Holy smokes, what a learning curve this game has! This guide will help serve to turn some of those frowns upside down. This game has a very steep learning curve, and without a particularly good tutorial, it is very frustrating to start. (You can tell by the mixed reviews!)

This guide will help you get into the game and equip you with what you need to enjoy it. It is a culmination of what I have learned while playing the game and represents a guide that goes through all campaigns on Easy and Hard difficulties.

The learning curve on this game is steep! There's a lot of mixed reviews on this game about it being RNG, so unfair, even so far as to call it buggy because the game mechanics at first can even seem that way! While the game does have a few bugs in it and a little RNG, most of this is due to the game not fully explaining the importance of various mechanics, UP FRONT! In fact, though, it does adequately explain everything if you just so happen to look at the right tooltips and intuit a bit from the UI. Once you see it, you'll wonder how you ever missed it.

So, to get you going and enjoying the game, let's do some Trigon Bootcamp! This is going to be very brief, just hitting the highlights to get you playing the game w/o frustration.

(Also, if you have played FTL, which this game is a successor to, most of this is obvious)


Ship

Your ship has hull points, you lose them you die. Your ship also has a captain. He/she dies, you die.

Your ship has Shields. Shields act just like hull points except they regenerate. They regenerate very slowly during combat, however. So, you can't really rely on them to sustain a lot of damage. The goal with shields is to protect your hull points **long enough** till you have disabled the enemy ship's ability to fight.


Ship Systems: As you upgrade ship systems, you get benefits (described below). You need to power those systems. Click on those systems on the bottom of your screen to allocate power (right click to deallocate). You aren't getting the benefit of the system if its not fully powered. Hover over a system to see what benefits you get.

Scrap/Money: Scrap can be used to upgrade your ship systems. Click on manage and ship. Buy upgrades. Hover over the systems to see what the upgrades do. This is very important as many systems have sneaky, good abilities you won't realize till you hover. Money is used to buy things at stations including repairs, new weapons, drones, food, and ship upgrades as well (w/o using scrap).

Ship Systems

HOVER OVER SHIP SYSTEMS IN MANAGE SCREEN AND READ WHAT THEY DO. This isn't obvious at first as many systems are very useful at higher levels above and beyond what you might try to intuit that they do.

Power - Used to power your main ship components. Each level of most ship components requires one power allocation. You can allocate and deallocate power at will. (i.e. You don't always need a powered up Med Bay and instead could use that power for Shields).

Shields - Just gives you more shields.

Engine - Ups your evasion. Can be very useful. The more you evade, the less damage you take. Simple. Your Evasion rating is at the top of your screen. Note: Having a pilot and level 1 engines usually starts you off around 21% evasion... that means you are evading 1 out of ever 5 shots. That's HUGE damage redux!

Med Bay - Heals your crew while in it. Upgraded med bays are also used as some yellow quest dialogs.

Weapons - Provides the specs you need to power up weapons. Each weapon requires a number of energy and weapon slots. They are the same number, designated by the tick marks on the weapon (or energy required in description).

Doors - Allows you to open/close doors on the ship. Upgrades cause doors to have more HP which is useful to keep boarders from roaming your ship at all will (and dying from lack of 02 as you gas out the ship!)

Pilot - Only provides bonus for auto-pilot. You always want a crew member pilot because they give a huge evasion bonus over autopilot.

Life Support - Pumps oxygen into the ship. ALSO GRANTS YOU BONUS FOOD PER GAME DAY!!!!! This is how your solve your food problem!!!!

Drone Controller - Drones power up. You need drone parts to use drones. You get a drone, the drone parts make up the drone. Click to deploy. I have yet to see a benefit to having more drone system upgrades than your ship can hold drones (all drones require 1 power... ) Dunno!

Cloak - Makes you disappear for a limited time. Shields recharge while cloaked. If you shoot guns, it breaks cloak. Cloak can be VERY useful (but is totally not necessary to win game)

Cryo Chambers - Allows you to CAPTURE bad guys to sell later (boarders stuck on your ship) Also, you can jam your own crew members in there when you don't need them so they don't eat food! (Purchased in station!)

Sensors - Shows you enemy ship stats (very good). At top level shows you where Stations are on the map! HUGE! (Purchased in station!)

Teleport - Allows you to teleport crew to and from enemy ships. This is boarding, described in tactics later. .



So many reviews blasting this game because people can't manage their food. I understand. Very same thing happened to me at first too, and I was like WTF?? how you supposed to get food?

Answer: Life Support Module. This module creates food per day to offset your ingestion. Also, robots don't eat, and you can cryo you own guys when you don't need them if you want.

Fuel

Fuel is very rarely a problem but is required to jump around. You can buy in a Station, and usually you don't run out.



This goes up after every jump to a new sector. Goes up as days go by. Goes up as you fight.

GOES DOWN IF YOU SELL CAPTURED BAD GUYS IN STATION!

What does Bounty means? High bounty = lots and lots and lots of fighting. Harder and harder enemies. So many people in reviews keep saying "More laid back than FTL because you don't have to move forward...."..... YES YOU DO. Bounty gets higher and higher, more and more fights, harder and harder enemies. Don't dawdle but also don't sweat it.

Stations

Your life line. Buy weapons, food, repairs, crew members, and ship upgrades. Collect junk weapons and sell them. There's big money in doing so.

Crew Members

Crew Members give HUGE bonuses. You want one of each kind if you can. Pilot is invaluable for providing evasion. Weapon guy charges weapons faster, gives huge bonuses as you level up to damage and recharge speed. Shield jockey gives you enormous boost potential to shields. Medic with ship doctor keeps you topped off and/or combat ready. Engineer gives you free power! Hyperdrive expert significantly decreases jump wait times and provides free energy.

Make sure to station the appropriate crew member in the appropriate module. (i.e. Shield Operator on shield slot).

Decreasing jump wait times is useful when you get locked in a big multi-battle and need to escape, or better, or on a nasty solar storm and need to exit, pronto.

Warriors fight. They are like 800lb gorillas compared to normal crew members. Have to be in order to fight inside Med Bays (more on this later). Your crew members CANNOT go toe to toe with warrior style boarders outside med bay or w/o a medic to heal. Read boarding tactics.



PEW PEW!

You've got several basic categories of weapons, all of which are described by their tool tips. Here's stuff to know/pay attention to.

Missile/Bombs - Go through shields. Typically slow recharge. Require ammunition. Can be easily shot down by defense drones.

EMP - Things that do EMP damage temporarily shut a system levels down IF THEY CAN HIT IT. Have to get through shields first. Amount of EMP damage is equivalent to how much shutdown and how long. EMP is the strongest weapons in game (IMO).

Typical Guns - Fires a number of SHOTS, have a generally quick recharge, do variable amounts of damage to hull, shields, and systems. Might have other bonuses like a % chance to set stuff on fire, or blow a hole in a ship (sucking the oxygen out of the room!).

Lines - Some weapons draw a line (line length) across a ship, hitting multiple systems at once. Still has to get through shields. Situational because not always a good place to draw a line.

AoE - Some weapons fire 1 shot but have multiple rounds. You specify a circle that they will approximately hit in. Basically, it's the "shotgun"/"scatter gun" of pew pew lasers.

Some weapons do EMP damage and act as guns (damaging hull or systems, etc.) Example is an EMP Blaster.

Want to shoot faster? You want shorter recharge. Damage varies based on hull, shield, etc.

Opinions:

Right now, gold standard on guns is to find a gun(s) that do heavy shield damage, preferably the big EMP cannons that shoot 2-3, 40 shield damage, EMP Damage. You drop enemy shields on first volley, and then take gun(s) that do system or EMP damage. Even crappy Mk I cannons that do 15 system damage work if they have no shields. Read Battle Tactics section for why.

SYSTEM DAMGE over HULL DAMAGE

We don't care how fast we can kill a ship. We care how fast we can take a ship's systems down to neutralize it. Firstly, your guns. Secondly, typically, pilot (prevents escape and reduces evasion) and some shields sprinkled in. Once their guns are gone and they have no pilot, well, that's ball game. Doesn't matter if you are doing tiny hull damage and the fight takes 5 minutes, you still win. Preferably you neutralize the enemy in 1-2 volleys, so that your shields never get punched through.

So first, you need guns with shield damage to remove shields, followed by guns which do SYSTEM damage. Many blasters do all 3 types of damage... some hilarious ones even tack on EMP damage. Remember, 1 EMP damage equals one system level down for a second or two. Multiple EMP hits take out more levels for longer.

Weapon Rarity

Typically, rarer weapons are better weapons. Not always, though for purpose. Just check their stats.

Game Days

This is one area the game does not really explain at all, and you can tell by game reviews the frustration it causes! haha!

So, the game uses Game Days, which are units of time. Each day does the following:

- Consumes food
- Rolls up a random encounter in the sector you are in

Applying ship upgrades with scrap passes a day. IMO, this is very confusing and is a reason for a lot of complaints about food and being randomly attacked. it's because this is not clear that it is happening when you upgrade with scrap.

Each jump also consumes a day.


Multi Battles

It's not a bug! You will have encounters, especially at high bounty, where it's just ship after ship after ship after ship.... and you will be like, "Is this game bugged what the hell?!?!"

It's not a bug. it's high bounty and late game. Sometimes, you just need to hyperjump away.

But really, if you are kitted out well with tons o' guns and shields, you'll mow through them anyways.


Conclusion

Bootcamp is over. Equipped with the above, you are ready to play and the frustration will be gone and replaced by a fun game.

This section is on basic gameplay tactics for fighting, navigating, and so on. Think of it as level 1 training once you've gotten through bootcamp.



This section describes some tips on how to fight.

Auto Fire

Hover over your guns and you will see a little icon tooltip at the bottom which if you click, causes your guns to fire as they are ready. Thus, you don't have to keep clicking (or number key click) to fire them. Click this button.

Default Tactics

Aim for the enemy weapons system. This is a no brainer. If you disable all of their guns, they can't hurt you! No matter how long the fight takes to kill them, if they aren't shooting back, you are good. This works 90%+ of the time. Train your weapons on their weapons module and profit.

Just make sure you brought enough guns of your own.

Default Game Plan

1) Find a gun(s) that does heavy shield damage. Ideal is Purple/Orange 2-3 shot 40 shield damage, EMP damage toys (ideal is Pacifier EMP). But really, anything with 10-20 shield damage, depending on shots/recharge works. Think, "how can I do around 100 shield damage in one volley?"
2) Find a gun(s) that do heavy system damage and/or EMP damage.
3) Fire shield breakers. Wait 1 second. Fire system guns at weapons module.
4) Auto Fire shield breakers at their shields, Auto Fire system guns at their weapons.
5) Once weapons are cooked, take some shots at their pilot. Effectively, I split guns at this point. Some stay on shields, weapons, and pilot. Ball game.

The only mix up is on the Taeritkon Boss and any Rhakki Boarding ships. For Taertikon, you need to split system damage between weapons and drones. For Rhakki, I immediately point all guns at their Teleport to stop the boarding attack, and then go after the guns on the next volley.

Other Considerations

Stopping the Dodgy Madness
If the enemy ship has a lot of Engines, that means it will evade like crazy! Evasion can get really high (over 33%). Combine that with crew special abilities, like Maneuvering, and you will have periods of time where a ship is just not able to be hit.

Solution? Target the Pilot system. If you knock it out, no more evasion. Also, Weapons Specialist 100% accuracy click ability hard counters this.

Crazy Shields

Some ships have crazy shield recharge, especially boosted by crew members. Sometimes, it's so much shielding you should take some shots at this system to tone it down a little before switching back to targeting weapons.

Drone Controllers

Some ships come with a LOT of drones. Typically Taertikon. In this rare instance (and on the Taertikon boss), you need to split system damage between drones and guns. I actually recommend taking out the guns first (as they are EMP guns) and then then drones.

Crew Abilities

So powerful! Shield master, engineers, and weapons expert have crazy good abilities. Use them for bosses or big fights. Don't forget about them, they are insanely good. Bring your shields back to full. Halve weapon recharge. 100% accuracy. Drop enemy shield system by 5. So Good!

The Enemy has Crew Too

See that enemy ship starting to glow and looking like there's a dance rave going on? Yeah, that's crew abilities. They are on a timer. They type and effect will be reported at the bottom of your screen.

Suddenly can't hit the ship at all? Suddenly they getting all their shields back SO FAST? Yeah, crew abilities. You have to tank this out, use your own crew abilities to help, and/or CLOAK (this is where cloaking is useful sometimes).

Drones

Drones are just good. Extra damage. No reason not to have them. Defense Drones are actually VERY good. They not only stop missiles but also can target certain types of gun bullets. Defense Drone MK II is amazing. 2 Defense Drones is even better.

Boarding

I actually dislike boarding. Disliked it in FTL too.

It's powerful, no doubt. But I have a few problems with it that are hard to overcome and frankly, you can easily win w/o ever boarding. It's just "for funsies".

1) If you blow up the enemy ship while your guys are on it, your guys die.

2) You can't NOT be killing the enemy guns so your ship doesn't die, while your guys are there. This makes #1, difficult. Also, boarders fight other crew before systems... meaning if you want to take out their guns with boarders, first you have to fight through everyone and that's precious seconds of you getting hammered..... and then if you shoot the damn system with your guys in it, they take damage. SAD FACE.

This makes EMP a better choice for boarders.

3) Med Bay Fights. Sigh. The enemy will always retreat to their med bay to fight you there while they heal. This makes it take so longer. I mean, not to worry if you have a bunch of warriors, you probably kill them anyways, but still.... madness. No I need to EMP the Med Bay instead of the guns... and same problems as #2.

NOTE: Teams of Combat Medics are basically unstoppable boarding machine, working even with no O2, and is hilarious... although again no boarding ever really necessary to win the game.



Moving around the Map

This is about how to navigate around on the map to help you with winning the game.

Here's the nutshell... you want $$$ and Scrap. A lot of it. Scrap to upgrade, money to buy goodies in Stations and upgrade your ship for money in stations..

The Rule of Enough - You want ENOUGH scrap and $$$ out of a sector before you leave to get some serious upgrades, but you don't want to dawdle and run up the bounty.

Try not to cover ground you have already covered. This is just wasteful, unless you are farming.

Fight, A LOT. Scrap and money comes from this. Do not be afeared!

The Rule of Find the Station - Always find the station before you leave. Dock there. Repair. Buy crew. Sell scrap guns. Buy better guns. Buy ship upgrades. Buy food (if you need it).

You always want a lot of money so you can buy the best guns, crew, and upgrades.


When you get to hard, some amount of farming seems required. Try not to get the bounty TOO high (like over 10) while you do it, but fishing for $$$$ and Scrap to upgrade reactor and get lucky with gun drops seems like a must. So, you can take your time a bit to make sure you got enough in the tank to fight that next boss.


Get comfortable pausing the game to issue crew orders. For the most part, crew stay in their appropriate station (engineer on engines, shield guy on shields, weapons guy on weapons, pilot in cockpit, etc.)

Watch your Life Support! You must repair this if you lose oxygen! Robots don't need oxygen, but have very low HP. They can't fight, but they can repair anything.

I like Ship's Doctor to keep everyone topped off. This is a Medic Perk. But not really required.

Gas out sections of the ship by opening the air locks to the exterior and controlling it with interior doors.

Fire

Fire on a ship is deadly. Just like real life. It spreads FAST. You can't let it get out of control. Pause and send people in or remove the oxygen. You have to react to this, or you will die, very quickly. Removing oxygen is best if practicable.

Conclusion

Once you get into the Purple/Orange rarity guns, and you have a bunch of them, good shields, and strong crew, you will be amazed at how powerful you can get.

Just target their guns and PEW PEW most of the game away. The rest is situational and you pick up through learning.

The golden rule: Shield busting guns and System Guns. You get those and you will cake walk the game with just a few crew abilities sprinkled in for some bosses.

The Human and Etari campaigns play out in basically the same way. The following strategy will get you through both of them:

Food Management

Buy some life support already. Haha.

Guns and guns and guns

Both starter ships have many gun slots. Fill them up with guns you find following the basic strategy of shield busters and system/emp damage.

Get some shields to buffer, and profit.

Get Some Drones Too

Why not? Moar guns or defense drones to protect against missiles.

I'm still trying to complete this one.

That was extremely difficult, only because of the toaster bosses, 2 of them! No oxygen for boarding, and you got 2 crappy gun slots the whole game! Also, as stated, I strongly dislike boarding as a mechanic, albeit here's how I think it's supposed to work:

1) Pick up EMP Guns
2) Use EMP guns to stun lock their Guns.
3) Board and destroy guns.
4) Stun lock med bay... and kill everybody.

Here's how I actually completed the campaign.

The 2 Toaster Ship Bosses are the big problem! Huge shields, crazy amounts of shield recharge, big EMP and lots of drones. No oxygen for boarding. This is like worst nightmare for this crappy 2 gun Rhakki ship. With other ships, no problem because you got enough guns to get past the shields.

So, here's what I did:

The Most OP Gun in the Game

EMP Shield Busters. EMP Pulsar, Pacificer EMP. Get a gun that clobbers shields and emp damages to boot.

Secondary Gun

I visited every station I could find, sometimes multiple times trying to fish for a decent gun. I never found one. Went the whole game with a Blaster Mark II. It was enough though when combined with that EMP Pulsar (that thing is just crazy too good). Basically, system damage here.

Engineers

I got 2 Engineers. One with Technician. Stick him on weapons slot. This prevents EMP from locking down your guns.

Second engineer got the shield reduction ability. You put him on sensors, click the button, and temporarily, they lose 5 system levels of shields. THIS offsets your lack of additional guns to knock out big shields on bosses quiclky.

Follow this up with Weapons Specialist ability to cut cooldowns in half... combined with EMP .... AND FINALLY! Die toasters die!

1) Start a very hard battle
2) Click to reduce their shields.
3) Click to halve your cool downs.
4) Point EMP at their shields. Watch them take stupid EMP damage in seconds.
5) Switch to guns.

And in my case, since I had such a crappy "other gun"... go to the bathroom, make coffee... watch some tv... come back when their ship finally dead.

This one was a relative breeze, just like Human and Etari... not because it was as easy as those though... but because I've now learned about the raw, unadulterated power that is EMP guns.

My final ship loadout was an EMP Blaster Mark III and a Pacifier EMP.

Stats are as follows:

EMP Blaster Mark III - 6 shots, 1 emp damage, low recharge
Orange EMP Gun - 3 Shots, 40 SHIELD DAMAGE, moderate recharge.

And then I just stacked on whatever the best offensive drones I could find.

Cake walked it after this. Hired Weapon Operator, Pilot, Shield guy to round off the crew.

The hardest battle by far in all campaigns is still the Taertikon boss. It just has so much shields and shield boosting crew abilities, mixed with EMP and drones to mess up your systems with damage. it's by far the hardest fight.

Boarding battles were no problem, even with Taeritkon. I did pick up on Human Warrior to help out, and basically, my tips on how to win boardings worked just fine. I also abused the Taertikon lack of need for Oxygen on boardings to help due damage by gassing out the whole ship except med bay, where I packed my non-Taertikon crew. I would then send Taertikon crew members out to start repairing damaged systems as the boarders moved towards med bay.

IN SHORT:

The Pacifier EMP Gun first 3 shots, dealing up to 120 Shield Damage if they all hit, followed by the EMP Blaster Mark III's 6 shots which also stack up to another set of shield damage. This instantly evaporate any enemy's shields in one volley and typically the EMP Blaster Mark III would get several shots into their weapons.

I would then just out fire EMP Blaster Mark III into weapons and put the other gun to auto fire on their shield bank.

Drones were just there to speed up fights.

Ejecting Crew Members

You can eject your own crew members. Go to manage and crew. Drag and drop them on the eject area at the bottom.

Why would you do this? Because you already have a pilot, don't need another, and this dude is just taking up FOOD.

EMP Pulsar/EMP Blaster Mark III/Pacifier EMP, Other EMP Weapons

So, I'm constantly discovering new EMP weapons, and they are all very OP in my opinion. The EMP Pulsar can practically carry a game. The EMP Blaster Mark III is even better. Just tons of EMP damage on quick recharge. EMP is VERY, VERY effective at shutting down systems since you don't have to deal damage to them. Once their shields are down, you can stun lock any system with just one of these guns.

Do not underestimate Engineers.
Engineer -> Technician

This is a passive ability. Stops whatever module the engineer is in from being EMP'ed. SO GOOD.

Engineer -> Click Abilities

Put engineer in sensor room, click button, enemy loses 5 shield system levels for 10 seconds. That's enough to rip into any ship in an opening salvo.

Another click ability puts out ALL fires on the ship at once. Amazing.

Easiest Ship to Win With

Actually the very first human ship. 4 gun slots and 2 drone slots. That's enough to get UBER gun loadouts like multiple EMP Pulars, EMP Blaster Mark III, Pacifier, and one decent system gun. And this just instant wins the game for you even on hard.

The 2 Drone Slots are nice for Defense Drones too to stop any initial missile volleys.

Asked in the comments, I figured I would update here. This bit helps with how to counter the rare ship or two that you run into where they send some Rhakki onto your ship to board. (Seems like it's ALWAYS Rhakki!)

Understand what you are facing

Understand that Rhakki has massive HP and do a LOT of close combat damage. Close combat is when two guys are wailing on each other in a corner. Everyone else in the room shots and is considered "ranged combat". Basically, if the guy isn't in a cage match in the corner with someone, they are shooting.

The Rhakki that come on board are almost always Warrior Class, meaning they have additional buffs and abilities for kicking your butt.

General Tactical Rule

Accept that their boarders are stronger than your crew members. You can't win in a 1v1, especially not with a Rhakki because in a 1 on 1, you will be in close combat. Bad news for you.

Easy Mode
1) Upgrade your doors 1 level.
2) As soon as you see them teleporting in, move your crew, open the air locks, and gas out the section of the ship they are teleporting into.
3) As they try to beat through doors, O2 is gone, and they will eventually die.

Harder Mode

Here's the general tips:

1) PAUSE... a lot. So you can micro-manage the fights. This tip alone gets you through the process pretty easily.
2) The AI is NOT good about concentrating its forces. The little guys will run all over the ship to different systems to destroy them. Use this to your advantage to....
3) Always engage the enemy in a crew dog pile. Lasso up 3-4 of your guys and put them in a room with 1 Rhakki. Watch the Rhakki die.
4) Don't engage in 1:1 fights! Run away, group up, and attack as a team. Only reason to be in a 1:1 is if you are tanking to buy yourself a little time.
5) As your guy gets low on health... run away to the med bay. Start healing there.
6) Don't run away when its too late. If your health goes red, you get a speed debuff and won't be able to get away. Try to run at like 33% health.
7) As you fall back to the med bay, by this point you have probably killed 1-2 Rhakki. The other 2 two will eventually make their way to the med bay. That's OK, that's where you want them! You'll have 4 guys in there, all being healed while they fight off and kill the last 2.

8) PAY ATTENTION TO THE GIANT TELEPORTING LIGHT SHOW! If the room your crew are fighting in suddenly gets the giant teleporty light-show, rave dance, circle... they are trying to teleport their crew members back to ship. If your guys are there when that teleport goes off, they will get teleported too, and you DIE. As soon as you see it, PAUSE, run out of the room.

Advanced Considerations

1) You still need to be firing your ship guns at their ship guns so you don't get blown up while dealing with the boarders. This is typically doable because those Rhakki ships typically have crap for guns, and if you are doing basically "well", you'll easily deisable and even destroy their ship while dealing with the boarders. They also typically have missiles which one defense drone can take care of.

2) The only game ending problem with boarding is when they take down your life support. Here's how to solve. If the Rhakki, while they are skittering around from room to room destroying stuff (which is to your ADVANTAGE per general tip #2)... one may get into the life support. You cannot lose this system else all the oxygen goes away and your crew die anyways. Key is, wait till the Rhakki kills it and leaves to find another target. Then, run a crew member in there to start repairing. By that time, the little Rhakki will be munching on another system or preferably be engaged in your med bay with the rest of your crew. So, you'll get there just in time to restore oxygen service.

3) If you kill their ship while guys are still on your ship, sometimes (and I think it's buggy when it doesn't), if you have Cryo... you will capture the boarders automagically. You can sell them at a station for sometimes $$$ and somtimes a Bounty redux.

Advanced Tactics when you have Etari/Taertikon Crew

Your big problem here is that Etari and Taertikon fold like origami in combat. If my crew is largely weaklings, I spend an upgrade point on Doors (or 2). It's worth it. I also TRY to disable their teleporter with my first volley, which works damn well if you have EMP guns and can knock out shields.

Worst case here is you get boarded. OK. Pause, Open up the air locks and doors to gas out where the boarders are. Run your crew away (basically follow Easy Mode above).

Super Advanced Considerations

Hilarious note, since we know from general tip #8 that you can teleport guys off of a ship.... that means you can do this too. In fact, you can use this somewhat offensively. The teleporter takes about 4 seconds or so to charge up.

If you target an enemy ship system with your own teleporter, the AI will RUN out of the room... just like you should when the same thing happens. Thus, you can actually target a system that is actively being repaired with your teleporter (even if you have none of your own guys on their ship) causing them to run out of the room and NOT be repairing for 4 seconds. Hilarious.

I am now working my way through the next difficulty setting. Will post here differences and if anything changes from my basic guide above as I complete them! Stay tuned.


Two big things.

1) Reactor upgrades are ludicrously expensive in both Scrap and $$$. This means I find you have to farm a lot more to get your ship powered up.

2) Bounty goes up 2x as fast. This means you can't farm for too long, but it also means you are going to regularly be at around 10 bounty and into the "hard fights" by the time you leave a sector. So, be prepped for it with solid command of the basic battle tactics and appropriate guns.



Ended up using the Rhakki ship that I unlocked that starts with the 4 guns because I have liked those so far. Hard difficulty has taught me to be more flexible!

Several bad starts on this one before I found my groove. Hard presents the following problems:

1) Ship Reactor upgrades are VERY expensive. This is a game changer on difficulty as you have to really be picky about what systems to upgrade. I completed campaign with only 4 shield slots, 1 engine, and I was having to leverage an Engineer to give me enough system levels in weapons to stock my guns.

2) Because you can't get reactor upgrades, food is a problem on this one. You need to get life support up but don't have the upgrades to do it with! Still managed after a few bad starts.

3) Just before the final encounter, I had to spend some time farming a sector with repeated visits to the station to cash out to repair and look for weapons.

4) Bounty goes up a lot more on hard! I retract what I said earlier about bounty in Easy. Bounty is LOW there haha. I was packing 12 bounty at some points on this one.

Weapon Loadout

I got the orange missile launcher off the first boss and several selections of purple missiles, especially cluster and ragnarok. This was huge and kept me in the game early. Other than that, went with 1 MK II Blaster, and 1 MK II Blaster Turret. Towards the end, finally scored one of the very expensive, purple multi-shot 50 shield damage EMP guns. This sealed the deal.

Crew

Lucky Ticket was pilot. Leader was warrior. Shield and Weapons person. Ronnie was an engineer and his +2 levels for my weapons saved me this game. Picked up one more warrior very late which helped with boardings.

Overall:

Strategy of guns works still. You need to crack the shields with "something" and then just hammer their guns. That something for me in this case started as missiles on weapons and transitioned to my large EMP gun. Once I had the EMP gun, everything was pretty straightforward.


Like the Human campaign, many bad starts I had to suffer through before I could catch a groove. Hard is basically difficult for two reason.

1) Reactor upgrades being so expensive
2) Bounty going up so fast that enemies get strong.

I used the Centennail Hawk on this one, which I'm starting to think is the best ship. It's the best because of 4 Gun slots and 2 Drone Slots.

Once I caught a groove, this ended up being easier than Human campaign as I knew what to expect, and I have solidified on what is I think the consistent, winning strategy for the game.

Winning Strategy

Get a gun(s) which will quickly melt shields, preferably in one volley. Get a gun(s) which do system damage. The large, multi-shot EMP guns, which I think are only purple and orange, to get multi-shot are the best guns to have because they can zap shields and I target the shield generator with it so that the EMP keeps them from coming back.

Shortly after the shield breakers fire (like 0.5 seconds), pause, and target the weapons with your system damaging weaponry. That way shields break and weapons go down in the first volley. Then just sit back and relax. That's it.

Weapons

I picked up from the 2nd boss the Pacifier EMP Cannon thingy. 40 damage to shields and 3 shots. I then had 2 Mk 1 Blastres (15 system damage each) and one MK III Blaster cannon (because I just couldn't find a regular blaster to save my life).

Crew

I ended up scoring lots of crew this run, which was super helpful. This is what really made the game easy because on bosses I had the following Alpha Strike potential:

1) Shield Operator has +10 / level and I had max shields by end for 140. Click ability was double that! Awesome!
2) Weapons guy had the 100% accuracy buff.

So boss, was this. Double shields, click 100% accuracy. Fire Large EMP (takes down shields instaltly and usually one shot EMPs the shields. Fire two blasters at guns and MK III cannon at pilot. (Still have 100% accuracy for 10 seconds).

After two volleys, ball game.


Used the Centennial Hawk again, and more of the same. Scored solid EMP guns, farmed a bit, and just blasted my way through the game, just like Etari.


Winning strategy still wins. Centennial Hawk again. Pacifier EMP, EMP Blaster Mk 3 x 2, 1 other Orange gun (can't remember). Typically shut enemy down in one volley unless they pop maneuvering. Maxed shields so could tank it out even if they did. Simple.


Hard is just harder, and you need to farm a bit. Once you get the winning strategy gun loadout I keep touting in this guide, you will easily win. The only boss in the game that is ever a problem is Taertikon, and to defeat it is simply just using your crew abilities. Pop 100% accuracy off weapons operator and 2 x Shields off Shield Operator, and that's it. If you got the winning strategy guns, you just win.