FTL

Oh, and one more thing: as far as I can tell, beam weapons do damage per room they cross, not per square. Crossing a room right down the diagonal doesn't appear to do any more damage than just touching a corner. So, for maximum damage, make sure your line touches as many rooms as possible.

And remember that the beams don't affect shields; if the shields are at 1 when you start firing, they'll be at 1 when you finish. I'm not sure whether shields can come up during a beam strike, but they're definitely not damaged by one.

Oh, I just started a new Engi run, and I literally took one hop and had someone hand me a fire beam. If anyone wants a copy of the save file, let me know. It'll be awhile before you can use the fire beam, because you'll need to expand your weapons and system power a bunch to get them both online at once, but that's a super effective combo.

I believe my sole purchase when I saved it was a single slot of main power.

I strongly recommend upgrading the Oxygen room in the mid-game, not really for the ability to regenerate oxygen faster (I almost never allocate the second power level) but so the room can survive two hits.

Malor wrote:

edit: the same trick works for missiles -- if they're detargeted after firing once, they'll just charge up and wait for a command. Missiles don't usually need timing, because they cut through shields, but an immediate detarget after firing means you won't waste any you don't intend to.

It can be useful to wait and launch a missile at the shield generator right before you are ready for the laser weapons.

Malor wrote:

And remember that the beams don't affect shields; if the shields are at 1 when you start firing, they'll be at 1 when you finish. I'm not sure whether shields can come up during a beam strike, but they're definitely not damaged by one.

I have had shields come up and cut off beam weapons.

Made it to the final sector!

But I made the mistake of bee lining it to each sector exit, well ahead of the rebels, so my ship was nowhere near as upgraded as it needed by the end. Seems like I'll need to manage my time/health/gas in a more nuanced way.

Since I made it so far on easy, though, I'm going to play at Normal from now on, as beating the game on easy wouldn't feel as satisfying. This game is so so good.

Malor wrote:

The difficulty curve is insane PERFECT in this game, and needs no adjustment. That last boss is overpowered beyond reason.

If this is were Nethack, you'd start at level 1, you'd have five minutes per level, and an inescapable Asmodeus would be on Level 10.

FTFY. Roguelikes need to be obscenely difficult, otherwise there's nothing to aspire towards

The difficulty curve is insane in this game, and needs adjustment. That last boss is overpowered beyond reason.

If this were Nethack, you'd start at level 1, you'd have five minutes per level, and an inescapable Asmodeus would be on Level 10.

This game is the Dungeonquest of computer games.

I friggin' love it!

Yeah... so. at 9pm I fired this up just to see what it was about... 6 hours later at 3am I'm finally logging off to go to bed. Hopefully the teething 7 month old baby will cooperate and let me sleep in on my Sunday morning.

Thanks for the advice. A boarding party just ended my last game. I look forward to your next article.

Once you're in a system, does it matter how long you spend there? Is the rebel fleet advancing all the time, or only when you jump?

What I'm really asking is should you repair every single thing and heal all crew to full after a tough fight, or is it important to keep moving?

Captain Baron's tactics for dealing with boarding parties

So what do you do when you got a bunch pirates beaming onto your ship? First don't try to be a hero. One man can't stand up to 10 mantis bastards. I always order my crew to group together and attacking as one. A closed fist hits harder than a single finger.

Ah but what do you do when you are hopelessly out number? Fall back to the Med Bay and open up all the doors and airlock. This has two obvious benefits. One if the attackers don't get to the Med Bay they will suffocate. You might be thinking that your crew will suffocate also. If you thought that solider you should go back to basic training. The Med Bay sends out enough oxygen to keep you alive. The second benefit is the med bay will heal you even when you are under attack. Two men can hold off an army of pirates in the med bay. The med bay computers will only heal crew members making it the perfect place to hold off the enemy.

Follow these rules and you'll have nothing to worry about from being boarded. Next week I'll tell you how to deal with a outbreak of space herpes.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

Once you're in a system, does it matter how long you spend there? Is the rebel fleet advancing all the time, or only when you jump?

What I'm really asking is should you repair every single thing and heal all crew to full after a tough fight, or is it important to keep moving?

I think your safe until you jump. I haven't had any issues staying and getting ship and crew back up to full yet.

Yeah the rebel fleet only advances when you jump.

Blind_Evil wrote:

If your oxygen room's on fire, are you pretty much boned? Everyone that went in to fix it died, game over. Such an ignominious end to the journey of the brave lady captain, CptDomano. >_>

(edit: thinking on it, shouldn't the lack of oxygen in there put the flame out?)

Obligatory "I wish this was on the 3DS eShop" comment. Actually, snark aside, this would make a pretty cool 3DS game.

Unless you vented the oxygen and/or turned the oxygen off there probably was oxygen in there.

If your oxygen room's on fire, are you pretty much boned? Everyone that went in to fix it died, game over. Such an ignominious end to the journey of the brave lady captain of the SS PCMasterRace, CptDomano. >_>

(edit: thinking on it, shouldn't the lack of oxygen in there put the flame out?)

Obligatory "I wish this was on the 3DS eShop" comment. Actually, snark aside, this would make a pretty cool 3DS game.

When your O2 system is broken and a fire rages in a room, you can see the oxygen level lowering faster than other areas. With enough time it can go out, but your crew will likely be dead by then.

Cool to see everyone digging on this game now that is has been released. Still considering on taking the plunge on this game. Sounds purty dope!

Just had my second time getting to the final sector, I had a really sweet, real beast of a ship. It was pretty amazing.

Spoiler:

Got to the flagship, not too bad, not bad at all. Blew off half of it, caught up to it again and WHAT THE f*ck?!

So bombs huh, bombs or boarders.

Anybody else find themselves wishing that this was how combat worked in Endless Space? Any given round of combat is only a few minutes at the most, and the upgrade mechanic wouldn't be that hard to turn into a tech tree (if you were doing it from scratch anyways, putting it in there now would probably be a bit of a nightmare from a programming stand point).

This is all just wishful thinking, but it's a nice dream.

Stupid moment of the day: I forgot to teleport my boarding party back to my ship before destroying the enemies ship with a Hermes missile. Doh!

So, I just beat the final boss (on Easy).

Using a Taurus, Full crew and an almost completely upgraded ship...

HantaXP wrote:

So, I just beat the final boss (on Easy).

Using a Taurus, Full crew and an almost completely upgraded ship...

I just upgraded to Normal even though I didn't manage to win on Easy (lost on the boss). Wow, the numbers are much, much smaller on Normal. 12 scrap? 12 SCRAP!?!?!!?

Just put in my first couple of games. I can already tell that this is going to be one of my favorite games in a long time.

Wohooo! Victory! I beat the boss using a Kestrel! I also got the achievement for having all types of alien in the second to last jump. Then the Engi was promptly eaten by a spider, DOH.

I did a run on Normal, how do they expect you to win like this? If harder enemies and less scrap are the ONLY differences, it just looks impossible.

Blind_Evil wrote:

If your oxygen room's on fire, are you pretty much boned? Everyone that went in to fix it died, game over. Such an ignominious end to the journey of the brave lady captain of the SS PCMasterRace, CptDomano. >_>

(edit: thinking on it, shouldn't the lack of oxygen in there put the flame out?)

Obligatory "I wish this was on the 3DS eShop" comment. Actually, snark aside, this would make a pretty cool 3DS game.

Just make sure your crew is safe and open up the airlocks and vent the portion of the ship that's on fire. It should go out in enough time to let you fix the room. If it's really dire, use the tip from above and park your team in the medbay and vent the rest of the ship, then when fires are out close all the doors and you can send members to fix the Oxygen room. You may have to shuffle crew but you should be able to fix things up.

Alternatively, Rock men are great for stomping out fires.

I've only been playing on Normal so far. I think it's time to show some humility and go to Easy. Too bad it doesn't log your stats out to plain text. Surprisingly my best run was in the HMS Quintin, with a score of 1297 in Sector 4. I thought I was going down in my second jump but managed to defeat the nasty automated ship that kept cloaking. My poor crew was huddled in the med bay while I opened up the entire ship as it was all in flames. Had a fairly strong run after that but at the 4th sector's exit I had a nasty guard and my wife decided to start talking to me about some health insurance stuff. Rather than wisely pause the game entirely, I tried to juggle the combat with the conversation. RIP HMS Quintin.

Why is your navy British? I suppose I should call mine the HMCS Icelus.

I have nooo idea how I'm supposed to beat the second form of the boss. Made it this time with a near-fully upgraded Engi ship, great drones and weapons, ace station operators, and a crew full of badass motherf*ckers ready to stomp anything that came aboard.

Cloaked to avoid the first big barrage, then got my muffin buttered 30 seconds later by endless beam and droid pummelings while my cloak was down. All I managed to accomplish was to slightly dent its droid system in that time. Woo.

Ah, turns out that ship just sucks. Got the stealth ship and won on cruise control.

I suck with the stealth ship and am good with the Engi ship. Probably just play style.