Solo Campaign tips? (6 Questions)

[HerrDave]

Howdy folks!
I'm looking to beat the game solo, and I'm wondering if there's any tips or tricks that could help me.

The only two things I know already are:
- Don't make AI Assistants Clowns, they can't honk or bonk
- Swap out Coilguns for Laser Cannons to conserve lead for crafting

1 - Should I give my crew a specific weapon type (SMG, Shotgun, Boarding Axe, etc)
2 - Is there an ideal submarine for solo-play? (Easier to defend if attacked or breached)
3 - Is it worth going into the Abyss in the Cold Caverns for island-mining, or is the sub too vulnerable?
4 - Should I have excess Security & Assistants to combat boarders during a breach?
5 - How do you deal with Fractal Guardians before crafting an Exosuit?
6 - How do you make mining in the green overgrown/gassy/nasty caves safer?

[Bookslayer10]

I played the campaign a while ago so take anything I say with a grain of salt. That being said,

1 - I didn't give any of my non-security bots weapons, I generally never had any monsters breach the sub after the early game
2 - Dugong, then Orca 2, then Typhon 2. I find those are generally the all-around best subs at each tier. Dugong is much more survivable than the Barsuk, Orca 2 has fantastic weapon coverage, manoeuvrability, drainage, and utility, and Typhon 2 has guns. Lots of guns.
3 - IDK I never did it, but if you do end up killing an abyss creature it's 100% worth looting
4 - Didn't find it that necessary for me, but having lots of security is good for when you get big ships with lots of guns. It's faster to switch between a bunch of bots who are already on each periscope, and more weapons can fire at once.
5 - Assault Rifle, HMG
6 - Assault Rifle, HMG, extra ammo, extra meds, extra 02

Also, loot all mudraptor corpses, they have ammo crafting materials. Buy a mineral scanner upgrade for your ship and sail near cave walls to find tons of free goodies. Railguns kind of suck, flak guns are much better DPS and ammo efficiency wise, and double coilguns are pretty good as well.

Most importantly though, never use AI autopilot. Always drive manually, and as soon as you see enemies on the sonar, start backing up as fast as possible. The number one key to winning fights and saving ammo, repairs, and medical items is to get as much standoff as possible from the incoming targets. The longer you keep the swarm of mudraptors away from your hull and airlock, the more time the Gunners have to kill them all. Don't just drive though, practice switching between Gunners and the Captain in combat to the point that you are practically driving and shooting at the same time. This combines the situational awareness of the sonar and the delaying power of a full speed retreat with the tactical awareness and aim of a human.

I never fully trust the bots on the guns, I always catch them wasting ammo shooting through corpses or repeatedly missing a single crawler.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by HerrDave:

5 - How do you deal with Fractal Guardians before crafting an Exosuit?

Come prepared in other ways.

Lots of firepower. EMP if you can, that will stun fractal guardians for a long time.

Buffs - hyperzine, or meth + steroids. Preferably right before the fight, meth heals stuns for 30s, hyperzine for 60s, effectively reducing the stun-duration during that time.

Powerfull healing items. Combat stims especially, if you have it (powerfull healing that includes burns, and provides stun-resistance). Especially make sure to be able to treat burns - protein bars or pomegrenade extract for weak body-wide healing, plastiseal, antibiotic glue, or at least bandages for limb-specific healing. But don't forget regular healing (via opiates or combat stims) either.

Try to get an autoinjector.

Get burn-resistance. Some clothing provides that (e.g. Engineer's Jumpsuit provides 30%), PUCS would be better (and also provides and autoinjector - still nice to add an autoinjector headset).

Originally posted by HerrDave:

6 - How do you make mining in the green overgrown/gassy/nasty caves safer?

Overgrown being those with plants slowing you, gassy with oxygen-tank draining? WTF is "nasty" supposed to be?

Being slowed by plants only really matters in combat. Make sure to take a close look at the cave using active sonar (including handheld sonar) to look for hostiles. And use torches (in hand, on twohanded ranged weapon, or worn on the head slot) for light, and possibly flares/glowsticks for light and to distract hostiles.

Oxygen tanks being drained you can just power through with some more tanks in your inventory, and avoiding staying in the gas as much as possible.



My tips unrelated to your questions: Get as many bots as possible (reduces micro - no need to order a turret to be manned if all of them are allways manned).

And some encounters can be avoided via stealth - the reaction to spotted hostiles described above is the combat option that's often necessary, but occasionally you can reduce engine thrust, leave sonar off (off being default; for active sonar just toggle on/off for pings, you get slightly more information that way because passive sonar is off if active is on) or make it directional, and use your ballasts to glide past the hostiles. But very often this is not viable - the only enemy against which it's allmost allways doable are molochs.

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

I never fully trust the bots on the guns, I always catch them wasting ammo shooting through corpses or repeatedly missing a single crawler.

While those are issues, they often don't come up (e.g. corpses will be left behind fast if you're retreating away as you described). And wasting some ammo is better than a breach, even if manual control is usually more efficient.

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

Railguns kind of suck

They are, however, usefull for opening wrecks and salami, and sinking enemy subs. Especially if you increase their power with more explosives, and/or use nukes.

[lolic_lol]

Originally posted by HerrDave:

Howdy folks!
- Swap out Coilguns for Laser Cannons to conserve lead for crafting

Not the best idea, i think.
Yes, the bots are very accurate with the laser, but the effectiveness of the laser against many small enemies is questionable, and the cost of ammunition is quite high.
In fact, Coilguns are the optimal and most versatile weapon for a single-player campaign. Coilguns will never have problems with ammunition. And the variety of ammunition for Coilguns makes their use very flexible.
And yes, Coilguns can be used without lead (which is not something rare). It can be replaced with other metals.

[Buggy Boy]

I completed the solo campaign several times using my own custom scout class subs very basic, not overpowered in any way, but small enough for me to run from bow to stern in just a few seconds), but before that I think my favourite was the Humpback. In a multiplayer game a friend and I customised (all in-game) the heck out of an Orca 2, it was almost indestructible and unsinkable after a while (*almost*!), it became a bit of a meme.

I never really used the exosuit thing, nor did much at all by way of gene splicing (this can be a very powerful way to improve the survivability of your crew, if you concentrate on it with a doc character and talents, but it needs a lot of genetic material so you'll be farming every dead thing in sight).

I agree that the coilguns are very versatile, but lasers + bots tend to make short work of most things especially if you can get some damage buffs going with talents. You need to loot dead bodies for their blood constantly to remake the laser ammo, and I think it's lithium or some other mineral so you need to stock up on it (batteries can be a good source of lithium, buy out the entire stock from stations and deconstruct them).

Abyss mining may be a necessity to get sufficient alien / rare minerals for upgrades, especially to the hull, not sure there's much going on or if you can even access the abyss in the Cold Caverns, just mine the crap out of every cave you find, keep an eye out for minerals on the sea bed, get everything you can from every round in the Cold Caverns as you'll encounter few or no enemies in caves etc.

I prefer my own designs because I know they work very well with bots, some vanilla subs and plenty of other workshop subs are not optimised for bots or may have glitches with the waypoints etc.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2796225129

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2879872976

[Beltneck]

Give everyone medic fatigues so they can carry their own bandages, antibiotics, and morphine. Then the doctors can carry the blood packs, a syringe gun of calaxanide, and the better painkillers.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Beltneck:

Give everyone medic fatigues so they can carry their own bandages, antibiotics, and morphine.

Everyone can carry all of that anyway.

Except maybe security, if equipped with a heavy (toolbeltslot-only) weapon.

It's only an issue if you want to retrieve loot from somewhere, and can't afford to carry a crate or anything like that.