Know Your Ship: Guide to using Rock Class

The Bulwark isn’t exactly a subtle ship. The setup is elegantly simple… smash everything with copious amounts of missiles. Great fun and the rock crew are excellent, albeit slow

U ‘ave shields? lol

Nothing but missiles make battles a simple process. Screw the shields, aim the Artemis at the pilot’s seat and then let rip (If you get a hacking module early on to do this, all the better!) You need to really be economical with your missiles, so make the most of the Hull Missile’s double-damage bonus on systemless rooms. Sure your foe might have weapons, drones, medbays… but right now you’re in a position to overwhelm their ship with sheer force: Something unusual for most builds

Hull Smash!

Missiles are fun and all… but you’ll quickly find your starting stock of 28 disappear fast. Laser weapons are your top priority here. Ion/Beams are no good as you’ll still need your missiles to support them. Don’t be so hasty to sell your missile launchers though, both are very useful for the final fight

As a Plan-B – If you happen to stumble across a Pegasus Missile or Explosive Replicator… grab it! Whilst it doesn’t entirely negate the ominously depleting counter… They are very handy in stretching out your stockpile and giving you more boom for your scrap. (Good spot by WubWoofWulf)

What of defence drones?

If you’re unlucky enough to meet a ship with a defence drone early on, don’t panic – There’s a way around this (albeit at the cost of quite a few missiles). The key is to fire both missiles at the same time at the drone room – They can only shoot down 1 missile at a time! As soon as the drone room is offline, you have your window: Go crazy!

Rock on

Starting with 3 rock crew is awesome. Immunity to fire and everything you need for a boarding crew. But you’ll quickly find their slow speed to be eye-wateringly painful, not helped by the shoddy layout of the ship. The only saving grace is that the crew teleporter locates itself literally next door to your medbay. As such, keep an eye out for engi crewmembers to give you more flexibility to reacting to problems, fires and repairs. Blast doors are also a sound investment to contain boarders/fires whilst your rock crew shuffle their way to them

What to aim for

Lasers and flak weaponry to compliment your missiles are a safe, reliable choice in the run-up to the grand finale. Keep hold of the Rock Plating add-on, as it’s very good for winning the war of attrition against the flagship – You’re going to have a lot of shots coming your way, so the more hull damage you can negate, the better

As for additional systems, go for the boarding setup. Though with decent missile weaponry at your disposal, feel free to bypass the Hacking Module for other systems of your choice. Just be aware that if you do, your missile could potentially spend the entire 1st phase keeping the hacking room offline

- +3 Crew (x1 Engi)
- +2 Decent hull-damaging Weapons
- Crew Teleporter
- Hacking Module
- Mind Control

A very cool ship to use. Its weapons are quirky, but in the rights hands can make this ship absolutely devastating

Do or Die

I’ll cut to the important bit – Your success in this ships pretty much rests on your ability to leverage your starting weapons. They’re unique, they’re unusual and they have awful synergy… but find the right compliments and your job will become considerably easier

Quite simply – You’re on the hunt for one of 2 things at the first few stores you come across: A Crew Teleporter or some laser/ion/flak weaponry

1 flare short of a light show

The Shivan is pretty much a 3-part jig-saw to being a lethal ship… and you already have 2 of the pieces: Fire Bombs and a Rock Crew. All you need now is the crew teleporter and you’ll finally be able to put that maniacal laugh to good use

On their own, fire bombs seem a bit flimsy. The enemy just put them out. But what if they weren’t able to because they were engaged in melee combat with beings immune to fire…? I think you can see where I’m going with this…

This is by far one of the most powerful boarding tactics in the game – Pretty much able to empty a ship in one raid – even if you host the fight in their Medbay. Trigger a fire bomb in a hated room of your choice that you want permanently offline (except Oxygen, you need that) – Medbays, weapons or shields are good choices. Picking one with an equally disliked room neighbouring it is also good call, as the fire can spread to it. Go on, let out that anger. Doesn’t that feel nice?

As soon as the fire starts, teleport 2 of your rock guys into it. The enemy will sprint in to take you on... Well… Try to. Once the fire takes off, you’ll quickly watch their HP fritter down to a sliver before they pull their guys out. By this point, anyone else they send in probably won’t last long enough to put up much of a fight. Better still, that fire has been melting away at whatever system was in that room – bringing even the most robust tech completely offline. Once the room is engulfed in fire, they’re not going to be sending anyone into it anytime soon (unless they’re rock). At this point, it’s just clean-up – You’ll have an enemy ship full of crew with fragments of health. Make your way slowly through and you should be able to mop them up easy enough

Just remember that Fire Bombs also deal crew damage on explosion (even those resistant to fire) – So don’t launch one in if your guys are in there

The only downside with this tactic is time… the Fire Bomb is slow to charge, and having to lumber around the enemy ship picking off stragglers is time consuming. As such, your ship will come under a lot more fire than usual. So if you have the spare scrap (likely if you can capitalise on boarding early) – it might be worth installing a drone room and getting a defence drone online for when the enemy fields missiles. If you’re cheap (which you should be) you can get a defence drone free with the Drone Room, so wait until that one is included instead of the repair/combat drone… hey, times are tough

What shields?

The Fire Bomb isn’t your only toy… you also have a unique weapon not found anywhere else: A Heavy Pierce Laser. This works pretty much like the regular 1-shot Heavy Laser… but also bypasses 1 layer of shields (like a missile). Quite frankly, this will hilariously wreck the first few ships you come across – likely taking any system it touches completely offline. The problem, of course, is that it’s completely useless when you’re facing 2 or more shields

So if you can’t get the teleporter – You’ll need another weapon to help reign the shields in. Always leave the Pierce Laser to fire last (despite its fast charge-up) – Launch the other weapon(s), and as soon as you get that 1 shield window: Let rip. The Pierce Laser should put a nice big dent in whatever it touches

Though it costs 2 power, it’s well worth keeping unless you get something really good. The ability to jump 1 shield gives you that extra edge when you’re duking it out against ships with many layers to blast through

Knock Knock…

Another unique (but less welcome) idiosyncrasy of the Shivan is a distinct lack of airlocks. In fact, you don’t actually have a doors system! (You can buy it at stores though) This means you cannot vent a thing. Whilst rock crew are good vs boarders and immune to fire… don’t get too complacent. Fire will spread quickly – And whilst your guys might be resistant… your systems aren’t. Putting out fires takes a while too, so don’t be afraid to overkill any that start. If it gets out of hand, pull everyone to the Medbay and turn off the Oxygen

As such – Engi are a very good call here to catch any fires early. They can also move around faster (and the layout is considerably better than the Type A). In fact, if you get a decent crew – You might not want to worry about blast doors at all: They’re a hefty 60 scrap and you don’t even get to benefit from venting things out the airlocks

What to Aim for

- +2 Crew (x1 Engi)
- +1-2 Additional Weapons
- Crew Teleporter
- Hacking Module
- [Optional] Drone Control / Cloaking

Nothing begs for a crew teleporter quite as much as this ship. The Fire Bomb/Rock Crew combo is far too fantastic to bypass. The Hacking is also a good support tool – Great to counter the flagship’s hacking, but you can also use it to ‘lock-down’ a room you’ve just ignited: Buying the fire some time to catch

The sheer strength of the boarding tactic renders the likes of Mind Control quite obsolete. So as mentioned before – Get a defence drone rolling. Cloaking is alternatively a good option – Anything to keep your ship in good stead whilst you’re raiding

A very fun with ship combining 2 of the fun elements of the other ships. Decent layout and 2 very awesome weapons… Not awesome for your enemy, but let’s not dwell on semantics here…

A power Crystal!

In a curious twist, this is the only non-Crystal ship to give you a Crystal crewmember. It’s cool and gives you a strong, yet slightly more mobile, addition to the team. Truth be told, the pilot’s seat is generally the best place for it – You’ll want your other rock crew available if you can get boarding rolling early (very recommended)

Remember though, for all its advantages, it cannot beat Mantis or Rock in a straight 1v1 fight, so the boarding setup should still employ both of your rockmen. The only exception to this is if you pick up a mantis crewmember, so you can make use of increased attack when you use the Crystal Lockdown power. In this case, feel free to switch out the conventional team for a Crystal-Mantis one if you’re confident you know what you’re doing

Fly, my pretties!

The Swarm Missile launcher is great fun, albeit inaccurate. You can stack up 3 rockets and launch them all as a single barrage, but get this… for the cost of 1 missile. Needless to say, stack the full set where possible and carpet bomb the place. This also makes Defence Drones less of a worry, as they can’t shoot down all 3 at once

The only thing to beware of is the scatter effect. Where other missile weapons target the room directly, these will target the “room” but scatter within a small radius around it (much like flak) – This means that the barrage will sometimes hit a different room or miss the ship altogether (even before the enemy’s evasion is considered). As such, you generally want to target larger, central rooms with others surrounding it. That way, even if the missiles scatter, they’ll still hit something. 2x1 rooms on the edge of the ship tend to be unreliable targets. As such, you’ll generally want to use the Swarm for general-purpose-mayhem as opposed to picking off key rooms

I’m sorry, do you have shields? I couldn’t see them through the sight of me owning you

In addition to the Swarm Launcher – You also get a Heavy Crystal Burst. Much like the Heavy Pierce of the Shivan, this beast bypasses 1 shield and will utterly ruin most ships in the early sectors. Pretty good for 1 power! The only catch is that it takes a while to load, but can also be targeted by Defence Drones. As such, if you face one: Launch it with the triple Swarm barrage… something will get through!

As such, any ship with a single layer of shields might as well have not bothered. Don’t waste any time shooting them (unless you’re in an asteroid belt) – Pummel the weapons and engines into dust. Truth be told, this should single-handedly be able to take on most early ships

Shield Service

For the most part, your weapons should ensure a lot of early victories. The main danger you face is the charge up times (assuming you wait for 3 missiles to load) – So it’s definitely worth investing early resources to your shields and engines, otherwise you could see yourself get taken down by pure attrition. The Rock Plating is definitely worth keeping around

Upgrade your blast doors early too. The ship’s a bit winding, so is slow for your Rockmen to get anywhere fast. The good news is that you have a lot of airlocks, so the ability to trap your foes will come in exceptionally handy here

What to Aim for

- +3 Crew (x1 Engi)
- +1-2 Additional Weapons
- Crew Teleporter
- Hacking Module
- [Optional] Mind Control / Drone Control / Cloaking

With the ability to breeze through the first few sectors, you’re in an excellent position to rake in the scrap and buy some really cool kit early on. Boarding is, as always, an excellent augmentation and makes use of the built-in boarding crew on your ship. Picking up some Engi is also a good call where speed isn’t exactly in your crew’s CV

Whilst your 2 starting weapons are fantastic, it’ll be wise to pick up a third if you stumble upon one (Flak is particularly good). Anything to help your Crystal Burst against 2 shields, as you don’t want to be forced to wait for everything to charge up before you can actually attack. But it’s not uncommon that both starting weapons will be present for the final battle

Other than that, it’s a damn good ship! Smash ahoy!

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Hungry for more? Fear not - The other ship classes are catered for! Just follow the links below:

- Kestrel Class
- Engi Class
- Federation Class
- Zoltan Class
- Mantis Class
- Slug Class
- Stealth Class
- Lanius Class
- Crystal Class