Subset Games Forum

Apparently boarding is incredibly great for everything, but if you like blasting the hell out of things like me, I find a universally great strategy for the boss (or any enemy for that matter) is if you can get your hands on two ion weapons (and either a 'regular' weapon or an antiship drone, or both or multiples of either) and a cloaking device. 2x ion whatever let you shred the shields, and as has been stated, cloaking is invaluable for dodging the massive attacks.

On the red tail:

Systems:
Shields lvl 3
Engines lvl 3(Upgraded them to 4 after the first stage)


Drones:
Attack Drone II
Defense Drone I

Weapons:
Heavy Laser II
Burst Laser I
Basic Laser
Basic Laser

Made it to stage 2 of boss and almost beat him, he drone stormed me into oblivion. It was working pretty well up until then, I only took about 3 hull damage on the first stage.Next time going to try to shoot for something similar to this setup, but with cloaking.

With that setup you'll take very heavy damage whenever it uses the drone surge, along with the surges on stage 3. You need a bit more defense than 3 shields and 4 engines. More engines will help, as will the fourth shield (though its not necessary and very expensive compared to other things that help). Defense drone II's make a significant difference, and cloaking can practically nullify the surges all on its own. Remember all that drone I is shooting down is some of the missiles (it can't shoot down all 3 at once), and boarding drones.

Also you'll need more firepower than that. With 6 lasers you'll only have a chance to hit twice a volley, and some of those are likely to miss. The attack drone does little more than add a seventh laser to your volleys unless you manage to take down its shield down all the way (at which point it will rack up damage very fast). If you can kill the boss faster you won't have to survive as many drone surges. That's really only enough firepower if you can use boarders to kill the crew in the first stage so you can take out the shield with boarders in the second.

A side note if you're going to wipe the crew -- while the AI that takes over will slowly repair systems, including that three-shot missile launcher you probably broke right at the start of the battle, it does not seem to extinguish fires or turn off the oxygen so the fires will spread unbounded.

The Zoltan shield will still be restored in the third part even if basically the whole ship is an inferno, so be careful about losing boarders because systems burning causes damage and explodes the flagship before you can teleport your crew back.

(Musing: It is possible to simultaneously destroy the flagship AND your entire crew, if for some reason you've ported them all aboard. Does the game declare this a victory, a loss... or throw up a "you silly human" screen?)

I have seen two screenshots posted here of people who destroyed the boss the same time they died themself a moment later before it went to the victory screen, so in the background of the game over screen you can see the flagship exploding. In one case it was from the last volley of shots that were in the air when they finished off the ship, in the other the last of their crew died due to oxygen deprivation.

For my endgame setup I value engines higher than fourth shield, but early game I definitely go for two shields before nearly any other ship upgrade. Cuts down on a lot of damage you'd take that 10% extra dodge just wouldn't handle as well. Engines are best when they work in conjunction with the shield, when you have three bars of shields and 50% dodge chance, you can have five lasers coming at you and be fairly comfortable that at most one of those will get through, and often times none.

Anyway, lately I've been finding burst lasers comboed with beams to be my favored weapon setup. It's pretty dependent on what you can get throughout the game but when I do get a pair of burst II's and a beam of any kind. Halberd beam or glaive beam are damn strong, but most others will do, the main selling point of beams for me is that they don't factor in evasion when you hit with them; whatever rooms you target take the damage that the beam is capable of dealing.

I've found both the Kestrel and the Red-Tail to be exceptional for taking out the boss. Kestrel starts out with a stronger late game arsenal and slightly weaker early game, Red-Tail gets an insanely strong early game loadout and pretty good crew. Both of them are quite good at chewing through the first few sectors without taking significant damage, which is what makes me like them as boss killers. Any ship can kill the boss given enough equipment, and these ships make it much easier to stockpile scrap in hopes of a decent store inventory. The less money you need to spend early on, the more you can hoard it and try to set yourself up for a strong lategame.

There's been a lot said about the boss fight itself, but once you learn a little bit more about how the boss functions, it's mostly a matter of having enough power to burn him down quickly, or having enough defenses to weather the power surges. Cloak alone is not enough to get you through every one, but it will allow you several guaranteed safe surges.