Some thoughts on flying a Yacht into end game

[Red Wizard]

I've been playing through trying to get the Battleship Raid perk, which entails beating bosses a higher level than you with a yacht or shuttle. I was able to get a couple around level 10-20, but I'm now level 26 and am having a hard time finding bosses that are a higher level than me that don't completely wipe the floor with me. My ship is pretty much decked out with top yacht gear, too, so there's not much room to improve it. Here's my thoughts, and some ideas on what would help:

First of all, I think it's amazing that I can even compete into mid/endgame with a small ship. Really says a lot to the balance of the game, and I'm loving the gameplay and battles way more than I was playing with a big tank.

There's been a few things that have been a little frustrating, though. The first is carrying capacity. I can really only pick up a couple of items before I have to return to base and drop them off. The only weapon that's been effective with my strategy (which requires I stay a little further away, to avoid getting lasered to pieces) is rockets, which also take up a large amount of inventory. I think/hope that this will be resolved as fleet mechanics is improved. I'd love to be able to have a tanker following me that I can drop items off in, or reload on missiles.

The second frustration is power drain -- and in particular, constant power drain from things that aren't in use. I never really thought about computers/analyzers/codexes in my last game, because they took up no space, but their energy usage scales from 1 at 1.0 to 6 at 3.0, which is a huge draw for a tiny ship. It basically meant I stuck with 1.0 versions, or swapped out chips as I was doing specific things. I don't really see a reason why an asteroid analyzer should pull 6 energy when I'm not analyzing an asteroid. Same with most of them.

The third comment is about gear. By level 26 I've basically acquired ideal gear for my ship. I jumped around some higher level systems to get it, but most of the gear is pretty low level, since higher level gear usually requires bigger ships anyway. It would be nice if there was some high-level small-ship-only gear out there. It could be exceptionally more expensive than regular gear, because you're not having to spend much on upgrading the ship itself. It's not such a stretch to think that there should be some gear optimized for a yacht or smaller ship, that wouldn't work on a bigger ship. I feel like I'm currently plateaued in my ship progression, which I feel shouldn't happen at level 26.

As an aside, since my ship isn't really big enough to justify a tractor beam, I tried pushing a derelict vessel into a port, and was amazed to find that it worked! I have now salvaged several ships this way. Thanks for this detail, devs!

And a question to wrap it up: Do the 5 bosses for Battleship Raid have to be in the same game? Or can they come from multiple playthroughs?

[stretch]

The only way I can suggest to kill a boss if you have limited ammo and such is to find one right next to a station. Closer the better. If you die they reset to full health on reload but it still makes it easier than travelling miles. Obviously a boss with regen/heal drones and/or a shield is out of the wuestion. It's really quite hard to find the right ie vulnerable bosses but they are there. I have not tried this achievement but I have had enough bosses that fit the bill to know they exist.

Another suggestion would be to swap out for a bigger ship and go get some better gear and levels. I am fairly sure there is some equipment out there that would fit what you are asking for but the rarity and likelihood of getting those drops is extremely low from lower level bosses. I don't know if there are enough crew in smaller ships to make a noticeable improvement but there are a lot of crew skills that might help.
I understand that crafted weapons are a lot better at low levels than dropped stuff but it really needs yo to invest in the skills, to craft at the correct stations for the tier increase and to have plenty of ancient relics spare. Not a lot of that is going to happen at low/mid levels.

High tier cargo expanders? I think those are % based so probably not ideal but the extra weight they cost shouldn't be all that detrimental in smaller ships and might help with space issues.

It's hard to say for sure but the difficulty of bosses at higher levels is quite extreme. Not so much in damage output as in them just becoming bullet sponges and honestly if you do level up somewhat you might just completely $crew yourself. It might be one of those achievements that you simply must do very early in the game or not at all. Like you I do think that if there is a perk/achievement for something it should be doable.

[WeaverSong]

To answer the question: Yes, all 5 have to be in the same game.

As for setups: I would also recommend that you try out a Jousting setup - getting heavy weapons and repeatedly jousting the Ravager to outrange it, then swooping away till your weapons cool down and can be fired again. That was the strategy I used with a Reaper the first time I got it. I found it a lot easier than my second time, using pd weapons in a Dragon. (Although both were viable - finished before level 50)

And a final note: Crew. A large ship can get by with low quality because it has so many, but a yacht can benefit way more from their single crewmember (if you ignore Lacewing cheating and getting an engineer as well). a good copilot can be worth more than half your equipment space.

[Moon-Shadow]

Kill 5 bosses , gives you "Lacewing"

So you can use the ship badly to unlock the karma advantage that unlocks the ship with.

[stretch]

There is a way to cheat killing bosses if you get wish. I am not sure if it works against all weapon types they may use and it is VERY situational but it will let you kill them easily.
I have only done this once and it wasn't deliberate at first but I did finish it to prove I could. I was only lvl 9 and thought there was a perk for killing a boss before lvl 10 but I never got it. Maybe it needed to be higher level than me. Not sure. The boss I killed would not pass through or shoot through a warp gate. Get on one side with it on the other side and missile it to pieces. I do not think my missiles passed through but the explosive radius seemed to. It was up against the warp gate so I couldn't see if my missiles went through or not. It's not a common scenario to get a boss near a warp gate to start with and they are tethered so it's gotta be close.

[WeaverSong]

Beams go through warp gates, projectiles do not. I had not known that the radius of explosions did, however. Impact mines are also a perfect way to one-shot bosses, as the ultimate act of cheese.

[Red Wizard]

Weaversong: "And a final note: Crew. A large ship can get by with low quality because it has so many, but a yacht can benefit way more from their single crewmember (if you ignore Lacewing cheating and getting an engineer as well). a good copilot can be worth more than half your equipment space."
What ship do you use for this? I've been using a V2F-A because the self-repairing factor means I can skip wasting space on a repair system, but it's one of the only Yachts that doesn't have a co-pilot. And what do you do for repairs mid-fight?

[WeaverSong]

My favorite yachts in order: Lacewing, Reaper, Phantom, Dragon. While I get that the hull regen is nice, a yacht can never get very much hull or hull regen, so I vastly prefer to stack shields. You don't need too much - you only need to be able to survive one heavy shot, and enough regen to recover before you miss time a roll again. 30 regen and 200-300 shields are usually good enough. And no, I don't usually have any form of hull regen on my yacht.

[Red Wizard]

Why Reaper and Phantom before Dragon? Dragon looks like it has better stats. Was about to swap to that.

[WeaverSong]

Dragon has the best weapon space and hardpoints, but 1 less equipment, lower speed and agility, and no faction bonus.

[WeaverSong]

Cannons and Beams are my favorite weapons for yachts. Only the lacewing can handle beams nicely, and the Reaper has good hardpoints and a +20% cannon damage. Phantom almost makes up for that damage with its ridiculous speed and agility, and +1 weapon space, but it also goes down by another hardpoint. All around it's a matter of personal preference - they're all really good ships, and they all have their advantages.

[phoenix_54d]

At level 26, it's unlikely you've acquired all the ideal gear for endgame of a yacht.
Here's a list of the endgame gear and you'll want it purple or orange:

• Miners Reactor: you may like a Venghi in the stack as the energy generation is slightly better per space, but the Venghi are 3 space and have no storage capacity
  
• Ardonian Small Battery: One or two.
  
• Pirate Impulse Drive
  
• Pirate Speed Boosters (at least one)
  
• Mk II or III (depending on your mass) Lateral Thrusters. You probably already do have this.
  
• Mk 1 or 2 (depending on your mass) Gyroscope. You probably already do have this.
  
• Terran or Energy Armor.
  
• Venghi Shield Generators.
  
• Mk III shield chargers you probably already have.
  
• Optronic Computer
  
• NODOLOS. A couple of Nodolo Combat Mods or more depending on how much heat gen you can giv up for more damage.

The oranger the better.

Now you've done well to notice some of the issues like power drain. If you're hunting ravagers, you can unequip the debris, asteroid and maybe even pathfinder units (long as you wouldn't get stranded by hull damage with that last one).

Endgame copilots should also be purple or orange; while a big ship wants a dozen decent quality folk to stack up, most yachts get just the one and want the best. Prepare to chuck a LOT of people out the damn airlock for learning ♥♥♥♥ they shouldn't have.

What's happening in the late 20s is generally that you don't have the top gear, but the Ravagers you face are starting to have shields, maybe some self repair, and an annoying number of beam turrets. They tend to be sub-dread sizes with a 360 turret or two which unless you strafe REALLY REALLY fast (Phantom or Lacewing with good gear and an excellent pilot and even then) will stay on you with ease.
Some can be a real nightmare; a Beam Kurma is a complete pushover for a half-assed cruiser or dread, and will utterly shred the average yacht in a split-second of the slightest error.

• Luckily they have a Hephaestus-like tendency to want to beam duel you with their fixed-forward Ultralaser, so you can plasma joust them offscreen or something

At this stage what you're starting to look for is either jousting (plasma or cannons), or if it's big enough a little trip to point-drill town in a dead spot. The bigger ravs will begin to have places where they just can't fire from - long as it's not covered by a 360 point beam you can get and stay there till they die... a lesson you'll be needing later when hunting the Titans.

One of the things here is coverage. A Raven has that middle gun for sure, and the smallest like a Lacewing can end up between the forks hardpoints up close temporarily, but as ships get bigger more and more of the turrets lack either the angle or the range to reach your ship. You have to find the distance and position that's best for you against each target, and high level battleship raid starts looking like Monster Hunter.

I won't spit on your request for more small-ship-specialized gear though, even though I feel a bit selfish when I'm asking for those things due to how much I like beaming holes in the fat ones.

[Moon-Shadow]

Yacht equipment.


Forgot the name, but the module what Warp and Sensor is, this module takes up less space than these two modules combined, and has better performance than the middle types of warp and sensors.

It is important never to remove warp drives without having enough space to reinstall them, so only expand them in space if you have found a better one.

Then skills in technology, equipment space can be increased, usually 2 points more.

The skills on the bottom row, there's one for making less heat.

There are a lot of karma perks that are easy to unlock, and some harder ones that will help at least for your next yacht Run.

---

Kill 5 bosses , gives you "Lacewing"

So you can use the ship badly to unlock the karma advantage that unlocks the ship with.

Since this is about killing 5 bosses, but every time it is mentioned that you could also use this ship, which is not possible because you need 5 bosses.

[phoenix_54d]

DO Sweeper Drive is good, BUT one more space than a Deuterium/Basic combo. It's absolutely excellent for general exploration and does good work with relic hunting too, but if purely gearing up for combat, you may want to keep a high quality pair of the basic in order to save that one space.

As for Battleship Raid, the first unlock won't be in a Lacewing, however once you've unlocked and started anew, if you don't pick Battleship Raid as a starter (I usually don't) you will go hunting to get it again in your new save.