Subset Games Forum

personally the thing that bugs me the most in ftl is trying to get the acheavement as rock cruiser for destroying a ship with only missiles while it has a defence drone. whats yours?

Moved to Discussion from Stories and Storytelling since it isn't a story.

Archievments that take a long time to archieve or ships whose dependence on luck to attain are so high it's not fun.

This means the second stealth cruiser cause avoidong 9 points of damage with a cloak, sorry but you only avoid that on the mothership battle. Similarly, get to sector 8 without going through hazzards which means that no matter what, you gotta get to sector 8 and often you get no option other than jumping into an hazzard, like it's only route possible.

Getting the crystal cruiser means you need to get into a pirate/engi/rock sector first. Then you gotta find the distress signal which actually has the pod. Then you need to find an engi/zoltan sector and then have the luck to find the research station. Lastly you need to still have the rock homeworld ahead and I'm not sure wether you get a quest to go to the hidden place or if you just have to search for it... I've managed to get the first two parts a couple times, despite hundreds of hours played. But I never seam to be able to get the rock homeworld after. This is just incredibly stupid at the amount of dumb luck you need to actually get this. One thing is having a difficult archievement due to it's difficulty, another is to depend on a horse dose of dumb luck to get it.

The general balance issues and oversights in the game, e.g. how awful most augments are or Heavy Ion's inability to chain.

Twinge wrote:The general balance issues and oversights in the game, e.g. how awful most augments are or Heavy Ion's inability to chain.

You should try the balance mod, it's made by... Oh. Wait.

I don't mind Heavy Ion being not able to chain. It still works fine in tandem with any other ion weapon (including another Heavy) which is generally my goal with Ions anyway.

My peeve is that the final boss is fully predictable, after an entire game of stuff that is NOT predictable. I have a set of goals in my head for meeting the final boss, and I know exactly what to do each time. It's weird for that to be the case when every other encounter is completely random and fresh.

Twinge wrote:The general balance issues and oversights in the game, e.g. how awful most augments are or Heavy Ion's inability to chain.

Am i the only one who actually likes the FTL Jammer? And what do you mean by chaining?

UltraMantis wrote:

Twinge wrote:The general balance issues and oversights in the game, e.g. how awful most augments are or Heavy Ion's inability to chain.

Am i the only one who actually likes the FTL Jammer?

I don't think I've ever had it AND needed it at the same time. I need it about once every 5-10 playthruoughs, when I happen upon a ship that is trying to get away AND I can't stop it in time. I'd never use one of my only 3 slots for that, when I could instead get some free scrap for it.

Yeah, the FTL jammer is incredibly bad, one of the worst things you can fit it. Almost never anyone is able to flee and if they try, just aim for the bridge or engines... Bridge breaks a lot easier cause it can never have many points in it anyway.

UltraMantis wrote:Am i the only one who actually likes the FTL Jammer? And what do you mean by chaining?

I figure even when the FTL Jammer is good, it doesn't really do enough - double time isn't *that* much longer, especially when you're spending scrap and an augment slot to have it there. So all I ended up doing to it in the Balance Mod was making it triple the timer instead of double - so at least it does its job well, even if you don't need that job often. FTL Jammer is only like the 6th worst augment in the game or so, though

Ion Chaining is the effect where you hit an ionized system with more ion damage before it has worn off, thus taking out additional bars from the system. For example, Ion Blast II fires every 4 seconds dealing 1 ion damage, which is 1 bar of damage for 5 seconds. This means that as long as it doesn't miss, it can keep building up, and potentially take down any number of shield bubbles all by itself.

Ion Bomb deals 4 ion damage (4 bars for 20 seconds) every 18 seconds, and also chains quite nicely (two ion bombs takes out 4 shield bubbles for only 1 power). Ion Blast I cannot chain with itself, but also only requires 1 power and has a low cooldown, so it still has usefulness without other ion. Heavy Ion deals 2 ion damage with a 13 second cooldown, so it cannot chain at all unless you have an Automated Reloader - means you're using 2 power for a weapon only capable of taking down 1 shield unless you have additional ion weapons to combo it with. (In the Balance Mod I drop Heavy Ion to 11 seconds and increase the cost, meaning it can chain with itself as long as your weapon system is manned.)

(I'll also add - Teleporter and Cloaking cooldowns count as ion damage, so you can add to cooldowns by adding ion damage.)

Twinge wrote:...Ion Chaining is the effect where you hit an ionized system with more ion damage before it has worn off, thus taking out additional bars from the system...

Ah gotcha.

As for the jammer, i mentioned it because it is universally considered worthless, and yet i never regretted having it. Now, i would never actually buy the thing and i agree that it's effect isn't strong enough. It helps a bit when you have low crunch power or are boarding and the enemy is legging it. Maybe i was really lucky to have the Jammer AND have it thwart attempts to call in the Rebels. Unless there's a better aug on offer, it's good enough to have imo, can't hurt. I would not buy it, but i would not sell it for scrap either.