Difficulty?

@admiralgeezer. See this ship? http://imgur.com/YnSXu0W I used a distress beacon and pulled three of them to one of the smaller space stations. They blew up both me and the space station. I pulled five of the wanderer version to a battle station. When I died, the station was out of shields and rapidly losing hp. There were still four of them left. These ships should not appear at turn 6 in easy mode. You certainly should not be getting two or three spawned in a trap from clicking a loot box. Also, in easy you should always start with the same money, not random. Getting 4 upgrades and only 800 scrap is not an easy start. I assume the two times I got literally nothing were bugs.

@noncom. In my experience the ship I fly has no impact on the enemies I face. Better ships are just better. Though I haven't unlocked all of them. I strongly suspect this is a big part of the problem. In my experiments the gunboats are all too slow, far far too slow. They cannot close with enemy missile ships fast enough (or at all in some cases). Making carriers outperform them. That said, I did have some great runs with a zephyr. The hurricane and Raven were both markedly worse than it. The guardian is also far worse than the Nightingale. It's higher hull allows it to survive spike damage, but it has many fewer weapons so longer sustained fights it suffers badly. Especially the limit of one side with no defenses at all is brutal against multiple enemies when you are alone.

I'll have the resolution and Memphis soon. Memphis looks like a horrible gunship being slower than the zephyr and with fewer guns. But the resolution looks pretty good from what I can see.

@gavinruneblade you'll figure it out soon. A lot comes down to luck of the drops. I've had games where I got a death ray in the first world and others where I've gotten trapped by an EMP and killed on turn 3.

Having beaten the game quite a few times on hard, I can tell you that getting past the first world can often be the hardest part save for the very last level. Right now I win roughly 1 out of 4 on hard and in most of the cases that I fail, it's because I make a stupid mistake on world 1 that costs me the game. Once you get your first reinforcement it helps a lot.

@Gavinruneblade. Part of the appeal of this game is the fact that sometimes 6 ships jump to your Battlestation, even on "easy". It's about creating those holy shit moments, and it is achieved with random things. It's just the kind of game it is meant to be.

The most exciting thing is to face those 6 ships, and prevail somehow. Will you die in many games? Yes, absolutely. This just makes winning that much sweeter

There are a few key things that one needs to know in order to win the game. If you have a slow ship, it is not worth it to stay in a sector with a missile ship running away from you. You jump out, and back in again right on top of the annoying thing. Take him out that way.

Knowing when to jump out of fights is also key, if you drop down too low on health and do it then, the enemies might follow and you will probably die. And sometimes you will have to leave your Battlestation to die in order to survive yourself.

@GavinRuneblade well, Admiral says true, it's like that. The trick is to *survive at any cost*, do whatever you need, but survive. I think that the point that this game is a much of a roguelike should be emphasized once more.. Really, in these games you can face any kind of challenge anytime. That's the whole point, it's just like the real life. Yes, sometimes it can seem that a particular layout was so much unfair that you had no chance to win. It happens. But on the other hand, roguelikes offer a gread deal of immersion, unexpected challenges and really make you think out of the box. The key is to survive, be liquid, never sleep. It's a state of mind kinda meditation in martial arts. Except that sometimes you face a military-grade killer robot.

I am sure that if you keep pressing, eventually you'll be making more and more progress. But what's important - is that your thinking and the way you address a challenge will be changing.

Please read about roguelikes:
1. https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussi...n-is-dying
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

I play hard if I want to play without a plan. lately I have been playing and trying to build funny and or themed fleets such as less than 600 range, all rocket cannons, or a fighter based run were the main ships can only repair. I usually play these runs on easy because the battle stations are more common and so are the supplies.

I do understand the nature if the game, especially since I have actually played the original rogue. But rogue did not have an easy mode. In fact no human won it. Some guys at Stanford had to write a program called rogue-o-matic to win it for them.

That said, easy is not easy. With the better ships it is easier. But with the starter ships it should not be called "easy". Perhaps consider making tutorial a full game and making that the intended mode to win with only started ships and no experience.

Or change the name to something that is not easy. Pretty much, by definition, easy should be the n00b setting. It isn't.

@GavinRuneblade well, if you're saying so, knowing what a roguelike is, then probably it is so (btw humans do win roguelikes, even nethack, adom and others). Probably then it becomes apparent that an additional level, an easier one than easy could be made, in addition to the already proclaimed "insane" or something. Also a valid point since of course there will be players who want an even breezier experience.

As another idea - the game start menu could expose some controls, like sliders and stuff to adjust various aspects of RNG, AIs, and other things! That could make the endless mode close to infinitely parametrizeable! "Custom difficulty" or something..

I just recently beat hard using Projectile and Energy Cannons only. That was a hell of a lot of fun! Having a total of 12 projectile cannons is just brutal. I did use repair drones which helped immensely in the middle levels.

One question tho, does your load out have any barring on what weapons the AI uses? When I reached level 4, I only encountered a handful of ships using death rays.

Has anyone beaten the game on hard using only human weapons?

This means only weapons you purchased and upgraded yourself. No alien loot. No human loot. No mission rewards. Only good, ole' fashion human-made weapons.

I've gotten to the final level (and lost) three times now.

Unlike every other mission in the game, it isn't a question of how much damage you can deal. Rather, it's a question of whether you can survive the 10 or so seconds it takes your jump engines to recharge before your flagship dies.

Here's what I've tried
*fighter-heavy - 6x fully maxed out plasma bombers. 2 x resolution and 1 vahalla. Weapons - maxed out nukes. PDW - all shield boosters. Result: absolutely annihilated.
*battleship/ranged - 2xplasma bombers, 2 x liberator and 1 armada. Weapons - maxed out missiles and 2 projectiles. PDW - mixture of bolters and shield boosters. Result: couldn't get through their point defense, slowly got worn down and died
*Hybrid - 2x plasma bombers, 1x bolter drones, 1 x repair drones. 2x liberator, 1 resolution. Weapons - 4 fully-upgraded projectiles (everything to the max), 4 maxed-out nukes. Result: didn't even destroy one station

For the record, I've beaten it numerous times using alien weapons.

The conclusion I'm regrettably drawing is that it boils down to DPS - with alien weapons I can annihilate the battlestations before they can do the same to me.

Challenge accepted! Most of the weapons I used were human on my last run, except for point defense. I think I had a couple Trolgar Projectiles and the two energy cannons I was using got swapped out in stage 3 for another races. I think the key is using repair drones and trying to keep the energy weapons down to a minimum. Instead, I ended up maxing out the shield attribute on all the projectile weapons. Also, you want to try and keep your reload time down. Most of the projectiles I only upgraded the burst once. Will post back my results in a couple days.