need advice

I have not yet won on Medium. I expect I will be able to engage the rebel flagship in my current game, and, I expect him to mop the floor with me, possibly with his 1st form, definitely with his 2nd form. Looking for advice on how to turn this into a victory.

Kestral B (aka Red-Tail)
I have all ship systems
LX engines (25% dodge)
L1 stealth
L2 transporter
L3 blast doors
L2 medbay
L2 O2
L6 shields (3 bars)
L4 or L5 weapons energy points
* currently powering 3 starting/tiny lasers + 1 ion bomb
* also have a 4-second charge ion cannon
* also have a hermes missile launcher, I think
L3 drones
* hull repair
* system repair

(I stupidly sold a defense 2 drone thinking it was way too expensive to ever power, and I have never seen a defense 1 drone for sale.)

Augments:
* Rock shielding
* Scrap Recovery Arm
* Pre-igniter

Full crew compliment (2 zoltans, 1 rock, 1 mantis, 1 slug, rest human)
everyone is ** expert in their role, but, no one has any cross-training to speak of

~10 fuel
~40 missiles
~8 drone parts

I'm mid-way through sector 7 with no cash.

Why I think I'm toast: No L8(4) shields. No weapons that can reliably take down 4 bars of shields. No money to buy better weapons, or upgrade shields/weapons. No defense drone, so no good defense against against missiles / boarding drones. Minimal stealth.

I've had to retreat from 2 ships with 3 bars of shields so far. I just couldn't damage them fast enough to get the upper hand, and I was taking too much damage. Even if I can scrape up another 200 scrap before heading to sector 8, and even if I sell the scrap recovery arm and maybe other stuff too, I'll have to make painful choices. Not sure how many beacons in sector 8 I should try to explore.

If I'm lucky, I'll have my choice of defense drone 1 + better weapons in sector 8 shops, but not enough money to do everything I'd like.

Suggestions?

Yea, I probably shouldn't have upgraded my lesser systems. I did it a while back in the hopes of getting a blue option on a random event. I still have lots of ships left to unlock. But in this particular game, I only got a blue option once, so that was a lot of scrap for not much return.

I think I followed the strategies you mentioned, so I'll give that a try. Honestly, it largely depends on what I can find at the shops.

I'm actually thinking selling the pre-ignitor. Heresy, I know, but against a flagship, unless I can get some systems offline immediately, it seems like a waste of an augmentation spot.

P.S.: Forgot to mention that the L3 doors were because I was on the trail of the Rock ship. I had long range sensors, and I could see that he was luring me to a flare beacon. So I upgraded to L3 doors at that time. That was my toughest battle ever so far, mostly because I didn't realize I needed to focus on defense. At one point, 2/3rds of his ship was burning and I thought there was no way he could survive, but he did. Anyway, I ended up trading out my long range sensors for some special rock armor plating augment -- nice!

OMFG! I sooooo wish I could go back in time and record this epic battle! I won by the skin of my teeth! I can’t imagine getting closer to ruin and still pulling it off. (No doubt I made a lot of mistakes; feedback welcome!)

FINAL PREP

I wrote my original post from memory, and my memory failed me. My kit was *far worse* than I remembered it. I had sold my Ion MK 2 and my Hermes missile launcher! So my only weapons were 3x tiny pea shooter lasers and an ion bomb. Other than that tiny little insignificant detail, the kit I described earlier was correct. :^)

(I remember thinking about selling those weapons to get something – a cloak maybe? But I could have sworn I quit and saved before making that decision. Guess I was more tired than I realized. :^) I also remember thinking these weren’t my ideal final weapons – I really wanted a multi-shot laser and maybe a beam weapon – and that I’d have plenty of time to buy better weapons with more scrap later. Ha! I never found another weapon anywhere for love or money.)

My weapons were so poor that I had a hard time even reaching the boss. I had to flee multiple enemies in sector 7, and, I spent *25* ion bombs just getting there. Yes, that left me only 3 pea shooter lasers + 15 ion bombs against a fully armed and operational rebel flagship! I never found anything of value to purchase ever again. No weapons. No drones. (No defense drone!) No augments. I found 3 green crew members but had to dismiss them all. Are there even shops in sector 8?? I never found one. I could only reach one repair depot before they were all taken, and it didn’t give me anything useful either. On the plus side, I was able to scrape together 300-400 more scrap on the way, and given I only needed L4 to power all my weapons (yikes!) I had plenty to spend on L7 engines, L8(4) shields, L2 cloak, and enough reactor power to be comfortable. My only other ace was having 12 drones to spend on hull repair; it was like having double ship HP. (You know, so I could take longer to die.)

So I couldn't use the strategies you guys had suggested as I had sold those weapons. But I wasn't going to quit; I’d still have a fun story to tell after getting slaughtered. :^)

STAGE 1

Because the max damage I could do was THREE, and all stages of the final boss have FOUR shields, the only viable strategy seemed to be to ion bomb his shield generator, and *if* it hit, shoot a coordinated blast of all 3 lasers and hope they hit as well. I could probably get 2, possibly 3 laser volleys off before the ion blast would wear off. I had to hope I could score a single point of shield system damage before I ran out of supplies, and before he killed me with his own weapons. A very long process.

While that was underway, I sent my fully experienced rock+mantis boarding party to destroy his weapons. I don’t know which is which, so I started with the middle 2, as these exist for all 3 stages. Then I killed his left weapon, which was dumb because the right weapon exists in stage 2 and I never managed to kill it.

By this point, his shields were damaged (down to 1-2 bars), and he had multiple crew members repairing the shields. I recall advice from this thread to try to kill off midsection crew members to make later stages easier, so I sent my killing duo into the shield room and redirected my pea shooter lasers to his medbay (to avoid hurting my own men + to hopefully knock out his medbay). If I couldn’t knock out his medbay, I hoped to at least delay his shield repairs and do some damage to various systems. He had 3-4 guys against my 2, but, his were pretty beat up fighting a fire and getting hit by my pea shooter lasers. I think I got the medbay offline and killed 1-2 guys.

(I can’t remember if I ever used ion bombs on the pilot’s chair or engines. If not, I should definitely consider it next time, as I had a high miss percentage. Which target is better for minimizing dodge? What if he has fully maxed out piloting + engines, then which is the better target? Would L3 piloting allow you to never lose your ability to dodge due to ion weapons?)

What I do remember is that I failed to send any ion bombs against his cloaking device or door controls. I learned the hard way that (a) you can’t recall your away team from a cloaked ship, and (b) stage 1 has L3 blast doors. The room has now become a deathtrap. I paused and tried different things (running to different blast doors, re-re-re-trying the teleporter), but in the end all I could do was watch my 2 fully experienced combat officers die. His crew went back to repairing the shields, perhaps because his medbay was still down. When he decloaked, I got a measure of vengeance; I unloaded 3 pea shooter lasers on that room and managed to kill 2 of them. And by maintaining fire on the shield room, I managed to keep his shields down for the rest of stage 1 and kill him. It royally sucked losing my combat troops! But at least they didn’t die in vain.

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

STAGE 2

I’m down to 9 ion bombs and 6 crew: human weapons expert, human shields expert, human pilot expert, zoltan engines expert, engi repair expert, and an extra unskilled zoltan. None had any melee combat experience, which is fantastic because I have no defense drone so am about to face multiple breaching terminator drones. There were no repair stations still alive anywhere in the sector – no open, unexplored sectors at all. But, I did have full HP thanks to spending 3 hull repair drones. Down to 9 drones.

As is typical for stage 2, I had 3 major efforts underway simultaneously: destroying his weapons with a boarding party, defending/repairing my ship, and attacking his ship.

I needed to knock out his weapons, but who could I send most safely? I decided to send the unskilled zoltan by himself. (I hated to lose the free energy, but with so many systems getting knocked offline, I it wasn’t an issue.) Knocking out all 3 weapons took maybe 30 minutes of play time – most of that spent paused and anxiously wringing my hands as I paced around the room – but he eventually pulled it off, which stopped the hemorrhaging.

The engi was on triple overtime dealing with the massive amount of damage I was receiving, and everyone else did lots of repairs too. He landed at least 2 breaching terminator drones, plus I had other breaches, fires, and massive system damage to deal with. More than once, my ability to dodge got knocked offline, I started taking a serious beating, and I thought I was done for. And of course, I had to use the engi + either my shields or weapons expert to fight off the terminator drones, rotating them back to the medbay in their copious downtime. I launched 2-3 systems repair drones both to help out with repairs and as deliberate targets to slow down the killing machines. I was taking massive hull damage to boot so spent another ~4 drones on hull repair. My ship was dodging like crazy, but still took dozens of blows, both missiles and lasers when my shields were down. I was spending drones very quickly, but at least I didn’t lose any more crew.

Parallel to these efforts, I was doing my best to bring his shields down. *Everything* had to be perfect for me to score a single systems hit. He couldn’t be close to cloaking. I couldn’t have any damage or ion lock on my weapons. My ion bomb had to score a hit on his shield generator. And all 3 pea shooter lasers had to hit. And if *all* of that went right, I would get a single damage point on his shields. This was agonizingly slow. Many times, my ion bomb just plain missed, in which case I had to wait for it to recharge – there was no point in firing my lasers. Once, I gained a tiny crack foothold, only to have him damage my weapons, which allowed him to repair his shields before I could exploit the opening.

It honestly took 30 minutes of careful micromanagement on all 3 of these fronts simultaneously, but finally, finally, I got a foothold on his shield room and managed to start whittling away his shield power. When I got him down to 1 shield, I spared one ion bomb for his drone control, and I may have targeted his engines as well, can’t remember. But I beat the insanely hard stage 2!

STAGE 3

Final inventory: THREE ION BOMS. 2-3 drones. Same six crew. There was no way to gain anything at any beacon. In fact, all beacons were now controlled by rebels, and I had to fight my way through one to re-engage the boss. I of course warped away from that battle as soon as I was able.

As if my situation wasn’t hopeless enough, in stage 3, the enemy suddenly gains a zoltan shield. And not just any zoltan shield – a double strength, *magically recharging* zoltan shield. WTF!! He also has some sort of secret power surge weapon – a weapon that I can’t target or do anything about – which results in a huge barrage of weapons fire all at once. And, to top that off, he also sends a boarding party to attack me.

The boarding party actually helped me! He sent 2 crew members (out of 5 I think) to beat on my ship systems. But I had L3 doors, and, I had learned that I could cloak to trap his crew on my ship! OK, truth be told, I didn’t plan this and just happened to cloak at the right time, but I *did* capitalize on it to kill his two boarders. Down to 3 enemy crew!

I was blocked from sending my own boarders by his double strength zoltan shield. It was painfully slow to knock that down with 3 tiny lasers, but finally, I was able to send my zoltan crew member to knock out his 2 forward weapons. After this, I could survive for a very, very long time! (Hey, could I actually *win* this thing??) He no longer had sufficient firepower to tear me to shreds. His power surge attack was definitely dangerous, but I used cloaks every chance I could, and even when it wasn’t available, I dodged several shots and the I would take minimal hull/system damage.

That’s by no means a guaranteed win! I only had 3 ion bombs – 3 chances to bring down his shields. My first two ion bombs missed, but my last bomb hit! I started the painfully slow process of whittling down his shields…

Then his double strength zoltan shield *recharged*. You know, the green extra shield that cannot recharge during combat? Yes, it recharged!

My jaw dropped and my heart sunk. I was sooo close to winning this unwinnable match! But this latest curve ball just signed my death warrant.