FTL - Faster Than Light

[Molach]

Okay, time to end this.
My ship at sector start:



I took a slightly long route getting to the flagship, picked up some fights to gain more scrap. I got:
+1 weapon for 100 scrap, so I could use all weapons (fire bomb was key here)
+2 reactor - well I just needed power. Keeping cloak up at all times, 0-2-4 in droids and a lot in weapons meant that otherwise I would be forced to take away from shield or engines (dodge).

Flagship - round 1. (Damage is from fighting in the sector, this pic is just as fight starts)



Sad to say, this fight is pretty standard now. First thing to do is beam boarders aboard his missile launcher. He gets a salvo off due to starting out cloaked, but I of course was ready to cloak as he fired his 3 missiles. After that missed salvo there was very little he could do to hurt me. Boarders went home, healed, then got his beam weapon ('just in case' he gets lucky with ion+laser taking out my shield). I then took out ion blasters with laser fire.



Now for the tricky part. My ship is completely safe, so next mission is to kill all crew except the one manning the laser. (Remebering to keep O2 online, otherwise he will die leading to an automated ship which is a bit worse to fight) I firebombed his medbay and fired lasers/ion into it, then sent boarders. Probably a mistake, because he came with 4 defenders. I then targeted a second fire bomb into the fight. Yup, had an idea my rockmen were immune. They weren't, but perhaps resistant. Both survived with less than 10 HPs, and I could teleport them right out. 2 rebels were killed, 2 others severely wounded, and medbay would be on fire & damaged rest of fight.



While healing my rockmen I sent my bug and Lauren the engineer over, they killed last three rebels easy.



Result - one crew left, who cannot defend against boarders, make any repairs or put out any fires in the main area of his ship. (Wonderful ship desogn, can only move crew around when docked with a base - hopefully the gunners have a little toilet in there with them...)

Round 2.
Again teleport into missile bay.



This time no missiles because no cloak and no defender to slow my crew down. Firebomb into shields first, laser fire at drone control, second fire bomb into drones.



Boarding drone hit my O2, always a hassle. But remembered (barely) to get my crew out of there before suffocating, so no harm done. First power surge - no sweat with a cloak.

Second surge - no cloak ready:


Just let one laser hit through, but it hit my cockpit. Temporarily 0 % evade, so gonna upgrade cockpit to level 2, so it can withstand a 1-damage hit at least.

Got a defense drone I from looting the remains, not gonna use it though...offense IS the best defense, when they ain't got missiles.

Round 3.


I power up both drones to take down shield as quick as possible. After I fire bomb the shields, and teleport into missiles. He manages to fire missiles, I cloak. Then the power surge (not timed with his ship-laser of course---stupid AI) Well I missed the screenshot but there were a lot of MISS. Only 2 hit, easily absorbed by shields.
Second power surge IS timed with ship-laser, and I do cloak it...



A few more firebombs, some laser fire...and it's going down, baby. It's going down.




Final score:


No new session best, and 'new high score' means only it's in the top 5.



Hey, look at that. What's that other realms beyond doing there? I took MY save from sector 5, the one with triple lasers forward (quickly, without pics) just to see. That ship won pretty handily as well, just brute-force lasers to take out shields and damage whichever system it needed to. More finesse using the droids, but I still think that just massing lasers/ion/beams is the quicker way to go.

This game does need a 'hard' setting, to be honest. I know choosing a different craft can be considered hard, but still would like the setting so the easy ships can have some challenges too. I don't think any of the saves are auto-lose. If I get time I'll play through the worst save (whichever that is) and see if I can't win that as well.