Anti Ship Battery in sector 2 on easy?!

[obliviondoll]

What I am saying is that people already have a very good reason to run the hell away from the fleet in the first place without the ASB. The ASB just makes the fight completly unbalanced and if you don't have the engines upgraded yet (because it's still early in the game) then it's a game over screen. And that is frankly a problem and the game could do without.

Regardless of why they do it, that fact that there are people who regularly farmed the Elites for extra points before AE is solid evidence that for many people, the fleet DOESN'T pose enough of a threat in vanilla FTL. You argue that the problem could be solved by making fleet encounters worth no points so people don't farm them, but that doesn't fix the ACTUAL problem. For those players who could legitimately farm the fleet that way, those "elite" ships DON'T present a valid threat they need to fear, and that means something more IS required to make the fleet actually an intimidating threat for players to be concerned about.

ASB does what it's supposed to. It turns the fleet into challenging but fair enemies into something that you're legitimately AFRAID OF. Which is what the fleet was always supposed to be.

Your "problem" with ASB is pretty much that the massive unbeatable terrifying fleet you're meant to be running away from was already scary enough even though many players toy with them, and that making what SHOULD be an unfair fight actually unfair is a bad thing.

If you're getting caught by the fleet, and you're not in a position to handle the fight, you screwed up. No, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to lose - IF you play your cards right - but it's certainly not something you should expect to walk away from unscathed.

Do you have scrap to spare? Yes/No.
Do you have your engines upgraded to level 4 or 5? Yes/No.
If you answered yes to either of the above, do you really, REALLY need the extra resources you may or may not be able to catch if you take the risk of fighting a short battle against the fleet before you jump out?

If you don't want to spend your saved scrap on upgrading the engine, don't push for the fleet battle, because it's going to be nasty and not worth the risk. If you have the engine upgraded but aren't REALLY confident the benefits will outweigh the dangers, again, risking that extra jump is a bad gamble.

The point of the fleet is to keep players moving. If there are people who don't see the fleet as a credible threat, then it needs to be more dangerous. Because there WERE people who didn't see the fleet as a credible threat, there WAS need to make them more powerful.

[Elhazzared]

And which players didn't see the fleet as a credible threat? Every player whenever they got a monster run where they just get so much scrap and stuff early on that it's absolutly impossible to even take damage when fighting those elite ships. Which players saw the enemy fleet as a credible threat? Every player whenever they had a normal or bad run and couldn't aford to take the fight because it just wasn't worth the damage they would take... Of course some ships make the enemy fleet a lot easier than others. The mantis ships is one possible example but also subject to the wills of the drops cause let's be honest here. You are not bording an elite ship which certainly has a med bay or a clone bay, if you don't have a way to take them out so the bording is successful.

The fight was already unfair. But at least you were able to get out of it with non critical damage, however with enough damage to set you back quite a bit. Now it's a case of, if you get caught, you either lost or take critical damage so the next sector is going to be spelled as GG.

Again let's not forget that the elite ships are more dangerous than the flagship even without the ASB... Quite frankly why do the rebels even need a flagship now? They can just power up the cannons of doom and obliterate the federation without spilling their afternoon tea.

For some reason you seem to assume that the reason I am caught by the rebel fleet is because I just want to farm more beacons. You are wrong, I rarely get caught anyway. However not to get caught it means that most times I'm jumping some 2 jumps before the rebel fleet actually gets to the beacon because the maps seeding now is really bad. An average of 2 jumps lost per sector, joined together with possible empty beacons equals to a nearly guaranteed loss.

In the average run you just don't have the scrap to spend on the engines for the first 2 or 3 sectors. They need to be spent first on shields, then on weapons or with any luck, a drone system with a defense drone. Some bits in repairs as well.

Also don't forget that the said players who constantly farmed the elites for the most part played with 4 teleporter ships and won a lot more scrap for bording. Something which in my opinion should have been fixed a long time ago. Bording is just better than killing and more often than not, it's easier too. Rewards should be equal no matter the way to kill.

[obliviondoll]

The fight was already unfair. But at least you were able to get out of it with non critical damage, however with enough damage to set you back quite a bit. Now it's a case of, if you get caught, you either lost or take critical damage so the next sector is going to be spelled as GG.

If it was actually TRUE that you can't get out without taking critical damage, then you'd have a point.

But many people - myself included - find that it's consistently possible to escape most (not all, there's still bad luck involved occasionally) fleet encounters while suffering minimal damage (3 or less hull damage, maybe jumping out with a couple of boarders still on your ship).

And losing out on only 2 jumps, which only happens occasionally and not every run, isn't something that should be conisdered as a reason not to make the fleet legitimately scary for players to fight. If you're consistently coming down to the end of your journey through a sector and realising that you're going to either miss out on a few jumps or get caught by the fleet, then you didn't plan your route well at the beginning of the sector. Also, most of the time, i run a good few jumps ahead of the fleet to avoid taking too many risks, because I've had a few times where not doing so has caused me to miss an interesting or valuable quest location. As such, I tend to miss a LOT more than 2 possible systems, and yet I consistently not only reach the Flagship, but put up a good fight when I'm there, and have what I consider a decent enough win rate. If I wanted to optimise my runs, I could do better, but I play for fun over perfection.

[5thHorseman]

And which players didn't see the fleet as a credible threat?

Me.

It was SOP for me from sectors 1 to 7 to, if there was a way to get 2 extra beacons for facing the rebels just once at the exit, I'd take it. If my ship had a cloak and I wasn't worried about fuel, any number of bonus beacons justified any number of fleet encounters. Yes, I got a single extra beacon once and because of it had to fight 2 rebels instead of the zero I'd have faced for going to the exit.

Now, I only do that in Nebulas, and only for the exit beacon. It's not worth the hit to my hull (and possible game loss) otherwise. I will also do it if I have engines 7 or 8 (And yes, I do that moderately frequently and think it's worth the scrap) or engines 5 and a cloak, but again only once and again only if I've got the fuel because I almost never stick around to kill the Elites now.

[Elhazzared]

Obliviondoll - Clearly you aren't trying to fight elite cruisers on sector 1 or 2 with 1 engine power or you'd say otherwise. This is what i'm refering to. You take critical damage or are just destroyed in the early sectors if you don't have the engines to flee quickly and I don't have the scraps to upgrade the engines because again, when I do, the game just shows me every single time that the scrap I spent on the engines was necessary elsewhere and I end up losing as a direct result of that... Later on when you can spare the scrap for the engines, sure! You take a bit of damage but you can run away, not early on and this is the whole problem here.

Also if it's not a problem to lose scrap sector after sector... Well lucky for you. Quite frankly even when i lose little scrap I just barelly manage to get the bare minimum to beat the flagship (unless I'm on the mantis B cause bording since the beggining means enough scrap for everything). Even today trying a run on the engi B when i got to the end I had 3 weapons for a total of 6 laser shots, (defintily not enough) I had a BL3 in the cargo but the scrap to get the weapons from 6 to 8 never happened. My engines never got past 4, again lack of scrap. My shields were maxed out fortunatly. My drone system at 4 and really, no other sub system... This kind of scrap deficit happens every time you don't have at least a teleporter earlir on and a decent mantis/rock assault team, especially with losing jumps because I can't face the rebel fleet most of the times.

5th Horseman - If you never saw elite ships as being a credible threat then I assume you saw absolutly nothing in the game as being a credible threat because even the flagship is less scary than the elite ships.

In my case it was about one of the very few things that I respected because they could hurt me a lot when normal ships either couldn't or would just do 1 or 2 points of damage.

I could understand if you said. In a good run I'm not afraid of them because i can beat them easly, but in a normal or bad run, they will deal tons of damage in a straight up fight and you certainly know this.

[obliviondoll]

Obliviondoll - Clearly you aren't trying to fight elite cruisers on sector 1 or 2 with 1 engine power or you'd say otherwise.

If I was consistently getting even remotely close to the end of sector 1 with less than 3 engine power, I'd be realising that engines are OP the first time I did otherwise. I know this because on my first 3 playthroughs, I upgraded shields before touching engines, and ever since trying otherwise, I've ALWAYS upgraded engines to a minimum of 3 before worrying about shields on any ship with at least a first layer.

I don't have the scraps to upgrade the engines because again, when I do, the game just shows me every single time that the scrap I spent on the engines was necessary elsewhere and I end up losing as a direct result of that... Later on when you can spare the scrap for the engines, sure! You take a bit of damage but you can run away, not early on and this is the whole problem here.

There is almost nothing which can possibly be valuable enough to pass up an engine upgrade that early in the game. When I'm a jump short of a store, I'll usually save my scrap until I've checked it out, but if I'm low on engine power, sometimes I'll upgrade the engines and only bother with the shop if I need repairs or fuel.

Also if it's not a problem to lose scrap sector after sector... Well lucky for you. Quite frankly even when i lose little scrap I just barelly manage to get the bare minimum to beat the flagship (unless I'm on the mantis B cause bording since the beggining means enough scrap for everything). Even today trying a run on the engi B when i got to the end I had 3 weapons for a total of 6 laser shots, (defintily not enough) I had a BL3 in the cargo but the scrap to get the weapons from 6 to 8 never happened. My engines never got past 4, again lack of scrap. My shields were maxed out fortunatly. My drone system at 4 and really, no other sub system... This kind of scrap deficit happens every time you don't have at least a teleporter earlir on and a decent mantis/rock assault team, especially with losing jumps because I can't face the rebel fleet most of the times.

Sounds to me like you're severely under-valuing engines. Increasing your evade chance can quickly mean almost half the firepower enemies direct at you will simply fail to connect. Not taking as many hits means your shields don't drop as often, less shots will be hitting while your shields are down, and you're taking less hull and system damage. Less hull damage means less scrap wasted on repairs, and less system damage means you're staying at full combat-readiness for more of the fight, meaning you can damage enemies faster, which in turn means you're not fighting them for as long, and that means even less damage.

5th Horseman - If you never saw elite ships as being a credible threat then I assume you saw absolutly nothing in the game as being a credible threat because even the flagship is less scary than the elite ships.

I don't find a single elite ship to be more of a threat than the Flagship. If you do, you're once again appearing to do something wrong.

I could understand if you said. In a good run I'm not afraid of them because i can beat them easly, but in a normal or bad run, they will deal tons of damage in a straight up fight and you certainly know this.

For MOST players, in a good or normal run, and even sometimes in a borderline bad run, pre-AE elites are only a significant threat IF you're running into several of them in a row. If you're cutting across the edge of the fleet once or twice, that's fine, but if you're running yourself into 3 or 4 elites in a row, then you have to be having at least a decent run AND be really good at the game.

By the time you get to the 6th or 7th sector, elites are only a half-step above a normal ship.

I find the Flagship more of a threat, because it's like running into 3 Elites in a row, with the added threat of the power surges throwing extra damage your way. In my games, I very rarely end up in a situation where I can safely retreat and repair during the fight, so I have to let myself get worn down a little by each stage and end up with a really close battle where either I die with the flagship almost gone, or kill it with my own ship near death.

[Elhazzared]

Before AE elite ships wouldn't pose much of the treat. If you had teleporter, it would be even easier. Now I didn't noticed much of a change in elite ships, because I wasnt' much of a fleet farmer, I'd just jump where I need to and then come back taking 1 fuel from every fight till I get to exit. Now with the ASB I don't consider 3 (or a bit more) points of possible hull damage worth 1 fuel. Now it's actual decision: Am I ready to fight that fleet for those few beacons I can visit, can it be worth it.

Also, you mentioned that leaving beacons behind in first few sectors is bad idea. But if you are going for few beacons where you could find no scrap and if you do, it will be no more than about 30. And you risk then having to fight fleet which as you said, you cannot take without getting critical damage, my question is, why then you go for that little scrap if you're going to spend it all (if not more) on repairs?

Again, teleporting is slightly OP but either way, I needed a good run in order to fight elite ships and take absolutly no damage. Even with bording you need your ship to already have a capable weapon system so that it can take out med/clone bays. You also need the weapon systm not to fail you when it matters the most because if you miss your shots then it's gonna be a while until you can try to destroy it again and that prolongs the engagement which in turn means you take more damage... It is very rare, even by sectors 1 and 2 to find an elite ship that simply does not have the weaponry that can't cause you damage. More often than not they have quite enough weapons to deal a lot of damage, med/clone bays and a relatively high number of crew.

Lastly No, I don't farm those extra beacons for that extra scrap that I need badly because it isn't worth the hull damage I'd take. However all the scrap I'm losing hurts badly in the long run. This is a problem of the actual system seeding which in turn is highly amplified by the fleet becoming ridiculously hard due to the ASB.

Obliviondoll - Your experience is very different from mine then. Dodge rarely works for me at any values less than 40% (for which you need maxed piloting, maxed engines and level 4 engines if I'm not mistaken because the bonus start reducing as it gets higher). A shield upgrade is incredibly better because it blocks an extra shot for granded and because it makes ships with 1 laser and beams completly useless against you. The advantages of shield over evasion are just in plain sight. Also while dodge is good, again it rarely works under 40% but having your weapons dealing decent damage, or getting a teleporter or even a drone system with a defense drone. All of these are much more important than getting a bit extra dodge.

Why is it? Even if saying 30% dodge would save you 3 out of 10 times which according to my math it doesn't, again, rarely works bellow 40%. A drone system saves you almost every time from a missile, combine with a level 2 shields and that's an incredible amount of invunerability early on. Better/more weapons means the enemy dies that much faster and loses his weapons systems that much faster which directly translates into taking less damage. Teleporter might not necessarely translater into a quicker battle with less damage but it directly translates into much more scrap, much more fuel and higher chances to get augments and weapons from the enemy, even spending a bit more scrap in repiars, the amount you earn more in return makes up for it tenfold.

So never, under any circunstances is a little bit of dodge early on more important, it is in fact the least important. That is the conclusion I got to in over 200 hours of gameplay.

I am not doing something wrong. The elite ships are just better than the flagship. They have more dodge, they have full shields, they have an impressive array of weaponry, lots of crewman and lots of sub-systems.

The elite ship has a low dodge by comparison, it has the full shields but weapons are relatively slow firing. the subsystems are not all active at the same... It's just an overall easier fight. Granted the hacking module now makes it harder if it actually hits a vital place but it does also depends on how is your ships outfited.

In a straight up fight with an elite ship I always take damage, even with good dodge values I always take damage, the ship is just that powerful, but let's compare it with my recent runs which I killed the flagship.

First stage. No damage! - And I rarely take damage in the first stage unless the hacking hit my weapon system, shields or piloting. Well hat is a lie, sometimes one missile gets in, but that's as far as the first stage can ever get.

Secong stage. While things can get very wrong here, my last 3 victories were between no damage to 2 points of damage... This is because if you know that destroying the drone systm not only depowers the enemy drones, but makes his super weapon actually be over very quickyl, then it's hardly a problem because really, he'll already be without the main weapons.

Third stage. The only where I get damaged. In my last runs I never even got hit for 10 hull damage but between 8 and 12 is the normal damage I take here and the only reason I take that much is the super shields just being a general annoyance. The super power has no way to be reduced in effectiveness but it shouldn't fire more than 3 shots which between shields and dodge you shouldn't really take that much damage. BTW, the mind control here is easly nullified by a mind control of your own. I always want mind control for this battle for that reason.

This is to say, the flagship is only ver going to deal more damage than an elite ship in the final stage and even then it depends on the elite ship and whether or not the AI actually screws you with shots going into the shields and weapon systems cause then, more likelly than not, it will deal more damage than the flagship at any point.

[Elhazzared]

Usual math for drone control + shields level 2.

50 for shields, 20 for energy (cause you can always shave 1 energy by reducing engines to 1 or depowering medbay).

80 for drone control + 45 for energy (asuming one already costs 25, usualy is still at 20 at his point for both but meh).

80 + 45 +50 +20 = 195

Quite a bit less than 250... Sure sometimes you also need to buy the defense drone, but sometimes it already comes with it too.

Of course you went only after that specific one but never the less, it works better than a roll of the dice dodge which more often than not, doesn't works. You can say it costs less, but it's not cost efficient, not early on, not before 40% dodge chance... Also getting level 4 shields by sector 4 or 5 isn't good. If you are investing that hard into shields odds are you aren't investing into your weapons and quite frankly you need a third weapon by sector 3 without fail. While the starting weapons can still work, they are designed to fight ships with shield. Fight things with 2 shields and you have to priosirtise destroying the shield before destroying weapon systems and that means you take more damage during the fight. By the 4th sector you want shields at 3, the 4th level usually comes around 6th sector but it also depends on how much scrap you are earning.

BTW, do not take things out of context. When I said i'm not doing something wrong, i refered specificly to the flagship being straight up an easier battle than an elite ship and in my honest opinion, it is always true. Like I said, I can deal with the flagship taking no damage in at least the first stage and the damage I get in the second in negligible or also unexisting. The elite ships always deal me more damage than the flagship in the first and second stage put together unless I actually have had a monster run and am sitting on a pretty powerful weapon setup and pre-igniter which at that point, yeah I can toy with them too, but if I don't have a very powerful weapon setup + pre-igniter, damage is almost always guaranteeed to ramp up higher than the first 2 stages of the flagship. So no, i'm not doing something wrong here. This is consistently true for every plathrough.

Also, i might have 3 people sharing other opinions about engines, even those 3 people don't view the engines as being something god awesome. You say engine before anything, you've got other people saying. nope, first shield at 2 and then engine.

I am specificly telling you that every single time I do upgrade the engines before I get a third weapon or a drone control unit or a teleporter with crew for it. I get wrecked. There has not been a single time this has worked for me. Considering the time I've invested into it. Considering that so long as I was not playing the worst ships (because there are plain bad ships which require more luck than others on the start) I could win almost any run I did without a problem. I certainly have the right to belive that I am not talking out of my ass.

When I say that 30% dodge is actually lower than that. I actually count how many shots I actually manage to dodge in most runs at the percentage I have (sometimes I don't bother to actually count but I do it most of the times). Let me tell you the results, I have it saved on a spreadsheet.

10% dodge actually dodges on average 3% of the times.
15% dodge = 7%
20% dodge = 11%
25% dodge = 13%
30% dodge = 15%
40% dodge = 60%
47% dodge = 70%

I have have the values rounded up of course... Strange how bellow 40% the results are about half their actually value but get to 40 and the values go way up like crazy. A 47% dodge means that almost every single time the superweapon of the last stage of the flagship alone won't get through the shields... Sometime a shot gets past but often it doesn't. If you take out it's weapons and leave at least one crewman alive to pilot the flagship, on a high engine value even the last stage often won't touch you... Of course the hard part is getting to the flagship with ship that powerful... You need a really good run.

[Elhazzared]

Not a problem of mine really. Someone made a post about it, on easy mode in fact. It's not my original post though I used it as an example. I've never played this game on easy! Honestly I am not doing hard too right now. I tried it a few times and it looks like a good challenge, but I'll save the challenge for when I unlock all versions of all ships and then pick the ones that give me most pleasure to take out for a spin.

What I was doing was agreeying with the guy who made this post. The ASB is simply overpowered. Maybe it is possible to actually dodge the shots, quite frankly it never happened in my opinion but there is people saying they managed to dodge it so I take their word for it. Still it's overpowered and turns what was already an unfair fight into a massacre if you happen not to have the engines for it... And by engines for it I mean the engines to run from it cause nope, i'm not going to stay and fight. I used to before because if I got caught by them before, even if I took some damage it was mostly my pride on the line so I made sure to make an example out of them... Unless their ship was too bad ass in relation to mine

Now the options are you either run or you run. It's not a matter of option, it's a matter of whether it's even possible to do so at that stage of the game and that's what really bothers me so much. Restarting a run because you just ended up to inevitably get caught by the rebel fleet is just meh.

Also sorry for the confusion on the shields. I don't think of it as levels as much as I think of bubbles, a level is not really worth anything since it doesn't gives you a bonus after all so I don't care to layer it in terms of 0 to 8 but 0 to 4.

Also, the example I gave you of fighting an elite as opposed to fight the flagship is not when your ship is badly upgraded. I was talking sector 8 level of upgrades to make a fair comparison. I really have it easy against the flagship but the elite ships usually are much more dangerous to me. They deal much more damage which is why I never even fight them even on sector 8 without the ASB. At that point I'm already prepared to face the flagship... Hopefully... If I'm not it was because I had a bad run and my problem isn't probably just scrap as it is my weapon systems.

Also yes. I know RNG is going to be random, it's RNG after all. Still after so many atempts wouldn't it be fair to say that it falls into what you would consider an average? I mean just the 10% dodge chance which I showed you at 3% in reallity. That has over 3000 atempts recorded in my spreadsheet. if it fell within 8% and 12% with that many atempts... Sure, but it's 3%. Can i be that unlucky?

By the same token can I be that lucky that every single time the dodge goes abouve 40% value the dodges consistently go up into the 60% or above?

It's RNG so everything is possible, but it feels like too much coincidence to me.

In the end what I am arguing here about is not how to solve a problem that I don't trully have. I know how to deal with elite ships and it's flee. if i don't have the engines because I couldn't aford it. Restart, it was just a bad run.

What I am arguing here about is game balance and the ASB just feels completly unbalanced... Even going as far as lore goes. You probably don't have ships much bigger than cruisers and even then what they have for weaponry is the normal weaponry other ships have. Only the flagship is truly big and has special weapons mounted on it.

Lore wise the ASB correctly works exactly as what it truly is. An anti-ship batery. It's the kinda weaponry that is huge and would be mounted on planets where there is just plenty of space to have a big badass weapon or maybe a space station.

If the ASB could just be mounted on a cruiser or any ship of the line as it's given the impression. Then why can't i mount one on my ship?

Well of course I know the reason. It's because it's horribly overpowered. if we can reach that much consensus then it either should be limited to special and rare encounters. The kind of thing you see once every 10 games or so. Or, completly removed from the game.

I care about game balance at the end. That is why I'm not too sure that the flak 2 has a place. it's just too strong a weapon as it is because of it's "innate abillity" to completly destroy shields and even put some damage into the hull if you're lucky... Similarly i don't think that bording should give as much rewards as it does. it's horribly overpowered and it simply becomes the metagame. Want to win? Board ships for much higher rewards and then blow through it easly... Boarding should be no more than another way to take out the enemy, not a way to take out most enemies more effectively and at the same time, gain more from it.

[5thHorseman]

5th Horseman - If you never saw elite ships as being a credible threat then I assume you saw absolutly nothing in the game as being a credible threat because even the flagship is less scary than the elite ships.

"Absolutely Nothing"? No. "Damn near nothing?" Yes. And no, it had been quite a while since I'd considered the flagship a threat. I had an entire system for taking down the Flagship that quite literally worked every time, and if I got the bare minimum of things to make it work (Teleporter, and enough other stuff to make it that far in the game anyway) then yes, I beat the Flagship every single time. I can't remember, pre-AE, the last time the flagship destroyed my ship. I'm not sure but I don't think that in any of my runs on YouTube where I reached the Flagship, if it killed me. The closest it came that I can remember was in my Potential run, but I still pulled through. And I only had 5 lasers and no teleporter.

However, there was the occasional ship that would have my number in the normal sectors, and those were all I feared. And Elites in the first sector or two if I got scrap-screwed and therefore didn't have level 2 shields and at least 4 bars in engines.

I could understand if you said. In a good run I'm not afraid of them because i can beat them easly, but in a normal or bad run, they will deal tons of damage in a straight up fight and you certainly know this.

Note one important thing: I never said I could defeat them easily (though I frequently could). I said I didn't fear them. It was almost always worth facing them once to get 2 bonus jumps in of other stuff, even if all I did was jump away as soon as I could. 1.5 extra jumps per sector* is 10 jumps in 7 sectors (about), which is like having an entire extra sector, almost. For me, that's more than worth a slight chance of a couple damage in the first few sectors and an almost assured escape or (if I'm doing remotely well) free fuel in the later game.

*Though sadly this was not usually the case. I'd guess that the number of sectors where you couldn't effectively get an extra jump were about half, and the sectors where you could get 2 jumps were maybe 10% or so. 3 jumps was possible but even rarer. I never did an analysis, just took advantage of the free stuff when I could.