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Completed Lets blow shit up in space! (Faster Than Light)

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
So, new LP time. Still running Brigandine as well, but I felt like playing this and figured I may as well LP it while I'm at it. If you don't know much/anything about the game, it's a sort of real time tactical roguelike. Death is permanent, encounters and loot is random, and there's a lot of freedom in playstyle. I'm going to be using the stealth cruiser for the first run (I'll probably do at least one more, maybe more than that depending on how quickly these go) which most people consider to be a bit of a challenge for reasons that will become quickly apparent. Anyways, fuck title screens, lets get into this shit.
FTLb0001.jpg

This is the ship we're using. Like every ship except the default starter one, I had to unlock this fucker by playing and accomplishing a specific task. It has a shitty human crew, some halfassed weaponry, and no shields. But we do have pretty good engines.
FTLb0002.jpg

We also have Cloaking, which normally costs as much to install as shields. And we have an excellent name for our ship.
FTLb0003.jpg

This is what most of the game looks like. We can order our crew about the ship to man various stations, or repair shit or fight boarders. Or, if lightbane doesn't reply to this quickly enough, we can move him into an airlock room and suck the oxygen out to watch him die a slow agonizing death. Just sayin'

As you can see at the tooltip, crew can gain experience at manning the 4 stations that can be manned, as well as repairs and boarding. All crew start with no skill, though some races get inherent bonuses.
FTLb0004.jpg

This is another important screen, where we plot our course through the sector, one jump at a time. We have long ranged scanners, so we have the luxury of noticing if a ship (not necessarily an enemy ship) or dangerous local event like a plasma storm is at an adjacent star.
FTLb0005.jpg

Over here is some purple nebula shit, which makes sensors nonfunctional and delays enemy pursuit if we spend time there.
FTLb0006.jpg

And finally over here we have the exit beacon. We need to reach this to progress to the next sector.
FTLb0007.jpg

In the top left we have the hud for our resources. Hull is self explanatory, shields I'll explain a bit when we start to fight, and to the right of that we have fuel (need 1 per jump) missiles and drone parts. Missiles and drone parts are consumables used by certain weapons or drone systems, but we have none of the consumables or the means to use them right now. To the right of the hull bar is our scrap total, the currency for the game. It can be exchanged for damned near anything, as well as used to upgrade our ship.
FTLb0008.jpg

In the bottom left, we have the energy hud. The bars in the very corner represent our reactor capacity and spare energy, which we funnel into various systems. Systems need at least 1 energy to function at all, and if they're upgraded, need more energy to make use of their upgraded functions.
FTLb0009.jpg

As an example, our engines here are just minimally powered. Putting our spare energy in will pump our evasion up 10%.
FTLb0010.jpg

Like so.

In the bottom right are subsystems, which require no energy to function. They can, however, be damaged or disabled like any of the other systems.
FTLb0011.jpg

But enough of that shit, lets get going. I opt for the star without a guaranteed ship. We're at our weakest right now, and might get some free stuff before we have to fight.
FTLb0012.jpg

Well, instead we come across a ship fighting pirates. We could just leave, but if we fight we can get not just the scrap from the dead ship, but a reward from the civilians.
FTLb0013.jpg

:fight: Obviously.
FTLb0014.jpg

So, this is what combat looks like. We can pause whenever we want. Our weapons are shown next to the other systems at the bottom there, and as long as they're powered, they'll begin to charge while we're in abttle against an enemy ship (unless the enemy is cloaked, which stops our weapons from charging for some reason.)
FTLb0015.jpg

Before anything else I depower our medbay and cap out or engines for the extra bit of evasion. No reason not to.
FTLb0016.jpg

Then the enemy fires his heavy laser cannon and htis our weapons before ours finish charging. Having not played the stealth ship in a long while, I'd forgotten how to actually fight with this thing. Oops. The laser did 2 damage, which means we take 2 hull damage, and the system takes 2 damage as well, leaving it completely disabled. This means our weapons lose any charge they'd had built up and can't charge again until we repair the weapons and repower them.
FTLb0018.jpg

Of course, the enemy also has a missile launcher, which hits our piloting controls while we're all moving to repair the weapons. Probably should have left Azira there to keep our evasion around. (I forgot to mention, Azira is our pilot, Procrastinator our engines guy, and lightbane our weapons guy.)
FTLb0019.jpg

The missile also started a fire, which luckily can't do any more damage to the already totally destroyed piloting system. It could, however, spread to the O2 system next door and destroy that, which would be bad. The smart thing to do would be to open the nearby doors and vent those far 3 rooms to spaces, suffocating the fire. Except the enemies hit our door control subsystem, so we can't control the doors any more. At least weapons are back online.
FTLb0020.jpg

The dual laser fires a pair of 1 damage shots. The first is cancelled out by the shield the enemy has (note how the blue square went dark) and the second should hit the weapons system we aimed at, before the shields recharge.
FTLb0021.jpg

However, we paused in between the two shots landing, so we can fire our beam weapon. Firing is instant after the weapon is charged and we set the target. Beam weapons are targetted as lines (you can see the short red line on the enemy ship, which is now dark like ours because our fucking sensors got hit) and hit every room the line touches. Ours is a shitty low level beam, so it does only 1 damage, and the line is quite short. On top of that, beams do nothing to shields. They can pierce through shields, but they do 1 less damage for each shield they pass through. Ours would do nothing if the enemy has any shields up at all.
FTLb0022.jpg

Beams also never miss, which is rather nice.
FTLb0023.jpg

I either fucked up the targetting here or the enemy somehow resisted the system damage, because their weapons are unharmed. I think the former since this ship type can only resist hull damage, not system damage. We did manage 4 points of hull damage though, leaving them with 4 remaining.
FTLb0024.jpg

We're at about half of our 30 points ourselves. I've finally managed to fix doors and partially fix sensors. Of course now engines our down, but engines without piloting don't do much anyways. Also, I finally remembered we had a cloaking system and used it completely ineffectively. Weee. And the enemy shields are back up.
FTLb0025.jpg

But our next attack wipes them out. We now have a fire in the engine room. Not that it matters, since the engines are already destroyed, and the adjacent room has a hull breach, venting all the air.
FTLb0026.jpg

We got 15 scrap, 2 missiles and 2 fuel from the ship's remains, and even more stuff from the science vessel we rescued. Altogether, it's barely enoguh to cover our repair expenses. I totally fucked up this battle.
FTLb0027.jpg

We go ahead and vent the engines more quickly by opening a path to the enarest airlock, and close up the other side to start making repairs possible.
FTLb0028.jpg

You can see which rooms have breathable atmosphere by the borders. Yellow borders mean it is unsafe to be there, unless you're a drone.
FTLb0029.jpg

Of course, even with the doors closed, the room with the breach isn't going to have any atmosphere until we repair the breach.
FTLb0030.jpg

We lose a substansial chunk of health repairing it, but it's done.
FTLb0031.jpg

After fixing the engines too we turn the medbay back on and patch everyone up.
FTLb0032.jpg

Shit. I wanted to explore the nebula but one spot has a ship and the other a plasma storm (which usually also implies a hostile ship.)
FTLb0033.jpg

We bite the bullet and head to the ship. Plasma storms are pretty awful to deal with. Any environmental hazard is honestly.
FTLb0034.jpg

No option to just leave like we did with the last encounter. However, this time I remember what ship we're using.
FTLb0035.jpg

Before much of anything happens, I activate the cloaking system. This gives our weapons a headstart on theirs to charge for 5 seconds.
FTLb0036.jpg

Which means we get to fire before them, even though our weapons are slower.
FTLb0037.jpg

Same as with the other ship, the dual laser takes out the shields then we use the beam to slice them up.
FTLb0038.jpg

Their weapons are completely down before they fire a shot. Complete opposite of the last battle.
FTLb0039.jpg

By the time they've repaired a weapon, we can fire the dual lasers again and knock it back out.
FTLb0040.jpg

And then the beam to finish them.
FTLb0041.jpg

:kfc: Flawless victory.
FTLb0042.jpg

Rewards in the first sector are pretty small, but fights are also pretty easy. As long as I play competently and don't encounter anything crazy we'll do fine.
FTLb0043.jpg

We have enough scrap to upgrade some systems now, but nothing is really worth upgrading. I'd rather hang on in case we can buy another weapon or useful addon.
FTLb0044.jpg

So, lets continue exploring the little nebula.
FTLb0045.jpg

An automated ship near a space station. You can see one of our options here is blue. This denotes an option we only have because of something we have that not every ship would. In this case, our cloaking system gives us the option to board the station without fighting the ship first.
FTLb0046.jpg

I go ahead and do that. Would still like some sort of combat upgrade before I engage in combat just for the reward of the scrapped enemy ship.
FTLb0047.jpg

And here is where we're most likely to find it. Anyone can detect stores when they are adjacent to your position.
FTLb0048.jpg

We head there immediately. There are many differently fluffed stores, but they're all pretty much following the same rules.
FTLb0049.jpg

They'll have fuel, missiles and drones for sale, as well as repair facilities. Repairs get more expensive later on. They'll also sell 2 of the following sets of things: Systems, Weapons, Drones, Addons, and Crew. We got systems and weapons available here.
FTLb0050.jpg

Getting a shield system would be nice, but it's damned expensive. Drones and teleporter wouldn't be very useful to us right now. This weapon is probably our best bet.
FTLb0051.jpg

We can also sell stuff at stores. Not our consumables, but any of our equipment is fair game. These are our existing lasers, which charge a bit faster, use less energy, and fire 1 less shot. Both have a small chance of causing fires when they get past shields.
FTLb0052.jpg

And our mini beam. Note that the damage per room hit doesn't depend on the size of a room. Essentially you want to pass between as many walls separating rooms as possible. Though targetting specific systems factors in as well obviously.
FTLb0053.jpg

We also have our long range scanners...
FTLb0054.jpg

...and this special system casing which only this ship gets AFAIK. I think it used to sell for a lot more scrap. This makes things a bit harder than I'd expected. Ah well.
FTLb0055.jpg

We're gonna sell it to buy that burst laser.
FTLb0056.jpg

Note that we can only mount 3 weapons at a time on this ship, regardless of their power requirements.
FTLb0057.jpg

Also, since we currently only have level 2 weapons systems, we can only use up to 2 energy to power weapons.
FTLb0058.jpg

We could depower the weapons we had before to use this...
FTLb0059.jpg

Or we can spend the last bit of our scrap to upgrade our systems so we can spend 3 power on weapons.
FTLb0060.jpg

Which is what I decide to do.
FTLb0061.jpg

The order of the weapons in the slots matters. In the event of system damage, weapons to the left have the highest priority of staying online. If we took 1 weapon damage here, the mini beam would shut down while the burst laser kept charging.
FTLb0062.jpg

I opt to use the 2 laser weapons together. A volley of 5 lasers should be able to take out almost any weapons system we encounter in this sector or the next.
FTLb0063.jpg

Another store is available, but we have no scrap right now. Maybe we can come back later.
FTLb0064.jpg

Note the warning on the left side now. The rebels (yes, we belong to the federation, and are fighting AGAINST rebels, go figure) are pursuing us. The highlighted area shows us where they'll have their scouts searching specifically for us next turn. Being in that area next turn would be very bad, especially for us right now.
FTLb0065.jpg

Checking out the last safe nebula node, we find a weapons trader. The weapons they sell are rarely worth the price.
FTLb0066.jpg

And since we have some firepower now, I feel like beating up random ships to take their loot is worth it.
FTLb0067.jpg

There is an alternate way to use the cloaking device in battle besides just to buy extra time for charging weapons.
FTLb0068.jpg

As you can see here, I've waited a while before using the cloak. Our lasers are already charged (the weaker ones anyways, the new ones are close too though.) In fact, I waited for the enemy to fire.
FTLb0069.jpg

So when his shot would land, we have +60% evasion. This is useful if you want to dodge specific weapons rather than just get more shots than the enemy. But in our situation it wasn't really advantageous to do this. The enemy also has a beam weapon which hasn't fired yet, we could cause us some trouble.
FTLb0070.jpg

However, it's too late for them, because our weapons are charged.
FTLb0071.jpg

Pew-pew motherfuckers!
FTLb0072.jpg

With their weapons down I can go after other systems as well instead of just camping on their weapons. Taking out the piloting will lower their evasion to 0.
FTLb0073.jpg

The offer to surrender. On average, blowing up a ship tends to give better rewards than surrenders do. But if you want to end the fight ASAP it might be worth it anyways. In this case, we'll accept because it's actually a really good offer. Thats a lot of fuel and missiles. We don't need the missiles right now, but we might later on. And we'll definitely use the fuel.
FTLb0074.jpg

Another chance to avoid combat. Like our first encounter in the system, some pirates (or something) are fucking up another ship. However, these guys notice us and offer a bribe if we just leave. These bribes tend to be especially shitty, but let you avoid the fight entirely. We can tell what their basic ship type is though, and can see their weapons too (though the weapons are harder to see when powered down, since they tuck into the ship.) We can take these guys out easily and hopefully get another double reward.
FTLb0075.jpg

Once again, I pause just as the enemy fires (you can see the shot leaving their cannon this time) to dodge it. Even though this makes no sense.
FTLb0076.jpg

Sure is cinematic though. Woooooooo! :avatard:
FTLb0077.jpg

I guess evading shots at least trains our pilot a bit. Anyways, lets unload.
FTLb0078.jpg

Great success!
FTLb0079.jpg

We'll be fighting a LOT of ships in this game. In the future, I'll probably skim over the combat if it's against a ship that isn't likely to cause us any damage.
FTLb0080.jpg

After our next volley, they're fucked up enough to be scared, Unlike most ships though, instead of offering to surrender, they try to bribe us to leave again with a better deal. We could accept, but then we'd be abandoning whoever they attacked.
FTLb0081.jpg

So we refuse and blast them to bits. The reward is especially lame. Ugh.
FTLb0082.jpg

And it turns out the guys we rescued were enemies. :x
We opts to blast them to bits and get a bit more loot. This doesn't even put us in combat, it's just free loot.
FTLb0083.jpg

So... we have nice weapons, are pretty fucked up hull wise and still have no shields and a shitty crew. Not the greatest start, but I've seen much worse.
FTLb0084.jpg

Onward! Though not here. More fucking environmental hazards. We won't be seeing any of those on this run if I can possibly help it. And I probably can with our scanners.
FTLb0085.jpg

Instead we move above us and run into these guys. Aside from the pursuing fleet, the rebels are stationed all over the place anyways, so we'll encounter them even if we avoid the fleet itself.
FTLb0086.jpg

These fuckers actually have a teleporter and board us. Luckily they're retarded and fight us in the medbay where they can't possibly win. I stupidly moved our whole crew there even though 1 guy would have been sufficient.
FTLb0087.jpg

But it's irrelevant since our cloak and inital volley totally fucks up their ship. Their weapons are down and on fire (and fires have to be put out before repairs can start.)
FTLb0088.jpg

Now that I have two weapons that can overwhelm the enemy shields, I can afford to go after other systems besides weapons when we fire, which speeds things up.
FTLb0089.jpg

Now their shields are down until they repair them, and I have lasers charged and ready to fire the instant they repair their weapons.
FTLb0090.jpg

Rebels often try to escape. If they get away the fleet gets warned and will jump ahead a long way on the next turn.
FTLb0091.jpg

We're not going to let that happen obviously. They give up their escape attempt and offer to surrender.
FTLb0092.jpg

Surrender refused. :rpgcodex: We actually got a weaker reward here arguably. Kinda bad RNG in that regard so far.
FTLb0093.jpg

But we've eeked out enough for another weapons system upgrade.
FTLb0094.jpg

Now all 3 weapons are online, though are engines aren't close to capacity any more and the medbay is offline to power this stuff. We'll want some reactor upgrades before long, especially when we get shields too.
FTLb0095.jpg

Next system is a simple quest opportunity. These guys want us to escort them to a nearby system. If we accept, we'll get 2 fuel immediately and a highlight on our map of where to head.
FTLb0096.jpg

Little reason not to accept these. They can be traps, but if it's a trap it'll be at the quest location, and we could just not show up and run off with the free fuel.
FTLb0097.jpg

We're gonna head there though. It's quite unlikely we'd be in serious trouble even if it is a trap.
FTLb0098.jpg

First we have to fight another rebel ship. They are really underarmed, with a just a single basic laser (1 shot 1 damage laser.)
FTLb0099.jpg

They also have a defense drone, which can shoot down incoming missiles. Of course, we don't have missiles so it's basically a free win for us.
FTLb0100.jpg

Afterwards we get to the quest marker and get our reward. Not a big reward but better than having to fight for it or just wasting a turn.
FTLb0101.jpg

Not that the rebel fleet is nearly covering the system now. The heavily shaded area is already occupied, and being there means we'd have to fight a bigass cruiser. Do not want. Based on their rate of expansion if we visit the store we'll have to fight our way into the exit beacon. We'll leave the store behind.
FTLb0102.jpg

Well, here we are, sector 1 finished up.
FTLb0103.jpg

You can have cnounters at these nodes too obviously. It's another station guarded by a drone. We'll fight this one for the extra scrap, since it looks weak.
FTLb0104.jpg

These ships don't have crew or air on board, which makes fires irrelevant, boarding nearly pointless, and capturing them impossible. Note that there aren't even doors between adjacent rooms on this thing.
FTLb0105.jpg

Anyways, between our 3 weapons and the cloak we can easily carve it apart before it has a chance to do anything. Also some fag is playing Dota 2 apparently. :troll:
FTLb0106.jpg

Anyways, mission accomplished, drone destroyed.
FTLb0107.jpg

17 scrap and nothing else from the ship is... ok. Not very good but not awful.
FTLb0108.jpg

This is kinda lame for a storage cache though. Ugh. Whatever, it cost us nothing to open.
FTLb0109.jpg

Time to scram.
FTLb0110.jpg

This is the sectors map. Kinda explains itself. I'd let you guys vote on where to go but fuck you we're going to the nebula because Zoltans are fucking scary to a ship like ours. To a lot of ships in fact. Fucking Zoltans.
FTLb0111.jpg

So we'll stop here for now.
FTLb0112.jpg

Also, I realized I can run it in a smaller resolution and cut down a bit on screenshot size hopefully. (These are already resized and reformatted, this'll just save some bandwidth hopefully.)

If you guys want, I could try making the screenshots bigger, but aside from the evasion/oxygen levels and the tooltips, I think everything is pretty legible. The game is kind of annoying the screenshot because although the nuts and bolts are simple as fuck and perfectly suited for an efficient PNG file, the backgrounds are high res clouds and stars with a shitton of colours that make the PNGs take over a MB each. Argh. Unless theres a lot of complaints I'm going to stick with this format, it's the same as I used for Brigandine. Not sure if I want to change the font or anything like I did there. Feel free to comment on that kind of shit as well as the game.
 

Cool name

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Messages
2,147
It had to be a Nesasio. I did never understand the ship. I wish you luck on your adventures.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
This is what most of the game looks like. We can order our crew about the ship to man various stations, or repair shit or fight boarders. Or, if lightbane doesn't reply to this quickly enough, we can move him into an airlock room and suck the oxygen out to watch him die a slow agonizing death. Just sayin'.


Jeez, alright. I'm here already. Don't fret and moar posting. So, is the entire game about running away from the rebels instead of you know, fighting them?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
To some extent. The fleet serves a a time limit to prevent us from milking everything in every sector. Our mission is to reach federation HQ and give them the secret info we've obtained about a powerful rebel flagship on it's way to destroy said HQ. The fleet is chasing us to stop us from warning them. Along the way we're going to blow up a lot of shit, rescue various people, and turn our ship into a god damned war machine. Also, while we don't want to fuck with the main fleet, we'll be happily murdering any advance scouts, patrolling ships or guardposts they have along the way to our destination.

Or we'll get blown to bits. But if that happens we'll try again (maybe with an easier ship, though I've got a good feeling about this run.) Come to think of it, I think I'll let people vote on which ship to use on the next run, when we get to that point. I've unlocked most of them.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
:lol:

Nice fuck up on the first fight. With that jab aside, you've now got enough firepower to take down the flagship and you're just leaving the first sector. I'm a bit surprised you didn't rush the first cloak upgrade, though, as that makes a huge difference for the early game.

I'd like to see the screenshot format tweaked a bit as the black borders are mildly annoying, but it's not critical.

And don't talk shit about the dual lasers and mini-beam. The lasers are arguably the best weapon in the game and the mini-beam, while not on the level of the dual lasers, is still damn good.

Oh, and I suggest the Engi-B for the next ship :smug:
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Cloak upgrade is probably next on the to-do list, along with a reactor upgrade. Though I like to keep a float of 50-100 scrap whenever possible. Never know when you might stumble across a nice store. There's also the issue of getting shields. If we don't get those we're going to be fodder for beam weapons pretty quickly.

Re. the screenshots, at native resolution the borders on the left and right side disappear, but the top and bottom ones stick around.

FTLb0113.jpg


Better? There's also a full screen stretch option, which I'd assume distorts things but gets rid of the upper and lower borders as well. Though I might be able to get irfanview to crop them for me.
 

Cool name

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Messages
2,147
I was going to preemptively vote for the Osprey but Ashery's suggestion is a thing of beauty. Put another vote for the Vortex.

And to my eyes the new screenshot does look better. Yes.
 

Smashing Axe

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
2,835
Divinity: Original Sin
I'm calling it now, you won't get past the 3rd sector unless you're lucky enough to get shields soon.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
The thing is, that first stealth upgrade is *huge* for defense, as it will allow for you to get two volleys off (If weapons are manned) for the price of one because you'll have ten seconds of cloak and the mini-beam and burst mk2 have base recharge rates of 12sec. It may not seem like much, but against the more damaging beam weapons, that'd be two fully volleys before they get one. Really, though, as nice as the burst mk2 is, buying it in the first sector means that you'll have shit for defense for the early/mid game transition as you burned a ton of scrap on both the lasers and the weapon capacity upgrades.

I'd say to buy the next level of cloak, a couple reactor upgrades, and then sit on your scrap until you can get shields.

The screenshots definitely look better.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
We're sitting on a shitton of fuel right now as well. I can honestly just run from anything that'd give me too much trouble and avoid fights in general. But the list of shit that would improve our ship is a mile long.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Update Time!
FTLc0001.jpg

So, here we are in nebula land. Nebula dominated sectors like this one don't have the usual effect of drastically slowing the fleet pursuit speed. The sensor fuckover part still applies though, and the fleet is still slowed somewhat compared to normal nodes.
FTLc0002.jpg

We get a shop right off the bat. And it has shields! Score! Except we have not nearly enough scrap! Fuck!
FTLc0003.jpg

Well, lets see if we can't fix that. Open fire on what is probably the only non aggressive mantis captain in the game!
FTLc0004.jpg

Fucker managed to teleport crew over. We tried venting the area they were in, but they managed to kill the door system before the air ran out. We took a point of hull damage from that (you take a point whenever a system goes red from something that doesn't otherwise do hull damage. Fires can do this too.) and now that whole section of the ship is devoid of air and we can't close the doors because our door subsystem is wrecked!
FTLc0005.jpg

Thankfully, when we blow up their ship it drops a drone, making it pretty worthwhile.
FTLc0006.jpg

Having their ship destroyed doesn't make the boarders surrender though, instead they fight to the death. We kill them without suffering any casualties though.
FTLc0007.jpg

Azira and Procrastinator repair the door systems without breathing. Because they are awesome. :bro:
FTLc0008.jpg

And they even make it back to the medbay before suffocating to death. Lucky them. ;)
FTLc0009.jpg

I took us down here to reveal as many nodes as possible. You never know where there might be an awesome store hiding.
FTLc0010.jpg

More pirates to fight. : x
FTLc0011.jpg

Another unlucky bastard with a useless defense drone. Easy pickings.
FTLc0012.jpg

They make a surrender offer, but it's not very enticing. People don't value their lives much in this. I mean, you'd think there'd be at least one guy that just lets you have the whole ship.
FTLc0013.jpg

So we blow it up instead, and get their cargo. The smuggler ships have cargo like this fairly often, though it usually gets blown up unless you capture the ship via boarding. More loot for us! :dance:
FTLc0014.jpg

Between the drones and the scrap we looted, we can pick up those shields now.
FTLc0015.jpg

Normally I wouldn't spend this much time and fuel to backtrack to a shop, but we might not see shields for sale again for a long time, so it's a good idea to grab them now.
FTLc0016.jpg

Shields require 2 energy (and thus 2 upgrades, although the system gives us 2 to start with when installed) for each layer of shielding. To power these up we need to give up our medbay and one of our weapons. Well, we could opt for the O2 or the engines or the cloaking as well. But this is how I'd prefer to do it.
FTLc0017.jpg

Shields online! :yeah:
FTLc0018.jpg

I also opt to do some repairs. I've been holding off because you can get repairs as a reward sometimes, but we're getting pretty sketchy, and probably won't be buying shit for a while.
FTLc0019.jpg

This is an event that happens fairly often in nebulas. It's rather annoying. Basically we've been boarded but the enemy doesn't have a ship.
FTLc0020.jpg

We deal with the obnoxious bastards.
FTLc0021.jpg

Or try to, but they're in an annoying area. I should probably have vented this whole section and holed up in the medbay.
FTLc0022.jpg

We end up having to do just that anyways, but we timed it badly and let them kill the piloting system, taking needless hull damage.
FTLc0023.jpg

Now we're holed up in the medbay while they trash our weapons. You can see that enemies are attacking a system by the red fist over the energy display. However, since our weapons have 4 bars to burn though, it'd take them forever to cause hull damage this way.
FTLc0024.jpg

We head over and finish the bastards off.
FTLc0025.jpg

And then work on repairs.
FTLc0026.jpg

We get everyone and everything patched up. But we receive no reward at all for defeating these bastards, aside from the fighting and repair xp. The fleet is getting close again, we'll have to wrap up this sector soon.
FTLc0027.jpg

Another ship we could avoid. Note that even without cloaking you'd get an option to try and avoid them, but it's success rate would obviously be much lower.
FTLc0028.jpg

Of course, we want the scrap. How do we not have a pirate emoticon?
FTLc0029.jpg

We acquire moar precious jewgolds. :take my jewgold:
FTLc0030.jpg

We work on the reactor. It's a cheap upgrade, and goes a long way for a ship with this many high end systems.
FTLc0031.jpg

Next jump we find more hapless enemies.
FTLc0032.jpg

The fuckers manage to land a missile on us though. Unlike lasers or beams, missiles pass through shields like they're not even there and do full damage wherever they hit. Fortunately the missile launcher they're using is weak.
FTLc0033.jpg

Yet another smuggler ship giving us delicious loot. Well, not the best loot ever, but it sure beats missiles or drones.
FTLc0034.jpg

We add another point to the reactor.
FTLc0035.jpg

Our new weapon is like our dual lasers, except it requires 2 power instead of 1, and it charges a bit more slowly I think. In other words, it's not that good. But we'll probably use it over the beam anyways, because it's always nice to have moar lasers, in case the enemy has more shields or rolls lucky dodges. If you can't take down the shields, beams are useless. Also, this can potentially do 2 points of damage to a single system, while the beam has to spread the damage out. Generally it's nice having the option to focus damage on a bothersome system.
FTLc0036.jpg

The next node offers us yet ANOTHER weapon, this time without even a fight. Score! This sector has totally made up for the slim pickings in the first sector. We're well ahead of the curve at this point.
FTLc0037.jpg

We probably won't be using these missiles. 3 power required and 22 second charge time. But they do a massive 4 damage per shot and have a high breach chance AND a chance to cause fires, both of which makes repairs impossible until dealt with. Very dangerous weapon.
FTLc0039.jpg

Looks like we can swing maybe 2 more jumps before hitting the exit.
FTLc0040.jpg

And it's an automated rebel ship with cloaking.
FTLc0041.jpg

We engage in a cloak off but their cloak is level 2, giving them the advantage.
FTLc0042.jpg

Their weapons are an ion cannon and a small beam weapon. I decide to lower our shields as the ion lands. If ion weapons hit while shields are up, they act as though they've hit the shield system directly. This way it might land somewhere less troublesome and then we can raise the shields to stop the beam weapon.
FTLc0043.jpg

Aaaaand....
FTLc0044.jpg

It hit our weapons. Thats ok, we got 2 more weapons online still. Ion weapons don't actually cause real damage, but temporary disabling damage. Not the energy bar for our weapons. It's missing 1 bar (the bar that got disabled) and has a count down underneath it like our cloak does after it gets used. That bar will stay disabled unit the counter hits zero. If another ion weapon hits the same system, it causes more damage and extends the counter. With enough ion weaponry, a system can be indefinitely disabled, and repairs aren't possible.
FTLc0045.jpg

Of course, my plan fails because these bastards got their beam weapon charged right after landing the ion shot. They cause ACTUAL damage to our weapons system. Which is actually no big deal, since it just overlaps. We weren't able to use that weapon anyways.
FTLc0046.jpg

Fortunately, the enemy is like we were a bit ago, lacking shields entirely. We fuck up their cloaking first.
FTLc0047.jpg

And then try for their weapons. We also tried the shield trick on the ion cannon again, but it was just aimed at the shields this time anwyays, so it didn't make a difference.
FTLc0048.jpg

Bastards evaded enough of our shots to keep the beam online and our shields are down.
FTLc0049.jpg

:x
FTLc0050.jpg

But now our shields are back and they have no weapons.
FTLc0051.jpg

Just, like, 300 engines apparently. :rage:
FTLc0052.jpg

They actually just dodged 4 shots in a row before that landed. Fucking assholes.
FTLc0053.jpg

Victory! :dance:
FTLc0054.jpg

And a nice chunk of scrap.
FTLc0055.jpg

And a cache with a drone. Fucking jackpot. :incline:
FTLc0056.jpg

And then the last node before the exit is a store. Perfect.
FTLc0057.jpg

Guess we didn't need to worry about those shields after all. The crew is pretty tempting, we only got 3 guys and they're all humans. But it's still early, and we probably won't bother with a boarding party this run.
FTLc0058.jpg

We do sell these missiles and the drone though.
FTLc0059.jpg

Some substansial repairs before moving along.
FTLc0060.jpg

And enough scrap left over to upgrade again.
FTLc0061.jpg

We nab weapons yet again and the reactor to power them without changing anything else. In retrospect, the crew would have been a pretty decent idea, since we ended up with 25 to spare anyways and those guys grant us a unit of energy.
FTLc0062.jpg

We fire the burst laser into our loadout and but the beam in cargo. We won't sell it yet though, it might come in handy later.
FTLc0063.jpg

It only sells for 10 scrap anyways.
FTLc0064.jpg

Slavers! Surprised it took us this long to find some. These guys offer to sell us a slave, but we lack the scrap. Also, their ship sucks balls so why would we bother paying them anything?
FTLc0065.jpg

We DEMAND a fucking slave you cunts!
FTLc0066.jpg

Oh shit, their ship isn't that weak after all, it has an anti ship drone system. That thing is going to fly around our ship spamming lasers at about the same speed we can reraise them, constantly.
FTLc0067.jpg

Their only normal weapon is a missile launcher, which would go through shields anyways. But if that drone hits our shields, we'll start taking a pounding real fast. Also, we'd have been in deep shit if we hadn't gotten shields by now, and would have probably resorted to cloaking and running away.
FTLc0068.jpg

After dishing out a ton of damage they offer us a slave as tribute. They usually do this. If you blow up the ship you can still get a slave sometimes (and it's usually a rockman I think) but we want the gauranteed crew right now more than the extra scrap. You saw how expensive crew was at the shop.
FTLc0069.jpg

And our new member is an Engi. These guys can repair systems twice as fast as other races, but deal half as much damage in hand to hand combat. I really really like having at least one on board. Very useful. He'll be our new engineer, since Procrastinator is our shields officer. Oh, and I can't name new crewmembers, only the ones our ship starts with. Sorry guys.
FTLc0070.jpg

And that wraps up the sector. 3 guesses where we're headed next.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Mini-beam beats the hell out of the burst mk1. I would've sold the burst and invested in power/defense/teleporter/drones instead of burning yet more scrap on upgrading weapons.

For the mini-beam to do nothing, the enemy needs to have one shield up. When they have one shield up, you need *both* of your laser shots to land in order to do damage. That is to say, you'll have a slight chance to do damage when you otherwise wouldn't, but you're giving up the ~3 *guaranteed* damage from your mini-beam if you fully breach their shields with your lasers. Five lasers is more than enough to take down any ship with three shields and you're still looking at a pretty good chance of piercing four shields. My Stealth-A win was with 2x burst mk2s and the mini-beam and the only reason I used a burst instead of the twin was because I found both bursts and didn't need the scrap from selling one.
 

JoKa

Cipher
Joined
Nov 22, 2006
Messages
689
Location
Nordland
nice LP so far, even though i would've bought at least one of the crew at that last shop - free energy is alway handy!
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Update time! Decided to take 2 sectors this time, since the first was pretty quick.
FTLd0001.jpg

Anyways, lets go over the crew's stats. Azira's our pilot. However, due to his amazingly awful skill (or the RNG, take your pick) he only has 1 xp of 15 needed to level up. Piloting xp is gained whenever a shot misses us when we weren't cloaked. Yes, this has only happened one fucking time so far. Holy fuck. It also shows what bonus we get for having the station manned: Azira (and anyone with no skill) gives +5 evasion while piloting. Engineers grant the same bonus for manning engines, and level up the same way (and maybe also for making jumps, I forget.)
FTLd0002.jpg

Procrastinator is on shields now. He's at 6 of 55 xp. You get shield xp whenever you restore an empty shield. Having him man the shields gives us 10% faster recharge speed.
FTLd0003.jpg

Lightbane is on the weapons. Unsurprisingly, he's the closest to gaining a level, since we actually use our weapons. 53 of 65. He gains a point whenever we fire a weapon (maybe only if it hits or does damage? I forget exactly) and having him man the weapons increasing the loading speed by 10%.
FTLd0004.jpg

And we also have repair skill, which is at 9 of 18 for Azira. It'll increase repair speed when he gains a level, but is just default right now.
FTLd0005.jpg

And lastly combat, which is at 2 of 8 for Azira, and gains a point any time he lands a kill blow or damages a system on an enemy via boarding. It'll increase combat damage when levelled up.
FTLd0006.jpg

Enough of that, we've got pirates to fuck with!
FTLd0007.jpg

So glad we have those scanners. 2 of 3 of our inital jump points have hazards. Fuck those spots.
FTLd0008.jpg

And the spot we go to just has a weapon floating in space by itself along with a bit of scrap. Should have named this ship the lucky cunt.
FTLd0009.jpg

This might replace our burst laser Mk1 later on, it takes 3 power but fires 2 shots that each do 2 damage and have a chance to breach or cause fires. Very powerful for fucking enemy systems once shields are down.
FTLd0010.jpg

Ooh, and we've found a distress beacon. One of the reasons it's worthwhile to cover a lot of the map. These are often lucrative.
FTLd0011.jpg

Hmm, pirates trapped in some rocks. Having a beam weapon is SUPPOSED to give us an option here, but it isn't. Either we need to actually have it equipped to work now since last I played, or the minibeam doesn't even count. Probably the former.
FTLd0012.jpg

We try to blast the rocks for them but accidentally cause an explosion. We take some damage and get a bit of scrap. The pirates are obviously toast.
FTLd0013.jpg

Another distress beacon! I set up our mini beam in case it's the same type to test my theory.
FTLd0014.jpg

Instead it's coming from a single life form on a moon. Potential crewmember, definitely worth investigating.
FTLd0015.jpg

We find the guy, but he might be crazy. Crazy people can kill crewmembers before you kill them, so I'm not gonna risk it. We leave the unlucky bastard there.
FTLd0016.jpg

Next jump finds us a smuggler.
FTLd0017.jpg

We thrash them with our weapons. Easy fight.
FTLd0018.jpg

They make a surrender offer but it's total shit. Especially for a smuggler ship that might drop gear.
FTLd0019.jpg

Which it did. :kfc:
FTLd0020.jpg

This is actually one of the nicest missiles in the game, it fires 2 for the price of 1, and each missile does 2 damage. Firing 2 at once is nice because it lets you slip shots past shields. Alas, this is not a good ship for using missiles, since we'd have to rely on them completely. 2 burst lasers wouldn't be enough to handle enemies on their own, and we can only equip 3 weapons.
FTLd0021.jpg

Since we're using the minibeam for now to test my theory, I pump a point into cloaking to use the freed up energy.
FTLd0022.jpg

Time to visit some nebulas.
FTLd0023.jpg

Of course, we get the shitty ass boarding event again.
FTLd0024.jpg

This time I handle it perfectly though, and we're quickly finished with no damage suffered.
FTLd0025.jpg

Gah, the other nebula has an ion storm. Off into naked space then.
FTLd0026.jpg

Guy asking for an escort. Cool, especially since we're running low on fuel now.
FTLd0027.jpg

We get some uneventful nodes along the way. These might have given us stuff or options if we had different things on our ship.
FTLd0028.jpg

Then we run into a random bastard that wants to kill us with his dinky ass ship.
FTLd0029.jpg

We accept his surrender offer since we need the fuel right now and 6 is pretty decent.
FTLd0030.jpg

And we find a large asteroid field. These can be really nice if you have the right equipment. Which we don't. But we'll explore it anyways.
FTLd0031.jpg

Nothing at all. Oh well.
FTLd0032.jpg

And another automated ship. This one a bit beefier with some shields and decent hull.
FTLd0033.jpg

Scratch that, WAY beefier. Fucking bastard has a pair of Mk2 burst lasers (6 shots in total) along with an anti ship drone. And top top things off, our cloak is on cooldown because I jumped right after the previous battle instead of waiting. :rage:
FTLd0034.jpg

Actually, this is a beam drone. It effectively spams mini beam attacks, so it's harmless as long as our shields are up.
FTLd0035.jpg

Of course, if our shields aren't up, this can happen. Fucking laser spam. We shut down the drone control though, so it's sitting dead in space.
FTLd0036.jpg

I vent the appropriate rooms to stop the fires.
FTLd0037.jpg

Which works like a charm.
FTLd0038.jpg

I cloak to avoid the burst laser. 75% evasion. We didn't dodge a single fucking laser. 1 in 64 odds. So much for being lucky.
FTLd0039.jpg

We do win though.
FTLd0040.jpg

And finally get a normal reward, instead of it being either shitty or excellent.
FTLd0041.jpg

Lightbane levelled up in the fight, and now charges weapons 14% faster instead of 10%. He needs another 65 xp for the next level (which is the last, skills cap at level 3).
FTLd0042.jpg

I opt for some more reactor energy to keep our engines running better for more evasion.
FTLd0043.jpg

And of course the escort mission was a trap. At least the enemy ship doesn't look too tough.
FTLd0044.jpg

They do have a 3 shot laser though, so we're likely going to take some damage.
FTLd0045.jpg

Ooh, but we get them to surrender as their shots are in mid flight. If we accept a surrender, our shots just harmlessly whiff into space instead of landing. Theirs probably do the same so I'll accept this one (3 fuel anyways) to avoid the damage.
FTLd0046.jpg

NOPE. We get fucking hit. :x
FTLd0047.jpg

Another chance to fight. Our hull is low but I figure we may as well go for it.
FTLd0048.jpg

Shitty surrender offer is shitty.
FTLd0049.jpg

Another fairly average reward.
FTLd0050.jpg

Hmm, a trade oppurtunity. This is why it's ncie to have missiles and drone parts.
FTLd0051.jpg

We accept, and get 5 fuel in exchange for 2 drone parts.
FTLd0052.jpg

And now it is time to get the fuck out.
FTLd0053.jpg

No other option this time.
FTLd0054.jpg

I'd like to avoid fighting for now until we find a store.
FTLd0055.jpg

More empty space. Weee.
FTLd0056.jpg

Well, we are specifically avoiding ships.
FTLd0057.jpg

Nice, these usually turn out well.
FTLd0058.jpg

Free stuff and a station we can rescue for even more stuff. Sounds good.
FTLd0059.jpg

:hmm: The quest and the store are in opposite directions with a hazard between them. I could patch up at the store first, but then we'll have to do some backtracking, which I'd like to avoid. If we hit the quest and swing down then back up, we can hit the store with a ton of scrap to spend and still get to the exit on time.
FTLd0060.jpg

The station thing we're here to fight is pretty strong, as I figured. We should be ok though. I'll divert power to the engines and use the cloak well.
FTLd0061.jpg

FUCKING HELL THEY HAVE 2 ANTI SHIP DRONES. They are going to spam lasers faster than our shields can come back up.
FTLd0062.jpg

Fuck oxygen, we need evasion.
FTLd0063.jpg

Actually we're cloaked so I put the O2 back on till we open fire. However, 5 lasers just barely took out 3 shields and didn't cause any actual damage.
FTLd0064.jpg

The beam does one lousy point of damage, enoguh to shut down their missile launcher and one drone, but they still have the burst gun.
FTLd0065.jpg

And again, our shots hit sweet fuck all.
FTLd0066.jpg

The mini beam doesn't hit hard enough to stop the drone. Those drones take 2 energy to launch, so the second point of damage we just did only disabled extra leftover energy it had from when we disabled the first drone.
FTLd0067.jpg

And our shields got hit. With a drone firing lasers at us constantly.
FTLd0068.jpg

Maybe we can get lucky and dodge till we can fire again or get shields back up?
FTLd0069.jpg

INCOMING!
FTLd0070.jpg

:rage: We were like 2 seconds away from being able to jump away too.
FTLd0071.jpg

Farewell cruel world.
FTLd0072.jpg

:hero: to our brave crew.
FTLd0073.jpg

So, time to pick our next ship.
FTLd0074.jpg

This is the default starter ship. I'm not going to go into detail on any of these though, theres quite a few. Although, I DON'T have the engi B type unlocked, so I guess we won't be doing that. :p Pay attention to the crew and the systems, not just the weapons and augments. A lot of ships are missing some systems entirely.
FTLd0075.jpg

FTLd0076.jpg

FTLd0077.jpg

FTLd0078.jpg

FTLd0079.jpg

FTLd0080.jpg

FTLd0081.jpg

FTLd0082.jpg

FTLd0083.jpg


So, vote away!
 

Smashing Axe

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
2,835
Divinity: Original Sin
I'll vote for Torus, since I've yet to win on it. I really hate relying on drones for offense since you can't target systems.
 

Cool name

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Messages
2,147
Damned Registrations said:
Although, I DON'T have the engi B type unlocked, so I guess we won't be doing that. :p

The Vortex is a consistently terrible ship. You are not missing much.

I will vote for the Osprey.

The artillery beam allows the player to focus entirely on defense. The burst laser mk.II gives it enough firepower until the player has raised the artillery beam enough to depend entirely on it. It has a great starting crew. If you add a teleporter it will not be that far away from the medbay. If boarded the medbay can be used to cut the ship in half and only vent the O2 on the area being invaded. This helps with a more numerous crew. The initial weapon level is enough for a couple of bomb launchers. The starting rockman and mantis allow the ship to become a boarding vessel with ease. It also gives the feeling of commanding a great battlecruiser even when to all intents and purposes you are flying the millennium falcon. This is turn does make the final battle feel more like a decisive battle between two massive warships than the desperate David vs Goliath affair it usually feels like.

But Smashing Axe's choice is not a bad one either. The Torus is a very powerful ship. It is a bit on the ugly side and the interior is not very practical but I do enjoy the scrapyard look it has. The Engi healing system, the Ion Blast Mk.II, and the drone system are great starting equipment.

Edit: I was just checking the Basilisk, which I did never unlock myself. A big teleporter and a drone system right from the start? I am already in love with the ship. Is it like the Torus in that it can have up to three drones out at the same time instead of just two?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Nope. You can see how many slots a ship has if the system is unlocked. It's got 3 weapons and 2 drones. I haven't actually tried it yet, but I can't fathom it not kicking all kinds of ass. The starting crew is a bit small, but that teleporter will be a death sentence once you get a crew and until then boarding drones have always wrecked the shit out of me, I'd imagine they do the same to most enemies.

Osprey is probably my favourite ship. That starting crew is insane. Redtail makes for a close second. Starting weapons are insane, solid crew, no real weaknesses.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Engi-A for the express purpose of unlocking the Engi-B :smug:

For the Fed-A, other people should be aware that you can't get a cloaking system with the ship, so you can't play as defensively as with other ships.
 

Azira

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 3, 2004
Messages
8,519
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Codex 2012
Aw, I died.
I played two games myself, managed to unlock the Engi ship and the Zoltan one. That was my first run, was going well. Second run I did in the Engi, died in the very first sector. :roll:

Loving this LP. I'm bound to learn lots from following it. :salute:
 

Black

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
1,872,592
Red Tail for some easy mode.
 

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