Another thing I like to do to handle boarders is to “pre-vent” them. With level 2 doors or better, I vent the room they warp into, as well as other rooms in their path. I make sure to close doors behind and in front of them as they move. It’s fiendishly fun to watch them break into a new room only to have the exit snap shut so they have to break back out because the room is vented. This works great in the Kestrel B layout.
It’s a minor thing to think about, but in a game as hard as FTL the minor things add up. But even if it’s only 20, it only adds 1/4th evasion chance. Now I’ve never actually used autopilot, but is that just 1/4th of the chance you’d get from when an untrained pilot was in there? That’d be 2.5% dodge by default. Maybe there’s some sort of rounding. You’d have to dodge more than 20 scrap worth of damage repair (and you’re likely to only not have a pilot for the first sector or two where the repairs are cheap) to make it worthwhile.
I agree they aren’t worth it to buy, more useful crew are not much more expensive.
Power is fungible, so it doesn’t necessarily matter what system they equip. I mean, you could have a zoltan sitting in your oxygen room, which would then free up 1 power to be used for engines/shields/whatever. Of course it’s best to have them on a system, since that system would be manned anyway, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s engines/weapons/shields. The real advantage of zoltan is that they allow you a way to get past the maximum power a ship can hold, and in that respect it doesn’t matter where they’re stationed as long as it’s a system you’d have powered anyway.
You’re essentially saying engis are bad because they’re so much more useful you’ll be attempted to use them elsewhere. That’s not a real disadvantage. You could park an engi at a station just the same as a human, nothing is lost in that regard, you just get the extra ability for the engi to repair his own system, or to act as damage control if it’s appropriate. It doesn’t prevent you from having a repair floater - you can have engi manning all the systems and then a floating repair engi team also.
The only disadvantages the engi have are the inability to fight off boarders, and rarely that extra health can make a difference I suppose, if you let someone just sit there and take missile hit after missile hit until they actually die. I find this to be a pretty rare occurance though.
Yeah, it’s the same as the other abilities, you can level up twice.
Bought the game purely because of this thread. It’s only $5 now!
I am totally grooving on the Amigaesque music. I am totally tearing my hair out over the gameplay. Are you guys all using the “stop rebel pursuit” hack? My problem is basically that I can’t get my ship fully kitted out with guns and boarding crew and drones in the time allotted.
Yesterday I did manage to get the Federation cruiser kitted out with three level II burst lasers. That was righteous - but I was torn to shreds by the second phase of the mothership because I didn’t teleport my boarding party out in time when I destroyed the first phase.
I still have yet to make it past phase two. 
Level 2 helm also unlocks some blue events, though not as many as some other upgrades. (Super secret tip: If something doesn’t seem useful, it probably triggers some blue events somewhere.)
Engi repair bonus is mostly irrelevant to me, because the number of times when I need to repair in a combat situation are minimal, and even when I do, shaving a couple of seconds off a repair time is unlikely to make a difference. It’s a super fringe case for me when the repair rate matters. I really don’t think crewmen are EVER worth buying unless you have less than 4.
Another case that can be made for “not all engis and zoltan” is that there are times where you’re going to want to board and enemy ship even if you aren’t specifically built for it. Having crewmen that don’t suck in combat means those situations come up more, and you net more scrap.
Yes, enemies do leave rooms that have no air, but it takes some time for the air to drain out, depending on how good the airlock configuration of your ship is, it can take a long time to empty the cockpit.
Yeah. You get like 3% dodge from level 2 autopilot. It’s pretty crummy. I don’t suggest ever using it as a means to actually dodge. Being able to sustain a hit to the cockpit without losing any dodge is nice though.
Any mod that stops the rebel pursuit is sort of ruining the whole point of the game. I mean go nuts if that’s what you like, but the whole point of games like this is that you’re always strapped for resources, thrown into really difficult situations, and having variable experiences due to luck.
I’ve never even considered using the “stop pursuit” hack; It seems like it would completely destroy the game. Being able to go everywhere in ever sector would feel…pointless and easy.
The mothership really isn’t bad once you know what you’re up against, but I strongly recommend having:
Defense 1 Drone
Crew Teleporter and two able bodied lads to teleport
Cloaking
Enough weaponry to somehow damage a ship with 4 shields (Doesn’t matter if this is a bunch of EMP and a beam, a bunch of lasers, some lasers and a bomb, or what. Note that a single missile launcher doesn’t work unless it’s a pegasus, because stage 2 has a defense drone.)
That’s really all you need.
If you can knock out the medbay on the flagship, its considerably easier to kill off the crew. Breach bombs are handy for this. Keep one of the weapons guys alive, though, so the ship’s AI doesnt take over.
Most efficient way: Phase 1, try to kill all but one of the weapon operators. Knocking out medbay and having 4 elite mantis is the best way. This makes the next 2 phases considerably easier since they won’t recover crew. Phase 2 use defense drone to stop their boarding drone. Use rank 1 cloak to avoid the power surges. With almost no enemy crew, they wont be able to repair destroyed systems. Phase 3 use rank 1 cloak to avoid superweapons.
I actually find it’s often easier to kill the crew by simply focus firing your damage. Do a bunch of damage to the shield room (preferably also setting it on fire or creating a breach) and a bunch of crew will all pile into it. Wait a little bit for them to take some damage, then unleash whatever onto that room. The shields are probably still damaged a bit, so most of your fire should go through, the crew are probably damaged by fire, so 4-5 pts of crew damage should kill them all.
Truthfully, you don’t even need to kill “all” the crew (where by “all” I mean “all but one weapon operator”), just most of them - if they have 4 or less, later phases become essentially trivial as the AI will do goofy things like take the pilot out of the cockpit to fix things.
Oh, also, the weapon operator to leave alive is ALWAYS the one in the triple heavy laser battery. You want to destroy the missile launcher every time, because it can really screw things up, and the other two weapons get destroyed as you go along, so if you leave either of those guys as the last crewman standing, the ship will go into AI mode.
So has anyone else beaten this as Stealth B? I finally did it the other evening, and it was a PITA. Seriously worse than Engi B in my opinion.
Fine, I accept your challenge.
I concede that the stealth B is a piece of shit. Not sure if it’s worse than the engi B… it feels like if you got lucky and got an ion blast early on it’d be immensely more powerful. I actually was having a great run - got a weapon preigniter - but I simply never had a chance at a better weapon by sector 3 and by then they had 3 levels of shield and my glaive beam was useless.
I’m not sure if it’s worse than the engi b, but it’s sure more aggravating. So many times I’d have like 19 of the 22 seconds charged up on the stupid glaive beam and then I’d take a stray laser to the weapons room and have to start all over again. Often 2 or 3 times in a row.
You’d need to invest a pretty vast amount of scrap in being able to use the Ion Blast 2 with the Glaive Beam though - 50+75+90=215? That’s a heaping lot when you also need to spend 150 just to get shields. =/ Just an Ion Blast 1 would be cheap, but I don’t know how much difference that would make.
Yes. x.x I swear enemies with minibeams hit the damn weapon room two times in three. The two things you can do to remedy this are paying 50 scrap to upgrade your weapons so they can still run the glaive beam after taking a point of damage, and investing 50 (well, 90 after power, though you can get by with only one power upgrade if you turn off your oxygen while in combat. :P) in upgrading your cloak to level 3, which allows you to fully charge up the glaive beam before you decloak the first time. (Assuming that you go about 10 seconds into the fight before you cloak.). Weapon Pre-ignitor is obviously huge, but even Automated Reloaders make a big difference. Heck, even getting your weapon operator some experience makes a big difference, but it takes FOREVER to skill up while just using the glaive beam.
Beams suck. I’ll sell a scavenged glaive beam every time. Give me lasers to pound through their shields, that and a teleporting bomb -preferably ion- and I’m in business.
Nah. Beam + Bomb is better than laser + bomb. Lasers are best if you just have lots of LASERs.
Of course, everything works well with Ion Blast 2.
Beams have their uses. Beams auto-hit, halberd and glaive beams can penetrate some shields, and bio and fire beams are just plain fun.
Beams are particularly good vs unshielded auto ships. There are also some ship layouts (Rebel Rigger) that allow you to do an enormous amount of damage.
Yup. And if you have a bomb or a couple of lasers to knock down shields, damage can be massive.
I play to board (rhymes with scrap reward), so massive damage is never what I’m looking for. I need to break the shield down (no need to damage the system itself), knockout the medbay, and perhaps damage the weapons – but usually not, as my borders will kill everyone before the third volley is fired.
Stealth B victory. 4698 points.
No teleporter! Interesting!
(Also, for the person who said “I like to board”, beams also include the Fire Beam and Anti-Bio beam, which are EXCELLENT boarding tools.)
2 man teleporters are kind of awkward. Boarding is the way to go, however, 2 man teleporters make the whole process slow. There’s not much point in being half-gunship half-boarder, you get to the point where you can’t even use your weapons without destroying the other ship with your crew on it.