A Developer Tries to Reach the Core - Episodes 4 and 5

[george moromisato]

No stream this week--I'm traveling for the weekend. But I've got episodes 4 and 5 uploaded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUwEJ3ngnnw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-61atQbwdE

I've been doing better--I've got decent armor and weapons now.

[JohnBWatson]

Episode 4: I'd have grabbed that Omni - Turbolaser, but aside from that the Arena fights were carried out brilliantly. I always wondered what the pilots in the qualifier were doing there, given the lack of much pay in exchange for facing almost certain death. Is the economy doing that badly?

[Song]

Episode 4: I'd have grabbed that Omni - Turbolaser, but aside from that the Arena fights were carried out brilliantly. I always wondered what the pilots in the qualifier were doing there, given the lack of much pay in exchange for facing almost certain death. Is the economy doing that badly?

Internships suck in the future, it seems.

[JohnBWatson]

Watched version 5. For the slave camps, I usually just bombard the central camp from afar, then dive in and dock with the nearest slave quarters.

[gunship256]

Watched version 5. For the slave camps, I usually just bombard the central camp from afar, then dive in and dock with the nearest slave quarters.

That works pretty well for me if I have a WMD weapon. If I have the lancer cannon, a slave quarter wreck sometimes gets in the way, so I'll fly in on top of the central camp, destroy it, and then loot the slave quarters. This only works if I have good armor (level 7 or up).

[Xephyr]

Usually by the time I'm ready to take on the Sung I'm equipped enough to just sit on top of the camp to destroy it without taking too much damage, but if you have stilettos and a targeting program then you can just take out the turrets (as long as the camp didn't spawn in an asteroid field)/

[pixelfck]

I usually tackle the turrets of a slave camp first, from the maximum range of my tracking missiles (typically NAMI). Just cycle through the available targets with your targeting scanner, select the closest, fire a missile and see if it takes damage. If not, circle around a tiny bit and try again. If you do damage the turret, fire a salve of 4 and move on to the next one.
Once all turrets are down, dash in and take out the central station.
If done properly, all slave quarters may survive.

~Pixelfck

[PM]

Depends on my equipment. If I have a long range omni weapon, I may snipe at turrets first. If I have good shields and/or missing an omni, I will probably simply snipe at the camp instead (because I am impatient), select one slave quarters, rush in, dock, rush out. Then I obliterate everything at my leisure before looting what is left.

[gunship256]

No stream this week--I'm traveling for the weekend. But I've got episodes 4 and 5 uploaded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUwEJ3ngnnw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-61atQbwdE

I've been doing better--I've got decent armor and weapons now.

Congratulations - I just watched the two episodes, and it looks like the game was making life difficult by not providing good armor options. You survived a lot in Rigel without doing armor upgrades. There's usually a Makayev shop at Rigel that sells blast plate, but it didn't show up in this particular game.

A couple of observations, given the relatively weak armor you have to work with:

The omni turbolaser is worth considering, since it will let you shoot while maneuvering to avoid enemy fire. You can also shoot while running away or while mostly covered on top of a planet. the omni x-ray is definitely worth fabricating if you have weaker armor, and it's worth holding onto until the omni TeV 9 (level 7).

You have weapons that can easily snipe Charon bases: longbows, which are cheap and have some WMD, and the particle beam cannon, which has a range of 80. (The faster-firing variants, such as the dual particle beam cannon and the lancer cannon, are better if you have a higher-level reactor.) Once the base is destroyed, the capital ships will chase you down, right into the waiting jaws of Anton or a Commonwealth station.

The lack of a targeting program does make sniping difficult. (The visual display enhancement ROM helps in this regard, but it's hard to tell which dot to aim at.) This is a good reason to go back for the Morning Star cannon. If you get one of the omni weapons, you'll already have a good skirmish weapon, and longbows are decent long-range base busters. Without a targeting ROM, if you want to kill bases quickly at short range, the Morning Star cannon or Brutes are the best way to go. The cannon has the advantage of being ammoless and can block enemy fire, which becomes important when engaging Charon frigates.

Rigel is challenging in a special way because the tougher ships, including the Slicer, are as tough as early-game capital ships, but there's nowhere to hide to regenerate shields, and the ships are tough because of their weapons and armor, not due to internal HP. Given the lack of places to hide, a hard-hitting omni weapon works relatively well, such as the omni turbolaser, omni x-ray, or omni Partisan, especially with an enhancer.

The omni weapons don't work as well against early-game capital ships because of their lack of WMD. Longbows, Brutes, and the Morning Star cannon are decent ways to deal with Charon Drake and Frigates. They're slow and can't run away, so if you consistently pound them, they'll die. The Morning Star cannon is one of the better weapons for this because it can wear down internal HP while blocking missles at the same time. The dual Flenser can block missiles, but its low WMD makes it slow at hitting internal HP.

(It's easier to destroy Charon bases and lead the capital ships to a friendly station to watch them get destroyed, but this tactic doesn't work as well in the Charon system unless a friendly station happens to spawn.)

You can pick up free 50MW and 100MW reactors at the Charon system. After you dock at the destroyed Korolov base and are offered the Charon base map, dock again to loot the reactors and then install them at St. Kat's.

[NMS]

Unfortunately, I'm going to have a conflict with this time slot until next summer; my choir rehearsals are 6:45 to 8:00 Eastern. But I'll try to catch the recording on Twitch or later on YouTube.