Wow. I'm still stuck on Easy..?? Tips anyone?

[TheMac]

I'm up to the BSE Guardian, and have tried numerous combinations of ships and small craft.

1. Bolter Fighters are easy to upgrade. I've tried overwhelming the enemy, but mid to late game, they simply perish before doing much damage.
2. Plasma bombers. More durable, but shots are too slow.
3. Missile bombers. Take lots to upgrade and still shoot very slowly.
4. Tried to spec for long range attacks, but there's always a situation where they warp in on top of you.
5. Tried buying a couple of smaller ships, but they die quickly in situations like #4 above.

Tried pure assault craft:
1. Warp in close and they can die before you have time to even see the health bar go down. Not much luck with short ranged weapons for this reason.
2. Tried long range attacks, but missiles get shot down, and energy weapons don't do much to hull, except some ion weapons.
3. Also in the long range attacks, sooner or later you'll be attacked by swarms of small ships. Point defense won't kill them.

In regards to point defense:
1. Lasers seem to kill missiles best, but low damage really hurts when attacked by swarms of fighters.

Tried shield drones:
1. Boy that was one of my shortest games. :-)

How in the heck do you win this game? I take every mission I can find in order to build up supplies and such. I also try to be careful, but there's always that battle where another ship warps in.

Maybe I should buy a couple of ships and have an escape pod? I thought about that one, but there isn't enough money to recover from the loss of your main ship. Looks like I'll lose either way. Hmmm.

Help. ;-)

[{C.S.A} Misfit_1995]

I do recommend to go on a fighterspam AFTER you upgraded your mainweapons.
Today I was using the Capital ship BSE Armada. The Beginning is always hard, I did use 2 rocketlaunchers, 2 energy weapons with tripple burst and one teleporter, after i cleared the map except the fabric and the goal i was farming for my second ship, the last ship you can buy costs about 15k scrapmetall so it took me about 15 mins until i was able to continue on map2. Meanwhile i changed my 2 rocketlaunchers to a deathray and another energy weapon.

my second ship was equipped with 2 shielddrainers, 1 teleporter, 2 energyweapons which i changed to a dual and a megaplasma cannon.

It took me 10 mins to get the last ship on map 2 which was equipped the same as my other ship.

In combat i was either moving my ships with the teleport out of enemys fire so i was still in range but i dodged the attack, later on when i reached the unknown i was also stacking my ships like Capital was attacked by enemys deathrays and lasers etc, it shields dropped to ~30% then I put my other ship into the fireline to prevent the other to get destroyed and finally my last ship when the other ships shields went down too.

Im also using my fighters in the 2 hangar bays each of my company ships have as "meatshield"
they were really usefull against enemys flaks, rockets, energyweapons, megaplasma cannons, ioncannons and so on.

Fighters are actually good for stopping enemy figthers crowds and blocking enemys gunfire.
on early game u dont need them as your mainship should be able to destroy at least 2 enemy ships + a small group of fighters.

I was able to destroy 4 enemys only with my mothership as i havent had more ships at that point. Using the teleport strategically can give you huge advantages, but be aware of enemys lasers u cant dodge them with teleporters :D

Try to play like this and youll easily win the game on hard/medium

[{C.S.A} Misfit_1995]

Btw hard or medium only changes the amount of scrapmetal u get from destroying enemys theres no difference on combat. at least it feels like xD

[Sleipe]

Rehli 4 a écrit :

Btw hard or medium only changes the amount of scrapmetal u get from destroying enemys theres no difference on combat. at least it feels like xD

ooh yes it does...on hard enemy ships scale much faster so it can happen you have to fight 3 well equipped ships 3 jumps from your stating location

[{C.S.A} Misfit_1995]

o.o thanks for the information never noticed it but for sure is that on the first sector around you are at least 1 - 3 fighters. in every difficulty also when you spawn on the next maps theres 1 big ship with a crowd of fighters to welcome you ;D to be honest it doesnt makes a big difference if youre playing on hard or medium. You only need to start good and your way to the top is prepared. Ofcourse you can always die but this will happen because you make mistakes and/or dont pay attention.

Playing harbinger means beeing focused on the game even if it gets boring over time as the enemys vanish in the first 5 seconds. I often made the mistake to jump into sectors with much stronger forces. not everytime it went well for me thats for sure. Dying is part of the game and it will help you to increase even more.

After you found the tactics which fit for you you can always adjust them a bit if you see things dont work as well as expected. Also play on longterm strategie. Its important to think about the scenarios which can happen and how to react on them. beeing prepared is always an ace :)

[atrox]

Sleipe a écrit :

ooh yes it does...on hard enemy ships scale much faster so it can happen you have to fight 3 well equipped ships 3 jumps from your stating location

Ahh yeah: Those nasty fleets fully equipped with death ray and huge plasma cannons end most of my games fast. This may happen occasionally mid/end game (mostly in endless mode ?). Haven't found a way to cope with them - well, escape pod works...

Rehli 4 a écrit :

Playing harbinger means beeing focused on the game even if it gets boring over time as the enemys vanish in the first 5 seconds. I often made the mistake to jump into sectors with much stronger forces. not everytime it went well for me thats for sure. Dying is part of the game and it will help you to increase even more.

Best description of whole gameplay I've read so far ;)

please keep up this good stuff - still learning from this

[antisocialmunky]

If you want to avoid getting blown up instantly, you can always add a teleporter. It is perfect for single ship variants.

[WillKhitey]

Its wierd, I read this whole thread and never saw this anywhere else: am I the only one who buys particle turrets? I buy my first particle turret before my second ship sometimes.

Also I recommend fighters of all kinds, but especially plasma bombers. I try to outrange my opponents everytime, and the support ships you launch can fly as far as you need them to. My fleet at the moment is a Harbinger and two Valiants giving me a total of 8 carrier slots. I have 4 plasma bombers with 4 individual fighters each, so 16 bombers. I have two bolter drones that give me 10 drones and I have shield regen in the other two slots. Very few opponents get within firing distance of my fleet because the bombers have so much range. They deploy and they encircle my enemies, bombing them at 700 range which negates their small weapons and also takes the short-range/high rate of fire weapons like the vulcan out of the running.

In the middle-ground between my fleet and theirs the bolter drones absorb shots and take out missles which leaves my ships mostly unharmed. That is basically what I hope to accomplish with them, but I also put points into shield damage. The devs dont let you go too far with shield damage on these I think because they would be OP, but the bolter drones do a great job of softening up targets once they get some points into shield damage.

I have 3 particle cannons and one death ray on each of the Valiants. All of these weapons in the current configuration have around 1100 range, and the particle turrets have 80% accuracy. This allows them to one-shot all of my opponent's bombers so they cant play the same trick I am pulling on them. I have a pair of heavily upgraded mega plasma cannons on the Harbinger that are pushing 1250 range each. It all about outranging your opponents because the enemy will aboslutely destroy you in the late game if you let them get within 500 range and they hit you with energy gatling guns, vulcans, etc.

Each of my ships have 4 maxed-out shield generators giving them 1200-1300 or so shields. Every other slot is filled with lasers. I feel this is an area where I could get more creative but
I really only use them to destroy missles and enemy fighters, so I put points into hull damage and range. I also have four Celestial lasers on my flagship which are so sweet they make my teeth hurt.

The basic course of battle for me begins right before I jump in. The fleet follows the line between the two sectors so I plan accordingly. I generally try fo face my enemy because these ships are slow and unwieldy. If I have to manuever at all I want to start in a consistent position. Then I place my entry point as far from the enemy as I can while still mostly facing them, and jump in. I focus everything on the nearest ship so the bombers and fighters close in. They destroy the enemy shields which leaves them vulnerable to the high hull-damage particle cannons I have in my fleet, and because the particle turrets hit instantly the enemy usually only gets off off a volley with their non-missle weapons before I shut them down. Fighters provide my first line of defense, then lasers, then shields, then finally the hull itself.

I know I take a risk by not using the repair drones and everytime I get a game-over my first thought is always "Why didnt I buy any ******* reapir drones that time?", but I prefer to repair for free when I can. I'd say learning to manage a set of repair drones is my next step to improve my game. Let me know what you all think and thanks for reading this extremely long post if you did.

[{C.S.A} Misfit_1995]

wow thats a nice strategie =)
Flak Cannons are also a nice way to deal medium ranged damage on enemy ships and fightercrowds. On map 8+ the enemys can get really annoying So I do recommend not to fight them as you wrote it on 500meters and less. However the teleporter gives you the opportunity to dodge the enemy attack/tank them by stacking your ships which is absolutely neccessary on the endgame. To be honest: Repair your ship after every battle. No matter how pennywise u are, repair them! On the endgame u have scrap without limits (atm im on map 9 with over 70k scrapmetal and over 1k of those green upgrade things[Upgrading 2 Megaplasma cannons is about 500 of those green things each ;D]) Theres no need to save it :D.

Lasers are the best "Melee" defense for your ships as they are great against missles and give you a good crowd controll buuuuut! Your Fighters should be the units blocking off enemy also your fighters should work as meatshield, I am using Bolterdrones because they are quite efficent and can be produced very fast.

I do recommend as Willkhitey wrote it to have at least a minimum of 1,2k shieldpoints. more shields are recommended, I do place my shields on the Fleetships (Those last ships you can recruit for 7100 crap) beside a laser. so its 6 lasers (2 in front and 4 on the "platform" like towers so ur ship is 360° covered by lasers with extended shields (4 shields in total i think) btw if you buy shields upgrade them constantly all together not one by one.

I rather not to use escape pods as you wont be able to fight the enemys wihtout your great flagship very long. I instead recommend to use teleporters. You will see your improvement of playing this game if you use them. Use them often, use them tactical.

:D

[TheMac]

Wow. More wonderful tips just keep coming. Thanks to everyone who has contributed! I love reading about all the different strategies.

[Vela]

My best game so far has come from a fleet made of one Memphis destroyer with a healthy combination of long to short range weapons that are effective against primarily hull but still effective against sheilds, and two Resolution assault carriers with mid-long range, and a hull and shield regen support respectively, and each loaded with two full compliments of plasma bombers (4 squadrons of 4, total).

The carriers are somewhat low in hp compared to even the light assault carriers but what ive done here is spec to formation.
i've pushed for massive left/front laser point defense and used the right slots for shield buffs to make everything including the destroyer a little more durable, then i just position the carriers so the detroyer is set to intercept all incoming fire and am really careful about where im jumping into systems so that even ambushing enemies will generally fall on the left side of the formation.

Everyone seems to agree and i do as well that laser point defense are the best, you can upgrade their hull damage to be as effective as the other types, and they are madly accurate. Anything coming straight on will definitely get burned up by them instead of having a chance to miss like with the other "particle" based point defenses.

It admittedly will go horribly wrong if anything nasty manages to get on my right side, but the mix of weapons and the huge compliment of bombers makes them very effective for range combat and the destroyer will eat a fair amount right to the face while dishing just as much back in short range encounters.

The huge bank of laser point defense with focus on upgraded hull damage on the front and middle ships and upgraded range on the rear line ship (3 dedicated left side, 1 front left and 1 front right per ship) just eats up anything and everything getting too close, even squadrons of durable small ships.
Ive seen 6 or more missles/photon torpedoes per second (or second and a half) just disintegrate before impacting anything. I'm finally well into galaxy three and ive only had to tactically retreat once or twice the whole game.

Im sure there are plenty of better options with later unlocks as described above, but these are not so hard to get access to, the carriers don't cost more than 5k scrap to add to the fleet, and their weaknesses can be compensated for pretty darn effectively this way.

[TheMac]

Not a bad idea to use a capital ship as your main and then carriers as your others. That way, your main ship is quite strong and harder for you to get killed.

[Vela]

I love how many options and nuances this game provides. it's so simple at its core, and yet there are so many ways to assemble a fleet and spec to solve different problems. I never thought it would be this interesting when I got it. Glad you and others are having a good time problem solving in this as well.

[{C.S.A} Misfit_1995]

I uploaded a screenshot for you all so you can see my fleet and taste some endgame


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=689587200

was a defend the station mission, it didnt survive xD