I choose one guy to deck out, send him out to open doors and leave the rest of the crew near the core. Then, at the first sign of trouble, my door opener has to high-tail it back to the rest of the group until the waves are wiped out. Rinse and repeat . . . and repeat . . . and repeat . . . and repeat. I enjoy the game, but doing the same thing over and over again is getting boring.



What are some other strategies to look into?

That's sort of built into the mechanics. You get a production bonus for having stations maned, stations are always going to be in your core, so you're pretty much always going to have one guy opening doors and everyone else hanging out manning a system while they do it. The variety usually comes in how you deal with trouble and how you adjust your layout and defenses based on where the game decides to put the doors.

It'd be nice if there were a variety of viable strategies. For example, if you could pump a ton of resources into making your defences strong enough to hold off a wave or two on their own so you could take your whole crew with you through the dungeon. I still like the game, but opening every single door in exactly the same way is beginning to wear on me.

I started trying to make a maze for the creatures to get through. If you get lucky and leaves the right doors sealed, it can take them quite a while to make it to your heroes. Get some powered room with defenses and it makes things easier.

I've found that a lot of the strategy lies in figuring out which doors to open when. Also I occasionally find it useful to place heroes in unpowered rooms to keep creatures from spawning there. In one game I ended up with a really difficult layout with two major module slots near the crystal room and then a long corridor of three or four rooms between me and the next nearest major module slot. In the scarcity of resources I was forced to station my whole crew in unpowered rooms near my territory and have them all fallback to defensible positions when creatures spawned.

I always reroll until I have Gork and someone who can operate/repair on my team, from there on out it's pretty strealined.

I like the idea of maybe getting some variable strategies... maybe the ability to group heroes together, maybe into pairs? Give some heroes bonuses when paired with certain other characters. Some get buffs when working alone? maybe add this in with the prisoner/guard trust dynamics they were working to add in. Would require you to choose whether you want to risk just one hero exploring or if you want a bonused team out there opening rooms. Could make it so that a Hero doesn't permadeath in a team unless both members go down to really make the stategy of just "leaving all your others manning modules" alot more risky. thought?

Pretty close. I also spread out my team while opening doors, since creatures don't spawn where you have dudes. Then everyone flees to a combat room. With the latest adjustment you are very limited in what you can build and you chars are not high powered, so the number of strategies open to you is going to be limited.

I think it would be really interesting if a character would power a room while in it (as long as its adjacent to a powered room). This would give huge incentive to spread the team out and stay in the room for as long as possible (since leaving it would turn off defenses).



Also it would be really interesting if there was things you could build that boost different skills or weapons like there is for healing, armor, general damage. And these things could be fairly cheap, so building them is a real option even with limited resources.

I think it would be really improve the games complexity if you are more able to give each room more of a purpose and also re-purpose rooms (making the cost free or close to nothing). I'd be ok with weaker rooms, if I could a make purposeful choice for each of them. I don't quite feel that is the case now, mainly due to resource limits, but also limited choices.

My strategy is pretty much identical to the original poster. I try to keep long single paths open instead of branching as I explore. I always build industry then food. I rarely vary the defenses built, as a few small turrets and maybe a large or medium turret seem to do the job just fine. While fun, the game does seem very repetitious at this stage.

Recently I've started really pouring on the food in the second floor. By the time I get to Floor 3 I usually have 3-4 Lvl 4 heroes, sometimes lvl 5. It really makes things easier, especially when they have to defend alone.

What i read so far is kinda what i do ingame :



- I try to get the more ressources from floor 1 and 2, with, if i can, a seller in a powered room (well, depending if he has good stuffs i can buy during the crystal phase). I recently discovered the "pause" (by pressing the space bar), it really helps (since the gear you are not wearing is discarded when you go on another floor) to buy gears that are expensive. Plus, if you got a nice layout, you can leave the crystal bearer "alone" until he gets to the exit.



- floors 3 and 4 have been so far kinda hard with me : i usually gets a poor layout. I failed many times because of that. One thing i really like to do is to create a maze. Have a nice defensible node with turrets in it, and only have 1 path for mobs. Once i get an extra room, I expend on another side of the map so i can power the newly discovered room. This way, i can manage my heroes to get ressources while opening doors, and then get them back to defend (of course, you gotta have some major modules, which is not that easy to get if you start going the "wrong" way !).



Concerning heroes, i really like Max for the bonuses he gets by leveling. But from the beginning, my love goes to Troe : fast enough, good HP and good dps. Thats usually my preference when opening doors.

Opbots is really good for operating. I like to have him for this job only.

Gork is reaaally nice to have in your defensive node and his skills makes him a reference for aggro and dps.



Concerning the turrets, i like to get only the small ones (they fire much quicker). If i can, i get 1 slow turret on corridors to max out the dps of those turrets. In defense, i like to get buffs turrets. The extra amount of damage, defense and heal is very nice.

Got a question though : i tried to get a room near my defensive node with 2 regen turrets in it. I thought it could heal my heroes much faster... The anoamtions on the turrets make sme think you can't do that (like "double regen for this one!"). Am i correct?



Having your heroes in unpowered rooms to prevent pops is a good idea, but you have to find dust for this to be very efficient : sometime, you don't get it and defending eats up your food really fast. Until the end.



Overall, my main strat is having 1 to 3 powered rooms with turrets where i'm sure mobs will go. The unpowered rooms linked to those 3 rooms will not be powered, so i can expend in another way, without having to defend elsewhere. Sometime, you get lucky and you can have free-heroes room that "auto-defend" your path. And also, creating a "maze" really helps (by opening or not opening certain doors).