Subset Games Forum

"The Vortex" or simply Engi Cruiser Layout B has real fun-appeal to me, because you start with just one guy who uses two repair and one anti-personell drone as substitutes for any other crewmates. My captain happened to be called Hector.

So I thought it was a spectacularly funny (read: clearly bad, but entertaining) idea to open all doors except the one to the piloting cabin so fires and enemy boarders would suffocate instantly while Hector would pilot what is essentially a vacuum-filled ghost vessel where only drones scurry about. So I open the doors on the first beacon of the game and of all possible rooms my enemy takes out the door-room and then the drone-room so now I can't close my doors any more and my repair drones are not functioning either.

My plan was then to rush Hector to the doors room in order to repair it and if I got too low on health I would quickly run to the med-bay and back and forth until it's patched up eventually. Funny thing is, the med-bay heals you for exactly as much health as you lose from suffocation...

And there brave Hector waits in the med-bay to this day, floating alone in space...
He briefly considered a bold run for the pilot room, but it is no use - without the engines he is stranded and can't even try an FTL jump into the unknown.

Poor Hector.

Poor Hector. The one possiblility that you least desired was the one that happened. How cruel.

A level 2 MedBay can heal crew even in airless conditions, so that offers a glimmer of hope in such scenarios.

Undoubtedly one of the most unforgiving ships, still not giving it my full attention (trying to complete the game with the stealth B).
I like to think of the Vortex as the hard mode of FTL

Damn crazy engie.... what the hell was he thinking, piloting off alone with a trio of drones ???

Stealth B is imo the most unforgiving. The Glaive is just terribly slow and it doesnt have the sweet fast engines the A has. Vortex is a crazy ship, usually difficult to play, but the stealth is just a nightmare. Never made it past s3 in it, but i must say i enjoy trying. I managed a win in the Vortex, on the 2nd attempt. The tale is here.

One of the major problems of the Vortex is also the lack of rooms.

Look at the number of rooms in in some other ships and this one... if you do not evade a shot, it's almost guaranteed that some important system is hit, while other ships have many empty rooms.

How exactly is the hit-chance for a room computed anyway? Are 4-square rooms double as likely to be hit as 2-square rooms or do all rooms have an equal probability of being hit regardless of size?

It's a bit silly actually, I think the evasion chance should rather be computed by evasion factor times squares.