Best Weapon Combo for the Boss?

[BadgerMilk]

What is your favorite loadout of weapons and systems to fight the boss? I ask because I have been dying over and over lately on the Boss. Any suggestions would be great.

[Tealtyr]

lasers and lasers and lasers AND LASERS AND LASERS AND

VULCANSSSSSSSSSS

[Bellomy]

What ship layout?

With a four-man boarding crew made up of three crystal and one mantis it's possible to beat the game using no weapons, only an anti-combat drone and a beam drone.

It depends on the specific capabilities of your ship.

In general the Flak weapons are always a good pick-up. Burst Laser II's are a steal if you can get 'em, as are Pegasus Missiles.

The two best weapons in the game are Vulcans and Glaive Beams. If you ever have to pick between the two (remember to give thanks to the RNG gods if THAT ever happens), I personally would say to pick the Vulcan. Give it 15 or so seconds to get rolling completely and that sucker will shoot out a laser pulse a second. You can probably take down the Flagship just with that as long as you have adequate defenses. Combine it with ion weapons and you're truly terrifying.

(BTW, one bar Ion Blast is also a good one because of the low reactor usage and quick load time).

BUT, it once again depends on your ship and its starting layout.

[Furball]

Pegasus Missile, Burst Laser and lots of drones

[Joonazan]

Torus with ions and Anti-Ship x3.

[Ray Robertson]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=275510252

[Dr. McWeazel]

Originally posted by Invisible Flames:

lasers and lasers and lasers AND LASERS AND LASERS AND

VULCANSSSSSSSSSS

"Are the lasers charged?"
"Yes, sir, they're charging once every second or so."
"Excellent. We'll be through with this in no time."

Now imagine two Vulcans and two Combat Drones MK II.

So many lasers....

[Ray Robertson]

If only we could have level 10 weapons like this elite has:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=292733476

That would be hilarious.

[Nickname0329]

The most efficient method is definitely boarding, you can disable all the weapons by boarding the individual weapon compartments and killing the person manning it, rendering the weapon inactive indefinitely.

Adding hacking to the mix, hack the medbay, fight the some of the crew until they are low, and when they try heal themselves, unpower your hacking drone to let them in, then immediately repower and activate it, killing whoever is inside. Of course with hacking level 3, you'll pretty much kill everyone inside anyways. You'll want to keep at least one enemy crew alive, so the ship doesn't go HAL on you and start fixing it's own systems.

As far as straight up combat, Combat Drone Mk II is still one of the greatest drones in the game. The Ion Bomb is still hands down the best weapon in the game, for one power you can take down two shields for a lengthy amount of time. It's amazingly effiicient. Then you just need damage weapons, which are common and fairly interchangable (and boring). All you really need is the ability to penetrate 4 shields and do 1 damage, and the fight will be yours if you have adequate defenses and you take down the flagships weapons.

[Tealtyr]

Originally posted by Dr. McWeazel, PhD:

Originally posted by Invisible Flames:

lasers and lasers and lasers AND LASERS AND LASERS AND

VULCANSSSSSSSSSS

"Are the lasers charged?"
"Yes, sir, they're charging once every second or so."
"Excellent. We'll be through with this in no time."

Now imagine two Vulcans and two Combat Drones MK II.

So many lasers....

Vulcan fires every 1.1 seconds.
With three autoreloaders and a fully manned bonus, from my calculations from the stupidly un-specfic wiki, the vulcans should charge in ~.616 seconds.

[Dr. McWeazel]

Originally posted by Invisible Flames:

Originally posted by Dr. McWeazel, PhD:

"Are the lasers charged?"
"Yes, sir, they're charging once every second or so."
"Excellent. We'll be through with this in no time."

Now imagine two Vulcans and two Combat Drones MK II.

So many lasers....

Vulcan fires every 1.1 seconds.
With three autoreloaders and a fully manned bonus, from my calculations from the stupidly un-specfic wiki, the vulcans should charge in ~.616 seconds.

So they'll have 6 lasers coming at them in around 2 seconds, then, and that's before we factor in the drones.

This sounds like a whole lot of fun.

[Ray Robertson]

Originally posted by Nickname0329:

The most efficient method is definitely boarding, you can disable all the weapons by boarding the individual weapon compartments and killing the person manning it, rendering the weapon inactive indefinitely.

Adding hacking to the mix, hack the medbay, fight the some of the crew until they are low, and when they try heal themselves, unpower your hacking drone to let them in, then immediately repower and activate it, killing whoever is inside. Of course with hacking level 3, you'll pretty much kill everyone inside anyways. You'll want to keep at least one enemy crew alive, so the ship doesn't go HAL on you and start fixing it's own systems.

As far as straight up combat, Combat Drone Mk II is still one of the greatest drones in the game. The Ion Bomb is still hands down the best weapon in the game, for one power you can take down two shields for a lengthy amount of time. It's amazingly effiicient. Then you just need damage weapons, which are common and fairly interchangable (and boring). All you really need is the ability to penetrate 4 shields and do 1 damage, and the fight will be yours if you have adequate defenses and you take down the flagships weapons.

I don't agree. Boarding can work, yes, but it is not the most efficient. If you look at the screenshot in post #5. That hull damage is all the damage I took in all 3 phases, I never used the hull repair drone. Those two boarders in the cockpit are the first two that teleported across.

I'm not saying it is thae best setup, but it is the best one I ever had and a crew teleporter doesn't feature in it.

[Nickname0329]

Originally posted by Ray Robertson:

I don't agree. Boarding can work, yes, but it is not the most efficient. If you look at the screenshot in post #5. That hull damage is all the damage I took in all 3 phases, I never used the hull repair drone. Those two boarders in the cockpit are the first two that teleported across.

I'm not saying it is thae best setup, but it is the best one I ever had and a crew teleporter doesn't feature in it.

Considering you have a beam weapon, it's not really an efficient set up at all. A good rule of thumb for weapon efficiency is that for however much power it takes to run them, they need to be able to take down or penetrate that number of shields. Obviously there are mitigating factors, such as evasion and defense drones, but that rule is the most basic.

Burst Lazer II takes down 3 levels of shield for 2 power. Yay efficient.
Halberd beam only penetrates 1 level of shield for 3 power. Aww not efficient.
Ion Bomb takes down 2 levels of sheild for 1 power. Wow, amazingly efficient.

The Halberd and Glaive beams are really only good the first couple of sectors, where level 4 and 3 shields are uncommon, and you can mindlessly cut through ships.

As far as boarding goes, it takes one power, no missiles or drone parts, cannot miss and completely disables the weapon system of the flagship. Now that's efficient.

As far as mind control's efficiency, it is worse than the crew teleporter because it doesn't kill the host, meaning it alone can't take ships whole unlike the crew teleporter. It also sucks even more with ships with medbays and clonebays as it's the mind control ai is terrible and they won't do significant damage to the crew, as the enemy will just cycle or clone itself.

So forgive me, but I just don't believe you when you say the crew teleporter isn't efficient.

[Tealtyr]

Originally posted by Nickname0329:

Originally posted by Ray Robertson:

I don't agree. Boarding can work, yes, but it is not the most efficient. If you look at the screenshot in post #5. That hull damage is all the damage I took in all 3 phases, I never used the hull repair drone. Those two boarders in the cockpit are the first two that teleported across.

I'm not saying it is thae best setup, but it is the best one I ever had and a crew teleporter doesn't feature in it.

Considering you have a beam weapon, it's not really an efficient set up at all. A good rule of thumb for weapon efficiency is that for however much power it takes to run them, they need to be able to take down or penetrate that number of shields. Obviously there are mitigating factors, such as evasion and defense drones, but that rule is the most basic.

Burst Lazer II takes down 3 levels of shield for 2 power. Yay efficient.
Halberd beam only penetrates 1 level of shield for 3 power. Aww not efficient.
Ion Bomb takes down 2 levels of sheild for 1 power. Wow, amazingly efficient.

The Halberd and Glaive beams are really only good the first couple of sectors, where level 4 and 3 shields are uncommon, and you can mindlessly cut through ships.

As far as boarding goes, it takes one power, no missiles or drone parts, cannot miss and completely disables the weapon system of the ship. Now that's efficient.

As far as mind control's efficiency, it is worse than the crew teleporter because it doesn't kill the host, meaning it alone can't take ships whole unlike the crew teleporter. It also sucks even more with ships with medbays and clonebays as it's the mind control ai is terrible and they won't do significant damage to the crew, as the enemy will just cycle or clone itself.

So forgive me, but I just don't believe you when you say the crew teleporter isn't efficient.

So lasers are all horrible.
That's litterally what you just said- Lasers are, without a doubt, the worst weapon class.
Am I wrong?
Your equation may just apply to lasers and flak, but it doesn't work in missles and bombs since they always have 5 shield penetration, and it doesn't work for beams because they are meant to be ship-killers, not shield-killers.

[Nickname0329]

No all beams are horrible as far as efficiency. That's what I'm saying. Lasers are always efficient except for the Heavy Laser II.

There are 6 weapon types.
Lasers
Missiles
Beams
Bombs
Flak
Crystal

Ion weapons are a special case, but they functionally operate like bombs or lasers.

Yes missiles and bombs are always efficient, because they penetrate all shields. Bombs especially so because they can't be stopped by defense drones, like lasers, crystal, flak and missiles can.

Beams only excell at doing hull damage. Which can be done with any damage weapon, with greator reactor efficiency.

[Tealtyr]

Originally posted by Nickname0329:

No all beams are horrible as far as efficiency. That's what I'm saying. Lasers are always efficient except for the Heavy Laser II.

There are 6 weapon types.
Lasers
Missiles
Beams
Bombs
Flak
Crystal

Ion weapons are a special case, but they functionally operate like bombs or lasers.

Yes missiles and bombs are always efficient, because they penetrate all shields. Bombs especially so because they can't be stopped by defense drones, like lasers, crystal, flak and missiles can.

Beams only excell at doing hull damage. Which can be done with any damage weapon, with greator reactor efficiency.

Efficent at what?
Efficency at killing shields- None.
Efficency at killing ships- Barely anything compares.