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Thread: FTL - Faster than Light

  1. #211
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    Quote Originally Posted by _Ln_ View Post
    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
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  2. #212
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    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.
    Last edited by Silfir; 04-07-2014 at 03:43 AM.
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  3. #213
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    Hacking is crazy good
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  4. #214
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    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.
    Last edited by _Ln_; 04-07-2014 at 05:51 AM.
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  5. #215
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    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.
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  6. #216
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    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.
    Last edited by Stingray1; 04-07-2014 at 08:43 AM.
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  7. #217
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    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.
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  8. #218
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grey View Post
    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.
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  9. #219
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    Quote Originally Posted by Silfir View Post
    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.
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  10. #220
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    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!

    Last edited by GordonOverkill; 04-08-2014 at 11:28 AM.
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