The Last Stand

[War Bear]

For the two years the game has been out I've made it to last stand exactly 7 times, 5 of these times I've managed to a collect a surplus of missiles, massively upgraded shields/wepon systems (almost always maxed sheilds and just enough power to fire what ever I had), and a full crew. All this and only once have I EVER survived the first stage only to be imediately crushed by the godlike (insert system name here) of the flagship. Are the devolpers really so cruel as to make a boss this so redicously powerful? Or are they just so clever as to add a weakness that I fail to notice?

P.S. I know the ship breaks apart after each phase, and I know it's possible to win.

[War Bear]

I should also point out that the only time I've managed to make it past the first phase was on easy, and right after that playthrough (still on easy) I was killed instantly by the flagship.

[slappy_d0]

No, you're the guy. I remember during the kickstarter that they said they would pick one guy that will never win, thus proving it a proper RNG brutilizer. They said that they would wait until he would post on steam and then release the truth of the universe!

Yeah, jk, i've obviously got too much time on my hands... The answer is YES the devs are just that cruel. You have to spend a lot of time and detail to win. VERY detailed attention to even more detail.

Hope this helps.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by War Weazel:

Or are they just so clever as to add a weakness that I fail to notice?

P.S. I know the ship breaks apart after each phase, and I know it's possible to win.

tactics. plan your upgrades for fighting the flagship. take out its missiles asap. make sure you can deal 5 damage a volly. the more evade and shields you have, the better.

[Dr. McWeazel]

Originally posted by DOCTOR GORI:

Originally posted by War Weazel:

Or are they just so clever as to add a weakness that I fail to notice?

P.S. I know the ship breaks apart after each phase, and I know it's possible to win.

tactics. plan your upgrades for fighting the flagship. take out its missiles asap. make sure you can deal 5 damage a volly. the more evade and shields you have, the better.

Unless you're talking Ion damage, 5 damage per volley isn't gonna be near enough. You need to make sure you have at least 8 damage per volley, such that your shots can actually get through and maybe hit something instead of just wafting over the flagship after you finally take down the shield.

[Ray Robertson]

In your OP you mentioned " massively upgraded shields/wepon systems", but you forgot to either mention engines or not?

[Suzaku]

I noticed you didn't mention anything about your engines. Evasion is key to survival, so have your pilot systems and engines manned, and ranked up enough to have at least 40% evasion chance is nearly essential (I prefer 45%, with a backup battery being used for extra bursts as needed).

Make use of certain systems. If you can get a Teleporter, you can send a pair of guys over to break the single-weapon sections on their ship with little trouble. If you start with the missile launcher, then this will save you a lot of pain. If you rank it up enough, you can send them over to harass enemies that are trying to repair systems, then call them back before they get killed. Beware of ships with Cloak, since you can't recall your guys if the enemy is cloaked!

Drones can be useful, especially if you can get a Defense Drone Mk II (they can stop a lot of abuse from hitting your ship). System Repair drones are cheap to keep active, but can really help keep everything running more smoothly, especially once fires and breached rooms become an issue, since they're immune to those issues. Hull Repair drones are great to keep you in a fight longer, or to heal up between phases.

Hacking drones can cripple an enemy's shields, or be useful for messing around with a lot of things. Hack their doors, and your boarding party can do more damage before the enemy can reach them. Hack their drones, and they get stunned/blow up. Hack their teleporter, and you send back their own boarding party. Or plenty of other things.

Mind Control can be useful to give you an extra gun when boarding, use enemy boarder to fight each other, or stop enemies from repairing systems while they're busy killing their friends. Or you can use it on your own crew to cancel the enemy's mind control.

How you mix up all of these things at your disposal can be crucial to victory. Get creative, and work these multiple ideas in with your weapons.

[War Bear]

Thank you for all of the advise but I've found that things like counter-mind control/hacking doesn't work against the flagship, I think that might've changed after advanced addition.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by War Weazel:

Thank you for all of the advise but I've found that things like counter-mind control/hacking doesn't work against the flagship, I think that might've changed after advanced addition.

No, the ability to do those in the first place was added with the advanced edition. You've just never had to deal with it since you haven't survived long enough to reach it.

Particularly in the third phase, the boss spams mind control as much as possible, turning even an Engi into a team-killing psychopath (I swear, if players can get their MC to rank 3, then the computer has theirs at rank 7. That damage boost is just massive). You're pretty much forced to use your own mind control on your unit to counter it, or watch as he decimates your crew and systems.

All you can do is prepare for every possible thing, 'cause it will all go wrong in the end. Know that the boss fight doesn't change at all on easy/normal, so starting planning on how to win from your very first jump.

[War Bear]

I've never had to use the mind controll on the last stand, like you said I just haven't survived that long, but counter-hacking I know doesn't work, any time that I hacked a hacking system before the boss it either destroyed the drone or counter acted the disruption. Not the flagship, it just turned that drone into a fancy decoration on it's ship...

[Suzaku]

The drone can be shot down, but the only other way for the enemy to make it useless is to hack your hack, which only turns it off/stops it for a few seconds, and maybe destroys it (just like other drones). You don't even necessarily have to counter-hack. If their drone hit something that's not too important, you can just latch your hacking drone to their shields or something else that's useful to shut down.

Even if hacking is made useless (mainly phase two, where their defense drone will pick it off every time), then you can just switch its power over to something more useful, like an extra layer of shields, or boost those engines some more.

[War Bear]

Suddenly it hits me, why are you the one to fight the flagship? Your ship is probably the weakest in the fleet, it's literaly heald together by the parts of other ships, and manned by anyone that knows how to push a button.

[Dr. McWeazel]

Originally posted by War Weazel:

Suddenly it hits me, why are you the one to fight the flagship? Your ship is probably the weakest in the fleet, it's literaly heald together by the parts of other ships, and manned by anyone that knows how to push a button.

Because the entire rest of the fleet is trying it's damnedest to keep everything else off of you so that you can take it on. You can end up being the strongest ship in the Federation's fleet, able to defeat the Flagship 3 times over when the best they could do to it before was slow it down some.

[War Bear]

Kinda says something for the fleet though, the entire fleet is unable to stop the flagship, so they just get some guy with his crew of billy joe-bobs in their ship of duct tape and scrap metal.

[Tealtyr]

Originally posted by War Weazel:

Kinda says something for the fleet though, the entire fleet is unable to stop the flagship, so they just get some guy with his crew of billy joe-bobs in their ship of duct tape and scrap metal.

Flagship is surronded by massive ships, and so is your base. These bemeoths wouldn't be able to get through the advancing wall of the fleet to get to the flagship. Your tiny little ship however, can.
...still doesn't change the fact that the flagship got defeated by a decomissioned federation ship, that's just sad.

[Dr. McWeazel]

Originally posted by Spaghetti-Sensei:

Originally posted by War Weazel:

Kinda says something for the fleet though, the entire fleet is unable to stop the flagship, so they just get some guy with his crew of billy joe-bobs in their ship of duct tape and scrap metal.

Flagship is surronded by massive ships, and so is your base. These bemeoths wouldn't be able to get through the advancing wall of the fleet to get to the flagship. Your tiny little ship however, can.
...still doesn't change the fact that the flagship got defeated by a decomissioned federation ship, that's just sad.

To be fair, the Flagship can also completely stomp the Federation Cruiser, even with it's fancy shield-piercing beam.