Subset Games Forum

I always get a bit disappointed when I get to The Last Stand, and for one reason: It's always the same thing! Make a mad dash for the Flagship (which is always the same encounter) and take it down! The Flagship itself is often frustrating due to just how powerful it is, and how unlikely it is that newer players will understand mechanics such as the AI suddenly taking over or the second stage power surge.

So taking from ideas from this thread (http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9643), I've thought of a few ideas for the Last Stand. For starters, the Flagship would take longer to reach the Federation base. Next, the Last Stand would have several beacons labeled BATTLE, representing systems currently having large (what else) battles between the Federation and the Rebels.

On jumping to one of these, the player would enter an encounter with a rebel cruiser, which would act as a kind of miniboss somewhere between the level of random encounters like fighters and such and the flagship. These cruisers would exhibit some of the special abilities of the flagship, and on defeat, weaken the appropriate ability. Here are a few examples:

The Drone Command Cruiser, a Rebel ship using the new tactic of using remotely controlled light drones en masse to cause headaches to Federation ships across the sector (Like Skysmashers! Hopefully someone gets that reference). This ship would use a weaker version of the flagship's second stage power surge, as well as having a chance to have other drones. Destroying it would cripple the rebel's ability to use their massed drones, meaning that the Flagship would have to control its drone-spam locally. . . which means that destroying the drone control during the Flagship's second stage would disable the power surge!

The Rebel Dreadnought, a terrifyingly well-armed ship that has been carving a path through Federation ships thanks to the help of a regenerating 5 hitpoint Zoltan Shield. Heavily damaging the ship and accepting a surrender or killing off its crew would cause you to release several captured Zoltan scientists, who reveal that they were forced at blaster-point to install an experimental zoltan shield on several rebel ships. To help their rescuers, the scientists point out several weaknesses in the system. This comes in very handy during the third form; the Flagship's Zoltan shield will now no longer regenerate during a power surge so long as the shield system is damaged.

The BATTLE encounters could also do other things in the last stage. For example, you may be able to ambush a Planetary Landing Cruiser. This ship, while lightly armed, is equipped with a large crew and a four-man teleporter. If you manage to defeat them, the rate at which the rebels take over systems slows down considerably. As a side effect, fighting the Planetary Landing Cruiser would give the player a taste of the huge boarding party that can possibly occur during the Third Form.

A few (2-3) of these BATTLE beacons would appear on The Last Stand, but it's extremely unlikely that a player will be able to visit all of them. And on top of that, there may be more possible BATTLE encounters than can be spawned. So the player will never be able to cripple the flagship completely. And also, these miniboss cruisers can be challenges in their own right, requiring many tactical decisions, such as "Will I have enough missiles/drones left after this battle to take on the flagship" and "should I risk taking too much damage to make the boss a bit easier?" And of course, "Will I have enough time to defeat these cruisers AND destroy the flagship?"

A system like this, I think, would make The Last Stand WAY more fun and interesting, while at the same time teaching newer players about the flagship's abilities (and how to fight/counter those abilities).

EDIT: Made the text a bit easier to read, as well as fixing a lot of nasty typos.

Yes, please.

...Justin, Matt, are you guys reading this?

Great idea!

Add this now


Please.

This is honestly a great idea.

The most annoying thing for me on the last stand ais the shop usually goes down before I find it, and there is a good chance the repair bays go down also, or appear in my flight path, forcing me to go around or lose it. It would be nice to have an option where you an leave the contents of the base.

The final battle itself is not too difficult if you know what you are doing. The only weapon that can hurt you if you have four shields is the missile gun (which is obviously your main target each time) Usually this can be nullified if you put full power to your engines (swapping for shields if you need to). You have to be pretty unlucky for any of the other weapons to do serious damage. A bit of variation would be cool

The Final Battle might be easy if you're quite experienced, but it's extremely BORING to fight. You usually use the same tactics/abilities to defeat it, and if you don't have them because you tried something else or wasn't able to find what you needed, too bad.

Another idea to supplement this one could be a more randomized flagship. Instead of having the same abilities every time, it could have an arsenal of abilities that varies every game. Instead of cloaking, it might have an ion-machine gun during the first form, or instead of attack drones during the second form, sending multiple boarding drones that self destruct when the power surge en-

Actually, not the last one. That just sounds terrifying. Forget I said anything.

Yet another idea: Those quests that would normally unlock the ships? They could also give a random chance for certain events to be generated. For example, if you finished the Stealth quest, you would have a chance to find BATTLE beacons featuring a large, damaged Engi ship under attack by a Rebel cruiser. If you defeat the cruiser, the system would then act as a repair system, fixing hull and giving supplies of consumables.

This is a great idea and should be a mod, if not officially implemented into the game.

Skysmashers...
Are you talking about Iji, sir?

Anyway, I approve.

I could change the topic of this from "less boring" to "better designed"

I approve of those ideas and the idea of a boss that is slightly less powerful but ( like the rest of the mfcking game) has a randomized outfit of weapons and forms.

And the idea of making the ship change form not after destroying all the hull points displayed but after destroying a part of its health would make so much more sense as well.

Honestly, I would have preferred if the last fight was a fight against a ship that has the same power as yours but that has an (almost) perfect AI (which would make it take decisions similar to a real player).