Advanced Edition: First impressions thread

[cretin]

yea thanx im aware of those options. my other two wins were with zoltan a and slug a ship by weapon power.
first time i am forced now to play with clone bay and other AE special systems ;P run is not going well.. i went through an abandoned sector where i had to skip lots of ships and failed a little, but still got my hopes up since i got clone bay+backup dna as well as enough crew.

just need enough scrap to get my weapon systems now then it still could turn

hf guys

[shadowcrust]

Of course, that was on Normal Mode in the old verison. I'm no where near that in Hard Mode in AE, and I'm still waiting for the 90%ers to post their videos of how easy Hard Mode is.

I don't know if anyone claimed 90% win rate on Hard here (itg seems to have made the best progress so far), I just claimed that Hard is still too easy. I won 6 of 10 finished Hard runs (unlocking all cruisers but Crystal and Mantis twice); one of the losses I attribute to the flagship's unpatched infinite tsukuyomi (and bad decisions), one to extremely poor luck in phase 3, and two were clearly my fault (losing my only crew member with the Vortex after three jumps, and running out of fuel to unlock the Rock cruiser). Sorry for letting you down with providing an instructive video how to play properly (I did some awesome power juggling in a Nebula in sector 3), but it's not much fun spending twice as much time waiting for the video to compress than actually playing the game. It's also not much fun repeatedly losing the whole progress because of poor programming/straining my poor old computer too much.

However, if I may be so blunt, I think it's likely not the game, but you, if you lose 90% of your games in Hard mode. And isn't the 99.8% player streaming all runs? I guess you could learn a trick or two watching these, if you're hardy enough for the task. I can also put online the surviving sector 1 video of my Torus run (a delightful blunder at the very end, otherwise not much going on), but I guess that's of limited educational value.

[cretin]

I won 6 of 10 finished Hard runs (unlocking all cruisers but Crystal and Mantis twice)

so lets do the math.. there are how many ships total? assuming u only talk about c layouts 8 ships, unlocking em twice = 16 games. what exactly is a "finished" hardrun? whats unfinished? u start games then decide u get bored and dont count it in ur statistics?;)

sry dude but if u only want to provoke ppl ull have to backup ur claims, otherwise keep quiet.
its not like FTL has an infinite skill curve.. there should be plenty of players with similar skill (=knowing all mechanics and being patient enough to abuse pause to maximum). theres also ppl who play unspoiled and others look at every event on wiki. its just a game and everyone enjoys it differently.

i also had 2 pretty easy wins on hard/AE early and thought AE has changed balancing so that hard/ae is comparable to old normal (1 page back) but thats yet to proof. atm i can say the difference is significant (until i learn all mechanics and know all new events from my head i guess)

[shadowcrust]

I won 6 of 10 finished Hard runs (unlocking all cruisers but Crystal and Mantis twice)

so lets do the math.. there are how many ships total? assuming u only talk about c layouts 8 ships, unlocking em twice = 16 games. what exactly is a "finished" hardrun? whats unfinished? u start games then decide u get bored and dont count it in ur statistics?;)

Oh dear. I propose to do proper reading before doing the math. I wrote "unlocking all cruisers", not "unlocking all ships". With this additional hint, the picture becomes less opaque, doesn't it.

[shadowcrust]

I guess you could learn a trick or two watching these, if you're hardy enough for the task.

As this may sound very impolite, I want to clarify: with "hardy enough" I refer to the ability to endure watching videos of other people playing*, and not the ability to play well.

*it makes me cringe

[cuthawolf]

I'm super late, but here we go:

Overall I'm really, really happy with the expansion. The fact that it's free actually makes me want to give them MORE money because the Dev team have given us a quality product for free. I'd happily pay another $10 for this.

New Ships: I love new ships, just having new options makes me happy, and these are no different. I'm not wild about some of them, and some of them (*cough* Fed C *cough) made me stray WAAAY out of my playstyle to get the win with, but overall I like them.
Aside: Does anyone else experience a "Cursed" ship? I love the Rock C, very cool ship, very solid design...but I CANNOT get a decent playthrough with it. I don't think I've even made it to Sector 8.

New Weapons: enh...I'm not wild about some of the new weapons for a lot of different reasons. The Charge weapons "feel" underpowered but I don't have enough experience with number crunching to actually call them underpowered. Flak makes EVERYTHING look underpowered by comparison in my opinion; I realize Flak 2 has some of the largest cooldown in the game but it is TOTALLY worth it. (Fire two of them in tandem with the Fed C's Keel Cannon for extra hilarity.) Chain weapons are neat, I particularly like the Ion Chain, but the Vulcan is sheer horror in gun form. I had a wonderful run that was going beautifully only to be totally massacred from full health by a Vulcan and Burst Laser 1 sitting behind a Zoltan Shield. It might be a touch OP.

New Drones: Again these are neat ideas, but seem to fall a little short in the execution. The Anti-Combat drone is too slow firing for me to consider it really reliable, the Shield Booster drone is WAY too slow to be really useful and the nerfs to the Defense drone have made them so unreliable I don't even consider them viable anymore. Really the only new drone that stands out to me is the Ion Intruder, which can completely ruin your day if you're not prepared for it.

New Equipment: If my Defense Drone 2 fails to shoot down one more Hacking Drone before it latches onto my weapons room I'm going to kick a puppy. It's gotten so bad I won't play ships that have their weapons room in any sort of outward "bulge" because I want to maximize the amount of time between it firing and it contacting my hull. Mind Control is a very cool function and I really like both that Slugs are totally immune to it, and that you can foil Mind Control with a liberal application of Mind Control...or hacking for extra amusement.

Aside: I wonder if some enemy ships have the Augment that lets their hacking drones past your defense drones and that's what I've been experiencing.

New Augments: Pretty much universally I like them. There are some that aren't so great, but there were always some augments that weren't as good as the others, so that doesn't really bother me. In particular the Healing Teleporter and the Explosive thing make me very happy.

I have a couple other thoughts about it, but it's mostly jumbled into emotional feelings instead of any real hard facts or evidence. I feel like the game has gotten a little more random, which in turn can be very frustrating, but I don't really know that for a fact yeah?

Overall I like. If you liked the Basic Edition, you should absolutely try the Advanced Edition.

[cuthawolf]

Is it just me or are the Lanius ridiculously adorable? I usually don't accept surrender but when they do it I just can't bear to refuse. Those desperate little white flags ...

Backup DNA is a protective luxury item. It's not about not needed to power your Cloning Bay all the time - you already have no reason to do that. Instead, it's about keeping your crew alive if they were trying to revive when the enemy dropped a missile right on top of it.

Just don't let all your crew die when that happens. I learned that the hard way.

They totally are. I only won't accept their surrender on hard mode. And I literally said to my screen: Sorry buddy, but I need the scrap to save the Universe.

[project_mercy]

New Drones: Again these are neat ideas, but seem to fall a little short in the execution. The Anti-Combat drone is too slow firing for me to consider it really reliable, the Shield Booster drone is WAY too slow to be really useful and the nerfs to the Defense drone have made them so unreliable I don't even consider them viable anymore. Really the only new drone that stands out to me is the Ion Intruder, which can completely ruin your day if you're not prepared for it.

I think you missed the biggest issue, which is Anti-Combat drones are too good and too cheap. For 1 energy, they functionally lock down all incoming drones and most hacking modules, unless the other side (aka the player) has the drone defense augment. If it wasn't for the fact that drones were already iffy before and people mostly used them for defensive purposes, I suspect we'd have heard more anguish about it.

Imagine if the Defense I drone was 1 energy and blocked 90% all laser fire, and you get the equivalent for Anti-Combat Drones. They might.. maybe be balanced if they were 3 energy to run. At least you'd have a better shot of taking them down or not having to deal with 2-3 per enemy drone carrier.

Edit: There may be a bug with the AI AC drones. For me, they stun the enemy drone 9 out of 10 times. for the AI, they destroy your drones 9 out of 10 times. If they actually stunned the same way they do for the player, they might not be nearly as OP. And yes, I just tested all 17 drone parts I had, and it destroyed them 16 times in one shot, with the 17th taking 2 shots to destroy it.

[Twinge]

18 wins on stream consecutively, sounds like heavy luck or just cheating. the 18 wins could be easily manipulated

90 % winrate overall is impossible over a decent sample.

sry dude but if u only want to provoke ppl ull have to backup ur claims, otherwise keep quiet.

LOL. That is all. Consider backing up your own claims if you're going to call people cheaters. I'm sorry that you feel the need to make stuff up about people to make yourself feel better about not being as good at the game as they are.

[cretin]

only answering here because pm doesnt work for me. i signed on this forum on monday, never read before.. i go to some topic about advanced edition and all i can see is people playing the E-peen game and provocing each other. thats got me pissed but i guess thats internet and FTL is too popular to not have this culture. its a single player game man and i never called u directly cheater.. just that i dont believe it (90% win rate over 50 or 100 games, involving the learning phase) because there is serious RNG in the game and there are situations which cannot be solved by skill.

there should be more than 50thousand players (dunno numbers) of this game but ofc the 5 here on forum who claim theyre the best are the only one with half a brain (who can read "properly" and play "properly"). u are right i couldnt read (any content in shadowcrusts post which wasnt directed at provocation). no worries ull have the forum back for u guys - bye

€ obliviondoll (if thats directed at me)i also said 20 games is in the margin i can believe, when someone is really good AND has some lucky run. also never said must be cheating.. there even is the quote.. heavy luck or cheating. why do u even care about my opinion? my intention was to rerail topic and stop this flamewar but i failed and am now not better than the ones i attack i guess i realize this.