60 hrs into this game and i only beat normal once on the foundation cruiser with the flak 1 strat...

60 hrs into this game and i only beat normal once on the foundation cruiser with the flak 1 strat. What am i doing wrong or am i just to reliant on the flak strat other weapons have so much hassle to be effective missiles with limited resources, beams can't penetrate shields, teleport bombs cant penetrate shields. Should i invest trying different augments for those blue options i alwas pick scrap recovery, reloader, and hull repair.

>What am i doing wrong
you forgot to git gud

if you're relying on one strategy you're probably gonna have a bad time, like most roguelikes it's about adapting to what is thrown at you and the tools that come up rather than rolling the dice and hoping for something that matches your ideal layout + encounters
some good tips I read a while ago was to always try to have a decent amount of scrap saved up to be able to take full advantage of shops, pause frequently, never use autofire and always time your weapons to hit at the same time unless you have one that literally fires 2x as much as another, you might already be doing all of those though.

youre probably not doing that much wrong
the games designed to rape you in the first few sectors, theres a fair lot of run-ruining events that mandate a restart, and even when that doesnt happen the last boss is an actual outright coin flip since the fights functionally unwinnable if it hacks any of your defensive systems
even a good player still isnt going to have a winrate in excess of like 10-15%, its not a game of skill if youre aiming for consistency, youre always gonna be gambling on rng

>even a good player still isnt going to have a winrate in excess of like 10-15%, its not a game of skill if youre aiming for consistency, youre always gonna be gambling on rng
wrong, after 150 hours I can beat normal more often than not with my favorite ships
even hard isn't ruined by bullshit RNG nearly as often as you think, if you don't make any mistakes it's very doable
>even when that doesnt happen the last boss is an actual outright coin flip since the fights functionally unwinnable if it hacks any of your defensive systems
I remember one run on hard when if hacked my shields, but I could out-DPS him, otherwise you jump away and back to remove that (if you don't wait at the base for the flagship, you fucked up and don't have that option)

fights in the game are easy and it's always obvious what you are supposed to do if you're not a retard, the real problem is resource management and shopping decisions

what are some good mid game weapons to reliably take down shields with. i mostly get out of early game good mid game is when things get rough

Why is there nothing but absolute shit in shops? Only thing you can reliably get that does any damage is teleporter. There are never Burst II or Flak II anywhere. Why are hull, rapid and stun even in the game? Charge is shit too but it isn't as shit. Vulcan works but only past system 6 or something because you can't have just one gun due to danger of stray missiles.

ion 2, burst laser 2, flak 1, charge laser 4 or whatever the quad laser is called
bombs are decent too but theyre only as good as their charge time, an 18s bomb is gonna be fucking terrible if your other weapons or more importantly the enemys weapons are up in half that time

also, boarding rocks, you can solve a lot of problems with it, like fucking with the flagship's artillery, just be careful not to lose your fighters

you always pick your strategy based on what you already have, flaks and powerful beams are a good combo, so are full laser barrages, you should always try to get a boarding team or crew killing weapons (intact ships bring more scraps)

with time you learn which events can fuck you up (great eye, boarding events have a chance of killing a random crewmember which is usually a major setback)

flagship isn't nearly as OP as you think after losing to it a couple of times, if you know what it does and how to counter it, while being properly equipped, the final fight is a breeze, even on hard, the problem is getting equipped in time

Crew Teleporter with Clone Bay is god tier.
Stealth can make the Rebel Flagship a ton more manageable.
lmao 3flak is fun but doesn't guarantee a win, one of the three times I got it I lost to the flagship. Don't blow up slaver ships and try to get your crew as diverse as possible.
Piloting and Doors are always worth upgrading to 1 first.

use common sense: dmg/energy consumption ratio with a little bit of reloading rate, that's all there is to it

...

>Piloting and Doors are always worth upgrading to 1 first.
I don't ever upgrade doors until the last sector, if you get boarded you can always kite the shit out of the AI and you're safe in the medbay

shields are the priority at the start, even if you chance upon a good weapon in the first two sectors, resist the urge to get it

...

I'd say engines first and then shields when it becomes about the same price/cheaper than shields but both are pretty viable

I thought upgrading shields to 2 before the end of the first sector didn't need to be said to someone 60 hours in

...

...

By the way, I've done everything there is to do in the game, but I want more. Are there any good mods I can check out?

...

Whoever drew these comics is great, they make me smile every time

never played it myself but I've heard captain's edition is a good mod

Does it half the gear being worthless?

no idea I'm afraid, I've just heard a lot of people praising it

fucking rng keeps giving me drones with a ship without a drone control

chances are there are good loadouts you missed out on because you were fixated on drones

though you do need either cloaking or defense drones for the final fight, preferably both (then you can save on the 4th shield bubble), maybe you can also win with effective boarding, hacking and good DPS, but that's less foolproof, a repair drone with monster firepower might work too

I had runs where every single shop had utter shit, but it doesn't happen all that often