I've now finished compiling my last sector tips. Unfortunately my tips post is too long to append those, so I'll just paste them here.
LAST SECTOR
I would recommend not to read any of these until you've at least reached the last sector on your own, as it will spoil the entirety of it. Only read this if you've got desperately stuck there. Since having to highlight the entire post is a chore, and, well, the game's been out for almost a year at the time of this edit, I've removed the spoiler tags.
The mechanics for the last sector are very different from regular stages. You face the enemy flagship, which jumps once for every two jumps you make (you will know when it's about to jump because a red line will mark the jump; this makes it easy to rendezvous with it). Your goal is to reach it and destroy it before it can get to the base; otherwise it's game over.
Each jump you make will cause some systems to become Rebel-controlled, meaning pretty much the same as in the rest of sectors (hardish fight against a Rebel ship that yields only one fuel as a reward). There is one very important exception to this; if a sector is Rebel-controlled, but the flagship is there, jumping there will prompt the flagship battle exactly as if it wasn't controlled.
Getting back to the base and jumping back seems to repair your hull (but not give you anything else, unlike "repair" nodes). I've only done this once, though.
The flagship has three phases; after each one, it will jump away and you'll have to chase it again. Each time, it will lose some of its rooms and systems, but will gain additional capabilities to compensate. This actually makes stage two and three quite deadlier than stage one.
This is the strategy I've been using lately, to great success.
1) Base requirements for this strategy:
- Teleporter (level 3).
- Cloaking system (level 2 or even 1 is enough).
- Enough crew to man each station AND fight boarding drones.
- Level 3 shields (minimum).
- Engines up to the point of diminishing returns at least (level 5).
- Ideally, any way to disable a system without damaging hull; best of all would be any kind of bomb (except the healing one) and a bunch of missile ammo. You might not come across any bomb, though, so barring that, missiles or ion guns might suffice.
- Barring that, you'll need enough firepower to penetrate a level 4 shield PLUS a defense drone (this may include several ion guns, a few high-burst lasers, or a way to shoot more than one missile at a time, and a bunch of ammo).
- Optionally (but it definitely makes things easier), a drone system with one of the ship defense drones, and/or one anti-personnel drone.
Seems like quite a lot, but really, it's not hard to get most of those as you go.
2) If at ANY time during any stage you are getting badly beaten up, do NOT hesitate to jump away and repair your ship. There's enough time to make a few extraneous jumps and get back to the fight. If your hull is very low, try getting to a repair node or the starbase. Of course, always keep an eye on the flagship's distance to the base and the "remaining jumps" counter (same thing, really).
3) Stage 1 should be very easy with this setup; in fact, you can shutdown the ship 100%. Just teleport two crew to the missile weapon (second one from the right), kill the one human manning it, then destroy the gun. You can do this before almost dropping out of cloak. Once the missiles are out, the rest is quite easier; use the exact same strategy to keep destroying the rest of the guns except for the second one from the left. That is, destroy the three-shot ion gun and the beam, but leave the guy at the multi-burst laser alive. The reason for this is that killing all crew makes an advanced AI to take control of the flagship and slowly repair all systems; we're going to leave exactly one crew (this one gunner) alive to prevent this (thanks to RPG Wizard for the strategy involving leaving this particular crew alive rather than a couple in the main body). With these three guns destroyed and no crew to man them, the flagship can't do a thing to you as long as you have level 3 shields.
4) It gets a bit tricky now and you should exercise patience. As mentioned, I'm assuming you have level three shields at least, so that the laser burst can't even get through them; you can drain all power from the engines now.
Your objective is to kill all the crew in the main body of the ship. There are several ways to do this:
4.a) If you have any bombs, this is reasonably easy; just disable the medbay and send your boarders to any 2x1 room. With mantii, you should kill a couple of crew before they can repair the medbay.
4.b) If you don't have bombs, you'll have to work with what you have. Another strategy that doesn't involve destroying the medbay, but it's considerably riskier and trickier, is as follows: send two boarders (rockmen ideally) to the cockpit, then when one of the crew in there starts moving towards the medbay, send two mantii to the room immediately south of it. This is a 4x4 room that they have to cross diagonally, hopefully giving you enough time to finish off the crew member before he gets to the next room. You might want to destroy the reinforced door connecting those rooms (just send each crew to the opposite room so that all four bang on the door) so that you can teleport them all back in one teleporter jump.
5) In any case, teleport your people back (remember that you can't recall them when the flagship cloak is up, this might cause you to lose a few crew the first times), heal them, rinse and repeat; this may take a bit. Do this until you've killed everyone. If you don't manage to kill everyone, or even nobody, you'll need to have enough firepower to get through 4 shields AND a defense drone; this means a single missile won't cut it.
6) At this point you can go ahead and "destroy" it. It will jump away.
7) Chase it down and get ready for stage two. You will immediately notice that the dead crew stayed dead. Your instinct is probably to use the cloaking device as soon as you enter the fight; do NOT do so! Rather, send two crew members to the missile gun again, and focus your fire on the drone bay. When your crew is done destroying the missile gun, send them to the drone bay to finish it.
8) Whenever you see the message "Power Surge Detected!", wait a bit until it launches its barrage of drones, then power the cloak to level 2 (not 3!) and engage it. A level 2 cloak should protect you from all the drone fire, and drop right before it ends. The reason for not powering it up to level 3 is simple; you want the cloak to drop as soon as the power surge ends, because that way it'll be ready for the next power surge (in the nick of time, too). This means that you should start firing as soon as the barrage ends, to help drop it even faster if there's any time left.
9) Unless you have a defense drone, it is inevitable to receive a boarding drone or two to the face during this phase; they're probably the most annoying/difficult part of the fight. An antipersonnel drone should help if you have one instead (I actually haven't tried that particular approach yet). Otherwise just swarm it in a large room, and hope that you can disable the drone system ASAP.
10) With its missile gun destroyed, the drone bay under control, and the cloak to protect you from power surges, you should take no further damage for now. When your crew are done with the drone bay, have them go to the shields to disable them (most importantly if you can't get through the shield with your weapons).
11) At this point, recall your crew and finish off the ship with your weapons. It will jump away again.
12) The third phase is very similar to the second, with a couple of exceptions. First, it will start off with a heavy duty Zoltan super shield, which will prevent even boarding; this means you'll have to endure more missile barrages until you can eat away at the shield and send your boarders to the missile gun. Also, rather than the drone surge of phase 2, it's power surge will do any of two things; either power back its Zoltan shield, or shoot a huge barrage (around eight shots at once) of either lasers or missiles. In any case, the exact same strategy applies, as the cloak will once again perfectly synchronize with power surges. I feel this stage is actually quite easier than the second one, but don't drop your guard yet. Use the exact same strategy you used in stage two, and you should be victorious.
