Originally posted by JGMT.Freedom:

rule of thumb is to build as many thrusters as early as possible and spam their hexnut-generating ability. It takes some trial and error to figure out what is the maximum amount of hexnuts u can spend on thrusthers without suffering any losses on your ship. This is because thrusters are your only source of extra income. More thrusters = more everything else later on. spam as much focus as u can on tactical breaks, and the best alternative to using focus for tactical breaks is to to use a weapon to snipe down the core of a passing ship. On hard maps I end up with thousands of extra hexnuts even after maxing out the whole ship. This is because more weapons = more firepower to fully destroy enemy ships = more $$ = more weapons = win

Originally posted by LotusBlade:

I found that building any gun with +2 levels upgrade gives lots of firepower and you should always save 25 energy for that gun's super shot. I prefer using blue ones, since their skill attacks wide area and annihilates everything. I usually start hard runs by building two thrusters and green upgrade module to boost those 2 and 1 basic. Then i burn 2 of them and save 25 energy for mega shots.

As for routes, they are way too much different, so we simply cant give you any working advices which will cover 100% routes. Actually, this game made to force you THINK about best ways of defense, so using forums for tips is kinda cheating.

If you just want to get 3 stars - dont take any cargo and equip large ship with 60+ sockets. Use empty cells to tank some damage.

Originally posted by NemesisZidar:

the blue guns are good for a wide area of weak enemies, but as soon as you want to ruin enemy ships you can forget them. Their normal attack is too weak and they wont finish the enemy ship off, besides that they take too long to destroy weaponry and so leave you open for attacks which cause that many things might get destroyed.
Key weapon against enemy ships are laser cannons, using their special attack and aiming at enemy guns or their command center is most effective and ofte neven finishes a large ship in 2 shots.
For big ships the plasma rocket launcher or normal rocket launchers are key, using their rocket ability kills a large part of their ship quite fast, also they finish asteroids off quite good and so are nice support weapons for asteroidfields.
Plasma turrets are weak, but heal. Its effective to place them inside a bunch of other weapons to keep them healed, also they are movable after being placed, so also building them on specific spots may give you more options to turn them to face threads and so spare some money for new weapons. Some plasma turrets placed on the side basically can aim in 3 directions and so cover one side nearly completely (except front and rear).

Laser turrets are only good for specific targets, not a large amount of enemies. They are good to deal much damage fast on single targets, but as soon as you get spammed by lets say 100 asteroids you can scrap them.

Building one thruster early on helps to get some more energy, also focus on getting enhancement modules to get upgraded modules, espcielly important for thrusters.
Although the bug with replenishing all focus might be fixed, the enhancers can regenerate focus faster. Some thrusters placed smart with enhancers will generate enough focus for you to spam abilities.

Use shields and repair nodes alot. I made it quite far with only one repair node and then hit a wall in the game. After i bought another 2 to have 3 for every run i managed to beat missions easily i couldnt before. Their repair ability is key, i even hadnt to use shields for most missions anymore.
( i think in this game the shields arent really good. Their coverage is to osmall and prevents that you can place efficiently and use enhancers, also only their hitpoints get enlarged with an enhancer upgrade but they dont get a larger shield field, which makes them a bit weak. They have their use, but in fact they have less use than most other modules.)

1 anti rocket radar can be helpful. I figured one is enough for pretty much any mission. Upgrading it by one level makes it fast enough for 2 ships shooting rockets, most ships however dont use rockets so its a rare use. Even if, one is enough to cover your whole ship.

Originally posted by Kotli:

To get the most Hexhuts.

1) build only what needed to kill the waves.
2) build many thrusters ASAP and conect them to green boosters (requires conectors to get best bonuses). This lets you cycle the hexnut generating skills while keeping energy levels high.
3) Connectors are king for getting maxium boosting to as many engines/parts as possible.
4) repair module goes next to connectors as well (repairs all stuff connected to it and is boosted as well).