More scrap plz :) (thoughts on upgrading strategies?)

[x_dirtrobot]

I think a 30-40% boost in scrap salvage would make the game a little less (grossly) unfair on normal. By the time I reach sector 4-5 I'm no where near the might to deal with the encounters. This seems to be mainly because of missiles and fires.

So my first few playthroughs I didn't realize the importance of the ship upgrades, I had it in mind that the stores held all the answers. But now that I'm doing the opposite, I have almost never any money to spend in the stores, so the all-important defense drones (vs. those awful missiles) are usually out of my reach.

How do you guys like to approach the upgrades? I'll note that I once had 3 shields and got punished by an ion/missile ship. What's the effective counter to that?

[DeltaOmega]

Cloak, defense drones, engine upgrades, reinforced hull plating, and gold pilot and engineer are your defenses against missiles. Defenses drones are pretty terrible for cost since they can miss and cloak is the best defense as you can avoid missiles in flight and stop their cooldown while recharging your own weapons.

[x_dirtrobot]

Ah good to know, thanks!

[VladePsyker]

Well thinking back on my run last night that beat the end boss on normal the only thing I really did differently was not spending alot of scrap when I didn't absolutly have to

In particular I waited alot longer than I normally would to purchase energy upgrades, instead playing out fights with 0 energy in engines O2 and heal, and shifting power from an offensive drone to a defensive one to counter a missle and then back to the offensive drone again. maybe it was luck but I had 3 weapons that only used 2 power each so I only ever upgraded to 6 weapon power. I alternated between using missles or drones sometimes neither if I could lock down a ship quickly enough, which in turn left me free to trade missles and drones for scrap a couple times. Getting cloak early also helped get the lockdown faster with just lasers without taking too many hits

So my suggestion would be try get though sector 1 without any upgrades and take you bank of scrap to the first store you find and get that choice bit of equipment and do a little upgrade at that point then hold off again where possible. if an upgrade isn't going to get you a critical benefit e.g. bring a 4 power weapon online, add a shield bar, then why spend money on it now better to wait and maybe run into a store before upgrading.

[DeltaOmega]

Level 2 shield is still the first upgrade you get. Hold onto your scrap till you can afford the whole deal because you might find a shop with pegasus or breach missiles which can correct any shield/weapon problem.