Subset Games Forum

After playing dozens of games and never getting past the 6th world, I've finally combined enough game competence with a little bit of luck, got to the final world, and easily defeated the main bosses first form. Since I had never gotten close to the boss before I had not been designing my ship specifically to take it on. Nevertheless I had no problem taking out the bosses first form and if its third form is a mass boarding, I shouldn't have any problem taking that on either. However, I just tried to take the boss's 2nd form and I think that I may be stuck. Please take a look at my ship and equipment and see if there's any strategy that has a hope against the 2nd form:

Ship: Kestrel
Shields: triple (6bars)
Engines: 5 bars (45% evade with 2-star crew on engines and piloting)
Oxygen: 1 bar
Medical: 1 bar
Weapons: 6 bars
Drones: 2 bars

8 Crew Members, with a member at 2 stars for every system

Weapons:
-Burst Laser II (3 lasers, 1 damage each)
-Hull Smasher Laser II (3 Lasers, 1 damage each, double damage on systemless rooms)
-Artemis Missile (2 Damage)

Drones:
-Defense 1
-Hull Repair

Energy: Enough to run my shields, engines, O2, and weapons at full plus 1 drone

So taking out the first form was easy. A missile to their shield room, then the Burst Laser aimed at their shield room to wear down the remaining shields and if very lucky strike another hit on the shields, and then the Hull Laser on a systemless room to deal the damage. Between 45% evasion, the defense drone, and triple shields, I hardly took any damage. I imagine that the third form would also be very easy with 8 crew members on a kestrel where I could dump the air out of the rear 2/3 of the ship and mass my guys in my medbay and shield room, switching people into the medbay as needed to recuperate health.

However, I just tried beating the 2nd form and its not looking good. The defense drones (they might have 2?) shoot down my missiles and my lasers don't seem powerful enough to drop their quadruple shields and deal any damage.

Is there any way I can win? If I get lucky and I am able to damage their drone control a little, will it take their defense drones offline or just 1 or 2 or their attack drones?

No Teleporter or Cloak and only 3x Shields? You're gonna struggle, with no effective way of dodging the drone swarm or taking out the missile launcher.

If you're lucky you might be able to get a few decent hits with your lasers on their shields and then just brute-force the boss down with your Hull Laser, but I doubt you'll be able to survive more than a couple of full-duration drone swarms. Your shields will evaporate during the drone swarm, and if you're unlucky and they hit your shields or piloting/engines, you're gonna get shredded.

Give it a shot I guess, I'd be impressed if you make it.

I haven't been able to face the 2nd phase without bombs, to bypass the defense drone.

The problem with the second stage of the boss is all those beam drones. If your shields go down for a moment they are going to carve you up within seconds flat.

However, if you are lucky then the drones might not be able to get through your shields on their own, which means that your only chance might be to focus your fire on the boss's burst laser and pray that none of the missiles manages to hit your shields (or at least have crew on hand to bring them back up the instant they go down). If you somehow get their lasers red then attack the missile launcher and alternate from there.

The only way to win this one is to focus all of your firepower on the drone control. Your lasers won't do much when that shield is up and that defense drone will shoot down any missile that goes near it.
Just pray that 1 or 2 missiles can make it past before your ship takes too much damage.

I suggest grabbing an ion weapon or two next time around. Those laser weapons you have right now require a lot of power that you could be putting into something else.

Focus Fire your Burst Laser and Hull Smasher on the enemy drone control, enough to knock out the defense drone. Once done, you can launch missiles at their tripplie missile launcher and have the BL and HS focus on the shield generator.

Good luck, it will be tough!

You might be able to out last them since you have a hull repair drone just make sure you keep your self topped off and drop power from your med bay and life support during swarms to keep your engines at full power if you have to.

Tough fight but it might be do able. Don't waste your hull smashers on systed rooms go for systemless for max damage because its going to be a race.

One Crewmember with 2 Stars at all Systems? And the Others???
Thats a Huge waist.
Specialize different Crewmembers to the Systems. Otherwise u will never get the Boni when ur using the Systems.