Best challenge runs, anyone?

[JohnBWatson]

So, everyone knows the basic challenges. We've all likely breached the quarantine without dying at one point. Having long since gotten used to permadeath runs, I decided to try something a bit more interesting this time around.

Let's start with the most brutal part - I picked the Manticore, that ship everyone's rather wary of due to its slow speed and shield penalties. Doubling up on this, I resolved not to purchase a single engine upgrade, take no wingmen, and never install a shield other than the default.

The permadeath conduct here is a given - I didn't die at all throughout the game, even with insurance.

Finally, I took up the oft - neglected challenge of never backtracking. While this may seem trivial, the inability to return to a system with better equipment or fall back to sell, refuel, repair, and find a Temple is quite a bit more crippling than one might think. I'd urge anyone reading this to try the conduct at least once.

With all of these restrictions, I was forced to reexamine my strategies, be much more cautious when taking on enemies, and plan ahead much more comprehensively. While I had to try quite a few times, it felt like quite an accomplishment to finally succeed. Anyone else have a story about their most challenging run through the quarantine zone?

[Song]

I did a technical pacifist run back in 2010. That was fun.

I tried again in 1.2+CC but failed. Might try again some day. I've gotten better at the game since then, and autons have improved as well.

[pixelfck]

Most of the times I play, I don't backtrack, if I backtrack, the game quickly becomes easy.

If you want an increased challenge, try using the Hammerhead-II from the tutorial, it has only three armor segments, can't fit heavy armor (up to 6 tons), has very limited device slots and is just as fast as you would expect from the typical low-level *enemy* ship.

~Pixelfck

[gunship256]

With all of these restrictions, I was forced to reexamine my strategies, be much more cautious when taking on enemies, and plan ahead much more comprehensively. While I had to try quite a few times, it felt like quite an accomplishment to finally succeed.

While I hear on the forums that the Manticore is pretty weak, I don't think it has to be. It has a specific weakness in that it's too slow to run away, so to compensate, I upgrade armor as quickly as possible to keep the feeling of near-invulnerability the ship has at the beginning of the game.

If a Makayev shop shows up in Tau Ceti, I'll get blast plate right away, which means I also have to upgrade to a 50MW reactor to support the energy drain of repairing that level of armor.

If anything, the Manticore's weakness makes it annoying to fly without an engine upgrade. The Sapphire and Wolfen do much better with the repairer (bought through a Corporate Trading Post) and are also more fun to fly.

[Song]

The manticore is actually weaker than the other ships pretty much no matter what you do......the penalty to shields isn't cancelled out by its perks and those perks aren't really good enough to balance it....but it's not impossible to fly well. It just puts far more emphasis on picking the right armor and having the right gear to finish fights quickly and not need to retreat (or soak damage).

[gunship256]

The manticore is actually weaker than the other ships pretty much no matter what you do......the penalty to shields isn't cancelled out by its perks and those perks aren't really good enough to balance it....but it's not impossible to fly well. It just puts far more emphasis on picking the right armor and having the right gear to finish fights quickly and not need to retreat (or soak damage).

I agree. It's weaker than the other ships because of its speed and poor thrust, and having six armor segments is not enough to balance out both the poor speed and the penalty to shields. I think the armor repairer does offer enough of a benefit to mitigate the poor speed, but only if a lot of resources are spent to upgrade armor and the reactor early, which is money that could be spent on other things.

If the Sapphire and Wolfen were allowed to buy the repairer, they would be better than the Manticore, which comes back to something I've mentioned before: I think the problem is with the ship, not the armor repair mechanic.

[Song]

The manticore is actually weaker than the other ships pretty much no matter what you do......the penalty to shields isn't cancelled out by its perks and those perks aren't really good enough to balance it....but it's not impossible to fly well. It just puts far more emphasis on picking the right armor and having the right gear to finish fights quickly and not need to retreat (or soak damage).

I agree. It's weaker than the other ships because of its speed and poor thrust, and having six armor segments is not enough to balance out both the poor speed and the penalty to shields. I think the armor repairer does offer enough of a benefit to mitigate the poor speed, but only if a lot of resources are spent to upgrade armor and the reactor early, which is money that could be spent on other things.

If the Sapphire and Wolfen were allowed to buy the repairer, they would be better than the Manticore, which comes back to something I've mentioned before: I think the problem is with the ship, not the armor repair mechanic.

Exactly. Fortunately, my ticket for an autoloader got enough attention that I think that regardless of what shape it takes...a buff will eventually come for it.


Anyway.....back to challenge runs.


Technical pacifist is one of the hardest, but it may be possible now that certain issues with autons are gone (still: Very Hard). A fun voluntary one is only allowing yourself a fixed number of installs.

A really old one that people used to do from time to time was completing the game (properly) with stock armor and shields. Or a stock reactor. Very cunning people occaisionally combined the two (basically requires a QAC and a lot of ammo weapons).

Edit: Oh yes, There's one I came up with but never got around to attempting: Killing the ICS with the lowest level gear possible (for weapons, this means an enhanced Shuriken and the penitent cannon)....and/or getting through the game (again, not speedrunning) with the lowest level gear possible.

[NMS]

Let's see...

My first permadeath run was also no backtracking and no destroying friendly stations: http://transcendence.kronosaur.com/game ... qU%2Fr4%3D
I'd like to do all conducts, but it's just so hard to avoid accidentally destroying friendly ships.

I did an Eternity Port run with only Eurasian Diarchy weapons (except for the starting weapon): http://trans.kronosaur.com/gameStats.he ... dKXTEUE%3d (currently the Eternity Port high score)

I'm working on a few others: No shots fired with the Constellation (on hold pending improvements to the auton bay and/or comms system), forward-firing energy weapons only with the Freyr, and no upgrades with the Wolfen (would be good to finish this one before I lose the ability to use He3 reactor assemblies in the Nova-10).