Subset Games Forum

The Nesasio is my favorite ship, but I would say that it's only mid-tier, not high-tier (it's sitting at 12th place on my tier list now, next to the Kestrel and the Adjudicator). Its crew is mediocre, its layout/venting is poor, and it only has 3 weapon slots. On the plus side, it often takes some of the least damage of any ship early on when played well, and the Dual Laser+Mini Beam combo is incredibly strong in the first two sectors. That's not to say it's bad, to be clear - a top-level player should still win with it 90-95% of the time on Normal.

Here's a short highlight that may be useful to those that struggle with this ship that illustrates some things you can do to survive an early drone: http://www.twitch.tv/darktwinge/c/2338542. This shows a near worst-case scenario where they had a System Repair Drone, the drone hit my pilot and started 2 fires once I uncloaked, and later hits my weapon system -- and so I took 7 total hull damage. Most cases you'll only take about 2-4 damage from a drone when you play it right.


The Stealth B gets a major PR hit from the fact that it is both reasonably hard to play well *and* it's the 2nd worst ship in the game. Played well it does usually do okay, but with only Level 2 Engines and other issues it can have a lot of problems.

So very much true. Though, if a ship that can do well 90% of the time isn't on your top tier list, I wonder what is. Quite a few ships can encounter a situation that they can't deal with properly.

Well, here's the list if you're interested:

Tier 0 (God Tier):
Carnelian
The Basilisk

Tier 1:
The Torus
Red-Tail
Bravais
Noether

Tier 2:
The Osprey
The Gila Monster
Shivan
Man of War
The Kestrel
The Nesasio
The Adjudicator

Tier 3:
Nisos
Bulwark
The Stormwalker

Tier 4:
DA-SR 12
The Vortex


These tiers assume a high-level player on Normal difficulty. There's a decent amount up for debate here, of course - some ships I haven't played often enough to feel completely confident in my rankings, and the difference between two adjacent ships isn't that significant. The only things truly set in stone in my mind are that the Carnelian is the best ship and The Vortex the worst.

The random is the game.

I think it's an integral part of any rogue-like.

The preperation for, and anticipation of the random is your mission.

Be like Batman... plan for everything you can think of... and then plan for everything you didn't think of.
...and always have your "get out of trouble" strategy... (which for me is to turtle like heck and spool up the ftl drive).

That's not so hard is it?

Elhazzared wrote:10 combats per sector in the first 2 sectors is close to impossible. I rarelly see more than 6 and for scrap. Average of 12 per combat on the first, average of 17 on the second. even summing 10 combats, which I doubt very much you can easly do that's 290 scrap. But it's more likelly to assume you're gonna get some 220 to 230 scrap in the first 2 sectors.

So I decided to play a quick FTL game just to see if my calculations were off. Well, see for yourself.

http://s10.postimg.org/lagm761ll/2013_07_25_202536.png
http://s10.postimg.org/evczwr5i1/2013_07_25_202604.png

By the end of 1st sector, I had 7 hostile encounters (got unlucky here with 2 empty sectors, 1 friendly quest, and had 2 beacons that rewarded me with low amount of scrap without combat).

Scrap in the bank: +76
Cloak level 2: +30
Teleporter level 1: +75
Repairs: +12
Fuel: +15
Sold Titanium augment: -50
Starting scrap: -10

So, in the first sector alone, even with unlucky encounters and no teleporter for the first half, I have collected 148 scrap, and I did not even count all the extra weapons I mounted off boarded ships.

Twinge wrote:Well, here's the list if you're interested:
Tier 1:
Noether

I understand that the list is nominal, but are you saying that you have a 90% success rate with this ship? Because I don't. It has nice weapons, and Zoltan shields are powerful, but once the Shields are down (with a beam drone they are gone in 12-15 seconds), you are very vulnerable. And you do not have the maneuverability of the Stealth ship, or even cloak, for that matter.

Once it gets past sector 3, it is golden, but it does not happen THAT often.

superbatprime wrote:The random is the game.
The preperation for, and anticipation of the random is your mission.

True, but people tend to underestimate the extent to which you can anticipate things in FTL.

Well you had a very good start there. By my accounts you made 121 scrap on the first sector alone. I get one run like that in every 10 tries... Average you get 1 bad distress (bad as in, nothing worth to go there for). some 4 empty jumps (include stores here which might be so close to the beggining area that they turn useless for the lack of scrap in general) and some 5 combats which then reduces your first sector run to some 50 or 60 scrap, no drops of any kind. Oh and i'm forgetting most times you have to jump through empty beacons because you have to just avoid hazards or it's just part of the only route available.

Add in the possibillity of all enemies with beam drones that just burst your ship like crazy if you don't have the second level of cloak yet and even then it's not guaranteed it will be enough, add zoltan ships... it starts getting a very messy ship to start with no matter what you say. For me this ship is amoung the worse.

That said I did managed to obtain the stealth B today, I can finally never touch on that ship again... Oh and saying it's a ship that just requires a lot of skill is the same as saying the ship is plain bad. The better the ship is by itself the less skill it requires. Similarly the worse the ship is, the more skill it requires to win... Well, theoricly anyway. For me it isn't about skill. Quite frankly the game doesn't requires a lot of skill. Each ship has a way to play, a good balanced ship will require you to just do something in order to usually make a good run. A bad ship will require that in addition to luck. For example the kestrel requires you to just get the second level of shields and that alone will carry you through the first 2 sectors easly, then depending on the run you might start adding some more dodge or firepower if you do get the weapons. Teleporters are only required if you get 2 mantis or for the end boss. Drones, the sooner the better to have some anti-missile protection but generally you can get these at the middle of the run. Now the nessario for example, requires you not to trip on certain enemy types are the beggining (drone ships, especially with beams or zoltan), they require luck to find a weapon here or there quickly, they generally require you to have a lot of enemies to fight and while the advanced sensors help pick the route, that hardly means you'll get a fight in each jump. Another big problem of the nessario is having only 3 weapon slots. It's doable but the end really gets hard if you don't have very right weapons and possibly enough missiles and drone parts to sustain it.

Nevill wrote:I understand that the list is nominal, but are you saying that you have a 90% success rate with [the Noether]? [...]Once the Shields are down (with a beam drone they are gone in 12-15 seconds), you are very vulnerable.

This guy has bounced between the bottom of Tier 1 and the top of Tier 2. I need to play it more to really cement the slot, but I figure you can ionize the enemy drone system for 5 out of every 7.2 seconds to start with, so even in rough early spots you shouldn't be in *too* much trouble. And if you're not in trouble it's wrecking faces. I haven't played it quite often enough to verify exactly how vulnerable I think it is early on, though. (Likewise with The Basilisk - 4-man teleporters are crazy OP, but it's possible it still has enough vulnerability with the terrible repair + O2/Doors positioning that it isn't on the same level as the Carnelian.)

Elhazzared wrote:Oh and saying it's a ship that just requires a lot of skill is the same as saying the ship is plain bad. The better the ship is by itself the less skill it requires. Similarly the worse the ship is, the more skill it requires to win.

This can be somewhat true in the sense you're talking about -- but it's not what we're talking about. The Engi B is the worst ship in the game, but it isn't especially skill-based. Meanwhile, The Stealth A is a perfectly average power-level ship that is solidly skill based, and will perform much worse if you don't know how to use it properly. One could perhaps say that it's harder to reach its potential power, I guess.

Objection! The Engi B is NOT the worst ship in the game! What are it's drawbacks? That you have to wait a few seconds longer to use the H Laser while the H Ion charges up? Meh, no biggie IMHO, especially early on when enemy ships only have one shield anyhow. Other drawback, the key one, is one crew member - BUT - you are compensated for that with not one, but two system repair drones and an AP drone. And it's not like crew members are especially difficult to pick up, is it? And you have stuff you can sell - Drone Booster, extra system repair drone - at the first available store.

Engi B's drawbacks are inconsequential compared to those on other ships; Stormwalker - you have to board. With slugs. And no medbay. Much worse than the Vortex. Both stealth ships - no freaking shields! That cost you 150 scrap you need for other upgrades/purchases/repairs. Bulwark is just plain ugly...and i guess that's about it, so on a list of the 18 ships, for me the Vortex would sit about 14th, ranked on general suckyness. My scores on normal and easy with the Vortex are significantly higher than these other four, partly because it is much less vulnerable to the RNG gods in the early going, and partly because with even modest upgrades it's drawbacks are very quickly overcome.

Twinge wrote:

Elhazzared wrote:Oh and saying it's a ship that just requires a lot of skill is the same as saying the ship is plain bad. The better the ship is by itself the less skill it requires. Similarly the worse the ship is, the more skill it requires to win.

This can be somewhat true in the sense you're talking about -- but it's not what we're talking about. The Engi B is the worst ship in the game, but it isn't especially skill-based. Meanwhile, The Stealth A is a perfectly average power-level ship that is solidly skill based, and will perform much worse if you don't know how to use it properly. One could perhaps say that it's harder to reach its potential power, I guess.

That depends on your perception of average. If by average you mean that well, most ships aren't even well balanced and that the ship underperforms as most then yes. It's not balanced in any way sense or form as even after you know how to play the ship you still are highly dependent on luck to get a run with it going. The kestrel is a perfectly balanced ship. it's not OP nor it's weak, it has a fairly decent start which is not highly depentend on luck, mostly knowledge of what to prioritise (bad luck can ruin anything from really harsh ships in the first fight to suns and asteroid belts but normally this is not an issue). Again I stress that the skill cap of this game is hardly high, it's more of a learning how to play each ship and well, not fall asleep at the wheel.