How do I destroy the penguin mothership?

Also finally constructing the distress beacon and activating it, a gigantic penguin summoning UFO attacked and quickly killed me. When I returned to my world it was no longer there for me to try again.

So of course I gathered the distress beacon materials again and gave this another go (being more cautious this time). I hit the UFO a few times with my iron hunting bow to very, very little effect. The penguins also took quite a few shots to bring down. I attempted to melee the penguins to kill them faster and was once again killed almost instantaneously.

Before I waste a third distress beacon (finding those materials is a huge pain), what level of armor/weaponry should I have? I've done a bit of exploring on this planet and have found no structures with anything that might help me (save for one empty Apex outpost, still no help).

As of the patch that rebalanced armor, weapons, and enemy difficulty, this fight has become much easier. I completed it easily with one or two bandages, copper armor, an iron bow, and an iron melee weapon. The summoned penguins all died in one to two shots of my Hunting Knife. After that I just needed to keep firing arrows at the mothership and occasionally dodge its blast. Even if I got hit, bandages could easily keep up with the damage.

I'm pretty sure you don't even need to bother with copper armor to beat this in its current state. Unless you're absolutely terrible at combat, you probably need only the following to take out this boss:

• An iron weapon such as the Hunting Knife (10 iron bars, 30 pixels), to dispatch penguin enemies quickly.
• The iron bow (15 iron bars, 150 pixels, and your previous hunting bow) to shoot at the mothership. You could probably do it with the normal Hunting Bow too, but why make the fight more tedious on yourself?
• Bandages (4 plant fibre each). 10 should be plenty, but if you want to be sure, just stock up on a bunch.
• A basic shield (10 wood planks, 10 iron bars, 20 pixels) is by no means necessary, but binding it to the right mouse button can be handy so that you can block while bandaging yourself. You can use bandages while blocking, which means you can basically back yourself into a corner and become immune to damage (or at least take greatly reduced damage) while you heal.

Total resource cost to prepare for this fight (assuming you've already crafted everything along the quest line to get the ship to appear): 35 iron bars, 10 wood planks, 200 pixels, and 40+ plant fibres.

If you've got the copper handy and want to make yourself some copper armor, knock yourself out. I don't think you'll need it though. And if, like me, you had a ton of silver sitting around too, keep in mind that after this fight, you'll probably just be upgrading straight to silver armor anyway, since it unlocks soon after.

Copper Armor upgraded into -> Silver Armor will reduce the fatal blow of the rocket penguins and tank shells to a mere 28 damage.

They're nerfing the leather winter armor (it's on par with Gold, which is next "Tier" after UFO) in next patch (tomorrow as of this post).

Your best bet is to get the Silver Armor and then go raiding Threat 10 planets to find an Armor Pen 10 weapon, or if you are lucky find a flat land with an anchor (if you have a way to go up high enough) to an Avian Airship and get a pair of guns. I solo'd the ufo with a pair of Tech level 10 pistols

I managed to destoy the mothership with the iron bow, try sitting near the base of a cave that go's down at about a 45 degree angle, And just shoot outwards, it takes a while but it works. Also try the snow infantry armor you get from the yarnspinning wheel, and have plenty of bandages and/or milk, good luck :)