They've now made the game too hard

[Snow Job]

Those of you complaining, if you play on Easy, I guess I can see where you're coming from, but if not, this topic is just downright shameful. If you're good enough at FTL to get wins on Normal, you should not have trouble adapting your play style to Advanced Edition's Rebel Fleet.

Get 4 engines and still take more than acceptable damage.

Yeah, pretty much. Engines 4 still leaves open the possibility of the ASB destroying your helm, which in turn opens you up to attack from an Elite Fighter and more ASB shots with 0 evasion for an uncomfortably long time.

[spacecadet13]

Some people may say ASB is perfectly ok. But it isn't. It's game breaking inbalanced. If you want lore reasons. A planetary weapon shouldn't be mounted on enemy cruisers, otherwise I want one of all of mine too.

Isn't it mounted on the planet? Looks like where the shots come from to me. "Lore" being the rebels took over the beacon and set it up to mess you up. And you basically have to make a decision that you are going to deliberately 'miss' the beacon and face the ASB. If you don't want to face it, don't take too many jumps in the sector. I think it improves game balance if anything. Previously you could take in extra beacons with impunity. Now - unless you've really beefed up engines and/or got stealth - there is a risk/penalty - in certain circumstances, taking a hit to the helm from the ASB can be terminal.

[Elhazzared]

As I've said in other threads. Sometimes you don't have an option but to fight the rebel fleet or if you do have the said option, it requires leaving with the rebel fleet still only half way through the screen. This not to mention when you run out of fuel.

The breach missiles don't ignore everything your ship has. The breach missiles can be stoped by a defense drone. Let's not mention that the ASB is a 5th weapon in adition to the other 4 the ship already has and which doesn't eats up power because guess what? It's fitted on the cruiser in the background... Even the federation cruiser special laser isn't as good as the ASB (though it makes sense since we're talking about a planetary defense weapon).

As for the flagship. it is a kitten when compared to sector 8 elite ships... Yup that's right. i'd rather fight the flagship than elite ships any day of the week.

As for complaining even though I only play it on normal/hard... Well I complain when something is clearly unbalanced, unfair and sucks up the enjoyment of the game because of the previously pointed reasons.

spacecadet... Let yourself be caught by the rebel fleet... There isn't even a planet, just a lot of ships in the background and one of them is firing the ASB so yeah, an planetary defense weapon mounted on a ship... Well I dunno about the rest of you but I feel fairly confident that if the rebels can have it then my cruisers should also be capable of having one.

As for it improving the balance. How is it balanced that you are fighting a ship that is vastly superior to what the sector has to offer as well as the ASB, taking no reward other than 1 fuel and even lose whatever was on the beacon something balanced or fair?

Don't forget people took extra beacons and then fought the fleet, but they were already taking damage from the fleet none the less and they were not gaining any rewards by fighting the fleet. If you take an extra beacon and gain resources then fight the rebel fleet to exit, it's already not worth it cause you lost the exit beacon reward in order to take a very probable lesser reward somewhere (the rebel fleet doesn't gives you anything). Even vising 2 beacons may not be worth it as it's too easy to just get an empty beacon.

People farmed the rebel fleet for points if they got a really incredible start and were absolutly sure they wouldn't take damage in any fight. But guess what, it's only points in the end screen which matters nothing and even if that was a problem, a simple way to solve it is making the rebel fleet be worth 0 points so it couldn't be farmed.

[spacecadet13]

I've run into the ASB often enough, nearly always by choice, sometimes because I messed up, sometimes because I got unlucky. When you mouse over the hazard marker ' ASB Danger" on the screen, it says " An anti ship battery on the planet is targetting you"...so it definitely isn't on another rebel ship. Guess if you get your own planet, it comes with an ASB too?

With beacon paths shown, there is - almost - no reason to face an ASB or the elites, UNLESS you choose to. Sometimes you might run into a event that speeds up the fleets pursuit, or have a ship jump away and advance them towards you faster than you've budgetted for, but even then, with a reasonable level of engines, you might take one hit from the ASB before you can jump away, and with 5 or more (and/or Advanced FTL Nav) you can jump away before it even locks. What's too hard about that? It would be unbalanced if you had no choice in the matter, or no chance of not being hit by it.What you're doing is like playing the DA-SR12, seeing an asteroid field in one of the beacons ahead with the LR Scanners, choosing to go to that beacon and then complaining that the asteroids destroyed your ship!

And yeah, sometimes through no fault of your own, you might end up having to face an ASB when you really, really don't want to. Yeah, it's unfair, cruel, mean. Kinda like the whole rest of the game, right? I like that it makes taking in those extra beacons risky, especially early on when you're relatively weak; are the rewards of those extra beacons really going to be worth the risk of facing the ASB and an elite? And the extra pressure NOT to run out of fuel by blowing all your scrap on repairs or upgrades, or to take out that auto-scouts helm before the sucker jumps and advances the fleet.

And elites tougher than the flagship? You can just jump away from elites, no harm, no foul. Jumping away from the flagship just postpones things at best, at worst, game over. And if your ship can't handle an elite, how is it going to handle the flagship?

[shadowcrust]

Sometimes you might run into a event that speeds up the fleets pursuit, or have a ship jump away and advance them towards you faster than you've budgetted for, but even then, with a reasonable level of engines, you might take one hit from the ASB before you can jump away, and with 5 or more (and/or Advanced FTL Nav) you can jump away before it even locks.

I guess you mean FTL Recharge Booster, not Advanced FTL Nav.

I liked it better without ASB, but you just have to adapt your game to the new hazard. I visit about 10 beacons less on average in AE than in FTL Classic, as now I deem it often not worth to explore the behind-the-exit beacons.

I don't think the ASB was installed to prevent maximising points, as you can still do that in the same way as before, only in special sectors. The ASB is there to make the advancing rebel fleet scarier than before, as many people (including me) didn't find it very scary with a halfway decent ship at all. Now it needs to be an above-average ship for me to stay a little longer.

[xlandar]

You need to remember. The ASB is SUPPOSED to be a pain in the ass. Pretty much the sole reason it exists is to stop people farming the rebel fleet.

[shadowcrust]

You need to remember. The ASB is SUPPOSED to be a pain in the ass. Pretty much the sole reason it exists is to stop people farming the rebel fleet.

I don't think that is correct, because you can still maximise score by defeating many, many Elite Fighters, they still give points. What the ASB does is disencouraging to maximise visited beacons, as it's now more risky to visit those one, two tempting beacons behind the exit.

[Diet Water]

When you mouse over the hazard marker ' ASB Danger" on the screen, it says " An anti ship battery on the planet is targetting you"...so it definitely isn't on another rebel ship. Guess if you get your own planet, it comes with an ASB too?

That could just be because it's a standard warning. If you have Long-Range Scanners, they just say "The fleet's anti-ship batteries will be targeting you at this location". I personally don't think the rebels can set up ASBs on nearby planets that quickly, but they also don't put them up in nebulae, which don't have planets, so I guess we'll never really know. Just like we'll never know whether that power-sucking hazard in nebulae is an ion storm or a plasma storm.

[Baxta54]

You've got to know when you are strong enough to get those few extra jumps in, at the end of the sector.
Sometimes you are not ready & it is suicidal, but most of the time you can get away with it.
Especially with high engines and level 1 cloak.

[xlandar]

I guess i worded that a bit badly. Ya, the ASB is there to make the rebel fleet a significant threat, because before,it was fairly easy to farm sectors. The ASB makes that a lot more challenging.