Erkki

FTL

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I've got like 25 plays and still haven't managed to beat the game, even on Easy. Made it to the final boss's stage 2 form in a really souped up Kestrel but ran out missiles and those droids just fucked me up so bad. So far the best games I've had were both Kestrel runs with a focus on boarding and all those times I've not managed to get a single mantis for my crew (nor get that achievement for multiple aliens on the ship.) Every time I start getting a nice, mixed alien crew something really stupid comes along and kills some of them. In one game I managed to hire 9 crew members total and lost them all by the fifth sector So unless I get a blue text option, I'm never ever fucking around with giant spiders again.

What this means is that I really need to unlock the Mantis ship to be able to beat the game in my style. I like the Engi ship, but drones drive me crazy because you can't micromanage them and I suffocate because the genius repair droid decides to fix the sensor room before the oxygen.

(One thing that I hate in this game which should be a bug is that if you have a deactivated boarding drone on your ship and you send guys into that room to repair the breach/system, they ATTACK the inactive droid while they suffocate or burn to death. Morans.)

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Interesting. You mean Rocks, right? I guess boarders don't really need speed that much, though it can play an advantage.

It is also really, really fun and/or dickish to have Rocks blasting away at the enemies on the ship and then drop a firebomb into the room. Or their medbay.

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I've got like 25 plays and still haven't managed to beat the game, even on Easy.

Yeah, the game isn't really easy even on easy. I've lost 6 or so games, not even getting very far, since the last time I won. Mostly it's because I try to focus on some single aspect and then I run into an encounter I'm not prepared for (or just take too many risks) and get destroyed. I think you need to be a bit of a generalist to be prepared for any event that may come, but with a boarding focus you really need to specialize as well.

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Being the stupid idiot I am, I decided to listen to the Idle Thumbs guys talk about how awesome this game is and then proceed to watch the Twitch archived stream of Chris playing. That on it's own isn't the stupid part, the fact that I was fully prepared to not buy this game until I did all of that is. Yeah, between GW2 and Borderlands 2 I really needed something else to timesink my whole goddamn life.

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Played 30 hours or so, and I've started hitting about 50/50 success rate in my normal difficulty runs. 29 games, 9 victories, I think 6 on easy and 3 on normal. I'm having a hard time unlocking some of the more exotic ships, but hopefully that will start happening before I manage to beat it on normal with each ship layout I've got unlocked.

Regarding the last boss:

The missile turret (third one over) is BY FAR the most dangerous. It should be your first priority. If you have a teleporter, send your dudes in there and take a massive advantage early on: His other weapons will have a hard time penetrating shields of level 3 or higher. This goes for all stages of the boss. The only real exception is during the second stage it's an equally good idea to hit his drone bay-- it won't slow down his attack or defense drones, but it will stop him from using his boarding drone.

If you have a cloak, sit on it until he either fires a volley of missiles, your shields go down, or he uses a super attack, then raise it. Actually, it's generally a good idea to get used to pausing whenever you hear the sound of a missile launching so that you can activate your cloak.

If you DON'T have a cloak then try to get your engines maxed. Whenever he launches missiles or uses a super attack, deactivate all of your drones and non-essential systems to max your evasion.

Have a strategy to deal with shields- preferably one that doesn't rely on missiles. Ion bombs are downright overpowered, so if you find one hang onto it. All of the bomb weapons are extremely good, but as far as I can tell Ion bombs are by far the best-- among other things, because ion weapons do double damage to super shields they will do EIGHT damage to the final stage's super shield

And, not specifically related to the boss, but if you're using a beam weapon get used to hitting pause whenever you take the enemy's shields down so you can line your beam up. To use beams to their maximum potential takes pixel perfect precision, which is nearly impossible to do in real time. Used this way, they're absurdly powerful.

Hope that helps those of you who are having a bit of a hard time!

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Finally did it (on easy) last night with the Type B Zoltan ship, which I'm now a huge fan of. The biggest hindrance with that ship is early on the shield upgrade costs 100, but after that it works great and the layout is nice. It helped that I got lucky early on and apart from the Pike Beam and Ion Blast that I start with, I managed to get TWO MORE Ion Blasts really early (and an Ion Blast II a little later). I also managed to get a Mantis crew member (and lots and lots of humans, three of which i had to dismiss cause I ran out of room) and teleporter pretty early too. A second Mantis joined me later and we fucked shit up. With constant constant ion blasts enemy ships were effectively immobile and I'd send crew in and kill everyone. I think in total, not counting autodroids, I probably destroyed no more than five ships in the entire game (everyone else was killed by raiding party, or by asphyxiation, or by fire).

I had a huge, huge scare one jump away from The Last Stand though as a fire-engulfed Rock ship blew up a little too early... with my Mantis crew still on board. So I thought I was fucked. I still had two humans but those were mostly defensive (one was the engine guy too) but that put me at a disadvantage. A couple fights against some Rebel Fighters also lowered my hull quite a bit before taking on the mothership. Still, with all those ion cannons, a boarding party, and max stealth (and stealth weapons) I was so ready for it

ftl_loadout.png

and I fucked it up so bad. Barely got scratched.

Phase two went well but I had an energy surge happen one time when my stealth was recharging which did a LOT of damage to me. The breaching droid was also problematic as I only had Zoltans and one Engi to deal with it, but the constant ion blasting effectively made it more of a nuisance than a threat. I survived phase two like this

ftl_end.png

Phase three, with this load-out, was a piece of cake. Nice little ship that.

Now to do it on normal.

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YES! I finally beat it on easy after 20 something runs, using The Kestrel. I had 3 shields, 4 levels of engine, full stealth with stealth weapons, rock plating, 2 Burst Lasers II, one Burst Laser III and a defense drone II.

Such a triumphant feeling. I actually jumped out of my chair, fist pumped and shouted "YEAH!".

Normal mode here I come!

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Congrats guys! Here's just a taste of the wealth of tragedies you will find in normal mode:

Playing as the type A stealth ship, I made it out of the first sector without taking any damage due to upgrading my stealth system before anything else. I choose the Rock controlled sector over the Mantis one to avoid getting boarded. Rock ships went down easily and the first shop I visited had the shield system I was looking for. This is it, I said to myself, this is the run! Upon leaving the store I was dismayed to find that the only way to move forward passed by a red giant star. Luckily, my long ranged scanners also indicated that there was no ship there. I think I can handle a little bit of fire, I thought to myself. I get to the star and all of a sudden three rocks teleported on to my ship. Somehow I managed to kill them, but by then half the ship was on fire and the other half was devoid of oxygen. With no way to reach the medbay to heal, or lifesupport to get the oxygen back, or the bridge to pilot them the hell out of there, the crew spent the last minute of their lives bickering:

"We should have upgraded the doors!"

"It wouldn't have mattered! There were three of them and they're immune to fire!"

"M-my arm is b-broken."

"Shut up, there sun is about to flare again!"

"We could have survived you know, if we had just upgraded the doors."

"Those doors take four seconds to break down, we'd be dead anyway!"

"Why didn't we just upgrade the doors anyway as a precaution?"

"Because we choose the Rock sector, not the Mantis one!"

"Look, let's just make run for the med bay. With all three of us repairing it we could get it up in time before-"

"There's no way! You're holding your intestines in your hands and Mullet's fucking legs are broken!

"M-my legs? W-what di-di-did you say about my legs?"

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Finished at last on the alternate starting ship. I ended up with three burst lasers II and an ion, along with 3 rocks and a mantis for boarding. Also on easy.

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Today I learned the value being a survivalist. Usually when I get a bad roll of the die I get frustrated, which leads to me making a tiny mistake, which the AI exploits to do massive damage, which leads me to rage quit. In my last game I had to run away from half the battles in sectors six and seven. Things were looking pretty dire when five Mantis boarded my ship simultaneously and managed to kill my Rock. Somehow I dragged my piece-of-crap ship to the last stand. Then I rolled a twenty: there's a shop here! I've never seen a shop in the last area! Then I rolled another twenty: there's was a drone control system for sale along with an anti-ship drone mark II. I sold two of my augments to buy what I needed, fought a couple of enemies to make the necessary upgrades, and annihilated the boss with a third of my hull to spare.

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Man, so I've won the game twice and am continuing to play on easy, but in some games I get almost destroyed in the first few encounters. Like almost happened just now. Second encounter, lost a crew member and am down to 5 points of hull.

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The first patch out now, here are the details: http://www.reddit.co...pdated_to_1023/. I'm disappointed there are no balance changes. Burst laser II's and ion bombs are not only the easiest weapons to use, they're also the most efficient and compatible with any setup. Read up the story of someone's first win and 90% of the time they will mention getting a second burst laser II. Contrast that with some of the other weapons: nobody is praising hull lasers or beams, and heavy lasers are picked up grudgingly in lieu of their less risky cousins. In a game about strategy and being on the right side of luck I can't justify using brute force or all-or-nothing tactics, and I assume most people feel the same way.

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Killing the crew of an enemy ship will count as defeating it for stats

About time since my most successful runs always involve boarding crews. I wish they'd pick some of the priority issues regarding crew and droids though. That one basically fucked me over in a run yesterday.

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God, when you're on in this game, you're really on.

FTL_01.png

Another Zoltan run steamrolled the boss. Every system maxed out, three ion cannons and one glaive beam churning out serious hurt, and four fully-leveled Mantis crewmembers making short work of any ship. I unlocked the Mantis and Slug ships while I was at it, because I could kill any ship in a matter of seconds and therefore wasn't afraid to lollygag. It's kind of disconcerting how sometimes the random-number generator can line up with your intentions to make for an effortless playthrough, maybe an hour after you got your balls crushed into the dust with an identical build.

Teleporters, mantises, and ion cannons are a pretty broken combination, though. I didn't find a single ship that could stand up to them. I'm not sure how I feel about the game where the only disincentive to pursuing an optimal strategy is that occasionally the starting conditions for doing so are a bit adverse.

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Balance is screwy for sure. Hull beam is okay I guess because it's a beam, but all of the other hull stuff is pretty questionable. There's no reason for them to not do the damage bonus to all rooms, regardless of systems-- they'd be pretty alright if they did. I think that just overall the devs overestimated the importance of direct hull damage, and as a result bomb-type weapons are almost universally better than traditional missiles. As long as you get their systems down, getting the hull damage with whatever weapons you have handy is usually pretty easy.

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The boarding drones in stage 2 really aren't a problem if you focus on getting the hull down quickly. I think sending the away team to the missile turret (again) is probably a better strategy because in the main ship you may have to deal with as many as 4 guys in that drone bay AND they have access to a medbay. Not saying its impossible but I've lost before by not taking that medbay out and trying to kill off the crew, it is fully upgraded and even 4 of your guys against their 1 in that medbay is a losing fight.

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Bought FTL last night after watching some of Northernlion's play through's (and of course Remo's stream a while back). I was worried I'd watched too much and wouldn't enjoy it as much as if I'd just took the plunge earlier but... I love it!

My first run was my best ending in Sector 5 in normal mode. I got a lot of luck with extra crew members, finding weapons etc but wasn't well enough equipped defensively for one rebel cruiser I bumped into. It all ended surprisingly quickly but I did unlock the Engi ship at least. Not bad for a first run! I haven't managed to get as far as that again after a few more goes, my last one ending in Sector 3 after I ran out of fuel. I had been hopping from point to point hoping to hell I got a fuel drop from an event or engagement (or a damned store, grrr) which worked for about 3 hops before the inevitable happened and I was stranded. I was surprised to find I still had one last ditch effort to send out a distress signal and after doing so the rebels came to "help".

I feel a little too reliant on missiles at the moment. I struggle against the tougher shields when I'm low on them but figure I just haven't found the right weapon drop. I also haven't found enough scrap to buy the decent stuff in a store yet. I keep spending on upgrading my ship then regretting it when a store does pop up.

All in all, brilliant. Looking forward to more epic space sagas.

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One minor thing... it feels weird that I'm a Federation ship fleeing a huge Rebel fleet. I would much prefer being one Rebel ship fleeing a Federation fleet even though I know that's more clichéd. Still, I think of it that way anyway because, well Firefly. :)

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One minor thing... it feels weird that I'm a Federation ship fleeing a huge Rebel fleet. I would much prefer being one Rebel ship fleeing a Federation fleet even though I know that's more clichéd. Still, I think of it that way anyway because, well Firefly. :)

The Red-Tail has the exact same markings as a rebel ship so maybe you can pretend you are rebelling against the rebels lol

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Balance is screwy for sure. Hull beam is okay I guess because it's a beam, but all of the other hull stuff is pretty questionable. There's no reason for them to not do the damage bonus to all rooms, regardless of systems-- they'd be pretty alright if they did. I think that just overall the devs overestimated the importance of direct hull damage, and as a result bomb-type weapons are almost universally better than traditional missiles. As long as you get their systems down, getting the hull damage with whatever weapons you have handy is usually pretty easy.

I am almost sure this is true, if only because I have constantly thought, "There is no way I can get through those shields," but not once thought, "There is no way I can damage that hull."

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One minor thing... it feels weird that I'm a Federation ship fleeing a huge Rebel fleet. I would much prefer being one Rebel ship fleeing a Federation fleet even though I know that's more clichéd. Still, I think of it that way anyway because, well Firefly. :)

If it makes you feel any better I've run into some text that suggests that the Rebels are, in fact, rebelling against the Federation practice of giving alien species equality with humans.

Also, cool (if not super surprising) to see another NL fan. I was surprised to not see any comments on it when he encountered scoops in a video, but I didn't look too deeply.

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It's been a good day for the federation! First, I finally beat the game as the Zoltan ship. Then I switched to easy mode to unlock Zoltan B. I quit out of easy mode to start a new game on normal with my new layout, which already seemed overpowered before I found a burst laser II in a shop. I desperately pulled the scrap together to buy it, but before I even had the chance to equip it: "Holy crap! Another burst laser II floating in space!" The only thing I needed after that was a cloaking system and stealth weapons; I came nowhere close to needing boarding, drones, missiles or bombs.

I've finished the game five times on normal, but if you gave me five tries to beat the game right now I couldn't guarantee that I could do it. Since I first defeated the boss, every time I've reached the last stand I've easily overwhelmed him. My problems are the very early game and the very late game. Some of the ship layouts have ridiculous weaknesses and if you're unlucky the first few enemies can hand you an unavoidable game over. The late game is also impossible if you can't put together a decent combination of strong weapons, regardless of how strong the other aspects of your ship might be. At least, that's how it seems to me. Can anyone recommend a let's play series or a Twitch channel that features someone who can consistently beat the game?

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Yeah it's kind of weird that once you know the game well the first few sectors are the hardest. I've been trying to beat the game with the rock ship and the stealth B and it's super obvious the game isn't balanced around these because they're annoying as hell to play. Stealth B is a neat idea, but in practice it's a crapshoot: Because you don't have enough cloaking early on to guarantee yourself the first shot, a lot of the time it comes down to whether the enemy ship decides to target your weapons room. In fact, if the AI was smart at all it would be easily the worst ship in the game, because if the AI consistently targeted your weapons you would basically NEVER GET A SHOT OFF.

Similarly, with the rock ship, I basically couldn't do much of anything against a ship that had both a defense drone and a med bay, since my tactic was to disable medbays with a missile and then beam guys in. It would be fine if that tactic didn't work if it hadn't been the only tactic available to me-- using 4-6 missiles a fight (and thus wasting 24-36 scrap PER FIGHT) is not a viable option, and I never encountered a weapon that could take down more than one shield at a time. The Kestral has basically everything it needs to succeed for the first 4 sectors or so to start with, but a lot of the other ships REALLY depend on finding something to punch through shields, and if they don't they really can't do a lot. I think the game would be improved if there was a stable upgrade path to bypassing shields- perhaps if your engines were more powerful than theirs you could move inside their shield bubble and attack directly. It would make Stealth A too good, but I don't know. The Osprey is a total breath of fresh air, though, since that's the one ship that you NEVER get fucked because you can't find a weapon to get past shields.

There's no reason for missiles to be as expensive as they are. I mostly avoid buying them by using them carefully, but it's an unreasonable burden to put on the rock ship. Would they be overpowered if they cost 3 scrap? I doubt it.

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