FTL

Stele wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Itsatrap wrote:

2. avoid killing the crew in the triple-laser room

Why? It's a lot easier to destroy the weapon if there's no crew in there.

If you kill all of the enemy crew, an AI takes over and repairs systems super fast and makes the fight harder.

So you leave the one guy alive, in the laser room (inside left of the boss), all alone, and never attack that room.

If you manage to kill/board the rest of the crew in the main body of the ship, you have a very easy phase 2/3 fight.

I would only worry about leaving one guy alive you you have a boarding or fire-focused strategy for the boss fight. Even then, it isn't too big of a deal when the AI takes over. The system repair is annoying, but by that point you should have the boss pretty well on the ropes.

Just tried a couple games on Normal and was able to beat it on my second try! For most of the game you are really riding a super fine line between cash flow, repairs, and upgrades. I'm not sure I would be able to get the cash needed without a boarding party. By sector 8 I had managed to get full shields and close to full engines. I never found a defense drone but a lucky last second cloak purchase saved the day and I was able to take the the end boss handily. It seems like on Normal they start cranking up enemy ship shield levels earlier too. I saw a ship with 5 shield levels towards the end of the game. I'm pretty sure I have never run into that before.

EriktheRed wrote:
Stele wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Itsatrap wrote:

2. avoid killing the crew in the triple-laser room

Why? It's a lot easier to destroy the weapon if there's no crew in there.

If you kill all of the enemy crew, an AI takes over and repairs systems super fast and makes the fight harder.

So you leave the one guy alive, in the laser room (inside left of the boss), all alone, and never attack that room.

If you manage to kill/board the rest of the crew in the main body of the ship, you have a very easy phase 2/3 fight.

I would only worry about leaving one guy alive you you have a boarding or fire-focused strategy for the boss fight. Even then, it isn't too big of a deal when the AI takes over. The system repair is annoying, but by that point you should have the boss pretty well on the ropes.

Just explaining why itsatrap would suggest leaving the guy alive.

I've done it with and without boarding parties. One time I lost my party, but still had decimated their medbay with my beam weapons and managed to kill the whole crew as they tried to heal and repair the medbay.

I haven't really messed around with boarding parties much. I'm still getting the hang of a lot of the systems, it was really only on that last Kestrel run that I got the hang of timing the cloak to dodge missiles and stuff.

I unlocked the Zoltan cruiser on that run, only messed with it once and it was a disaster. Need more practice I guess.

I have learned that if you give me a four party Mantis boarding crew, a burst laser, and a fire beam, I become a TOTAL DICK!

Some men really do just want to watch the stars burn.

BunbyHeri wrote:

For the "Tough Little Ship" achievement, I found that the following trick worked for me

Genius! That achievement had been annoying me.

I'm having the luckiest run I have ever had. I started off with the rock ship and this is what I have so far by sector 6...

3 Mark II burst lasers
1 Hull laser 2
Unfortunately you can only upgrade to 8 power so I can't have those all going simultaneously.
Defense drone 1
Antiship drone 1 & 2
S.Bomb
Ion Blast 2
Cloak and Teleport
And a full crew including a well trained Mantis boarding party.

Most of my games usually only end up with 2 or 3 of the above. I think this will be the first time I fully upgrade my weapons system (I'm at 7 bars right now). This will be a fun boss fight.

That's quite the nice run

There's nothing like getting trounced for hours and then getting a build like that. Makes the enemy all warm and fuzzy in their ship as it explodes.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this. Unlocked the Rock and Mantis ships. Did one run with the Rock, got crappy luck and couldn't find a non-missile weapon to save my life, ran out of missiles, died ignobly. Haven't had a chance to try out the Mantis yet.

I've started messing around with boarding parties, man, they're fun! High risk, high reward. In the middle of another Kestrel run, got a leveled double-Mantis boarding party and a Mantis / Human backup. Defense drone to keep missiles off my back, cloak + stealth weapons. I'd like to find an Ion Bomb to make it easier to keep weapons disabled while my Manti slaughter things, but the standard missile launcher is still pretty okay for that.

I'm having some great fun with boarding parties as well, and love how having them can substantially change my strategy for certain encounters. After reading so many posts from people who've lost boarding parties to inadvertent autofires (and with only damage-dealing weapons on my current ship), I've been practicing keeping a more watchful eye on my shots, and have happily left some encounters almost entirely to my boarders. I'm thankful for the "heartbeat" SFX when someone's getting low on health, in case I take my attention away from them for too long.

Sparhawk wrote:

That's quite the nice run :)

Queueball wrote:

There's nothing like getting trounced for hours and then getting a build like that. Makes the enemy all warm and fuzzy in their ship as it explodes.

Yeah, it made the boss battles pretty fun. Having the option of what ways you want to take his various stages out is pretty satisfying. Sorry second stage, no boarding drones for you!

6 hours into the game, and always getting my butt kicked. I had gotten to The Last Stand twice and was immediately destroyed by regular ships.

Tried Engi ship on easy, and I feel like I won, even though what I did was destroy the second flag ship as he destroyed me. Still. Whoo freaking Hooo.
Much, much better than I'd ever done.

My weapons weren't even that great to tell you the truth. But still...destroyed his bootie twice.

Roo wrote:

6 hours into the game, and always getting my butt kicked.

I didn't get my first "win" until after I put in 35 hours, you'll get it eventually

Yeah seems that 10-15 hours is pretty common for first win, at least if you're playing on Easy.

So yeah, I leave the triple-laser intact because with a decently equipped ship, the triple-laser is not a threat at all. However, the triple-missile is very dangerous. Actually, missiles in general are dangerous, and inexperienced players ignore engine upgrades at their peril.

I suppose you could destroy the flagship's triple-laser system if you aren't using a boarding-heavy strategy, but for stages 2 and 3 it's the special attacks that you really have to worry about, so leaving the triple-laser guy alive is not a big deal.

I can win very regularly on easy mode now. Normal mode is still tricky, but it's no longer the instant-death situation that it used to be. Of course, some of this depends on the starting ship; I've had a lot of success with the Red Tail (aka Kestrel B).

I'm in the same boat. Easy mode (after about 100 hours....yikes, I'm getting my money's worth!) is pretty much a guaranteed victory unless I hit a bad string of random encounters.

Switched over to Regular mode last night and struggled to get to the last stand but I made it with a marginal build. Did my usual "take out all but laser weapons" with my boarding party, but then I didn't have the firepower to reliably suppress the shield. But then again, the mother ship couldn't hurt me either. Out of missiles, I set my burst laser III on auto, targeting the shield, and went AFK. I come back ~15 minutes later and the boss is down to 2 hull. Three more minutes and encounter 1 is over.

Rinse and repeat for encounter 2 and I am down to 1/3 my hull....I just couldn't cloak often enough, reliably enough, to avoid all the drones. No repair sites in range, so the outcome is inevitable. I enter encounter 3 full of dread...and the end was not pretty.

That was the best FTL game I've had! Amazing game.

Beat the boss! It was touch-and-go there a couple times. The bastard ate my boarding party in Round 1. My only missile weapon was the Breach Bomb, so I had to breach the enemy Medbay and fight off the enemy crew there while it was leaking oxygen. The enemy cloaked JUST as I was about to pull my guys out, and all four of them suffocated before it decloaked. I had to use my gunner and shield officer as a backup boarding party, but fortunately the enemy crew were all down to a sliver of health and couldn't heal because they couldn't repair the breach in the Medbay before suffocating.

On easy you don't have to micro that much and if your smart you'll have plenty of resource most the time. You can survive a screw up or two.

On normal you need to micro your weapons and unless you get lucky you'll always be scraping by. One screw up will usually end you.

hbi2k wrote:

Beat the boss! It was touch-and-go there a couple times. The bastard ate my boarding party in Round 1. My only missile weapon was the Breach Bomb, so I had to breach the enemy Medbay and fight off the enemy crew there while it was leaking oxygen. The enemy cloaked JUST as I was about to pull my guys out, and all four of them suffocated before it decloaked. I had to use my gunner and shield officer as a backup boarding party, but fortunately the enemy crew were all down to a sliver of health and couldn't heal because they couldn't repair the breach in the Medbay before suffocating.

Good story! Congratulations on pulling off the win despite that setback!

It's times like that I almost wish there was an option to order your boarding party members to *repair* the enemy ship...

There is one race that energizes the room they are in. So you could do that in a medbay on board of the enemy's ship, right?

Sparhawk wrote:

There is one race that energizes the room they are in. So you could do that in a medbay on board of the enemy's ship, right?

I'm not sure if Zoltan provide energy to enemy systems they are occupying (highly doubtful) but even so the enemy medbay does not heal your guys and vice versa. Plus you cannot energize a damaged area.

hbi2k wrote:

Beat the boss! It was touch-and-go there a couple times. The bastard ate my boarding party in Round 1. My only missile weapon was the Breach Bomb, so I had to breach the enemy Medbay and fight off the enemy crew there while it was leaking oxygen. The enemy cloaked JUST as I was about to pull my guys out, and all four of them suffocated before it decloaked. I had to use my gunner and shield officer as a backup boarding party, but fortunately the enemy crew were all down to a sliver of health and couldn't heal because they couldn't repair the breach in the Medbay before suffocating.

Nice, those close fights are always the most exciting.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Sparhawk wrote:

There is one race that energizes the room they are in. So you could do that in a medbay on board of the enemy's ship, right?

I'm not sure if Zoltan provide energy to enemy systems they are occupying (highly doubtful) but even so the enemy medbay does not heal your guys and vice versa. Plus you cannot energize a damaged area.

Good points.

I may be a little slow with this but my favorite part of FTL was the music.

I can a across the guy who made the music and he has the entire soundtrack on the site:

http://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/ftl

TempestBlayze wrote:

I may be a little slow with this but my favorite part of FTL was the music.

I can a across the guy who made the music and he has the entire soundtrack on the site:

http://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/ftl

I thought the soundtrack was bundled with the Steam version of the game? At least, there's a copy in my Steam\steamapps\common\FTL Faster Than Light\ directory on Windows...

hbi2k wrote:

The enemy cloaked JUST as I was about to pull my guys out, and all four of them suffocated before it decloaked.

This is why I'm very cautious about boarding the flagship during stage 1. It's doable, but only in certain circumstances.

McIrishJihad wrote:

I thought the soundtrack was bundled with the Steam version of the game? At least, there's a copy in my SteamsteamappscommonFTL Faster Than Light directory on Windows...

The game and soundtrack are also available separately, so not everyone who bought the game has it.

Itsatrap wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

The enemy cloaked JUST as I was about to pull my guys out, and all four of them suffocated before it decloaked.

This is why I'm very cautious about boarding the flagship during stage 1. It's doable, but only in certain circumstances.

If I have a boarding crew, I always board the gun rooms. I never noticed not being able to pull them out if the ship is cloaked. I could have sworn I have done that many times.

McIrishJihad wrote:

I thought the soundtrack was bundled with the Steam version of the game? At least, there's a copy in my SteamsteamappscommonFTL Faster Than Light directory on Windows...

I paid an extra $2.50 for the soundtrack on Steam (on sale) after I picked up the game and really liked the soundtrack. Even if it was already in the folder I don't feel bad kicking in a little extra for the music and the game in general. The hours played to cost ratio on this game for me shows an insane value.

I think I wound up buying it directly off BandCamp, as well as getting it as part of a Kickstarter reward tier for something totally unrelated...