Erkki

FTL

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In some ways it's harder, but I feel like the random events are a lot more forgiving. I've had far fewer crew killed by giant spiders, and it seems like colonists thank me for saving them from the rebels a lot more often.

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I still love this game. I think the additions are great. They do seem to make the game a bit harder, which I like. Or maybe not harder in general, but the new stuff provides more opportunities to get completely destroyed by the enemy, by a certain configuration, early on, without having had much chance or time to get the defenses up.

 

(Okay, I said this some pages earlier in this very thread I think, but to the people who have really big problems with getting through the game: You all do use pause constantly and for everything, don’t you?)

 

Yeah, I can make it all the way to the boss on normal (and have beaten it on easy) but the way the final boss works is less than thrilling for me.

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(Okay, I said this some pages earlier in this very thread I think, but to the people who have really big problems with getting through the game: You all do use pause constantly and for everything, don’t you?)

 

YOU CAN PAUSE!?

 

:P  Of course I do.  My problem has just been not having the firepower or defenses once the sector 4 enemies start showing up with level 2 shields and more weapons. 

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Lanius B with Hacking, Flak I, Charge Ion, Ion Bomb, Fire Beam and a Weapons Pre-Igniter. Hack their weapons, mind control a dude, Ion their shields, set everything on fire, beam on, kill Oxygen while sucking the air out of the room. Then watch as the crew burns to death and suffocates at the same time, powerless to do anything about it. It's a slow victory, but such a satisfying one.

 

Unfortunately, not a great set-up for the Flagship battle. I should have kept a Burst Laser instead of the Fire Beam, but that's not as fun.

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I got to the Flagship on Normal with my old standard the Mantis B last night.  I have to say that the Teleporter style can be a lot more challenging this time around in the last couple of sectors.  Enemies having a Cloning Bay requires a bit of a different strategy than a MedBay if you don't have the firepower to punch through and knock it out.  Several fights drug out longer than necessary until I picked up a Hacking System late in the run. Had a gloriously tense Sector 7 when my ship was reduced to 2 hull points and it took me several jumps and flawless battles until I found a store to repair. 

 

I still failed on the Flagship.  I had not realized what hacking a Medbay did!  It reverses the healing and hurts anyone in the room, and since the doors are sealed, they can't escape.  The Flagship hacked my Medbay, and not realizing that, I sent 3 of my boarders in to heal after bringing them back to the ship, the Flagship turned on its hack, and they promptly died.  I also foolishly lost a crew member because he was in the same room as a Lanius, which I had been doing a good job of avoiding until I had to use my systems people as boarders in the end.   When I got to Phase 2, I just didn't have enough boarders/firepower to knock out systems fast enough to keep it from carving my ship into pieces. 

 

I also discovered you can destroy a hacking probe by hacking the hacking system.  Not quite sure on the mechanics, but it seemed like I needed to hack it while it was active to destroy it, as it wasn't destroyed just by me turning on the hack. 

 

I continue to be super impressed at just how well everything feels like it fits in the expansion. 

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You can also counter an enemy's mind control attack by using your own mind control system on your affected crew member.

I also can't overstate how much i appreciate that you can now save a set of crew positions, it makes it so much less fiddly to put everybody back where they need to go after a battle has concluded.

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You can also counter an enemy's mind control attack by using your own mind control system on your affected crew member.

 

I just learned this after trying it out and it's super useful.

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I just learned this after trying it out and it's super useful.

I also learned it independently earlier today. When I did, I thought 'I have to make a post about how much I like this'.

 

Speaking of mind control, I just love it combined with the teleporter. Before mind control, it was dangerous to teleport into a 4-square room, since even expert fighters will lose if they're outnumbered. Now it's much more safe and viable, especially with upgraded mind control.

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Of the new ships/configurations, which ones have you guys been playing around with?
(Hell, for that matter, which ships/configurations did you guys use in vanilla?)

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I only have the Mantis C and the Lanius A unlocked so far.

 

My favorite ship is probably the Stealth B, though I have had terrible success with it.  I tend to like Glass Cannons though.  The Mantis A and B have been my most successful ships.

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Of the new ships/configurations, which ones have you guys been playing around with?

(Hell, for that matter, which ships/configurations did you guys use in vanilla?)

 

My favourite ship in Vanilla was the Noether (Zoltan B), although the Adjudicator (Zoltan A) was pretty sweet too. I also liked Stealth A (can't remember its name). Right now, I love the Shrike (Lanius B), although I've played a bunch of runs with it lately, so I might head back to the Zoltans soon, or maybe try out the Mantis since I've never really explored that ship.

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The Nisos, the b-variant of the federation cruiser, was probably the most reliable start for me in vanilla, but i also really enjoyed both of the crystalline beings' ships. (My best victorious game in FTL was with the Carnelian.)

I'm not sure what i like in AE yet. The b-variant Lanius ship, The Shrike, definitely looks like a promising all-around start. I also had a good game with the Tektite, the c-variant rockman ship. A lot of the other new c-variants look quite weird and interesting, like the Simo-H stealth cruiser or the Cerenkov Zoltan cruiser. (The former lacks not just shields but also the stealth gear the other sc variants have, it instead has super shield drones at start. The latter starts with a crippled reactor and relies on emergency batteries and its zoltan crew for power.)

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I still haven't unlocked the Crystal ship because that entire quest line is bullshit. The number of random hoops you have to jump through is crazy. And I haven't bothered trying to beat the game with every ship to unlock it the alternate way.

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I still haven't unlocked the Crystal ship because that entire quest line is bullshit. The number of random hoops you have to jump through is crazy. And I haven't bothered trying to beat the game with every ship to unlock it the alternate way.

It was a colossal pain in the ass to get to the crystalline beings' home sector, yeah. It's a shame, there's a lot of unique events and gear to find in there, and the crystalline crew members are awesome

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I still haven't unlocked the Crystal ship because that entire quest line is bullshit. The number of random hoops you have to jump through is crazy. And I haven't bothered trying to beat the game with every ship to unlock it the alternate way.

It was a colossal pain in the ass to get to the crystalline beings' home sector, yeah. It's a shame, there's a lot of unique events and gear to find in there, and the crystalline crew members are awesome

 

I was so pleased to see that the Advanced Edition allows for a different path to unlock the Crystal Cruiser. Still, if beating the game sixteen times is more appealing than your crazy unlocking quest, that might be a failure of design?

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The silly thing about the Crystal Cruiser is that it really just needed to guarantee that if the first step spawned, then you were guaranteed to get the rest of the steps.  There could still be a fail condition in there (dying, or something), but at least let the player find all the steps.  That said, I got stupid lucky and got it pretty quickly after unlocking all the B variants.

 

Has anyone played around with the new weapon the Vulcan Cannon?  That thing is nuts.  Got it with Pre-Ignitor and 2 of the double shot charging lasers, so all three got to skip their first and longest charge up.  Even the Flagship melted to that setup. 

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I never considered combining those weapons with a pre-ignitor, that sounds fantastic.

Also, do Zoltan explode when they die now? They didn't do that before, did they? I'm certain they didn't.

I lost a full four man boarding party of experienced Mantis crewmembers on a Zoltan ship when a room full of Zoltan opponents simultaneously all exploded on death in a horrible chain reaction.

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I've gotten a pre-igniter from a couple events recently. It's amazingly useful.

 

Yeah, Zoltans explode now. Makes up for their lack of health and how much it sucks to lose one when you are relying on them for power. Zoltan C has a clone bay, right? I think I want to unlock and play FTL: Kamikaze Edition.

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Also, do Zoltan explode when they die now? They didn't do that before, did they? I'm certain they didn't.

 

 

I don't ever remember seeing that before, and I don't think I've killed any in boarding yet.  If they do damage on death, with a cloning machine you could make little glowing suicide bombers your boarders. 

 

I was disappointed that the pre-igniter only fills up the first charge of the weapons that can hold multiple shots before firing.  Since those weapons tend to have comparatively short charge times for each individual shot, it's not terrible valuable on them compared to other weapons.  But yeah, for those weapons whose charge time decreases every time you fire, pre-igniter is killer.  Skipping the 16 second first charge on those double shots gets you to the max firing rate pretty quickly.

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I picked this up on the iPad last night. They did a great job with the interface, but I have to disagree with the comments I've seen from people that consider it superior to the PC controls. I've lost some fights badly because some of my crew didn't move the way I expected them to move, and I find weapon selection and targeting to be more time consuming compared to hot key selection. Still, it's an excellent port, and well worth the $10 in my mind. It will definitely help make long flights more bearable.

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YOU CAN PAUSE!?

 

:P  Of course I do.  My problem has just been not having the firepower or defenses once the sector 4 enemies start showing up with level 2 shields and more weapons. 

Hehe, okay, just checking.

Not something very sophisticated or anything, but I usually start in sector 2 to put some money aside, around 80-100 spacebucks, enough to buy the much needed weapon when I come across a store. Getting sufficient firepower to at least theoretically kill foes with level 2, 3 and in the end 4 shields is a big priority for me in the midgame. (I re-play it on normal right now. I would guess that on hard it's even, erm, harder to put aside cash.)

Oh, Zoltans explode. I didn't manage to piece that together on my own. This explains the strange and untimely death of one of my trusty Mantis'.

FTL is, I'm pretty sure, the game I've spend the most time with in the last two years. And now I'm all hooked again. I really like mindcontrol, the new encounters are great so far, a lot of the new weapons are fantastic, as are the new augmentations, the AI tweaks are cool (whoa, what, boarders get healed and send back now), new race, ships, everything. Even the cloning bay, which I very much not like to use, it's great that it's there, that the enemy has it – which is true with all the stuff, I like that the enemy now has a lot more options to mess with my stuff.

Wonderful job, Subset Games!

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The silly thing about the Crystal Cruiser is that it really just needed to guarantee that if the first step spawned, then you were guaranteed to get the rest of the steps.  There could still be a fail condition in there (dying, or something), but at least let the player find all the steps.  That said, I got stupid lucky and got it pretty quickly after unlocking all the B variants.

 

Has anyone played around with the new weapon the Vulcan Cannon?  That thing is nuts.  Got it with Pre-Ignitor and 2 of the double shot charging lasers, so all three got to skip their first and longest charge up.  Even the Flagship melted to that setup. 

 

I still haven't unlocked the Crystal ship because that entire quest line is bullshit. The number of random hoops you have to jump through is crazy. And I haven't bothered trying to beat the game with every ship to unlock it the alternate way.

 

There's now three ways, the original way, unlock all the other ships, and with the Rock C cruiser that starts with a crystal crewmember so you can skip the first two events.

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I was disappointed that the pre-igniter only fills up the first charge of the weapons that can hold multiple shots before firing.  Since those weapons tend to have comparatively short charge times for each individual shot, it's not terrible valuable on them compared to other weapons.  But yeah, for those weapons whose charge time decreases every time you fire, pre-igniter is killer.  Skipping the 16 second first charge on those double shots gets you to the max firing rate pretty quickly.

 

The pre-igniter was already  of the very best items, so having the new charge mechanics not get as much of a benefit from it is a nice balance tweak.  

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There's now three ways, the original way, unlock all the other ships, and with the Rock C cruiser that starts with a crystal crewmember so you can skip the first two events.

 

Huh, did not know that!  So that basically reduces it down to needing the Rock Homeworlds to spawn in a run, and the time/challenge to unlock Rock B.  That overall seems better that there are 3 ways to get it, even if none of them are "easy".

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