Three human shadow ships walk into a ravenous shadow mission...

[Lancefighter]

The ravenous shadow mission wins.

Am I missing something here? Like is this one ofthose missions where you either optimally deal with it or lose?

I am pretty sure we applied dps as efficiently as we could, with the unlocks we had (mostly hbc). What else are we supposed to do? Cry ourselves to sleep because we failed a gear check?

[chemical_art]

The ravenous shadow mission wins.

Am I missing something here? Like is this one ofthose missions where you either optimally deal with it or lose?

I am pretty sure we applied dps as efficiently as we could, with the unlocks we had (mostly hbc). What else are we supposed to do? Cry ourselves to sleep because we failed a gear check?

I find the gear check for this one to be brutal. I've done it once with a spire destroyer equiped with impulse emitters and plasma sieges, and the second time with a powerful Z destroyer with impulse emitters.

Both times I did not stop the devourer until it had crushed the supply of enclaves.

[Lancefighter]

I feel like if we push it back to a 'must have cruiser' level nebula, it would probably be fine - From there, you should actually be able to pass the gear check (or properly respec quickly if you cant).

It actually just occured to me how much better the missiles are - 300k damage /4s over 260k /7s. Still couldnt actually respec far enough into them to make it worth it in time.

[Toranth]

The ravenous shadow mission wins.

Am I missing something here? Like is this one ofthose missions where you either optimally deal with it or lose?

I am pretty sure we applied dps as efficiently as we could, with the unlocks we had (mostly hbc). What else are we supposed to do? Cry ourselves to sleep because we failed a gear check?

I find the gear check for this one to be brutal. I've done it once with a spire destroyer equiped with impulse emitters and plasma sieges, and the second time with a powerful Z destroyer with impulse emitters.

Both times I did not stop the devourer until it had crushed the supply of enclaves.

Gear matters, a LOT, in this scenario.  Although it can be done with general modules, what you really want is Missiles for your heavy modules and Armor Polarizers for your lights.  On top of that, I find it best to not bother trying to save the Neinzul, don't even bother trying to save the small starbases.  Just chase the Shadow around until it starts in on the Large starbase, then use your shields to try to protect it (and the Allied starships).  Even then, you might fail.

Numbers:
Mk I Missiles do 150,000 DPS against the RS, Plasma Sieges do 100,000.  HBCs do about 75,000.  Bombers would be a good choice, if they didn't get killed, but they are insufficient decoys to protect much, either.
Mk I Polarizers do 55,000 DPS, IREs do 30,000, all other light modules do no better than 17,000 DPS.  Doom Accelerators may seem good, but they cap out at 46,800 DPS.

[Cinth]

You aren't going to save many Enclaves.

Polarizers work the best out of the light mods. IRE next. Missiles and Plasma Siege are tops on larges. If your good with the lances (I'm not) they might be pretty good.

Sounds like you have multiple champs going. First, focus all you can on the RS until it starts eating bases.

Champs should rotate dropping shields on the bases (all 5 at once so that champ doesn't have to dash back and forth).

It works with 8 champs (YMMV) and I get 4 of those monsters to deal with

I have beaten this with Zenith destroyers loaded with missiles and lasers without losing a single base

[Lancefighter]

Dont get me wrong - Like I said, I have issue with the *gear check* part of it, not the tactics. Its a fairly straightforward event, its just.. binary. You either have the gear to do it, or you dont.

[Cinth]

Highest mark Missiles and Lasers available have been working for me.

[chemical_art]

Highest mark Missiles and Lasers available have been working for me.

Lasers get no bonus against it 

[Cinth]

Highest mark Missiles and Lasers available have been working for me.

Lasers get no bonus against it 

They have decent range though. With the RS moving faster than the champions, keeping weapons in range has its benefits. That, and both modules don't require a prior unlock.

[chemical_art]

As others have said in some form or another, this mission gives the player the least amount of control over.

The choices for the first 50% - 75% are either:

1)Attack devourer
2) Return to repair

No decision you make can really influence how many enclaves survive. Since the enclaves (and thus devourer) move around so much, shields don't get to do much.

The ability powers you make doesn't come into play in any way into the devourer is attacking the starbases, and even then it is just a matter of spamming shields when you can.

This is by far the most simple of the nebula.

[Histidine]

And when the Enclaves run out, it's a matter of standing your ground and shooting it out till only one party is left standing. Even spending your entire capacitor charge on Shadow shields buys a starbase maybe 10-15s against the Ravenous Shadow's DPS.

Two, not mutually exclusive ideas I just came up with for making the scenario more interesting - one makes it more like the other scenarios, the other not so much:

1) Let the RS spawn ships/drones (maybe even turrets, lul) to protect itself and/or hunt enclaves. For extra fun, said ships could be the IMT ships/neinzul enclaves it eats.

2) Make the RS chase the champion around when it gets close, so the player can bait it away from enclaves (but not starbases, perhaps). Problem: letting the champ kite the RS at will would break this; the kind of shields a destroyer (let alone a frigate) can mount are going down in seconds against the RS. Maybe it needs a penalty mult against Structural?

[brianc]

I actually noticed a bit of an error in this mission, in fact I'd imagine its an error that could be abused in a number of potentially game breaking ways and I felt pretty guilty for eventually resorting to it since I couldn't pass the gear check (had no missiles or points).  Unfortunately I'm unsure as to how to report the error so maybe someone else can but it goes like this:  I had four shield units on my ship, zoomed in as close to the final base as possible and repeatedly right clicked on the center of the base.  What happened was my ship repeatedly buzzed directly over the base with the shields taking the damage and the base repairing the shield modules creating a scenario where no damage could be done to the base what-so-ever.  Ideally the champion ship would default a certain distance away from the base since it can't land on top but through repeated right clicking it would try to re-direct multiple times without ever leaving the direct center.  Hopefully that all made sense!

Edit:  Oh and I forgot to add, since the RS focuses directly on the base when it's within range it would not shoot at the other ships coming from the base that attacked it.  Despite none of my weapons being in range due to me abusing a glitch the other ships were eventually able to kill the damn thing.

[Lancefighter]

thats a known exploit - there are mechanics in place to prevent doing this with actual forcefields, but with ships with mounted forcefields its a tad more difficult.

In all, the main change we could make there to prevent that is to stop the hero's shields from building as fast as they are.. *shrug* I dunno. I think mostly there is no elegant solution..  forcing the player to be unable to move ships over one another isnt really the best idea, and overall its just 'pretty please dont exploit that, its kinda stupid'.

[brianc]

I was actually thinking why not stack shield modules rather than handle them separately?  If shield modules just added to one cumulative shield then the problem could be handled easily by simply putting a ~5 second delay from last hit before shield module rebuilding can be attempted. 

[Lancefighter]

game actually treats each shield as an individual ship, built by the main ship, but forced into a position (in the shield's case, the same position the ship occupies)

Cant really 'stack' them together as you say without doing weird things, from what I understand.