SPAZ - Space Pirates and Zombies (SPAZ2 EA on Steam!)

LiquidMantis wrote:

Maybe I just haven't played as far, but I've always just milked the missions to gain favor with the side the shop is on. I've done very little bribing.

That only works when such missions are on offer (I once found a small system that never seemed to offer missions for the civs) and if you only need favor with one of the factions (missions usually piss someone off).

BlackSabre wrote:

So what level do I need to be before I can take out a space station? Still have my tug and two turtleheads.

You can always give it a shot and see how it turns out. I'd recommend you start off with the small "outpost" stations. The Tug is about the worst medium ship you could use for that sort of thing so you might want to gain access to something with a little more firepower first. Once you get a large ship you should be able to handle those easily and wear down slightly larger ones if you fight smart. Large ships cost a lot to replace so you don't really want to fight a war of attrition.

LobsterMobster wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

Maybe I just haven't played as far, but I've always just milked the missions to gain favor with the side the shop is on. I've done very little bribing.

That only works when such missions are on offer (I once found a small system that never seemed to offer missions for the civs) and if you only need favor with one of the factions (missions usually piss someone off).

BlackSabre wrote:

So what level do I need to be before I can take out a space station? Still have my tug and two turtleheads.

You can always give it a shot and see how it turns out. I'd recommend you start off with the small "outpost" stations. The Tug is about the worst medium ship you could use for that sort of thing so you might want to gain access to something with a little more firepower first. Once you get a large ship you should be able to handle those easily and wear down slightly larger ones if you fight smart. Large ships cost a lot to replace so you don't really want to fight a war of attrition.

While there are probably better ships to go after outposts/spacestations, as I get more medium ships to use, I keep going back to the Tug for use in missions. Having upgraded missiles really helps this ship be quite useful. I tend to survive a lot more with this ship as I can continually attack with all my weapons regardless of facing and at further distances with missiles compared to other weapons I have. I still don't have any large ships, but I have about 4 models blueprints nearly complete after the rescue mission in the same system as the capacitor mission.

I destroyed an outpost (I'm pretty sure that's what it was) with a Tug, Turtlehead and Hatchet. This was before I picked up the Ranger. My attempts at anything more powerful are woefully fruitless and I get shredded almost instantly. Especially UTA bases with the extra drones. I'm guessing that's where subsystems or something comes in.

Point defense utilities will shoot down drones. The Hatchet is one of the worst small ships (it's great for harvesting rez and little else) but the Ranger's pretty good. There's also one called the Colt with five weapon mounts but I usually use two for boosters, one reactor and one for laser or cannon.

The Volley medium ship carries nothing but launchers but it's kind of rare. I didn't unlock it until after I had my first large ship.

The tug is a cargo ship. I only use it for rez mining.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

The tug is a cargo ship. I only use it for rez mining.

Me too, but it was my first medium ship too, and it's way better than any small ship.

Oh yeah, if it's all you've got in the medium class, then definitely use it.

The hangar gives you 3 builds for each ship class. The way I ended up using them was:
A) Highest cargo capacity hull, mining lasers, tractor beams.
B) Highest crew capacity hull, crew boosters, tractor beams.
C) Combat

When I'm low on rez, I go to a mining system, switch all ships to A, and just hang.

When low on crew, I head to a colony system and try to find a Cheap Hotel mission, then switch all ships to B and hang around the station until ships stop showing up.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

The tug is a cargo ship. I only use it for rez mining.

You say this, and I hear you, but my attempts at using the others has only gotten me shot to pieces.

I really do need to start using the 3 different builds per hanger thing.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

Turrets just auto aim right?

You can toggle that on or off.

Whoa. I need to try that.

I love my turrets but get annoyed at their auto-target sometimes, when I want to focus on a big ship, despite not toggling my target indicator. Just want them to shoot where I'm aiming, I know what I'm shooting at dammit.

I definitely prefer auto-turrets. The computer is a much better shot than me when using slow-firing cannon weapons. If I need to override it for whatever reason I just hit shift.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

The tug is a cargo ship. I only use it for rez mining.

I actually prefer it over the Bulldog because the missiles allow me to catch those irritating small ships that can outrun me all day.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Anyone know if there are any mods or anything out there to reduce the number of goons required for a bribe? At this stage in the game I can keep 150 extra, which is usually just enough for two bribes (increasingly often, only nearly enough for two). It kind of sucks having to spend a half hour per station harvesting enough goons to use their black market, especially when they attack my mothership the moment I show up. In those situations there's nothing I can do but fight back, which pisses them off, which means I'll need to spend even more goons on bribes.

Hey, civvies, UTA... how about you take MONEY as a bribe, instead of slaves? I'm not comfortable with this.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Irongut wrote:

I say bah humbug to bribing them for warpgate access. Just attack and take control. Keep all the goons and rez to yourself... right where they should be. ;)

Yeah, I do that too. It's buying blueprints that's the problem.

Agree that the costs are too high. It really just makes it so that you should force your way from gate to gate if you want to get anywhere fast. The sad thing is I stay at the goon cap most times, until I decide to bribe one or two things and then suddenly I'm broke and can't keep crew up on my ships.

What does help is rushing to the next story mothership upgrade point, where they increase your goon count from 250 to 500.

Also, you get the blueprints when you destroy a station. Granted, that's pretty tough if the station is rank 3. But for rank 0 and 1, you should be fine where you are now. And maybe rank 2 with a little luck. I know I was taking down rank 2s somewhere in the 40s level-wise, but just barely.

Have taken down a couple rank 3s now that I am in my mid-50s with a large ship, and 1 med wingman + the other small one.

Alright. Got 3 of the 5 huge ships today. Explored every sector in my galaxy. Which is funny since I set it to 150, but got the explore achievement with like 2 systems to go.

Also got all the upgrades and that achievement.

Now I'm still trying to hunt down pieces for the last two big ships before I continue with the story.

So far I'm enjoying the Carrier the most of the huge models. Only using 4 of the missile launchers, and cannon boosters for the rest, and one of the triple turret things.

Sadly I got the mass driver and it's reflected by shields? That sounds completely useless.

Anyway really enjoyed wiping out stations after I got the huge ship. Also my small ship feels so useless lately that I have just stopped building it. Felt like a bigget drain on my resources than a benefit in helping me fight. And lastly, I'm so stupid for not keeping a tractor beam on my ship earlier. I finally felt like I had an extra spot with the huge ship, and now I'm staying at max rez/goons pretty much all the time, when earlier I was sometimes coming up short.

From what I understand the Mass Driver will obliterate anything once you get the shields down.

It goes right through armour and the anti-shield cannons are ridiculously powerful. (and stun!)

Cannons really made me feel overpowered which is why I'm sticking to beams this time around.

Stele wrote:

Also my small ship feels so useless lately that I have just stopped building it. Felt like a bigget drain on my resources than a benefit in helping me fight.

Small Buses are free, just set it to use zero crew and you have a distraction that doesn't cost you anything if it gets destroyed. And with later tech engines and shields it will actually last quite awhile.

Yonder wrote:
Stele wrote:

Also my small ship feels so useless lately that I have just stopped building it. Felt like a bigget drain on my resources than a benefit in helping me fight.

Small Buses are free, just set it to use zero crew and you have a distraction that doesn't cost you anything if it gets destroyed. And with later tech engines and shields it will actually last quite awhile.

Oh thank you! Excellent idea. I could even let that pick up most of the rez and put in another booster instead of my own tractor beam.

Put a cloak on your smallest ship and give it missile launchers.

Having a small ship mounting gravity missiles is VERY helpful. Even if it doesn't do much damage, they can easily chase down other small ships and hold them in place.

I tend to use the smallest ship for shield-busting weapons like beams or the energy cannon. If it does get destroyed, the non-optimal weapons will still punch through shields eventually; and so long as it survives, everything dies that much quicker.

Stele wrote:
Yonder wrote:
Stele wrote:

Also my small ship feels so useless lately that I have just stopped building it. Felt like a bigget drain on my resources than a benefit in helping me fight.

Small Buses are free, just set it to use zero crew and you have a distraction that doesn't cost you anything if it gets destroyed. And with later tech engines and shields it will actually last quite awhile.

Oh thank you! Excellent idea. I could even let that pick up most of the rez and put in another booster instead of my own tractor beam. ;)

I don't think the small bus can pick up more than like 15 rez at a time, so I'm not sure how well that will work out for you.

Yeah I'll tinker around. So far the bus is just a good target and not much more.

Reached the "point of no return" new story chapter tonight...

Spoiler:

Holy crap! Like the whole game has changed now. My captain is a zombie. And we have this crazy new mothership. And now everyone is our friend and we're gathering fleets and building them up... us against them, humans vs zombies!

Fun stuff.

Yeah, it's a great damn game. Very happy with the purchase.

I see that others are arriving at the same conclusions I did re:cannons. But there's at least one more trick that I haven't heard anyone mention yet that let me beat enemies that far, far outclassed me otherwise. I'm gonna stick with my 'no spoilers!' policy for now, but maybe I'll spoiler-tag the strategy if nobody else mentions it in the next week or two.

When I first got to Stage 3 of the game, I had barely any rez, and I'd burned almost all my crew -- pushing forward from there was really, really hard.

Spoiler:

The first colony planet was three hops away, and no crew makes it very hard to fight zombies. My shield tech wasn't up to run and gun yet. Fighting through the three planets without crew would have been a miserable, miserable slog.

This was where I first deployed The Trick, and it saved my bacon.

Took out my first level 3 station! I had the right hook and two colts. Felt like those shield were the worst part. Once I got those down, the cannons ripped through it.

What a really fun game.

I hit a wall in the final chapter.

Spoiler:

I completed the last "mission" and was told I could head to the final battle. But I thought I'd make a run at the 'free all sectors from zombies" achievement while I was here. So I went around to a couple sectors and got to the next mothership attack event. And now I've lost the mothership 3 times.

The last time I even went in and switched back to my old all-cannon setup and still can't take them down. I had been trying those strong vs shields cannons for front guns and mass drivers on the turret. But neither way seems to work. Mothership gets hammered, and I can't even get in the way and take shots for it. The zombie huge ships just park right on top of my ship and wail on it. :(

Advice from those who have beat the game? Should I give up on the achievement chasing and just back up a save and win? Is there a better setup for zombies? I wanted to get the no respec achievement too, but at this point I'm willing to switch things around a bit.

I'd go ahead and win, then go back to the save file and see if you can make it all the way around.

Have you tried fusion beams? If they're that close, their short range shouldn't be an issue.

Well, I think they've changed it a bit in recent patches, but, some tactical spoilers:

Spoiler:

Cannons were always very good for zombies, since they didn't have shields. I think zombied human ships now raise their shields when they didn't before, so this is less true.

Other things to try: leech beams, and bombers.

I haven't run into your specific problem, I never really had a problem stopping the mothership attacks, but in my saved game I'm like Level 165.

Yeah I'm level... 108 or so? And about 10 systems cleared on the final chapter.

I haven't tried beams in forever, since I switched to cannons. Guess it's worth a shot, but I stopped leveling them at 6.

Yeah I was running with straight mass drivers, but you are correct, zombie-taken-over ships now raise shields, so I had to toss in those other cannons on my main guns to knock down cannons. Was working pretty well, although I still lose way too many ships to zombie take-over. I started raising my crew level to deal with that. But maybe I should be raising my aux thing and equipping more point defense?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I'd go ahead and win, then go back to the save file and see if you can make it all the way around.

That's actually what I thought of after I made my post. That way I finish the game, and get the no respec achievement. Then I can go back, tinker, respec, and take my shot at 100% clear.

Point defense is important to prevent your ships from getting infected. That and raising your crew percentage.

I actually never bothered with Point Defenses. I had some beam or another that I used on a turret to sweep the areas around me for zombies now and again. The lack of point defense on the AI ships did lead to them getting zombified now and again, but the larger ones were still able to fend for themselves, and the small swarm of Zombie Short Buses that sometimes developed by the end of the mission were amusing.

How can you tell if it's a tier 1, 2 or 3 level star base?

BlackSabre wrote:

How can you tell if it's a tier 1, 2 or 3 level star base?

When you look at the system map or the galaxy map and highlight a system, there's a UTA/Civ rank of 0, 1, 2, or 3 out of 3.