Subset Games Forum

There seems to be a lot of hate out there for the Engi B and I'm not sure why. Personally I find it to be even easier than the Engi A, so here's some of the things I've discovered which make it work.

There are a couple of common misconceptions people tend to have:

Venting the oxygen out of every room but the cockpit, while hilarious, is NOT advisable. You will see the problem with this plan the moment that your engi crewman needs to rush back to repair the drone control. Additionally, if you are worried about fires or boarders then that's exactly what your drones are for; Repair drones are immune to fire damage (ie, basically rockmen who can move quickly), while endlessly respawning anti-personnel drones are going to stop any boarding party in their tracks.

Additionally, the idea that this or any ship will let you get away without crew is ludicrous. Yes, you will need to start building up your team eventually, and in fact it's not until you have a larger crew that the drones really start to shine What the onboard drones are good at is taking the pressure off. System repair drones are able to zip around, putting out dangerous fires or breeches and repairing the subsystems you are too busy to bother with while the anti-personnel drones stall boarding parties and prevent them from doing any damage, all while your actual crew remain glued to their terminals instead of having to run around reacting to every little problem.

As for actual strategy what seems to work best is to go for a defensive build. If you sell one of your repair drones then a combo of sysrepair+antipersonel+defense drone 1 will let you deal with pretty much any problem the game throws at you for extremely cheap (you will very rarely need to to have more than 1 or 2 drones running at the same time), freeing up a lot of power and upgrades to give to shields and weapons.


Unfortunately, the hardest part does tend to be the very start out as the first order of business will be trying to get ahold of some more firepower before you run into level 2 shields. Here are some things to keep in mind:
-The ion damage from your cannon lasts 10 seconds meaning that if you time it right you can get off two hits with the heavy laser for every one hit with the ion cannon. Aim for the weapons and you should have no problem against any 1-shield ships.
-if you need to, activate both sysrepair drones at once to deal with damage extremely quickly
-Your starting weapons are worth quite a bit compared to things like the red tail's lasers. I'm not really a big fan of the ion cannon so I tend to sell that first.
-Head for as many distress beacons as you can. Having a repair drone and an AP drone can net you a surprising amount of blue options there.

Good luck!

You don't seem a fan of venting O2, but at the very least it is good to upgrade the doors to rank 2 and vent some areas when you get invaded. The reality is that your AP drone dies pretty fast to 2+ invaders, *unless* it has the advantage of fighting in a vacuum.

What I really hate about this ship is how easily it gets boned by bad RNG early game. The lack of crew hurts, but it isn't the worst thing. It's the weapons. If one or the other misses, you do no damage. If they so much as graze your weapons system, you stop doing damage. It is just so easy early on to have a fight where stuff goes horribly wrong and you take 7+ hull damage, where as with the other ships the chances of that are much less (other than the equally awful Stealth B).

I enjoy venting until I get my crew built up. Three hits to drone control will be big trouble (half damage keeps one repair drone who can repair drone control), but it's worth not having boarders or fire be as serious a threat. When I get a second crew member, I air up shields, first aid and the connecting corridor. When I get a third, I air up weapons and that connecting corridor. When I get the engineer, I air up the whole thing.

But as a disclaimer, I've never beat the game, and I've only gotten to sector 8 with Engi B once. But my favorite part of it is fighting near suns with near impunity and watching boarders asphyxiate.

Another thing I find helpful early game with this stinker of a ship is to have your lone Engi man the guns, not the helm (once combat starts). Exception being something like solar flares, of course...where you don't get a free charge to your FTL drive after combat. Otherwise, it is better to lose your piddly 10% early game dodge and have your weapons charge faster *and* be in position to repair them asap if they take a hit. The 2nd crew member I get becomes the full time pilot.

Gaidren wrote:You don't seem a fan of venting O2, but at the very least it is good to upgrade the doors to rank 2 and vent some areas when you get invaded. The reality is that your AP drone dies pretty fast to 2+ invaders, *unless* it has the advantage of fighting in a vacuum.

What I really hate about this ship is how easily it gets boned by bad RNG early game. The lack of crew hurts, but it isn't the worst thing. It's the weapons. If one or the other misses, you do no damage. If they so much as graze your weapons system, you stop doing damage. It is just so easy early on to have a fight where stuff goes horribly wrong and you take 7+ hull damage, where as with the other ships the chances of that are much less (other than the equally awful Stealth B).

If they teleport into a room that can easily be vented then they don't stand a chance, especially if you send the AP drone in (heck, you wouldn't even need to leave it powered up). What you don't want to is vent a vital system room right before it takes a major hit. In other ships it tends to be a fairly risky maneuver, but with the drones you don't really need to worry about things like fires or boarders as much.
Yes, AP drones die pretty quickly to multiple opponents, as will a mantis or a rockman, but while the latter need to be rushed back to the medibay and waited on as they recover their health, if the drone dies you simply lose a drone part and can send another one in right away, thus preventing boarders from making any progress until you've crippled their mothership and are free to deal with them properly.

While I don't think the rng tends to be nearly as bad as you make it sound, I think it is true that some ships such as the Engi B and the Stealth B seem to be designed around the idea that an unlucky early game is preferable to an unlucky late game where you can't find the right weapons or drones you need for your strategy despite putting in so much time already.

You can leave all your doors open besides ones with crew(Obviously)

I attempted the Single Crew Member Challenge yesterday with this ship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw6a2OvIiFw
I didn't quite win, but I got close. Quite a few little tricks in there if you're interested in this ship.

I didn't knew repair drone takes no parts!

The Engi B was the first ship I reached the boss on Normal with it's a good ship but I find I spend so much on crew (if I don't get them in events) that I don't have much left to keep the ship going, plus I found you grow really attached to that Engi if he survives long enough. I replaced it with the fantastic Obsidian Cruiser and have not looked back.

Agent_L wrote:I didn't knew repair drone takes no parts!

It takes a part to start up the repair drone. You don't have to spend parts for the repair drone again until it's killed. The same is true for the anti-personnel drone. You can spin up a repair drone and an ap drone and switch power from one to the other without spending drone parts. They'll even heal in the drone bay when they're not charged, provided there is some power in the drone bay.

hborrg's tips make me rethink this a lot, as does Gaidren's suggestion to man the guns. It makes sense. Until you get an engineer, your dodge won't be great. Also, you need to hit with both guns in the same volly pretty soon, and the one advantage of the Engi B's nickel-and-dime combat style is it levels your gunner really fast, which is great if you have a gunner.

So I'd say another weapon would be top priority, followed by shields so you can survive a little longer sitting still. This ship is still more a challenge than anything else.