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[Catastrophic lolcats]

Well as a Torus you need to have 5 power dedicated between drones and weapons to be able to fight back in anyway. Engi gameplay is about locking down key sectors like weapons and slowly chipping away at hull damage and hopefully avoiding most damage yourself.
I really hit a terrible scout who had both beam and missle damage which meant there was no real way I could turtle up and try to get out of there. Usuallly this sort of ship you would just lock down those sectors. This was extremely annoying since there was no possible way to combat the ship thanks to storms and all I could do is just watch the ship die.

I just don't think storms are a good gameplay mechanic. You stumble into an area and all of a sudden you're greeted to this MASSIVE debuff that can completely cripple your build and doesn't seem to affect the enemy ship all that much. In the early game the Torus has abousletely no way to survive in a storm at all which is really annoying, I usually just reroll in the first few chapters if I stumble into a storm with an Engi ship.
If the effects of the storm was less like 25%-33% less power it would seem a lot fairer to me. There could also be other mechanics to help combat the massive penalty of storms like being able to "pay" scrap before a battle so you wouldn't lose as much power, justify it as insulating or something. There should also be a way to see storms on the map without the need for a long range scanner. Having both sensors and power halfed is just crazy.

There doesn't seem to be much reward in going to Nebula sectors either. Sure the rebels are slowed down which means you can visit more places but with the combined sensor loss and possibly storm acitivity the risk/reward ratio just doesn't hold together.
Nebulas should either be moved way back in the chapters so you have the ability to combat them when you reach them, or be nerfed, or have a "path" that allow you to skip the possible debuffs offered by the nebula. It's really just a death pit now.

[GlyphGryph]

Here's the thing about ion storms: You need to FOCUS, the same way the enemy ships do. If you decide to fight back, turn off medbay, turn of oxygen, turn off engines except one bar, and maybe even shields. If you have spare energy, cycle between shields and engines as needed - shield when they are going to fire lasers, and engine when they fire missiles. You'll probably take a couple of hits before you can get weapons off (unless you have wonderful drones, use those), but you need to disable the enemy ASAP. The enemy is also suffering from the ion storm effects, and thus operating at less than max capacity - but be careful about destroying systems like shields first, because they then switch that power into weapons! Ion is actually good here, because it locks up those power bars in addition to rendering them useless.

If worse comes to worse, that's why you left a point in engines - get the hell out of there.

If you don't think you can disable the enemy, forget weapons or offense. Max to engines, max to shields, and probably not a bad idea to move your shield/weapon crew members closer to the pilot seat/engine room to fix things if they break. Again - no o2, nothing but the necessities.


Finally:
IF you're going through nebula without a scanner, have some extra energy on you! It's cheaper than the other upgrades, and you know you'll need it eventually.

[Leafsnail]

I finally won.  I fell at the second last hurdle a few times but the Artemis B ship is really good and allowed me to win.  Boarding + laser spam works great against the boss, although it was a horrible pain without any stealth system (had 2 points of hull left at the end, also I lost two brave men who went aboard to take down the shields when I blew it up... at least my 26 kill mantis survived).

I guess wiping out nearly the entire crew to make subsequent stages easier is kindof cheating, but ehhh.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Here's the thing about ion storms: You need to FOCUS, the same way the enemy ships do. If you decide to fight back, turn off medbay, turn of oxygen, turn off engines except one bar, and maybe even shields. If you have spare energy, cycle between shields and engines as needed - shield when they are going to fire lasers, and engine when they fire missiles. You'll probably take a couple of hits before you can get weapons off (unless you have wonderful drones, use those), but you need to disable the enemy ASAP. The enemy is also suffering from the ion storm effects, and thus operating at less than max capacity - but be careful about destroying systems like shields first, because they then switch that power into weapons! Ion is actually good here, because it locks up those power bars in addition to rendering them useless.

If worse comes to worse, that's why you left a point in engines - get the hell out of there.

If you don't think you can disable the enemy, forget weapons or offense. Max to engines, max to shields, and probably not a bad idea to move your shield/weapon crew members closer to the pilot seat/engine room to fix things if they break. Again - no o2, nothing but the necessities.


Finally:
IF you're going through nebula without a scanner, have some extra energy on you! It's cheaper than the other upgrades, and you know you'll need it eventually.

Quoted for truth. Personally, I find the benefit of slower fleet pursuit and a lack of "solar flare" events (those are murder on any non-Rock ship) to be worth the extra risks involved in flying through nebulas. Plus, yes, the enemy is just as affected as you are, which adds an extra layer of tactics to the fight. Usually it means that he goes into the fight with reduced shield and weapon strength, so you can focus energy into one system for temporary full effectiveness, and actually defeat him much quicker than you otherwise would. If you have a powerful beam weapon and are flying in a sector with 3-shield enemies, you might be able to literally eviscerate the ship before it has a chance to do anything if you put all your extra power into weapons. If you have cloaking, you can drop all engine and shield power into cloaking and weapons for a very safe, and very quick kill.

Speaking of cloaking - I still can't get the alt layout for the Nesasio. I got the "tactical approach" easy enough, but the other two keep evading me.

Also, an interesting idea that I think could be neat for a DLC/sequel: instead of extra layouts for existing ships, unlocking all achievements for a given ship would unlock "point buy" mode. You'd be able to take one of the two existing layouts as a base, and add systems, crew, and gear to it, for point cost, out of a pool of, say, 2000. You can go above your allotted point value, but the points left after you are done are added to your final score. You can try for a higher score with an underequipped starting ship, or hit the far negatives on the score chart and just have fun blasting through the galaxy with a stupidly overpowered one.

[GlyphGryph]

Stealth ship alt layout was hard. I find the "Get to last sector without obstacles" and "kill enemy in one cloak" to be the easiest.

Thing to note about the second one: You can do a lot to the enemy, so long as you don't damage their hull before you cloak - this means bombs and ion weapons can be used without a problem. Max out cloak, get missiles/beams, forget lasers. Wait for them to charge. FIRE EVERYTHING except beams. Immediately cloak before they hit, and then fire beams as soon as you're clear. With maxed out cloak you should get another volley. With decent equipment this should take down the enemy. If you get an ion bomb, feel free to use that first to take down their shields, then immediately cloak and beam.

Small beam should be doing 4 damage a blast, and other beams can do better - Glaive and Halberd will be especially nice. With two volleys, you should be able to take down at least a few ships in one cloak.

[jaxy15]

How do you get the stealth cruiser, anyway?

[GlyphGryph]

Engi homeworld quest. Fairly common and quite easy, I unlocked it even before I unlocked the Torus.

[lemon10]

Solar flares aren't that bad.
Just pre-vent every room that you don't have crew in as soon as you arrive, usually that will put out the fires before they become a real threat.

[GlyphGryph]

Or kill the enemy and then jump away before it becomes an issue (I love the Stealth Ship B)

[Haspen]

...What the fuck?

Suddenly when I try to start the game, it either shows me errors about too low resolution or it fullscreens with left/right sides chopped.

Did they rolled some buggy update or something? :-/

[GlyphGryph]

Fullscreen Changes:

•Fullscreen stretch now works differently and should be more effective at properly "stretching" to fill your screen
•Monitors that support 2560x1440 should be properly scaling and look much better (I'm jealous)
•Monitors with resolutions less than 1280x720 may now function in Fullscreen Stretched depending on your OpenGL support
•A more elaborate manual mode is available for tweaking your desired resolution effect within settings.ini

Seems likely.

[Haspen]

Blah. Why they fix something that works >:C

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Okay after a bit of playing I have decided the one thing I would really like to have. I want to be able to select crew with hotkeys as well as control the power setup with them. That and reassign them so I can set my keys up right. My goodness just letting me jump with a keypress would go a long way to removing unnecessary futzing around.

[Anvilfolk]

Yep, hotkeys for crew is definitely a must as this point!

[Levi]

Hrm.  I've finished the game with 5 ships(the 2 kestrals, the 2 federation ships, and engi layout A) so far.  The only ones I have left are some of the ones I've had the worst experiences with.

- Stealth Layout A:  AKA the "Everything murders me past sector 4" ship.
- Rock Layout A:  AKA "Spend all your money on missiles and then die horribly as soon as you run out" ship
- Engi Layout B:  Okay, this one wasn't so bad.  It just wasn't great.

I hope I manage to unlock some more ships soon, because the engi ship seems like the only not-terrible one of the bunch.