FTL - Faster than Light

[Silfir]

FTL - Faster than Light has been out for eleven days or so now. It's an indie game described by the makers as a "space roguelike-like". You take over command of a lonely, pretty crappy spaceship that is the last, best hope for peace. Well, victory at any rate. You possess crucial information (presumably, many Bothans died to bring it to you) that has to reach the last bastion of the struggling Federation at any cost - but the rebels know you have it, and they are right behind you. If you're going to make it through at all, it's by the skin of your teeth, adapting to rising challenges, improving your ship with systems and scrap left behind by defeated enemies, hidden caches, Federation sympathizers, random souls in need or whatever of the many secrets lie hidden in these unexplored sectors of space.

Why is it roguelike-like? First of all, it has permadeath - you don't get to reload or retry. Second, no two games are the same - there are always eight sectors, but their contents are largely random, though "themed" - you can fly through sectors mostly inhabited by civilians who try to stay out of the war, or controlled by the many alien races, or even by the rebels, or even just nebulas uncharted by anyone, and the "beacons" (the game's FTL drives travel from beacon to beacon, sort of like Babylon 5 jumpgates) contain places and events chosen from a rather large pool. Enemy ships have randomized weapon loadouts; even within the same sector, you can fight some that can barely harm you at all, and some that have just the right tools to completely mess your shit up.

It makes it all the more important to stay on top of the situation. Battles are fought in pausable real time; you can hit space bar to issue commands at any given moment, and unless you are the God of FTL you will do so frequently. Your ship has a number of main systems:

- Engines, which keep you moving; without the engines you can't flee from a battle or evade any incoming weapons.
- Shields, which can block incoming shots and recharge fairly quickly - but can be bypassed or deactivated by certain weapons, or simply overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemy lasers.
- Weapons, the system that manages your various turrets and launchers. Each individual weapon requires power rerouted through weapon control, but if weapon control is damaged, you will lose the ability to power some or all of your weapons systems.
- Life Support, which keeps your ship filled with precious oxygen. Lose Life support and your ship slowly becomes uninhabitable - repair it or, eventually, die.
- as well as various other, less absolutely, but still very crucial systems such as medbays, drone control or cloaking devices, and subsystems like sensors, remote door control or the helm, which don't require power, but are still extremely important (lose the helm, and you can't pilot the ship, becoming the easiest target for the enemy weapons imaginable!)

Keeping all systems powered at all times is usually a pipe dream, so you will often be faced with choices and manual rerouting to get that tiny sliver of energy to keep your last laser turret powered, or get maximum output from your engines to escape - after all, life support only becomes truly important when your guys start actually collapsing. Or maybe you just open the airlocks and vent the ship into space, depriving both fire and incoming invaders of precious oxygen. Just make sure your life support system stays working so you can get it back!

Lasers, ions, beams, rockets, bombs, invaders in all shapes and colors frequently fly about with straightforward graphics and sound effects, and usually you don't have one system that needs repairing, but five. Your crewmembers, potentially skilled in various roles and from one of seven diverse races including of course the ever-present human, will have to deal with them in various ways; manning stations, repairing damage, putting out fires, fighting other enemies with ray guns, claws and other weapons of choice, and occasionally staying put huddled together for dear life as your ship gets pelted by rockets all over and into every orifice imaginable. Even if that last ditch rocket, fired remotely as the weapons room is slowly burning to complete brokenness, manages to remove that last sliver of hull strength and leaves you victorious, that won't count for much if your own ship is beyond repair. On the other hand, it can all be worth it in the end. Survival always leave the option for eventual victory, or at least getting as far as you can.

You don't get time to build up your ship indefinitely - while you can cover a lot of beacons before the rebels force you to leave a sector (and should), you will try to gather as much scrap, fuel, missiles and other stuff (like additional crew members) as you can, on the go, upgrading and adding new systems as you can and need.

The randomness of game scenarios and the finality of death, both for your individual crew members and your own ship and its mission, makes your playthroughs memorable much in the same way as you remember that ADOM character who pulled off that one miraculous escape - or died that gruesome or valiant death. In the end you don't just fight for the ideals of the Federation, you fight for that one guy who fixed the life support at the last second so his crewmates might live, but asphyxiated just seconds later - or the heroic soul who sabotages the enemy ship to explosion as it's pounding you to a pulp - with no time to teleport him back out in time. Or that unlucky redshirt who was manning the engines as they were hit with a missile and set on fire, retreating to the medbay to heal only for it to get hit with a missile and set on fire, and finally settle in a remote spot of the ship with his last remaining three HP. Only to be hit by another missile.



The goal was to combine that special feel of roguelike games with permadeath - where very choice matters, and adaptability, caution and paranoia as well as strategic (which weapons to pick? Which systems to upgrade and keep powered?) and tactical aptitude (which weapons to aim at what, when, and which crew members to send to repair or man stations; at the same time possible directing your own boarding parties aboard the enemy ship) and a fairly healthy dose of plain old luck will determine your success. In my eyes, the creaters of Faster than Light have succeeded masterfully. Playing, winning and losing in this game feels the same and is just as addictive as ADOM, even if in a different intensity, since you don't invest as much time in your "character" the ship as you typically will in a regular ADOM game; it's more similar to Iron Man.

On the whole FTL is much easier to win than ADOM - but just as in ADOM, you will have to minimize mistakes and understand the combat system really well to succeed at all. It's just that FTL is not nearly as long and detailed; though still very much a deep and engaging experience.

Similar to how the ADOM races and classes offer very different experiences in the early game especially, Faster than Light offers eighteen different starting ships, vastly differing in starting crew and equipment, that you can unlock in various ways. Some of them break the mold significantly - you can play ships without shields, without sensors, with just one crew member and without weapons. Like in ADOM, even if you find the "Normal" playing experience to be too easy, you can give yourself certain restrictions, or work on one of the many achievements the game will gladly record for you.



The game costs ten dollars, and for the fun I've had with it, that's an absolute steal. For me, it's the only time a game that wasn't ADOM has made me feel the way I did when I played ADOM - in addition to letting me be a friggin' spaceship captain. I'm still far from unlocking every ship, too, so it's not the end of the road yet.

And that concludes this review. Incidentally - it's almost enchanting to read some of the posts in FTL's official forum. Many of the complaints raised against its randomness and unforgivingness and their rebuttals could just as well apply to any roguelike, including ADOM (and have been). As such, roguelike-like seems a fitting term.

[Grey]

Yeah, it's a great game, very addictive. I talked about it on Roguelike Radio (http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/09/episode-47-ftl.html) recently. Have won 3 times now, each time with the Torus (I love the ion blast II). For me the big thing that gives that roguelike feel is the control of time. Pausing and issuing commands makes it a really tactical game, where you have to think carefully about all your actions.

[Silfir]

I've won one each with the Torus, the Osprey and the Bulwark.

With the Torus, I think I had the easiest time (but because it was the first win it also felt the best). I had lots of Ion, though I don't remember what I used to actually deal damage. I think it might have been rockets and a Heavy Laser Mk 1.

With the freshly unlocked Osprey, I immediately jumped in again - and won that one, too. I never got cloak; I think the ship isn't allowed to. In the second phase, I was almost done for; most of my ship was on fire and most systems were down - I think the helm and the weapons and part of the engine were still functional; and the artillery beam, which dealt the final blow to the boss. I lost two crewmembers and almost lost two afterwards trying to repair the life support in time, but I managed to repair to full, reach a repair station, and go back in to finish the job.

With the Bulwark, I had fully upgraded engines and shields and cloak and a defense drone and everything. The Bulwark is the ship that starts with two missile launchers. I sold them both in an effort to get a weapon loadout that didn't use missiles, and ended up with no missile launchers whatsoever for the final boss. Fire Bombs turned out to be close to useless, so it was back to relying on my two ion weapons to get the shields down and the pike beam to finish the job. Without my near perfect defensive systems, that probably would've gone badly. If I had kept even the Artemis, I could've done damage much quicker.

Next up... probably the Adjudicator. Or unlock some of the type B ships. Decisions, decisions.

[Grey]

I need to unlock more ships, but I've not had much luck doing so.

I'm not a big fan of the missiles either, as later in the game too many enemies have high evade and defensive drones, causing you to burn through missiles far too quickly. Bombs can be handy though - the ion bomb is handy at the start of a battle to quickly get their shields or another system taken offline. Fire bomb has its uses for taking down a medbay and then targeting the ions at their oxygen. Killing the crew with the ship intact leads to better loot (more scrap, fuel, chance of picking up a weapon or drone).

[Silfir]

I used the Fire Bomb for that very purpose before - I just never managed to pick up something else for the final boss. I didn't have a lot of crew left because I let them stupidly board a fleeing ship.

The Crew Teleporter is perhaps the most lucrative early investment possible, just after the Scrap Recovery Arm, provided you have the crew to spare.

[Kyreles]

After hearing them talk about it on Roguelike Radio I bought it and I've been playing a little bit. I'm busy wedding planning, but I've figured the game out and I'm enjoying it so far.

[Grey]

Yeah, Crew Teleporter is ridiculously profitable. But I don't enjoy the gameplay with it so much - lots of crew micromanagement. Plus I like the overall feeling in the game that you are the ship, and fighting with crew is less interesting than with lasers and bombs.

[Soirana]

Yeah, Crew Teleporter is ridiculously profitable. But I don't enjoy the gameplay with it so much - lots of crew micromanagement. Plus I like the overall feeling in the game that you are the ship, and fighting with crew is less interesting than with lasers and bombs.

What is difference between crew and bombs? Both are disposable/buyable from ship position....

I glimpsed actual games homepage. Real time roguelike... WTF?

[Silfir]

They call it a roguelike-like. Obviously it looks nothing like one, and it's not truly turn-based. But because it's always pausable and you can give orders freely during pauses, you can plan out battles at any point with no pressure - though if you don't want to miss crucial timings, you better become good at pressing it twice fast to advance just a tick. I think I once had a window of maybe a tenth of a second between my crew teleporter coming off cooldown and the enemy ship falling apart due to fires, and thanks to the pause function, I easily got it.

ADOM would play the same way if you could pause the game every segment and do something - but you can only ever act when you have 1000 energy points and the game is automatically paused when you do, and only then. It's not even possible to delay your action for just one segment to take advantage of better timings (we still do it, but we have to spend a lot of turns to exploit a slight speed advantage to get free hits) - in FTL timing your attacks is often crucial. For instance, beams do great damage if the enemy shields are down for even parts of a second, since they connect instantly and do great hull damage, but cannot pierce or lower shields.

You can pull off all sorts of things with timings. I recently managed to hit an enemy missile with a missile of my own - by accident. I can only assume there are people out there who do stuff like that on purpose. As far as I can tell, all types of projectiles can also potentially intercept all others, and also drones.

You can play it like a real time space combat simulator if you simply don't use the pause function. I might just do that someday, sounds like crazy fun.

Bombs consume a missile each; crew members don't technically consume anything if you bring them back alive. Missiles are much easier and cheaper to get than replacement crew members. I don't exactly see how lasers, bombs and boarding parties are mutually exclusive, though! Bombs that damage systems especially are almost a necessity when boarding enemy ships with medbays.

I don't really get the feeling I am the ship as much as I'm the captain of the ship - since the game ends if your crew dies, one of the crewmembers must be the captain, and by extension, you. They're probably all interfaced with a mind link at all times with all the ship's systems and the other crewmembers, and whoever is the most senior alive crewmember can give commands to the systems and the other crewmembers just by thinking.

[prime]

Wow this game is amazing :O

It's those times when half your ship is on fire and lasers are raining down and mantises are scratching at the door that really make the game for me. I love them and hate them.

It reminds me of those moments in ADOM when your mindcrafter rolls a strength of 2, or when your fireproof blanket bursts into flames halfway through the first level of the ToEF, and the game clearly wants you dead without being too obvious about it but you just refuse to die. That's the roguelike spirit, and this game has it.

[Grey]

Yeah, it really does have the roguelike spirit in abundance. I've seen a lot of people argue over semantics of whether it's a roguelike because it doesn't have feature x, y, etc. But you can't just decide a roguelike from that - it's the interaction of elements and how the game feels that really matters.

[Kyreles]

Well, I've beat the game on easy. Haven't quite got there on normal. Just noticed an option in the menu to turn on a thing where it shows you where a node you're about to jump to can jump to. I wish I'd noticed it earlier. I've gotten cornered a time or two because of that. Definitely feels a lot like a roguelike to me.

What are your favorite ships? I love The Torus. The Engi one. I've done the best with that one by far.

[Grey]

The option to highlight node-paths was only recently added, so you haven't been missing out that much.

The Torus is good, but I've won too many times with it, so I'm a little bored of it now. The Zoltan ship is really really cool for the first while. And the Stealth ship has all sorts of awesome around it, though it starts with no shields. Especially the type B of the Stealth ship - it starts off with a Glaive beam that will just tear apart any enemy if used right. Red Tail (type B of the starting ship) has a nice weapon loadout at the start too, though when you hit 3 shield enemies it starts suffering.

[Silfir]

My first win (Normal, I haven't touched Easy except for one or two games in the beginning) was with the Torus - the Ion Blast II is an absolute monster. There aren't many ships that start with the ability to defeat any level of shields. I've added two wins on the Osprey, one on the Bulwark and one on the Red Tail.

I still have to unlock the Slug, Mantis, Stealth and secret ship. I bungled the Slug once already, kind of annoying. My next attempts will involve the Shivan (Rock B) since Rock ships have the best shot at the secret ship, but the weapon loadout really annoys me. The Heavy Pierce Laser is a piece of crap.

[prime]

I've mostly been using the Kestrel, the default ship. I guess I don't really know how to use the Ion Blast II effectively, since it doesn't seem that amazing to me.

And I've only won on easy as well. On normal, I can make it to sector 8, but I just don't have enough stuff to take down the flagship.

[Grey]

Get the ion blast ii autofiring against their shields whilst the drone kills them. Use any lasers you get to keep their weapons suppressed so they can never hurt you, meaning all your lovely scrap goes on upgrades instead of repairs.

[prime]

Heh, I'm always reluctant to spend drones since I feel like I should save them in case I get a hull repair drone. I ended up trying to kill ships by hitting the life support until they asphyxiated...

[Silfir]

Saving drone parts for an eventual hull repair drone instead of using them to kill the enemy right now is kind of like not drinking a blessed potion of extra healing at 3/150 HP because it wastes two potential points of healing. (Though nothing to be said against asphyxiating the enemy with ions if they can't hurt you - though they might escape.)

[Grey]

If you want to kill the crew then get a teleporter. Asphyxiation is rarely easy without taking damage.

[prime]

Okay, I'm starting to see why the ion blast is so good. Hitting the shields again resets the ionization timer? Or just adds more time?

And I have a newfound love for the Noether (Zoltan B). It comes with two ion blasts, and the amazing Zoltan shield. And the less amazing half-a-shield, but I can live with that.

[Silfir]

If the ion damage hasn't cooled off, getting hit with more ion resets the timer - that way it can build up over time to take down the shield system entirely, regardless of how many shields there are. A string of misses can ruin the fun (more on the higher sectors), but because of the high firing rate your weapon guy will increase in levels quickly and reduce the chance of that happening.

I haven't had humongous success with the Noether. Against some opponents, the Zoltan Shield is enough, but against other Zoltans and in asteroid fields you will suffer. That said, the weapons are excellent; you just need those 100 scrap fast.

[Grey]

To stops strings of missiles with the ion take down their pilot room - cuts out their evade rate completely.

[Silfir]

If you have missiles, that's the perfect use for them, of course! Won't work against defense drones.

In my most recent win with the Shivan I had just about the perfect set: Ion Blast Mk II, Hermes missiles and Halberd Beam. Swapped missiles for beam once shields were down. I had a boarding team to disable weapons, but I couldn't send them out twice because the boss died too quickly anyway.

[Grey]

Or bombs for when they have drones. Or burst lasers.

[Kyreles]

I've been playing easy quite a bit (unlocking ships, trying different weapons/strategies). Just bumped up to normal. Geez, you really gotta stay on top of upgrading early on. I just died to one of the first fights I was in. Not *really* my fault, as I only had a single Engi crewmember and a pair of mantis men jumped on my ship. They do double damage, my guy does half... good times.

[Grey]

Open the doors and watch them asphyxiate :P But that ship that starts with just one Engi is possibly the hardest of all the starts.

[prime]

If the ion damage hasn't cooled off, getting hit with more ion resets the timer - that way it can build up over time to take down the shield system entirely, regardless of how many shields there are. A string of misses can ruin the fun (more on the higher sectors), but because of the high firing rate your weapon guy will increase in levels quickly and reduce the chance of that happening.

I haven't had humongous success with the Noether. Against some opponents, the Zoltan Shield is enough, but against other Zoltans and in asteroid fields you will suffer. That said, the weapons are excellent; you just need those 100 scrap fast.
Yeah, it takes a little bit of luck to get started. But it's not quite as bad as the Stealth B. I feel like success with that ship largely revolves around your ability to deflect lasers with prayer alone.

And a basic question for the experienced players - which systems are most important to have manned? I know having someone at the helm is pretty much mandatory, but is it better to pull someone off weapons to repair, or shields/engine?

Also, what's a good way to deal with the drone phase of the flagship? The teleporter shuts down the weapons on the other stages nicely, but I always take a lot of hull damage from drones.

[Grey]

Manning order of importance: Pilot, Engines, Weapons, Shields. Shield manning makes little difference in my experience.

For the drone special attack cloak is a life saver. But 3 or 4 shields and 45% evade is good enough too.

[Silfir]

Shield manning should reduce the number of windows of opportunity for opponents to get a hit in, which can be important against drones or asteroids. But in almost all cases, the shields guy is the most expendable. The weapons guy can be absolutely crucial when your defense is lacking, simply because you need to fire your weapons as quickly as possible, before they get hit. The engines guy provides 5-10% evade which is pretty huge, but not manning the helm means all evade is gone unless you shelled out for an autopilot (and autopilots suck).

[Grey]

It's still worth shelling out for autopilot in case of emergencies and more importantly to make the pilot station able to absorb damage before being completely disabled. For the same reason I always pump an extra point in O2.

[Silfir]

As far as I remember, as soon as the helm gets even partially damaged the pilot will stop piloting to repair - or did they think of that and allowed him a partial bonus, like the one you still get even if the pilot is engaged in hand-to-hand?

Even if he can pilot the ship at a reduction while repairing a partially damaged helm, late game if something gets through your shields and hits the helm, it's usually going to be a missile, and they'll generally do more than one point of system damage. At least if you only have level 1 piloting you will be done with the repairs very quickly, regardless of the size of the missile that hit it.

[Grey]

You still get full pilot bonus as long as he's in the room, regardless of repairs or boarders.

Missiles will indeed take it out completely unless you upgrade to level 3 (which I'll oft do by the end). But burst lasers, fires and boarder damage are still best buffered against. And my point was more about throwing 20 scrap on it early game, not too late.

[Kyreles]

Holy shit, we have a spoiler tag now!

I like to upgrade stuff just to provide a buffer to take damage as well, especially the teleporter or cloak. And I try to push up O2 and my medbay so I can get the blue options to do special stuff, even if I don't power them most of the time.

[Ichthys]

It's definitely a fantastic game. Not sure I would classify it as strictly "roguelike" as it's not got a lot of the hallmarks of the "traditional" roguelikes. It does feature permadeath and a decent amount of random generated content. Maybe more of a tactical action game.

Great regardless of its genre.

[Grey]

I had a run recently where I ended up with an ion blast II and 2 fire beams. You have no idea how outrageously fun that is :P Here's a screenie: http://i.imgur.com/vfN3KvK.png

It's much faster than boarders or asphyxiation for killing the enemy crew, and it quickly takes down many of their systems too. For the last boss burning was taking way too long to kill him though (you have to kill the crew and let the AI repair its systems one by one) so I broke out the anti-ship drone to finish it off.

[Ichthys]

I had a run recently where I ended up with an ion blast II and 2 fire beams. You have no idea how outrageously fun that is :P Here's a screenie: http://i.imgur.com/vfN3KvK.png

Haha, very nice. A good choice in ship, as well.

I was a little disappointed each time I've beaten the game in that I couldn't capture the final boss ship. It makes sense, given the explanation they use for it, just a little sad. Hope that's not too spoilery.

[_Ln_]

I've been playing the stuff for some time last several days and have died like 40 times. I'm using Kestrel 100% of the time because I've only unlocked the Engi ship (and learned from a wiki yesterday that I've missed the Zoltan shield choosing the wrong dialogue option).

On my very first try I got to sector 6 with Burst Laser III and 3 layers of shields, but got owned by something.
Since then I can't even get to sector 5.
What are the main priorities to get more or less stable situation? I'm trying to improve my shields/engines and boosting energy supply early one + repair hull at shops and I never seem to have enough money for Teleporter or Drones (I didn't like them with the Engi ship several times I played). Should I take it easy on upgrades?
My last run was with good stuff (Burst Laser II, base Kestrel Missile and something like Hull Beam) and 7 crew members by the very beginning of sector 4. Then I got boarded by 2 Mantis parties in one fight (how is that even possible?) which summed in 6 Mantis crew members tearing my ship, so in the end only a couple of my guys were left in the MedBay and all other ship rooms on fire/without air.

[Silfir]

Like with ADOM, it's hard to determine what it is you're doing wrong without watching you actually play.

You only have a limited number of battles with possible loot until the end. Crew teleporters make it easier to take ships alive, which gets you extra money, so that's a good early investment. Shields avoid repair costs and help you take enemy ships alive (a second layer of shields often means a good number of fights early game in which you are invincible and can take your sweet time taking the ship, provided you start by disabling the engines or the helm), so the second layer of shields (at 100 scrap) is a good early investment. Energy and engine upgrades should generally wait until after you've done those first two. ("Generally" because the first engine upgrade is very, very cheap for what it does.) Hold off on repairs for a while (if you can't avoid damage altogether; there's not much of an excuse for the Kestrel to be taking a lot of it); your ship will run just fine at half hull, and those 45 scrap might buy you the recovery arm, and with it riches in the near-to-mid future.

Use missiles as-needed. Meaning, use missiles if the enemy has missiles of their own, and aim for their weapons systems to avoid having to repair. A missile that helps you avoid two hull damage broke even. If it avoids more than that, you made a profit, even if you don't add into the equation that you start with missiles and will find them on the way.

A Scrap Recovery Arm is something you should snatch up instantly. Other than that, the crew teleporter, or level 2 shields, I would hold off on buying anything on the Kestrel. Even Energy. If you can power your weapons and your shields and one engine level, you have enough energy in the early game. It takes some time for the O² to run out, and the medbay can be activated in a pinch if you need to deal with borders.

Pause, pause, pause. Most boarding party situations can be dealt with, in my experience, if you immediately vent all crucial systems close to the boarders and gather your guys in the medbay. Your computer can still fire weapons, run engines and manage shields without air. Keep the pilot on his post if you possibly can because unpiloted ships usually get eaten up fast. The boarders shouldn't have enough time to do more than one point of system damage before they start to suffocate and abandon the assault.

Drone systems are a great investment, generally, since for the price of 80 scrap you usually get a defense drone 1 (worth 40 if bought single) in addition to the system itself, which is the best answer to enemy missiles available in the game right through the boss fight. That said, unless you have that much scrap left over, it's not more important than the second shield layer, the crew teleporter or the scrap recovery arm.

Some weapons are worthwhile to use, some aren't, and if they aren't, sell them ASAP for the extra scrap. The same goes for found augments.

[Soirana]

A Scrap Recovery Arm is something you should snatch up instantly. Other than that, the crew teleporter, or level 2 shields, I would hold off on buying anything on the Kestrel. Even Energy. If you can power your weapons and your shields and one engine level, you have enough energy in the early game. It takes some time for the O² to run out, and the medbay can be activated in a pinch if you need to deal with borders.


Personally I believe scrap arm at let say first sector is inferior to long range scanners. Dodging few empty encounters is way better than some percentage.

For borders blast doors is must have [and cheap] and oxygen upgrade is recommended - cause worst case scenario is they take oxygen system out.

on more general things:
A) enable showing connections between beacons on mouse hover in options
B) learn to synchro weapon fire if needed and use of Ctrl [enables autofire on/off] for single weapons.
These two helped me a lot and are next to undocumented

[Grey]

Play the Engi ship (the Torus) and auto-fire the ion cannon on their weapons system. It'll usually take out their shields, letting the attack bot destroy them, but the odd ion that gets through to their weapons will prevent them from taking shots at you. The less damage you take the more you can spend on upgrades. Get shields 2 and level 2 doors ASAP.

As the game progresses you'll need more firepower to take enemies down quickly, and in particular a Burst Laser II helps immensely for taking out their pilot room at the start of the fight, thus preventing them dodging. Beam weapons are also fantastic if you an get one.

[quik]

Are you playing easy mode? If not, I'd suggest you do that. I think it's a better progression to try and win in easy mode a couple of times and then changing to normal mode.

[Grey]

Bah, screw easy mode. FTL on Normal difficulty is still much easier than ADOM.

[_Ln_]

Thanks, I did much better now with resource preservation.

By the last stand I had:
1) 2 Mantis Golden Hand-to-Hand dudes on teleport
2) Full energy
3) 3xBurst Laser II (that's 9 shots)
4) Fully-levelled cloak + shields
5) 48% Evade
6) 2 points of hull when I teleport to a repair station. Unfortunately Rebel Flagship (first stage) teleports to the same location at the same time cutting me repairs. I almost took out their rocket launchers with boarding crew (everything else I can resist with shields), but evade only 1 rocket out of 3 and die.

Pretty sure I could have won with full hull.
Completed "No redshirts" and "Technophobia" at the same time :D I should probably try droids.

[Soirana]

FTL on Normal difficulty is still much easier than ADOM.

Not so sure - I would think eleven thief even with all "scum fixes'' is way easier than slug cruiser B.

[Grey]

For the missile attacks you'll want cloaking (cloak as the missiles are approaching) or a defense drone I.

[_Ln_]

For the missile attacks you'll want cloaking (cloak as the missiles are approaching) or a defense drone I.

Yeah, I know, but I've used it previously, so it was on cooldown :(

Just finally unlocked Zoltan ship. Starting Glaive Beam is just godawful. Also, some really strange stuff when you unplug Zoltans and all energy management (even if you have free reactor energy) gets screwed.

I had some fun with Engi after getting the hang of drones. Also devised a pretty rad strategy which failed when I got carried away - get lucky and chance on normal Ion Gun I (preferrably two). Spend everything on shields and weapon systems and then attack solely weapon and life supply systems. It worked pretty to secure ships intact more or less throughout the game, but I got blown up in sector 5 because I didn't watch my ship :D

Also, how nice are 3 attack drones and Drone recovery augmentation? Should work with Ion weaponry as well, I think.

EDIT: And hotkeys, yes.

So many ways to go, if only I could actually win. Maybe I should use mouse instead of touchpad.

[Stingray1]

Oi, why did you guys not tell me that the boss has to be killed more than once? Now I'm screwed, no hull, no missiles.:mad:

[Silfir]

No one told me. My reaction was much similar.

Have fun in your next attempt!

[Stingray1]

Yeah, had fun and my first victory with the Torus. Pretty difficult damn boss, lost 7 times versus him.

[_Ln_]

By the way, I've won some around a week or so.

Kestrel, only 6 guys, starting Burst Laser 2, another Burst Laser 1, Fire Beam, Beam Drone 1. Haven't used Missiles since I've sold starting Launcher in the second or so sector.

My first ever buy was Preignited Weapons and it makes battling so much more comfortable, it's scary. I also picked up 2 Scrap Recovery Aims (do they even stack?)

First stage with boss lasted like 20 minutes or so, becuase I only had 5 lasers and the boss had 4 shields, so I could only use Fire Beam every once in a while.
Teleported and killed all weapons, then it went pretty easy.

The worst was second stage because of boss's boarding drones.
Evasion of 50+ allowed me to skip some weapon surges without cloak.

All in all I've lost like 25 to 33% of my hull in all battles (from full hull) and winning was pretty reliable.

Also reminder to self: should be careful with Fire Beam and teleporting my crew in the future.

[GordonOverkill]

What a nice game! Bought it on Monday and just won my first game with the Kestrel (normal mode of course... sure that there was another mode availible? ;-)). The teleporting Mantis Team of ultimate destruction was just unstoppable ;-) Looking forward to try the next ship soon, maybe the Torus since I didn't make much use of drones so far.

[persy]

Torus is boring, aim for Stealth B it's a shltload of FUN! Event spawns in Engi homeworld and IIRC you only need 1 engi to be able to do it.

[GordonOverkill]

I have only unlocked two other ships so far and the B-Type of the human ship, so I will play with one of them next and see if I can unlock some more ships during the run.

[Stingray1]

Well done, the Human ship is not easy to unlock. Try to win. ;)

[persy]

and see if I can unlock some more ships during the run.
That's what I mean, go for Stealth Cruiser! :-) You need to have an engi and look for engi homeworld sector

[GordonOverkill]

Oooor I could instead waste a whole Saturday evening with the crappy flighing donut, which in two out of three games gets ultimately destroyed in sector 1 or 2 by something like a hostile tiny kitten (as long as this kitten knows how to use a bazooka). Now I am tired and totally unsattisfied x-D Anybody got a good idea how to use this horrible ship with a higher survivability?

[Silfir]

The Torus? That is an awesome ship. Not sure what you're missing!

This is what I remember: Against enemies with one shield, target weapons with ion, which will keep the shields deactivated most of the time and occasionally interrupt weapon timers, and have the anti-ship drone take it out. Keep an eye out for a laser weapon so you can stop bleeding drone parts.

EDIT: Just checked by playing my first FTL game in months with the Torus and won. It's as straightforward as I remembered.

[GordonOverkill]

Hmmm, actually that's exactly what I tried to do... my problem was more or less everything with a missile launcher, because I just could not reliably disable those rockets. At the same time I had the feeling that at least 3 out of 4 foes had such a rocket launcher, so I got blown to pieces again and again and again... maybe just a streak of bad luck ;-)

[Silfir]

Against foes with only one shield in the first few sectors, targeting the weapons should disable rockets very early into any given fight. Engines and such help, too. I'll admit that I found a defense drone I in my playthrough fairly early on, and things might have gotten hairy without it.

[GordonOverkill]

Well, I guess I am getting a little better, but still I have quite some trouble with this ship. I have started to record a run with the Torus, so if you have got a hint or two how to improve my performance, that would be very much appreciated!
Here's the link to the playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOdHNY3MGPas8BzsBqCTAlI8bZ6AprYeK

[Silfir]

You almost gave me a heart attack. WHY NO AUTOFIRE

EDIT: Second heart attack. SELL THE MEDIBOTS. They're "nice". The Scrap Recovery Arm is SCRAPTASTIC! Why why whyyyy

(Had to stop watching for a bit after you left the recovery arm behind for good. Why would you do this to me. Why)

EDIT2: Don't pull a guy from a station to repair a non-critical system in the midst of battle, like you did at 16:00. (Granted, the enemy weapons were disabled at that point.)

EDIT3: If you fight in orbit of a sun that's going to periodically set your ship on fire, I would default to accepting surrender.

EDIT4: Of your two Engis, your Weapons Engi should be considered the more mobile one, especially if you're fighting a ship with missiles. Those 5% extra Evasion are going to do you more good than the slightly faster Ions.



Not selling the Medibots was your most egregious oversight overall. Otherwise, everything seemed acceptable, though I'd have invested in the second shield layer one or two jumps before the end.

Watching FTL Let's Plays is probably not a good idea for me. I get way too upset.

[_Ln_]

Just a quick trick: if you happen to fight Slug Interceptors (video time around 11:00) and you can survive their attacks without damage, destroy their oxygen room and then go defensive. With drones this is a bit tricky - wait for it to damage the room, then depower Drone Control and it will stop shooting. There is no door to that room, so the crew cannot fix it and will die of asphyxiation leaving you with a bit more scrap.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

The DA-SR 12 is the best ship.

[GordonOverkill]

Big thanks for your hints, Silfir and _Ln_! Great to know about that weakness of the interceptor, that will certainly be usefull in the future! And for the Scrap Recovery Arm... oh damn, you are so right, Silfir x-D Getting that arm on the first sector would have been "scraptastic" indeed! For a moment I thought about selling drone or weapon, but somehow it didn't come to my mind to sell the med device. Let's hope that I'll be able to compensate for this.

So, the second episode is online and I got the feeling that the rng is not my friend. Once again it would be great to get some tipps from you guys what I might have done better.
This is the direct link to the second episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cohAyK7QtI8&feature=youtu.be

[GordonOverkill]

So I also made it through the third sector, increasing my defensive options but still lacking some firepower. Would be great if you maybe had another hint or two for me. I do not really feal save, especially because in the fourth sector I think that many enemies will have more shields.

Here's the link to the third sector episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqjisDObZAw&feature=c4-overview&list=UUMWW1k4ZUEB5Fu9EfjYMTUg

[Silfir]

Second sector!

I guess in hindsight, I would need to amend the general instructions for the Torus thus: Do not fly into nebulas. At least not until you have a lot more energy bars and less energy-intensive weaponry. Five bars minimum to do any damage is just murder, compare to the Kestrel, which just needs one to power the Artemis.

I'd also advise you to dawdle more, personally. You skip ahead of the early beacons, when there is really no good reason to do so, and in the end you run out of beacons to explore with your extra time.

"We could get a crew teleporter, which we do not need..." - Here's the thing. The crew teleporter is pretty much the second most scraptastic investment you could get, just behind the Scrap Recovery Arm. Why is the crew teleporter so scraptastic? Go back to your first encounter, the ship that couldn't hurt you. With a crew teleporter and a medbay (they didn't have one), you could have taken it intact, which would have meant roughly double the rewards, possibly even a system. (Plus, in your specific case, you would have saved the drone part for the anti-ship drone.) Two ships taken intact, your crew teleporter paid for itself. An entire game of this, you've earned roughly 200-300 scrap, several extra missiles, fuel and drone parts, and possibly even an intact weapon or drone schematic that would've otherwise not been spawned. Buying a crew teleporter at the first opportunity is very rarely a bad idea. It's what you save all that scrap in the beginning for instead of blowing it on ship upgrades, actually.

Instead, you paid 65 scrap for one extra bar of power and a fifth wheel (all your systems are already manned, and you don't have boarding crews because you don't have a crew teleporter) at a time when you really, really couldn't afford it. I can hardly remember buying a crew member ever; I typically run out of space by lategame for the ones I get for free.

And I still have one and a half videos to watch. Lord give me strength.

EDIT: 12:20 - This is what I go through. ACTIVE YOUR SHIELDS. GOOD LORD. ACTIVATE THEM.

oof. Thank you.

EDIT: What. You just cut the Oxygen. Why would you send your guys away to fight those losers? They will start fleeing like little shits when the air runs out, and it should run out before the drone system gets damaged enough... Oh. Yeah, the air would run out fast enough if you opened both airlocks, that is.

EDIT: Yes, you could have changed it, but like in ADOM, the mistakes are not always obvious. The nebula was one, and skipping the non-nebula sectors on the early stages of the sector was another. Plus, you could've had a crew teleporter but bought a Zoltan instead, which will lead to less scrap, which will lead to an even worse time in future sectors, which will lead to even less scrap. And this while you're still recovering from the terrible mistake in sector one where you didn't buy the Scrap Recovery Arm.

EDIT: You know, an important thing to realize about the Torus: It can kill the boss as-is. Given enough defensive capabilities, like full shields and good engines, the Ion Blast Mk II can take down any amount of shields eventually and the anti-ship drone will do the rest. You want an alternative weapon (a laser or beam, preferably) because you want to save up some drone parts, and because it sucks to have cargo holds full of missiles and nothing to use them for. (Bombs are perfect, because they work right away; your ion will take down any shield, but it may take a while.) What's far more important is to be able to keep up in defenses. With enough scrap saved up, you can score a cloaking device. With not all that much scrap saved up, you can score a defense drone Mk I. Combine either of those (not even both!) and level 3 shields and not too terrible engines, and you're completely set up to sector 8. For the flagship, you just buy the last shield layer and engines up to the point of diminishing returns (where extra engine points give less than 5% evasion) and you will hardly take any damage.

EDIT: By the way, level 3 engines cost 15 scrap. Just buy them. You have too much power anyway.

EDIT: GOOD LORD. Like fifteen minutes ago, you got your ass handed to you by an automated ship in the nebula. Why would you voluntarily go there? "Hostile" or "friendly" sectors - red or green - have little to no effect on the number of combat encounters, but you know what red and green sectors are not full of? Nebulas. Like the one that almost killed your ship. Remember? Fifteen minutes ago? Why am I repeating myself?!

I'll mow the lawn now. I'm not sure if I have the strength to watch episode three. It's a mixture of fascination, entertainment and unadulterated agony, watching these. Sort of like watching my buddy play ADOM. (Use the walk command! Don't hold down... Yeah, there's a gelatinous cube... Yeah, you brought this on yourself)



Sector three.

No. No, you do not get to cite "bad luck" at the first sight of an ion storm after you've voluntarily flown into an uncharted nebula.

Fight at 8:00: At two shields upwards, your ion weapon really needs to concentrate on taking out the shields and keeping them down. Only target weapons against enemies with one shield. (At 8 missiles, I really would've accepted the surrender. I don't think the existence "buy an unknown weapon" option will increase the probability of getting a weapon after combat, either.)

Fight at 21:30: You should have focused shields here, too, especially after the weapons were disabled and your O2 was close to running out.

29:18: Don't buy energy when you can power all your systems and then some and you still haven't upgraded your engines. (The 15 scrap engine upgrade is one of the earliest I tend to make because it does so much for so little.) You're about to leave the nebula you never should have gone to in the first place, so don't come to me with ion storms. In general, it's much more important to have more systems to power when you need them than to be able to power all your systems even if you don't need them. Buying too much power early is an easy mistake to make, but still a mistake. Power only does as much for you as whatever you power with it. (Did I mention the engines?)



I'm not sure about your future prospects. You managed to miss out on both a Scrap Recovery Arm and a crew teleporter, which will cost a lot of scrap. But you do have a defense drone now, which is a great addition to the Torus' defense. Upgrade engines and get the next shield layer; if you have the next shield layer, you can maybe start buying power again.

There are plenty of mistakes to be found. One of them, which bears repeating I think, is that you wasted 130 scrap on two crew members. The third shield layer plus one bar of power at the current rate? 125.

[KyoShinda]

First enemy I run into is a regular unpiloted drone, quick kill nothing much.
Second enemy is a cloaking drone, it cloaked, then hit my weapons, then oxygen, then my medbay.
THIS IS BEWLLSHIT!!

http://i.imgur.com/Vi1IL6a.jpg

[GordonOverkill]

Big, big thanks for your entertaining and helpful comments, Silfir! Actually I hoped to gain some extra-scrap by flying through the nebulas... obviously it did not work. I will do my best to improve my performance, promised ;-) I have just uploaded the fourth sector crossing and I am a little afraid that it might include some shocking moments again... anyway, in the end I will hopefully be a true Torus-expert (with your great help that is).

Here's the link to the new episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6yKzsS57Bo&feature=youtu.be

[Stingray1]

The Torus is a fine ship. I had my 1st victory in it using nothing but ion, teleporter and heal bombs as offense. Edit2 - well, atleast until I could buy the teleporter at 1st store.

I've been trying to achieve "Living off the land" today with the Osprey. Do you guys think I'm trying with the wrong ship?

Edit - Maybe one of the Engi ships as they start with Drone Control.

Edit2 - May I use bombs in "Pacifism run"?

[KyoShinda]

The Torus is a fine ship. I had my 1st victory in it using nothing but ion, teleporter and heal bombs as offense. Edit2 - well, atleast until I could buy the teleporter at 1st store.

I've been trying to achieve "Living off the land" today with the Osprey. Do you guys think I'm trying with the wrong ship?

Edit - Maybe one of the Engi ships as they start with Drone Control.

Edit2 - May I use bombs in "Pacifism run"?You probably can't, 'firing a shot' is probably a way they tried to shorten it for a lot of the weapons.

Is there really a good point in traveling to nebula sectors after unlocking the ships? Just want to know.. lol

This just in: started out, a pirate gave me stealth weapons, walked away from the game for a little bit and forgot I kept my oxygen off to power my engines. yeah...

[Stingray1]

The only reason for going to nebula sectors I can think of is to get more beacons visited.

[GordonOverkill]

I have got the fifth episode online now and all in all I am quite sattisfied with the results. Still there was a problem with my recording programm. Somehow the video was recorded in twice the normal speed, so video and audio do not fit together and the whole video might not be very enjoyable. Sorry, I really don't know how that happened.
This episode in short: The boarding crew did a great job, I increased the engine to lvl 4, the reactor to lvl 15, sensors to lvl 2, found a Hermes missile launcher and a shield charge booster and left the sector with just 13 hull points but 161 scraps into a mantis sector. The crew teleporter is indeed scraptastic!

e: I have recorded a new audio track for this episode and re-uploaded it. Here's the link to the new version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uVREJ8tv2Q

[_Ln_]

The only reason for going to nebula sectors I can think of is to get more beacons visited.

Rebels are not slowed in nebula sectors.

[Silfir]

They're slowed a bit in nebula sectors.

[KyoShinda]

The only reason for going to nebula sectors I can think of is to get more beacons visited.
I forgot about that, although nothing good ever happens in nebula beacons.


They're slowed a bit in nebula sectors.
I decided to check and it's about half speed, which is pretty significant(although, this is a nebula from a regular sector, even then it helps a lot).
http://i.imgur.com/mY60roH.png

It might be good to do nebulas later in the game in that case, since you'd be more prepared for it.

[Silfir]

Nebulas from nebula sectors don't help as much because the rebels are more prepared for it. Maybe 80% the regular pursuit speed, which is good for 2-3 extra beacons.

Of course, you have to be prepared for ion storms. As Gordon has seen, the Torus, which needs five energy minimum on weapons and drones to do any damage to a shielded enemy, has low odds of gaining anything from nebula beacons early in the game. The Kestrel A can run either the laser at two or the Artemis at one and arguably benefits from the conditions compared to the enemy.

[_Ln_]

Nebulas from nebula sectors don't help as much because the rebels are more prepared for it. Maybe 80% the regular pursuit speed, which is good for 2-3 extra beacons.

You're right, my bad.

[KyoShinda]

Nebulas from nebula sectors don't help as much because the rebels are more prepared for it. Maybe 80% the regular pursuit speed, which is good for 2-3 extra beacons.
Yes, about 80 percent. I wanted to take a picture of it again because I like making sure, and because I like pictures.
Nebula, nebula sector, regular. Then events, stalling rebels stalls 1 turn and someone warning stretches it twice as far for one turn if I recall.
http://i.imgur.com/wmorFZM.png

[Stingray1]

WOOHOO!! Made Living off the land. with the Torus.

Ion Blast II, Ion Blast, Heavy Laser I, Anti-Ship I, Hull Repair.
Engines and shields fully upgraded only 2 Drone Parts though.
Anyway, will take on boss tomorrow. What do I ionize first on the boss?

[KyoShinda]

WOOHOO!! Made Living off the land. with the Torus.

Ion Blast II, Ion Blast, Heavy Laser I, Anti-Ship I, Hull Repair.
Engines and shields fully upgraded only 2 Drone Parts though.
Anyway, will take on boss tomorrow. What do I ionize first on the boss?
Well, I keep the pilot bay top priority at the beginning since it has low 'system hp' to disable quickly and it accounts for all dodge if you take it out, then shields, by this time they might fix their pilot bay or be able to use it again soon so I switch to engines since you can whittle it down far so it takes longer for them to repair(basically the pilot is to disable dodge and engines to keep it down). After that you can hopefully destroy that god-forsaken missile launcher, then the cloaking.

You could also try to find a shop on the boss level and try to buy all the nice stuff you weren't allowed to get before the achievement, unless you like the challenge.

I have a question, can homeworlds spawn in any sector? Like sector 2? I've been trying to find an engi homeworld over and over again because I slipped up last time I was trying to get the stealth ship.

[Silfir]

Your ions stay locked on the shields, naturally. Once you've disabled them, you use your heavy laser. In the first phase, I'd try to disable the cloaking device with the heavy laser first chance you get (If it runs at level 1, it's only five seconds, and your ion stacks might hold - you have a fully leveled weapons dude, if not several, right?). There's also a possibility of finding a store on level 8, which you should try to do, since you might get something to use missiles on. A rocket launcher would be super. Ions + Heavy Laser make short work of phase two and three (and yes, with the shields locked down hitting the pilot, then missile launcher, then pilot again seems like the best strategy); it's the first that might give you trouble, and rockets are great in the first.

Depending on your crew setup, even a crew teleporter might be a good investment. Two Mantis can board and destroy the missile launcher before its second volley, I think.

Try to hit repair bases, even with full hull, since they add drone parts, both for your anti-ship drone and the hull repair. It's rare to be able to visit a repair base in-between flagship phases.

You might find yourself having to run the anti-ship drone in phase one to get heavy laser shots in before the cloaking starts up again: with Ion getting them down to one shield, you can time your heavy laser shot to hit just after the anti-ship drone pops the last shield layer, hopefully hitting a critical system for two damage. (It's unlikely that it will come that far, I think; the Ion Blast Mk II is beastly even on its own and an extra Ion Blast should ensure critical mass. I distinctly remember having had an extra Ion Blast in a boss battle before; I'm fairly certain it was glorious.)

With maxed Engines, I think you have a very decent shot. The first phase is the most troublesome since cloaking is basically the counter to ions. The lack of a defense drone might also cause significant excitement in phase two, since you can't stop the boarding drones. Luckily, the lack of cloaking will let your overpowered ion disable the shields in no time at all - so even if you do get in trouble on your end of things, you will kill the flagship first. Afterwards, you should be able to patch yourself up with Hull Repair drones. (Phase three is a joke: Ions obliterate Zoltan shields and maxed engines laugh at the power surges even without cloaking.)



The Engi Homeworlds are sector 3 or later, and they're always green, so plan a route that allows you to check as many green sectors as possible.

[KyoShinda]

Your ions stay locked on the shields, naturally. Once you've disabled them, you use your heavy laser. In the first phase, I'd try to disable the cloaking device with the heavy laser first chance you get (If it runs at level 1, it's only five seconds, and your ion stacks might hold - you have a fully leveled weapons dude, if not several, right?). There's also a possibility of finding a store on level 8, which you should try to do, since you might get something to use missiles on. A rocket launcher would be super. Ions + Heavy Laser make short work of phase two and three (and yes, with the shields locked down hitting the pilot, then missile launcher, then pilot again seems like the best strategy); it's the first that might give you trouble, and rockets are great in the first.

You might find yourself having to run the anti-ship drone in phase one to get heavy laser shots in before the cloaking starts up again: with Ion getting them down to one shield, you can time your heavy laser shot to hit just after the anti-ship drone pops the last shield layer, hopefully hitting a critical system for two damage. (It's unlikely that it will come that far, I think; the Ion Blast Mk II is beastly even on its own and an extra Ion Blast should ensure critical mass. I distinctly remember having had an extra Ion Blast in a boss battle before; I'm fairly certain it was glorious.)I think I stated my strategy more for the red-tail because I'm so used to playing it. With that ship I tend to sprinkle the shields but never destroy them and instead poke through and damage random things just to poke through again later, which is kind of dumb but I've gotten used to doing it. It probably is a good idea as you say to put cloak a fairly higher priority than what I said since Stingwray doesn't have cloak.

I remember my first victory which was with the torus too, I also had mk 1+2 ion but also had a hull laser. It took it down pretty fast. I also had a shields at lvl3, those still seemed to work pretty well. Before that I died at the third phase because my ppl were busy putting out fires and for some reason I didn't think of attacking the weapons.

Does the boss have a defense drone the first round? Because then a rocket launcher would be useless.



The Engi Homeworlds are sector 3 or later, and they're always green, so plan a route that allows you to check as many green sectors as possible.Thanks! It's very nice to have an estimate of where it starts. I've been replaying through and pretty much sprinting through the game over and over and I keep ending up in areas with a bunch of engi controlled areas or all the other homeworlds right next to each other, it drives me insane! lol

[Silfir]

(Hull laser, eh? Better than nothing, I guess. "Hull" weapons always irk me. Doing two hull damage instead of one hull, one system is a bad tradeoff, and you pay for the privilege of making the choice with higher cooldowns compared to the regular laser versions. The Heavy Laser Mk I, now that's quality! My favorite laser by far. Two hull, two system - FOUR points of damage, so to speak, at a blistering cooldown? And it only costs one energy? Sign me up!)

The flagship only has a defense drone in the second phase.

Roughly speaking, each phase "counters" a strategy, or at least tries to. Phase one has the cloaking device, which makes stacking ion damage harder. Phase two has a defense drone, which screws over anyone who was planning to rely on missiles to breach the shields but can't launch more than one at a time. (This spelled my doom the first time I ever reached the boss. I was flying the Kestrel, but only had rockets to disable shields and not enough lasers to do damage otherwise.) Phase three has a Zoltan shield that delays boarding, bombs or missiles, for quite a while if you don't have a good number of lasers or ion.

[KyoShinda]

(Hull laser, eh? Better than nothing, I guess. "Hull" weapons always irk me. Doing two hull damage instead of one hull, one system is a bad tradeoff, and you pay for the privilege of making the choice with higher cooldowns compared to the regular laser versions. The Heavy Laser Mk I, now that's quality! My favorite laser by far. Two hull, two system - FOUR points of damage, so to speak, at a blistering cooldown? And it only costs one energy? Sign me up!)

The flagship only has a defense drone in the second phase.

Roughly speaking, each phase "counters" a strategy, or at least tries to. Phase one has the cloaking device, which makes stacking ion damage harder. Phase two has a defense drone, which screws over anyone who was planning to rely on missiles to breach the shields but can't launch more than one at a time. (This spelled my doom the first time I ever reached the boss. I was flying the Kestrel, but only had rockets to disable shields and not enough lasers to do damage otherwise.) Phase three has a Zoltan shield that delays boarding, bombs or missiles, for quite a while if you don't have a good number of lasers or ion.That's pretty interesting, you kind of have to have a balanced ship and be able to do several things. They did a pretty good job with this game I'd say, everything can be useful if done right.

With the hull weapons I usually have a mk2 burst laser with them and an attack drone, I try to get items that bust through shields and then pick up anything else along the way that seems interesting(which is why I used hull weapons in the first place, they do seem kind of crappy). After that though I started using defense drones instead of attack at the boss, I learned my lesson. I think instead of hull weapons for the 'once shields are down' task, I'll resort to beam weapons because they've started to make quick finish of my fights since they cut all the rooms you want to get rid of. A while ago I did have a torus with a mk2 ion and heavy ion along with heavy laser, that thing whomped on stuff but I usually end up with hull weapons instead of heavy so. ;_;

..and just now FOUND ENGI HOMEWORLDS, only took all day!

Also another question, I was having a pain in the ass time trying to get 'is it hot in here' with the bulwark. I would board the enemy ship, beat them up then fire bomb before they died, destroyed the ship and still didn't get the achievement. I tried it like 3 times and gave up, is there something I'm doing wrong?

[Stingray1]

Thanks Silfir. I'm relieved you informed me about the repair beacons restocking drone parts. They are all hugging the righthand side of sector 8. I would certainly not have visited them.

All my crew is masters. 3 human, 2 engi, only 1 mantis.

Yeah, as the last layer of shields drops one can get a heavy laser shot in.

My strategy has basically been to use the ion blast to keep shields ionized and ion blast II to keep the helm out and then take down the other systems with the laser.

It was handy to be able to see energy usage thus far, but on the flagship it is not displayed, which is unfortunate.

[GordonOverkill]

My Torus and it's crew is getting closer to the end of the game. Although I did not play perfectly in the last sector (some rather painfull mistakes, to be honest), I am quite happy with the overall developement and slowly but surely I am getting positive that this run might end successful. Would be very, very cool to get some more good hints for the final fights!

Here's the link to the latest episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuEqIE3OXpw&feature=youtu.be

[_Ln_]

2xIon Bombs + Anti-ship drone Mk II. With this outfit you could have killed all three boss stages in 5 seconds flat.

Anyway, you'd better upgrade your engines a bit.

Also, don't stick around with Ion Blask all the time. You could have demolished that assault drone which you have fled from with a couple missiles.

[KyoShinda]

I don't use boarding but I probably should since you seem to get pretty good scrap from it. One problem though is that if you board that you probably can't cut oxygen as often for extra energy since the battles usually take a little longer.


2xIon Bombs + Anti-ship drone Mk II. With this outfit you could have killed all three boss stages in 5 seconds flat.

Anyway, you'd better upgrade your engines a bit.

Also, don't stick around with Ion Blask all the time. You could have demolished that assault drone which you have fled from with a couple missiles.But the ion bombs take 20 seconds to charge! That's impossible! lol

I agree with the engines thing, I usually upgrade engines to the 40 mark first(since after that it progresses by 3's and 4's and not 5's), get shields to II then get stealth then upgrade my weapons to 4-5 bars. I usually upgrade my defense based on cost(per increase), that 'dodge 25' costs 65 overall, 2nd shields cost 100, ok that would make cloak cost more than shields III but I feel the benefits of a third system outweighs that cost(you can actually use long charge weapons, it isn't much to upgrade to II, and you can fire all weapons at once instead of staggering which can do massive damage). When it comes to weapons I usually obtain the weapons first and upgrade the bars when I can. I usually try to get 3 weapons operational at once, it makes a huge difference (I always stay away from anything more than 2 energy though).

Another thing I sometimes do is only bombard one system over and over, it usually causes the hull to bust open and many ppl flee to it and you can sometimes kill the entire crew bombing them w/o even having to board, although that only happens sometimes, or do like the wiki says and keep hitting their medbay until everyone dies. I haven't tried it yet but it sounds like it might work, although you'd need missiles/bombs for that.

[_Ln_]

But the ion bombs take 20 seconds to charge! That's impossible! lol

18 seconds according to wiki.

You know, you may be right. I didn't figure out the chance of missing which is much more drastic for ion bombs.
However, with two ion bombs at the same time you get maximum frame for shooting (which is continuous with a drone) instead of lesser one with Ion Blast, since it gradually overcomes shields.
Anti-ship Mk II is very fast. Using this frame it can probably make out around 4-5 shots (unless evaded) which will target various systems instead of one.
The ideal situation is to use Ion Bomb + Ion Blast II.

My point is that Anti-ship drone II is so much better than Burst Laser Mk II if you use ion weapons.
His weapons are level 3 now and will need another 100 scrap to get leveled up. His drone control is already 4 points.

The possibility of getting in a bad situation when your systems get hit is more or less equal (weapons will have to work at maximum capacity, the same as drone).

[Stingray1]

The Torus was victorious, tada.

Thanks again Silfir for your tips. The last stage was actually the trickiest with all their crew teleporting in.

Second also with boarding drones and defense drones shooting down my ion blasts and laser fire.

There was a shop, but it became Rebel controlled just as I wanted to jump to it.

In the end the entire team stood strong and pulled it off.

[GordonOverkill]

Congratulations, Stingray :-)

[_Ln_]

Hah, just to prove my point.
Started a Torus, got Drone Recovery Aim at the first shop (had to sell medi-gel).
Then Hull Repair. Then Scrap Recovery. Then Ion Bomb. Then second Anti-Ship Mk I. Then Beam Drone. Then another Anti-Ship Mk I (unfortunately only 3 slots for drones on Torus A).

I tore through boss like butter. Got ravaged to half hull during the second stage because first thing he does he launches a drone into my Flight Control (sucks to play without Cloak, I must say). It took me the same amount of time to kill him completely while who took half of my hull though :D
Third stage was likewise easy, broke through Zoltan shield in a couple of seconds, then boom!

This time I didn't even board him during second and third stages to disable weapons. Focused Ion Blast and Ion Bomb on shields solely.

I was watching the boss being demolished by my 3 drones and let shield-dude Rockman destroyed by 2 boarders. Oh well :(

Also, buying Zoltan crew in shops is quite a good deal.

[KyoShinda]

18 seconds according to wiki.

You know, you may be right. I didn't figure out the chance of missing which is much more drastic for ion bombs.
However, with two ion bombs at the same time you get maximum frame for shooting (which is continuous with a drone) instead of lesser one with Ion Blast, since it gradually overcomes shields.
Anti-ship Mk II is very fast. Using this frame it can probably make out around 4-5 shots (unless evaded) which will target various systems instead of one.
The ideal situation is to use Ion Bomb + Ion Blast II.

My point is that Anti-ship drone II is so much better than Burst Laser Mk II if you use ion weapons.
His weapons are level 3 now and will need another 100 scrap to get leveled up. His drone control is already 4 points.

The possibility of getting in a bad situation when your systems get hit is more or less equal (weapons will have to work at maximum capacity, the same as drone).Oh, I wasn't sure, I threw at a number that seemed about right and yes, lv2 drones are great. I find it funny how when, even when you have a lvl1 anti-ship drone, on the smaller pirate ships or like the crab mantis ship, sometimes when it goes off to the side if fires like 4 shots within 6 seconds bouncing back and forth in it's small width but on the larger ships it takes a while to cruise back and forth.


The Torus was victorious, tada.

Thanks again Silfir for your tips. The last stage was actually the trickiest with all their crew teleporting in.

Second also with boarding drones and defense drones shooting down my ion blasts and laser fire.

There was a shop, but it became Rebel controlled just as I wanted to jump to it.

In the end the entire team stood strong and pulled it off.Having a lot of ppl always helps against boarding, when I first died to the boss I had 4 ppl, putting out fires and fighting boarding drones got really troublesome. Now I try to get anyone I can. Also, congrats!



Also, buying Zoltan crew in shops is quite a good deal.
If you want to talk about butter, Zoltan are made of butter. xD

[Stingray1]

Thanks guys. Lack of oxygen is a good solution to both boarders and fires when low on crew. Doesn't help vs drones though, only thing to do then is damage enemy's control.

Which was what I did in the final battle, with medbay down and breached and crew almost dead. it meant that I was down to ion blast and laser for most of the battle, but hey who needs more than one ion weapon. ;)

[GordonOverkill]

Well, I am afraid I absolutely ruined my strategy during this episode due to most stupid playing ever :-( Now I am desperately in need of your support, otherwise the quest of the "Speed Metal" might come to a sad ending. Every help is very much appreciated!

I you want to see me failing badly, here's the new episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_jx8Uz0BY&feature=youtu.be

[_Ln_]

Well, I am afraid I absolutely ruined my strategy during this episode due to most stupid playing ever :-( Now I am desperately in need of your support, otherwise the quest of the "Speed Metal" might come to a sad ending. Every help is very much appreciated!

I you want to see me failing badly, here's the new episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_jx8Uz0BY&feature=youtu.be

I'm ashamed, but I laughed out loud both times. This is the thing I've learned very very soon - do not shoot anything that damages hull while your crew is boarding. Wait till you get Federation Cruiser and start forgetting to turn off the Artillery Beam.

I have some general advice, but can you post your full equipment?

[GordonOverkill]

Let's see, I have...

Shield: 8 (max)
Engines: 5
Oxygen: 1
Weapon Control: 6
Drone Control: 4
Medbay: 1
Crew Teleporter: 1
Cloaking: 1
-----
Piloting: 1
Sensors: 2
Door System: 2
-----
Power Bars: 19
-----
Weapons:
Ion Bomb
Ion Blast II
Burst Laser II
Hermes Missile
Hull Beam
-----
Drones:
Defense I
-----
Augmentations:
Automated Re-Loader
Engi Med-bot Dispersal
Shield Charge Booster
-----
Crew:
Engi with maxed weapons and improved repair
Engi with maxed engines and maxed repair
Human with maxed piloting
-----
Hull is completely repaired
-----
With full enginges: evade 45%
-----
Fuel: 24
Missiles: 19
Drone Parts: 11
-----
Scrap: 89

[KyoShinda]

How much difference is there between easy and normal? I was playing easy a lot but then decided to keep playing normal with the stealth cruiser and it seems to be a lot harder. I can't tell if it's because of the ship or the mode.

And I find it weird how when your mantis died, when you 'teleport it back' it was there temporarily then disappeared again. Engi ships seem to be bad luck for you.

[GordonOverkill]

How much difference is there between easy and normal? I was playing easy a lot but then decided to keep playing normal with the stealth cruiser and it seems to be a lot harder. I can't tell if it's because of the ship or the mode.

Sorry, I don't know. Never played on easy mode so far.


And I find it weird how when your mantis died, when you 'teleport it back' it was there temporarily then disappeared again. Engi ships seem to be bad luck for you.

I just played horribly bad today. So I desperately hope for some nice tipps one last time x)

[KyoShinda]

Sorry, I don't know. Never played on easy mode so far.

I just played horribly bad today. So I desperately hope for some nice tipps one last time x)
Mmmm, I just died, great(lol). I can tell you there were no unmanned ships with 2 attack drones or any rebel ships with defense drones mkII in easy(I think even the boss had mk1 defense). At first it doesn't seem too different besides starting with 20 less scrap, but in the first couple sectors the ships usually had like 1 or so shields, way different from normal, where everything has 2 or 3. I think I'm going to switch to a ship that isn't a pain in the arse for normal. I was mostly playing easy to unlock things but got a little too used to it and thought I was whooping tail.

I've actually learned some stuff from watching your videos, like the fact that you can switch people like that to extend their fight time a little bit. I usually make the injured person parade through the ship running away from everybody.

[Silfir]

Let's see, I have...

Shield: 8 (max)
Engines: 5
Oxygen: 1
Weapon Control: 6
Drone Control: 4
Medbay: 1
Crew Teleporter: 1
Cloaking: 1
-----
Piloting: 1
Sensors: 2
Door System: 2
-----
Power Bars: 19
-----
Weapons:
Ion Bomb
Ion Blast II
Burst Laser II
Hermes Missile
Hull Beam
-----
Drones:
Defense I
-----
Augmentations:
Automated Re-Loader
Engi Med-bot Dispersal
Shield Charge Booster
-----
Crew:
Engi with maxed weapons and improved repair
Engi with maxed engines and maxed repair
Human with maxed piloting
-----
Hull is completely repaired
-----
With full enginges: evade 45%
-----
Fuel: 24
Missiles: 19
Drone Parts: 11
-----
Scrap: 89

Three crewmen is really, really harsh. As always, there's a small chance you might find a shop on sector 8, if it sells crewmen, buy some. The decision not to sell the Med-Bot Dispersal throughout the entire game turned out to have some benefit, because it will allow your few crewment to avoid medbay visits even if they take punishment from putting out fires and stray shots and occasional lack of oxygen throughout.

You have a lot of important secondary systems stuck on level 1. The upgrades to level 2 can be absolute lifesavers and are very much inside your 89 scrap range - but have to be balanced against the fact that you're also not maxed out in power. You should be able to pick up more scrap on sector 8 by visiting unvisited beacons or selling items to shops; do it. (Sell the hull beam; the Burst Laser II does a more than adequate job wasting the enemy ship once the shields are down, charges faster, and you can never have enough concentrated targeted system damage.) Level 2 in Oxygen, Piloting, the Medbay or Cloaking will make those systems not just sturdier, if you do find yourself in need of oxygen or the medbay before the battle is over, you need them juiced up. It's a tough call. I'd get at least oxygen 2 and invest the rest of the 89 scrap in power bars.

Defensively, you are really vulnerable to boarding. Relatively speaking, the first phase of the boss fight is by far the least dangerous to you, so you should use it to lay the groundwork for an easier time later - try to kill as many crewmen as possible on the main body of the ship and the missiles room. Bring missiles, Ion Blast Mk II and the burst laser. Missile priority should probably be missiles room, then piloting or cloaking or maybe shields, as your ion blast II stays locked on shields, and once the shields are down you just aim the burst laser at whichever system the crewmen are repairing at the time. Use your cloaking device to dodge the first missile barrage. Later, it's probably most useful against the enemy ion barrages.

Second phase, swap out the missiles for ion bombs, and keep the defense drone powered up at all times. Really pay close attention, since it's easy for it to get deactivated by a stray drone. Ion bombs, incidentally, go into the missiles room, so the defense drone can concentrate on keeping the boarding drones away, and your cloaking can stay reserved for the power surges (remember to only cloak shortly after the power surge drones actually appear). Meanwhile, your Ion Blast II should be able to switftly turn off shields and your burst laser should kill piloting first, then perhaps missiles so you can stop using bombs (might need to save up some missiles - but do remember before the flagship to hit up repair bases for extra ones) then the drone control to switch off whatever boarding drone might have made it onto your ship, then whatever else you think is in need of some tender loving carnage. Use cloaking, of course, to dodge power surges. Things might get nasty in this phase - but Ion Blast II + Burst Laser II should kill the flagship fast enough.

In the third phase, if you didn't kill enough crewmen, you might have to resort to venting almost the entire ship (your pilot can't leave; if he gets into a fight, send one of your Engis to assist and pray to Celestia that the med-bot dispersal makes a difference; your remaining Engi will also need Medbay 2 to survive in a 1v3, so make this a priority with your flagship 2 scrap) and retreating to your medbay. This is where having Oxygen 2 might make the crucial difference, since after the attackers suffocate you want the damn thing full of air again so your Engi can repair crucial systems. In this phase, I would actually abandon subtlety altogether. Pump the shields full of Ion and Hermes missiles to take them down as fast as possible, knock out the piloting, and just missile+laser the hull down. Ion knocks out Zoltan shields very quickly, so you should be fine winning the race.

[quik]

How much difference is there between easy and normal?

Easy mode is challenging enough when you begin playing. Normal mode is a lot harder and you need to optimize your resources and choose your battles more carefully.

[GordonOverkill]

Well, without spoiling too much: My Torus series is over and out! Big thanks for your help and support during the last days, especially to Silfir... definitely learned a whole lot from your hints!

Here's the link to the second-but-last video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1i6vP4ff7A&feature=c4-overview&list=UUMWW1k4ZUEB5Fu9EfjYMTUg

And here's the very last one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDRirR-cag4&feature=youtu.be

[_Ln_]

Congrats, that was pretty solid.

But, damn, your power management sometimes made me shout at the youtube video. ;)

[Silfir]

I haven't even watched to the end, but I have to write this now or I'll burst.

Power your engines. I've seen too many systems that were doing nothing at the time powered while your engines were chugging along at minimum power, sometimes even at one bar. When people write that you should have level 5 Engines for the final battle, they mean powered. The magical number is 40% Evasion, as that adds to the Cloaking device's 60% bonus to protect your ship completely while the cloaking device runs.

You've also fallen prey to a grievous misunderstanding as far as the cloaking device is concerned. For the flagship, the recommended Cloaking power usage is 1. This is because extra power to Cloaking prolongs the cloaking period, but the main draw of the cloaking device is not a long cloaking period to help weapons to recharge (though that helps, too, don't get me wrong), it's the ability to 100% evade short-term barrages of powerful attacks. Perhaps more importantly, the power surges are not delayed by your cloaking period, so running higher level cloaking means your cloaking device will still be cooling down as the next power surge rolls around. If someone recommended higher levels of cloaking to you, it's probably as security.

These two misunderstandings escalated each other in your (I'm sorry) horrifying mistake of buying cloaking 3 over the final power bars. I have fought every single boss battle ever with fully upgraded reactors and I can hardly contemplate ever not doing so. There's just so much to power. Full shields (six to eight), engines (ordinarily at least five) and your weapons and drones.

I really hope you're going to make it anyway, because I'm not sure I could live with the suspicion that I've somehow failed you in not communicating my advice properly.

[GordonOverkill]

I haven't even watched to the end, but I have to write this now or I'll burst.

Power your engines. I've seen too many systems that were doing nothing at the time powered while your engines were chugging along at minimum power, sometimes even at one bar. When people write that you should have level 5 Engines for the final battle, they mean powered. The magical number is 40% Evasion, as that adds to the Cloaking device's 60% bonus to protect your ship completely while the cloaking device runs.

Haha, sorry for the pain and despair! To be honest, during most of the time I just did not feel in danger of being seriously hit. Of the three rebel ships that I fought before the boss only one was a little dangerous to my hull, which was the second one with the missile launcher. (Still you should not have skipped the third battle. That one included a really exciting moment... my bording crew was already seriously injured and the tellyporter not yet charged when I realized that those damn rebels had an improved door controll :-o )


You've also fallen prey to a grievous misunderstanding as far as the cloaking device is concerned. For the flagship, the recommended Cloaking power usage is 1. This is because extra power to Cloaking prolongs the cloaking period, but the main draw of the cloaking device is not a long cloaking period to help weapons to recharge (though that helps, too, don't get me wrong), it's the ability to 100% evade short-term barrages of powerful attacks. Perhaps more importantly, the power surges are not delayed by your cloaking period, so running higher level cloaking means your cloaking device will still be cooling down as the next power surge rolls around. If someone recommended higher levels of cloaking to you, it's probably as security.

Thanks, that's definitely good to know!


These two misunderstandings escalated each other in your (I'm sorry) horrifying mistake of buying cloaking 3 over the final power bars. I have fought every single boss battle ever with fully upgraded reactors and I can hardly contemplate ever not doing so. There's just so much to power. Full shields (six to eight), engines (ordinarily at least five) and your weapons and drones.

Most important aim of my next FTL Let's play: Not kill Silfir!


I really hope you're going to make it anyway, because I'm not sure I could live with the suspicion that I've somehow failed you in not communicating my advice properly.

Haha, I am the Captain and of course I take the whole responsibility! Anyway, I hope you enjoy(ed) the series at least a little. In my eyes it features some truely nerve-racking moments and I am quite positive that it is at least not boring to watch ;-)


@_Ln_:
Thanks for your support, and also sorry to you for some rather "special" tactics that I used ;-)

[Silfir]

Wait, what. Why did you power down your weapons. Are you high?! If you don't want to shoot, just deselect their targets - click on the weapon, right click, bam, no target!

Can I bring myself to keep watching? I don't know. So exciting, so entertaining, so painful, so sad. Let's Play at its best and worst. Celestia lend me strength.

EDIT: Check 19:30 again. That's how my power management usually looks during boss fights. No superfluous systems, full power on the engines. O2 doesn't become a problem as long as your guys can physically breathe. With some extra power, you could have powered a defense drone as well without having to power down a weapon again.

I definitely can't hate on the doors 3 investment though. That's some delicious asphyxiation going on.

EDIT2: 20:55: Please start up a new game right now, get into a fight, and practice deselecting targets. Click on a weapon that is charging and has a target as if to select a new target, then right click. Now it won't fire, but will still charge and be ready to fire as needed. Please practice this until your fingers bleed and then never, ever do this to me again. We're physically located in the same country, and I can check your band's tour plan, but you will never see me coming.

(For serious though - if I ever manage to be nearby we should totally meet up or something.)

EDIT3: What is up with your weapons? You don't have the Ion Blast on autofire because of your depowering spree and I don't know what? You should have killed that guy a long time ago!

EDIT4: Thinks are looking way up. One minor nitpick here; don't pull your guys if you don't have to. Sensors are non-critical and you could have vented that part easily now that boarders are no longer a concern. The Engines dude adds 10 evasion as long as he's at his station and it's not like your weapons dude is playing Minesweeper on his console either. Congratulations in advance anyway, by now you would have to screw up majorly to lose.

Say hello to the wife for me. Well done!

[KyoShinda]

Yeah, watching you depower the weapons made me cringe too. xD

Also, a tip. You can turn on autofire but then hold Ctrl+Wpn Num to do a single attack with said weapon instead of constant. As an example, set on autofire then do a regular 1+click on w/e to constant attack with ion II then Ctrl+click with a missile to fire once and not repeat(obviously, yellow reticle being repeat attack, red being singular). What I usually do to reset weapon lock is tap 1234 in a row then right click.

All in all it was pretty fun to watch and I realized a lot of mistakes I usually make when fighting the boss.

@Silfir: was totally wondering about the cloak recharge thing. I never tested and assumed that the recharge time between lvl3 cloaks was shorter simply because it lasted longer.

I gave my MS Paint a cloaking device(totally not cheating I swear).
http://i.imgur.com/kkCXhkN.png

[Stingray1]

Congratulations GordonOverkill on your second victory on that platform.

[GordonOverkill]

Thanks, again to all of you guys!

@KyoShida:
Actually I was really glad that the boss fight went so well. This was the very first time I fought him without bording troops, so I really did not know if it would work.

@Silfir:
Would be great to meet up some day! At least we seem to have a very simmilar taste in video games ;-) Greetings back from my wife!

@Stingray:
I expressed it in this strange way because the night before I recorded the last episode I made a test run on my laptop, which became a success, too. Yesterday night I played one more run with the Torus to see how I do when I care of everything I learned from the very beginning and again I won, so I am really happy with this ship right now! Not yet sure which ship I will try next.

[Stingray1]

Ok. Can one simply install the game on another platform without another license and just copy the savefile across?

[Silfir]

FTL has no DRM whatsoever. Go nuts.

[Grey]

Sell the hull beam; the Burst Laser II does a more than adequate job wasting the enemy ship once the shields are down, charges faster, and you can never have enough concentrated targeted system damage.

I would have advised keeping the hull beam. It is beautifully effective against the flagship as it has several empty rooms, letting you finish each round extremely quickly. With an ion bomb + ion burst II there's no need for extra systems targeting. Plus beams always hit as long as the shields are down (which they will be with ion II) - compared with lasers which rely on the pilot room being down.

In general the lasers are better, mind, because most ships have few systemless rooms.

[KyoShinda]

I think I've found my new favorite weapon, the pegasus(I find it all the time but usually don't use because the power cost). I have the pegasus along with dual lasers and pike beam with the occasional artillery attacking, but for the most part the pegasus does all the work(artillery usually hits the pilot bay which is really nice).

I forgot to use the ion bomb instead of the pegasus the second round of the boss but still had no trouble getting through. Little on ammo usage for how good it does. I was only able to use the pike beam and dual lasers for the rebels before the flagship because I usually have to target things first other than the shields, I never break them down in time before the flagship gets annihilated.

I have a pretty interesting setup this time too: no cloak, 3 shields and 2 defense drones. It actually seems to be pretty good, besides the fact that I lost 9hp second part(since the occasional missile would get through or the drone surges, I have to move a bar from oxygen to engines a lot, so I have to take a 'breather' sometimes lol). The defense drones shot down about 5 or 6 boarding pods but 1 got through afterwards. First round I lost 1hp. Haven't done third round yet, but should be easy since I'll switch out the ion bomb I didn't use for ion blast II.

Edit: Third round lost 9hp too(surge, owww oww oww!!!)

A while ago I actually had a boarding team but they both died on their first board(in sector 6) because one tp'd too late and accidentally moved the other one to another room before it activated. I need more practice with boarding, like a lot more. lol

[GordonOverkill]

Won a funny run with the Red-Tail yesterday... it became obvious that I did not learn a single thing from my mistakes with the Torus: I killed two complete boarding teams... both against automated enemy ships x-D The first mantis and rock were still inside when the enemy jumped away, the second (two rocks that I bought in the same sector for 130 scrap) could not be teleported out after the enemy cloaked and thus suffocated to death... in the end I was lucky to get yet another Mantis and so my third team survived till the end. Also this was my first boss fight without a cloaking device. I lost 2/3 of my hull points during all three boss stages, but I think it went quite well all in all. Maxed shields, engines and energy plus a defense drone did a good job. On the offense I had a burst laser I, a heavy laser I, one of the original small lasers and an ion bomb.

[KyoShinda]

Won a funny run with the Red-Tail yesterday... it became obvious that I did not learn a single thing from my mistakes with the Torus: I killed two complete boarding teams... both against automated enemy ships x-D The first mantis and rock were still inside when the enemy jumped away, the second (two rocks that I bought in the same sector for 130 scrap) could not be teleported out after the enemy cloaked and thus suffocated to death... in the end I was lucky to get yet another Mantis and so my third team survived till the end. Also this was my first boss fight without a cloaking device. I lost 2/3 of my hull points during all three boss stages, but I think it went quite well all in all. Maxed shields, engines and energy plus a defense drone did a good job. On the offense I had a burst laser I, a heavy laser I, one of the original small lasers and an ion bomb.Next time I try boarding I'll take those into consideration. It is pretty interesting fighting the boss without cloaking, it makes you feel like a guy in a bath robe with an ak-47.

[Stingray1]

Hehe, funny picturing that.

Achieved No Red-shirts Here. with the Red-tail. How bad was I, only reaching sector 8 now without losing a crew member.

[GordonOverkill]

It's absolutely hopeless... just started a very nice run with the Zoltan ship... and once again destroyed the enemy ship with my whole boarding crew x-D I hate crew teleportation!
So of course I haven't got the No Red-shirts achievement, too, Stingray ;-)

[KyoShinda]

I ended up accidentally getting 2 achievements. The first one was 'astronomically low odds' where I was trying to get the 'use cloak to negate 9 pts of dmg' with the nesasio at the boss part 3(or 2, I forgot). The other one was 'flying on a wing and a prayer' with the bulwark because a couple times I got the fix event beacons and started doing speed runs because I was looking for the stupid rock homeworlds(so if I was at a shop I would say 'meh, 2/3 hp is fine, don't have time for shopping').

[Stingray1]

I cannot find the timerefuse to browse the ftl forums(spoileraphobia), but maybe one of you guys have. Are they going to do something about the scummy crew training exploits?

Training crew skills in asteroid fields or vs 'weak' opponents?

Edit - I have some suggestions to fix this concern, if you can link me to the best place to make these, alternatively I can post them here and you can relay them.

[Silfir]

Pilots, shield guys and engineers used to train skills in asteroid fields even when there was no enemy present - that was really bad.

[Saracen]

I had to try this game after reading this thread. I'm a big fan of Master of Orion 2 and this reminds me of that game. It took about 6-7 games on easy to beat it. Now i'm trying to win on normal, a lot more difficult task :) I'm using a lot of boarding crews now, lets see how it goes... Luck is a bit too big factor in this game. If you get good weapons its much easier.

[Stingray1]

6-7 tries is very impressive, it took me 43 tries to get my 1st and another 38 for the 2nd on normal.

Speaking about luck or lack thereof, I'm in sector 4 with the vortex and had not 1 opportunity to double my crew.

[Saracen]

I was slightly spoiled, I saw a video of a guy playing 3 sectors. What is the vortex?

[Stingray1]

The Vortex is the Engi Cruiser Type B. Starts with 1 crew member.

[persy]

It's the worst ship in-game. It's a ship that deserves to be named "Glory Device", if you know what I mean;)

[Stingray1]

The description of the 'Drone Reactor Booster' makes it sound like it affects only the speed of boarding drones, when in fact it affects the speed of all erm..erm.. inship(?) drones.

[Dogbreath]

It's the worst ship in-game. It's a ship that deserves to be named "Glory Device", if you know what I mean;)

Arrgh, now I'm all nostalgic for UQM. There really needs to be more games like it.

[KyoShinda]

I had to try this game after reading this thread. I'm a big fan of Master of Orion 2 and this reminds me of that game. It took about 6-7 games on easy to beat it. Now i'm trying to win on normal, a lot more difficult task :) I'm using a lot of boarding crews now, lets see how it goes... Luck is a bit too big factor in this game. If you get good weapons its much easier.I LOVE master of orion 2, I played it for a good while. Ironically, my pastor was the one who introduced me to it because he's very into videogames.

The vortex isn't that bad, you start out with freakin' heavy guns. Everything but the mantis cruiser and the kestrel(+redtail) have huge drawbacks. I admit, I didn't play the vortex very long, but that was because I wanted to unlock more ships. The bulwark gets really annoying because you get missile trauma trying to keep your ammo afloat and saving up to find a weapon that doesn't waste even more ammo.

Recently I got the glaive beam for the first time(I do have the DA-SR12 but haven't used it yet) and I was in a rock sector so it'd be like RESIST RESIST 3 RESIST RESIST, OMG STOP DOING THAT!! lol

[GordonOverkill]

I am a big fan of Master of Orion 2, too. Been playing it since the original release and still enjoy it alot! Sooner or later I will definitely make a MOO2 Let's play on youtube (although I am not good enough to beat it on the hardest level, so "hard" is the most difficult one that I could play).

[KyoShinda]

I am a big fan of Master of Orion 2, too. Been playing it since the original release and still enjoy it alot! Sooner or later I will definitely make a MOO2 Let's play on youtube (although I am not good enough to beat it on the hardest level, so "hard" is the most difficult one that I could play).I think we should make an orion thread, because I was going to start talking about builds but this is the ftl thread. From what I'm seeing, that game came out when I was 5.. holy cow. I'm not what you would call an ancient gamer, but I find older games more interesting than newer games because they are all about content. I did manage to beat orion on hard, but that was because it was me vs. one other guy and I rushed him.

And lol to wikipedia: "MoO 2" redirects here. For the chemical MoO2, see Molybdenum dioxide.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

For Master of Orion 2 fans, have you tried Master of Magic? It's the same kind of game, but on a fantasy setting, with heroes, and tactical battles, and summoned creatures, and spells, lots of spells! MoO2 is a great game but MoM is even better IMHO.

[Stingray1]

Oh, I played that game to death and gone on impossible setting a year or two before my ADOM addiction started.

Kind of Civilization mixed with Art of War all with magic and fantastic creatures.

[Saracen]

I'll def. try this MoM soon, looks interesting...

I won FTL on normal with the Fed. Cruiser. Now I would like to unlock some new ships. I only have 3 (torus, kestrel, Fed. Cruiser). Is it possible to find new ships without spoilers in a reasonable time? Or should i spoil myself?

[Stingray1]

I enjoy finding them myself, I think you will get them sooner if you spoil yourself, but the puzzles aren't that complicated.

Have you read the ingame tips by clicking on 'LIST' in hangar or stats and hovering pointer over the undiscovered ones?

P.S. Even with the ships you have and unlocking their B types you'll have many attempted playthroughs and encounter the other ships by chance anyway.

P.P.S. On second thought maybe not, as you seem pretty adept. Good hunting.

[Saracen]

No I have not, ill do that.
I decided not to spoil myself yet, let's see how long it takes :)

[KyoShinda]

The very last one you pretty much need a spoiler, it is very unintuitive and very based on what sectors spawn after another, the rest are fairly easily obtained through normal means though.

[Stingray1]

I don't need no spoilers. How dificult can it be, take the guy to the sector, he even tells you that. It requires luck yes, but being spoiled is never a necessity.

[Grey]

The rarest ship unlock takes a lot of luck even with spoilers. The rest I mostly found just playing the game.

[_Ln_]

Speaking of unlocks, I fired off FTL today to kill a couple ships and managed to win with a Mantis Cruiser (haven't won with it previously) unlocking Type B at the same time (well achievements make it really hard not to do that).

Decided to give the Basilisk a go. First 3 games I restart because I got Zoltans (one with solar flares for more absurdity) as _first_ fights. Fourth game - destroyed the rebel flagship. Seriously, that's gotta be the best ship ever (although I don't have slug and crystal ships yet) - double shields and defense drone and crew teleport right from the start? Gimme any time.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Decided to give the Basilisk a go. First 3 games I restart because I got Zoltans (one with solar flares for more absurdity) as _first_ fights. Fourth game - destroyed the rebel flagship. Seriously, that's gotta be the best ship ever (although I don't have slug and crystal ships yet) - double shields and defense drone and crew teleport right from the start? Gimme any time.
Yes, I have all the ships except Crystal and I agree the Basilisk the most OP ship by a mile.

Not only you get great boarding capabilities, but you also get the best two drones in the game from the get go, and level two shields. It's just awesome. If you can get past level 1 (i.e. you don't get a disproportionate amount of Zoltan before you can get a weapon) it's even difficult not to win with this ship.

Although I also have a soft spot for the DA-SR12. It's another awesome ship.

[Stingray1]

Yeah, it's almost as if they put that ship in the game to guarantee a victory.

[persy]

Yeah, it's almost as if they put that ship in the game to guarantee a victory.
Decided to do some achievements:
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/580126086437756944/A4C3ECB2BBE3EA27007DD2602371CB0B5829CF02/
No upgrades until sector 5 + no shopping until sector 8 :eek:
Crazy ship if you don't run into zoltan and doorles drones much.

Btw, anyone have any tip on pacifist run achievement?

[Stingray1]

Btw, anyone have any tip on pacifist run achievement?

Well, I want to say use the Basilisk too. The pacifism run is all about defense and jumping as soon as possible and blue encounter options.

So, upgrade engines, doors, shields. Get as many different aliens and types of weapons for the blue event options.

Scrap recovery, long range, drone recovery.

[_Ln_]

Btw, anyone have any tip on pacifist run achievement?

Do you have the Nesasio?

I've decided to cover Pacifist yesterday and made on a 3rd try or something.
Sell everything except Long Range Scanners at the first store, upgrade engines/cloak, avoid any encounter if you can. Takes ~5 min or so.

[Grey]

For the pacifist just keep avoiding everything. Skip to the end of each sector with the minimum sectors visited, avoid known ship locations, choose the run away option at dialogues. It's actually fairly easy.

[Stingray1]

Man, I just had such a close victory with the Bulwark.

Had 3 hull left, half the ship on fire and oxygen almost depleted. I was expecting the ship to explode within a second.
Chearing my laser on to charge.

Should have taken a screeny.

[KyoShinda]

Yeah, it's almost as if they put that ship in the game to guarantee a victory.They should give you an achievement for dying with the Basilisk. lol

[GordonOverkill]

Just won my first game with the Vortex. That was maybe the hardest ship I played so far. Really dramatic run, in sector six I was down to 1 Hull Point and lost four of my seven crewmen. In the end I used two Burst Lasers Mk.2 and a Helbard beam.

[Stingray1]

Congrats on winning with the Vortex, I struggle to get past sector 3 with it.

I'm not by my FTL platform now, but I've maybe reached the boss 16-18 times and have never seen a 5 shield ship either.

It must be a rare sight.

[_Ln_]

Congrats on winning with the Vortex, I struggle to get past sector 3 with it.

I'm not by my FTL platform now, but I've maybe reached the boss 16-18 times and have never seen a 5 shield ship either.

It must be a rare sight.

In one of my game I had to run from a 5-shield Rebel fighter with Defense Drone Mk II in sector 8, because I couldn't damage them (didn't want to jeopardize my crew with a teleporter onslaught) just to effortlessly beat the boss.

[persy]

Congrats on winning with the Vortex, I struggle to get past sector 3 with it.

I've got a Vortex in my top5 highscore with almost 5k points. It sits there and mocks me for almost 3 months by now, I can't kick it out without rebel wave scumming))

AW GAWD, I've unlocked Crystal B it's so freaking OP, you're 100% invincible against anything you can meet in first 2-3 sectors

[KyoShinda]

In one of my game I had to run from a 5-shield Rebel fighter with Defense Drone Mk II in sector 8, because I couldn't damage them (didn't want to jeopardize my crew with a teleporter onslaught) just to effortlessly beat the boss.Ships with 5 shields actually exist? That's nuts. I'll add bombs to my list of 'If X ever happens' just like I keep anything ion to get through zoltan shields.

Edit: I forgot someone already mentioned that, I have bad memory. lol

---I got bored in the break room, so I made up a drawing game loosely based on ftl. For a RNG you make a 7x7 number matrix, put in every number 1-0 5 times except 8 which you write in 4 times (I wanted to keep it a square closest to a count of 10, and the 0's represent 10's). To read it I do it first by columns (left to right) then rows (up to down) diagonals, and then repeat it. You could probably have some little piece of paper to keep track of which number you're on and which direction the next number is.

---You draw your ship and your enemy's ship, each 10 squares in any formation, pick 4 rooms to draw a dot as your systems (if your 4 system rooms are destroyed, you lose). At the end of every turn, you mark a line above the ship to show that that turn is complete.

---It's basically 1 shot each turn of each ship and the rng calculates hit/miss, what room, and chance of starting fire(a chain of 3 rng numbers used). To begin a turn you look at the next number you are on (1-7 is a hit), what room which is figured out by going left to right, top to bottom (topleft-most room would be 1, bottomleft would be 0), after those two are calculated, if the number is 9 or 0, that room is considered not only destroyed, but on fire. I used bowling notations to signify things, a room hit is a spare (slash), a room on fire is a strike (an X).

---At the beginning of every turn, before a shot, if there are rooms on fire, they will spread (to 4 non-diagonal squares if there's a room) if the rng is 9 or 0. Since the rng is slightly less likely to select an 8, it's good to pick the 8th room as one of your system rooms. So, to sum it up, you check which way the rng is going, calculate fire spread->hit->which room and fire chance. If someone misses, it goes straight to the next ship's turn. The strategy of the game is to pick which rooms you want your systems in and the structure of your ship (although, having most of the ship as hallways is kind of exploiting the fire spread). I thought this would only be useful for breaks at work but I also use it for breaks at school (cuz talking to ppl is less fun).

[GordonOverkill]

Sounds funny! Definitely a creative way to waste your time ;-)

I just won with the Bulwark, so I have now won at least once with every ship that I have unlocked (Kestrel, Red-Tail, Nesasio, Torus, Vortex, Osprey, Nisos, Man of War, Bulwark and Adjudicator). Now it's time to hunt for some new vessels once again!

[GordonOverkill]

Just in case anybody would like to follow my new space adventure, today I have started a new FTL run on my youtube channel. I've chosen the Kestrel as my vessel and the first episode is already online. I hope and got the feeling that I improved my performance alot since my last series with the Torus, but still your hints and feedback are very much appreciated!

Here's the link to the first episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX4gatroN_o
During this episode the ship crossed the first sector, getting quite a beating by some nasty foes. My aim was to at least increase the shields and reactors.

And here you get to the second episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PPbHmwT_TQ&feature=youtu.be
Luckily the fights were a little more relaxed this time. Therefore lack of fuel and close pursuers became a serious issue. My aim for this episode was to increase reactors and engines each by two.

Here you get to the third episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVGqUKcEMI0
Well, to make it short, in this episode both ship and crew got quite a heavy beating!

Well, and here's the link to the fourth and (sadly) last episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAmkcHtkQHg
I continued being too trusty on the one hand and too greedy on the other... could have survived if I had been a little smarter. However, so it's ADOM again tomorrow!

[Stingray1]

Have you been victorious with the Kestrel, I remember it took me quite a few runs to win with her.

Maybe wait for prerelease 19 before starting a new ADOM series. That bug that ended Rattatordon's adventure and others will be fixed in it. Just a thought.


Yes, there will be a public Prerelease 19 shortly.

[GordonOverkill]

Yes, the Kestrel was actually the first ship I won with. I like her quite alot and actually this was quite a stupid death... should just have gone to the store directly. I had about 50 scrap and a defense drone mk.II and a boarding drone to sell, so I could have easiely repaired the ship. Instead I tried to visit as many sectors as possible with my heavily damaged ship... in hindsight that was rather stupid x-) However, the whole run was far from perfect.
Good idea, if prerelease 19 is soon to come, I will wait for it. Untill then I might play something else... for example I definitely want to play a hardcore challange game of Jagged Alliance 2, maybe I will start that now.

[KyoShinda]

Omg, for the first time I decided to take out the entire crew the first round of the last boss and it makes the second round so much easier!! How come you guys didn't tell me about this. xD

Now I can just storm the entire ship without worry.

[Stingray1]

I did not tell you, because I wanted you to figure it out yourself. See, I knew you would succeed.

[_Ln_]

Doesn't the flagship AI vent the ship as soon as it's enabled?

[GordonOverkill]

At least it repairs it's systems again... also that anoying missile launcher. That's why I prefare to kill just the weapon guys, so the weapons themselves stay out of order once they are destroyed.

[_Ln_]

At least it repairs it's systems again... also that anoying missile launcher. That's why I prefare to kill just the weapon guys, so the weapons themselves stay out of order once they are destroyed.

This is not always a problem - AI will never fix systems in a room with a breach.
With a good timing I've just died with the Bulwark at the end of sector 6. Killed a record of 6 of my own guys to asphyxiation on enemy ship. While some of them were caused by the bot enabling a cloak in the most inappropriate moment, two initial rockmen died after I've killed the entire enemy crew and was busy fixing the oxygen supply and forgot that the rockmen stood in a room with a breach.
It went like this - where are these rockmen dying sounds coming from? OH, SHI-!

[KyoShinda]

I did not tell you, because I wanted you to figure it out yourself. See, I knew you would succeed.
You have faith in me! Although, I died the third round because I started round 1 with half my hull.



Doesn't the flagship AI vent the ship as soon as it's enabled?
It didn't do it to me, but that would make a lot of sense. I was on 'normal' so idk.

[GordonOverkill]

Wahuuuu, fiiiiiinally won with the DA-SR 12! Can't express how much I hate this ship x-D

[_Ln_]

You guys probably know this already, but a free add-on (FTL Enhanced Edition) is scheduled to arrive "in the early 2014".

For those who haven't seen the trailer - here's a link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWTy4kiNXeY

A forum thread with very detailed analysis of the trailer - http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=19168

Also, I still haven't unlocked crystal & slug cruisers. Can't express how much I hate this.

[Stingray1]

LOL, well done Gordon. I failed about 4 times today with the DA-SR 12, never got past sector 4.

_Ln_, funny those are the exact same ships I haven't unlocked. :)

[Grey]

Wahuuuu, fiiiiiinally won with the DA-SR 12! Can't express how much I hate this ship x-D

I LOVE that ship :D Recently unlocked the crystal cruiser with it.

The best thing to do is level up stealth to max very quickly. When you enter a fight you can instantly cloak, stopping all the enemy's weapon charge, whilst your glaive beam keeps charging. 15 seconds cloak + the 10+ weapon charge time means they'll never get to fire on you before your glaive beam destroys them in one hit, or at least takes out their weapons.

And remember with the glaive beam to maximise rooms hit and try to get shields hit first or early. If you can't kill the enemy in one hit at least take down their weapons / drones.

[GordonOverkill]

That sounds like an excellent strategy, a whole lot better than mine! x-)

That's what I did during my winning run:
Sold the Glaive beam directly in the first sector and replaced it with Helbard beam, heavy laser Mk.I and a small bomb that I found. That's been my weapons untill deap into sector 5. Also it took me untill very late sector 2 untill I was finally able to buy a shield... had to fight the rebels once in order to reach that last shop. Sector 3 was the Mantis homeworld and the very first mantis ship bombed me down to 4 hull points, lots of damaged systems and two rooms on fire and he even killed my Zoltan weapon engineer... their boarding troops bet the hell out of me (doors were still at lvl 1) and I honestly didn't think I would survive this fight! Afterwards I stupidly missed one shop, so I had to cross the whole third sector with this critical hull, being shot down to a single hull point in the end. At least I spent the scrap that I had saved for repairs on a second shield and engines level 4, so my defense was a whole lot better. At the same time I ran short on missiles, so I could only use the small bomb for the most important situations and had to retreat from a whole lot of fights. Luckily I found a scrap recovery arm around that time, which greatly helped me gain some momentum in the end. In sector 4 I finally managed to repair my hull and get a new third crew member. Therefore I got into new trouble: Even while using my little supply of missiles, I could at maximum fight enemies with two shields, but there were more and more three-shield-foes approaching. So I continued to flee alot, used my scrap on a third shield and hoped for a lucky finding... which finally came around late sector 5: Ion blast Mk.2! From that point on I was optimistic to win the run and indeed I managed to improve my ship greatly to maxed shields and engines, replacing the helbard beam with a hull laser Mk.2 (maybe a mistake in hindsight) , shield recharge boosters and in sector 7 finally a defensive drone to deal with those damn missiles. Still the final battle became a truely tough one because I lost some concentration and forgot to use my defense drone and/or cloaking device in important moments. As a result I lost yet another of my crewmen and were only able to replace him with a mantis immediately before the boss fight. The boss also managed to hit me heavily, but in the end I destroyed his last instance with around one third of my hull still intact.

[Grey]

Oof, wow, sounds close! With my last stealth ship win I took only 1 damage - it was my best boss fight ever. Can't believe you sold you glaive beam! It's the best thing about the Stealth B, an end game weapon right from the start. It takes you to sector 4 with ease, so you just need to get a burst laser and some defence before then and you're set for the game! :)

Honestly, try the ship again using the max stealth tactic, you'll have such a fun game :D

[GordonOverkill]

I will! By the way, just had my easiest boss fight ever... Osprey with four Burst Lasers Mk2, pre-igniter and re-loader... it almost felt unfair x-)

[Stingray1]

Well, I tried Grey's advise twice. It does work until sector 4, but then your ship blows up. No additional weapon and you are pretty much going nowhere fast. Maybe better luck next time.

[Grey]

Yep, you need a better weapon before you find 3 shield enemies. Maximising sector scraping and nebula visits helps, and a bit of shop luck is always handy.

[Stingray1]

Yes. On my second attempt today find a Pre-igniter on 3rd fight in sector 1. Easy going from then. :)

Had Max weapons and 2xBurst laser MK II by sector 4 and Glaive, was blowing up enemies in seconds. Entered sector 8 with 534 scrap hoping for a store with for some drones. Not even needed in the end.

[Grey]

Awesome :) Pre-igniter with the glaive is just mad mad power :D

[GordonOverkill]

Tried two runs with this tactic and it's definitely a whole lot better that what I did before. Sadly I had a whole lot of bad luck during both runs and died one time quite late and one time quite early. Anyway, at least with this tactic I don't have the feeling that survival depends 95% on lucky dice ;-)

[Stingray1]

Man, I'm really struggling with the Vortex. Just saying, no tips please. Have all of you won with it?

[GordonOverkill]

Jup, I have. Though it surely was not easy ;-)

[_Ln_]

Went to grind for slug ship (was a nice map with 3 nebulas which all turned to be "uncharted") and won with Vortex. Recruited 3 only more guys and skipped teleporter entirely, but the last stage was intense (too many boarders). Also Heavy Ion + Burst Mk II + Halberd Beam kinda suck.

For some reason I've acquired about 6 or 7 Defense Drone I throughout the game, but haven't use even 2 at the same time.

[Stingray1]

Actually won with the Vortex on my very next attempt after my previous post. Was lucky to find another Heavy Ion in sector 3. 2xHeavy Ion + Heavy Laser I took me all the way.

Was long and hard when 4 shield ships started appearing, but managed in the end. Only had 3 shields layers and 45% dodge, luckily also bought a hull repair drone along the way. No missiles, bombs or teleporter, just cloak from sector 6.

[_Ln_]

Finally unlocked slug ships and claimed victories with both of them.

Slug Cruiser B firmly goes to claim the worst ship position.

[_Ln_]

Recently unlocked Carnelian and the ship is a beast. Discovered an interesting thing - if you kill all the crew on the flagship except the guy in the Beam weapon slot, he'll survive to the second stage - except he will still be in the Beam slot while the whole ship is empty for your boarders :D Then you kill him before destroying the ship to make stage 3 easier.

Beat my top score with 5800ish points - fully upgraded ship and generally had a lot of fun.

But damn this ship is OP.

[_Ln_]

So what's your "most collected scrap" value in the stat menu?

I just finished a run with Slug A and had 3xScrap Recovery by sector 6. Upgraded everything on the ship and ended with almost 500 extra scrap; set the most collected record at 2616.

[Stingray1]

Oh, I almost got excited and thought you were announcing the release of the update. Mine is 2270, don't remember the details.

[GordonOverkill]

2384 here.

[Stingray1]

http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=688

[_Ln_]

http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=688

My body is ready!

[GordonOverkill]

Great news indeed :-) Still I didnt unlock Rock Ship Type B and both Crystal Ships, but anyhow... maybe I will be able to do that while having fun with the new version!

[Stingray1]

Ja, I was going to maybe eventually finish Westside run after new information came to light and then I saw this. So, for the past two days I've been hunting the Crystal ship.

In all my games I've only had the crystal man once and only learned about his possible significance later, but I want to unlock all the ships unspoiled and before the new version comes. So, here we go.

[GordonOverkill]

Oh, I think I was really close yesterday! Got the stasis pot repaired and still had two red sectors ahead of me, but sadly not the one I was looking for. At least I made my second win with the rock ship and unlocked the first achievement (kill enemies in burning room). By the way, that was a bloody exciting run! The only non-missile weapon I got untill sector 8 (!) was an Ion Blast Mk.II, so I was constantly short on missiles and had to board like crazy in order to kill most enemies. The Crystal dude was very helpful for this duty ;-) Funny fact: I found three stasis pots during that run! For the later ones I took the weapons, but sadly it was just a missile and a small bomb.

[Stingray1]

I only flew the Rock ships this past weekend, to get Ancestry and Crystal ship. Had 1 win with each and reached sector 8 with another 3 attempts in type A without enough firepower to defeat the boss.

Found stasis pod on 2 attempts in Rock Homeworlds, never managed to get Crystal man. I think I'll rather wait for new version. A bit tired of flying those ships now.

[_Ln_]

I only flew the Rock ships this past weekend, to get Ancestry and Crystal ship. Had 1 win with each and reached sector 8 with another 3 attempts in type A without enough firepower to defeat the boss.

Found stasis pod on 2 attempts in Rock Homeworlds, never managed to get Crystal man. I think I'll rather wait for new version. A bit tired of flying those ships now.

Good luck with that. I forgot to check the number of tries, but I think I've reached sector 7 about 8 times and quit + once or twice decided to win. All with Shivan (Rock type B) which is significantly more powerful than type A. And this is not counting numerous times I've quit in sectors 2-3-4.

Unlocked crystal ship run is still my top run thanks to a whole new sector of encounters.

[Grey]

The way I unlocked it was with Stealth B runs. If you spoil yourself on what encounters to look for then the Long Range Scanners help immensely. The important thing though is to learn the Stealth B tactics which can make it one of the most reliable ships in the game.

At the start of the game use stealth to dodge attacks, especially damaging ones.
But when you get the money buy the cloak upgrade immediately. Then cloak *at the start of battle*. Your glaive beam will go off before their weapons get to charge. The only time this might not work is if they have a Leto missile. Start the beam line on or near their shields for optimal damage. And beware of anti-ship drones :-/ Once you get shields and surplus weapons you'll be rolling :)

I find this ship much more fun to play with than the rock ships, so scumming for the crystal doesn't feel as much like a chore.

[_Ln_]

The way I unlocked it was with Stealth B runs. If you spoil yourself on what encounters to look for then the Long Range Scanners help immensely. The important thing though is to learn the Stealth B tactics which can make it one of the most reliable ships in the game.

At the start of the game use stealth to dodge attacks, especially damaging ones.
But when you get the money buy the cloak upgrade immediately. Then cloak *at the start of battle*. Your glaive beam will go off before their weapons get to charge. The only time this might not work is if they have a Leto missile. Start the beam line on or near their shields for optimal damage. And beware of anti-ship drones :-/ Once you get shields and surplus weapons you'll be rolling :)

I find this ship much more fun to play with than the rock ships, so scumming for the crystal doesn't feel as much like a chore.

The thing is Rock ships are pretty much unkillable while with Stealth ship you can get royally screwed with Zoltans, anti-ship drones, Zoltans with anti-ship drones etc.
Another thing is
Rock Ships are guaranteed to get the stasis pod from the event thanks to Armor Plating blue option, while other ships have 1/3 chance to recover the pod.
So the math is pretty simple.

[Grey]

I find the Stealth B is way more reliable than the Rock ships for survival. They might get unlucky first sector, but that's rare. Plus the glaive beam is much more fun than the boring slow rock-men :)

And as for numerical advantage, Long Range Scanners let you find the relevant encounters much more easily. That's more useful than a tip in the odds for one stage of the quest.

Honestly, give it a proper try. I tried for ages with rock ships and it was making me sick of the game. Stealth B got me my crystal and a lot of enjoyable hours of gameplay.

[KyoShinda]

Awww, the expansion is free? I wanted to pay for it. :(

[_Ln_]

I find the Stealth B is way more reliable than the Rock ships for survival. They might get unlucky first sector, but that's rare. Plus the glaive beam is much more fun than the boring slow rock-men :)

And as for numerical advantage, Long Range Scanners let you find the relevant encounters much more easily. That's more useful than a tip in the odds for one stage of the quest.

Honestly, give it a proper try. I tried for ages with rock ships and it was making me sick of the game. Stealth B got me my crystal and a lot of enjoyable hours of gameplay.

I already have the Crystal Cruiser, so I don't have to try anything, but "tip in the odds"? I mean, are you serious? Stealth B just slighty help you with stage 1, slightly helps you with stage 2 and has actually hard time to progress a bit further. Rock B is on the other hand pretty much unbeatable in the first several sectors and just needs some weapons to hit through more shields. I can take Rock B and win with it straight, but I can't say the same about Stealth B.

[Grey]

Oh, I haven't got the Rock B unlocked actually, so I was more thinking of the painful Rock A. And Stealth B is my 2nd most won with ship :)

[_Ln_]

Oh, I haven't got the Rock B unlocked actually, so I was more thinking of the painful Rock A. And Stealth B is my 2nd most won with ship :)

Yeah, Rock A is painful with its stupid missiles, fair enough.

Just launched FTL for a last run before the update, went with Noether, unlocked Man Power (no reactor upgrades till sector 5), had 5 Zoltans, 1 Engi pilot and Rock & Mantis enforcer team in the end, beat Flagship with 1 or 2 points of damage sustained per all stages. 3x Ion Blast I + starting Pike Beam + Anti-Ship I. I just don't get tired of ion weaponry, it's so good :D

[Grey]

Yeah, Engi A is a beast for that. I once had Ion Blast II and 2 fire beams - it was joyous.

I played last night trying to beat the boss with zero upgrades all game (using Mantis B). Died most of the way through the second stage, but it was jolly good fun :)

[Stingray1]

Anyway, the main reasons for flying the Bulwark was I had two victories with the Shivan and only one with the Bulwark. I think I only had about 3 hull left on that victory, so I wanted to better on that and I am also going for all three type B 'unlock achievements' on all ships. So, I thought I'll try and kill many with one stone.

Do you guys know whether we'll be keeping our progress with the new version or will we be starting fresh?

[Grey]

Progress will be kept and many unlocks will become easier (I think you get a new unlock every time you win, so you can just keep spamming victories).

[Stingray1]

Oh, the victory spamming bit sucks. That's gonna take all the fun out of the hunt. :(

[GordonOverkill]

Haha, take a look at the date, Stingray ;-)

[Grey]

No April Fools, that's seriously what they're doing. Or that's my understanding at least. I'm not sure if this is only for old or new ships, mind.

Personally I hate the current finickity unlock system so I think it's a great change.

[_Ln_]

You can see the whole thing here: http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20034

I'm lazy to read so I don't actually know what decision was made. IIRC, there will be a switch anyway to keep the old system.

[Stingray1]

I'm scared to read, but I hope you remember correctly. That would mean they catered for both us and the fools. :p

[Grey]

They're turning the different quests and things that trigger the unlocks into achievements, so even if you use the new system there will still be the achievements to hunt down. Which is much better than unlocks in my opinion. I hate unlocks!

[Stingray1]

So, I just had my first shot at Advanced and Hard(was already kind of difficult on normal :p) difficulty with the Kestrel(You know deleted my old profile, as this is a new game really). Dies in sector 2. These new additions, make it, well, not too simple.

Have fun guys and girl.

E: It looks like I'm gonna be forced to play this in easy mode. :o

[KyoShinda]

Question: in the 'hidden sector' does the rebel fleet still follow you (for whoever was lucky enough to find it)?

[_Ln_]

Question: in the 'hidden sector' does the rebel fleet still follow you (for whoever was lucky enough to find it)?

Yes.

Gotta love new things. I have been slain by the flagships a couple of times already, it's a such refreshing experience.
What I don't like is this thing - http://i.imgur.com/KVz6evp.png
I mean, come on!

[KyoShinda]

Yes.

Gotta love new things. I have been slain by the flagships a couple of times already, it's a such refreshing experience.
What I don't like is this thing - http://i.imgur.com/KVz6evp.png
I mean, come on!I'm trying to buy every new thing I can to use. Was kind of hesitant at first but yes they are great. Playing around with the flak gun, super crazy. lol

[Silfir]

The starting laser on the new ship is a piece of crap - you will eat a lot of damage waiting for the blasted thing to build up, and even at full power it only shoots two lasers for two power at a time - I much, much preferred the Burst Laser Mk I I found a little while later. I never bothered to figure out how to use the stun ion well, but it helped eat the shields early. I think its best use would be to target an already damaged system that is currently being repaired to keep it down longer, but outside of that fairly situational use case - since it requires the shields to be down - its just a longer-charging ion Mk I, and ion needs to recharge quickly to really lay on the hurt.

I left the oxygen-draining aliens in the engine and weapons rooms as suggested by the game. The minor downside is that if you have Engis on one side of the ship and you need to repair something on the other, they'll either eat some oxygen damage (which is harder to shrug off without the medbay) or you order them to take the long way around. The major upside is that both systems were virtually impervious to boarding actions.

On the way, I also picked up one of the charge lasers. Again, because lasers are best fired in salvos, it essentially was a slightly worse Burst Laser Mk I. Better than the Chain Laser, nothing to write home about.

The Flak, on the other hand, hoo boy. It's at least as good, probably much better than the Burst Laser Mk II, aka the best damn laser in the game. The inaccuracy sucks only a little, but 10 instead of 13 seconds charging time is monstrous. I rocked dual Flak, a Halberd Beam and a Weapon Pre-Igniter in the final battle; it was a massacre.

The clone bay is a valid alternative to the Medbay. The skillpoint loss on death is very modest. You shouldn't die willy-nilly and you certainly need to avoid taking unnecessary damage, and after a harsh battle it may take some time until you can jump into a system with a full-health crew, but it takes off a lot of pressure overall. You can no longer win any given boarding fight in the medbay, so using doors and oxygen deprivation becomes crucial (especially if the clone bay is down), and a boarding-heavy playstyle seems hard to maintain. If you rely on cloning to recover from damage sustained during boarding, your hand-to-hand skills will build up poorly or not at all; if you rely on between-jump healing, you can't really board several times in a row. I picked up the crew teleporter very late and never got seriously into boarding (the flagship was so utterly boned against my weapon lineup that boarding was pointless) so I can't really judge how it would play out.

Lanius crewmembers have amazing utility - not only are their stations virtually impervious to boarders, they can repair hull breaches with abandon. You can also use them to board automated drones, which will come in handy if your weapons are not as supercharged as mine were. Even in regular boarding combat a Lanius tag team would probably work out really, really well, should there be a way to get some of these guys on a ship with a medbay. (I had the option of buying a medbay - can you actually have both? Not that it'd be a good idea; system slots are very limited, so you'd want to avoid the redundance that comes with it.)

I bought the emergency battery, but I'm not sure how much use it is. The flagship ended up trying to hack it, which I much prefer to having my shields or engines hacked, so that's something, but ultimately with the way the game works in emergencies power is the one thing you usually have a surplus of, because the systems that use power can get damaged but your total power never goes down. It's probably useful against ion, when you would really love to power one of the more situational systems (you need to have the clone bay powered when a crewmember dies or they're gone for good, for instance, and occasionally I went "oh crap" and powered up the hacking station I rarely used to make that little extra difference) and find all your energy ion-locked. It's not an expensive upgrade, but does take up a system slot even though it's a subsystem, and those are limited. The systems I added throughout the game were Cloaking, Battery and Crew Teleporter.

I think the new ship is respectable, but you're on a bit of a clock: You will keep taking hull damage until you manage to replace the Chain Laser. If I hadn't been able to pick up a Flak as early as I did, it would've been a much harsher run. Other than that, it's fairly average on all counts. Hacking seemed somewhat underwhelming, but I never upgraded it.

[Grey]

Hacking is crazy good :)

[_Ln_]

Wait, what? Chain Laser is unbelievably good. You just need to buy two shields as early as possible and you're good to go.

I got to sector 8 with Lanius on Hard on my very first try with AE, having 2 chain lasers and smth else. Unfortunately died to flagship because I ran out of drone parts by this time. Also managed to fail 20% O2 challenge right in sector 7 fighting off boarders.

Hacking is very good, an offensive tool and a counter to pretty much anything. Try Engi C which starts with Defense Scrambler which makes all enemy drones useless.

Flak is not better than BL 2 imho and quite bad on its own - with other good lasers it's pretty powerful.

My current opinion stands on getting cloak, drones and hacking. Mind control is too situational and teleporter too risky with the amount of shit that now can happen. Recently lost crazy prepared Mantis B when my shields got hacked by the flagship.

Cloak gives you time to fix all the bad stuff as usual. I took down flagship with Federation B using nothing but the cloak and artillery beam with starting dual lasers. This was a joke run as I couldn't find a decent weapon by the end. Turned out my evasion + full hull were just enough to constantly wait for Artillery beam to charge up. Probably one of my most bizarre runs so far.

Finally, I hate cloning bays with a passion. To me they are nowhere near comparable to med bays.

Edit: forgot to mention - hacking + well placed and timed shots - asphyxiation for the enemy crew! It's like teleporter which is completely safe but requires 1 drone part. Just for some numbers - hacking level 3 sucks about 60% of the oxygen in one go. And the best part is permanently locked doors.

Edit2: concerning boarding healing - there is an augment in the game which allows you to fully heal crew every time you teleport. Costs 70 scrap however.

[Silfir]

What makes a Chain Laser *good*? A two shot burst laser does nothing on its own against anything two shields and more. You'll end up first waiting for it and then having it fire ready and waiting for other lasers to catch up. It won't play nice with any timings. And the first 30, 40 seconds of a battle - the period in which it's worse than other lasers - are the most crucial, too, when it comes to avoiding damage and the havoc it can bring with it. If you have the defenses to wait that long without taking hull damage, any weapon will do.

I'll stand by my statement on the Flak. It will certainly do more on its own than a Chain Laser; all Laser weapons have to be combined with others to be effective late game. I used the Flak in conjunction with the Chain Laser for a while, and enemies tended to die to the Flak before the Chain Laser could approach its speed. The inaccuracy is a non-factor if the Flak is the first three shots of your salvo and only intended to beat the shields for your other lasers and/or beam weapons.

I might be missing something; maybe the qualities of the Chain Laser shine when you rely on hacking to beat shields. And that's certainly valid, though a good way to run out of drone parts.

I did miss the medbay while I had the clone bay and I definitely wouldn't want to play a boarding game with it - it was *workable*. Its level 2 upgrade is more crucial than medbay 2 would be. I'm pretty sure the Lanius' affinity for oxygen venting to defend from boarders and the ability to man the door system introduced in AE helped cover for its shortcomings somewhat. The skill loss upon death is a bit like the corruption from the water orb - it sucks, but ultimately doesn't matter.

[Stingray1]

I had two Flak MkI and fire beam on my Red Tail run, if it had been another beam weapon I think I might have beaten the boss. This was the only run I managed to reach sector 8 BTW(out of 11 A:3 B3 C:5). A plus for the Flak is its fast charge time.

The clones don't lose that much skill anyway and they come to life with full HP. :)

[Grey]

If you have the clone bay then Zoltans now make for great boarders - they explode when killed. Suicide bombers ahoy! It does make Zoltan boarders on your own ship newly frightening though.

Unlocked the Stealth C just to find it has no stealth :-/ Not happy with that...

Vulcan laser thing is nuts. If you can survive the first minute then you end up shooting a completely constant barrage of lasers. Nothing can hold up against it! Unfortunately you do need to survive that initial build-up... My last run didn't, dead a couple of jumps before the flagship.

Mind control is handy late game to take out the enemy's pilot, reducing their evasion instantly. Also useful to mess up enemy boarding parties, and of course to counter enemy mind control. It's still mostly quite niche though.

I'm loving the Hard mode, by the way. Makes the whole game really tense - there's no room for error and every upgrade choice matters hugely.

[KyoShinda]

I'm loving the Hard mode, by the way. Makes the whole game really tense - there's no room for error and every upgrade choice matters hugely.Yes, hard mode is very fun. When I started advanced edition I automatically wiped the game and am doing all games on hard. My first run my kestrel died at sector 5 which barely unlocked the engi ship.

With the engi ship I miraculously made it to the last stage of the flagship with 3 shields, no cloaking device and I kept spamming the hull repair drone letting it repair me and absorb hits from the laser burst(lol). In one of the sectors before that I completed the zoltan quest to get the hard shield, which was helpful for saving scrap. This is what it looked like when it died: http://i.imgur.com/KhOsRit.jpg
The battle was even and going nowhere then they did mind control on my pilot and I was screwed, didn't know I could counter it with mine.

Since I unlocked the zoltan ship with the engi one, my third run was with it. Was doing amazing, kicking ass and taking names, then I get b-slapped out of nowhere by a souped up rebel drone. I made a huge mistake of making my engines guy repair weapons and that's when I was really going down. The diversity of weapons it had along with a beam and attack drone, I should have just run in the first place. This is the picture of that death: http://i.imgur.com/q5L68xo.jpg
After that I've just been using the kestrel and never making it past sector 5(hurray :P).

Anyways, I found the mind control system very cheap and useful since everyone else starts fighting said guy then it makes a perfect target to kill most of their crew with barrages. I was trying to use hacking to take down shields then use burst laser but even then you still really need the firepower, otherwise you get a little hit in, they recharge and the battle takes forever.

[_Ln_]

What makes a Chain Laser *good*? A two shot burst laser does nothing on its own against anything two shields and more. You'll end up first waiting for it and then having it fire ready and waiting for other lasers to catch up. It won't play nice with any timings. And the first 30, 40 seconds of a battle - the period in which it's worse than other lasers - are the most crucial, too, when it comes to avoiding damage and the havoc it can bring with it. If you have the defenses to wait that long without taking hull damage, any weapon will do.

I'll stand by my statement on the Flak. It will certainly do more on its own than a Chain Laser; all Laser weapons have to be combined with others to be effective late game. I used the Flak in conjunction with the Chain Laser for a while, and enemies tended to die to the Flak before the Chain Laser could approach its speed. The inaccuracy is a non-factor if the Flak is the first three shots of your salvo and only intended to beat the shields for your other lasers and/or beam weapons.

I might be missing something; maybe the qualities of the Chain Laser shine when you rely on hacking to beat shields. And that's certainly valid, though a good way to run out of drone parts.

I did miss the medbay while I had the clone bay and I definitely wouldn't want to play a boarding game with it - it was *workable*. Its level 2 upgrade is more crucial than medbay 2 would be. I'm pretty sure the Lanius' affinity for oxygen venting to defend from boarders and the ability to man the door system introduced in AE helped cover for its shortcomings somewhat. The skill loss upon death is a bit like the corruption from the water orb - it sucks, but ultimately doesn't matter.

I normally increase my shields early on which allows me to go after enemy's shields, so chain laser is my friend.
I don't know, I've played only once with Lanius and had double chain lasers + some ion weapons, so my judgement may be skewed.

Flak can miss even with 0% evasion - that is, deal actual damage. I've played several times with flak + burst lasers and I still haven't mastered perfect timing (flak travels so slow) to ensure good damage.

The thing with cloning bay is that all C layouts have them. With few crew you can't afford to wait for the cloning bay to resurrect crewmen (actually I haven't upgraded it to level 2+, so I might be wrong about it) and you still risk getting your cloning bay being disabled by some stuff.

I now play hard mode exclusively and constantly die to flagship (odds of getting to sector 8 seem to be about 90% if I don't ragequit due to some stupid stuff) due to being unprepared in one way or another - I always manage to lose my scrap right before the shop which contains something important (read cloaking). This is a habit I need to purge to get better.

The worst part is that iPad (my way of supporting free expansion) port doesn't have ships unlocked and I refuse to play on anything other than hard so I can't unlock ships as I have other priorities :/ first world problems, ugh.

[GordonOverkill]

Hoooly crap, just played my first run with the Kestral on hard and that was TRUELY hard x-D I got the feeling that I played quite well, still the second phase of the boss beat the crap out of me! I had 3 shields, 5 engines, cloaking, defense drone and a spam of 9 lasers per volley and still I lost... well, at least that's a challange! Guess the biggest problem was that during the last sectors I had to spend most of the scrap I got on repairs... also I sold my hull repair drone at one point, which definitely was a mistake, too.
Sadly I didn't get the chance to purchase any new pieces of equipment, but one foe with some kind of fireball missile really did a load of damage against me in sector 8!

How nasty is it that the power surges of the second phase don't synchronise with a level one cloak anymore!

[Grey]

I always manage to lose my scrap right before the shop which contains something important (read cloaking). This is a habit I need to purge to get better.

This is one of the issues I really like in Hard mode - the gamble between spending scrap on upgrades now vs saving for a shop is much harder. On Normal you normally get plenty of scrap to upgrade and buy what you want *and* have some left for fuel and repairs. Hard mode makes everything tighter.


The worst part is that iPad (my way of supporting free expansion) port doesn't have ships unlocked and I refuse to play on anything other than hard so I can't unlock ships as I have other priorities :/ first world problems, ugh.

Heh, I have the same issue - I want to unlock the new things but Hard mode makes the unlocks much harder! I found out my unlock of the crystal cruiser on my laptop (and many victories on it too) hasn't transferred over to my desktop :( Took ages to get that fecking cruiser!

[Stingray1]

They should not allow you to play with ships that you unlocked in an easier mode or earlier version. I refuse(d).

P.S. I count time after shooting to time my lasers, once you have the timing they work nicely together.

[GordonOverkill]

They should not allow you to play with ships that you unlocked in an easier mode or version. I refuse(d).

That's not really a problem. I have just deleted my old achivements and started with a completely new game, where I will not play any other difficulty but "hard". Guess that's exactly the effect that you want, isn't it?

[Stingray1]

Yes, that is exactly what I did(do). :)

[_Ln_]

They should not allow you to play with ships that you unlocked in an easier mode or earlier version. I refuse(d).

P.S. I count time after shooting to time my lasers, once you have the timing they work nicely together.

The issue is the size of the ships :D for mantis huge-ass ships that start to pop up later (4-crew med bay) the timing is different because flak travels really slow so difference in shield frames causes things to go wrong. I tried to remember the exact portion of the burst laser charge left as an indicator, but when you have to fight off boarders and your weapons are no longer manned, this also screws everything over.

The worst game was when I had BL 1, BL 2, Flak 2 and ion bomb (one of the most efficient things I can dream of) and I had to time 10s flak with slow moving projectiles, 11s BL 1 and 12s BL 2. One hell of a thing to do. I still managed to die to a boss with that rig, because of awful target room management.

2Grey:
I don't know how I am going to unlock the crystal cruiser now. So far it's like, oh the abandoned crystal ship, screw the stasis pod I need that 10 scrap badly! Hard mode ftw.

[Stingray1]

I'm surprised you don't have the crystal ship through the alternative unlock method yet. How many type A and B ships haven't you had victory with then?

[GordonOverkill]

Haha, I found out why I didn't get any new stuff! Didn't know I have to activate it x-D Tried another run and got a beating in sector 4. Holy crap, that's really hard! I think you have to consider much more closely which fights to fight and when to flee.

[KyoShinda]

----I saved up a little bit of scrap at the beginning of the game and got the backup battery which I used as an excuse to upgrade quickly. Was heavily abusing that and always taking energy out of oxygen to power 3 extra engines or an ion intruder. I guess the backup battery is also really nice if your battles are short and your next power bar upgrade is expensive.

----The ion intruder and power shield drones are iffy, I usually get them if I can't get a defense drone although I do like how the power shield drone stacks up the power shield, so if you had good dodge you could use that against someone using cloaking. The ion intruder is good if you don't have 3 enemies kicking it in the shins and it targets one of the major systems.


I always manage to lose my scrap right before the shop which contains something important (read cloaking). This is a habit I need to purge to get better.
What happens to me is, I've been starting to save for shops to buy weapons, usually go to a shop with ~80 scrap and then they only start selling drones and systems I don't need.

[GordonOverkill]

Wahuuuu, got my first victory on hard! The boss is a beast, goddamn x-D My Kestrel was down to three hull points in the end, half my rooms were burning and half my systems destroyed. The weapons of victory were two burst lasers mk.2, two chain lasers, 4 shields, 6 engines and the hacking device (which bloody rocks!). No stealth, no drones (actually got the drone device but never found a defensive drone). I had a scrap recovery arm during large parts of the game (sold it in sector 7), but that was the only augmentation that I got at all.

And this is how I finished off the boss:
Hacking tool against the cockpit, thus deactivate his whole defence and fire ten lasers into his weapons. Every second volley without hacking and with everything aimed at the missiles. Against the second phase hacking didn't work at all, but luckily I learned a little from my first run and just hit everything against his shields to finish him off as quickly as possible. Worked really well!

An amazing event that I never saw before was:
The second boss ship! Had to fight it in sector 4 or 5, which was one hell of a tough fight, too!

Funny fact by the way, I got a whole lot less points than during my first run (which I lost).

[Stingray1]

Well done Gordon.

Damn, I suck at this game. Just lost against the boss again in the Swallow(Kestrel C) this time. Flak mk1, dual laser, fire beam, small bomb, defense drone mk1, cloak, full shields and engines.
Screw fire beams, I'm selling them next time I find it. Had 3xscrap recovery from about sector 5, still didn't make me beat the boss. :confused:

Think I should try to play with hacking and/or mind control a bit haven't yet or teleporting, haven't even owned that in Advanced.

[GordonOverkill]

I have seen so many cool screenshots of enemy ships completely on fire, but honetly, I never managed to handle this firebeam myself, either x-) I'd love to take a look at the Kestrel C, too! So far I have just unlocked the Torus and the Ossprey, maybe I can reach one C-Type tomorrow!

[_Ln_]

Well done Gordon.

Damn, I suck at this game. Just lost against the boss again in the Swallow(Kestrel C) this time. Flak mk1, dual laser, fire beam, small bomb, defense drone mk1, cloak, full shields and engines.
Screw fire beams, I'm selling them next time I find it. Had 3xscrap recovery from about sector 5, still didn't make me beat the boss. :confused:

Think I should try to play with hacking and/or mind control a bit haven't yet or teleporting, haven't even owned that in Advanced.

Just unlocked the Swallow yesterday and immediately xlaimed a win with it (a rare sight on hard for me). I visited 2 abandoned sectors and got 3 more Lanius. By the end 3 humans and an engi were crammed in doors, sensors and piloting and Lanius dominated everything else on the ship. I had to heal people in two sessions, because my organic guys didn't mix with Lanius in the med bay :D
4 Lanius are just amazing crew. On the third stage I was like - flagship boarders en masse? Oh, they are already dead, no worries :D

It was a tense run as Bad things were constantly happening and spent gazillion scrap on hull repairs. However, I had 2 scrap recovery and by sector 7 which I milked to it max letting the federation base to get demolished a bit, but not fatally everything finally paid off. Charge Ion (I underappreciated this thing, with maxed weapon dude it' 2-power Ion blast 2 with margin of error in just 1 miss, not two), dual lasers + bl 1 + bl 2. Killed the flagship without much trouble even without a defense drone (normally a top priority for me).

Anyway, the Swallow is simply breathtaking. Best layout in the game for sure. Starting weapons are a bit clunky, but powerful on average.

WRT Fire Beam on boss - it normally is not that good as the flagship has too many people (unless assisted by enough laser do deal a lot of damage). With hacking however you can torch med-bay, hope enough people get there, hack it to kill them off, let eveything get destryoed and repeat! One of the best things about fire against the flagship is that even if you kill all the crew, systems don't get autorepaired if on fire. So if you careful around the flagship O2, you can sustain disabled ship for pretty much the full duration of the fight.

[KyoShinda]

I thought the scrap recovery arm doesn't stack with itself, unless they changed that in the advanced version.

[Stingray1]

I thought the scrap recovery arm doesn't stack with itself, unless they changed that in the advanced version.

It also stacked in the previous version.

@_Ln_ Yes, the starting weapons are not the best, but they are atleast enough to get you through the first two sectors and some fights in the 3rd. If you don't have additional or alternative firepower by sector 4, you're in for a tough time. Even with the starting Lanius in the swallow I keep most of the ship vacuumed, you do however run some risk doing this. But hey, that is what the clonebay is for. :)

[Grey]

I had 2 x fire beam and an ion blast mark 2 once. It was epic. The crew die and the systems are shut down so quickly with lots of fire. Against the flagship though I ended up using an anti-ship drone to do damage after wiping out the crew - waiting for systems to regen before blasting them again was too slow.

I'd love to get a Lanius boarding party together. Would be hilarious :D

[Silfir]

It took plenty of tries but I managed a first victory on Hard on a Zoltan B, coincidentally my first Zoltan victory (got close but no cigar a couple of times). Again with a double loadout of Flak I and a Weapon Pre-Igniter, though this time I had to buy it all from stores, and I only had the starting Pike Beam to go with it. You do get a lot less scrap overall; I only went 4 short of my beacon explored record (102 vs 106), but only went 1650 (vs 2300) in scrap collected. Cloaking 2 would have been nice; I was hit in the second phase and had to facetank a drone burst. I think it was the first time I didn't finish reactor upgrades, too, but I actually had a little more energy than I knew what to do with in the end, since I only needed six for weapons, only got up to five in engines and had no drones to power.

From my limited, half-arsed experience, I would advise against buying the crew teleporter on Hard Advanced if you don't already have a proper boarding crew lined up (i.e. two Mantis on door/sensors duty) and/or boarding support weapons such as heal bursts or small bombs. There are just not enough easy targets; practically every ship has missiles or ions or hacking or some other dickish maneuver lined up that punishes you for dawdling. I couldn't afford to board a single ship throughout seven sectors; I'm pretty sure resisting the temptation to try was part of why I managed to win, because I spent very little scrap on repairs. I wasted a system slot and 90 scrap early on that Crew Teleporter and as a result was forced to choose between Hacking and Drone Control after Cloaking. I finished with like 45 drone parts. And 60 missiles. (I actually managed to get both Ballistophobia and Technophobia for the first time in this run - apparently, every time I reached sector 8 before this point I had used both at least once.) So there is still room for poor decisions and resource management in Hard, though the Zoltan B being fairly beastly definitely helped.

[GordonOverkill]

Nice job, Silfir! Congratulations! On my first try I had a boarding crew of two manises who managed to board exactly zero ships. Tried and had to retreat three times and died on the fourth attemp.

[KyoShinda]

I was getting frustrated with dying in sector 5 so many times that I decided to try playing the game on normal. Was going to jump to the first beacon and said ehh, this doesn't feel right. Deleted and switched back to hard. xD

Btw, does beating it on hard unlock the achievements for beating it on easy and normal? If not, that's lame, and why isn't there an achievement for beating it on hard? or maybe they ran out of room. Also, naming my ship hawkslayer, going to use adom names since I can't think of any. lol

[Stingray1]

I think it will unlock on hard, but I haven't beaten the game on hard yet. I will likely tonight, gotta be positive. :) Must just remember to not be over-confident or greedy. I think greed has cost me more than it gave me so many times.

[GordonOverkill]

I can confirm that it does unlock the achievements.

Fingers are crossed for your crew and your ship, Stingray!

[Stingray1]

I can confirm that it does unlock the achievements.

Fingers are crossed for your crew and your ship, Stingray!

Thanks. Have bl2, dual lasers, hacking and zoltan shield halfway through the run, so feeling good about this one. :)

E: How is your unlocking progressing?

[Stingray1]

Well, at least I saw all three stages of the boss. Now I know what to expect. The zoltan shield was actually the cause of the demise of the swallow this time around. Clever move Rebel scum.

[GordonOverkill]

Argh, so close! At least now it's only a matter of time untill the boss gets what he deserves :-)

Actually my unlocking is not progressing at all... I have tried to win with the Red-Tail three or four times, but I never got past sector 5 to 6 and I didn't get to even try any homeworld quests. I just don't manage to increase my weapons... hopefully just a streak of bad luck.

[Stingray1]

Good luck then, at least the Red Tail has a pretty strong start.

[GordonOverkill]

Finally made it with the Red-Tail! My weapons were Flak 1, Pike Beam, Heavy Laser 1 and one of the basic starting lasers (just didn't find anything else... however, turned out that it was enough), full shields and alot of engines (51% evasion at full power), a defense drone 1, an offense drone 1, long range scanners, weapon recharge booster and that amazing mind control thing. Also got Ballistophobia and United Federation Achievements and unlocked the Swallow. Amazing run from the beginning to the end :-)

[Silfir]

That takes me back a little... I remember having a burst laser, a combat drone and a pike beam for the flagship once. I had to time the burst laser with the combat drone and get no misses just to do damage. (Thankfully, at least it was Pike Beam damage. But get the timing just a little wrong, and the beam gets interrupted by recharging shields!) Against a five shield random ship, I would have had to flee.

There's a failsafe balance thing going on in that if you don't get powerful weapons, even from shops, you do usually have enough scrap to maximize your defenses or buy drones and live through the flagship's attacks.

Just such a marvelously designed game.

[_Ln_]

Just won with Shrike (Lanius B) and this ship is a freaking beast.
Lanius boarding + probably the best weapon in the game as starting = pure win.

I had some fun with insane game mechanics I just accidentally noticed.
On stage 1 my teleporter got hacked. Teleporter hacking automatically returns your boarders to the ship while active. I mind-controlled a guy on a flagship during the hacking surge (again, timing was absolutely accidental) and he got teleported to my ship thanks to jinxed friend/foe identification. On stage 1 flagship doesn't have teleporters, so this guy was unable to return back home at all :D

I spent the next 5 minutes and about 60% of my hull (thanks to rockets) carefully stealing all flagship crewmen and killing them on my ship. I left him with 2 guys (in the ion weapon and in the beam) and destroyed. Stage 2 was done without any damage, as I instantly teleported, wrecked his missiles and lasers (no one to stop me :D ) and drone control, survived a couple of power surges under cloak and killed it off. Thanks to my insane rig of advanced flak + flak 1 + burst laser 2 I did stage without any damage likewise. Flagship had the time to do 2 power surges before it got downed.

In retrospect, simply killing the flagship during stage 1 would have been more effective, as I wouldn't have lost so many hull points. And without cloaking my weapons were no match even for a fully crewed ship. But you gotta exploit a funny mechanic when you find it.

[KyoShinda]

I bought the chain vulcan halfway through the game and got rid of the ion II and flak I for it but that thing is really nice if you have good defense and the enemy has at least 3 shields. Mostly picked it up to see how it fun it is against the boss, definitely fun!

[Stingray1]

I played around 10 games with the swallow over the weekend, only managed to reach the last sector once. Engaged the flagship with 3 hull, as he ate all the repair beacons.

Have I mentioned that hard is hard, damn I have no confidence left.

[GordonOverkill]

Just don't surrender, Stingray! I think that it's very hard because many of the "old" strategies don't work anymore like they did before the advanced version... in both my victories the new pieces of equipment played an important role (especially hacking device and mind controll device). Maybe just try to play around a little with them and see what you can make out of it!
By the way, I think that the Swallow is surely not the easiest ship to play. In my eyes the original Kestrel comes out of the box a whole lot stronger.