Managers: a review

[Daynen Drakeson]

So after unlocking all the station managers, I have some thoughts and feedback I thought I'd get onscreen--some good, some bad, some broken as hell.

Jena Wilikers: your starter. A medic and pilot. As long as she's near, crew heal passively. Starts with a basic laser blaster and an accuracy bonus. Her healing requires you to build around her which can be limiting and it's highly replaceable by the medic/reborn stations' upgrade paths. The accuracy bonus, while initially nice, is also completely obsoleted by fairly accessible gadgets and her piloting skill will be far outclassed by hireable crew.

my opinion: unlock another manager posthaste.



Yuto Jeong: A gunner who starts with machine guns, better skills overall and an accuracy bonus. See above comments on Jena for that. His active ability, on the other hand, is quite powerful if fires start spreading and the cooldown gets quite short, quickly alleviating the need for firefighters and letting you skip a couple upgrade paths.

My opinion: not bad, but I'd still suggest saving your points.


Naserian Eilpry: A...soldier/engineer? Not that I'd ever want to send my station manager on a mercenary mission but...okay. Starting with the missile launcher and accuracy is quite powerful and can quickly trivialize a lot of early fights. Starting with medic stations not only gives you access to healing but removes a perk choice from the pool, helping you get to the good stuff a little faster. She starts with some armor and a big oxygen tank so she's tough to kill, but her active is...situational, at best. It's no good when there are still breaches or ruined airlocks and if you properly section your station with doors, you won't have massive rooms drained of oxygen anyway. At least the cooldown is quick; if you're going to use it, use it liberally. Maybe you can get away with designing your station with low or no life support and rely on the active? Bit of a gamble.

my opinion: Weird spread of abilities. Only use if you REALLY like starting with missiles.


Miguel Bartos: Now we're getting somewhere. 7 weapon skill makes him a damn good gunner out of the gate, though he lacks Naserian's starting armor. He starts with both shields AND forcefields unlocked, which is huge for your survivability, though the plasma beam is quite possibly the worst starting weapon. Those early fights will be excruciating, especially if the enemy spawns with even a single firefighter. Protip: NEVER go all plasma. You WILL run into a ship full of firefighters and accomplish nothing while the enemy whittles you down. Also, event ships with no oxygen become unwinnable, forcing you to take the additional threat of letting them go. His perk is odd because it's phrased as if "no rerolls" is a downside; given you can only reroll once per perk choice and you'll get six perks anyway, what this REALLY means is "one free reroll with every perk" which is pretty damn amazing. Best of all, his mining bots start with a 50% speed boost, which just means you get everything you want a little bit faster.

My opinion: Pretty Good stuff. Easy to develop and specialize. Just get SOMETHING besides plasma as soon as possible or you'll hate your life.


Blanky: Seriously? Do I need to go into this? Even I can only be so masochistic before I say "nah, I'm good."


Unity: Okay, now here's where we get a little tricky. Weapon synergies, in their current form, feel...underwhelming. While there are a few strong ones, like extra bounces or extra beams, the sheer number of weapon slots you need to use up to get those bonuses is a bit chafing, at least to me. Unity alleviates this pain by not only doubling those bonuses but starting with enough weapons unlocked to get a few right away. I DO appreciate getting weapons out of the perk pool, though this does mean you'll be seeing a much wider spread of perks to upgrade them all, making it difficult to focus on the weapon you actually care about. Also, using multiple weapon types does mean you have to bring down multiple defenses for everything to get through.

My opinion: If you love weapon synergies, Unity is your man(-ager.) Otherwise, there are more practical picks.


Catsie: Aaaaand now we get to the point where the dev just stopped giving a **** and said "what if we had an immortal catgirl who just annihilated everyone?" Catsie is blistering fast but she lacks lung capacity and is fragile; thankfully she revives instantly and is easily the best mechanic you'll ever see because of it. When combined with the revive station perks that add HP and stats, Catsie can become absolutely godlike at a terrifying pace by rapidly dying and reviving in oxygen-depleted rooms. Her most gamebreaking ability is her weapon perk: an extra bounce on ALL projectiles, which means heavy lasers, artillery, flak...basically anything that's not a beam or a missile gets an extra bounce. When you combine this with AOE weapons, the devastation is staggering. One shot from an artillery can bounce around a room and open up breaches in the entire floor, leaving weapons and systems blacked and multiple crew dying from oxygen loss. A heavy laser (especially with its split perk) can set entire wings on fire in a single volley. The "downside" is that she'll only ever have four weapons at max...but this isn't the drawback one might think. With only four guns, the most gunners you will ever need is 16 if you use four artillery; otherwise you can stop at 8 or even 4, if you prefer basic weapons like burst lasers or flak cannons. That frees up a TON of crew space for more mechanics to keep things in working order and your four guns will FAR outclass any other manager's arsenal of 10.

My opinion: Unlock Catsie and never look back. The weapon bounces add so much multiplicative force that you only NEED four weapons. Best chunk of points you'll EVER spend.

[Rincevent 83]

thanks for the guide !
I rode it, unloked catsie and tried it. It is to be said that the malus on weapon numbers only applies from the start and does not affect late game : I still had 12 guns after a few years in space.

Would you mind elaborate on what exactly is a bounce ? In your post you say that it does not affect missiles. Is that a sure thing ? Does it affect the... whats it's name? Level 3 missile : the one with rapid firing rockets ?

[Daynen Drakeson]

How did you have 12 guns with catsie? I've never had more than four; that's literally her perk.

[Rincevent 83]

No idea ^^ Just played the game I guess, I will try to snap a picture

Normal number is 12 at end game, so why do you say 4 as 12-2 = 10 ?

[Daynen Drakeson]

because every time I play catsie, my maximum guns only goes up to four.

[Rincevent 83]

As far as literrally is concerned, her abilities reads : +1 rebound but -2 for max weapon number...

[Daynen Drakeson]

I'm not sure we're playing the same game then, because I've done dozens of runs and have never had more than four weapon slots at maximum level with Catsie. That perk, at the selection screen, is what she gets at the beginning of the game. As she levels, she gets more rebounds but only gets one gun every three level ups, leading to four total guns at maximum level.

[Daynen Drakeson]

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198025026197/screenshot/2423570474545093002/

Just finished off the final story fight and hit maximum level.

[Frida Martine]

yes, Catsies weapon slots scale a lot slower, so she ends up with four slots at top level

[Rincevent 83]

Maybe I am mistaken and selected a different manager. For now, I failed to progress long enough with Catsie.

[jrasdall]

Originally posted by Daynen Drakeson:

I'm not sure we're playing the same game then, because I've done dozens of runs and have never had more than four weapon slots at maximum level with Catsie. That perk, at the selection screen, is what she gets at the beginning of the game. As she levels, she gets more rebounds but only gets one gun every three level ups, leading to four total guns at maximum level.

This is my experience too, and I'm new at the game yet but this is why I respectfully disagree with your choice of GOAT manager. The early game is much tougher with her, which limits your options later on.

[van the man]

as you get late game, i'm really not sure.

Catsie can make ultimate weapons bounce and you can start with them. She also starts with useful stuff unlocked so you don't have to spend gadgets or perks on it. Her early economy greatly benefits from not having to spend much on weapons.

Unity leads to freakin' crazy fire builds. What I didn't realize about synergies is that they can stack, so if you build 2 or 3 of everything, the numbers start getting weird. (weird as in, so OP this shouldn't be allowed).

Miguel's got useful unlocks at start but you need to bring a weapon gadget so you aren't leaving the early game up to RNG. Or don't, because he always gets 6 options. His station is also worth the most money of the three when you sell it (with full value sale gadget) so you can get 2 mining rigs and the first upgrade for them, and he starts with a 5th crew member, so his early economy is way ahead.

On the other hand, Unity's station is worth the least money so his early economy sucks. I find myself doing funny tricks with selling weapons immediately after a fight to buy a mining rig, and selling a mining rig right before a fight to buy weapons just to get him going early. This makes the RNG feel a lot more punishing since getting him started is so much work. But don't you want to annhilate with fire?

Yuto, Naserian and Jena seem like they're meant to be characters for new players since they help negate the failure mechanics. They don't seem like serious contenders for "Best manager" if we're talking late game.

Mid-game when you're saving up for unlocking expensive gadgets, I do think Catsie can be the most useful, since it doesn't take much to get really far into a run with her and farm up points.

Also want to add that I think flak is Catsie's best weapon. I just won on hard scaling / normal campaign with it. I used railgun to shoot engine, pilot, and forcefield, then priority guns, while I just let flak autotarget and rapidly deplete the hp of those endgame ships.

[Daynen Drakeson]

I'm pretty much set on heavy lasers with catsie. the bounce plus the AOE is just too much destruction to overlook; especially now when there are perks for ANOTHER bounce? Absolute carnage. I might try some other stuff but the sheer practicality of them is undeniable. Also, fusion reactors can now give laser weapons 50% more attack speed, which is NUTSO.

[van the man]

TBH with the latest patch perks have gotten so good that Miguel Bartos is imo one of the strongest picks simply for the always 6 choices. You can get AoE from the perks now. Catsie gets a bunch of bounces but other characters can have 12 weapons and start getting bounces from perks so her advantage falls off. If Catsie has 4 weapons and 6 bounces that's 30 hits, if another character has 12 weapons and 2 bounce that's 36 hits. The tradeoff is that Catsie is much, much cheaper to get running through the early and mid game since she doesn't have to buy the weapons and power for them.

I just took Miguel to late game (year 4, normal campaign/hard diff, died when I had to fight 3 outsiders around day 80) with - missiles, of all things. 4-2-2 for the missiles to get the synergies, and then I had all 4 super weapons, and by the end everything was max upgraded, about 60 crew members. AoE was maxed, had 5+ bounces, over 15k shield, forcefield while staffed applying nearly 2k slow/sec.

Honestly I think projectile speed is the biggest decider at that point of the game - which gives any gun that upgrade projectile speed an edge - machine gun, breacher, etc.
Damage of the weapon is kind of irrelevant, every weapon does enough damage to quickly crater tiles with enough perks, but the problem is killing the enemy before they kill you, and if you have weapons that fire soon after the start, and have faster projectiles, that's one way to manage it. The enemy will kill you before an EMP wave can even hit. Missile Silo still bad even with the new upgrade to have it ready right away because the animation takes so long, but it's a fun gimmick to have a "kills the ship" upgrade.

One reason plasma might still be decent at endgame is its projectile speed is instant, once it fires (gotta stack lots of attack speed to even get it to fire though). Its damage isn't instant but if you stack enough fire things melt like they flew too close to the sun. So Unity might still be viable to that level, the problem is just getting him started.

[Fuzzy Blanket]

Miguel

Early Game: Start with EMP Wave(use it to take out early Kidnappers)
Get the Perks No Common Perks, No Rare Perks, No Unique Perks
Survive and get your economy up any way you can.
Specialize in 1 weapons group.

Mid: You get a choice of 6 Legendary perks every battle. How can you go wrong.

Late: Make sure your bounce is 5+ and your AOE is +3 or more.
projectile defense is 99% and Crew defense should be 80%+

I'll screenshot when I finish my current game. Somewhere in the 8's. Still running a training death camp for 20 units.

Game is lagging on me. Not sure if its the fully kitted ship or the 100+workers