I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

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MrNooby
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I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby MrNooby » Thu Jul 17, 2014 9:31 am

http://postimg.org/image/ipuvuenaz/

I've only just entered sector 4. I got the first one in sector 2, then another from a shop in sector 3.

That being said, I'm wondering what sort of strategy I should adapt for the flagship.

I'm not sure I can do it without boarding, as the missle salvo would tear me a new one if not taken care of, right?

And if I can, what sort of upgrades am I going to need?
MrNooby
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby MrNooby » Thu Jul 17, 2014 10:39 am

Ok here's my current setup, I'm 2 jumps away from S8.

Reactor maxed
Shields L3
Engines L3
Medbay L2
Oxygen L2
Teleporter L3
Cloak L1
Hacking L3
Weapons L8

Piloting L1
Doors L1
Sensors L2

Weapons....the double vulcans

Augmentations:

Long-range scanners
Automated reloader
Zoltan Shield Bypass

Crew:

2x Zoltan, one maxed in shields, the other in engines
Human maxed in loading
Human and mantid with boarding skills (not yet maxed)
Human with no skills
Engi maxed in piloting

I decided I'd get hacking as my final system, because if my weapons got hacked on 1st phase of flagship...well, I'd be royally screwed. This way I can hack their hacker if need be, and if they hack something like my oxygen which I don't care about being level 2, I can hack their medbay so I can wipe our their crew and the like.

So, that all said and done, what should my strategy be to take down the flagship? I'm on easy.

I'd just go in and learn by dying but....I don't want to throw away such an insanely good game.
META_mahn
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby META_mahn » Thu Jul 17, 2014 2:11 pm

I always prefer to go towards 'green' sectors, not because I'm a puss, but because I can easily obtain Zoltan Shield.

With your loadout, I would say...
Board all weapons except for the laser.
Board a two-person room.
When they go back to heal, hack their medbay if they didn't hack something important of yours.
Watch them burn :twisted:
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5thHorseman
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby 5thHorseman » Thu Jul 17, 2014 11:44 pm

With 4 BL2's (or even 3) your strategy with the flagship is simple.

1) Shoot the shields out.
2) Assuming the flagship is still alive, kill it.
3) If you really want, target things like missiles, cloak, drones, whatever is causing you problems. But really those problems will go away in 12 seconds when your next volley kills the flagship.

EDIT: I looked at your pic. I don't know if 2 Vulcans beats 4 BL2s but your strategy here is to protect your weapons bay at ALL COSTS. If a Vulcan goes down, you lose the spoolup.
You want defense drones AND cloak if possible, IOW.
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MrNooby
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby MrNooby » Thu Jul 17, 2014 11:58 pm

The same thing occurred to me. I fought the flagship before I got advice, couldn't resist.

I knew 2 vulcans would be good, but it was amazing....

With hacking I was easily able to kill off all of their crew. I had to keep hacking their hacking until their hacking wasn't in a vital area, but once it wasn't, I used the closed doors of the hacking room to my advantage to kill as many crew members as possible (all but the guy in the laser).

I lost my human boarder who was by then maxed due to an unlucky cloak, and then in phase 2 I lost my mantis too after the battle by not paying attention......I thought I was in for it, with only 50% cloak.

During 1st phase I'd trained my other human to max boarding so I still had him. In 3rd phase I sent him to missles on his own, set vulcans to autofire on shields. Boarder took out the missles, I cloak dodged the first volley. They mind-controlled my engineman, which didn't affect me at all since it was fully upgraded and I only needed a few levels for 100% dodge. 2nd missle volley got through since I only had one boarder, caused alot of damage and fires....but none hit my weapons!

From there I brute forced it, my vulcans fired too fast, and destroyed the ship before any super weapon came out, or any missles.
LostAlone
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby LostAlone » Tue Jul 22, 2014 2:19 pm

Maybe it's just me but I've never liked Vulcans. I'm sure they work ok for bulldozing the flagship, but for everything leading up to that they've always felt they aren't immediately effective enough - They take a long time to spool up, and until they've fired a good few times they aren't achieving anything except plinking off shields. By contrast very many other laser set ups will let you off-line the enemies weapons in one hit, making for only a very tiny window of opportunity where they can stop me; if their first missile doesn't hit my weapons, I will kill them. For Vulcans they have lots more chances to offline them before you are really damaging them.
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5thHorseman
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby 5thHorseman » Tue Jul 22, 2014 4:20 pm

LostAlone wrote:Maybe it's just me but I've never liked Vulcans. I'm sure they work ok for bulldozing the flagship, but for everything leading up to that they've always felt they aren't immediately effective enough - They take a long time to spool up, and until they've fired a good few times they aren't achieving anything except plinking off shields. By contrast very many other laser set ups will let you off-line the enemies weapons in one hit, making for only a very tiny window of opportunity where they can stop me; if their first missile doesn't hit my weapons, I will kill them. For Vulcans they have lots more chances to offline them before you are really damaging them.


Vulcans shine on ships with heavy defenses. Zoltan shield and 8 power in the engines, for example. You can easily survive 4+ volleys from enemies that would destroy other ships. Add a cloak and wow.

But yeah, they're a 4-power weapon. They have a great upside (ONE of them can kill the final boss all by itself) so they need a big downside (4 power and a massive spoolup time in which they're essentially useless). But like anything that eats 4 power, once it gets going it's awesome.
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stylesrj
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby stylesrj » Fri Aug 22, 2014 11:41 am

A single Vulcan will not stop a very determined Defense Drone Mk.II, barring a lucky hit. I had that problem in one of my runs. Good thing I had a Burst Laser 2 and Dual Lasers to back it up and get through the enemy shields.
ehque
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby ehque » Tue Jan 20, 2015 3:37 pm

Vulcans are great with boarding. A single vulcan can punch through shields to take out the medbay/clonebay just as the enemy needs it after fighting your mantis boarding team, or hit shields to divert manpower away from your boarders. The slow spool is not a problem because you're not looking to blow up the ship when your boarders are on board. Once it breaks through, you have the option of letting the vulcan do it's work or to finish off with your boarding team (while keeping the vulcan powered just in case).

Few other 4-power weapon(s) can fulfill this role so effectively.

Had a run where, while I was busy suffocating and fighting off a huge number of boarders/MC in phase 3, my single Vulcan took out the RFS (hacked piloting).
maartendc
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Re: I think I beat 4 Burst II Lasers

Postby maartendc » Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:25 am

4 burst laser Mk II sounds like a pretty sweet setup!

However, I think you would be doing even better by getting a beam weapon in the mix.
I was able to defeat the rebel flagship for the first time with relative ease with this weapons layout (Kestrel ship):

2 x Burst laser Mk II
1 x Hull beam
1 x Pike beam

I also had the weapons pre-igniter, so as soon as the fight starts, I could take out all the shield bubbles with the 2 Burst lasers, (not actually doing much damage); and then immediately hammering them with the 2 beam weapons (also targeting shields and weapons with the beams), doing at least 11 damage or so (hull beam does double damage on systemless rooms).
I was able to defeat the flagship in 2 Volleys every stage!! I couldn't believe how powerful this combination was!

So if I were you, I would replace one of your burst lasers with a Pike beam or Hull beam if you can find it. However, I think 4 burst lasers would also work, but the annoying thing is that the shots miss target quite often, whereas the beams never miss. So once the shields are down, the beams can do serious damage, while the lasers might still miss.

Other than that, make sure to have at least 3 shield bubbles (4 is better) and at least level 4 or so engines (more is much better).

Good luck!