Subset Games Forum

A-Dawg wrote:So here I am having unlocked the stealth ship and attempting to learn its mechanics. About my third attempt, I can only go to one beacon. This thing had a Voltan shield, a beam, and a believe a drone (forget a bit since I tried to block it from my memory). Needless to say it was my quickest wipe yet.

The mechanics are pretty simple. Wait until it fires before engaging the cloak and use that to take as little damage as possible. Geting at least one extra point into the cloak will simplify your innitial runs a lots. Course, zoltan ships are indeed a pain no matter which ship you're in. The real problem is how badly equiped this ship starts. only level 1 cloak and a bad weaponry assortment means you're just going to restart a lot until you can get a decent start.

hybridfive wrote:

SgtFrog wrote:"Get 6 different alien races on one ship" is almost entirely luck-based

Attributing events to luck that are skill-based is a great way for FTL to blow up your life repeatedly.

The sectors you visit affect what alien races you are likely to encounter. To get the 6 different races achievement, you have to pick a path that has a mix of green, purple, and red sectors. Ideally you want 2 of each. Getting the individual guys is still luck, but you control the odds more than you think.

Well, okay. It's just that I rarely ever get any crew other than Human, Engi, or Rock. Mantis and Zoltan are rarer, and I think I've had a grand total of two Slug crew in my entire time playing, but that may just be because I avoid nebulae like the plague because of ION STORMS. ARRRGH.

Ion Storms are a mixed bag. As much as it screws your plans up, it also messes up the enemy ships. I've learned to adapt. They can't power all their systems either. One strategy is to target pilot to reduce miss chance to zero and just pound away. I go bare bones, usually trying to drop the enemy without O2 for the extra power bar. Just pause at the start of the sector, look at the enemy weapons, decide what is necessary and what is not. One issue with taking out weapons is as they go offline, the enemy then powers an extra shield. Visa versa targeting shields. Attacking the pilot station which takes no power means the enemy layout is predictable.

At the end of the day, ion storms hurt both sides. I feel they are generally advantageous to the player if one can make better power decisions than the AI.

I was doing an amazing run with the Fed Cruiser A. I had a Defense II drone and a Defence I drone, a Hermes Missile, a Burst Laser Mk II, a Fire Beam, level 3 shields, maxed doors, sensors and artillery beam, and fully leveled crew. When I went up against the flagship, the 2 defense drones blocked almost everything, the Hermes smashed the shields, the Burst Laser wrecked everything, and the Fire Beam burnt most of their crew. My ship took only about 4 hull points of damage. Then I went up against Stage 2. I was almost instantly destroyed. The Flagship's spamming of boarding drones as well as lasers and missiles overwhelmed my defense drones, and 2 boarding drones got in. The drone spam absolutely demolished my ship because of the sheer number of lasers and beams. I couldn't get a single shot off because of the enemy's defense drone shooting down every single one of my missiles. Whenever I was able to get the shields down from the Artillery beam, my Burst Laser would always miss, so the shield would stay up and I couldn't use my Fire Beam. When my ship finally exploded, the raging was great

Stage 2 is when you need cloaking most. But ala, the Osprey doesn't have it.

Since the flagship defends well against missiles, other weapons will have to be used.

Never ever use defense drones mk2, they shoot down lasers which is the worst thing they can shot at. By doing so they might allow boarding drones or missiles to go in. Always use the mk1 under all circunstances. A teleporter is also good to have, best thing you'll have to knock out the enemy guns. Also, it's nice to kill the enemy crew, but don't kill all of them, always leave one alive so that the guns will never repair.

I'm not a fucking computer. I can't do a bazillion things at once. I'm human. I forget things. FTL rams its boot into my balls, then spits in my mouth when I open it to scream.

This rant was caused by my super-upgraded Engi Cruiser A (3 shields, almost fully upgraded engine, gold-level gunner and engine, level 2 cloak, two ion weapons with Automated Reload, plus Beam and Defense drones, and a good mix of Engi, Human, and Rock crew) dying horribly because I forgot to close the fucking airlocks. "Well, that's a rather stupid mistake." you might say. I would have noticed they were open, if I didn't think I was losing air at a ridiculous rate because of the Breach Bomb spam. "Why the hell are all my crew dying? I fixed all the breaches!"

I had just defeated Phase One of the Rebel Flagship for the very first time too.

I need a break.

*Cough* it's called a pause button *Cough*

SgtFrog wrote:I'm not a fucking computer. I can't do a bazillion things at once. I'm human. I forget things. FTL rams its boot into my balls, then spits in my mouth when I open it to scream.

This rant was caused by my super-upgraded Engi Cruiser A (3 shields, almost fully upgraded engine, gold-level gunner and engine, level 2 cloak, two ion weapons with Automated Reload, plus Beam and Defense drones, and a good mix of Engi, Human, and Rock crew) dying horribly because I forgot to close the fucking airlocks. "Well, that's a rather stupid mistake." you might say. I would have noticed they were open, if I didn't think I was losing air at a ridiculous rate because of the Breach Bomb spam. "Why the hell are all my crew dying? I fixed all the breaches!"

I had just defeated Phase One of the Rebel Flagship for the very first time too.

I need a break.

First of all that is one of the funniest rages i have read. Not so much from your perspective i bet.

You're right, you're not a computer and the boss stages are designed pretty much to throw you off into a panic/rage. Until you win 2 or 3 times this fight is harder than the whole game that lead to it. However, because the mothership follows a set pattern every time, it becomes almost academic to defeat it in subsequent attempts. Never too easy, unless you have massive luck, but at least you know how to plan for the encounter.

As aggravating as it is to die at the end of a rougelike, each death is caused by you not knowing how the mothership fights and what surprises it has in store for you. Each time you learn more and eventually you know enough.

This has been brought up as the weakest part of the game, because previous sectors and battles teach you how to play FTL and survive, but then at the very end all of that is thrown out the window and you're unprepared and overwhelmed. That and the storyline aspect of the endgame. To me it makes no sense to have to take on the mothership with the fleet there, but that's another story.

When I was trying to unlock all ships, I did exactly what I needed to do for the Zoltan cruiser by accident, and not knowing what to do I asked the rebels to leave. Later I found out what to do. Still haven't gotten it yet.