FTL

I'm trying to unlock Zoltan B now . I'm doing the no upgrade power until sector 5 but things got harder after one of my crew member got killed (fragile race). I worked so hard to train them to breath vacum because the lack of power forced me to turn off non essential systems like the O2 generator.

I've played the game a lot this weekend and I unlocked Kestrel B, Fed Cruiser A, B , Stealth ship A , Rock cruiser A/B( did melee in fire room and killed a defense drone ship with missiles only), Zoltan A, Engi A .

I won again yesterday (2nd time) with the Cruiser (didn't upgrade weapons until sector 5 for B) I found a very nasty combo when I got to sector 5:

Spoiler:

A weapon pre-igniter ( like every good combo) , burst laser 3 (at first I used burst 2 ) and Glaive Beam . As I warp in I take out the shield with the burst laser and cut 4-5 rooms with Glaive

This is almost instant death to any of your enemy I wasn't even worried about the rebel fleet overrunning me because I took out any rebel ship while taking no hull damage .

As I played I also found it useful to toggle A defense drone 1when the enemy ship carries missile launchers . The drone can be turned off when it's not needed and then turned on when the missile is flying your way.

Did anyone figure out the way to get good weapons ? like what race carry which guns and equipment? I sometimes hit the jackpot but sometimes I'm straggling to find something I want (usually a weapon specifically burst laser 2 +).

Niseg wrote:

Did anyone figure out the way to get good weapons ? like what race carry which guns and equipment? I sometimes hit the jackpot but sometimes I'm straggling to find something I want (usually a weapon specifically burst laser 2 +).

I haven't really tested it, but I feel like I get the most weapons from Rock folk. Haven't seen a consistency yet though. Maybe I'll start taking notes...

I'm about half-way done a Captain's Blog, but it really slows the playtime down so I've been save scumming so I can have some normal playthroughs on the side where I don't record anything.

gore wrote:

Man, I am having a world of trouble with the rock cruiser.

The two missile launchers pack a huge punch early, but they also churn through missiles like there's no tomorrow. On several playthroughs now I've run out of ammo before finding another weapon. I'm also very reluctant to spend scrap on upgrades, because I have the limited missile supply looming over me and I want to be able to buy a weapon from a store if I find one, which leaves my ship more vulnerable.

There are a few ships where your game is won or lost in the first couple of sectors. Rock Cruiser is one of them. I've played it about a hundred times trying to unlock the damn crystal ship.

Ugh 17 hours in and I have yet to see the final boss (playing on Normal). I may have to swallow my pride and try easy. Seems like a well placed solar flare, asteroid field, boarding party or the annoying nebulas that knock out half of your power always gets me without fail.

I've also learned the fine art of "waiting until all your guns are ready to fire" (ie: Autofire turned off) in order to breach their shields, and actually do some sub-system damage. Unless it starts with a Zoltan shield; then it's "fire at will".

I had an awesome run with the pre-ignitor on my Fed Cruiser A. I actually got it as a reward in 1st (maybe 2nd) sector. I was saddened to discover it didn't apply to the built-in "beam weapon" . I guess that would be a little OP, and you'd have no control of it (I doubt you could pause fast enough to power it down before it fired).

Was there an update to FTL in the last 12-24 hours? I don't remember it using steam cloud before and now its trying to sync, but more importantly, because I'm playing in windowed mode it's making my monitor unhappy because the window is trying to refresh faster than the rest of my monitor, causing my monitor to make a faint, but audible high pitch wheezing sound. I can fix it by either turning v-sync on (which drops the frame rate even on such a simple game) or turn on the "limit frame rate" setting, but that causes quite a bit of tearing or "skipping" in the game window. Unless my monitor just broke, this seems to be a new problem.

Ultimately I'll turn vsync or frame-rate limit on because the sound is so annoying, but I would rather it just go back to how it was working 2 days ago which was perfectly fine!

Carlbear95 wrote:

Was there an update to FTL in the last 12-24 hours? I don't remember it using steam cloud before and now its trying to sync, but more importantly, because I'm playing in windowed mode it's making my monitor unhappy because the window is trying to refresh faster than the rest of my monitor, causing my monitor to make a faint, but audible high pitch wheezing sound. I can fix it by either turning v-sync on (which drops the frame rate even on such a simple game) or turn on the "limit frame rate" setting, but that causes quite a bit of tearing or "skipping" in the game window. Unless my monitor just broke, this seems to be a new problem.

Ultimately I'll turn vsync or frame-rate limit on because the sound is so annoying, but I would rather it just go back to how it was working 2 days ago which was perfectly fine!

That patch came out around the 26th.

When I launched Steam today, the client downloaded something for FTL, so maybe some minor Steam fix was released just today?

Why is easy so HAAAAARRRRDDDDDD?

Looks like a patch was put out around the start of the month:
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtop...

Changelog 1.02.6

-Fixed some texture rendering issues on Mac OS X and older Windows/Linux machines
-Fullscreen - FTL Native Resolution fixed to accurately provide the pre-1.02 Fullscreen method for older PCs
-Tough Little Ship Achievement fixed
-Fixed exploit that allowed player crew to walk through enemy blast doors, which is also a potential fix for the AI bug of walking through walls/doors (Thanks Unlucky Scarecrow!)
-Defense Drones Don't Do D'Anything and Master of Patience Achievements potentially fixed
-Protection against quests spawning at unreachable nodes
-Crystal Weapons / Missile Weapons will accurately state the number of shots they fire per cooldown
-Minor UI help - clearer tooltips for Cloaking/Teleporting and hotkey numbers for drones
-More event/descriptions/tooltip typos fixed

Ahhhh I hate stars.

I just had two flares in a row. The first one caught my mantis away team offguard and ended their lives prematurely, while substantially damaging my ship at strategic locations. I limped away from the battle hopeful, but I jumped right into another flare, and the stupid sun killed me even after I killed the enemy ship.

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I made it all the way to the final battle in normal, handily beating the first two rounds with the big bad boss. I had a repair drone and plenty of extras so I went into round three with full health. Then the stupid super shield blocked my boarding party and a lucky missle blew up my bridge, so I was taking every hit with the power surges. I fumbled my power priority to my weapons which meant a single point of damage took out my primary blaster III. I tried and tried, but I could never get enough systems repaired to board his missile bay and so my journey came to an end.

So close!!!!! I feel like if I had just taken it a little slower I would have done a couple things better and that may have saved me. Aaarrgg!!!

Findaer wrote:

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I made it all the way to the final battle in normal, handily beating the first two rounds with the big bad boss. I had a repair drone and plenty of extras so I went into round three with full health. Then the stupid super shield blocked my boarding party and a lucky missle blew up my bridge, so I was taking every hit with the power surges. I fumbled my power priority to my weapons which meant a single point of damage took out my primary blaster III. I tried and tried, but I could never get enough systems repaired to board his missile bay and so my journey came to an end.

So close!!!!! I feel like if I had just taken it a little slower I would have done a couple things better and that may have saved me. Aaarrgg!!!

I learned that lesson the hard way too. Your helm being destroyed means 0% evade rate -- even when you're cloaked. One good tip is to buy at least the first the helm subsystem upgrade -- it's cheap (20 or 25 scrap?) and it gives your helm an extra hitpoint.

I finally won Normal difficulty with the starting Kestrel, having lost on the 2nd or 3rd form of the final boss on my 3 prior attempts. I think the biggest difference this time was having the 4th level shield; that combined with a high evade rate made it hard for the boss to hurt me much.

Oddly enough, my winning Kestrel score (3515) was *lower* than all 3 of the prior failed attempts with that ship.

WolverineJon wrote:
Findaer wrote:

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I made it all the way to the final battle in normal, handily beating the first two rounds with the big bad boss. I had a repair drone and plenty of extras so I went into round three with full health. Then the stupid super shield blocked my boarding party and a lucky missle blew up my bridge, so I was taking every hit with the power surges. I fumbled my power priority to my weapons which meant a single point of damage took out my primary blaster III. I tried and tried, but I could never get enough systems repaired to board his missile bay and so my journey came to an end.

So close!!!!! I feel like if I had just taken it a little slower I would have done a couple things better and that may have saved me. Aaarrgg!!!

I learned that lesson the hard way too. Your helm being destroyed means 0% evade rate -- even when you're cloaked. One good tip is to buy at least the first the helm subsystem upgrade -- it's cheap (20 or 25 scrap?) and it gives your helm an extra hitpoint.

I finally won Normal difficulty with the starting Kestrel, having lost on the 2nd or 3rd form of the final boss on my 3 prior attempts. I think the biggest difference this time was having the 4th level shield; that combined with a high evade rate made it hard for the boss to hurt me much.

Oddly enough, my winning Kestrel score (3515) was *lower* than all 3 of the prior failed attempts with that ship.

Yep, I certainly underestimated the value of a hit point or two on the helm. At least I know that a normal win is possible for me. I am finding that dual mantis boarding parties are super strong. Ken and Charlie were the best I ever had.

It's not usually an option, but leading with a pair of Rockmen, and following up with a pair of Mantises, is really lethal. The rocks will survive a long time, and the extra firepower from the mantises will shred the opponents. It's sort of the old 'tank and spank' thing... with even a healer, if you've got a healing bomb.

WolverineJon wrote:
Findaer wrote:

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I made it all the way to the final battle in normal, handily beating the first two rounds with the big bad boss. I had a repair drone and plenty of extras so I went into round three with full health. Then the stupid super shield blocked my boarding party and a lucky missle blew up my bridge, so I was taking every hit with the power surges. I fumbled my power priority to my weapons which meant a single point of damage took out my primary blaster III. I tried and tried, but I could never get enough systems repaired to board his missile bay and so my journey came to an end.

So close!!!!! I feel like if I had just taken it a little slower I would have done a couple things better and that may have saved me. Aaarrgg!!!

I learned that lesson the hard way too. Your helm being destroyed means 0% evade rate -- even when you're cloaked. One good tip is to buy at least the first the helm subsystem upgrade -- it's cheap (20 or 25 scrap?) and it gives your helm an extra hitpoint.

Also Rockmen are good as pilots due to their resistance to fire and high hit points, and since they'll never leave that pilot spot the slow move speed doesn't matter. I also sometimes have my pilot repair everything during downtime so that he can repair the piloting system 10%-20% faster(if you ever get that damn 20% bonus, so hard). I also like having a spare Engi sit in a room near the pilot so if it goes down they can pop it back up in no time. I usually do at least one of these things.

Delerat wrote:

I also sometimes have my pilot repair everything during downtime so that he can repair the piloting system 10%-20% faster(if you ever get that damn 20% bonus, so hard). I also like having a spare Engi sit in a room near the pilot so if it goes down they can pop it back up in no time.

That's what I always do, substituting shield officer for pilot, since if your shields are damaged, you're in trouble.

Is anyone else not ever having the slug ship event unlock? I play spoiler free but I expected some slug ship would have hailed me or something by now. I've accumulated 60 hours so far.

Also annoying, the high-score list doesn't update with my recent scores even though they are higher than ones there. What's with that? Afraid to delete pref.sav.

Niseg wrote:

I'm trying to unlock Zoltan B now . I'm doing the no upgrade power until sector 5 but things got harder after one of my crew member got killed (fragile race). I worked so hard to train them to breath vacum because the lack of power forced me to turn off non essential systems like the O2 generator.

I tried that several times before deciding to shoot for the max-power-plus-4 one instead. I did learn a few things before I gave up though:

Upgrade the life support systems. That seems counter-intuitive since you'll be de-powering it a lot, but the upgrade will let you recover faster when you need to. 2x the power for 3x the oxygen = more power for your guns and shields in the long term.

Upgrade the medical bay. If 2 Zoltans need healing anyway they'll power it themselves. Having the extra capacity also means they'll get back to powering the critical systems faster.

Shunt all power from shields to the engines until your Zoltan Shield fails. The extra dodge will help them last a bit longer. Once that goes down bring the regular shields back up.

Get a new crew member ASAP. Buy one if necessary. Recruiting a new pilot of any race means you can plug your third Zoltan into a system that needs the energy.

I think the real trick is to upgrade the engines to where you can jump before your Zoltan Shield fails, and then you just sprint to sector 5 and hope you get lucky... It's either that or luck into enough Zoltan crew to power the ship to where you can play normally. I needed a change of pace before I got to try that one though.

I found the no-reactor upgrade to be rather simple when I focused on it exclusively. Mind you, that ship was in no shape to make it to the end of the game, but that wasn't its point. The problem with the other one is that it hinges on you finding at least one other Zoltan crewmember. I've found them very rare in all of my games.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

The problem with the other one is that it hinges on you finding at least one other Zoltan crewmember. I've found them very rare in all of my games.

I lucked into one very early and decided to "go big" for a change of pace.

That said, I think it's not as hard as it might seem. They're uncommon, but I usually see at least one for hire in a store along the way. So long as you keep the idea of hiring one in mind it shouldn't be too tough.

My favourite crew seems to be 3-4 Engi (Guns, Shields, + a repairing floater or 2), a Slug (telepathy is very nice), the rest can really be any combination of 1-2 Mantis, 1-2 Rock (Mantis and/or Rocks for boarding), with Human/Zoltan filling the last 1 or 2 vacancies.

Findaer wrote:

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I made it all the way to the final battle in normal, handily beating the first two rounds with the big bad boss. I had a repair drone and plenty of extras so I went into round three with full health. Then the stupid super shield blocked my boarding party and a lucky missle blew up my bridge, so I was taking every hit with the power surges. I fumbled my power priority to my weapons which meant a single point of damage took out my primary blaster III. I tried and tried, but I could never get enough systems repaired to board his missile bay and so my journey came to an end.

So close!!!!! I feel like if I had just taken it a little slower I would have done a couple things better and that may have saved me. Aaarrgg!!!

Man, I still can't even beat that stupid ship on Easy. Made it through the second round last night, but I only had about 3 hull points left and all the repair stations were captured. A Rebel ship blew me up on my next jump.

Just finished the game on Easy and I think I'm done. It was a great game and very fun, I just don't think it has the variety and mystery that I need to keep playing. On to some other turn-based/pauseable game (two-week olds are a real timesuck).

The endboss isn't fun. The rest of the game is... the endboss isn't. Have lost all drive to actually finish after getting there a couple times.

Accepted the offer of a truce and let the pirates go. Then the ship exploded 5 seconds later anyway. Giving me more scrap and all. I liked that very much

Vargen wrote:

If you're in a nebula you can still hear the fire burning sound effect. And if a system is on fire there will be flames above its energy readout even if there isn't anybody in the room to reveal it.

I really like the deck plan B unlock achievements for the Zoltan cruiser. The "kill something before your Zoltan Shield falls" one will probably just happen sometime in the first sector since your starting Halberd Beam will one-shot a shield-less drone. It's 2 and 3 that intrigue me. You can either get to sector 5 without upgrading your reactor at all, or you can upgrade your ship so much that you have the reactor maxed out and 4 Zoltan crew members powering it all. I like how they pull you in 2 different directions and you can work on the one that's more appealing.

I actually got achievements 2 and 3 on one run. Lucked into getting an extra zoltan guy or maybe even two so I could actually upgrade my weapon system enough to get me to level 5 without to much trouble. Once I got the 2nd achievement I had so much scrap and so many extra zoltans I was easily able to get the 3rd achievement, and make a run for the mother ship. That may have actually been the 1st time I ended up winning the game on easy as well.

Can you get the crystal ship on easy?

Can you get the crystal ship on easy?

Yes.

Has any one else played Sarah Northway's Rebuild and feel that it has a similar feel to FTL?

For those of you having difficulty with the final ship...

Spoiler:

#1 get a cloaking device. Only power it with one energy during the final ship, because if you power it with two or three it will take too long to recharge. You only want to actually use it just after there is a power surge reported; in boss #2 that's when an armada of anti-ship drones appear, and in ship #3 that's when he fires about 8 energy balls simultaneously.

#2 take out those missile bays. This should be the first thing you concentrate on for all three appearances. As soon as possible, teleport two of your crew into the first weapons bay on the right wing. Even if you only have a small crew, you've still got to take out those missiles first. The great thing about the boss is that the bays are isolated so they won't be repaired unless you let it go AI too long.

#3 kill most but not all of the crew. As soon as you kill all the crew, the ship goes AI, so it's best to avoid/delay that. On the other hand, if their ship is well staffed, they'll start beaming aboard and sabotaging your systems. What I try to do then during the first instance of the boss is to first take out all its weapons and then attempt to kill all but one of their crew. If I can do that without taking damage, great, but if you'll have to lose crew or too many resources (missiles, dead crew) to do so, just forego this and destroy it and go on.

Hull repair drone is probably my single most loved item in this game. When fights are over, pull it out of storage, repair to within 4hp of full, de-equip the hull drone, jump to next system. Just don't think that it's something you try to use during combat.