those guys in the top to asphyxiate.

I haven't managed to get that far with the engi ship. Good going. I haven't tried a boarding strat yet. I'll try that next.
btw as you'll soon find out the cloaking part is the easy part...

[GhoXen]

On my third playthrough, I had the Federation cruiser (with artillery laser). My strategy was to use two Ion Blast II (3 power, 1 ion damage, but only 4 secs cooldown), a simple Burst Laser II and maxed out Artillery Laser. I also have the Auto-Reloader augmentation, which increases weapon recharge speed by 15%.

The first two phases were extremely easy. I lost only a couple hulls in total. The strategy was to auto-fire the two ion blasts on the shield, which gets completely locked down within seconds. Next use the Burst Laser to pick off the troublesome systems, such as weapon or droid controls. I also teleported a couple mantis to destroy the rocket first.

The third phase was rather painful, since my ship had no stealth (no kidding). Each energy burst would rip a significant amount of hull. Nonetheless my ship's DPS was simply too high and destroyed the shieldless boss before my ship was destroyed.

[Intricasm]

I beat it for the first time just now. On normal. Which is funny, because I couldn't beat the game on easy the 3-4 times I tried.

I used the Engi Cruiser. Ion Bomb, Ion Blast II, two anti-ship drones. My sensors, shields, and engines were upgraded. Most of my crew were engi, with a couple Mantis just in case I was boarded. I also had two Zoltan in my shield room. I honestly think that the Primer is the best thing you can get when it comes to using Ion Weaponry. I was able to warp in, then INSTANTLY ion bomb their shields, or whatever else I needed to hit, then I just auto-fired my ion blaster on one of the other systems while my drones blasted away.

I'm honestly very surprised I was able to beat it with littler to no preperation. I think the main reason I survived was because I had almost 50% evasion, and I had the autopilot auto-evade upgrade. And had both systems fully powered the entire fight.

[RynCage]

To tell you the truth, i honestly feel the boss takes away from the entire experiance. As a new player, i enjoy everything about this game except for the boss.
First off, the fact that the boss has phases doesnt bother me. Sure, it was a giant ship and the phase thing does a good job at making the last battle somewhat epic. However, what completely ruins this for me is the fact that now that we have destroyed phase one, and are going into phase 2: it all of the sudden has a super weapon that it just didnt feel like using while you were kicking its ass in phase 1. And then when you get past phase 2, the same thing happens in phase 3. Oh look, another overpowered check that for whatever reason it just didnt attack you with the first phase. It's just way, way too Cliché.

Secondly, Leading up to the boss fight, regardless of how badly the RNG screws me, through skill as the player i can manage to make it to the last stand. However, unless the RNG didnt screw me, there's just no chance in hell that you can win the fight. you NEED to have X in order to beat the boss. if you didnt manage to get X for whatever reason, you're just shit out of luck. How good or bad you are as a player doesnt matter. You either have the gear or you don't.
I might as well just flip a coin and every time it lands tails, we can just pretend i didnt have enough gear to beat the boss. At least this way i can lose 10 times in less than 6 hours.

I suppose there are a lot of other factors that make the bossfight leave a sour taste in my mouth. but at the end of the day, it's just a lame way to lose. It just feels lousy to go the whole way through thinking "maybe ill find what i need in the next sector" Come to find out you're at the end of the game and had no such luck. In other "rougelikes" a lot of the fun i have is making a bad situation work, and pulling through in the end. But the boss in this is just a brick wall that has a minimum requirment for victory.
Maybe thats what they intend, and maybe you all like that sort of thing and think that's how its supposed to be, But i think it could have been done better.
tl:dr the difficulty in the game should scale better. the boss is a gimicy letdown.

[Gorlom]

To tell you the truth, i honestly feel the boss takes away from the entire experiance. As a new player, i enjoy everything about this game except for the boss.
First off, the fact that the boss has phases doesnt bother me. Sure, it was a giant ship and the phase thing does a good job at making the last battle somewhat epic. However, what completely ruins this for me is the fact that now that we have destroyed phase one, and are going into phase 2: it all of the sudden has a super weapon that it just didnt feel like using while you were kicking its ass in phase 1. And then when you get past phase 2, the same thing happens in phase 3. Oh look, another overpowered check that for whatever reason it just didnt attack you with the first phase. It's just way, way too Cliché.

Obviously it doesn't have enough reactor power to power cloak, drone swarm and plasma overload at once. And there is no point in juggeling the power because of the cooldown locks the power in the system!

Secondly, Leading up to the boss fight, regardless of how badly the RNG screws me, through skill as the player i can manage to make it to the last stand. However, unless the RNG didnt screw me, there's just no chance in hell that you can win the fight. you NEED to have X in order to beat the boss. if you didnt manage to get X for whatever reason, you're just shit out of luck. How good or bad you are as a player doesnt matter. You either have the gear or you don't.
I might as well just flip a coin and every time it lands tails, we can just pretend i didnt have enough gear to beat the boss. At least this way i can lose 10 times in less than 6 hours.

are you sure about that? Sure there is an optimal build but there should be a few viable builds... that is enough different from each other that they don't contain X

[Maze1125]

Yeah, the boss is definitely not a case of "you have to have a specific thing or you lose".
Pretty much the only thing you need against the boss is the ability to do damage through 4 strength shields, which is hardly a surprise. There're enemies you fight before the boss with 5 strength shields! And there are at least 5 different ways to break through shields, you'd have had to have had a pretty bad run to have gotten none of them.

[Gorlom]

Yeah, the boss is definitely not a case of "you have to have a specific thing or you lose".
Pretty much the only thing you need against the boss is the ability to do damage through 4 strength shields, which is hardly a surprise. There're enemies you fight before the boss with 5 strength shields! And there are at least 5 different ways to break through shields, you'd have had to have had a pretty bad run to have gotten none of them.

5 ways? Shall we list them?
I can think of
1. crew teleporters
2. Missiles & teleporter bombs
3. ion weapons, laser bolt and anti ship drone bombardment
4. boarding drone
5. ...

Have I missed any? (Have I bundled separate ways through the shield together?)