Loadouts
Weapon: Mass Battery or Battery
Shield: Regenerating Shield, because you can use Red Star Life Extender to buy time and recharge it
EMP: To help against the destroyers. Their pulse doesn’t work while they are disabled
Teleport: Navigation and positioning. Get out of the Red Star more safely, or position more aggressively
Solitude: The damage!
Repair Drone: To recover from some of those unforgiving mistakes
Decoy Drone: To make the Cerberus Colossus less intimidating with a counter to their laser
Stealth: Transports will benefit greatly by not being hit by Cerberus Interceptors during the time that the battleship is going in to kill it
Gotchas
Being on top of a Bomber
Avoid this at all costs. The bomber will shoot missiles that have virtually no travel distance, so they explode without having had time to be destroyed. This will incur deadly damage to your battleship
Moving towards a bomber’s missiles
Although not a deadly maneuver, when you move towards the missiles they will be destroyed but their destruction explosion damage will put considerable impact on your ship. Ideally, you just avoid these situations unless you’re in a rush
Being inside the Cerberus Destroyer’s vengeance
The red circle around the Cerberus Destroyer is not its pulse! It’s vengeance. And it will do 5k damage to your ship if you are inside it when the destroyer dies, or if the destroyer blows up the planet while you’re attacking it. Whatever happens, don’t be in that red circle when it explodes
Getting cut off by interceptors
Interceptors will only spawn next to planets. If you clear them out of the sector before bringing in any support ships, you will only need to deal with the ones that spawn after. A common mistake here is to set your miner to go to the exit jump gate after it has extracted all the hydrogen needed. This is only safe to do directly if there are no planets along the path! Unfortunately, after it has begun its journey an interceptor can decide to spawn next to a planet that cuts the miner’s path. Because interceptors only move between planets, the exit jump gate is always safe from them
Tactics for Success
Exit and Recharge
You can always jump your battleship out, use a crystal to heal it, and send it back in. If you are only playing with 1-2 battleships, then having one waiting in the Yellow Star with the correct loadout can also “recharge” you very quickly
Save the Max Planets First
The destroyers spawn about 1:40s after the start of the Red Star. Killing the 3 Cerberus Bombers stationed at the max-level planets will make dealing with the destroyers a lot more manageable. Once the destroyers are gone, then it is reasonable to focus on the hydro farm and lower level planets which can begin being used for Red Star Life Extender
Hydro Farming
If you need more hydro, you can always cast Genesis and Enrich multiple times by waiting for the cooldown to complete. This is handy as there is usually only one hydro sector. Just be sure to avoid mining the hydro so that Enrich can be most effective. You can do this up to 3 times
Rules and Tips for Playing with Others
The last person to be “ready” begins the scanning
It gets confusing when multiple people are all scared to touch the button
Don’t do things to make it harder for other players
If you go into anyone’s sector you will break their Solitude and potentially get their ship blown up. Even being in a neighboring sector will make the bomber shoot additional missiles which can strain their shields. To prevent these, use the temporary movement marker to communicate your intentions first, before locking in the move. You can do this before a Teleport as well
Highest level Genesis / Enrich does the job
Only one person can use Genesis, and same for Enrich, so the player(s) with the highest level should be the ones to run it
Use Red Star Life Extender
Everyone can contribute by bringing in transports and running Red Star Life Extender on the lower level planet’s artifacts. This helps everyone have more time to do their business and avoid mistakes