Looking for advice on flagship, boarding strat

[MrNooby]

Okay so after many failed attempts at the flagship, I'm now running a boarding build, with the Engi Type A.

I will have very few damaging weapons, possibly none if I use a combat drone. I am not using a cloning bay, I'm using teleporter level 3 for in and out raids.

I've only recently started, about go into the 3rd sector, and my current upgrades/equipment are the following:

Reactor L15
Shield L4
Engines L2
Medbay L1
Oxygen L1
Teleporter L3
Weapons L3

Engi maxed loader
Human maxed helmsman
Human maxed shielder and maxed combat
Rockman maxed shielder
Engi maxed engine operator

Augmentations:

Engi Med-Bot Dispersal
Zoltan Shield Bypass - I saw this in a shop at start of sector 2 and immediately bought it, I don't seem them often and I know it will help tons in flagship phase 3.



At the moment I'm just doing quick in and out raids with my human combat trained guy (he came partly trained), the 10 second teleport cooldown means he's never in any serious danger.

So, what else do I need? I imagine I'll want cloaking for missle/power surge dodging, and I've found hacking to be rather useful aswell. I'm playing easy, and with a lot of crew kills, I should get a fair bit of scrap.

As for cloaking, should I got 1 or 3? Last game I had a boarding build (last minute decided, so although it had the upgrades, it didn't have the greatest crew for it) I got destroyed in phase 2, by the drones (I didn't realise taking down the drones system wouldn't depower them), and my level 1 cloak didn't do me that much good.

Lastly, I read that if your ship is destroyed in phase 3, you can still win. However, it wasn't very specific. Does this mean if we both have shots off that destroy each other, I win, or that if my ship is destroyed, with my crew on their ship still I can still fight?

So, other than all that, what is the general strategy I should use to beat down the flagship?

[Leylite]

Hacking will actually be enough to let you kill the entire Flagship's crew - no matter where you hack (shields, hacking, medbay), you can engage crew inside the hacked room (or a room cut off from the rest of the ship by the hacked doors, like hacking shields and boarding piloting), get the enemy crew down to critical health, and then kill them before they can break through the hacked doors.

If you don't get hacking, you'll seriously need a bomb or a missile to damage the medbay. Without either hacking or a bomb, it's still possible to kill off the crew by sending large numbers of crewmen over, and killing crew off slowly by either picking them off on their way to the medbay, or killing crew while the medbay is clogged with people healing, but either way it's going to be very difficult without trained Mantis boarders.

The good news is that once the main Flagship cabin is emptied, the rest of the fight is a joke - on Phase 2 you can just board the weapon compartments again and punch them out, then punch down the shields and quickly wear down the Flagship's hull with whatever weapons you have (e.g. Heavy Laser, Pike Beam).

Phase 3 can give boarding ships some trouble due to having few weapons with which to take down the Zoltan Shield quickly, but with the Zoltan Bypass you can just immediately board the rocket compartment and punch that down, so if you can survive the power surges you should have no problems at all.

[MrNooby]

I couldn't get hacking, or I wouldn't be able to get cloaking.

Well, I fought ship and had quite a bit of luck I must say.

Firstly, I got a Chain Vulcan. I had so much scrap, almost everything system wise was maxed, all bar a few that I couldn't use anyway (like extra drone power, since I didn't have other drones).

The system they hacked was oxygen, which does completely nothing since I had level 3 oxygen systems.

I took down the first and second phases easily, without taking damage. I used the chain vulcan on medbay while
shields were down from ion, and the whole place got damaged and lit on fire, so nobody could heal. Then I sent my 2 man boarding team in to finish the crew still alive, and wasted the ship after they were out.

Phase 3 wasn't bad at all. I cloaked first super weapon charge, but missed the next. Boarders and MC everywhere, but my weapons were still going, so I brute forced it with that insanely fast vulcan, and ended up with around 50% hull left after the ship was down. Finally, after over 60 attempts, victory on easy! I don't think I will ever play hard.

And I completely forgot to use any drones

[stylesrj]

Once you've got the strategy down-pat, you'll move on to Normal. For certain ships of course. And on Hard, you'll only be using certain boarding vessels (??? B, Mantis B, Lanius B) and possibly the Red-Tail. Everything else is too gimmicky

[MrNooby]

I feel like I've got the strategy down fine now, but unfortunately it uses hacking, cloaking, and a teleporter, which means any ship starting with an extra system can give me a hard time.

[stylesrj]

I tend to work with Mind Control instead of Hacking.
A 5th (or 3rd) boarder immediately is always nice.

Although watch for Hacking modules. If you think the enemy ship is going to have one, immediately take ALL the power off the device. If they hack it, nothing will happen because there's nothing to do. Although this does mean you won't be able to put power into it. Ever.

Seriously, I had this problem with the Flagship. Didn't take power out of Mind Control, so I had to destroy the enemy system and then divert all power away before they fixed it (had to do it twice. They fixed it as Mind Control was cooling down from the last hack).

I like the Hacking Module, but it can cost you a lot in Drones, depending on how far you are in the game. Also, if the enemy is under your Mind Control power, you can teleport them back to your ship.

[MrNooby]

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I feel like without an immediate counter to hacking on phase 1 (for me, the counter is hacking their hacking) then then if they hack one of my vital systems, such as my engines, pilotbay, shields, everything can turn to immediate crap.

If they hack something like my oxygen or sensors, I could care less. In the event they hack one of my vital systems, I hack their hacking. Infact, I always hack their hacking regardless, since the door control it gives me is a very effective way of wiping out their crew members by trapping them.

I thought maybe I could drop cloaking on a ship starting with drones, but to take out all 3 missles, you'd need 6 power for your defense drones, and that's alot of power to drain out of other systems, even temporarily. Besides which, it wouldn't protect me from drone swarm or superweapon.

On another note, I just did a run in the red-tail, it was raining scrap for me. At the end I had every single upgrade maxed with 500 scrap to spare. I didn't get a scrap recovery arm until sector 6.

[stylesrj]

Holy Crap! A Perfect Red-Tail Run just floating through space!

I found that defence drones don't do d'anything against the Triple Missile Launcher Of Certain Doom & Fires.

But one is all you need really to take out the Hacking Module and the Boarding Drone. Or use a Mk.II for faster firing

The only problem though is that sometimes the drone doesn't hit it in time. Once it hacked my Drone Control. So I jumped and tried again. Another drone, and what do you know their first target was? Drone Control! Defence Drone didn't do d'anything either!

For some reason, Defence Drones can't protect the Drone Control effectively from Hacking. Bug, or a feature?

[MrNooby]

Who knows? I thought of drones for defending against hacking, but what happens when missles fire at the same time as a hacking drone?

It's highly likely the drone would target a missle rather than the hacking, being 3 of them.

[stylesrj]

I found that problem too. I cloak when the missiles fire, but the Flagship hasn't run out of Hacking Drones just yet.
Ship uncloaks and the drones forget to shoot the module already in flight. They forget that the drone exists while it's sitting there.

But yeah the Flagship will run out of Hacking Modules to throw at you. A Zoltan Shield + Cloak can help mess with their missile/drone timing too.