Beacon 1 (69)
Now it's all about scrap so I'm going to follow the ships and not care about stores. We'll need to visit one for the "Tough little ship" achievement but that will be either at the end of the sector or in the next one.
Also finally upgraded power a little since it will be needed for the weapons and will make the fights slightly more comfortable in the meantime.
Beacon 2 (70)
Forgot to bring back the weapons guy
Still, if hack shields and cloak the first laser this will give the halbert an extra 5 seconds and they should die before the other weapons can fire.
They boarded weapons but everything is under control.
Quick and dirty but there is a nearby sun so we better get out of here asap.
Beacon 3 (71)
Very low on drone parts and will try not to hack to save. Wait for the missile to fire, then mind control the pilot to help the BL2 break the shield, and halbert from weapons to medbay. Hopefully this takes the missile offline and puts the engines mantis on the repair.
Perfect except I dropped the shield a moment too late because the mini-beam was firing and gave the missile a 5% chance to hit - luckily it didn't. But you can see the missile launcher is now offline and the mantis is heading to weapons while the engi will go to repair the engine.
Later they boarded with the engi and I should have been able to crew kill but messed it up and the ship got destroyed instead.
Beacon 4 (72)
Bad things can happen here but we have time so I'll try not to hack again. I need only one of the 3 BL2 shots to hit for the halbert to do damage, so I'll wait with the mind control and get the engi when it starts to repair weapons. Meanwhile I'll be venting the boarders but there is no pressure with them either.
Objective 1 complete. I mind controlled the engi just before it entered weapons, and the mantis was already there on its way to oxygen.
The engi is dead and the halbert is about to damage/destroy medbay. I then used two fire bombs to make sure I don't mess up the crew kill again. The reward was only 31 scrap but also 3 fuel and 1 drone part which are sorely needed so I won't complain.
Beacon 7 (75)
Two dummy beacons followed by this easy fight. Wait for the BL3 to fire and cloak. Then halbert weapons-medbay-oxygen while walking the pilot to sensors and mind control the engi as it passes through weapons.
Breach in weapons and two mantises vs an engi - gg and crew kill but it was again a lowly reward of 36 scrap.
Beacon 8 (76)
This is the mantis ship collector so it's either high scrap now or high scrap plus a rerollable weapon at a later beacon. We don't need a weapon and have LRS to get the high value beacons so I'd rather take the scrap now and not risk the quest ending up in an inconvenient or inaccessible place.
Wait for the missile to fire, cloak, and then mind control the pilot and halbert the weapons.
The stun bomb hit my weapons so I couldn't take the missile offline immediately but it was breach which is trivial to handle because it recharges slower than the cloak. However, I mistimed a venting and the boarders did one hull damage.
I have 120 scrap and was tempted to upgrade weapons or shields especially since the next beacon is in an asteroid field, but decided to get just one power bar and keep most of it for the "Tough little ship" achievement (repair from 1 hp to full). I haven't seen any stores in this sector yet so there must be at least one ahead, and all but one of the remaining beacons are easy to visit. Whereas the stores in the next sector could be in a bad place and I'd much rather just focus on gathering scrap than having to search for a store.
Beacon 9 (77)
Auto ship with fairly powerful guns and cloaking. 3rd shield would definitely have been good but cloaking can save us once, then hack shields, halbert piloting which can't be more than level 2 and will certainly be disabled, and the laser will finish them off.
The first laser took both shields down so I cloaked to safely recharge because for some reason I thought the halbert was close to firing. Ended up taking two damage, which fortunately wasn't in weapons.
At least my hacking timing is good even though it was still eye-stimated, and they are dead in one.
Beacon 10 (78)
Forgot again to move the weapons guy back. The auto ship is escaping so hack shields, halbert from piloting to drones, and if piloting is still up fire the hull laser into it to prevent them from escaping, otherwise into weapons. We should be fine as we can get damaged only when the BL2 fires, but the first time I can cloak it and then the halbert should take it offline.
Just as planned and without piloting they are dead with the next strike.
And here is the store. Can't get to it without diving, but we get to visit two extra beacons this time as well.
Beacon 13 (81)
The exit beacon gave us a hermes missile to sell, and the distress was the escort civilians quest. We are now in the store and it's time for the fire bomb to fulfill its purpose.
We burned down the ship
I also used the opportunity to train the guys to become masters in repair.
All repaired and ready to dive. Piloting and engines are pre-vented to flush boarders and I stocked up on fuel and drone parts with the remaining scrap so we don't have to visit another store.
Beacon X (exit dive)
The boarders can fight each other while suffocating, and with cloaking and hacked weapons we are completely safe.
Since it's still all about getting scrap and we have LRS, I'll definitely go with the nebula. It's not ideal that we can't mind control the slugs and that our second laser is not yet online, but we are only one step from weapons-8 and hacking will see us through.
I have to agree with T-Hawk though, I would not circle back that many jumps to purchase Cloaking in Sector 5; it's even debatable if Cloaking is worth the 150 scrap cost before Sector 6 or 7 because the expense is so great for the early portions of the game. I would also suggest putting more emphasis on shield and engine upgrades earlier since running around with Level 4 shields and Level 2 (!) engines in Sector 5 is very dangerous. This run also spent 75 scrap on a largely-unnecessary Mind Control, plus spent scrap on weapons that the Kestrel was nowhere close to having enough power to run, and took the "Manually search the wreckage" gamble that could have lost a crewmember. It's working out just fine here but this is a pretty good RNG run and these are risky choices when trying to compile a win streak.
