Erkki

FTL

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My people seem to suck at fighting, do you need other species or something for that?

Yea, Mantis get speed and attack bonuses and Rock have lots of HP. Those are probably the two best species for combat.

Edit: FTLWiki is handy!

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Keep in mind that numbers matter in a fight too. A one-on-one fight is going to go slow in lots of cases. But when there's a second attacker on someone, the second attacker gets to use guns because they're not grappling and such in melee combat (that's a nice little beat to add to the game I think).

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I'm kinda scared to look at the guide, if I see a huge guide, it will scare me away from the game, which is already pretty scary.

I'd rather come here and have people laugh at my poor management skills and give me a hint or two. If I get to area 5 will I finally get a ship that already has a drone system? It's just so expensive for me.

So far my strategy is to fight for scrap metal, accept surrenders, aim for cloaking devices or shields first, then weapons. I try to go in a straight line to the exit.

If possible, I put out fires and kill enemies by opening airlocks.

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I'm kinda scared to look at the guide, if I see a huge guide, it will scare me away from the game, which is already pretty scary.

I'd rather come here and have people laugh at my poor management skills and give me a hint or two. If I get to area 5 will I finally get a ship that already has a drone system? It's just so expensive for me.

So far my strategy is to fight for scrap metal, accept surrenders, aim for cloaking devices or shields first, then weapons. I try to go in a straight line to the exit.

If possible, I put out fires and kill enemies by opening airlocks.

The Wikia page isn't terribly complex, if that's your worry.

I accept surrenders too, generally if they offer a good amount of fuel, or if they're offering missiles and I have missile-necessary weapons. I think the trade-off to decline is more scrap than what is offered in a surrender but not the missiles or drone parts. So it's a good policy to accept surrenders.

Cloaking devices I'm not decided on how priority they are for me to destroy. Weapon systems always, always, always come first for me. If they enemy can't attack me, it means I can focus on tending to my repair needs and such. Shield systems don't really matter much to disable if you have multi-volley weapons. Like the burst laser mark 2, the one you start with in the basic ship, fires three shots. That laser will remove the shield system, temporarily, of the enemy (unless the enemy has the 4 shield orbs) and your other laser weaponry can do damage.

And that's another thing I've caught onto; timing your weapons to fire. I often let my burst shot take down a shield, and immediately hit the enemy with another laser I have while the opening is present.

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I guess prioritizing the weapons make sense, but won't it be easier if you take the shields down first? But yeah, once the weapons are down I guess you are safer?

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Tanu, lasers are really good and if you have a few they should see you through. Don't know what you're doing wrong - do you have autofire on? It's a good idea to switch it off, wait for all your lasers to load up and then (likely by pausing) UNLEASHING everything at once. You will down most shields and get in a few good hits.

As for boarding, which is arguably the best part of the game, you will want some strong fighters (Mantis) or some beefy meatshields like Rock People. Try to employ some basic techniques like beaming two guys on board into a small room, kill a dude, then retreat. Rinse and repeat. Watch out for med bays: they will heal the 'home team' if they're in it, so you will die if you attempt to attack there.

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My problem is that I can't survive enough to unlock a better ship and since the initial ship has no cloaking, teleporting or drones I always mess up saving scrap, if I have enough scrap to buy one of them the store is selling something else and when they do I just spent all my scrap on upgrades.

I haven't played more than few hours, so I'm still learning thing, I'm still learning the difference between each weapon and I almost made it to sector 5, but I only had one man left and couldn't handle the ship that attacked me. :|

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Let me just ask you a couple of questions, because on Easy it really shouldn't give you too much trouble to at least get to the final boss. (Defeating which will make you cry, by the way.)

1. Do you use pause a lot? You should. Before any encounter or situation, feel free to pause and think out your strategy.

2. Lasers are really good. Don't be afraid to just get some basic ones that fire 2 or 3 volleys. Don't spend all your effort on one big giant gun that costs a lot of energy.

3. You already focused on shields, which is good. For extra evasion, also upgrade your engines, though usually I trade off between the two. The differences are thus: shields soak up damage, engines avoid damages. Say that you are up against rockets, which bypass your shields (!), then it is a very good tactic to pause the game before the rockets hit, put all your energy from shields into engines, and hopefully evade the rockets completely.

4. Send your beginning staff to pilot, engines/shields and weapons. Get extra guys whenever you can. Rare is the occasion I wouldn't want a fully staffed ship, even when I'm not boarding.

5. Upgrade your doors. Seriously: this WON'T cost you energy and it's cheap, so this is a must-have. It'll hold back intruders and fire.

If you stick to these basic rules, you will do fine. Once you get over the level 5 hump, you'll reach the final boss almost all the time. Just need to get the hang of it.

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Well, it's not like easy level in this game is really easy, though. Some games I've died in the first or second sectors even on easy.

Also, don't worry too much about unlocking other ships. IMHO, the first ships has just as good a chance of beating the game as the others.

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I just had another of those frustrating runs. I was using the Engi ship for the first time (and thus working with drones for the first time ever). I put the human to pilot the ship and set my crew to the shield and weapon systems. Ion weapons are amazing, the faster they fire the better. And drones aren't half bad either. Through quick luck, I suppose, my crew maxed out with all Engis (minus the human pilot), so I doubled up crew members in the weapon, shield, and engine rooms, and had the others waiting in the drone and scanning rooms to cover repair / security space. I arrived at the final stage of the game with level 2 shields, 35% evade, 2 ion weapons, and three attack drones (mk2 anti-ship, mk1 anti-ship, and a beam drone).

Until the end of the game I was wrecking everything in my path pretty easily. But again, that final boss doesn't put up with no mess.

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I picked this game up yesterday and have played for about five hours.

Got to the final sector on my second run (easy mode) and lost because apparently I let the mothership get "too close". Wish the game would have told me that if the enemy gets within 3 systems of my base I lose. Or in my last run I traversed an entire sector only to find that I couldnt get to the exit that way... even though it looked VERY close. So I had to go all the way back around through the rebels to get there. The rebels are impossible and I died. And that was annoying.

This game has some very nice amounts of polish, such as the way personnel combat works. But other areas really lack what seems like common sense clarity. When those errors cause me to lose an hour or more of progress, thats just not okay.

I also find that game to have not very high replay-ability. The unlocks and achievements seem way too far out. I unlocked the engie ship but have no real interest in it, and im not sure where the next one comes.

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You can turn on a setting in the options menu that shows jump paths when you hover over a sector, which lets you plan things out so you never get stranded like you did in your last run.

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The reason to unlock all the ships + ship layouts, beyond the fact that they add a lot of variety, is that each one teaches a lesson in how to play the game. Start with no weapons. No shields. Ion cannon tactics. Bio-beam tactics. They generally force you to learn a system or technique you may have skipped entirely over.

Note that alternative ship layouts are unlocked via visible achievements are are different enough to consider them unique ships themselves.

The engi ship is quite powerful, btw, one of the best ones. Easy and early access to defense drones means you save a ton of scrap that would be damage. (when you see a missile fire you can pause the game after it is obvious that your defense drone is not going to shoot it down and divert power to evasion or engage cloak, you don't have to guess) The Red-Tail, the alternative version of the starting ship, is one of the easiest ships.

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You can turn on a setting in the options menu that shows jump paths when you hover over a sector, which lets you plan things out so you never get stranded like you did in your last run.

Are you serious? Motherfucker.

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I just beat the game and I feel so exhilarated from it. Everything just culminated into a perfect storm. I found two additional Burst Laser II's and a Heavy Laser as my final load out by the time I was half-way through the game (and even had a chance to buy a fourth BLII). The one thing that probably shaped the entire game, that wasn't that awesome random chance of weapon finding and instead a decision I made, was when I bought a scrap recovery arm toward the start. It added quite a bit of an edge to... well, everything.

I also learned the value of having more weapon system power than you need, because the dummy space will lose power but your weapons will still be functional.

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Yes, that's an excellent tactic! I would always buy dummy space for weapons and drones.

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I dislike the boss fight (especially the second part) very much. While the rest of the game allows varying playstyles, there doesn't seem to be many reasonable ways of beating that one. I absolutely rocked the whole game up to that point with my burst lasers and boarding parties. I didn't take many points of damage in the first phase of the boss either, but when I failed to destroy it in the second phase in two volleys, it spawned the "rocks fall, everyone dies" swarm of drones even though I had destroyed its drone system. It seems like a bullshit slap in the face to me. "Looks like the ship is routing power to drones", the game says. "I better disable the drones then", I think. "Oh you think disabling my drones will disable my drones? You wish. You lost the game".

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Got this game with Christmas Monies on Friday night; it's good!

Anyone else notice the similarity between the combat in FTL and the game "Magi" from MoaCube? Not carbon-copy similar by any means, but as I was fighting in FTL I had a moment of realization wherein I exclaimed silently, to myself, "This feels just like Magi!"

It's been a while since I played it, but I remember Magi is a wizards-dueling game (nothing else, just a series 1v1 battles) where the ultimate goal is to defeat Death so you can be a wizard forever. Anyhow, the choices in that game around which schools of magic ("channels") you upgrade, whether you summon beasties or focus on defense or offense, whether you try to end it quickly or play an endurance game...the options and the timing and the mana allocation all feels akin to the power allocation and choice of offense/defense systems in FTL.

Especially noteworthy was the Engi ship I got -- the dependence on Drones and Ion weapons felt just like the class (I forget its name) in Magi that relies almost entirely on summoning and debuffs, with little direct damage to speak of. And perhaps most importantly of all, they both have that tense moment where you're just watching your attack timers recharge, hoping you get to fire off that key round before your enemy does.

I just mention this to see if anyone else noticed the similarity, and to suggest that if people like FTL's combat they will probably also like Magi. =)

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I got this when it was on sale yesterday. At first, I played on normal and got intensely annoyed at how quickly it can wipe out even a well set up ship. On easy, I'm finding it quite addictive, but I still suck: High score of 917. I quite like the Engi ship that has drone control from the start, with the Kestrel I was struggling to get past 550.

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I just mention this to see if anyone else noticed the similarity, and to suggest that if people like FTL's combat they will probably also like Magi. =)

I tried it a moment ago and even though trying to be a wizard forever sounds good, I can't say I really liked the game at first glance. It seemed a bit... spammy to me. I'll believe you if you tell me it gets better and more tactical once you get more spells etc.. The fast pace and lack of a pause button certainly contributed to the picture I got of it.

This is going quite a bit off topic, but I must mention it. Magi, in turn, made me think of the hacking minigame in EYE: Divine Cybermancy. Magi has of course a lot more depth, as there's only 4 action in the EYE hacking game, but the idea is the same: bring down your opponents defence while keeping yours up, debuff the enemy and boost your own attack while also landing hits at the enemy.

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I tried it a moment ago and even though trying to be a wizard forever sounds good, I can't say I really liked the game at first glance. It seemed a bit... spammy to me. I'll believe you if you tell me it gets better and more tactical once you get more spells etc.. The fast pace and lack of a pause button certainly contributed to the picture I got of it.

Thank you for the unreserved trust. ^_^ I've probably put about 6 hours into the demo and you're right -- it does start out feeling somewhat frantic, and it's possible to win some fights just by throwing basic attacks. The fast pace becomes more manageable as you get a few basic opening strategies in your head, though, and there are some craaAaAzy opponents against whom the brute-force tactics won't really work unless you're playing a specialist in arcane spamminess. (So for example, there's a type of magi who had stupidly effective shields, and it took a few tries before I hit upon a good combination of defensive minions and...I think it was, like...a swarm of plague insects? that would just fly over there and cause damage over time, and could pass through shields).

In other, shorter words, I at least think it gets better and has some nuanes. =) I doubt it ever quite loses the element of panicked rapid clicking, though -- which is probably deliberate. Perhaps it was made by people who do not have chin-beards for stroking thoughtfully. The decision to not include a pause-and-issue-orders option is a big consideration, and one which I'd entirely forgotten about since the last time I played it. =P In any case, as far as FTL goes, I enjoy being able to pause the combat so that I can take time to do all the clever little things with doors and fires and etc.

I only ever had played the big ol' Magi demo, but after making this post I saw it was down to $10 so I purchased the full game with money, and after I have played it a goodly amount I may create a thread with my findings! Also, your post reminds me that I still need to play more than the first 30 minutes of E.Y.E, if for no other reason to experience yet another wildly different "hacking" minigame.

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Wow -- I must say, watching the twitch.tv stream must have endowed me with reams of unconscious and conscious knowledge. Playing with the combined power of 2.5 hours of chatroom advice and seeing someone else beat the scary boss, I was able to destroy all three stages where previously I had never beaten the first stage! Thanks, stream.

I wonder why I never tried cloaking and boarding parties on my own? (Except for the obvious problems with boarding parties; though I'm pretty proud that I managed to attain victory even after sending two of my units onto a nearly-empty Rebel ship which seconds later jumped away...I like to think that they befriended the remaining crew members out of necessity and sailed off into the outer reaches of once-again-Federation space, having lots of adventures and adopting a puppy named Jonathon Winslow along the way).

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Ok, I need some tactical advice. I've managed to make it to the final boss (on easy) once -- but I got wiped out immediately. It's a fun little game, but it seems to rely on luck an awful lot. I can't seem to see the benefits of much strategy... which either means I'm very bad at this game, or it really is based largely on luck. Can anyone who's mastered this game offer any advice?

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