Making the switch to hard mode

[stylesrj]

You had Crystal dudes and a teleporter. Did you even try to board the ship and take out its weapons?

Don't forget the Mind Control. If it hits one of your boarding dudes, you're in trouble as it'll go after your teleporter (and it'll destroy it before you can destroy the Mind Control) If it goes after your pilot, you're in trouble as you can't escape the hazard quickly (plus you have to send someone away from boarding to make sure the pilot doesn't smash the system). And if a fire breaks out in the helm, even worse.

As soon as I arrived at the beacon, I said "No way" and restarted as I wasn't going to stick around for a long and agonising death by fire, Mind Control, missiles and lasers. I might have won and have only one Crystal left or I might have lost horribly and my ship drifts through space. I could have known in 5 minutes and have a tale or tell... or I could just restart and hope my next jump is a jump to victory.

I recently had a game where my Kestrel C got boarded in the 1st or 2nd sector, Lanius & a Human died in the fighting. No problem, I got a Clone Bay, right? Well, it got hit and set on fire - two fires, actually. And since my last Human was wounded, I couldn't save anybody. I actually won the battle. Had to wait until the fires used up the oxygen before going in to fix the Clone Bay and make other repairs. I had less than 50% HP and an Engineer-turned-Pilot. Did I restart? No, even though I knew that in many cases I might not last much longer. In this particular case I went on to get my first hard win in this ship type.

And this is supposed to convince me that almost every loss in FTL is due to Human error and not just the RNG screwing with you?

When I hear stories like this, followed by "This is why you should never give up" I just roll my eyes and sidestep to avoid the incoming anvil.

My point is still valid. There are some battles you can't win and it's not because of Human error.

[SelphieSelfie]

"This is why I never give up."
Reasonable assumption that the RNG was in your favor after having screwed you over earlier. In fact my very first victory on hard I had 1 life at the start of the 5th sector. 1 fuel. Decided to play on anyway since I'm half way through. 2nd node was a "normal" ship that happened to miss its volleys. Got fuel from it. Decided to take the most direct route and what do you know? It was a string of empty nodes with one free drone sample node and a stire at the end. Do I attribute this to skill? Sure. But any one of the first encounter's shots could have hit. That time it was luck no doubt.

[Ray Robertson]

You had Crystal dudes and a teleporter. Did you even try to board the ship and take out its weapons?

Don't forget the Mind Control. If it hits one of your boarding dudes, you're in trouble as it'll go after your teleporter (and it'll destroy it before you can destroy the Mind Control) If it goes after your pilot, you're in trouble as you can't escape the hazard quickly (plus you have to send someone away from boarding to make sure the pilot doesn't smash the system). And if a fire breaks out in the helm, even worse.

As soon as I arrived at the beacon, I said "No way" and restarted as I wasn't going to stick around for a long and agonising death by fire, Mind Control, missiles and lasers. I might have won and have only one Crystal left or I might have lost horribly and my ship drifts through space. I could have known in 5 minutes and have a tale or tell... or I could just restart and hope my next jump is a jump to victory.

I recently had a game where my Kestrel C got boarded in the 1st or 2nd sector, Lanius & a Human died in the fighting. No problem, I got a Clone Bay, right? Well, it got hit and set on fire - two fires, actually. And since my last Human was wounded, I couldn't save anybody. I actually won the battle. Had to wait until the fires used up the oxygen before going in to fix the Clone Bay and make other repairs. I had less than 50% HP and an Engineer-turned-Pilot. Did I restart? No, even though I knew that in many cases I might not last much longer. In this particular case I went on to get my first hard win in this ship type.

And this is supposed to convince me that almost every loss in FTL is due to Human error and not just the RNG screwing with you?

When I hear stories like this, followed by "This is why you should never give up" I just roll my eyes and sidestep to avoid the incoming anvil.

My point is still valid. There are some battles you can't win and it's not because of Human error.

How are you certain it is not Human error? It is likely that you make errors without even knowing.

[5thHorseman]

And this is supposed to convince me that almost every loss in FTL is due to Human error and not just the RNG screwing with you?

Actually I think it was. But a better indication is - once you get good at the game - to read through the "Fuck You, FTL" thread and realize that damn near every one of those is due to the person either doing something they shouldn't have or not doing something they should have.

[The Captain]

Don't forget the Mind Control. If it hits one of your boarding dudes, you're in trouble as it'll go after your teleporter (and it'll destroy it before you can destroy the Mind Control) If it goes after your pilot, you're in trouble as you can't escape the hazard quickly (plus you have to send someone away from boarding to make sure the pilot doesn't smash the system). And if a fire breaks out in the helm, even worse.

I didn't forget. If you dance another crew in & out of the room, you can prevent the MC'd guy from taking out the TP. If your Pilot is MC'd, send a guy to dance him, or try boarding to take out the MC first. You can try to dodge the missile with your cloak. Then go back for it later. And what if a flare hits an empty room? What if a flare takes out the MC?

As soon as I arrived at the beacon, I said "No way" and restarted as I wasn't going to stick around for a long and agonising death by fire, Mind Control, missiles and lasers. I might have won and have only one Crystal left or I might have lost horribly and my ship drifts through space. I could have known in 5 minutes and have a tale or tell... or I could just restart and hope my next jump is a jump to victory.

This makes me . There are ways to attempt this battle. Not to win, sure, but to survive and move on and maybe win the war. And even if you lose, you gain experience in dealing with this encounter.

And this is supposed to convince me that almost every loss in FTL is due to Human error and not just the RNG screwing with you?

Not necessarily, but if you just see a battle and give up without even trying, then you're missing out on the chance to have a tale of an epic comeback, where you snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

When I hear stories like this, followed by "This is why you should never give up" I just roll my eyes and sidestep to avoid the incoming anvil.

At least I've got a few stories like this.

My point is still valid. There are some battles you can't win and it's not because of Human error.

Sure, some battles you survive. But that doesn't invalidate the point that more game losses are due to human error than RNG.

[RAD-82]

I don't really think Hard mode is all that hard. I have a 72.7% (40/55) win rate right now. I know two of those losses (Engi B and Zoltan B) are my fault and one of them (Fed B) isn't my fault. I don't really recall the other twelve, but I would assume most of them involve being outgunned, which I certainly wouldn't blame the player for. A list of when I did a run, which ship it was, and how far it got can be found here. It has been a couple of weeks since I last played, but that game was with the Stealth C and it went waaay better than my Stealth B run did.

I think it is foolish to blame the player for every loss, since there is so much RNG in the game, especially in the early game before you can increase your capabilities, but if you forfeit like stylesrj did, then that is your fault since you didn't even give yourself a chance. Suffering damage on the first jump with no reward doesn't doom your run, but it does increase the odds that you will lose without being at fault.

hate the Chain Vulcan as I think it's a dirty trap!

That is how my Zoltan B lost. If only I hadn't sold one of my ion blasts, I might've been able to make it work. I was stuck against 3-shield enemies with my Vulcan and Burst Laser I, which left me taking too much damage while waiting for the Vulcan.

I think you can do fine on Hard. Starting non-AI enemies will have 5% more evade, since they man the engines now, and you don't scale with the enemies as well due to lower scrap rewards, but other than that, it feels pretty much the same until you reach the flagship and have to deal with the missiles that are now connected to the main section of the ship.

[stylesrj]

I didn't forget. If you dance another crew in & out of the room, you can prevent the MC'd guy from taking out the TP. If your Pilot is MC'd, send a guy to dance him, or try boarding to take out the MC first. You can try to dodge the missile with your cloak. Then go back for it later. And what if a flare hits an empty room? What if a flare takes out the MC?

Like I said, if the first jump leads to such a massive clusterfrak that requires immense micromanagement to survive, or just prolonging your imminent defeat, I'd reset the game. It's not worth it, not even for the epic tale.

I think it is foolish to blame the player for every loss, since there is so much RNG in the game, especially in the early game before you can increase your capabilities, but if you forfeit like stylesrj did, then that is your fault since you didn't even give yourself a chance. Suffering damage on the first jump with no reward doesn't doom your run, but it does increase the odds that you will lose without being at fault.

No no no, in this case any further damage and destruction is due to Human Error because you obviously didn't do the first jump correctly before you escaped.
If you did it correctly, you'd win. I'm 99.9% sure and any defeat is your fault and not because of the RNG deciding your life support and doors were the best things to hit after a harrowing escape from a solar flare.

You swear the fires are sentient - instead of spreading to an empty tile like a normal fire, they decide to go through your blast door and smash up the system there before you can take it out - before it spreads to the other tile and thus make it more annoying to remove.

[slattikarma]

I was scared about going up to hard mode at first, and I thought I wouldn't enjoy it.

I've now managed to win on all ships on hard. The learning curve was steep, but I guess the best lesson for hard is to be really stringent about what you spend scrap on, and try and be flexible to work with any weapon/augments you get along the way, rather than buying your preferred weapons. Stick to only buying things from stores that you really need for endgame and minimise damage as much as possible so you don't waste scrap on repairs. A good defence early is really important.

[Crouchy]

I posted the other day asking if I was ready for hard mode and got some really good replies advising me about how to make the switch from normal to hard.

Today, I tried hard mode for the first time and my third attempt resulted in a victory with The Kestrel.

Here is a screenshot of the moment of truth:
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/419 ... 09227738D/

Here are my session stats and top scores after today's game:
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/419 ... 905B7A5BF/

Pretty low scrap collected on this run. Going to need to improve on collecting scrap now I'm playing on hard.

Hard mode is quite a step up. This was really tough! Less scrap, way harder ships and no mercy in the early sectors at all. All of the ships are damn hard to take out! The enemies actually focus on taking out your vital systems (weapons, shields etc.) and the boarders are way stronger (they must have combat training maxed out).

The final phase of the fight with the flagship was so stressful. We nearly didn't make it! I lost five crew fighting off boarders.

Hard mode is way more difficult and really tense the whole way through. It's going to be a real challenge to get victories on hard!

Thanks again for the encouragement guys!

[5thHorseman]

Congrats! you did better than I did on my first win!

http://pulpaudio.com/ftl/ftl_first_win_hard.jpg

(If you wonder why my final crew member is fixing the medbay instead of doing ANYTHING else, well it's because he was being mind controlled when I blew up the flagship)