Noob needs some help!

[SixWaysToSunday]

Hello, I'm obviously a new player to this game and I just don't understand how to beat the Flag Ship. After playing 28 times I've only won twice, losing nearly everytime to the Flag Ship. This has gotten beyond frustrating and is starting to make the game not fun.

I've only played on easy, checked strategy guides on the wiki, and my ships tend to crush everything before hand. This last round I had an almost completely upgraded Kestrel B with a teleporter, a Burst laser 3, hull laser 2, ion cannon, and bomb 1; yet the Flag ship still destroyed me on the second stage.
I tend to lose because of one small issue that's out of my control. For example, I lost with that Kestrel B because a random missile hit my cockpit, dealing 2 damage and setting double fires. This caused me to lose because my pilot was too damaged to put out the fires, and my other crew members were off fighting on the Flag ship, so the power surge drones annihilated my 4 shields and ended me because I couldn't dodge. Quite a mouthful.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps happening to me and it has started to make me want to leave FTL. I just wanted to know if the boss is suppose to be this difficult on EASY; that even small errors or unlucky hits can leave me with defeat.
Either I need some serious help with my strategy or the boss is designed to be this hard and I'm going to go Mod him. Because this is making the game not fun for me, which is horrible because the rest of the game is outstanding.

[5thHorseman]

Teleport 2 guys into the missile bay. Leave them in there until they take it down. Cloak if you can, use defense drones if you can, or just take the missiles that come on the chin if you must.

Once you take those missiles down, the first stage is pretty easy. Teleport guys into the other weapons (many, myself included, like to leave the 3-laser bay alone so you never kill that guy off. When the flagship becomes unoccupied it gets really hard) and then it literally cannot hurt you. Then, you can take your time. Try to take out the medbay and then teleport guys in there to kill the repair crew. Or, ion the shields to oblivion and then beam them out of existence. No matter what your strategy, though, the first stage is easy if you you KILL THOSE MISSILES.

I won't talk about the drone phase. That's a whole new issue. All I got to say there is defense drone = happiness.

[SixWaysToSunday]

So I basically need to go drone heavy to have a chance on the second phase?

[Internal Auditor]

So I basically need to go drone heavy to have a chance on the second phase?

No. For the second phase, you should have a cloak.

When it says a power surge is coming, use the cloak WITH ONE POWER. Any more and it won't ion out fast enough for you to cloak out of the next one. Also, make sure you have at least 40% evade and 4 shields if possible. This is the same for the third stage's mulit-laser attack.

[5thHorseman]

It may not seem that way right now, but there are multiple strategies that work for every phase, and you will likely have to adapt your play to account for what you have when you meet the final boss. Cloaking in the drone phase is a great way to avoid a lot of damage. 4 shields and high (45-50%) dodge can get you past the drones without a scratch most of the time when you don't have a cloak. Taking out the drone bay won't stop the surge, but it WILL stop the persistent drones that are always there. With those drones out of the way, the Power Surge drones will not have quite as much bite (though they'll still have a lot of bite, it may just be the little bit you need to make it).

One of my favorite ways to beat the final boss is to just pound him to death with lasers. If you can get 2 Burst Laser Mark 2s and a couple other lasers (like a couple mark 1's or heavy lasers), you can pummel the shields and still do a hefty bit of damage to the ship. In my favorite run ever, I had a preigniter, three mark 2's and a mark 1 for 11 laser blasts. They sliced through the shields like butter and I aimed them all at the shield room. When I fired the second time, their shields were totally down. The third barrage took the ship out. I repeated that strategy for the 2nd and 3rd stages and barely took any damage at all.

So no, you don't need a cloak. Or drones. Or bombs. Or anything in particular. You just need a lot of stuff and a good plan on how to use it

[cicobuff]

Ultramantis! We need you to nuke the spammers again!

[VanguardOfValor]

One thing you may want to keep in mind is the importance of not getting hit.

Having heavy firepower is great, but your ability to dodge enemy shots is what makes the difference between most fights and the flagship: against a regular ship you can take out the source of an enemy's damage in one salvo a lot of the time (what with there only being one room controlling most of it) but the flagship doesn't play fair in that regard. In order to be reasonably well defended, you generally want to have at least level 5 engines, because with level 5 engines and max levelled piloting and engine crew, you have close to 50% evasion, which is pretty darn useful.

Adding in well-timed cloaks can make things even better for you, because they will push your evasion up to 100% ensuring you can dodge key attacks that would otherwise be quite nasty. For example, in the first stage, you can use the cloak to avoid the flagship's missiles which otherwise have the highest chance of doing damage to your ship due to their ability to bypass your shields, and in the second and third stages, the cloak can be used to minimize damage taken from the various power surges.

Keep in mind that high engines are not required to beat the flagship (I beat the flagship with only a single point in the engines) and neither is having a cloak, but they both make things much easier.

A defense drone can also help protect against the flagship's missiles and boarding drones, attacking the drone control asap in stage 2 can help neutralize some of that stage's incredible firepower, using a boarding party to clear out and destroy the triple-rocket as fast as possible does wonders for your survivability, killing the entire crew from the main part of the ship (but not killing the crew in the triple-laser) means you can wreak havoc with fire weapons or boarders unimpeded, if you damage the section of the ship that breaks off just before you destroy the stage you can insta-kill any of the crew who are currently in those rooms...

There are tons of little tips to give and little tricks to learn, but it's hard to say exactly what would benefit you most without actually seeing what problems you have. You may benefit from watching a few videos of people fighting the flagship as there are several people in the forums who make quite informative youtube videos (gingerdragon being one, myself being another (or so I'd like to believe )) and seeing some of the strategies employed might help you work out your own preferred techniques.

[UltraMantis]

Ultramantis! We need you to nuke the spammers again!

Thanks for the report, appreciate it

[5thHorseman]

There are tons of little tips to give and little tricks to learn, but it's hard to say exactly what would benefit you most without actually seeing what problems you have. You may benefit from watching a few videos of people fighting the flagship as there are several people in the forums who make quite informative youtube videos (gingerdragon being one, myself being another (or so I'd like to believe )) and seeing some of the strategies employed might help you work out your own preferred techniques.

I should add that while I have no clue if I'm informative or not, I've killed the boss 7 times on YouTube, with 7 of the 9 "type a" ships. I've a link in the Videos section to my playthroughs and you can simply watch any "episode 8" there, as I broke them up 1 episode per sector.

But even if you don't watch my videos, you should watch someone's. I have found them to be great learning tools. I learned the joys of teleporting by watching a Let's Play.

[boa13]

Ultramantis! We need you to nuke the spammers again!

Thanks for the report, appreciate it

It would be better if it was sent by PM or posted in a separate topic. But thanks for reporting.