Weaponless Run

[postman]

Has anyone thought about or tried a weaponless run? I imagine with Crystal B you could use the Lockdown ability and kill the crew of essentially any ship. Add anti-ship for Zoltan shields and auto assault ships. Thoughts?

[BKT]

It will work, of course. But better yet—

- Replace Anti-Ship with Beam drone:— it work faster on Zoltan Shield and never miss.
- Get a Drone Recovery arm. (optional, but highly recommended if you find one in the shop)

Battle Plan: Your basic 4 pads ship tactics & the usual crew ...

** If you have Drone recovery arm, deploy Defense drone at the beginning of every battle, don't waste your time and energy checking whether the enemy have any missiles; it distracts you from your routines and your goals.

Ships with crew = Tele > Win
Ships with crew + medbay = Tele > Win
Ships with crew + Zoltan Shield = Deploy Beam drone > Tele > Win
Ships with crew + Zoltan Shield + medbay = Deploy Beam drone > Tele > Win
Automated Ships = lv.2-3 Tele to Shield > Shield down > Tele back > Deploy Beam drone > Win
Rebel Flagship = Tele > Massacre the usual mooks (if any) > Whack the Shields > Tele back > Deploy Beam drone > Win (x3)

I had done exactly this many time back then... Though for automated ship, I instead just auto-fire whatever rocket I got as loot from random enemy/event at the shield room instead of Tele until the shield's down, cuz I'm lazy!

But obviously the Tele to shield will work just fine; better than firing at it, in fact...



PS. Drones are basically just another form of Weapon IMO.

[postman]

Though drones can be used as a weapon, they aren't technically...

There had to be some way to get through the boss' shield, otherwise it would be fun to try a game with neither weapons nor drones. I think a fun challenge would be to start without weapons (Crystal or Mantis B) and then rotate to cargo and sell any weapon you get randomly.

[More Dakka]

Though drones can be used as a weapon, they aren't technically...

There had to be some way to get through the boss' shield, otherwise it would be fun to try a game with neither weapons nor drones. I think a fun challenge would be to start without weapons (Crystal or Mantis B) and then rotate to cargo and sell any weapon you get randomly.

In theory, you could use the Crystal Vengeance to breach the boss's Zoltan Shield, but since it requires you to take hull damage and it only does so rarely even when you do take such damage, you would need a hull repair drone and a giant stack of drone parts *and* enough luck to fire enough shards in a row before the next superweapon trigger regenerates the shield (assuming that the "rebuild Zoltan shield" bit can happen on a damaged Zoltan shield, and not just an incomplete one; if it's ALWAYS laser spam unless the Zoltan shield is completely down, it'll still be incredibly tedious but maybe not completely impossible).

[mrguy888]

it'll still be incredibly tedious but maybe not completely impossible).

After trying to beat the boss with only the artillery beam, I would go with impossible. The boss can refill the zoltan shield before it is completely empty.