Advanced Edition: First impressions thread

[Twinge]

I'm thoroughly amused that people are talking about this like it's theory or impossible or something.

Here's images of all the flagship deaths with links to all 18 runs, 1 with each ship: http://imgur.com/a/sIpyH - these runs were streamed live in front of hundreds of people without a single loss in-between. I'll add that this did not take multiple attempts - I declared I would win 18 in a row and then did so. Winning FTL is NOT a matter of luck.

[obliviondoll]

don't see you backing up your own claims, 18 wins in a row my ass

I'm one of the ones who saw the stream. The fact that there was a relatively well-watched (as mentioned, hundreds of viewers) stream of it happening IS backing up the claim.

im playing the game daily on hard +advanced edition and i've beaten it only twice but ive reached sector 7/8 many times, theres absolutely no skill besides some base skill which you obtain quite fast with some common sense, the rest is just luck. I facerolled the game 80 playthroughs ago and now i die in sector 3, wanna tell me that i got worse? nope the game is just a big bad joke
With weapon preigniter in sector 1 i still manage to die because in sector 3 where enemies are usually 1/2 shielded they decided to start spawning me 3shield + invisibility or zoltan enemies with 4 weapons and 2 missiles, good luck beating that. My problem isnt even my own survivability, its the fact that no matter what you do you can't break their shield because you're with starting weapons in sector 3, i didn't meet a better weapon in any store or in any encounter as i wanted to get one for my pre-igniter

you will not win 18 times in a row unless ,well ,one in a million as you said

There are occasional - VERY rare - situations where a loss can come down to bad luck rather than a lack of skill. Those rare situations, while still rare, are LESS rare the higher you turn up the difficulty. But the situations where skill CAN'T overcome a bad situation are the exception, not the rule.

Around 90% of my losses in FTL, I can look back and see exactly how and why I lost. Maybe I rushed through a sector I could have done with taking my time in. Maybe I missed a chance to hack the Flagship's missiles and let a volley through that I should have been able to delay. Maybe I went into the fight under-equipped because of a fight I performed badly in beforehand. Maybe I lost early because I made mistakes in an earlier encounter.

My win rate's pretty bad, because as much as I understand the game, I tend to fall short on the execution. But I can say that when I first started, I had dozens of hours of playtime before I got to the Flagship once, and now I reach the Flagship more often than I fail. I can also say that a few months ago, I was losing to the Flagship almost every time even after I started reaching it regularly, and now I feel like I have decent odds on winning the fight if I've done well leading up to that point.

I'm not saying luck isn't a factor - it certainly is - but it's not as big a factor as you're trying to claim.

[shadowcrust]

I'm thoroughly amused that people are talking about this like it's theory or impossible or something.

Here's images of all the flagship deaths with links to all 18 runs, 1 with each ship: http://imgur.com/a/sIpyH - these runs were streamed live in front of hundreds of people without a single loss in-between. I'll add that this did not take multiple attempts - I declared I would win 18 in a row and then did so. Winning FTL is NOT a matter of luck.

I think it's silly to believe that this experiment was rigged, there's really no point in cheating in FTL. Only thing is if people forget that they had mods installed and claim that they got 180 beacons visited in normal FTL or some such.

However, and we've been through that already in a now buried thread, what your experiment has shown is that 18 wins in a row using all FTL Classic ships on Normal is possible. What you didn't show was that there is no luck required in winning FTL, as this 18 ship win streak could have depended (and in my opinion did depend) on some luck. You later went back from the (in my opinion rather ludicrous) claim that all runs are winnable to a rather obscure and unfounded number of 99.8% of runs being winnable, but this is untested. With a (in my opinion) more acceptable rate of roughly 90% of runs being winnable in Normal FTL Classic, you had a 1 in 7 chance of winning your 18 ship winning streak, which is quite plausible - you were just lucky to get it done in your first attempt. In short, winning FTL IS a matter of luck, only to a relatively low degree (between 10 and 0.2%, according to different researchers ).

[project_mercy]

There are occasional - VERY rare - situations where a loss can come down to bad luck rather than a lack of skill. Those rare situations, while still rare, are LESS rare the higher you turn up the difficulty. But the situations where skill CAN'T overcome a bad situation are the exception, not the rule.

Of the last 10 games on hard, I've had 3 where, by sector 6, I have not seen (in a shop or via some reward) a single weapon outside of heal or repair bombs. In two of them there were no teleporters either. So, I'm having a hard time seeing how you're getting past that. Are you using mad skills to somehow penetrate shields with your basic lasers? Because I want some of that

In fact, if I were to go back and edit my first impressions, that would be AE:

"Hard mode is fun, but otherwise AE just turns into "did I find weapons worth using? You win. Didn't? You lose"

Edit: And for the guy's 18 shots, Classic FTL on Normal? I can totally see it. I'm not even good and I could probably do it with enough shots. I'm sure there's great players that can rock classic normal 99 out of 100 times with the non-terrible ships.

[tempthomas]

bought this game around a week ago, my preference has been shaping up towards the standard edition. i can see why some people would like the advanced edition, but i would have rather seen more stuff done using already existing content. e.g. free roam mode without rebels where you can be a trader, or become a pirate. or even fight on the rebelside.
now that i finally beat the flagship i kind of just want to play the game without really having an end goal. kind of like bejeweled.

[spacecadet13]

Luck is a significant factor in every run. Does that breach missile fired at you hit an empty room or the helm? You beat the auto ship guarding the station, only to find it has been unused for some time, or, its got a Burst Laser II sitting inside. Your trust the mantis fleeing from the engi, and he joins your crew, or he does more damage to the hull and takes out some/all of your shields/engines as the fight starts.

Depending on the state of the ship at that moment, how far into the run you are, and the encounter you're in or about to face, that luck can set you up for a cakewalk or doom your adventure right there and then, or a few more jumps further ahead. Usually, its a combination of events rather than one single dramatic positive/negative, but we've all had those "Fuck you FTL" (TM) moments, right?

But what Twinge (and others) have shown is that in the large majority of cases it is possible to negate the effects of 'bad' luck by 'simple' good play - making the right decisions, and doing the right thing at the right time during encounters- and by minimising the amount of bad luck you're exposed to in the first place by making the right decisions during the game -choosing weapons/upgrades/sectors etc in a way that optimize your chance of success.

However,my experience is that almost no run is absolutely 100% safe from a FUFTL moment - something that triggers a chain of events in one encounter or spread across several - that dooms the run with the player able to do nothing about it. And I like that about FTL - if there is no threat/risk, then the 'reward' (winning) is negligible.

And unless you did something totally redonkulus ( like actually paying for a Pre-Igniter.. ) you can't "Monday morning quarterback" the failed run and say oh if I had brought hacking instead of that weapon two sectors beforehand I'd have got through..how do you know for certain that the weapon didn't get you through encounters hacking wouldn't have?

But at the end of the day, the better player you are, the 'luckier' you get, right?

[Twinge]

Of the last 10 games on hard, I've had 3 where, by sector 6, I have not seen (in a shop or via some reward) a single weapon outside of heal or repair bombs. In two of them there were no teleporters either. So, I'm having a hard time seeing how you're getting past that. Are you using mad skills to somehow penetrate shields with your basic lasers? Because I want some of that

Prioritize sectors appropriately: Engi = Civilian = Slug > Rock = Zoltan = Lanius > Others in terms of finding stores. (Engi and Civilian Sectors also have a fairly high occurrence of finding free stuff including weapons.) Hacking is also a massively powerful tool - drop the enemy shields or evasion and let whatever you have through. Within the first 5 sectors you will have seen about 10 stores on average, with 3 sections each on average, letting you see something like 13 weapons on average (guess) which does NOT even count Teleporter, Hacking, or offensive drones.

[project_mercy]

Prioritize sectors appropriately: Engi = Civilian = Slug > Rock = Zoltan = Lanius > Others in terms of finding stores.

Yes, I realize there's more stores in green sectors. What I'm saying is, there are no weapons in those stores. It's drones and dudes. Drones and dudes. I'm pretty sure it's a chain. "Drones and Dudes". I just got done with a game. I found a Flak II on like the 3rd guy I killed with a Kestrel. And that was it. I finish the game with a Flak II , a BL2, and an artemis (and drones). There was one shop that had "guns" and it was all the 3-energy missiles.

Again, this thread is about AE first impressions, and mine is I don't like the dilution of items and stores. Classic FTL had a balance. The Enemies scaled at a certain level, you advanced at a certain level. You hit a shop and you're were stuck adapting to certain options, beams, or lasers, or whatever; but you had options. It's not like you get to just monty haul the weapons. You still need to buy them. It's just without that option you end up in exceedingly tedious and frustrating fights.

Drones and weapons counts were practically doubled, and augments took a major boost, but the shop panes did not. You used to always have 2. Now you range from 2 to 4. Which means in a green sector where you used to have 6 panes of stuff, you now have (on average) 9 panes of stuff, but it would take 12 panes of stuff to have a comparable selection of items. Additionally, the sectors were stretched out, and there's a lot more dead ends, which means it's unlikely you can find and use all 3 shops. Each shop costs you 1 jump, 1 fuel, and missing scrap/loot you visit. So, if I now require to hit 2 shops to equate previously to one, the aforementioned balance is destabilized.

I would prefer either shops be changed to 3-4 panes and/or when a shop sells weapons, it contains 3 different classes of weapons, instead of 3 variants of the same type. This would at least mean if you found a weapon shop, it wouldn't be "oh, it's the heal bomb, repair bomb, option again!"

[shadowcrust]

At least on Normal FTL Classic, you could win with the Red-Tail's Basic Lasers against all three flagship incarnations - I had never found any weapons dropped or in stores that run, but I got a Drone Control and an antiship drone and found another antiship drone in sector 8, so it was not a problem to win actually.

With AE, you got Hacking, unless you also have bad luck in never finding a shop that sells either weapons or Hacking or Drone Control. With upgraded hacking, you can fully negate enemy shields, so really *any* hull damaging weapons can be used. Hacking is by far the most useful system if you got any drones to spare and is so powerful that I purposefully not buy it many times as to not make the game too easy, as it's already on the verge of being too easy... it's still fun to play, because I make many stupid mistakes, but if you focus on surviving instead of taking all risks, then the scales are not tipped enough against you in most runs I experienced so far to make you autolose.

[stvip]

[ Hacking is also a massively powerful tool - drop the enemy shields or evasion and let whatever you have through.

Indeed, I recently played a Rock B run on Hard ("Hard Rock", naturally) in which, despite defeating most ships by crew kills (now that sensors can be manned, the Heavy Pierce is often sufficient by itself in the first 2 sectors), I hadn't found an additional weapon until Sector 6 (excluding an additional Firebomb - which is just maddeningly unhelpful), nor even had the chance to purchase a Teleporter until late Sector 5, yet still managed to plow through with aid from drones and hacking. Hacking is powerful and versatile enough to complement, if not enable, just about any strategy and loadout.
That run is also a good demonstration of the importance of skill: I went through six gruelling sectors of minimal resources (drones and missiles had to be conserved too) and only starting weaponry, and did well, finally got lucky with a Flak I drop and the drone/missiles situation no longer being critical, saved & quit and resumed playing the next day while groggy in the morning - it didn't go well (lost boarders, took massive unnecessary hull damage multiple times, leaving me in a mediocre position against the Flagship, which I insisted fighting with an inefficient fire/boarding strategy). The difference in the encounter results when alert and in the morning was striking, despite being in an otherwise objectively better position.