(May 24th, 2015, 22:23)Sullla Wrote: (Seriously, why does the online FTL community underrate that ship so much? Zoltan A is crazy good!)
Because they don't understand how good beams are and the Halberd in particular. They get all caught up in their shiny ion stacks or fire bombs or shooting out the oxygen or some such. They like gloating over crippled enemies and feeling superior, drawing out the fight to strut more. They don't realize or process or care that beams JUST KILL AND WIN in the space that all these setups take to get going with their schtick.
More generally, they rate most game elements on their best-case scenarios. "X is awesome if Y and Z and Q conditions!" But if what you care about is win rate, the worst-case scenario is the relevant gauge, if X is awesome in every fight and every run without needing favorable conditions. Any ship can win the top 80% of its problem space. It's those 20% worst dealt hands that separate the kings like Zoltan A from the mediocre. But most of the community cares more about overkill upsides in the 80% than in cobbling together those thin margins in that last 20%.
It's ships like Slug C that have versatile answers for that last 20% and should be ranked higher. I haven't played it much but perhaps it should indeed be top tier over Fed A. (Seems like almost literally nobody has played it much. It gets overlooked because Slug A and B are both weakish with a narrow gimmick, overshadowing Slug C as a seriously strong mainstream gunship.)
Fed A's big sin is the artillery beam occupying a system slot for endgame. It's possibly the only case where a ship is actively worse for one of its starting pieces. I don't think that price is worth the occasional early usefulness of the beam. No I wouldn't put it near the top of tier 2, the middle of it at best. I give very little weight to a gunship's starting crew - they are not the reason you lose fights. The Burst 2 is nice, but mattered considerably more pre-expansion before we had easily findable and almost-as-good Flak.
Fed A also has what I think is the worst literal physical layout, with the weapon and drone rooms way on the end of a big ship and very highly prone to missile hits against a too-far-away defense drone.
On Mantis C, I'll adapt one of your arguments. You say systems are better starting boons than weapons because weapons can come in more ways. Well, a 4-man teleporter is an even better starting boon since there's no way at all to acquire one other than starting with it.