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Nicely done with the Vortex. The no-damage wins are the sweetest, sweeter even than the everything's-on-fire-and-the-hull's-falling-apart wins. But those are pretty sweet too.

Session Nine: Creating a living ship

Unfortunately, due to the current patch, 1.03.3, teleporters are limited to four crew. I know they used to be able to handle more crew. Since this cuts into the OP potential of a large boarding crew, I've decided to not make the shieldless, cloakless variant of it, or limit the teleporter level.

I've learned that Superluminal crashes if you try and give it weapon slots before you actually mount the weapons.

Artillery has to be the fifth mount, even when there is only three weapons. I just made the unused fourth mount be the same as the fifth.

My custom beam weapon doesn't seem to pierce one shield when told to. Telling it to pierce two shields helped. It doesn't matter too much, since it will be considered OP due to how many times it can hit the shield system.

While testing the ship with full systems, I accomplished three achievements. I wish I hadn't done that. That's something I would have preferred to do with vanilla ships.

Now I'm going to upload a file to the modding forum, although I haven't tested it after setting the blueprints for the ship back down to starting levels. Also made untested changes to the floor and cloak images. I don't foresee any problem with that.

I'm not actually going to play this ship anytime soon. I just wanted to try and get it made before Advanced Edition came out.

Session Ten: The Nisos

Right off the bat, I got pounded by an anti-ship drone and a beam weapon. I escaped that fight and ended up in another bad place with my shields down. Restart.

I acquired quite a few laser weapons on this run. I chose to neglect my artillery and opt for a mantis boarding crew with laser spam support. I upgraded the artillery in the end, but it never got used once I had a teleporter.

I went through Engi and Zoltan Homeworlds, but didn't get a quest from either of them. I was hoping to unlock the stealth cruiser or at least get a free weapon from the Zoltans.

I didn't get any augments, so I ended up buying a scrap recovery arm around sector 5 or 6. A little late, but I'm sure that it covered itself with enough of the high scrap rewards you get at the end. It did get a blue option later.

Flagship: I beat phase one with no damage; my dual defense drones shot all three missiles down. I killed some of the main crew, but through stupidity, I almost lost one of my mantis.

Phase 2: I forgot to teleport my mantis at the start, so the missile launcher got a shot off and hit me once. The boarding drone wasn't too bothersome when it finally landed. In the end, I killed all but two of the main crew and I took 12 points of damage. I repaired up with a hull repair drone.

Phase 3: The last two teleported over right away and they didn't last long. My doors got breached, and were on fire. I took another 5 damage on this phase.

Screenshots at the end:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 517D77F64/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 147864BD2/

Came in second place, well behind the Dead-Tail (535) and a bit ahead (65) of the Osprey.

Session Eleven: More modding, with a holiday theme.

The Candy Pain Tree!

I don't really care much about the name. It certainly isn't my strong point.


Session Twelve: The Noether

I upgraded my shields to one bar at the end of sector one. I destroyed a ship and got a anti-bio beam, but I never really got a chance to use it well. Had three ion blasts going at one point, but chose to go back to two so I could use both a Halberd beam and a Burst Laser II. Had some accidents with autofire, but it didn't really cost me anything, although I almost killed my own boarders. Hired all of my crew, except the Engi. Received one additional augment, the Automated Re-loader.

Boss fight was almost perfect.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 1E8A7F9D1/

A missile got through. As seen by the next screenshot, I forgot to bother with the fire. The fight ended suddenly, due to the power of the Halberd beam. I was quite surprised since I didn't notice I was ready to win.

Screenshots at the end:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... F8F27D7BF/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... E6C950225/

My next two runs should be the Red-Tail and the Torus. If I fail to unlock a new ship with those runs, then I plan on playing the Banana ship.

Session Thirteen: The Red-Tail

This one seemed like a struggle on the weapon side of things. Due to an early teleporter and my starting Mantis, I was able to scrape by until I finally received better weapons. I traveled to the Engi Homeworlds (4), but never got an Engi or the stealth ship quest. Next I was in the Slug Home Nebula (5), but I never found the Slug ship quest either; actually, I couldn't even make ships surrender since I had to board everything, while getting a lucky shot in on medbays when I could. I believe it was a Mantis-controlled sector (2 or 3?) where I had three consecutive jumps to suns. The first and third were ships, while the second was just boarders.

I fought a pirate ship, which boarded my cockpit with an Engi and a Zoltan. Later in the fight, a Hermes missile smashed my pilot, killing him. Things weren't looking too good, crew-wise, but I managed to trudge along; I had my second Mantis by this time. Things eventually started to get better.

Reaching the end, I had some good weapons and double re-loaders, so most fights weren't hard anymore. In the first phase, I took four points of hull damage and killed all but two of the interior crew. Second phase was mostly uneventful; I killed those last two guys. Third phase, I took two damage when my cloak failed to cover the missile fire and super weapon.

Screenshots at the end:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... F30914B34/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 49AC4DC0F/

Due to my Dead-Tail testing, you have to take my word this time that this was my first Red-Tail run.

Session Fourteen: Retrying the Torus

This one turned out really well.

Sector 2: Had a close call when three humans boarded me at a sun. I couldn't use air to my advantage, and I had to jump. Got boarded by two Mantis. My two Engi and one Human couldn't fight all five of them very well, so I lost my shields and doors while fighting a Mantis ship. My weapons and drones didn't take any harmful damage, so I did survive the fight.

Sector 3: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 6E4E284CF/

Sector 4: I got a teleporter and a Mantis in the same shop.

Leveled up a Mantis boarding party and a Rock boarding party. When I fought the flagship, I started a fire in the cloak room. Time for the Rocks to shine! That freed up one of my ion weapons so I could shutdown the medbay, and all four of my boarders made quick work of the interior crew.

Screenshots at the end:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 9B0F3E6B5/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 343453AF6/

It was almost a flawless victory. Hit by a missile in the first phase and the third phase; both my fault due to late cloaking. That third phase missile hit my cloak, so I actually had to rely on my shields and evade for the first shot from the super weapon.

My ending augments were the Engi medbots, Automated Re-loader, and Stealth Weapons. I had a Scrap Recovery Arm early in the game, but sold it when I needed room. Never found a Drone Recovery Arm; luckily, I didn't need it.

I bought my Burst Laser II, but I received about three or four of the Burst Laser I.

RAD-82 wrote:My next two runs should be the Red-Tail and the Torus. If I fail to unlock a new ship with those runs, then I plan on playing the Banana ship.

Well, I did unlock the stealth ship with the Torus, but I decided I'd still play the Banana ship, until last night. I decided to play a different modded ship, which was just updated.

Session Fifteen (last weekend): Worked on some Zoltan Ships, The Enforcer and The Scavenger. They are available in 5thHorseman's Enforcer topic in the modding section, since he produced the Enforcer for me back when I couldn't make it myself.

Session Sixteen: Retribution v1.3, by Kieve

This Obsidian Cruiser had a rough start, but it managed to pull through it's early troubles. It was having scrap and power issues early on, but I saved up for a teleporter. It was mostly a green sector run, until the Rock-controlled sector before the end. I was possibly ready to fight the flagship by the end of sector 5.

Screenshot before phase one of final battle:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... D3EAEB1F8/

I maxed out every system. It's hard to believe how much I struggled in the first few sectors.

Screenshots at the end:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 41B93CBE3/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... EF8A16661/

Flawless victory! I had a weapon with a guaranteed breach, so I decided to kill that last gunner. It got the super shield back up with one hull point left, so once I dropped that, I used the Singularity Projector on the medbay for the last point of damage. I steamrolled the last few sectors of this run.

----

I don't think I'll continue this topic anymore. It was just meant to show how well I could do due to all the YouTube videos I've watched. While there are still ships for me to play for a first time, I don't want to be bothered to take screenshots of them or try to give an account of the run.