Guide/Modules
Astral Ascension
The Astral Ascension module flies the Astral gate: it goes to your x-1 map, opens the gate (with an Astral CPU when no gate is standing), takes the lent ship, fights each rift, takes the best bounty and jumps the best gate to the next rift. Beta
The run goes on until the ship is destroyed or your Astral CPUs run out. Hull does not come back inside Astral, so the module fights carefully: it backs off to let the shield recover, and saves its strongest ammunition for the NPCs that cost hull.
Main settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ship | The lent ship to take in the lobby: Pusat, Zephyr, Diminisher or Sentinel. If it isn't on offer, the toughest ship offered is taken. |
| Wait for shield below | When the shield drops under this, stand off with the guns off until it is back. |
| Keep Astral CPUs | Never open a new run with your last this-many Astral CPUs. |
| Fit better equipment | Between rifts, swap a laser, generator or module for a better one from the Astral inventory, by your priorities. |
| Auto rocket CPU | Switch the lent ship's rocket CPU on, so rockets fire by themselves. |
| Collect boxes | Pick up what drops inside the gate. |
Priorities
These are tables: one row per choice, and you type only numbers.
| Table | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Gate priority | After each rift two gates are offered; the one with the lower number is taken. Resource gates pay Atlas Shards. Frenzied gates have stronger NPCs and better equipment. |
| Laser priority | Which laser to take from a bounty and which to fit: lowest number first. |
| Generator priority | Which generator to take and fit: lowest number first. |
| Module boosts | What each boost on a module is worth. A module is worth the sum of its boosts times these weights, and the best one is taken and fitted. Negative means avoid. |
| NPCs | Each NPC's Range (how far it hits; the common ones come filled in), Best ammo for the NPCs that deserve your strongest ammunition, and Leave alone for the ones not worth shooting unless they shoot first. |
Ammunition
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Best ammunition | When to fire the strongest laser ammunition and rockets you hold: on the NPCs ticked in the table (plus bosses and long fights), always, or never. |
| Best ammo on bosses | Fire the best ammunition at every boss. |
| Best ammo after | After this many seconds on one NPC, load the best ammunition anyway. 0 turns it off. |
| Best ammo once a rift has cost | Once the ship has lost this much hull in a rift, fire the best ammunition at everything left in it. |
| Stronger default ammo | Fire MCB-50, then MCB-25, at ordinary NPCs while you hold more than the reserve. |
| Ammo reserve | Rounds of MCB-50 or MCB-25 kept back from ordinary NPCs. |
| Default ammunition | Fired at everything that doesn't get the best. LCB-10 is the one the gate gives you plenty of. |
| Default rocket | Fired at everything that doesn't get the best. |
| SP-100X in corners | Load SP-100X to finish an NPC that has backed into a corner of the map. |
Hull is what the score counts. If your runs end early, raise Wait for shield below: a ship that waits for its shield loses less hull.
How it fights
It flies the same way as Eternal Blacklight: it circles its target through the gaps in the crowd, keeps clear of the other NPCs and the edges of the map, and backs off in a wide circle with the guns off while its shield comes back.
The ring is always inside your lent ship's laser reach, so every second on the ring is a second of fire.
The NPCs that hit as far as your lasers (by the Range in the NPC table) are killed first.
The ones ticked Leave alone are kept at a distance.
If an NPC keeps shooting while the shield comes back, it is shot back: a shield under fire never comes back, and hull never does in Astral.
Under Movement in the Advanced settings, each of these takes effect on the next second of the run, so you can tune while it flies:
- Orbit inside reach by: how far inside the lasers' reach the ring may be flown at most.
- Fight distance per NPC: a distance to circle one kind of NPC at, instead of the usual ring. It is flown exactly as set, even past the lasers, where the ship cannot shoot: a Gygerthrall at 2,000 is circled and never shot. 0 keeps the usual ring. The Range in the NPC table is how far an NPC hits, not the distance kept.
- Wait for the shield at: how far from the nearest NPC the ship circles while its shield comes back (2,000; 500 more in a corner).
- Shoot back while waiting for the shield: on by default.
- Keep other NPCs at least: how far the orbit keeps from the NPCs it isn't fighting. Off keeps the Eternal Blacklight distance.
Rules it always follows
- It never leaves a run by itself. Leaving keeps your run, being destroyed ends it, so the module only takes the exit when your schedule switches the account to something else, and then only once the rift's bounty is answered.
- Nothing is bought or crafted while you fly the lent ship: what it carries is not your own ship's stock.
- A run you left keeps its gate on x-1, and the module jumps it again: an Astral CPU is only spent when there's no gate to jump.