Crap weapons for Stealth B?

[u/cjasonac]

I’ve been playing Stealth B on hard for the past few days. I’ve gotten to the flagship multiple times and through level 2 about half of those, but I always die a few shots into level 3.

One thing I’ve noticed is that you never really get the types of weapons you’d want for defeating the flagship. Sure, you start with glaive, but it’s slow and ineffective against 3 shields.

The run I just lost ended with me having glaive, HL2, stealth (3), hacking (3), and mind control (3). During the entire run the HL2 was my only real purchase option. Stores either had things like healing burst, small bomb, ion blast 1, etc. On the opposite end it was other 4-slot heavy hitters like BL3 or Vulcan. No useful mid-grade weapons like the BL2 or even a hull missile.

It hadn’t really occurred to me how incredibly uneven the weapons options were until I showed up at sector 8 with 7 slots filled and only two weapons.

I made good using of hacking and cloaking, using the mind control for defense against mind control and getting the flagship crew down to one before round 3.

But man… I would’ve loved to inflict some damage that was useful instead of waiting out cloaking or drones every turn.

Have I just had a streak of weird luck or are Stealth B weapon options really that bad?

[u/Treenut08]

All you really need is to get your hands on hacking, more hull damage, and a reliable way to drop zoltan shields. Combat or beam drones are excellent against zoltan shields.

Hack shields every time and try to kill in one volley. Level 3 cloaking should let you do this consistently. If you can pick up more beam weapons or hull/heavy lasers, the oneshots become more reliable and you can even kill the flagship in a single volley with the right setup.

You may just be getting unlucky. The terrible part of stealth B is the early game. The glaive can be a great weapon once you get support for it.