Research/Command, and my strategy!:
So after I got sick of being shot at, and QUITE concerned for my health, I realized I could easily get around by just not getting in sight of anybody.
I grabbed what scanners I had left lying around, found an engineer, and dug into the walls. I managed to get the engineer into the tunnel I dug so he kept following me, sealing up the path as I went, preventing anybody from getting in behind me.
With the scanners going, I could see where things congregated and, more importantly figure out where the stairs were. With multiple targeting computers going, there was minimal risk I'd fire a shot and destroy a wall to a room and, with all projectile weapons disabled, the shots were free, only consuming energy that was easily regenerated in safety.
Dig, dig, dig, oh look, that might be interesting, dig, dig, dig, oh look, there's an entire ARMY on the stairs.
Kind of went in on a prayer over here and just opened the wall and shot them up.
Proceed to Command, and more or less in one piece this time!
With Kyzrati's hint about there being only one exit, I figured that that the exit was probably on the opposite side of the floor, probably straight down the hallway of The Death Room (it's scary. Very, very scary.). I didn't have much hope that this would work, but turns out that the walls on this floor were destructible to my projectile weapons, if not my energy ones. So! Dug right through the double walls separating the floor in two and neatly skipping The Death Room. I avoided things for most of the way until I figured I was near the middle of that side and entered a room that I guessed might have stairs.
Turns out I was wrong, and I had a small army unloading their weapons in my direction in short order.
Instead of standing and trying to fight, I decided it was smarter to just drop all my equipment and RUN. (The 200% speed from a naked Cogmind was far faster than I could move with my equipment. Besides, most of my defenses were blown off already.)
I found the stairs in the far opposite corner from where I entered the floor and beat a hasty retreat to the surface! A free Cogmind...
Hehe, I guessed it might've had something to do with digging around, but having an engineer following you is a smart trick. I suppose if others try that and take too long digging around, however, they run the risk of having an army of Programmers bear down on them shortly after returning to the normal tunnels/rooms.
Prototypes are generally equivalent to or slightly better than a common item that is one rating level higher (or even far better for some of the rarer awesome prototypes you can find in the late game ).
*shakes fist* In all my games, I've found ONE prototype 'special weapon', on Research/8... and I destroyed it since I was attacking with cannons at the time.
I STILL wonder what on earth makes it 'special'.
If it makes you feel better, there are no prototype special weapons. Your system corruption made you forget about a normal welding torch or plasma cutter
The only "special weapons" I added were those that aren't really weapons at all, but can be used as weapons, hence the "special" designation. I could've called them "Tools" or something, but I wanted to make it obvious they are equippable in your weapon slots.
The very powerful prototypes I was referring to in the late game are weapons like the Null Cannon, Omega Cannon, and Point Singularity Launcher, all of which can completely obliterate enemies (especially the last one, which can take out an entire army in no time if you've got the matter supply--with the right armament you could turn "The Death Room" into your playground
). There are some very nice experimental utilities as well.
In my personal experience, I have never seriously been screwed over by prototypes. And I try prototypes immediately whenever I'm safe. Really.
Anyway, besides that, just because the faulty versions of an item suck, doesn't mean that the fully functional version is also worse. Think about it. If there was a tank better than the M1, but 2/5 are faulty, is the entire tank class worse than the M1 even though the functional ones are clearly better?
I think Aoi is just referring to the fact that a faulty item which malfunctions on you can damage (or in some cases even destroy) some other attached part, which does really suck if it's a rare part that's vital to your build. That can affect you even outside combat.