That early damage cascade on Zoltan C was really unfortunate. The ridiculous burst laser setup was a final nail but it started back on the scrap loss from the bad early fights. Take the situation vs 2 anti-drones - if you had 2 shield layers that's a free (albeit very slow and painful) win, but it's hard to get there when you have clone bay + doors shot out for ages.
A useful trick regarding offensive drones: if you depower a drone when enemy anti-drone shoots it, the shot can't destroy your drone. With some tedious power toggling micro you can actually do some damage with offensive drones against enemy anti-drones without melting your drone parts away. It's similar to the hacking trick, except for the part about missing hacking because it's better by a wide margin. Still, have to squeeze whatever you can with low tier ships sometimes.
For Zoltan C I recommend moving shield guy to drones rather than engines. This lets you depower oxygen to use both charge ion + beam drone w/o battery, saving battery for when you need shields (can power oxygen again at that point too). IMO this is usually worth the 5% evade hit. Anyway obligatory picture to induce disgust
https://i.imgur.com/TnRxwTw.jpg
The phallic ships just aren't very fun to play, but interesting writeups for them all the same! Some of the B ship unlocks are pretty annoying on hard. In particular taking intentional damage on Kestrel A, getting Rock B at all, "tactical approach" on stealth, and actually hoarding so much scrap on Lanius are pretty impractical, leaving some annoying or RNG alternatives instead. If I reset my account I'd expect to take a few losses on ship unlocks, and I'm never going to bother doing the crystal quest via stasis pod. Much better to unlock Crystal by winning, and I've been there by having a random crystal crew on Rock C and Crystal A, good enough for me.
A useful trick regarding offensive drones: if you depower a drone when enemy anti-drone shoots it, the shot can't destroy your drone. With some tedious power toggling micro you can actually do some damage with offensive drones against enemy anti-drones without melting your drone parts away. It's similar to the hacking trick, except for the part about missing hacking because it's better by a wide margin. Still, have to squeeze whatever you can with low tier ships sometimes.
For Zoltan C I recommend moving shield guy to drones rather than engines. This lets you depower oxygen to use both charge ion + beam drone w/o battery, saving battery for when you need shields (can power oxygen again at that point too). IMO this is usually worth the 5% evade hit. Anyway obligatory picture to induce disgust
https://i.imgur.com/TnRxwTw.jpgThe phallic ships just aren't very fun to play, but interesting writeups for them all the same! Some of the B ship unlocks are pretty annoying on hard. In particular taking intentional damage on Kestrel A, getting Rock B at all, "tactical approach" on stealth, and actually hoarding so much scrap on Lanius are pretty impractical, leaving some annoying or RNG alternatives instead. If I reset my account I'd expect to take a few losses on ship unlocks, and I'm never going to bother doing the crystal quest via stasis pod. Much better to unlock Crystal by winning, and I've been there by having a random crystal crew on Rock C and Crystal A, good enough for me.