My solution to those big ships is to attack with two - the first knocks out weapons, killing the longest-range weapons first. Since damage persists on enemy ships, you could shuttle them back and forth until it's dead. So if you disengage you have to decide to you follow up with another ship. Right - you have the choice of being destroyed or disengaging. Overall though, I say yes Festering Skies is an improvement if you are more interested in playing the game than in winning it. Yes there are flaws and things that could be done better. You should bet a similar if not more urgent warning when this is about to happen. One thing that IS really a pisser is that you don't get adequate notice if a haven attacks one of your bases. I love the fact that I'm being forced into hard choices, and sometimes all the choices are bad and I can just hope I'm picking the least-bad one. It demands you make hard choices - If I disengage, do I just let it go or do I divert a second manticore to follow up, and if so, am I giving up a haven rescue or trade mission to do it? Is the potential reward worth the risk? How many resources do I put to aerial technology? How's the population census looking - can I afford to just ignore the fliers? Those 'free the haven from the blob' missions are pretty challenging also until you figure out the secret. that there should be either more protection options at a time or a different system, but on the whole I find the expansion adds value - in that it makes the game more challengingįor example, while the aerial combat could be better, I like the fact that sometimes you are just outclassed. I do agree with some of your critiques, i.e. I have never seen something as dull and annoying as the mini-game they have designed. Overall, I don't think the added mission justifies the slog of air combat. If you don't remember it, you have to disengage after you are hit by DOT otherwise your aircraft will be obliterate by it quite fast. The game will only show you icon of enemy weapon before the combat itself so if you remember what it is, you can swap the DOT protection at your base. Weapons have different DOT and you can only have defense against one. You also do better if you memorize how enemy weapons looks like. and you slowly deal with the enemy this way. After you disengage your ship will flee to nearest location and you can turn it back to the same target again and again and again and again. so you start combat, and let your ship with long range weapons shoot once and you intermediately disengage because of damage over time (DOT) effect or simply because the enemy has 2 weapons with 400 damage + several other weapons to add the punch (the bulkiest Anu ship has 1500 HP and the weakest Synedrion has 500 HP so 2 salvos with 2 shots each will obliterate you if they hit). sometimes you fight the same combat 10+ times: some enemies will have 6 weapons (you have only 2) and if you let them shoot you, they might obliterate your ship very very fast. The air combat mini-game is really bad one.

Phoenix point festering skies review