FTL - Faster than Light

[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.

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
4 Lanius are just amazing crew. On the third stage I was like - flagship boarders en masse? Oh, they are already dead, no worries

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

[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!