Lost Fleet – A Brief Guide to Beating the Campaign

An extremely short, very condensed, not at all too long, guide to the honestly relatively simple goal of beating the campaign.

Campaign Guide

Сrеdit gоеs to Helloyesit'sme!

The Basics

Just to cover my bases, here’s a quick overview of how the campaign works. You are the Admiral of a fleet, a Lost Fleet, traveling through various sectors, collecting resources, and building your armada. Defend your Mothership or perish in the dark recesses of the infinite unknown.

There are eight total sectors, though there are more maps than that so no two runs will be exactly the same. Each map has it’s own secondary goal or hazard. Some of them are noted in your hud, some of them are not. These are pretty important, though that can vary from stage to stage. Some have unique enemies, some give you opportunities to get more resources, and some give you the chance to earn more time.

Each sector takes a certain amount of time for your Mothership, which moves at a snails pace, to cross. It travels from the entry warpjump gate to the exit warpjump gate, and once you reach it, you can leave after a three second delay. While you are in a sector, enemies will continuously spawn and attack you, getting stronger and more frequent the longer you stay, though this build up is fairly slow in most sectors. It is denoted by the wave number in the top right corner of the screen.

Each sector also has a large variety of asteroids that your mules, mining drones, will harvest for you. Mules are your resource collectors in this game, and the only way to get more of them is to build refineries through the refinery fund in the build menu. This is highly encouraged.

Finally, there are two categories of ship in this game, further delineated into subcategories. The main ones are strikecraft and capital ships. Strikecraft range from the Hornet fighter to the Ranger corvette, they are fairly cheap and serve a variety of roles. Capital ships are the fleet leaders, ranging from the Pegasus light carrier to the Broadsword battleship. You can read more about them and their specialties in the build menu, they are largely pretty intuitive.

Starting a Campaign

The first sector is always the same, as of time of writing, and can therefore be standardized pretty easily. You begin with just your Mothership and five mules to begin building your fleet, with the first enemies on their way. You have a little over a minute to mine, enough for one delivery, maybe two if you’re really lucky with the asteroid spawns. So, what should you do with your first 500 bucks?

This is sort of up to you. The first wave of enemies is always 3 Freebees that rush directly for your mules (I’m pretty sure, lemme know if you get something different), so do with that what you will. I would personally recommend 4 hornets (2 ravens works too) and then tossing the rest into the refinery fund, the second delivery will get you your first refinery, which will give you about enough time for the money to trickle in for your next purchases. Again, my personal recommendation is getting a Pegasus and then a Zeus. The first major enemy you will encounter is a Pegasus, so one of your own plus a Zeus should be plenty. Also, grab at least 10 camels at some point. You’ll want ’em. Keep building how you like from there.

At this point your priorities should be getting as many refineries as you can while defending the fleeing freighters. Each surviving freighter gets you 100 bucks. Not insignificant, don’t lose too many of them, but don’t worry about it too much if one or two go down. I almost always lose at least one.

The goal of this first sector is not to mine out the entire sector. If you can, that’s great! But you don’t need to. Generally speaking, the goal is to greed out as many refineries as possible, while also keeping a handle on the number of enemies. Really, that’s the goal of the entire campaign. But for this first sector, you want to get enough out to hopefully have two, three, maybe even four refineries going into the second sector. I tend to leave around when the first hammerhead shows up, and that works for me.

The Middle Part

So, you’ve got a small fleet, and 2-4 refineries. The first thing you’ll want to do is buy that third and fourth refinery if you haven’t already, then save up. You have a grace period, however brief, every time you enter a new sector. Use it. With any luck, you’ll have enough for a cruiser by the time the enemies start showing up, though honestly it doesn’t matter much at this point.

Now, your goals boil down to this: Get more resources. Something to keep in mind, sometimes you’ll lose more resources in ships by staying than you’ll gain in asteroids. This is most common with battleships, so I wouldn’t worry about it till then though. When the enemies start appearing, it’s just a matter of building counters. Lots of bombers? Build some ravens. Got a raven issue? Build, uh, more ravens, I guess. Or carriers to build them for you for free, that’s better. Paladins aren’t cost-effective in my experience, as of writing, so I can’t recommend them as a strikecraft counter. Strikecraft is atm the most effective counter for strikecraft.

Capital ship counters are slightly more complicated, kinda. Paladins aren’t cost-effective, but they are still technically good against strikecraft, so you can use Slingshots, or Cyclops, or basically anything bigger than a Raven and be fine against them. Slingshots and Cyclops are slightly more annoying, both struggle against Strikecraft, so get some Dragons and or Zeus for them. Keep in mind that strikecraft don’t kill particularly fast, and you’ll want some camels to help the unlucky refinery or Pegasus it’s likely attacking tank. Cruisers are where we might start having issues, (Disclaimer: Slingshots may also cause issues). Hammerheads are the worst of the three. They will wipe out any frigate they get in range of. If you can afford it, your own Hammerhead, plus some bombers and camels, is ideal. Well, really the ideal is a Titan or Broadsword, but you get the idea.

Finally, Pegasus are countered by a mix of strikecraft, to deal with it’s own strikecraft and then it. Paragons are a little trickier, they’ve got some point defense, but a Zeus or two should wear it down in time, provided the enemy strikecraft are suitably dealt with. A Hammerhead obviously works too here, again provided with an escort of fighters.

You may have noticed the pattern. Strikecraft are very powerful in this game, and that means you’re best friends are Pegasus and Paragons. “Free” strikecraft are always good.

The only exception to the countered by Strikecraft rule is Titans and Broadswords. With a large enough swarm, sure, but really, you’ll want your own Battleships to brawl with them. As well as a big complement of camels, of course.

Special enemy counters:

• Biters: Strikecraft (Especially fighters)
• Leviathans: Strikecraft (Though really anything designed to take out big targets is good, I like Hammerheads personally)
• Sharks: Strikecraft (Again, especially fighter)

So, that’s the goal. Build up your fleet, remember to build camels. Collect resources, remember to build camels. Build carriers, and by extension strikecraft, but especially don’t forget the camels.

A Couple of Additional Miscellaneous Tips

Your Mothership has defenses, I mean they suck, but don’t worry too much about defending it in the first sector. A single Dragon won’t kill it. A Hammerhead might though.

Waiting to empty a sector of all resources before jumping is a good and valid strategy, and eminently possible in most sectors. Highly recommend.

Honestly, an all carrier run is probably possible, maybe even good, but I would still recommend some tanks, likely Hammerheads and Titans.

I can’t reiterate this enough, make sure you have camels. Preferably a large number of them.

Once you have a Broadsword or Titan, press M to open the tactical map (A great tool generally by the way) and click on it, then right click on your refinery to have it defend it. Never worry about an unfortunately placed slingshot or Hammerhead again! Early on, you can substitute with a couple of Strikecraft.

Revenants are cool, but the AI is bad with them. If you can use them well, then go for it! Otherwise, the Hammerhead is almost strictly better for the AI.

Always keep an eye on the health of your refineries in the corner. If you lose one, it’s easy enough to replace, but while it’s dead it’s not making you money, which is absolutely unacceptable.

You can pilot a mule for some extra resources at the beginning of the game if you want. If you do, and are feeling very safe, you can build a Pegasus at the beginning instead. Overall, the difference is negligible in the end, so do whatever you like.

In the tactical map screen, access by pressing M, you can see the amount of ships on each side, represented by stars. This is pretty much useless for counting your ships, especially late game, but it’s very useful for checking the enemy’s numbers. Are they getting to be overwhelming? Might be time to leave.

Oh, also, don’t put any CPUs on your team. They will only serve to make mistakes and damage your run.

The Final Two

Sectors 7 and 8 are always the same, they are the boss stages. I wouldn’t worry about them too much, though.

Spoilers ahead, if you care.

Sector 7 is simple enough. There are 6 shipyards scattered through the sector, currently in the process of building 6 Broadswords. Don’t let them. At this point the hope is you have several Battleships, (My personal record is 20, but that’s extremely overkill), so this shouldn’t be much of a challenge. In terms of strategy, if you do find yourself in a situation where you may not have enough time to destroy all of them, I would recommend utilizing a Zeus swarm, or a Dragon swarm, your choice.

Sector 8 is even simpler. A new enemy has appeared, strange ships that fire plasma. They are powerful, but a single ship is no match for a horde of fighters hundreds strong. They will perish in the end. The final boss, known as The Guardian, is very cool looking. It looks perhaps even cooler shattered into debris destined to float through the vast expanse. But seriously, while it is undoubtedly powerful, you can beat it comfortably with 3-4 Battleships (Don’t forget the Camels), not to mention it’s not great point defense. Rip it apart with a swarm of bombers, or a blast from your Broadswords’ Lasers. Your choice.

Anyway, I hope you found this definitely very brief and not at all way too long guide helpful in any way. Have a nice day, and peace.