Tips for hard difficulty, all ships (WIP)

Introduction and stuff

Eventually one day this game will get a huge update, go on sale, and get a review from some huge ass youtuber perhaps, finally getting the recognition it deserves.

Until the day comes the small community we have will carry on teaching one another how to play this awesome game :)

I am writing this based on how I get through each sector on hard, I am no gamer god, I am not some big brain master. I am just someone writing down what got them their victory, on hard, with each individual ship.

Tips, quirks, absolute must buys, and benefits of each ship along the way will be noted and maybe even talked about in depth? If you have anything to add please feel free to add it in the comments and I will probably throw it in a section for mentions :)


THIS GUIDE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. SOME INFO WILL BE MISSING. SOME SECTIONS WILL BE BLANK. PICTURES WILL BE MISSING. I AM ONLY ONE WOMAN AND DO OTHER THINGS IN MY LIFE SO IM SORRY IF THIS TAKES LOTS OF TIME ;-;

Excelsior Class Ship

The Imperial ship

Your starter, your finisher, and your best friend for the early game :)

I AM GOING TO WRITE THIS ONE OUT LAST BECAUSE IT IS PAINFULLY EASY

Difficulty
⭐
Ease of use
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fun :D
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Strengths and weaknesses

Starting out

Recommended officer perks:

Recommended starting specialist:

Recommended first buy:

Upgrades

Must buys

Weaponry

Strategy

Closing statement and footnotes

Kaos Class Ship

The Kaos Ship (Aka suicide squad)

In short, this ship is basically the "Zerg Rush" of Crying suns.

Difficulty
⭐
Ease of use
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fun :D
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Strengths and weaknesses

This ship starts with a little bit of hull, very few slots for officers, a small amount of weaponry slots, a hefty squadron dock, and a decent bit of miscellaneous upgrades. Short respawn timers for your drones make rushing and overwhelming the enemy easy, with a very bulky fuel scoop and fully upgraded ground distress signal efficiency. This makes scrounging for as many ships, weapons, and officers very easy in ground missions and acclimating to its play style very smooth.

Starting out

Recommended officer perks: Guerilla Tactics, Tactical targeting, Thrusters boost, Battlefield Auto-Krafter

Recommended starting specialist officer: Kara Moon, Mina Silk, Weezz, (Literally any officer with Guerilla tactics its damn busted)

Recommended first buy: Finish off maxing your fuel scoop, its basically already there and getting it to its third point is easy enough.

Upgrades

This ship starts with hefty options for its squadron dock (not to mention it can hold 4 more ships than every other ship can) with the downside being all ships are patched (50%hp) and must stay that way for the entire run (with a few exceptions.) It also has a very weak weapons dock and
average but not great hull structure. Its biggest strengths are in its upgraded squadron dock, so you are going to want to play around that.

Firstly, get your fuel scoop upgraded, it takes about 65 scrap and it basically guarantees (if luck be on your side) that you will essentially never need to buy Neo-N fuel. After beating the game on hard with this ship, I already miss the benefit of its beefed up fuel scoop.

Once you have done that you want to begin hoarding scrap for the squadron dock upgrade, only spending on squadron dock recovery as fights get stickier. As you start to take a little more time picking off each ship, and amassing more scrap, you want to put points into the recovery of the dock ASAP, keeping around 80-100 scrap for the sector one boss. This should ensure that you end with over 450~ scrap after the first sector boss, allowing you to get the first additional dock upgrade easily.

A majority of the ships you will get will not be purchased, unless you find a Stealth drone, Boomer MKIII, or a prototype that is far too good to pass up. (My personal favourite is the protectors, even if they are a tad ass sometimes.)

As you collect more ships you may often find yourself getting more scrap just for the ship being full hp, and since your ship can't use full hp vessels, free stuff! :D


The second sector should be just about the same as the first, try and do as many ground missions as possible, rack up as much scrap as you can, and well don't die lol. Coming up on the second boss you want to have your squadron dock recovery maxed out, four slots in the dock, and at least one officer to support speed, damage, or best yet, patched dmg VS unpatched ships. Once you finish off the second boss. Grab the last squadron dock upgrade to finish that tree off, and start working on getting a weapon (or both if you have the luxury.)

Crowd control is the name of the game for the Kaos ships weaponry, you are going to have a whole load of your little suicidal splodey sperms crash landing their c4 strapped faces into the various ship types that your enemies will throw at you, and they are very seldom going to come out of it alive. I tend to just throw them into the flames at the enemy ship, as their explosions to damage to the hull even if they dont get a single shot off, and with the upgrades to your dock that you have, they will be back very soon.

Weaponry

Tesla Field Generator: Not bad, great for defence if you are having a hard time pushing through the enemies and you want to keep them at bay from hitting your hull, or trapping them in a pit of pain as they spawn and you are grouping up.

Sub Zero Gun: Amazing, very nice for punishing the enemy for travelling multiple units on one cell, or allowing your little boomers to take out cruisers they would otherwise have a hard time fighting head to head without making their final journey at the same time.

Matter Destabilizer: An okay clean up tool, plop this down on enemies spawning on top of your drones while you wail at their ship, or toss it at an oncoming fleet to weaken them or finish them off after a drone spam.

Engine Disruptor: Extremely good, you can use this to force the AI to choose between keeping its slow as crap ships en route to attack your ship, or turn them around to try and go back to fight the drones that zipped past them and are already knocking on their carriers hull.

Note worthy weapons: Hull breakers can be good if you have trouble finishing off enemies and you think your CC is good enough on its own. Dark matter cannon can have some interesting combos to it forcing enemies away from their own ship while your drones eat them alive on the other side (ect, ect.)

This lil dude can be funny if you REALLY want to go hard in the "I am going to blow everything up, even myself" route; however I find it a little overkill.


Must Buys

Any officer with Guerilla Tactics

Stealth and Flash drones do especially well for back lining when you have full recovery

Nemesis Core. This is basically a braindead run winner. Just fcking buy it when you see it lol.


Strategy

There is really not a lot of strategy that goes into playing this ship, aside from rushing the enemy down before they can do anything because your ships respawn faster than they can react.

The things you do need to look out for are.

1. Akee ships rushing you in stealth. It is better to create a shield wall off the bat to weaken their ships with your lil suicide boys then hope and pray they don't chunk you for a full ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hull bar. Akee reserves are very small so you can typically outlast them. Getting a few points in heat for systems during chapter 3 can be useful, but I managed without.

2. Kosh ships can also be very annoying as your lil dudes always being at half hp at most makes them all a very easy target to nuke in one blast, just keep your drones and fighters spaced apart and be mindful for X-beams and line beams and you should be okay!

Basically if you cannot rush down the enemy and chip away at their hull until they explode, make this lil number go bye bye and they are free to nibble to death :)



Closing statement and footnotes

The Kaos ship was the first ship that I took through the journey of all six chapters of Crying Suns on hard (at my girlfriends request!) and it was a whole lot of fun! The only chapters I had to redo were III and V, once each. With enough practice, some luck, and a lot of drones torn a sunder in the name of glory, I you too can come out on top! :D

Jericho Class Ship

The Church ship

Buffs, debuffs, and crowd control, and turtling at its finest.

Difficulty
⭐⭐
Ease of use
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fun :D
⭐⭐⭐

Strengths and weaknesses

This ship has a boat load of pros. It has a unique augment allows you to play super defensive to the point where even in fights you should lose you will come out on top, your weaponry can be focused for low cooldown, and you can have up to four so, that is its own beast. You will always be close to your ship, so swapping out frigates is easy, and its a tanky as all hell battleship to boot! It cons are simply put, a maximum of three in the squadron dock does make your choices of ships to a pretty constant 2 to 1 for frigates to cruisers, and the play style is quite slow, if that is not your main choice I would still give this ship a go! It is awesome. :)

Starting out

Recommended officer perks: Battleship Shielding, Proximity Repair, Tactical weapon, ADV. Reload, Officer assist (for prox repair, and tac wpn)

Recommended starting specialist: Brother korto, Karl P. Opper, Maximus akai

Recommended first buy: Weapon slot upgrade, or squadron dock upgrade as both are cheap and you can make use of them instantly.

Upgrades

Being as this ship allows you to utilise crowd control for even more benefit than all the others, you are going to want to focus on that. Get yourself in a good position for the first sector because if you don't prioritise getting your cry-gun ready and able, and more than a single frigate out on the field you are going to have one hell of a time. Assuming you can get an extra squadron slot, weapon slot, and a fuel scoop upgrade by the first boss, its very simple to get this ship to the cluster boss with ease.

You want to try and fish for officers as often as you can, getting one officer with proximity repair can seriously trivialise your run, it makes turtling just that much more effective and the only thing you will ever have to worry about is hull breaker lasers or piercer shots that will tick away at your hull. However this can be alleviated with the beefy hull upgrades that the jericho comes with, or the augment that makes the first hull bar only take 50% dmg from enemy weaponry, which can be really effective if you seriously want to play as slow and methodical as possible.

By the time you have beaten the second sector you will want to prioritise getting weapon cool down for your crowd control, it is your bread and butter. I tend to stick to one hull breaker, one to two cryo guns, and a form of aoe disable. slows, tick damage, or even a tesla field can help keep the enemy at bay while you charge up your hull breaker.

Must buys

A longbow cruiser if you are confidant in your ability to keep them alive. Basilisk cruiser if you are feeling less confidant in your abilities.

Quarks Cooling System. This allows you to spam your cc and get your hullbreakers off much quicker if you are in a dps race. Absolutely worth the scrap.


Magneto cruisers are also extremely powerful on this ship. Going full turtle mode is incredibly easy when you tuck your cruiser next to your hull and squadron dock and put two frigates blocking it.

Weaponry

Sub zero gun: You start out with a mark one, and this will last you for a long time, you can either upgrade it for a mk3 later on or keep it for the whole run and it will do you just fine.

Matter destablizer: You start out with a mk1 and it can do you just fine, I personally prefer to use an engine disruptor over this, however this can be very useful for pulling akee ships out from stealth.

Engine disruptor: Getting a mk3 of this can very easily win you most runs as your cruiser will pick off ships before they can even reach your frigates let alone your battleships hull.

Darkmatter cannon: Not exactly the most likely you will make use of it, however you can cheese with this gun to force enemy ships away from your own by drawing a line in the corner. If placed correctly it will shove any ships outward and your cruiser will tear them to shreds while they sit idle for the full duration of the weapon.

Force field generator/Repair bot injector: If you find the battlefield is easy to sweep, and come across one of these. I would say they are worth it, I got my sector 6 win with a lvl 1 repair bot injector. I would say only use the force field generator if you have an officer with proximity repair, but can be clutch against kosh ships who love to spam their nukes.

Strategy

As I have already said enough this ship is all about going full turtle mode. At the start of your combat you are going to sit your ships in the bottom left corner, your cruiser in the furthest most so it only has two tiles surrounding it, where you will place your two frigates. You are going to run down the enemies reserves on ships, and try your best not to burn a hull bar tickling each other with your hull beams until one of you eventually dies.

Friendly reminder that this is broken on the church ship


Keep your engine disruptors, and dot dmg weapons on cooldown for when the enemy respawns. If you shoot them as soon the first ship is a second away from spawning and place it just right (or with the mk3 engine disruptor literally anywhere over their spawn) you will catch the greater majority of their ships and stop them from entering stealth, or rush you down with mk4 drones.

The only problem you may come across is impalers, these dudes can be extremely annoying because they will bypass the 50% damage mitigation of the (insert augment name here) and can chip you down faster than battleship weapons normally would. Thankfully with enough cooldown reduction or careful weapon shots you can stop them from firing with your cryo gun, as its cooldown is already very short, (enough to get two shots off before any impaler can get a single one in) this allows you to generally take a few shots if needed, but not blow an entire hull bar trying to deal with it.

Most sectors aside from Act 3 will be very easy, (but I will do a guide for that for each ship... one day) even the final boss can very quickly be whittled down with a hull breaker laser as you fight off their legion, throw in a stray fighter to eat away at their drones, and swap out your cruiser for an impaler each time their squadrons are not out and that should be a win for you!

Closing statement and footnotes

This ship was quite easy to get my wins with, it was much less of a challenge than the Void or Geno. But it was still very fun! I like the slow, defensive, cc kind of playstyle. Slowly burning out the resources of your enemy until you are able to nuke them down over time or kill them outright when their reinforcements are depleted. I hope you enjoy this ship as much as I did!

Geno Class Ship Part 1

The Stealth ship

Challenging, rewarding, and a pain in the ass most of the time. A stealth cruiser in all its fields.

And so it comes to this... this god forsaken ship.

Difficulty
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease of use
⭐
Fun :D
⭐⭐⭐

Strengths and weaknesses

I won't lie in saying this ship is fun, it can be very enjoyable on lower difficulties, but man if you do not get started off well. Much like the Void class you will be very easily, and effortlessly dispatched by the enemy as quick as you came. Okay enough doomsayer crap onto what this ship is great at.

The geno ship has a large amount of offensive prowess to it. Stealth fighters to start off with, coupled with its unique system gives it a huge edge in just nuking down the enemies if they are patched, drones at all, or not aware of you laying three in a C shape right in front of their path. Coupled with a completely maxed out fuel scoop, Navigation scanner, and the ability to get four squads out at once and three weapons. If this baby has the chance to get going, it will go as far as it is given. There are plenty of play styles with this ship, and you may have the chance to do so if you come across the proper auxiliary system to support it, but otherwise you are going to be playing cat and mouse and praying to the sweet omni gods that they do not have a hull breaker laser of any kind.

This thing cannot take a hit though. You are going to have trouble on acts II, III, V, and VI. I and IV are easy enough, but this thing is wet tissue to heat weapons, stealth attacks, or hull breaker lasers.

Starting out

Recommended officer perks: Battleship shielding, Tactical Targeting, Weapon Sabotage, ADV. Reload, Versatile(Specifically Takeshi Sung), Thruster boost

Recommended starting specialist: Takeshi Sung, Kara Moon, Karl P. Opper, Mina Silk, Maximus Akai

Recommended first buy: An actually useful weapon, Officer to help get as much scrap as you can before the first boss

Upgrades

Your upgrades will vary based on what sector you are in, more than other ships due to how weak this ship can be. I would love to go in depth as much as possible because between the Geno and the Void... there is a lot of love they need in specifics, but I will save that for another time (unless people really need the nitty gritty tips.) Generally I would start off with getting a better weapon, the invisibility that the weapon you start off with has is not bad, but it pales in comparison to pretty much anything. Sub guns as usual are broken and got me most of my wins because of them so if you see one, pick it up, especially if you can track ships flight patterns in stealth, which with enough playtime you will!

If you are taking on lots of kosh ships, get squadron respawn time upgrades.
If you are fighting lots of akee or chruch ships, get Battleship Shielding and double down on them.
If you are fighting lots of pirates or scrappers, rush them down and take advantage of your stealth to overload their squadron docks, weapons, and then hull in that order. Just be sure to avoid having your fighters patched unless you take the brutal deployer/nemesis core combo. Which can be very potent with this ship even though if it does not seem like it.


By the start of the first boss, you want to have one of three things.

1. A crowd control weapon if facing akee, scrapper, or imperials.
2. Battleship shielding if you are facing church, or imperials.
3. Better hull and maybe an extra hull point, if you feel your fighters and drones are up to snuff and you are just worried about being backlined.

Get yourself situated in the second sector, if the first boss went by with a breeze then you should be fine to just collect scrap, and focus on getting officers to help with what you are doing best. If you are tanking up, double down on Battleship Shielding. If you are spamming sub zero/engine disruptor shots go weapon cdr. The mainstay of your ship is the damage and heat you get from the first attack out of stealth and that is not going to go away (assuming you don't sell your stealth ships, which you should never do on the Geno class.) Get your squadron dock upgraded to max, grab hull and heat capacity as needed, and max out respawn timer for your ships as needed.

By the time you hit the boss sector you are going to want at the very least two cc weapons, or three damage oriented weapons. ( I like to take piercer lasers because of their dual purpose.)

Lastly but not least repair your ships, this is especially important in chapter III, V and VI. If you cannot hold against your own during the golden veil, or EMP deluge. You are completely screwed. Don't forget to take advantage of cc weapons during golden veil to slow down the enemy ships and waste the enemies time with invulnerable, and remove your officers from their slots in your ships if the EMP deluge is going to overheat them. Saving them that extra damage (especially while weakened) can help with how long chapter threes fight can be. Tighten down, try not to let your ships get scrapped until the final push, and remember to take full advantage of leaving your ships in stealth for ambushes, again that is what the Geno class is good at, it is an upgrade of its own so use it!

Must buys

Asteroid-field Holo-mapper


This is not the most incredible thing on other ships but it does combo very well with your unique intrinsic while playing the Geno class, this can help get your ships back into stealth after you have taken out the first barrage of enemy fighters or drones and get back into stealth so they can hit the enemy battleships systems overheat much quicker when nibbling at their hull.

Stealth fighters. Do not pass these up ever. You can very easily toss out the two drones you start with if you need to buy them, they are fast, do extremely large amounts of heat damage and stun enemies upon leaving stealth. This can give you a huge edge in combat, even if its just burning their stealth to hit the enemy hull. These drones are just about the only excuse to use the invisibility gun you get at the start of the game as well. If you get a stealth drone early on, use the gun on it to spam its EMP when you can.


Advanced Electronic Warfare
This one is tricky... Not even close to a beginner friendly item at all (then again I highly do not recommend this ship or the void class to anyone who is just starting the game, especially their hard runs.) But never the less this can be used to get ship abilities back online faster, things like the stealth drones advanced stealth, Phase out shockwave, Decaying field, Bender drive, or even Auto-shield or health regen. This plays off those very easily with the Geno class due to how quickly you can overheat enemy ship systems.


And simply and lastly. Just buy a damn sub zero gun. Your ships are low hp, they will lose one on one fights if they don't exit stealth to start the battle off. Just pick one up to help chip down frigates, stick cruisers in their tracks, or let your fighters kill off two to three drones at once.

Geno Class Ship part 2

Weaponry

Hull breaker laser/piercer lasers: These can be very useful if you are trying to outlast the enemy. I took down the church boss after a few failed attempts by doubling down on battleships shielding and outplaying/kiting his ships until these came back online then I could not overheat his dock and weaponry. A solid choice.

Sub zero gun: Just buy the damn thing. I have blown enough smoke up this things ass you know the drill.

High Energy Beam: Whether you want to role-play being an Akibara-sung or you just want to whittle the enemy down by killing their officers and slowly burning them to death via heat procs this gun especially a mk3 is a very solid choice.

Engine Disruptor/Matter destablizer: Can be useful in chapter 3 to knock fighters out of stealth, or level the playing field for your own fighters due to their lowered hp pools, not bad choices but I would take them as I get them and never really purchase them with my own scrap.

Dark Matter Cannon: Hear me out on this one. This one is required to combo with a flash drone. I have used this for a few sector bosses when things seriously get hairy. If you can combo the flash drone, along side the dm cannon, you can place it tucked right next to their hull bar and wait for the enemy ships to get right beside them and slap the cannon on the two connecting tiles surrounding them leaving them with the full duration of the weapon to nibble away until either the hull bar breaks, or the enemy is forced to destroy the drone with a piercer laser or nuke of some sorts. It is a little goofy, but extremely fun to pull off.

Force Field Generator: Very useful when using a stealth drone or flash drone to back line the enemy battleship. A worth while purchase.

Strategy

Outside of brawling with bosses, avoiding having your hide tanned by causing sector alert to rise, and running out of grunts to do ground missions with you should take advantage of two things from the start.

1. The Navigation scanner. This comes nearly completely upgraded on the Geno class ship so take full advantage of that. I don't typically put points into it on other ships because I know most events and what to expect from sectors by heart, but this can allow you to plot out a course tactically and from the very start of a new run.

2. The fuel scoop is fully maxed on this thing. If you get lucky, and you will, you are going to want to hit the omni forge when you can. This is one of the few ships that can churn out upgrades almost every sector when given the chance, and having your stealth fighters or drones a cut above the crap being thrown at you can seriously help, take that leg up and use it.

Sectors
I will only do this for the Geno and maybe the Void ship because they are seriously tough. (unless requested for more in depth tips for each of the other ships, but as for now I do not see the need.)

Sector I: Load up on weaponry because scrappers are very weak to just having their crap blown up before they can choose what location they are going to meet their god in. Stack back, snipe stray drones out of stealth and pull your fighters back after one or two fights so they don't get patched. There really is not a whole lot of thought that needs to go into sector I, just avoid having your fighters patched and pick up an officer with Emergency Repair.

Sector II: This sector can be quite annoying. An easy way to beat it (and this tip counts for the Void ship as well) is to get two officers with Battleship Shielding, or one with an assistant, and sit back until the enemy gets adventurous with their frigates and cruisers. Peel out from your battleship and go behind them, once your ships exit stealth they will be targeted by the enemy weapons and their frigates should peel off. You will take one or two hits from the hull lasers but eventually both your officers will keep your ship intact. Rinse and repeat with flanking and baiting and you will be able to kill basically every church ship from there on out with practice.

Sector III: The way I got my victory against Tetsuo was having one magneto, one cruiser, and a steal fighter with emp blast in the corner, and one flash drone to backline the enemy battleship. Mk3 engine disruptor because its impossible to miss the damn thing with such a massive aoe. It is absolutely imperative to your success that you remove his fighters from stealth. Them striking first means you are going to lose. Keep them out of stealth, and keep yours in stealth and you will be just fine.

I swapped out my cruiser for an impaler in between waves, using a cryo gun to help ease fights between squadrons, and a hull breaker to chip away at his hp while I fended off the masses.

TL;DR: Get aoe to disrupt the stealth fighters, you need to keep his from striking first in stealth at all costs, turtling is effective even with the -20% hp max from being Geno class, always back line him with a flash drone if you can.

Max your squadron dock, weapon dock, recovery, then health and heat lastly. You want all of these to be maxed with heat and recovery missing a point if need be because they are less important when it comes to being maxed out to 100%

Sector IV: Vivar can be a pain in the ass because of his constant weaponry spam, missile barrage, and rushing out juggernauts. However, much like every other kosh ship in the game, is very weak to being overheated. You can keep his weapons permanently offline with two mk3 heat guns, two ADV. Reload ops, and quarks. I used this method and he was a complete pushover, I had only three squadron dock slots, and only one recovery upgrade.

(You can also spam out parasite drones when he uses juggernauts because yoinking them against his 80hp hull havin ass is really effective.)

Sector V: Turtle up with a cruiser if you have the luxury, I find kiting his ships into a blockade of frigates, stealth fighters, and a cruiser tucked in the corner an easy way to 3v4 his units then sneak a single flash drone or stealth fighter to attack his battleship. With a hull breaker laser you can have this fight done in less than two minutes and it will be an easy sweep. Crowd control or an engine disruptor makes him a cake walk. Just be sure to use any cc you have until after he cleanses it with his support weaponry, or golden veil going active. Surprisingly this one was easy for me.

Sector VI: This fight is basically mini fights of the previous bosses. Keep an eye out for what specialisation the defence ships have, if its kosh, be sure to keep yourself close to home so your units can recover from the nukes. If its akee, pray to whatever god you believe in. If its Church try and rush it down as quickly as you can while is cc weapons are on cooldown, and if its any of the others well, congrats on your victory :)

Closing statement and footnotes

I won't lie to anyone and say this ship is easy. This ship can be brutal if you don't put the time, effort, and failed runs required for you to win with it. I highly recommend leaving this ship, and the Void class for last in your journey but holy hell was it satisfying to get my chapter 3 win with this bad boy, and further on get that clean sweep to the end of the game. I hope this part of the guide helps you get your wins with the Geno class ship, there is so little information on beating the game on hard, and where as some tips did help in my own play through, I had to get a majority of it from banging my head against the wall and mixing things up. I hope at the end of it you were able to enjoy this ship as much as I did! :D

Hammer Class Ship

The Kosh ship (My favourite!)

This ship mingles hard hitting weaponry, and hammering down your opponents with big dps buffs to your ships!

Difficulty
⭐⭐⭐
Ease of use
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fun :D
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Strengths and weaknesses

As a ship with the inability to blow its on stuff to complete crap, this ship has already got a lot going for it! Most people say that the kosh ship is pretty sub-par but I found it the easiest to break the game with. This bad boy is mad tanky, gets up to 4 squadron dock slots and three weapon slots, with a moderate amount of support slots for hull and weaponry. You can turtle up real well and nuke down the enemy, or gauge out the time before needing to drop in a juggernaut and watch your enemies get brought to their knees in a single hit. This thing has the most hull in the game; use that. Your hull is a resource and this thing makes the most of it. Its downsides are not that bad in comparison to its upsides. Your ships are a bit slower, and you can get ganked in between weapon loading times if you don't upgrade properly, at most you will struggle against church ships if you don't have the means to out range them, akee if you cannot heal your frigates, and imperials if your fighters blow, but aside from that, I honestly recommend this ship for all sectors! it swept through all six chapters without only a single loss on the final boss, (cause of my own hubris) just don't forget to buy kinetic converter eh?

Starting out

Recommended officer perks: Battleship Shielding, Proximity Repair, ADV. Reload, Tactical Deployment

Recommended starting specialist: Karl P. Opper, Maximus Akai, Kara Moon

Recommended first buy: Weapon slot and a better weapon

Upgrades

A large majority of your upgrades are going to be sorted out on what sector you are in. This is not a ship you can really "One size fits all" your problems. But start out getting a second weapon, and a second slot in your squadron dock as soon as you can. If you can get one before the first sectors boss then you are off to a great start.

In chapter 2 you may want to focus on getting a hull breaker, chapter 3 will be heat capacitor upgrades, chapter 4 and on will probably squadron dock recovery. Adapt to your problems like you would need to with any ships, (aside form the Church and Kaos because they are very cut and dry) then focus on getting core upgrades. Max out your squadron dock, get all three weapon slots, and buy crowd control or more aoe damage weapons as needed. A fuel scoop upgrade may be needed if you are having raw luck, especially if ground missions are really going south for you.

Last point for upgrades, is to consider your weapons and ships as upgrades. You will need to have beefier frigates, higher tier fighters, and a decent cruiser to turtle up just like the playstyle of the church ship. Don't neglect to upgrade your weapons to squeeze out more dps and aoe damage and you will do just fine.

Must buys

Simply put, you will want a cruiser, you are more than likely going to turtle against most enemies, just like the church ship, and having a big boy back liner will really help accelerate how quickly you can get out your juggernauts. Speaking of which...

HIT THE DAMN OMNIFORGE you are going to run into enemies that have odd numbered hull hp, 82, 94, 112. It will mess with your flow, if you upgrade your juggernaut at the very least once, you can guarantee at the very least a single hull breaker will snipe the last of the health bar off a chunky kosh or church ship, not leaving you waiting the 50 seconds for it to get back up.

Lastly but certainly the most important... Kinetic Converter


This will win you the run. Earlier I said "Hull is a resource" this only extenuates that point, you have the thickest boy in all of crying suns at your disposal, your hull is beefy enough to tank entire juggernauts exploding, make use of it. With a nuke in the top slot, or a chain reaction cannon, and you will never have to worry about losing hull with little more than a deep sigh and hands off the keyboard as its nibbled to death by four stealth drones. They fight, you fight faster. Seriously though do not pass this up... Like ever.

Weaponry

Cain Reaction Cannon: Good pick if you want to clear out stuff super quick, your ships don't take damage and add to the chain so it has a double combo going for it!

Force Field Generator/Repair Bot Injector: Very good for sustaining your your frigates when they need to tank two, three, even four enemies. This helped me secure my wins on sector 3 and 5, both solid choices!

Sub zero gun: Look this thing is broken, if you find a mk3 just buy it and use it.

X-Beam/H-Beam: Two very good weapons for how they allow you to position your units and crap on tiny little drones that would dare to eat away at your frigates and cruisers. Not insane choices but I wouldn't turn them down.

Heavy nuke: Fun to play around with, but seriously not worth it. Unless you are using it with kinetic converter for the funny.jpg don't bother, its a meme imo, or perhaps... Consider the following.


Plasma nuke: You start out with one, and will do you just fine but if you get an upgrade take it right away, this thing is pretty nice.

Strategy

The way I got my wins were very rinse repeat with little deviation. I you have a cruiser, (which you should) hug that bad boy in the bottom left, phalanx it with two frigates and kill off the first wave of enemy ships. If its not Kaos, or Akee, or pirate class, then go ahead and pull back one ship and throw out the juggernaut. Keep them at bay until you hear the sweet blast of their hull greeting space jesus, and do this until cooked well done or to your preference.

Some slight deviations can end up looking like the following.
-You have an impaler, awesome! Throw it out like you would with a church ship, in between waves and whittle the buggers down.
-You have a stealth drone and can backline the last of their hull. Good! Do it when they aren't looking there is little they can do when you have 2-3 weapons and a fully built out squadron dock.
-You have a hull breaker laser. Just stall them until they die a slow and painful death.

There are other options of playstyle that you can dabble with in some sectors, like heat overload and rushing, but the way I played I found the most success with. If you find yourself rich with weapon cdr, or extra heat modifiers from Lethal Firing officers, then feel free to slowly eat away at the enemies hull by causing fire. That is how I beat tetsuo so I can confirm heat is a viable strat for this ship, considering how much time you get having 1,110 f**king hull at max, you have the time :)

Closing statement and footnotes

I know someone will ask the question, probably, yes entropic weapons has a de-synergy. You will put a dot effect on your units. No, it is not very lethal. Yes, it is rather annoying. No, it is not really worth it.


I love this ship! It has got to be one of if not my favourite. A really fun middle ground for fun, difficulty, and ease of use out of all the ships. I had an absolute blast with it, dropping nukes on the enemy and watching my own units tear the enemies a sunder, from their already weakened state. I can only hope you have as much fun with it as I did! :D

Void Class Ship Part 1

The Pirate ship

If you thought the Geno class was difficult... You know not the fires of hell.

Difficulty
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease of use
⭐⭐
Fun :D
F*ck this ship lol

Strengths and weaknesses

This ship has a lot going for it being a jack of all trades, hull and weaponry starts out being the weakest, but can easily ramp up and overwhelm your enemies with how much more efficient it is with its scrap; all thanks to its unique auxiliary upgrade! It has two stealth cruisers to start off with, along side two boomer drones, and two magneto frigates, all decent choices but can still fail you if you stay in a sector too long or find yourself fighting some bastard akee. Last but not least this bad boy comes with a crap ton of officer slots and the ability to utilise all of them. take advantage of that. The more officer abilities the better. All in all its what you can expect from a jack of all trades, hard to learn, but easy to manipulate later on in playing around with it.

Starting out

Recommended officer perks: Famous, Battleship shielding, Proximity repair, Versatile (Specifically Takeshi Sung), and Officer Assist.

Recommended starting specialist: Takeshi Sung, or anyone but Anton lol

Recommended first buy: A better weapon, and weapon slot.

Upgrades

Upgrading this ship can be... Difficult. There are many things this ship lacks in each area and dependant on sectors you will come across a need to really change up your game plan. (make notes of the sector 3 and 5 being ass)

Must buys

Weaponry

Strategy

This ship starts with two slots in each officer support module, and can specialise all the way up to nine slots, more than you will ever need. Make use of its extra one max officer and additional slots. You can follow your hearts desire to whatever play style you want to fall into... To some degree.

Closing statement and footnotes

People tend to dismiss this ship and how it starts with what is essentially no bonuses or specialisation to it, aside from a 20% off discount on all shops. But this is pretty damn good. As difficult as this ship can be, you can leverage that shop price reduction to help patch ships as often as possible and toss it to the last shop you come across before fighting the 3rd sector boss for a little extra scrap.

This ship is probably the hardest in the game. It is a lot more fun and manageable on the lower difficulties, but absolute hell on hard with it being basically a crappier Geno class with complete dependency on weapon, ship, and officer drops. But alas, still very satisfying to finally get a win with :)

Void Class Ship Part 2

Dealing with Tetsuo...

This section will culminate a number of unique tips for dealing with the pink a**hole that Tetsuo is and how I got each of my wins.

Excelsior:

Kaos: Rush him down, use one or two boomer drones as bait to stop any fighters coming from stealth and overheating your systems over since the Kaos ship is very weak to heat damage. Keep chipping away with drones and forcing him to fight at his ship instead of getting into stealth and pushing towards yours, if you keep a cluster of drones just outside the range of his spawn you can instantly negate the 'spawn into stealth' mechanic that all Akee ships have, this makes it very easy to pick them off. Throw in an engine disruptor, Matter destablizer or tesla field generator helps a lot.

Jericho: Turtle up, get those frigates sitting nice and comfortable because they are basically not going to be moving. Cruiser in the corner, two frigates next to it and just chip away at their hull with a hull breaker. Get hp regen up and maybe even Battleship shielding so you don't have to pull your ships back to get their health back. Slow and steady until he finally dies, and dont forget to the do the officer flicker strat to avoid having them die during EMP deluge.

Geno:

Hammer:

Void:

General tips: Always, always, ALWAYS, remove your officers from their slots in your ship if you are going to tank an EMP deluge, if they are weakened, or stationed and have versatile they will probably end up dying by the end of the fight. Not seriously a problem if you will win, however sometimes losing an officer with a very critical skill to your success can completely derail your chance and victory.

Very few cases are you going to want to fight it out against tetsuo's fighters having the advantage of taking you head on inside of stealth, so do what you can to pull them from stealth and keep it that way for each and every wave he sends at you. The less attacks they get from stealth, the quicker your ships can fight back, recover hp, and the less heat your systems will take throughout the fight.

Mentions, off topic notes, and miscellaneous tips

I am going to log some broad tips, things people recommend from their experience, tips for specific sectors, or stuff that was more applicable to play style rather than just one ship here.

• i will write things here :)

If I got any numbers wrong please feel free to correct me I am stupid have a nice day :)

Why Takeshi Sung?
If it isn't obvious from gameplay, ground unit missions are pretty much the best way of getting scrap, Neo-N and officers. Takeshi Sung is the only officer in the game to have four skills. This basically makes him the best choice in the early game for farming the hell out of ground missions. He allows you to basically never need to restock on grunts because of them staying immortal under the guidance of Takeshi. He will allow you to collect as much as possible with ease, but makes the game a bit... boring in my opinion. Hard difficulty can be pretty brutal on some runs. It is not exactly FTL no pause but, it becomes a lot easier when you are handed over all the spoils of war because you have a leg up.

Yes, it does require you have him unlocked. Yes, it does require you sacrificing an officer ability that could be better but. In the end he can net you over 300~ scrap plus, compared to normally raw dawging rng for them sweet spoils to make sure you don't get melted by some Akibara-sung rude boy.

Closing Summary

This game is awesome :)

[Zarylo]

cruisers with inertia drives win any match against anything with any ship, provided they don't get shot down. Simply by bombarding the enemy hull like it's nobodys business.

[BEASTESS 🐺]

Thank you so much for your comment ^.^ Warms my heart, I do have plans to finish this guide, ive been swept away by my love for boomer shooters and writing cheap smut so, soon™ it will be done.

Ship building would be absolutely rad, I would adore that! I know the devs have a DLC in the works? Or so it looks like from their twitter account, but communication is pretty low there. Fingers, toes, hooves and tentacles crossed we get something in the future :D

[pitiflauticus]

Fantastic guide, I am struggling with chapter 4 and your tips really help.

We want more! Moooooore! -insert Kyle Ren meme here

PS I agree with your Closing Statement, although I would like the game to have a ship builder and possibly additional variety of events (I am still on my first playthrough and some events already appeared three times)

[BEASTESS 🐺]

Have some prozac!

[Weary Willy]

Pretty good guide. I don't understand why a crudely drawn dog is offering me anti-depressants though.