Subset Games Forum

Hi everyone knows the Vortex is the hardest ship of FTL, but i have some tips to get a "good" run with the Vortex.
Fist get a Teleporter and a medbay 2.
If you got the Teleporter, go into a Pirat controlled Sektor.
Second get Drone recovery Arm and (some) Combat Drone(s).

Two questions:

1. I figure that a one-Engi boarding party takes a long time to win. How are you keeping your ship intact during prolonged battles with no one at the helm?

2. How are you keeping your single Engi alive on enemy ships?

you don´t borded the enemy.
you get so many blue opions to get more Crew members.

I sell just about everything and buy some real equipment.

The ship is absolutely useless when used for its intended role.

FDru wrote:I sell just about everything and buy some real equipment.

The ship is absolutely useless when used for its intended role.

Pretty much this. Either hope you get lucky and find some equipment and crew fast, or save up and buy some yourself. Trying to play the game with the initial gear will get you killed really fast unless you are incredibly lucky. Even venting the entire ship to harrass boarders and put out fires doesn't help all that much.

The robotic crew unfortunately lacks the decision making I can do, but still, I manages to get to the end of phase 3 on the boss last night on normal with it. The boss sent a bit too many humans against me in a boarding party and my shields failed since the engi I had did not fight well. The boss had like 1 more volley from my burst laser III to go down (combined with my two anti-ship drones) so it was really close

In my humble opinion, this ship would be better with a couple of changes:

- boarders cannot teleport directly into the helm room.
- you get to pick where the anti-personnel spawns, OR it spawns in the room next to the helm room

This way you could employ a strategy like the following:
- open all airlocks and doors, except for the helm room
- when boarded, activate an anti-personnel drone. The lack of oxygen should help even out the fight.

And perhaps for boarding, you could have a boarding drone+heal bomb? Not sure if heal bomb heals your drones as well.

E.g. something like:
Ion Weapon - Ion Weapon - Heal Bomb
System repair bot - Antipersonel - Defense Drone Mark II

Although I suppose you would never be able to defeat the flagship with this.

The idea of a robotic ship with a 1-man crew is very interesting, but I don't know if it's possible to actually beat the game with such a strategy.

Darkelve wrote:The idea of a robotic ship with a 1-man crew is very interesting, but I don't know if it's possible to actually beat the game with such a strategy.

Having an unmanned engine is already a very significant drawback, which makes the whole game that much more difficult.

Perhaps a reworking of the drone augmentation it comes with would make it more appealing (because it frankly sucks, I almost always just sell it off even when I'm trying to make use of the drones). If it improved all aspects of drones (speed, damage, repair rate, etc) it might be more useful but I still think that picking up a few extra crew and better weapons would be mandatory. It could give some bonuses to unmanned systems as well (equivalent to an unskilled crewman), which would be a real help.

Something like:

AI Computer
Improves on-board drone performance and provides a basic bonus to unmanned systems.

Perhaps it would be better as a ship system, with its own energy bars, which you can upgrade. Each upgrade gives extra bonuses to the schip or the drones.

How is an unmanned engine a significant drawback at the start? Putting a crewman on the engine for any ship at the start only makes 5% difference to a puny dodge ability.

What's good about the Vortex is all the bonus scrap you get once you're at the first store - sell off that Drone Augment, one or two of the drones, get yourself something nice or put it towards a second level of shields.