Elusive Contempt battle difficulty

[Stranger]

I finally chased down Elusive Contempt into the final battle. And... it mopped the floor with my ship and its escort. It has twice my shields, almost twice my HP, and I'm not even counting pirate fleet and fighters it constantly belches out.

My question is: did I miss some obvious way to improve my ship's weaponry?
I don't rush the story, visit every space battle and most side-quests and rumors I encounter. And still I hardly dent the pirate flagship before departing into oblivion.

You can say it's skill issue (and I might partially agree), but I should mention I had plenty space battles before that one and lost only once (when first meeting Drukhari ships). Elusive Contempt feels a bit too big of a leap to me.

[Hidetsugu]

I have never had difficulty with any battles (except the space station one, that I do near the end of chapter 2) once I had a bit more levels and gear on my ship. Are you using Jae/Yrliet as gunner for torpedo alpha strike, or trying the fighters? I like torpedoes and the EC dies in 2 turns with good maneuvering.

[Stranger]

Originally posted by Hidetsugu:

I have never had difficulty with any battles (except the space station one, that I do near the end of chapter 2) once I had a bit more levels and gear on my ship. Are you using Jae/Yrliet as gunner for torpedo alpha strike, or trying the fighters? I like torpedoes and the EC dies in 2 turns with good maneuvering.

I never encountered the fighters in the first place. I have access to only torpedoes.
Triple torpedoes (those not taken down by EC escort) bring it down to about 70% health, so I will need at least two more barrages.
Do I just run away from them and spam torpedoes until I get rid of the flagship?
I could easily take any other threat head-on before that, so it kinda didn't popped in my mind...

[Hidetsugu]

I do not remember how exactly that battle was going for me, since it has been months since my last run. I think what I did was warp jump, then advance for instant torpedo strike, forward, dorsal > park myself right in front of it at an angle, broadside is possible. End of this - EC is out fully from the frontal shield + 50% of its hp. And since you are right in front of it, it can not move, and you take it out in the next turn after laterally sliding away so you don't take the explosion damage.

[Taifun_Vash]

You need torpedos to even launch the fighters, to begin with. It isn't the same ship slot, the fighters are placed in the two upper right slots, where it starts with extra hull integrity. Then you can change the loadout, while in combat, to either torpedos, or fighters. You get some for free after one of the ship battles, relative close to dargonus.

[echoes222]

I still can't get over the fact that it wasn't our ship upgrade mission chain, which all this build up kinda suggested :E as for battle itself, I don't remember details but I know I had to repeat it once in both of my playthroughs. So it probably wasn't deldar trap hard,. but definetely hard enough.

[Vathek1]

Originally posted by echoes222:

I still can't get over the fact that it wasn't our ship upgrade mission chain, which all this build up kinda suggested :E as for battle itself, I don't remember details but I know I had to repeat it once in both of my playthroughs. So it probably wasn't deldar trap hard,. but definetely hard enough.

Flak ammo makes short work of Drukhari ships--the AoE of flak rounds ignore their evasion and holofield effects.

Originally posted by Taifun_Vash:

You get some for free after one of the ship battles, relative close to dargonus.

That battle is the one in Mu-Rho 79 between Lucretia van der Royen's fleet of renegades and the Imperial Navy in Chapter 2. You can choose which side to support, or keep clear of it. You get the fighters if you side with the Imperial Navy; I don't know what you'd get (other than your ship blown up by the Navy's Dictator-class cruiser) if you side with the pirate lass.

This is a good place to fight your second space battle since you can simply park your flagship in a corner and let the Imperial Navy do most of the work and still get credit in terms of scrap and rewards from the battle when they win.

[spammdc]

Are you playing with the DLC?
Some of the items talked about above are in DLC 1.

I think I had trouble with that battle in my first 2 games and then I learned (or got lucky) how to deal with it.
What I did is use warp jump to get into and out of range as needed as well as the extra maneuver ability.
I dislike torps and fighters/bombers as often I have found them to just be a waste. ie trouble maneuvering them, they get shot down easy, etc. So I am a mainly gun person.

There are some great new guns in the DLC, the mortars are something I really like.

I also do not know if they have fix the issue with having 2 of the same gun in the prow or not or 2 of the powerful prow guns installed (I do not remember there name right now).

Also a number of times in my 7+ games I have had people un-equip from their ship positions and this had made combat more difficult then needed.

You may have to run the encounter again a couple of times to get the hang of how to beat it.

Good Luck

[Taifun_Vash]

Originally posted by Vathek1:

I don't know what you'd get (other than your ship blown up by the Navy's Dictator-class cruiser) if you side with the pirate lass.

I think it was plasma-bombers when you sided with navy, or las-fighters when you sided with the pirates.

[Stranger]

After two more tries I managed to win this fight - barely. I've exited the battle on 30 HP with no shields.
Triple Torpedo salvoes appeared to be not really effective: most of them are intercepted by pirate ships or interceptors, so from 9 torpedo barrages only 3 made it to the flagship.

What helped me was upgraded warp. I managed to jump through Elusive Contempt three times, significantly damaging it before running away on my last HPs and finishing it off with the last torpedo salvo.

During my jumps I concentrated fire on aux ships, because I simply couldn't penetrate flagship's shields with my guns. This - and running away to lose slow interceptors - helped my torpedoes to end the fight.

I hope this might help someone else struggling like me.
But I still think I came there unprepared and I missed some good guns and/or upgrades along the way.

Thanks to everyone who tried to give me tips.

P.S.: oh and by the way, you get close to NOTHING for this fight. Few items for sale, few scraps barely enough to fix your ship... and that's it. No quest reward, no cool weapon or upgrade - nada. Just a checkmark on a rumor. Thanks OwlCat.

[spammdc]

Originally posted by Stranger:

After two more tries I managed to win this fight - barely. I've exited the battle on 30 HP with no shields.
Triple Torpedo salvoes appeared to be not really effective: most of them are intercepted by pirate ships or interceptors, so from 9 torpedo barrages only 3 made it to the flagship.

What helped me was upgraded warp. I managed to jump through Elusive Contempt three times, significantly damaging it before running away on my last HPs and finishing it off with the last torpedo salvo.

During my jumps I concentrated fire on aux ships, because I simply couldn't penetrate flagship's shields with my guns. This - and running away to lose slow interceptors - helped my torpedoes to end the fight.

I hope this might help someone else struggling like me.
But I still think I came there unprepared and I missed some good guns and/or upgrades along the way.

Thanks to everyone who tried to give me tips.

P.S.: oh and by the way, you get close to NOTHING for this fight. Few items for sale, few scraps barely enough to fix your ship... and that's it. No quest reward, no cool weapon or upgrade - nada. Just a checkmark on a rumor. Thanks OwlCat.

Yes there are some viodship battles where you get zero exp and little to no "loot".

[Stranger]

Originally posted by spammdc:

Yes there are some viodship battles where you get zero exp and little to no "loot".

I'm OK with common battles with common enemies that provide no gain, it's expected.
But when after a tough fight you bring down a big mf of a ship at least TWICE the size of your own, you expect at least something to show for it. 😅

[Brother Bigot]

after a very hard fought battle i finally won
only for the game to crash as it was loading back to the system map