FTL - Faster Than Light

[TheMeInTeam]

Freaking Lanius B .  You don't need the help on it but with boarding rewards you're probably going to get it anyway.

Erasing enemy weapons before they can fire in nearly every fight always feels good.

I forgot I ever replied to this thread! Although I'm not playing as much FTL as I was when I commented, my opinions have changed drastically, and I did make my own tier list here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comment...ection_of/

Noticed this pretty late, a few comments:

• Mantis C is way too low, if this is a "tier list by winrate under optimal play on hard".  Sulla has it too low also.  This is easily a top 10 ship and could be top 5.  I could get rating it lower on preference though.  The micro is annoying, especially the practice required before you can consistently hit enemies with stun bombs but not own crew.  Once you can do this however you have a versatile ship that can trivially lock enemies out of weapons (if crew is in there, you can bait it out) while you beat them down, stun 2-3 enemies and get free hits, and easily scale into mid sectors since additional crew + lockdown bomb (coupled with getting AI to pull piloting) mirrors the lockdown ability from Crystal B at the cost of a missile.  It even lacks the usual problem of AI scouts for boarding ships since you can just break weapons and rely on clone bay.
  
  
• Stealth A is a little too high, Stealth B is way too high.  The reality in FTL is that you can win the vast majority of runs with any ship.  Stealth B is the most RNG-dependent on hard, too many potentially bad matchups with enemy drones/minibeams early.  Even with oxygen manipulation (alters AI targeting algorithm away from weapons/cloaking on hard) and zoltan power stealing, it is more likely than any other ship to die to pure RNG.  Except below hard, where you can get cloak 3 faster and Rock A's missile count can screw you regardless of scrap w/o store luck.
  
  
• Torus suffers a bit from the usual ion hate.  IB2 fired on weapons is one of the fastest sectors 1-2 weapon interrupts in FTL (8s for two shots, before crew modifiers), power/depower combat drone so it's hitting during the open window is pretty trivial.  I'd not put it much higher though, the upper tier ships are really good.
  
  
• Lanius A is being underrated.  Yes, chain laser is mediocre and a single ion stunner isn't impressive.  But it starts with the strongest system in the game and can easily build into an ion ship, laser ship, boarding ship, etc seamlessly.  Should be ahead of Kestrel/Fed A for example.  BL2 is a superior weapon (best in the game IMO) but good systems + micro > top tier weapons in FTL, and Lanius A has the best system guaranteed before you move.  Too many flaws to reach the top but easily top 10.
  
  
• Crystal A synergy with most weapons is fine.  It's only bad with beams.  Your placement of it overall is okay in my book though.  Crew TP can make it legit good but in the early sectors you have no guarantee of that, plus slow weapons w/o compensatory systems and that hurts, because early sectors are where most losses to RNG can manifest.
  
  
• Stormwalker is like Mantis C in that it's a micro test ship.  It's not as good, but if you're mindful of things like moving crew to temporarily make enemy pilot move (drastically increasing hit chance for healing bomb) or have the timing required to hit enemy crew but not your own with missiles this becomes an average ship.  Yet another one that could very understandably have wide gap between "tier" and "preference" when it comes to ships.  Precision micro can get tiresome, plus this one does actually have some bad early matchups, scouts really lay into the missile supply for example but can still be worth fighting for 2x rewards and such.