FTL

I think Glaive + burst 3 is just a deadlier combo but finding both isn't as trivial as it sounds. You still have to burst 4/5 hits on the shields in order for it to take max damage from Glaive . If you hit 4 rooms a glaive does 12 damage . If you take down the shields you will tear any ship to shreds . I usually preferred the fire bomb because it kept the crew dead and busy it doesn't work on drones). The other option is ion bomb that can probably disable all shields if it goes through ( I think it's 8 ion damage) . S. bomb is still a good choice to get shields down fast.

The annoying part about the cruiser is the fact you don't have a cloaking device so investing in engines is a pretty good idea. When I was about to get hit I powered down most non essential systems( I trained my crew to breath vacuum ) and transferred power to the engines. When a missile is incoming you can usually give up your shields too just to get enough dodging power. I usually used a defense drone against missiles (just power up when missile is launched ).

I think the cruiser's special weapon isn't that great. It's pretty random and only does 1 damage per room. If you want to rely on it you should probably pump up your shields and engines and get a defense drone . That weapon is also a bane to any raiding operation. The cruiser generally takes the direct approach for winning a battle - blow them up.

Niseg wrote:

I think the cruiser's special weapon isn't that great. It's pretty random and only does 1 damage per room. If you want to rely on it you should probably pump up your shields and engines and get a defense drone . That weapon is also a bane to any raiding operation. The cruiser generally takes the direct approach for winning a battle - blow them up.

I go back and forth on the special weapon. The big issue is that, even if you upgrade it, by the time it fires most battles will already be in the mop-up phase (where the enemy weapons should already be out of play). Especially since you have no cloaking device, you want to hit early and hit hard with this ship to limit incoming damage - a tactic directly at odds with sitting around waiting for the beam.

I think the built-in beam is OK as a "gap" weapon - something that will let you limp through fights with heavily shielded enemies if you haven't found a good enough loadout to deal with them otherwise. A lucky shot from that thing on the shields or weapons systems can move you into the clean-up phase. It's also good against the boss, since he's got enough health that he remains a threat for a longer period of time.

My review of FTL just went live over at Paste: http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...

Thanks again to everyone who responded to my quick poll! You made it into the last graf.

I feel like an experienced player, and yet I still catch myself making rookie mistakes. Well, mostly that boarding parties are just sooo fidgety. Note to self: do not board a burning ship at critical hull strength.

kincher skolfax wrote:

My review of FTL just went live over at Paste: http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...

Thanks again to everyone who responded to my quick poll! You made it into the last graf.

Congrats! I'll add it to my news digest on my blog.

Holy crapola! Not only does FTL run on Linux, but I just got my money's worth listening the the first audio track.

I think I'm going to be a happy customer.

EDIT: A good crew member just died because the idiot commander had no idea how to fight fires in space. I should resign my commission. [This is awesome].

I now have the A and B types of:
Kestrel
Stealth
Engi
Federation
Mantis
Slug
I still have yet to even get the Rock, Zoltan, or Crystal (only ever had the Crystal-guy twice, and his unopened pod twice) ship events.

My 1st run-through with the Slug unlocked the B, but extremely poor awareness killed my mantis boarders on the 1st phase of the boss. They were still on board when it was on fire with 1 hp. Missing them to fight off the boarding drone was murder, and ended my run on phase 2.

I wish there were more direct ways to hunt down those ships. On one hand it's cool that events like this are just floating by to find at random. On the other hand, I don't have time to play through FTL 100 times to find all these ships.

(There's xcom to play!)

Damn, this thread is buried.

Late to the party but bought this last night. Having a huge blast. Got to the end of the run in my kestral on first try and fought the flagship but then i had to fight again and again while it keeps getting more damaged it simultaniously somehow keeps getting more powerful! lol.

So yea....first try ended in failure on the final confrontation i guess.

Now i got a 30 page thread to read for tips!

Sorry for skipping to the end of the thread.

I picked this up a few weeks ago, and didn't really sit down to start playing until earlier this week. So far, I'm 6 or 7 runs in on Easy. Furthest I've gotten in phase 2 of the boss.

I've unlocked the Engi-A+B, and Stealth-A, and twice I've stumbled upon the damaged pod that supposedly starts the quest for the Crystal.

I'm really amazed at how each ship has me playing with different tactics. With my first run in the Stealth, I was alpha-striking like a mofo, especially once I got my hands on a Pike.

Heh, i've come close to becoming a badass on the engi twice now but short 1 part that ended up causing me to get torn up just after i got cool stuffs.

For example....i got all kinds of drone sweetness, recovery, boarding drones, attack drones, a glaive beam weapon....and then got blown up facing a ship that spammed me with missiles and i had no defense drone:(

Unlocked the Zoltan Cruiser and Stealth ships last night on a run where I took down the first Rebel Boss stage for the first time (in a highly souped up Kestrel)! Whoo!

The one time I got the Crystal pod I never did get to open it

Had something unusual happen to me this morning -- has anyone ever had *5* enemy Mantis beam onto your ship at the same time, in a single encounter?

I was in Zoltan space. I don't remember the exact event text, but I think it was something typical, a "You see a Mantis and a Zoltan ship fighting, the Zoltan flees / is destroyed (? don't recall), then the Mantis attacks you" kind of thing.

The enemy came in two waves -- either first 2 then 3, or else 3 then 2. They came very quickly one after the other -- not long enough for the normal cooldown on the Teleporter on the enemy ship (even if it was fully upgraded). It's almost like some of them came immediately as part of the event, then the remaining enemy came from the enemy ship.

I did manage to fight them off with no losses with my own crew of five (2 humans, mantis, engi, rockman) by kiting them around my ship and using the airlocks -- although it did become very touch and go when my medbay got hit with a 4-damage ion bomb just when I had managed to get 3 of the enemy in there!

McIrishJihad wrote:

Sorry for skipping to the end of the thread.

Not necessary. This thread was dormant for half a month. Any reasonable forum that expects you to dig up an old thread like this can't also expect you to actually read the whole thing before posting. This is Gamers With Jobs, not some elite WoW character building theory forum. I'm pretty sure I've only seen "filthy skimmer" used as a good-natured jest.

WolverineJon wrote:

Had something unusual happen to me this morning -- has anyone ever had *5* enemy Mantis beam onto your ship at the same time, in a single encounter?

I've seen it a few times. There are scenarios that are an enemy ship plus borders from somewhere else nearby. Sometimes the ship will send its own borders over as well. It can seem pretty overwhelming until you realize that those extra large boarding parties are extra vulnerable to the "vent everything but the medbay" strategy. If you do it right anything beyond the first 3 will pretty much suffocate because there's no room for them in the medbay.

WolverineJon wrote:

Had something unusual happen to me this morning -- has anyone ever had *5* enemy Mantis beam onto your ship at the same time, in a single encounter?

I was in Zoltan space. I don't remember the exact event text, but I think it was something typical, a "You see a Mantis and a Zoltan ship fighting, the Zoltan flees / is destroyed (? don't recall), then the Mantis attacks you" kind of thing.

The enemy came in two waves -- either first 2 then 3, or else 3 then 2. They came very quickly one after the other -- not long enough for the normal cooldown on the Teleporter on the enemy ship (even if it was fully upgraded). It's almost like some of them came immediately as part of the event, then the remaining enemy came from the enemy ship.

I did manage to fight them off with no losses with my own crew of five (2 humans, mantis, engi, rockman) by kiting them around my ship and using the airlocks -- although it did become very touch and go when my medbay got hit with a 4-damage ion bomb just when I had managed to get 3 of the enemy in there!

Well, you can start an encounter with intruders that doesn't actually use the teleporter. I haven't ever had 5 people board me at once though.

The "Zoo" event involves at least 4 people beaming on to your ship at once, so I could easily see it being all mantises. That's a raw deal.

I haven't had 5 mantis (manti?), but had 5 humans before. Definitely a rough event to get, but welcome to FTL.

Our very own Nights/Black Raven's special event from his badass kickstart:)

I found it! And i had a slug with me!

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img827/593/ravenx.jpg)

I, unfortunately didn't screenshot the middle screen, but with a slug on board i was given a blue option to have my slug engage in mental combat with Dread Captain Nights. I chose it.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img222/5896/raven2k.jpg)

:3

Heh, I'd had that event before, My slug lost so I blew Nights into tiny pieces

Prozac wrote:

Heh, I'd had that event before, My slug lost so I blew Nights into tiny pieces :)

That's... not very nice... What'd my slug ever do to you! T_T

Well to be fair, he was trying to blow me into tiny pieces at the time.

Is anyone still playing this? I've been putting time in every now and then. Beat the game with the Slug ship, that was fun. Did it a bunch of times with the Rock ship and I finally managed to unlock the Rock ship B. Not to spoil anything but seeing the ship and it's name put a huge smile on my face.

Tamren wrote:

Is anyone still playing this? I've been putting time in every now and then. Beat the game with the Slug ship, that was fun. Did it a bunch of times with the Rock ship and I finally managed to unlock the Rock ship B. Not to spoil anything but seeing the ship and it's name put a huge smile on my face.

A tiny bit. I actually lost all my save data (and unlocks) in a hard disk crash in October, which helped me detox from the game. But I occasionally play a run or two.

Well, I did finally unlock the two Crystal ships after many, many attempts. I am really liking them both, especially the Type B. Leading boarding actions with a bunch of crystalmen is wonderful. I'm not sure if I am going to be able to go back to not having the lockdown ability.

Here is a crystal ship that I thematically loaded up with crystal men and weapons:

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/560958682911726068/1D4716462E9EBDF63F5BA808FE18986784655930/)

I've now beaten the game with all the ship types and alternate layouts. I still need to re-do a couple of the wins on Normal mode though. Then I will probably consider the game won.

Tamren wrote:

Is anyone still playing this? I've been putting time in every now and then. Beat the game with the Slug ship, that was fun. Did it a bunch of times with the Rock ship and I finally managed to unlock the Rock ship B. Not to spoil anything but seeing the ship and it's name put a huge smile on my face.

I got burnt out trying many many many times to unlock the crystal ship.

grobstein wrote:
Tamren wrote:

Is anyone still playing this? I've been putting time in every now and then. Beat the game with the Slug ship, that was fun. Did it a bunch of times with the Rock ship and I finally managed to unlock the Rock ship B. Not to spoil anything but seeing the ship and it's name put a huge smile on my face.

A tiny bit. I actually lost all my save data (and unlocks) in a hard disk crash in October, which helped me detox from the game. But I occasionally play a run or two.

Didn't use Steam? It doesn't say so officially but it does have cloud support.

Tamren wrote:
grobstein wrote:
Tamren wrote:

Is anyone still playing this? I've been putting time in every now and then. Beat the game with the Slug ship, that was fun. Did it a bunch of times with the Rock ship and I finally managed to unlock the Rock ship B. Not to spoil anything but seeing the ship and it's name put a huge smile on my face.

A tiny bit. I actually lost all my save data (and unlocks) in a hard disk crash in October, which helped me detox from the game. But I occasionally play a run or two.

Didn't use Steam? It doesn't say so officially but it does have cloud support.

I am on Steam but for whatever reason did not have Cloud saves. (Do I have to enable that specifically? Is it perhaps not available on the Mac version?)

Why isn't this on Steam sale? I was so ready to buy it this week. Don't make me wait until Christmas sale...

Stele wrote:

Why isn't this on Steam sale? I was so ready to buy it this week. Don't make me wait until Christmas sale...

Something tells me you've got some other games that have been patiently waiting that you can destroy for a few weeks. There's actually a working-the-pile thread elsewhere in the forums.