Rebel Flagship on hard (pseudo-spoilers)

[Nitro]

I tentatively marked this as a spoiler since I'm sure people will want to figure it out themselves. Basically, if you're playing on the newly created hard mode, the Rebel Flagship has the triple missile launcher and triple laser connected to the main ship, rather than being isolated them. If you're even vaguely familiar with the Rebel Flagship, you'll immediately realize that this makes the battle twenty times harder. In my case, even with the Crystal Cruiser B I got my ♥♥♥ handed to me, on phase one, partly out of surprise but partly because I just couldn't keep the triple missile launcher disabled for too long. This being hard, I didn't have a great run when it came to finding weapons, so I couldn't do much to keep the shields offline for very long.

So if you've gotten to the Rebel Flagship on hard, what are some of your strategies? Have you taken it down? Anything different in phases two or three?

[Neat]

I haven't faced it on hard but i'd imagine the best strategy now becomes killing all the crew members on the main part of the ship as fast as possible while minimising damage from missiles and lasers with cloaks/hacking. I guess flaks are pretty good to take out the shields and then after that the medbay. If you've got a firebomb, anti-bio or good teleporting crew you can probably kill the main crew pretty fast to disable the missiles. This does sound really difficult though and the lower scrap is gonna make your life hell.

[Tealtyr]

Originally posted by LoED Neat:

I haven't faced it on hard but i'd imagine the best strategy now becomes killing all the crew members on the main part of the ship as fast as possible while minimising damage from missiles and lasers with cloaks/hacking. I guess flaks are pretty good to take out the shields and then after that the medbay. If you've got a firebomb, anti-bio or good teleporting crew you can probably kill the main crew pretty fast to disable the missiles. This does sound really difficult though and the lower scrap is gonna make your life hell.

No, get this, the kill-everyone strategy isn't the best anymore, since the autopilot will take over on the third stage, since the two weapons rooms not connected to the ship are gone.

[Neat]

Originally posted by spaghetti-sensei:

Originally posted by LoED Neat:

I haven't faced it on hard but i'd imagine the best strategy now becomes killing all the crew members on the main part of the ship as fast as possible while minimising damage from missiles and lasers with cloaks/hacking. I guess flaks are pretty good to take out the shields and then after that the medbay. If you've got a firebomb, anti-bio or good teleporting crew you can probably kill the main crew pretty fast to disable the missiles. This does sound really difficult though and the lower scrap is gonna make your life hell.

No, get this, the kill-everyone strategy isn't the best anymore, since the autopilot will take over on the third stage, since the two weapons rooms not connected to the ship are gone.

I've faced the auto-pilot on the third stage and it's not so bad. The third stage isn't very difficult in comparison to the second stage anyway and thats what you need to be prepared for (and killing all the crew for the second stage alone is really helpful)

[Paul Bismuth]

Hello! I've played the Rebel Flagship on hard mode. I've lost two times, and always on the 2nd phase. in the 2nd phase with the drones, i have concentrate my weapons on his drone part but... when the "superpower" of the Rebel Flagship is engaged (with ten drones), the IA don't care if this part is broken. I feel disappointed because, on the 2nd time, i was fully prepared... I hope it's helpfull to you, and sorry for the english (i'm french).

[icleus]

Cloaking with high evasion will make the missiles miss.

[Cacodus]

Spam the ♥♥♥♥ out of the missiles.

Also, if you want to try to kill off all the crew, you can do some boarding as well and/or use a ♥♥♥♥ ton of fire weapons in the med bay and other parts of the ship.

Mind control and/or hacking works well here.

Put the hacking drone in the shields, since it blocks off part of the path to the lasers and missiles. That should help stall for time on the repairs as it locks the doors, and make getting past the shield easier.

Mind control can also help delay the repairs of systems. Sometimes you can get 3 guys to gang up on the mind controlled ally and kill him!

[InsertNameHere]

A few ideas
-Saving up missiles for the final boss, then spamming them (aim for pilots and engines, then weapons) (First win with Lanius B)
-Extremly strong boarders (4 fully trained mantis) + healing bomb + missiles or bombs to destroy their medbay. WIth a mind control (to get one of them) and a boarding drone (worked once with Mantis B)
-Beam + Hack combo (Hack shields, then unleash your beams)
-Artillery Beam, the extra room means 1 extra damage actually. The real difficulty lies in maintaining your ship and keeping that ship until this point.

The real bane is the hacking drone in the 1st part. If it hits a critical part of your ship, JUMP AWAY. You also want maxed out doors to deal with the boarders. Also, you can use your own Mind Control to mind control yor mind controlled crew back to normal.

Actually the emergency AI on the flagship (when their entire crew dies) is not so bad than some of them think (of course its worse than the machinegunner, but this option does not exist in hard). Just keep destroying the weapons until 1HP, then teleport them out and deliever the final shot. The drone swarm is no threat if their weapons and drones are offline in part 2 if you have maxed out shields and a decent engine.

[Gekkibi]

Haven't tested this on hard but what if you use the strategy I use to kill all crewmen without boarding. All you need is a bomb weapon and a hack. Hack their medbay and turn off the power. Bomb the shield room multiple times and when some of them need medical attention and enter the medbay, just put full power to the hack, thus locking them inside. Kills them pretty nicely. The only downside is that it takes few times to kill the whole crew.

[Kaigen]

I haven't tried hard difficulty yet, but I've found that if you can whittle a ship's crew down to one guy, Mind Control is great for keeping him from fixing things, and he'll damage more things that he might try to fix before going back to that missile launcher.

[FDru]

Originally posted by Gekkibi:

Haven't tested this on hard but what if you use the strategy I use to kill all crewmen without boarding. All you need is a bomb weapon and a hack. Hack their medbay and turn off the power. Bomb the shield room multiple times and when some of them need medical attention and enter the medbay, just put full power to the hack, thus locking them inside. Kills them pretty nicely. The only downside is that it takes few times to kill the whole crew.

That's the problem. It takes too long while you're getting pummeled by missiles. If you want to kill all of the crew you might as well just use boarders. Hacking the med bay is still a good idea, though.

If you get the crew dead, just stick 2 guys in the missile room to keep it knocked out until the ship is about to die, then teleport them back.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by FDru:

That's the problem. It takes too long while you're getting pummeled by missiles. If you want to kill all of the crew you might as well just use boarders. Hacking the med bay is still a good idea, though.

Missiles are the least dangerous during phase 1. They are more dangerous during other phases because of surges. Still haven't tried hard so I have absolutely no idea how much scrap you can collect, but I never want to face the flagship without cloak or defense drones. Both can help against the triple missile, and thus giving you more time to deal with the enemy crewmen.

Faster way of killing the crewmen is to teleport to (undamaged) medbay and hack it while you're fighting the enemy. The cooldown takes longer than it takes the enemy to breach the doors, so while new fighters are inside you simply walk from the room using the back door so that they can't follow you. Use this time to destroy the engines. When hack cooldone is done, kill the new victims and now you can head for the missile launcher.

Works on paper. Not so sure how it works on Hard with the typical FTL RNG...

[hghwolf]

Can the AI still not repair rooms with breaches ? Well there you go, problem solved.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by hghwolf, killed the bird:

Can the AI still not repair rooms with breaches ? Well there you go, problem solved.

The problem is that you can't count on breaches unless you're having breach bombs. Breach is not guaranteed with heavy lasers, and I don't want to bet that much for something that isn't probable enough.

...But if RNG gods smiled on you and you do have breach bombs then indeed: Problem solved.

[Foxxy Love]

Just beat it with redtail on hard. Got lucky finding cloak in store in last sector. I had vulcan and 2 flak 1s and pre weapon igniter. Went straight for the missile launcher. Stage 3 was basically a battle royale with flames and blood.

[Terin]

Originally posted by Foxxy Love:

Stage 3 was basically a battle royale with flames and blood.

That sums it up nicely. I've gotten to the flagship in both the hard runs I've done so far, first with the Red-Tail, then with the Kruos. Died on Stage 3 first and Stage 2 second, and boy, it becomes hellish real fast. Strangely enough, I breezed through the first stage both times, but then without cloaking, the drone surge and laser surge just wrecked me. I feel like cloaking would be really critical to hold off the pressure, but that 150 scrap investment is nearly impossible to make.

Might try with the fed cruiser next, or maybe the stealth cruiser so I do get that cloaking.