I hadn't thought of the doors.
Thanks.
Also turn off the O2 system when you blow the airlocks. The rooms will evacuate faster and your opponents will take damage sooner.
You can turn it back on once those rooms are in vacuum.
For ships that have very few crew members, I often open all my airlocks from the get go, and leave enough doors open to keep unoccupied rooms (execpt the medbay, if the ship has one) in vaccuum all the time. When boarders appear, I can selectively close doors to slow the boarders down (at least one or two door upgrades are required for this to be effective). Although this technique can backfire at times, it's worked out well for me. It also works especially well on ships with predominantly Lanius crew members, as they can move freely through the rooms in vaccuum.
Finally beat it yesterday after a run with the kestrel, max cloaking/shield/engines, 7 crew members, no drones, 4 weak weapons but the versatilty of the two initial weapons and the ion+Pike beam did the trick. It was around my 50th attempt. I think I might give the game a break for awhile/ever as it was completely taking over all my entertainment time.
I hadn't thought of the doors.
I typically try to upgrade to level 2 doors by the end of sector 2 (and for the Engi ships, sooner than that).
I need to wipe my iPad - does anyone know if the save file for FTL is saved in iCloud, or if it's possible to be backed up anywhere else?
I found these instructions on how to migrate your save from PC to iPad. I think a similar process would let you back up your iPad save and restore it later.
http://gaming.stackexchange.com/ques...
The game does not appear to use iCloud (There will usually be a 'back up save' / 'restore save' option pair in games that do, though some do operate entirely in the background)
I found these instructions on how to migrate your save from PC to iPad.
Wow, I didn't even think that was an option. May encourage me to dust off FTL on iPad if I can get my save copied.
Me neither. Are the two versions even compatible? I liked how the original PC version did NOT allow you to unlock ships by simply completing the game, and am displeased that the iPad version does not require you to go through the nitpicky unlocking steps. Does "newb unlocking" occur on PC now, too? Can I set my iPad to not allow it?
In case anyone is interested, pre-orders are open for the FTL: Advanced Edition soundtrack on 180-gram vinyl.
Damn. When I see a game's GWJ thread light up with new messages after this long I am hopeful for a new patch, expansion pack, or sequel.
Damn. When I see a game's GWJ thread light up with new messages after this long I am hopeful for a new patch, expansion pack, or sequel.
I have spent so much time playing FTL that a sequel is kind of terrifying to me.
If you're into game development and design, check out this post-mortem.
I fired up the game after a long time away, it's every bit as awesome as I remembered.
I've been playing a few games as the mantis ships, something I never really touched before. Mantis ships are all about boarding assaults, the first time I tried piloting a Mantis A the game kept throwing more and more mantis crewmen at me. I ended up with 6 of them, to support them I bought a cloning bay and an upgrade that makes crew heal when teleported. Whenever I ran into an enemy ship I just sent wave after wave of mantises at them until they succumbed. This worked pretty well.
And then I tried the Mantis B I just unlocked. Boy if the Mantis A is a good assault ship Mantis B is the pinnacle of boarding action technology. It has a 4-man teleporter instead of a 2-man, and not only that but it comes with a boarding drone! It doesn't have any weapons to start with but you have strong shields and a defence drone. So it's a simple matter to turtle up while you assault the enemy directly, in more than one case I just threw my entire crew at the enemy ship. By the end of the game I had a crack boarding squad of 4 mantises backed up by TWO boarding drones and an anti-bio beam. I don't think I could make a more face meltingly awesome setup if I tried. And just for added hilarity I got lucky and picked up a zoltan shield.
I've just been playing FTL too for the last three or four days -- interesting that we both picked it up in the same timeframe. And I just had a wildly successful run as Crystal Ship B, which also starts with a 4-person teleporter and no weapons. Crystals are incredibly good boarders because of their Lockdown power; they can put an impenetrable barrier around a room they're in. So you can teleport into some critical location with your three crewpeople, and by chaining up to three cooldowns, can lock it down long enough to kill anyone in there and destroy even very tough components. (like a big weapon stack.)
In enemy ships with a medbay, you can also use the lockdown power to keep the bad guys from getting away. This won't help much with a clone bay; those you pretty much have to invade directly or destroy with weapons if you have them. But normal medbay isn't much of a problem for a Crystal boarding crew.
The big weakness, of course, is the total lack of weapons; this means you can't destroy drone ships at all. So you have to run from those until you can get something to kill them with.
I also picked up that Reconstructive Teleport; that's more a convenience item than anything, at least with a normal medbay (I hate clone bays, because you lose skills). But it does let you respond almost instantly if you have to change from invading to repelling boarders, or vice-versa.
During that run, I found and saved the Mantis hero guy, so I also got Mantis Pheromones (20% faster movement) and a mantis crewperson with max skills in everything. He ended up being my pilot, and one of the responders to enemy boarders.
edit: oh, also, I got a Drone Recovery Arm, so I was able to deploy Defense Drone 1s freely. This was super, super helpful for not taking damage while assaulting the bad guys. I hate enemy missiles.
You guys make me want to play again. Loved this so much.
I tried to play FTL on my hand-me-down Surface while at the beach, but the size was off and the touch interface went bonkers if I set the game too scale. Ended up playing Kingdom instead.
It's a remarkable little game, and one that I can easily imagine still being perfectly playable fifty years from now. It's such a little gem, and entirely self-contained.
Mantis boarding crew FTW!!! I've played this so much. Funny thing is, I never clicked with the game when I got it on PC. At first. Then I got it on my iPad, and good grief, I must've played it hundreds and hundreds of hours. So great.
How's the mod scene these days? I remember there being a very nice balanced weapon compilation mod at one point, but I got rid of it when that big free first-party upgrade (Advanced Edition I think?) dropped. Is there anything like that out now?
So there I am flying my Lanius ship in Engi space. I jump to a new nav point and receive a free Defense Drone II. Awesome! I jump again and I get... another Defense Drone II! I put them to good use in the final battle. One trick you can do if you have multiple defense drones is to stagger them a little so they orbit opposite each other. This increases the protective coverage dramatically because they don't get caught up chasing the same projectile.
I also learned that teleporters can pull up to 4 crew from an enemy ship even if the teleport room is only two tiles. They simply teleport back into the nearest empty room. What I've gotten into a habit of now is to rotate my combat teams to spread the experience around. Even if I only have 2 or 4 "main" soldiers it's good to spread the experience around in case I get boarded. I have all of my crew take turns except for engis and zoltan.
The biggest tip that I wish I knew starting out is that enemy strength scales to your reactor size. There's a ton of strategy involved in when to spend scrap and when to hoard it. But the higher you get your reactor the more scrap you take in from random events as well as combat. I can usually tell how a run is going to end up if I get to the end of sector 2 and I'm not doing at least okay.
One trick you can do if you have multiple defense drones is to stagger them a little so they orbit opposite each other. This increases the protective coverage dramatically because they don't get caught up chasing the same projectile.
That's a good tip! I don't think I've ever run multiple defense drones at once.
I've found that I actually prefer the Defense Drone I to the II in many situations, because the DDII tends to often shoot at an incoming laser (which my shields would have stopped anyway), only to let through an incoming missile a second later (since the drone is now on cooldown).
I also learned that teleporters can pull up to 4 crew from an enemy ship even if the teleport room is only two tiles. They simply teleport back into the nearest empty room.
That's another new thing I've learned! Thanks!
The biggest tip that I wish I knew starting out is that enemy strength scales to your reactor size.
Is that true?? I'd always assumed that events / enemy strength / rewards were tied to the current sector number?
Can I get some kind of a hint on how the Mantis ship is unlocked? (other than by victory with whatever the other ship type is) I'm not sure what kind of hint I'm looking for though.
All I know is with some of the Mantis ships, if you kill all the crew with fire it tells you it was a disappointing end. I've also done the thing where you let a Mantis ship escape, then fight a bigger ship.
Edit: How about this: do I only find Kazerfilplik or whatever their name is in the Mantis Homeworlds?
Is that true?? I'd always assumed that events / enemy strength / rewards were tied to the current sector number?
Hmm, I could have sworn that was the case. I heard that a long time ago before the AE expansion and it seemed to be true at the time. But none of the recent guides I've read mention this, so I think you can safely disregard that.
Oh and for anyone who still hasn't unlocked the secret ship, getting the Rock C ship from the expansion will help you a lot because it skips the most frustrating part of the quest.
Can I get some kind of a hint on how the Mantis ship is unlocked?
I'm not sure how to hint at this, so I'll just tell you what I remember.
You have to find the Mantis hero KK-somethingorother, in the Mantis homeworlds. You might need a Mantis crewperson, not sure, in order to get some special challenge text. Then you have to beat them by killing the enemy crew without blowing up the ship; this normally happens with a teleporter, but any way of killing the crew can work. Finally, you have to have an upgraded Medbay to save the Mantis leader from death. I think level 2 is enough, but I'm not sure.
Get all those things right, and he joins your crew, and unlocks the Mantis A ship. edit: he's maxed out in every skill, too... slightly less useful with Mantis, because of their slow repair speed, but still nice.
If you find this unreasonably difficult, when you know you're about to jump into the Mantis homeworlds, savescumming can help a lot.
This can be a brutally difficult fight, by the way. The last time I fought that guy, his ship was ridiculously good. Even with the superb three-Crystal-one-Mantis boarding party I had, I took a TON of damage.
Can I get some kind of a hint on how the Mantis ship is unlocked? (other than by victory with whatever the other ship type is) I'm not sure what kind of hint I'm looking for though.
Edit: How about this: do I only find Kazerfilplik or whatever their name is in the Mantis Homeworlds?
Yes, the Legendary Thief event will only happen in the Mantis Homeworlds.
You must kill all the crew members without destroying the ship. After the fight, the normal end-of-fight dialog box will appear. In order for the options you need to choose to appear, you must have either level 3 sensors or a teleporter, and you must have a level 2 or higher medical or cloning bay. Choosing the options that appear for those specific pieces of equipment will give you the ship, among other rewards.
I think I have enough to set off for now. Thanks for the info, Malor and Keldar.
Found the mod I was thinking of: it's called Captain's Edition, it's added a whole mess of new stuff since the last time I messed with it, and it's really rekindling my love of the game. It feels very balanced and true to the spirit of vanilla/AE, but adds all kinds of extra variety to the weapons and events. Very much recommended if you've got the itch for some more FTL but know all the events, strategies, and loadouts backwards and forwards.
hbi2k, that Captain's Edition looks really cool, I'm going to give it a try!
Better ending or still massive boss ship?
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