FTL - Space Rogue-like hits Steam!

The Game Room
201

I’ve often defeated scouts using boarding parties(during my Rock A runs, where conserving missiles was a priority) but at least on those runs I don’t think I’ve encountered scouts with connections between the rooms. It’s always the ones where all the rooms are separate. Rock crew could actually last long enough to damage a couple of subsystems in a connected scout.

Another weird thing was happening to me in the flagship fight on Normal. When I jumped two fully trained Rock fighters into the separated weapons rooms, they would take absolutely no damage during the fight. Is this a bug? Or can a single untrained crew member actually not damage fully trained ones?

202

Probably a bug.

203

Sigh

I had a really great run going with Lanius A. One achievement unlocked, storing about 400 scrap… I had two chain lasers and a Burst II, and I just randomly found a pre-igniter on an empty field, plus Lanius boarding crew and medbay… Basically, the kind of ship you can win with. Then I find a shop, do some math… “Huh, I could unlock Lanius B if I sold all my weapons and augments.”

CURSE YOU COMPLETIONIST STREAK!! I died on the next stage. Turns out that you can’t beat a 6th-sector rebel fleet with just a two-man boarding crew.

204

Beat the game with the stealth cruiser. Got a vulcan, a burst II, and a double laser (2 shots for 1 power, decent charge speed? Those are actually really really good! Beats the pants off of Burst Laser I, and if you could get a few of them, beats Burst II as well), and everything beyond that was just so much alpha striking. “All of the lasers” really is the #1 best strategy in the game. Nothing else even comes close.

205

How did you get a double laser? I’ve never seen one for sale, only preinstalled on… the Federation Cruiser?

206

It comes preinstalled on the Stealth A. Also, FTL wiki says Heavy Laser 1 is good. Why? 1 power, 1 shot… I mean, okay, it’s not BAD, but…

207

1 shot, same damage as two regular shots, and only takes 9 seconds to charge. The only bad thing about it is that it doesn’t do any more damage to shields (except Zoltan shields) than normal shots.

Personally, I don’t bother with them because the speed advantage makes no difference when you have to wait for your shield-clearing burst laser to charge anyway.

208

Heavy Laser I is good for early sectors. I think it also has a higher breach/fire chance than normal lasers. It’s certainly not going to pull you through later mid or late game, but it’s better than nothing and is a good complement to a flak or burst lasers.

209

As far as I know, the Dual Laser is ONLY available as a starting weapon on some ships, you never get doubles.

210

HL 1 is basically one of the most efficient guns out there. 1 power, 2 damage, short reload, chance of fire. It’s not flashy but it just plain works. It’s true that you need something else to take away the shields, but as 3rd/4th slot weapons go it’s really good. Particularly now that the field of options to take out shields has widened. E.g. Flak I + HL I is a measly 3 power and will still take you well into sector 5.

211

So… anyone have any tips for getting through sector 1 with Stealth B? Basically every fight I run into boils down to “Do they have a drone? I’m dead. Otherwise, does their first volley hit my weapons room? I’m dead.”

212

Get to Stealth system 3 ASAP, regardless, you’ll get mulched a lot.

213

I believe also true of the Leto and Artemis missile systems.

214

I’ve now beaten FTL on Hard with the Lanius B, the Kestrel B, and the Engi C, and I can present something in the way of general strategy for beating the flagship on Hard.

On Easy and Normal, the four weapons rooms are isolated, so the best approach is to kill the crew in those rooms and disable the weapons, then attack the shields and reduce the hull to 0. Alternately, if you have a strong boarding contingent and you aim to kill the crew, you should leave the guy in the laser weapon room (second from the left) alive so that the ship AI doesn’t take over and make the ship start repairing itself.

On Hard, the two middle weapons rooms (lasers and missiles) are connected to the rest of the ship, making it impossible to take the kill the guys/disable the weapons approach. These are also the most hazardous of the four weapons, particularly the missiles. How annoying.

So, I think there are two general strategies to use, the boarding approach and the non-boarding approach.

(1) Boarding approach: Kill the whole crew as fast as you can, except for the guys in the two outermost weapons rooms. This way, you can destroy the two dangerous weapons rooms without fear of them getting repaired (at least until Phase 3), and you can use your boarding crew to destroy helm control and shields. For this approach, you will want to kill the crew on Phase 1. Unfortunately, the fact that the flagship has Cloak can make it impossible to pull your guys out before they get killed, and Door Control means that you can’t have your guys run around different rooms to stall for time until the cloak wears off. Thus, it is preferable to have a clone bay. (Playing on Easy and Normal, I usually wait until Phase 2 to kill the crew, since I don’t have to worry about cloak.)

(2) Non-boarding approach: You’re not going to be able to keep the two most dangerous weapons rooms disabled for very long, so you have to kill the flagship as fast as you possibly can. For this, you will need hacking. Level 3 hacking can take down 4 shield bars, and you can use this opportunity to hit the shield room hard-- your weapons will probably recharge before hacking does, so you want your next volley to have a prayer of damaging the flagship without using hacking. For Phase 2, you’ll want your first volley to hit Drone Control to disable the Defense 1 drone that will try to shoot down your hacking drones. Once the Defense 1 drone is disabled, you can send your hacking drone to the shield room, and repeat the process above.

For both strategies, you’ll need to be able to tank, so it’s good to have cloaking and/or a couple of defense drones.

215

Yeah, as you’ve noticed, the Number #1 priority for succeeding in the early stages with Stealth B is preventing or surviving a hit to the weapons room.

To prevent a hit to the weapons room, you can upgrade cloaking to Level 3. For surviving a hit to the weapons room, you can upgrade the weapons system to Level 4 or even Level 5. That way, even if weapons does take a hit, the Glaive Beam keeps charging.

I’m not sure which strategy I prefer at this point.

216

Why is Kestrel B so darn good? You’d think 4 basic lasers would be weak (if you are as dumb as I am), and then you try it (and stop being dumb) and realize “holy shit this just mulches everything before like sector 5 with almost no effort”. :smiley:

Also, flagship hacking module on the oxygen room: not fun. Deal with it ASAP or you’re going to lose quite a few crew members.

217

Personally, I don’t see the point of upgrading stealth because it just means it takes longer to start charging again. You’re always going to need more weapons juice at some point though.

218

I’m pretty sure upgrading cloak does not increase its charge time. All it does is increase the amount of power that’s stuck in the system for its standard 20 second recharge time. And backup battery even makes that less of a problem.

Level 1 cloak lets you cloak for 5/25 seconds (20% of the time).
Level 2 cloak lets you cloak for 10/30 seconds (33.3% of the time).
Level 3 cloak means that you can be cloaked for 15/35 seconds (42.8% of the time).

Cloak adds 60% evade, so the levels add a best-case average of:
L1: 6020% = 12% evade
L2: 6033.3% = 20% evade
L3: 60*42.8% = 25.7% evade

IIRC, it costs 30 scrap for level 2, and 50 for level 3, so level 2 gets you an average of 8% extra evade for 30 scrap, and level 3 adds an additional 5.7% average evade for 50 scrap.

So from the pure numbers, it seems like level 2 is by far the best deal, and it may make the most sense to upgrade cloak to level 2 and then improve engines a bit.

However, this completely ignores the strategy of synchronizing cloaking with a weapons volley, and the fact that cloaking also halts enemy weapon charge and drones for its duration. With Stealth B, prioritizing level 3 cloak may well be the best strategy. Surviving with that ship depends a lot on doing very well in the early sectors, which in turn depends on crippling your enemy with the Glaive Beam before they hit you. A level 3 cloak practically guarantees you get that crucial first shot with the Glaive.

Regardless, getting cloak to level 2 is a really good idea.

219

I’m pretty sure Stealth B STARTS with Cloak Level 2.

The only value of lower level cloaking over higher level is that it helps you synch up your cloaking with Flagship “super” attacks. And you can always just apply less power. For general use, high level cloak is preferable, at least, if you have long charge time weapons or Stealth Weapons.

220

It’s a great setup for five reasons:

– Four shots worth of shield piercing/damage.

– The basic lasers have a very fast charge time (10 seconds), so you can hit the enemy’s weapons room faster than it takes for their weapons to charge. This also means that you can do a ton of damage since you’re firing 4 shots ever 10 seconds.

– Your weapons guy will level up very quickly, since he’s firing 4 shots every 10 seconds. This further reduces your weapons cooldown time.

– Taking a hit to the weapons room doesn’t cripple you. It doesn’t disable your weapons until you can fix them and start charging them again; you’re just down to 3 or 2 laser shots.

– When you get a new weapon, you can start using it almost instantly, since you start with 4 weapons power. And then you still have 3 basic lasers equipped!

Yeah, that happened to me once. Luckily I had a clone bay, and so it could just keep churning out new guys to replace the ones that died from deoxygenation.