FTL: Faster Than Light - Advanced Edition

[Renegen]

No other weapons comes close to singlehandedly turning a bad run into a winner or is as versatile as the flak though.

 

[profreshinal]

The great thing about the Flak II is that it will always take all shields down for a moment, enemy ship evasion doesn't seem to affect this. With Ion cannons you can have your progress on the shields reset. When enemy ships start having beefed up shields and evasion this always becomes problematic for me, my ion cannons miss to much and fights become really drawn out while I hope for a lucky series. It's less of a problem if you can destroy or disable the pilot system though.

 

[Gord]

Playing with the stealth cruiser for the first time. Man, the game is really trolling me. 3 sectors and not a single store and every other ship is using attack drones which are a PITA witout any shields.

 

[Hellraiser]

Gord, yeah I guess the RNG is fucking you over. Stealth cruiser is great, just pray you don't run into zoltan shields and drones in the first sector.

My first time with the stealth crusier in AE and I got 5k score after getting murdered by the flagship.

Actually no, the flagship didn't murder me. This happened after I defeated the first stage:

Biggest mistake I did was swapping out the mini beam for the halberd beam. Also not sure if chain laser is all that good at all compared to the basic two shot laser the stealth cruiser gets. Sure it gets better DPS, but I rather have a more resilient to damage weapons system.

Also I had only the starting crew and no additional crew members, boarding drones really fucked me over on the second form.

Overall my scoreboard now looks like this:

That Torus run was great:

Though I really needed a better weapon than the chain laser and didn't get mind control or a defensive drone.

 

[Gord]

Well, I'm hoping for a shop in range in sector 3 (had to stop playing due to rl), I won't survive many more encounters without repairs.
Not sure if the game is salvageable, repairs will eat most of my scrap so I won't be able to buy shields soon. Then again I got pretty lucky on crew encounters, my crew is almost full already.

 

[Hellraiser]

Bloody hell, I got lucky with this Torus run:

Showered with free weapons, got a charge ion and halberd beam for free. Ion Blast II and Charge Ion easily nullify shields, halberd beams just massacres vessels. I got the halberd in sector 2 I think, just straight up murdered 1 shield bubble ships. Also got hull missiles but never used them.

Later I got the hull repair drone and bought a boarding drone.

Ultimately the third form of the flagship killed me because with just 4 crew it was too difficult to deal with boarding parties when the flagship has permanent mind control over one of your crew members. I need to remember not to attempt to fight the flagship with less than 5 crew or a anti-personnel drone. If my crew wasn't tied up by inane boarders I could deal with all the damage I got hit with. Too many fires and widespread system damage.

Also being unable to repair at the Federation base between Flagships fights is straight up bullshit.

 

[AMG]

You need cloak for flagship. Otherwise the power surges will cause too much damage. If you had cloak instead of 4th shield bubble you probably would have won.
Easy ways to deal with phase 3:
1. Kill all his crew except 1 guy in 2 previous phases
2. Buy hacking and hack his teleporter
If you have bad crew and can do none of the above you need to upgrade and man the doors and vent the motherfuckers.

 

[Renegen]

You can mind control the mind controlled person in the 3rd boss form. It's very useful.

 

[PocketMine]

Just unlocked fed cruiser type C. Comes equiped with teleporter and clone bay.
Only weapon is mega flak cannon instead of artilery beam. Cant wait to test it against flaghip.

 

[Black]

Just unlocked fed cruiser type C.

Also knows as the muslim ship, gotta git those zoltan suicide bombers on their ship asap.

 

[L'ennui]

This game is great, I'm just now starting to play again with all the new content and it's really a gem. Can't wait for the Android port as well!

 

[Hellraiser]

Also knows as the muslim ship, gotta git those zoltan suicide bombers on their ship asap.

Clearly the Zoltan are those djinn andhaira was warning us about.

Still Zoltan Nuking their crew does sound hilarious.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts?utf8=✓&tags=ftl:_faster_than_light+

 

[DwarvenFood]

http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts?utf8=✓&tags=ftl:_faster_than_light+

Needs Lanius

 

[Gord]

Still struggling with the stealth cruiser, some bad luck with the RNG, some bad decisions on my part.
Also, absolutely no luck with the tactical approach achievement - always seem to get to a point where I have to pass through a beacon with environmental dangers.

Edit: Got it now. Didn't manage to beat the flagship, though. The run went pretty well with the exception of getting good weapons, which I really felt in the last sector.

 

[PocketMine]

Unlocked Half crystal ship

Thanks to generous RNG had tons of weapons in sector 2.

Thats the first time i got vulcan cannon.

 

[Whisky]

Just beat the game for the second time, this time as the Kestrel C. I still don't really like the ship much, but we managed to pull together and win. I actually did swap to a MedBay because I bought a teleporter and cloning just doesn't gel with me. Though it turned out I got the Regenerating Teleporter so...I guess that was a waste of scrap.

Still I won.

Oh, and I beamed back the Mantis this time before I blew up the flagship. I hope this makes up for my grave regret last time.

EDIT: Gonna try Vortex. May god help us all.

 

[Gord]

Just having another nice run with the stealth cruiser, let's hope that the RNG gods keep smiling on me .
Once I found out that

Spoiler

it's much better to disable enemy weapons asap, instead of going for shields, it got much easier.

Biggest threat is still encountering attack drones before I get shields, which depending on my luck with the particular run might take a little while.

What are you guys thoughts on the hacking drone?
Just got one for the first time and I'm not totally convinced, yet.
On itself it disables a room only very briefly, although combined with an attack on the room it can be useful as it prevents repairs for some time.
Then again, using e.g. an ion-bomb has a very similar effect and seems more flexible.

Also got a chain-laser for a while, but de-installed it again. The reduction in charge-up time is nice, but the standard dual-laser costs less power, does the same damage and has a quite low charge time right away. Also the chain-combo counter seemed to get stuck at 3 although the description said max 7, iirc.

I do like the new charge-type weapons, they offer some nice flexibility.

 

[circ]

So if I do an ini edit and disable the timer, will the galaxy be as repetitive and dull as before and show how RNG reliant the end game is?

 

[anus_pounder]

Does circ like ANYTHING? I'm not trying to be funny here, but every post of his I've seen on the gaming and library sections are about how something isn't good. I'm legitimately curious.

 

[circ]

Sure. I like(d) StarDrive, unfortunately it doesn't have all that much content for a supposedly finished game. But the mechanics were quite fun. I also enjoyed Fallen Enchantress LH for some reason, go figure. I'm sorry that 99% of entertainment is shit in my opinion but there you go.

 

[Whisky]

Fuck The Vortex. Fuck it to hell. The Engi might be the nicest race in the game, but if they gave me that piece of shit in real life, I'd embark on a one man genocide mission.

I need more ships. I really suck at unlocking new ones. I beat the Zoltan mission all the way...but in that version it was bugged. I beat the Rock mission...and died right before the final quest marker. I always, always keep missing my shots on the Stealth ship mission.

 

[Gord]

I don't really like the way they have done the final boss.
It's not (only) because he's difficult, or because the RNG can easily fuck you over (although that contributes a fair bit), but because learning how to effectively fight him is tedious.
You make an error or the RNG hates you - restart the game, play through all the sectors again, new fight against the boss, screw it up again, wash, rinse, repeat...

I know that the ironman, rogue-like-ish nature of the game doesn't leave many options there, but still...
Given it's the final fight and by far the most difficult, too, it would be nice to have some way to repair a bit during phases, or some kind of second chance at the fight if you screw up (at some cost).
Maybe some store to do some (limited) swapping of equipment if you end up with a sub-optimal loadout.
Or some single-use specials you can collect in the game that will then grant some temporary boost to your ship.

Edit: And what's worse, with AE he has gotten even more dangerous, esp in phase 3. I can make it through the first two just fine most of the time, but he always most of the time wrecks me within a few minutes.
The supershields (which sometimes recharge) mean you need a lot of firepower to reach his systems while he does massive damage to me and his mind control is trolling me.
Also the rebel fleet is taking control of sector 8 much too fast, imho - I can barely visit one or two special beacons (repair or the very, very rare store) before I have to reach the base to fight the boss.

 

[Gord]

Yeah! Beat it the first time in AE now (only on "easy", though)
Used the fed cruiser and found some nice equipment. Got a Zoltan shield, which helped tremendously, a cloak in sector 7, and had 2x burst laser 2 + 1x Flak 1 on top of the Artillery Beam (plus a fire beam I almost never used in the 4th slot). No hacking, teleporter or mind control this time.
Some luck with the RNG in the boss fight did the rest. Score is pretty measly though, only 3530. Even the runs where the boss killed me got me a better score. WTF.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Just got back to playing FTL since a while.

After a couple of shit runs to get me going, I reached the boss. This is only the second or third time I manage to reach him, and of course I didn't know you had to beat him more than once. After he fled, I went after him but I guess I fucked up cause I've encountered a different ship that wrecked me.

Seems to me like RNG has gotten more unforgiving with the expansion. At least I unlocked the Stealth ship.