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Sian Wrote:My highest score is 4010 (another Red Tail win), in which game i managed to run out of things to buy that would actually be remotely usefull (found 2320 Scrap, never used Drones and Cloaking)
Cloaking's hard to use; I find it's often skippable. If you're cheap about what you buy at the stores (i.e., little fuel and no missiles/drones), 2000 can be plenty.
My best are:
4546 (Red-Tail Normal)
4350 (Nesasio (Engi Stealth) on Easy, and that was a loss to the boss: went boarding-heavy with cloak/shielding for defense)
I'm sure someone trying to maximize score (Mantis Ship going max-boarding?) can get well into 5000.
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I finally beat it on Normal with a score of 4085. The Type B Zoltan Cruiser is a frigging beast.
For some reason whenever I go far with Zoltan, I can never seem to find stores. I ended up with a nearly fully upgraded engine/shield/weapons set but I only had a blaster 3, blaster 1, and starting ion cannon. I manage to snap a drone control with a hull repair drone on the way. The hull repair drone proved to be much more useful than I thought (handily beats the the repair arm) but never got a cloak or anything like that.
It seems like you can win with high dodge, tons of shields and having just enough blaster shots to penetrate the shield. Cloaking is not really required. The key seems to be taking out the missile weapons control ASAP.
I'm curious what is the lowest score you can beat it with.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
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My Kestral run I mentioned earlier scored 4816.
Blog | EitB | PF2 | PBEM 37 | PBEM 45G | RBDG1
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Second run. Almost killed the flagship. 3708points.
mh
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mostly_harmless Wrote:Almost killed the flagship.
Story of my life.
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Second win, first with the Kestrel A. Score 4320, which sounds good although I have no idea how it's calculated.
It was on Normal difficulty, although the game kind of served up easy mode for me. Bought a second Burst Laser II in sector 3, and then in sector 5, the game handed me a GLAIVE BEAM! And then I bought stealth at a store and upgraded it. So every fight was to cloak in response to the first enemy salvo, and by the time we came back, the BL2 dropped the shields and the Glaive Beam wrecked the world.
(Glaive Beam 101: It's 4 power, 25 second charge time, and deals 3 damage to up to five enemy rooms depending on the ship layout. It can one-hit many ships up to sector 7 if the shield is down. If it doesn't kill, it blows up several systems and you have an easy mop-up from there.)
For sector 8 I upgraded weapons all the way, to use both Burst Laser IIs and the Glaive together. Never upgraded shields beyond 2 bars. I really got the hang of micromanaging drones: there's no reason to go above 2 power on the drone system, since you can pause and switch on your defense drone whenever an enemy missile launches. Finally, a Hull Repair Drone was super convenient for easy repairs between fights late in the game. (3-5 units of repair for a $8 drone part is always a better deal than the usual $3 per unit, but more importantly it can heal between boss fights without needing to find one of those repair nodes, which are terribly hard to reach at the right times.)
The boss went down the same way: cloak in response to all big attacks, drop the shields with double BL2, and wreck their world with the Glaive.
Trying the Stealth ship now and getting the hang of that one too. It starts without shields; I was actually kind of disappointed to see it can buy shields at shops rather than being challenged to go the whole game without them.
October 14th, 2012, 04:05
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So what's the current lowest score with a win on normal?
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
October 14th, 2012, 05:12
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Still on easy trying to finally unlock the stealth and crystal ships
October 14th, 2012, 11:58
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I had a game, where in sector 2 I got a level two shield and that ion cannon with a 4sec cool down.
Got into a fight with a pirate of sort which only had a laser, that could only bring down on shield ring.
Managed to get my full crew of 6 maxed out on engines, piloting, weapons and shields. I only kept firing the ion cannon. Each shot giving one XP for weapon guy. The ion cannon does not damage the other ship, so you have no risk to end the fight early. Every time they fired, they either brought my shield down, one ring (1XP for the shield guy) or I dodged (1XP each to engines and piloting).
Of course that takes quite a while. Leave it running while doing something else.
But you basically get into sector 3 with all the XP you ever need and redundancy by having multiple experts for each station.
A bit exploitive, I admit.
mh
October 14th, 2012, 17:15
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Killer awesome run with the Crystal ship today. 5318 score, which is about as high as it can go without intentionally milking. (After the Rebels take a sector, jump around behind Rebel lines killing extra ships.) I got the teleporter insanely early, on like my fourth beacon jump, then added a Mantis guy and boarded everything. The Crystal crew lockdown ability means trivially easy kills during boarding, since you don't have to worry about taking out the med bay, just lockdown the room right before the injured victim would run. Collected 2200+ scrap on the game, and actually ran out of things to buy (not all systems maxed, but reactor maxed so couldn't power anything else anyway.)
I used the boss to get the achievement for lockdowning a room with four enemy crew inside, since it has a four-square med bay. I took out three of its weapons as usual to get unlimited time to play with (the remaining 3-shot hull laser could never pierce my 3 shields.) Then just teleported two pairs of attackers into its med bay, and the AI sent four crew members to fight them. Bingo, achievement. Of course, three of the four crew got killed before the teleporter recycled again to get them out, hah. But I still had unlimited time to kill off the remaining crew one by one so that the last two boss fights remained easy.
(October 14th, 2012, 11:58)mostly_harmless Wrote: Managed to get my full crew of 6 maxed out on engines, piloting, weapons and shields. I only kept firing the ion cannon. Each shot giving one XP for weapon guy. The ion cannon does not damage the other ship, so you have no risk to end the fight early. Every time they fired, they either brought my shield down, one ring (1XP for the shield guy) or I dodged (1XP each to engines and piloting).
Of course that takes quite a while. Leave it running while doing something else.
Yeah, crew XP farming is a standard tactic. Usually sometime within the first four sectors you'll find some ship that can't pierce your shields. Plasma storm fights in nebulas are great for this, since the enemy will have fewer weapons and you can put max power into shields. So just sit there, depowering and recharging your shields, and waiting for missed shots to level up your evade. With any weapon that can avoid piercing enemy shields (ion, beam, or just a smaller gun than they have shields), you can max out weapon skill too.
I never bother maxing more than one skill per crew member though; that's about my limit of patience for milking. 
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