FTL - Faster Than Light

[TheMeInTeam]

Finally got some footage using ions more than just early game Engi A.  Going through each ship for a win on hard in this series, so far I have 11 wins, 2 losses.  Two games went ion-heavy, a third was just IB 2 start to finish on Engi A.  So not really 25%, but still making a decent showing so far.  I'm definitely not passing this kind of stuff up though: https://i.imgur.com/wiK9v9y.jpg

Neither loss came from ion struggles.  One was the Fed A one I mentioned earlier, and more recently I got Engi B'd within a few jumps in sector 1 (before even 50 scrap for 2nd shield layer got weapons hit --> shields hit --> system fail cascade).

With that dumpster fire out of the way, in 2nd attempt I managed to not die for a few jumps, bail some water out of the ship (sold drones for shields 4), and get Engi B out of sector 1.  From there, I bought IB 2 in sector 2, then hacking.  This run sucked.  I killed 45 ships on 98 jumps and got 1568 scrap for that.  Unsurprisingly, terrible income = late upgrades to shields and evasion, but I mostly avoided bad damage.  Mostly, because in one fight vs zoltans I made the mistake of shooting their shields with heavy laser, prompting 2 zoltans to fix it (blocking ionization completely!).  AI will never do this by default, so I basically FORCED it to wall me .  What a choke...at least it didn't cost me the game.

The other ion-heavy run was Lanius A.  Bought IB1 early, got a pike drop, easily saved up enough for cloaking by mid sectors, and ran charge laser + ion stunner + IB1 + pike until sector 7, where I traded out charge laser for ion charger just before sector 8.  Recalling the discussion here about preventing damage with ion play, I went back and watched my footage on this run.  From the start of sector 6 until meeting the rebel flagship, this ship took 0 damage.

Here are the two final builds:

- https://i.imgur.com/XNfaAxt.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/P2pIaYt.jpg

Both of these merit some micro discussion:

Lanius A:

• Most fights go 3 ion hits, then fire chain laser as 4th ion is firing, MC piloting, pike beam piloting + weapons + anything else you can.  Pike + possible chain laser hit + possible ion hit cripple weapons. Ions tend to stop missing due to the damage.
  
• Since we have MC for the evasion debuff both hacking and cloaking can be used defensively.
  
• Enemy cloaking was hacked in two cases.  I'm not sure I saw a dd2 in this run, but those can also be hacked.  Vs most stuff cloak/hacking weapons makes you immune to damage if necessary though so we only need this rarely (hacking is not consistently needed).
  
• Took an unnecessary hit from missiles before jumping out of a weapons hack in 1st phase of flagship.  When I returned it hacked clone bay and the ensuing fights were a joke.  1767 scrap on 102 beacons.
  
• Not only did I not take damage until the flagship over the last 3 sectors, this run literally never dropped out of green health...that's about as solid as you can ask for on hard.
  

But Lanius A is a high tier ship that starts with the best system in the game (more than offsetting its otherwise mediocre/average starting weaponry), so let's look at the other end of the spectrum for micro:

Engi B:

• Most fights go "aim IB2 and heavy ion at weapons", then heavy laser weapons once shields are down. 
  
• Unfortunately with bad shields/evasion due to poor scrap, I had to use tier 2 hack on weapons frequently.
  
• Once weapons are hit, allow 1-2 more ion shots on them and switch ion shots to piloting.
  
• While more shield layers take longer to go down, the requisite ion buildup also lasts a long time once they are.  Heavy laser gets multiple shots...typically thrown on weapons, shields, or piloting.  Again, do not shoot shields vs zoltans ffs .
  
• By hitting piloting, we accept that cascade on shields resets, but also ensure it's easily stripped.  Weapons are almost never a threat after that first hit.  With cloaking, remove that "almost".
  
• I did encounter dd2 + 3 shield layers + dangerous weapons in this run.  I hacked drone control in that fight, and didn't let it or weapons come back.
  
• Late in the game I told the stream I'd win for sure if I got cloaking.  Then I got cloaking ^_^.  One of the handful of reddit posters who wins on hard routinely said I was weak to ships that run away, but while a few tried none ever escaped.
  
• After farming this poor bucket up to shields 8 in sector 8 I simply cloak/hacked missiles in every phase, aimed ions at piloting, and shot out RFS cloaking (phase 1), drones (phase 2), and MC/lasers (phase 3), taking 0 damage until phase 3.
  
• Does anybody know why sometimes RFS crew doesn't board in phase 3?  I was prepared to jump away, but they just stayed put.  This happened in my Zoltan A run too.  The only common factors between the two is that I got sub-1600 scrap and don't think I killed any RFS crew in phases 1 or 2.  Neither of these seem to predict "no boarding" in phase 3 consistently.
  

To me the main takeaway from this is that good systems are a dominant consideration in FTL, and micromanagement/decision making are more predictive of success than having top tier weaponry.  If we're measuring how effective something is by how consistently it avoids damage in random encounters and wins the game, ions are fine to keep on hand throughout the game.  These are among the more dominant wins in my series so far, but that's more an advertisement for how good cloaking + hacking are than it is support for ions.

Which means if you can safely use ions to save for these systems, prioritize doing so!