FTL demon slain (brag + video)

[rhaining]

I did it. It took me a good long time, but I have slain my FTL demon. And when I finally put him down, I tore him to pieces and threw every piece into a fire. He’s not coming back to life this time.

I won the game with a huge number of self-imposed constraints:
• No sensors
• No doors
• No oxygen
• No shields
• No offensive drones
• No weapons

Yes, really.

Fine print: I allowed myself to use a single, 1-power ion weapon against phase 3 of the flagship only, due to the super Zoltan shield. Yes, brave crew members sacrificed themselves to kill each phase of the flagship from the inside out. And I couldn’t turn off my sensor sub-system, so I had to leave it on for a while until it broke, then I left it broke, like all the other broken systems.

I actually tried several times to use no offensive weapons or drones at all, and rely solely on the Crystal Vengeance augment to blast my way through the Zoltan shield. But I did some calculations and estimated I would need to absorb approximately 200 hull damage to break down the Zoltan shield even once. I might be able to survive that with a hull repair drone (or two!) and lots of drone parts. But it turns out he recharges his Zoltan shield periodically, even if it’s not down, even if it’s not damaged, so I’d need to absorb 200 hull damage *very quickly*. Even if I absorbed every hit he dished out for 4 entire power surge cycles, and even if I survived, by my calculation, that’s less than 200 hull damage. So as near as I can tell, it is virtually impossible to break his Zoltan shield using just a Crystal Vengeance augment. Not 100% impossible, in the same way that it is not 100% impossible to roll a 6 every time on a fair die. But virtually impossible. So, I let myself sell the augment early, which made it easier to survive.

Screenshots:
http://postimg.org/gallery/anlrnhss/1a8d0edc/

Video – recorded in one session with no recording pauses, and no saving the game, to make it clear I wasn’t cheating in any way – all 3.5 hours of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siatyVUdn6A

I can already feel it beckoning to me. It says I haven’t beaten the game with pausing disabled. It says I haven’t beaten the game in less than 30 minutes. But I think FTL will finally let me put it down. I hope.

So I can slay his brother: Advanced Edition. :^)