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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2016 16:19:11 GMT -5
For early game you want all pilot. Try to get rank and permit with all the factions ASAP. Be mindful of your reputation and trade embargoes, and buy pardons. Once you get enough Pilot (30 or so) you can start investing in other stats. Once you gain permit with all 6 factions, you can start carrying Weapons. For starter ship, a QUICK ship with high crew and cargo.
Generally, even for my board captains, I'm not as successful if I invest in warrior initially, as in the beginning board is hard with the torps and the ram and the hostility to weapons. Best to gain some Pilot first to dodge attacks.
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Post by Cory Trese on Aug 22, 2016 17:41:36 GMT -5
Or you can build Stealth instead, focusing on avoiding combats and gaining XP via the map directly.
There are a lot of different ways to approach. If you build Stealth, get a FAST ship. If you build pilot, get a QUICK ship.
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Post by filthyluca on Sept 6, 2016 12:52:48 GMT -5
Painful flashbacks... Has anyone actually made a board-retreat-gun-board captain work on high difficulties? I'm considering trying it again, although I should probably make a regular boarding captain first, to better understand it. Board-retreat-gun is a boarding captain with low warrior. He capitalizes on the weapons bonus in boarding. It is fairly difficult to make this captain work, as there are several key differences to sustained boarding. Frankly put, while you can get away pretty easily with having a Medium/Medium ship during sustained boarding (because you are capitalizing on your warrior skill to board), having a quick ship is a must while board-retreat-gunning (because you need the pilot bonuses for retreating), which is quite unpleasant, because since you have a fairly low warrior skill, your ship is susceptible to hull and engine damage during boarding and since you need to have a small hull, the damage can be quite lethal. The damage to the ship may be decreased by bigger tactics, but at the cost of pilot, I don't know.. . You refer to the weapons bonus in boarding, does this mean you only receive the bonus on the initial boarding action and not on sustained combat afterwards? On |
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Post by resistor on Sept 6, 2016 14:35:56 GMT -5
Board-retreat-gun is a boarding captain with low warrior. He capitalizes on the weapons bonus in boarding. It is fairly difficult to make this captain work, as there are several key differences to sustained boarding. Frankly put, while you can get away pretty easily with having a Medium/Medium ship during sustained boarding (because you are capitalizing on your warrior skill to board), having a quick ship is a must while board-retreat-gunning (because you need the pilot bonuses for retreating), which is quite unpleasant, because since you have a fairly low warrior skill, your ship is susceptible to hull and engine damage during boarding and since you need to have a small hull, the damage can be quite lethal. The damage to the ship may be decreased by bigger tactics, but at the cost of pilot, I don't know.. . You refer to the weapons bonus in boarding, does this mean you only receive the bonus on the initial boarding action and not on sustained combat afterwards? On Weapons do give bonuses for sustained boarding. The reason poryg said a board-gun-retreat style needs more weapons is to compensate for their lack of Warrior skill compared to "normal" boarders. |
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Post by Officer Genious on Sept 8, 2016 20:36:17 GMT -5
Interesting. I'd rather stuff my points in warrior so I can kill and get the fight over with myself. I never thought of the board-gun-retreat types.
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poryg
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Post by poryg on Sept 9, 2016 0:02:33 GMT -5
Actually, me neither. Because guns are the most fragile things for a boarder, they are always the first thing to explode  So when the board-retreat-gunning captain loses his guns, he is doomed, because he can now only board-retreat, which is too dangerous for me. |
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Post by filthyluca on Sept 9, 2016 0:14:44 GMT -5
It seems like early game is more about surviving so my current strategy is to focus on building pilot/stealth, getting trade permits and enough credits to buy a decent ship. I've never found a way to make combat viable fresh out of the gate so my questions are
1. When does everyone generally start moving towards combat and investing more heavily in warrior and tactics
2. Can you have so much warrior skill that you can beat much larger crew size/level ships with even a small (25 or so) crew? and how much do you typically invest in intimidation? Aaannnd will some of your crew always die in boarding combat?
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Post by resistor on Sept 9, 2016 0:26:34 GMT -5
Actually, me neither. Because guns are the most fragile things for a boarder, they are always the first thing to explode So when the board-retreat-gunning captain loses his guns, he is doomed, because he can now only board-retreat, which is too dangerous for me. Although I haven't attempted this kind of build since last July, so I might be misremembering the details, I don't remember losing many guns in boarding in my board-retreat-gun build attempts. I think my main problem was either losing too much crew in boarding or getting hit by enemy guns and torps, depending on my XP allocation. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 9, 2016 0:32:15 GMT -5
It seems like early game is more about surviving so my current strategy is to focus on building pilot/stealth, getting trade permits and enough credits to buy a decent ship. I've never found a way to make combat viable fresh out of the gate so my questions are 1. When does everyone generally start moving towards combat and investing more heavily in warrior and tactics 2. Can you have so much warrior skill that you can beat much larger crew size/level ships with even a small (25 or so) crew? and how much do you typically invest in intimidation? Aaannnd will some of your crew always die in boarding combat? 1. I invest exclusively in Pilot until my Pilot skill is about 40 or so. Then I START to invest in Warrior. 2. Yes it's possible, but not recommended. When your crew is at a "critical" low number, Boarding becomes extremely dangerous as you can easily lose HP even with extremely high skills, and even if you win the boarding action. If you only have 25 crew, you only have to lose a few of them to reach "critical". I'd recommend at least 50 in the beginning, and at least 100 as you progress. Mercenaries and weapons can help make up for a lower crew number, and boarding upgrades. I feel like Templar and Bodyguard are especially good for small crew ships, as with less crew you deal less damage and need to rely more on HP damage. You also are more susceptible to HP loss, which the Bodyguard helps with. Intimidate does play a role in boarding, but Warrior is much more important, so I'd just focus on Warrior for boarding alone. Intimidate is better for other stuff though (blockading, morale loss prevention, fuel-consumption etc) so I tend to raise it to about 9 or so. Some of your crew will almost always die in boarding. But with a high Warrior skill and lots of weapons, you can normally reduce crew deaths to just 1-4 per turn. Bulkheads will also decrease losses. If the enemy guns you at zero range, boarding deaths will go up for both sides. |
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poryg
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Post by poryg on Sept 9, 2016 2:20:32 GMT -5
It seems like early game is more about surviving so my current strategy is to focus on building pilot/stealth, getting trade permits and enough credits to buy a decent ship. I've never found a way to make combat viable fresh out of the gate so my questions are 1. When does everyone generally start moving towards combat and investing more heavily in warrior and tactics 2. Can you have so much warrior skill that you can beat much larger crew size/level ships with even a small (25 or so) crew? and how much do you typically invest in intimidation? Aaannnd will some of your crew always die in boarding combat? I invest in 30 tactics actually in the very beginning, because spy and solar wars are an easy way to level yourself up. Then I just build up my character the way I want with no real problem. 2. Actually, there are alien ships that have 1000 crew, and there are aliens that are 390% of your level. I have beaten both as a boarder, because I put huge emphasis on my warrior skill and weapons hold. I klnow I had 260 crew, but still, compared to 1000, 260 is quite low  but the alien's intimidate skill can't really handle this many anyway and they have decent casualties... But I have them too, because 1000 crew is just really brutal even without intimidate :/ Having low crew itself (below 100) is not recommended, because if enemy crew gets through your crew, you begin losing HP from crew attacks very quickly from just the crew attacks... If you also lose HP from captain duels, you will die soon. I maintain intimidation on par with tactics, 1 tactics and 1 intimidation per 2 pilot beginning from 30. |
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poryg
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Post by poryg on Sept 9, 2016 2:39:30 GMT -5
Actually, me neither. Because guns are the most fragile things for a boarder, they are always the first thing to explode So when the board-retreat-gunning captain loses his guns, he is doomed, because he can now only board-retreat, which is too dangerous for me. Although I haven't attempted this kind of build since last July, so I might be misremembering the details, I don't remember losing many guns in boarding in my board-retreat-gun build attempts. I think my main problem was either losing too much crew in boarding or getting hit by enemy guns and torps, depending on my XP allocation. I have always lost guns and solar sails, but nothing else It was because of the way my build worked though... I had such a huge warrior that it prevented damage to the ship from the boarding... But guns always took a hit, sails took a hit and crew took a hit, because the enemy's stats weren't enough to cause the ship damage. With less warrior your entire ship takes damage as well, because the enemy stats aren't enough to cause "critical damage" (critical damage delivers a huge hit on crew, guns and engines), but your warrior isn't enough to prevent this damage. To sum it up, there are three types of damage 1. I would call it prevented damage (solar sails, crew take hit, the guns and crew are the most damaged things) 2. spreaded damage (your entire ship gets some damage, there are moderate casualties to everything, including torps, but the damage isn't enough... Frankly, during these scenarios I experienced damage to guns, but I never used them as a boarder, so I don't know how huge damage I got) 3. critical damage (crew, guns and engines take heavy hit, sometimes hull takes a hit as well) The most influencing thing for the type of damage proved to be warrior to me. I once experimented with the plasma door cutters vs. Leviathan. With door cutters I experienced damage to whole ship and delivered damage to whole ship. With leviathan I had a huge warrior boost due to my build. And since I equipped it instead of the cutters (luckily they were a replaceable upgrade), I delivered damage to only crew, engines, weapons and on rare occasions I delivered a blow to the armor and hull. And the only things that got damaged on my ship were solar sails (moderate damage), crew (moderate damage), weapons (heavy damage) and from time to time armor (low damage if it happened on the rare occasions). |
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Post by filthyluca on Sept 9, 2016 18:27:57 GMT -5
I like the tactics idea. I'm doing well with credits early game by just remembering I'm not tough but I can't get tough without XP/need XP to get tough. Getting in on those spy wars early game, poryg do you buy a better ship before you start or just move right in? |
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poryg
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Post by poryg on Sept 10, 2016 0:09:53 GMT -5
filthyluca No, I go straight in. When I get enough money from spy wars (or solar wars, if I am a boarder, I raise tactics first and intimidate second to make profits from blockades as well), I buy a small ship with bigger cargo to make sure that I have about 100 cargo. But frankly, one alien encounter that killed one of the most feared Porygs while he was on a vacation taught me that your third ship should be your battleship and never ever take any other ships, not even for spy and solar wars after you buy a battleship.
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Post by Cory Trese on Sept 13, 2016 12:30:23 GMT -5
It definitely helps to correctly sequence your attacks vs. the AI moves.
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Post by filthyluca on Sept 13, 2016 15:54:55 GMT -5
When you say correctly sequence your attack is that judged generally as the encounter unfolds or are their certain steps that if not taken in correct order impart a non apparent penalty for the remainder of the combat?
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but the alien's intimidate skill can't really handle this many anyway and they have decent casualties... But I have them too, because 1000 crew is just really brutal even without intimidate :/