Subset Games Forum

Hey guys!

wanted to pass the question to you about your strategies using the torus.

With the Kestrel I usually reach the final sector unless I play a high risk high benefit game, and then I'm aware of why I lose. Which is fun.
With the torus I'm completely dependant on lucky draws at stores or sectors. Which is not fun at all. If I don't find the equipment the torus needs, I fail through no fault of mine, and if I do find the equipment the torus needs I progress not on merit but on luck.
If I don't find a defensive drone or missile weapon by sector 3 I'm usually toast for lack of disabling enemy missile weapons, and by sector ~5 the drone recovery arm becomes increasingly necessary if I want to capitalize on the toruses three drone slots. Anything past sector 3-4 requires almost a complete replacement of weapons and drones as the damage output is simply too low to defeat anything from this point on.

With the torus my impressions from a couple of runs are that it's item dependant to the point of being useless in 90% of games.
- it lacks the kestrels starting missile. this makes it extremely hard to defeat anything beyond sector 1 or 2. As soon as ships are running 2 or more points of shield I cannot disable their weapons in time to save my ship from major missile damage.
- Needless to say that without disabling shields the attack drone Mk I is about as effective as throwing popcorn at the enemy ship.
- It's also much less "fun" to play. I have no strategic options when playing the Torus. I always have to launch the drone, I always have to power up every gun, I always turn on auto fire because there is no alternative to disabling weapons ASAP, and then I just passively watch the fight play out. All this holds true until much, much later in the game when I have spent a ton of scrap on extra equipment.
With the kestrel I can always weigh my strength against theirs, decide whether I want to conserve missiles or let fly everything i have.. i can choose whether I want to try and disable their shields first, take a few hits but then kill them off quickly on low shields, or whether I have to start out conservatively by disabling their weapons and then slowly whittling down their armor through their fully functioning shields.

My conservative suggestion for fixing the torus would be replacing the Attack drone Mk I with a Mk II variant. I don't see why the kestrel would get an Mk II burst laser and a missile on top whereas this ship is supposed to make do on a 1 damage per shot drone that shoots less frequently than a shield recharge.
The more aggressive suggestion would be replacing one of the Ions Mk I with an Ion Mk II in addition to the above. A weapon that can do 2 points of disable in one go would make this ship much more resilient in the beginning stages of the game.
I could also see starting out with two points of shield working instead of an Ion Mk II. This would still make Sectors 3-5 extremely hard, while you're searching for a way to disable missiles, but it would be slightly less unfair.

So..
am I misunderstanding the torus? Has anyone had more positive experiences? Do you think it is designed to be "harder"? How would you fix the monotonous starting phase?

I beat the normal mode end boss with taurus

and my loadout was nothing fancy

which I've detailed here
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=463

so imo neither under powered or misunderstood just a solid lil ship , I'd actually rate it better than the kestrel, auto healing makes boarder defense easy as pie and repo on breeches in vacuum much easier. hell you can nearly run your ship in vacuum with the heal rates , fires esp solar flares are no problem just vent ship win fight and leave

Yeah, the auto-heal is amazing.

I haven't had much luck with this ship either, but that was mostly to not finding any weapon upgrades at all. I think if you get just a little bit of luck in the first two sectors, maybe some additional crew, this ship is better than the kestrel, especially with the drone recovery arm. The kestrel is limited by missile storage, with drone recovery there is virtually no limit other than system power to your use of drones.

If your flying the Taurus I think you need to consider buying weapons instead of holding out to find them , they should be higher on your priority list for purchasing at stores. and go for lower energy weapons like the burst 2 laser and the breech bomb that give good bang for the 2 power they use

Yeah, it seems like a good few people have had a decent time using the torus. My first run with it went really well until I died to some major missile barage in one of the late sectors.

However, I find the more I play this ship, the less fun I'm having. It's a very powerful lategame ship, but the early game is just terrible...
How do you usually manage sectors 1-4 ?

kshh wrote:Yeah, it seems like a good few people have had a decent time using the torus. My first run with it went really well until I died to some major missile barage in one of the late sectors.

However, I find the more I play this ship, the less fun I'm having. It's a very powerful lategame ship, but the early game is just terrible...
How do you usually manage sectors 1-4 ?

well sectors 1-2 for the majority of fights are 1shield, so just target weapons and let the drone do its work, usually by then I've found either a laser or missle/bomb and can alternate between using drones and bombs to ration supply. I often walk around with unspent scrap so when i do find a store, I replace the ions so by 3-4 I'm already rocking decent guns.

I think a big trick for any ship/player is going cheap early and just surviving to have that extra scrap available for stores in case one has something really good.

another big saver is not buying power to early and instead stealin from medbay engines O2 even shields if you time it right. can power a drone and then turn off power 1 shield bar before weapon hit then put it back on drone.

kshh wrote: How do you usually manage sectors 1-4 ?

maximize scrap collection. Don't accept bribes unless its a solar flare event. Try to disable the enemy crew instead of destroying the ship if you can.

actually if we're talking under powered and misunderstood fly the the Mantis Crusier some time, took me several runs to get a handle on how to make it work and I guarantee more people will have trouble with that compared to the Taurus

ok, from what I'm reading though, it seems everyone is supporting the points I made originally.. you're essentially saying your strategy with this one is to be lucky with shops or drops early on..
The essential problem remains that if you don't find the correct equipment at the correct time there's no way to adjust strategy with the torus.
Essentially you need to turn the torus into a ship that's more comparable to the kestrel asap. I.e. get lasers/missiles.

I think it's a really interesting idea for a ship, but just based on numbers, not personal preference(I like the ship), it seems like a frustratingly poorly equipped setup (even though it comes with a free drone bay and med upgrade).

So this keeps happening to me:
I start the game, (one of the) first fight(s) I run into is a ship that runs 1 simple laser and 1 simple missile (artemis) weapon and has 1 shield.
This is a simple setup, but you it's pure luck if you beat this ship with the torus..

first ion shot disables 1 bar of shield energy, 2nd shot disables 1 bar of weapon energy. The AI wisely decides to keep the remaining power on the missile.
my drone hits random rooms, not the shield, nor the weapons.. so I take a few missile hits while my drone uselessly takes pot shots at empty rooms over there and after a while I take a missile to the drone bay and at this point the game is essentially over. Weapons room would result in the same thing..

All the while my strategic options are exactly none at all. I can stand by and wait until my FTL is charged, then jump away. Either way, the best option at that point is to just start a new game, since it's still early.