Love the game, hate the random

[5thHorseman]

It's time for the second video.

I haven't watched the 2nd video yet. Frankly I got so mad watching the first that I'm recording a new playthrough with the ship now

I've fairly recently reassessed my hatred of nebula sectors. I used to avoid them in all cases, but after playing the Potential a few times I've realized that they in fact have their place, and ships with Long Ranged Scanners is just one of those places.

[Elhazzared]

10 jumps seems low to me. I haven't always kept track of endgame stats, but since all my "mosts" were taken over by scores from Infinite Space, when I went back to regular FTL, I started to do so, in order to have an idea of what my regular game results were like. I have 39 of my last 40 or so winning stats.

I averaged ~98.2 beacons explored, or ~12.3 per sector. I think the average for the first 7 sectors is probably a tad higher, because if you're more or less beelining for the boss in sector 8, I don't think you're getting as many jumps (not that I've counted).

I said average. If you go through any uncharted nebula you get more jumps, if you go through nebulas in normal places you still augment the number of jumps (and if you have the LR scanners doing it is generally a good idea). However assuming you don't go through nebulas, the average after a few test runs I did was 10 jumps, 11 if the exit is on the edge. Let's not forget that the average is well, the minimum really. You can always do these so statistics can only go up. Get nebulas, get a few exit beacon at the edge and the number can only go up. Still an average sector will allow you for 10 jumps, especially sector 1 which tends not to have nebulas and more often than not the exit is not at the edge.

Nevill - Yes, you won't have problems in uncharted nebulas with the nessario since ion storms are caught in it. I just don't go into them. Sure it affects the enemy ships as well but enemy ships have extra unused energy so they get more stuff activated. I once had all the sensors to see the spenditure and looked at the enemy and all he did was power down one level of shield, 2 levels of engine and 2 levels of drones which still allowed his attack drone and all his weapons, 2 shields and a decent dodge chance. Meanwhile I was severely crippled for energy. Still uncharted nebulas tend to, while offering you more jumps, give you more worthless jumps and lesser rewards. There is just a huge lack of systems which give you stuff while not needing to do anything, this not to mention loads of places to jump with nothing there.

5thHorseman - I will assime you mean the let's play of the kestrel. If I did get more than 15 scrap out of a normal fight then it might have slipped unnoticed. I never noticed more than 15 scrap out of a normal fight aside from boarding. I belive I've seen up to 20 on boarding but i don't really have many boarding on 1º sector to talk about.

Also yes, I managed a good amount of scrap by the end of the first sector but hey, I'm playing the kestrel which for me is a frigging rockstar ship. Pretty damn reliable which means I can go into any sort of encounter and come out of it with a smirk early on. That aside I did managed a decent amount of luck in that run early on, it didn't translated into late game as I was unable to find really good weapons (althougm making decent scap). I was still able to beat the mothership, but it wasn't something I was particularly confident of with my weapon loadout.

Edit: I've just checked the kestrel vid and yes, I got a 18 drop and a 19 drop... Weird I get 2 in a game I record when so far I've never noticed gaining anything above 15 on sector 1 otherwise... Still high values seam pretty rare but you guys do are right that you can get more than 15.

[Nevill]

I haven't watched the 2nd video yet.

Well, I've marked the highlights for you.

And I might as well do the third one.

2:24 This is turning into a standart run. The difference in playstyle with Kestrel is quickly becoming non-existant. Not that that's a bad thing to happen.

I'd probably have upgraded the weapons, though. You are going to have troubles dealing with two shield bars on enemy ships otherwise.

5:37 Had you gone for firepower, and not shields, you would have ripped that ship apart in no time with a Halberd beam (it is arguably better than a Glaive beam - it charges faster, allowing for better synergy between weapons). With the weapons you currently have, you can't destroy it fast enough, so you have to resort to delaying it. For that purpose it would have been better to prioritize hitting the helm instead of engines.

6:18 Changing strategy midway is a bad idea. If you started crippling its engines, make sure they are dead. Otherwise, if you spread the damage too thin, it will jump away. Like it did.

6:42 You could still have tried to follow your initial plan. The exit beacon would have been under rebel control either way.

11:05 I would have visited the store. There might have been a Burst Laser MKII there, for all you know. You'd have to tank the rebels, but with 2 shields and a cloak to fall back upon you would have been OK.

Not much to comment on. When you've got both shields and a cloak, there are precious few ways to screw your run over.

Edit: Oops, I didn't watch it to the end, it seems.
11:55 Nevermind, you just did, by upgrading yet another layer of shields. Why did you even need them?

---------------------------------------------

Nevill - Yes, you won't have problems in uncharted nebulas with the nessario since ion storms are caught in it. I just don't go into them.

I always go for Plasma Storms if they have ships. They are in a nebula, they slow down the pursuit, thus they allow me to get more scrap. That is reasonable enough for me. The fact that I never take more damage in a Storm than I do in any other fight helps, too.

---------------------------------------------
And the forth video is done.

0:27 The idea to smoke the boarders out is the right one, but once in a while it might help to send one of your guys into the attacked room to keep them from wrecking the system and damaging the hull. Might have come in handy at 9:16

0:58 Just the guy at the engines would suffice. You are trying to delay an FTL jump, so it helps to have someone manning the weapons.

2:12 Well, you could have had more, had you not wasted it on the shield upgrade, which you didn't even get to use yet.

5:32 Realisation incoming in 3... 2... 1...

8:23 You desperately need a crew teleporter. You can't hurt them, and you need a lot of scrap to put that Glaive Beam to use. You could also use a few extra crewmembers. Teleporter is never a poor choice.

But enabling the Glaive Beam comes first.

As for fixing being more important than drone control, you are not going to get hit very often through 3 layers of shields. Repairs are mostly for emergencies.

11:08 A single repairman isn't going to accomplish anything in a vented room, unless you bring another one in time for the first one to leave. That way you can keep the repair progress. I don't know whether you did what you did on purpose, or it just happened that way, so I am pointing that out just in case.

12:01 I often delay upgrading doors, because you never should have problems dealing with enemy boarders, ever. Containing fires, though, is nice, and the upgrade is cheap, so it isn't a bad decision, it's just there are better ones.

15:25 Finally!

[Twinge]

I said average. Let's not forget that the average is well, the minimum really.

That's... not what that word means.

I agree the minimum is 10 safe hops. The average is over 11.

[spacecadet13]

You say that to reach 90% on Normal is impossible. Now, Easy, that's a whole different beast. Nevermind that Easy differs from Normal only in the amount of scrap gained, and, as Twinge had shown, it is not exactly scrap that wins you the game.

Ignorance is bliss. Any one who has any experience playing normal knows there is just a teeny tiny bit more to it than just 'less scrap'.

90% win rate on Normal WITH THE STEALTH SHIPS is, well, I find it hard to believe anyone wins 9 out of 10 games with either ship. You are just so much at the mercy of the RNG gods with both. 5th Horseman, who knows what he's doing, stated he went back and tried with both, and took 3 runs to win with Stealth A, and 5 with Stealth B. Those are much more like the kind of ratios I would expect. 90% on easy, yes. Some of the ships on normal, I can believe players would win almost 100% of their games. But the stealth ships on normal? I seriously doubt it. The thing about them is that it makes only a little difference how good a player you are, the decisions you make, tactics you employ.. you just flat out have to be lucky to win with them. I see Twinge does claim high percentages with both, but I have to wonder if that's on FTL' vanilla' or his 'balance' mod version, which does play quite differently.

Easy to post screen shots from successful encounters & runs; what matters is what happens it goes wrong, where your first two dual laser shots both miss, or when you start facing ships with two shields and you haven't had the chance, or enough scrap, to improve your firepower. You won't have accumulated 350 scrap with the stealth ships in two sectors on normal - unless you've been super lucky - because as well as 'empty' beacons there are always fights you have no choice but to flee from, with no scrap reward.

And easy to "Monday morning quarterback' other players playthroughs, much harder to actually do them.

Boarding..anyone who has tried using humans/engis/zoltans/slugs knows its a horribly inefficient and risky way to win a battle. It's a tactic of last resort, used only when there is literally nothing else you can do. Using these races and trying to win by boarding guarantees a prolonged battle and thereby increases your risks, and there will be numerous encounters they just cannot win - for example, even if you could port three over at once, two mantis's will beat them. I won't even buy a teleporter unless I already have at least one mantis/rock/crystal on board; trying with the other races is just a waste of time (and scrap). But please, feel free to honour your offer of screenshots of how you board with Engi's, especially against a mantis or anything with a medbay. Thing is, even if it works, it's still a bad idea.

And cloaking.. you say "Let me explain my reasoning. Cloak lvl2, which is what you'll probably use for most of the game, gives you 10 seconds cloak. If they fire slower than that, by cloaking beforehand you will fire twice in a row before their first salvo. It can save your hide. By firing, then cloaking as they fire, you take a 10% chance of getting hit."

The thing about stealth is that it has two components: you can't be targeted, and it increases your dodge. By cloaking before they fire, you are wasting the 60% dodge bonus. And facing one salvo with a 10% of being hit gains you extra 'invulnerable' time over cloaking early; more than worth the 10% risk - especially if its a fight you have to jump away from. If your first salvo does shut down their weapons, then it doesn't matter which way you do it - but this being FTL, frequently that is not the case, and the percentages favour bringing the dodge bonus into play.

[Twinge]

At this point, I mostly just don't know what else to tell you. You simply believe luck plays a bigger factor in this game than it actually does and you underestimate the strength of the Stealth A (the Stealth B is indeed a weak ship). If you don't think Humans/Slugs can make up a competent and useful boarding party, you have a lot to learn about the game. (And as for the others - Engi and Zoltan are awful general boarders, but anything including Engi do the job for boarding the Flasgship weaponry. I have actually used a Zoltan boarder once when I was desperate that still did some decent work - some of my viewers could tell you the legend of Aki the Zoltan boarder =)

As for the version used - either. The Balance Mod is roughly the same difficulty overall. Free crew is rarer, the System Casing sells for 30 less scrap (but works better), the best weaponry is worse but the weaker weaponry is better and cheaper in stores, etc. A given run could be slightly easier or slightly harder due to Balance Mod changes.

[UltraMantis]

I'd like to chime in and mention that the luck vs. skill debate is almost as old as the forum. I'm in the camp that belives that skill plays the major role and luck only minor. Luck is what you make of it. Funnily enough i've even been accused of elitism , as if my post count is the number of my normal wins or something.

I belive it's skill because i would not get better and play smarter if the game was purely random. What's random is the set of obstacles placed at the beacon, but player's skill in dealing with them and coming up with solutions is what the core of the game is about.

Now this isn't a "i'm better than you" statement but i do play shieldless ships and have taken a fair number of them to the last stand (dat stage2) and anyone willing to belive that something like that doesn't involve skill is plain wrong. Yes luck helps, it help enormously when you are gifted a valuable item for free, but the list of such items is quite large for me (and it does not include reloaders) and you still have to punch and kick your way to this reward. Often i was luckiest in the final sector itself and nabbed an igniter or ion bomb just before the boss. But getting there was no luck. This also covers the Nesasio which is a monster ship. It starts almost the strongest but drops off dramatically towards the end. I will admit that no amount of skill can overcome not being able to find a suitable shield-cracker for later enemies, but that isn't enough of an argument to write off skill.

I understand the random element can sometimes be overriding (play Basilisk, meet AI/Zoltan/Asteriods in 1st jump, die) and that it may be frustrating to lose the game to something completely beyond the player's control. But there's allways the same two problems when this is used as an argument against FTL. First, this works in favor of the game actually because it completely breaks any attempt to establish an unbeatable build order/weapon combo. No matter how insanely strong you may be, there's allways a way for you to be completely annihilated and that is a good thing. There should be fear and worry when you play the game.

The second problem is that all starting ships play very differently and learning one doesn't help trying to play another. Sucking with a ship or claiming it's weak or whatever is a direct result of not knowing how to play the ship, and it takes a while to learn this.

Again this is not a competition, anyone who is good at FTL has simply died a lot more in it than someone who is still struggling.

[Elhazzared]

I said average. Let's not forget that the average is well, the minimum really.

That's... not what that word means.

I agree the minimum is 10 safe hops. The average is over 11.

Average taken data from first sector only assuming that there are no nebulas (because more often than not, there aren't) and well, averagelly, beacon is not at an edge... So average taking first sector as the prime example, you get 10 jump... we do know average would increase if you are to make complete runs but then again those gve you some sort of control over averages when you can deliberatly go into nebulas and we are taking that away, the best way is to only take first sector into account and make an average which just also happen to be the minimum... Well not exactly minimum since you can zip straight to the exit and leave, but minimum to get as much jumps inside and jump out safelly.

UltraMantis - I half agree with you there. There is some skilled involved in this game. I don't belive it's really at a high ceiling or anything like that. You basicly just have to learn to play each ship because they play differently. Luck still plays a great part no matter how much you want to shove into skill making it nearly factorless. Think of it as pretty much playing a game of dice like warhammer, sure your tactics will make a lot of difference, but if your rolls consist of bad rolls there is no skill that will save you. It's kind the same like say, play the last Xcom. You can plan everything perfectly. But if when you invade that room with half your team, take shots at the enemy with over 90% chaces to hit and everything misses, then no amount of skill has helped you once again. Similarly in this game you can play your ship perfectly, know when to cloak and where to fire and time everything to perfection. But if you got the wrong ships, get hits in the weapons, miss your shots, not gain enough scrap, not find weapons at all... You're pretty much screwed... Also I didn't say all of this ahppening in one run, just saying things that can go wrong which are just too many. There lies the problem with the stealth ships. They are highly prone to RNG, more so than any other ships... The only other ship that comes close to it is the mantis cruiser but overall it still behaves better than the stealth.

[Nevill]

Boarding..anyone who has tried using humans/engis/zoltans/slugs knows its a horribly inefficient and risky way to win a battle. It's a tactic of last resort, used only when there is literally nothing else you can do. Using these races and trying to win by boarding guarantees a prolonged battle and thereby increases your risks, and there will be numerous encounters they just cannot win - for example, even if you could port three over at once, two mantis's will beat them. I won't even buy a teleporter unless I already have at least one mantis/rock/crystal on board; trying with the other races is just a waste of time (and scrap). But please, feel free to honour your offer of screenshots of how you board with Engi's, especially against a mantis or anything with a medbay. Thing is, even if it works, it's still a bad idea.

I've got some screenshots for you. Took me a whole 20 minutes, mostly to find a ship with a medbay.

Me boarding a Mantis scout (1 mantis, 1 human). Killed them 2-on-1, separately.
http://s21.postimg.org/h9njteaef/2013_07_28_201237.png
http://s21.postimg.org/4jjbgb2g7/2013_07_28_201322.png
http://s21.postimg.org/73jjo5fdz/2013_07_28_201415.png
Also, no damage. Terrible, terrible risk.

Me boarding another Mantis scout (1 mantis, 1 engi). This time they refused to separate unless I did. So my engi kept their mantis occupied while my human killed their engi.
http://s21.postimg.org/fs23hu5nr/2013_07_28_202501.png
http://s21.postimg.org/d5r6en3tz/2013_07_28_202639.png
http://s21.postimg.org/h3eg41qnb/2013_07_28_202707.png
Also, no damage, plus an extra crewmember (an engi, too). Horrible idea, very inefficient.

Me boarding some pirate ship (2 mantises, 1 human, with a medbay)
http://s21.postimg.org/d9kzuw9bb/2013_07_28_202832.png
http://s21.postimg.org/dl2g7nprb/2013_07_28_203015.png
http://s21.postimg.org/jok0rkg13/2013_07_28_203155.png
http://s21.postimg.org/qt1u0lnaf/2013_07_28_203248.png
http://s21.postimg.org/pfa75ao13/2013_07_28_203313.png
Also, no damage. Definitely a desperation tactic.

Not even going to bother answering the rest. By now, we are long past 'everyone is entitled to their opinion' stage and far into 'la-la-la can't hear you' land. Ignorance is indeed a bliss. I wonder, did you make a single factual statement in this thread that turned out to be true?

But if you got the wrong ships, get hits in the weapons, miss your shots, not gain enough scrap, not find weapons at all... You're pretty much screwed...

Also, no amount of skill is going to help you if you miss 50 shots in a row with a Kestrel. What? It could happen!

Except in our reality, it doesn't. Very rarely a single encounter can kill Stealth A all by itself (not talking about the boss here), and it is even rarer that you could have done absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening. How many bad events it takes to bring down your ship is a pretty good measure of skill in FTL.

You can say one is lucky when he succeeds 10%, or even 50% of the time. When the success rate reaches 90%, calling it 'luck' is demeaning.

I will admit that no amount of skill can overcome not being able to find a suitable shield-cracker for later enemies, but that isn't enough of an argument to write off skill.

Yes, but you have 3 to 4 sectors before your starting weapons stop working completely on 3rd tier shields. This means up to 10 shops. And you can further increase your chances of finding a weapon by buying a teleporter and boarding. It would take tremendous bad luck not to find anything to help you out, so tremendous, in fact, that it didn't happen to me yet, and I was going to write it off as something unplausible. I don't know.

Edit: corrected the general statement about FTL, since I was talking about Nesasio only. There are ships that can go down quickly if they stumble upon an event they are not equipped to deal with.

[BKT]

The only ship I considered highly luck-dependent is Stealth_B.

And I don't know why there's a lengthy argument about how many jumps you can do safely per sector when you can just use the average number of beacons explored in a normal run (~90-110) and divide it by 8— simple!