Asteroid Field Hate

[tiberiansun371alexw]

Why does it seem like a lot of players hate asteroid fields? 4 Ships start with no working shield systems, so you don't want to be in one of those in an asteroid field. But it's not uncommon for me to watch a stream and someone groan when his Kestrel A, Mantis C, or Crystal A fights a pirate in an asteroid field before the pirate fired his weapons. It's not nearly as bad as the reactions I see when someone flies their Zoltan B there (for good reason), but the annoyance appears to be across multiple players.

[Arpente Reves]

Early asteroid fields are really painful for obvious reasons
Mid game asteroid fields are usually pretty bad because most of the time you will be short on ressources or can't afford to take damages
End game asteroid fields are terrible because the ennemy get more advanced techs, so more possibilites to get your shield down

[tiberiansun371alexw]

Originally posted by Arpente Reves:

Early asteroid fields are really painful for obvious reasons

When the enemies shoot at you, the asteroids alone very rarely hurt a shielded ship. True they can get in after the enemy fires their volley, but this is a mutual disadvantage early game when you might be up against something like a basic laser and a leto for example.

[Arpente Reves]

Originally posted by tiberiansun371alexw:

Originally posted by Arpente Reves:

Early asteroid fields are really painful for obvious reasons

When the enemies shoot at you, the asteroids alone very rarely hurt a shielded ship. True they can get in after the enemy fires their volley, but this is a mutual disadvantage early game when you might be up against something like a basic laser and a leto for example.

Yeah but still, you don't want to get the RNG and lose way too much HP for almost nothing

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by tiberiansun371alexw:

Why does it seem like a lot of players hate asteroid fields? 4 Ships start with no working shield systems, so you don't want to be in one of those in an asteroid field. But it's not uncommon for me to watch a stream and someone groan when his Kestrel A, Mantis C, or Crystal A fights a pirate in an asteroid field before the pirate fired his weapons. It's not nearly as bad as the reactions I see when someone flies their Zoltan B there (for good reason), but the annoyance appears to be across multiple players.

They're annoying, but generally, the worst environmental hazard is pulsars. There are exceptions like Zoltan ships where you can literally just immunize your shields by moving crew in there, and on top of that, your crew-based power is immune to the pulsar effect in general. So with certain ships, you can be fairly certain the pulsar effect is going to be much worse on the enemy than you. But in general, pulsars are terrible and random.

[tiberiansun371alexw]

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

They're annoying, but generally, the worst environmental hazard is pulsars.

It's very easy to understand why when watching someone they get frustrated with a pulsar. But asteroids? That's really only a headache for 4 ships most of the time.

[gambit]

Uncertainity.
If we ignore ships that dont have shields, where it is big problem.
Every other hazard you know what to do at the beginning, and all the way to end od fight. There are conters and priorities.
But for asteroid field you will probably take some damage, because you lose shield bubble at random times.
This is obviously troubling at beginning of run and with bad starts, and is not at all problem later in the run.

[Maya-Neko]

Always remember: Your playstyle is not the only one out there. Just because you've no problems with it doesn't mean, that that's true for everyone

I'm one of those players who try to upgrade the shields as late as possible, because i rather want to get my hands on some specific rooms, crew members or weapons early on rather than upgrades, which are always buyable and i'm willing to trade some hull hp for it on normal fights, as long as the enemy ships are still weak enough to barely penetrate a 1-point shield.

That pretty much leads to some quite frustrating situations, where asteroid fields might cause like 10+ damage, if the enemy weapons doesn't fit what my ship is capable of at this time. That's at least where my frustration comes from when entering these hazards in the early game.

[Mike]

A bad asteroid field fight in sector 1 could result in a forced loss. For example:

Combat drone + double Heavy Laser in asteroids is incredibly dangerous when you have only one shield. And they might even have hacking as well...

I can control almost any situation in FTL enough to survive and then win. But an early jump like that? There's only so much I can do. With some bad luck, I'm doomed.

[tiberiansun371alexw]

Originally posted by gambit:

But for asteroid field you will probably take some damage,

Actually even in Sector 1 I rarely take damage from them. Maybe 1/7 times I take damage from them that I wouldn't have otherwise like when the enemy pops my shield room or when their laser comes in after an asteorid removes my shields. Sometimes I take 1 extra damage, sometimes I take catastrophic damage, but usually I'm no worse off.

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

I'm one of those players who try to upgrade the shields as late as possible

I'm often getting my second shield bubble at the end of Sector 4 too! Unless the stores have ♥♥♥♥. No Burst Laser II, no hacking, no Engi crew, etc... ok I'm buying ship upgrades.

Originally posted by Mike:

A bad asteroid field fight in sector 1 could result in a forced loss. For example:

Combat drone + double Heavy Laser in asteroids is incredibly dangerous when you have only one shield. And they might even have hacking as well...

Never saw a fight like that, although you can end up with a nasty one like that.

This is one of those times I did take damage from them and it was catastrophic.

I did end up with a forced loss in an early asteroid field though. I got 3 (!) weapon rewards to sell in a Kestrel A run before my first store. I sold them to buy a Cloaking system, Engines-3, and Medbay-2. Then I faced off against a Disruptor with a Leto and Basic laser. Hacking landed on my shields system, but I was able to dodge all the first asteorids and the combat drone. "Not a problem!" I thought except I forgot to cloak the Leto and it hit and created a breach in piloting. I cloaked the basic laser, but it hit Sensors anyways. My own shots were able to get a single laser hit to their drone room and the Artemis missed their shield room (I should have aimed at hacking but whatever). Oh wait, the piloting is suffocating, I forgot to turn the O2 on. Ok, Engines guy, stop trying to break into the shield room and get to fix the breach while the pilot fixes himself up. Oh the combat drone hit medbay and almost killed the pilot, he's at 3 HP and the Medbay is on fire, no problem we can put out the fire. Ok fire it out. Ah damn, weapons room took a hit from the combat drone. Their drone control is repaired. Ok, let's fix that breach in piloting. Here comes a Leto, oh it hit the shield room and caused a breach. Good thing we have a sheilds-3. Ok let's retaliate. Fire away. Ok we shut down their drone again. Fix piloting or the breach in the shield room? Let's try to fix the shield room breach, use my lasers to knock out their hacking, and get a manning bonus for the shields. Oh joy, here comes a Leto. A hit to the engines and yet another hull breach. You know what, just fix piloting. Cloaking is ready. But we forgot it existed after the first time we used it, so let's eat that basic laser. It hit weapons again. Ok piloting is fixed and our Burst Laser is ready. Let's aim for their weapons system. Ok, we got rid of the Leto, but not the basic laser. Their drone system is yellow about to be green, but at least it will aim for empty rooms right? Ok, taking a hit to oxygen isn't ideal, but at least we can keep shooting. Our weapons is fully repaired, should we do something about their hacking? After all this I ended up with 1 hull and the store was consumed by the fleet, so I jumped. I killed 3 ships before I was blow up by a rigger. The idotic thing was that I just saw "rigger with only basic laser, no I won't take your bribe."

[gambit]

It's probably different playstyles, because in sector 1 I take damage in asteroid field more than not( not from asteroid itself, but from combo with enemy offence), and almost never take damage from pulsars.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

That pretty much leads to some quite frustrating situations, where asteroid fields might cause like 10+ damage, if the enemy weapons doesn't fit what my ship is capable of at this time. That's at least where my frustration comes from when entering these hazards in the early game.

That's exactly the problem. By not spending that 50 scrap, you can often lose a lot more than 50 scrap. Now you can't afford your Crew Teleporter or whatever, and on top of that you still just have one shield.

This is why you're deliberately choosing a sub-optimal strategy (in most cases) by not getting the shields. I will often put it off for a couple beacons if there's a store in sight, because sometimes a particularly great item like a BL II is worth putting it off for, but you should only do this if you're not already struggling.

I'm not disagreeing with you in that sometimes it actually is okay to put it off for a while, but it's almost always at least gambling not to go for it.

[tiberiansun371alexw]

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

That's exactly the problem. By not spending that 50 scrap, you can often lose a lot more than 50 scrap. Now you can't afford your Crew Teleporter or whatever, and on top of that you still just have one shield.

Well I'm usually fine with asteroids with one shield, I don't know why he's having problems. I've gotten unlucky before in one case taking over 15 damage, but most of the time zero asteroids hit me.

[Commisar Jon Fuklaw]

I hate asteroid fields because of their tendency to blow ships up that I am trying to de-crew. If you can ignore that, asteroid fields is good people.