FTL - Faster Than Light

[Twinkletoes89]

Yeah, I had just started to get regular victories on normal before the update, but since then it seems to have become even more vicious that I've had to retreat to easy

[Cyneheard]

Switched to easy difficulty a few days ago

I always assumed everybody was playing on easy!?

In FTL easy=normal in other games and normal=very hard.

easy = "hard"; I'd say it's comparable to Monarch/Emperor on Civ IV for difficulty. Normal is basically Deity.

I used to be able to win much of the time on normal (and it took a LOT of playing to get good enough to do that), but a year away from the game + the new changes = not a chance.

[Dantski]

First easy run since the patch (quickly died trying the new hard mode) and had a really tight run in with the Flagship. I struggled badly on the final phase of the fight with just the Vulcan and the 1 shot Crystal laser to slowly whittle down the super shield. Missiles and super laser blasts kept causing fires and wrecked every system except my weapons. Despite half the ship being on fire and multiple boarders it was a fairly comfortable margin at the end.

I know the Vulcan laser is really strong but for some reason I prefer the Flak II. It's just so many projectiles and being able to hit multiple systems at once is great.

Haven't really tried out the Lanias (sp?) yet, even though some have boarded my ship I wasn't overly impressed with their strength and my Mantis were able to dispatch them well before the O2 is the room became an issue.

With the addition of those ASB's in rebel space, T-Hawk should have a harder time milking endless ships for score

Quickly did a couple of sectors in another run and had a weird event where the Engi said my ship was carrying a virus, when I selected the option to have my Engi talk to them he got destroyed by the virus and the Engi decided to try and kill me to stop the virus from spreading. After the fight ended my Engi reformed and was renamed "Virus" and had all skills maxed out.

[WilliamLP]

This is a really great game with surprisingly good balance. A lot of different builds are viable. If anyone has unlimited time you can check out LethalFrag's no-pause runs on Twitch. He's trying to win with every ship in hard mode without pausing and he knows a lot of tricks.

I've gotten to where I can beat normal more often than not with most ships. General advice:

1. The best way to make scrap in the beginning is not to take damage, so you don't have to spend on hull repairs. You probably want level 2 shields before sector 3, 3 shields before sector 5. The fourth shield has very diminished returns for its cost, and I don't usually get it in favor of other upgrades.

2. It's usually better to hold a bankroll of scrap scrap when you can get away with it in case you run into a store with something awesome.

3. The really expensive weapons have problems. I think the best weapon in the game might be the Burst Laser 2, 3 shots in 12 seconds for 2 power. (I had 3 of them and a Burst Laser 1 in one run, it was the easiest one ever for me.) Compare 2 of those to the Burst Laser 3 at 5 shots in 20 seconds, and the two smaller weapons are far superior. Also big weapons are more vulnerable to being damaged and ion weapons.

4. When you're going through the game the main problem to solve is how to get through high shields effectively. There are different ways to get through, like bursting with lasers, or sustained ion fire, or bombs. Missiles can be good but you need a plan for defense drones. Lots of weapons (like all the beams) are tempting but not useful until you have shield penetration totally taken care of.

5. When you have what you need for all the normal ships, by Sector 4 or so you need to be thinking about how you will handle each phase of the boss. Lots of builds are viable to focus on but anything too one-dimensional will run into a weak point.

6. There is a lot of micro to do and little tricks that aren't obvious. E.g. you can power up a defense drone only when a missile is fired, then after it shoots the missile you can transfer power into evasion. Or you can de-power oxygen to temporarily power something else for a key moment, and try not to die because you forget to turn it back on.

The problem spots you need to address with the boss:

1st form: The hacking can be a big problem. If it hits weapons you might just need to jump away and try again. You can get lucky with a defense drone up since it can shoot down all the hacking attempts sometimes. (Defense drone is one of the best items in the game imo.) You can hack its hacking with your own, or you can try to keep it down with a bomb or missile weapon. Or just hope it hits something not that essential like doors or sensors.

2nd form: You need to have an answer to the mega drone burst. Cloaking works and if you don't have that you need really high evasion and maybe to bring other weapons down. The boarding drone can give problems.

3rd form: The mind control is a big issue now. The best counter is probably your own mind control to use to take your guy back. It also boards you like crazy at the same time. A few good fighters helps a lot.

Also 3rd form: The Zoltan shield is a pain to get through from some builds, and you also have to survive the mega-blast similar to the drones in phase 2.

All forms: The triple missile launcher second from the right is a big threat. It's actually really easy to take down the individual weapons with boarding. So it's often worth picking up a crew teleporter as a supplement even if boarding isn't your main strategy. And amazingly it's possible to take down all 3 boss battles almost entirely with boarding, but you need to leave one guy in one weapon alive or else the ship will go to AI control and self-repair. I did this today and the fights took like 15 minutes. I hacked doors and took out one crew at a time until nobody was left but 1 weapon man. Then those crew stay dead across all forms! And you get on board the main ship, take out the shields all weapons but one, and it can't repair so you can take it out with a basic laser or something.

The cool thing about the game is that a lot of things seem impossible to deal with at first but if you think it through many different builds have ways to deal with it.

[darrelljs]

In FTL easy=normal in other games and normal=very hard.

QFT. I've got to the point I can win about 2/3 or my games on Normal with the Basilisk at least, but with most ships its less than 50%.

Is the update worth dusting this game off again? I hadn't played in a while...

Darrell

[darrelljs]

If anyone has unlimited time you can check out LethalFrag's no-pause runs on Twitch.

Bah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNRTJ1UJ7kw

If you have 4.5 hours to waste you could watch the full run.

Darrell

[Dp101]

Is the update worth dusting this game off again? I hadn't played in a while...
Darrell

Yes, definitely. It is worth it simply for the fact that you can save the stations that your crew were at before you sent them to fix them so that you don't have to send them all back individually.

[uberfish]

Also picked it up for another game, I have too much pride to ever play on "easy" difficulty level

Unfortunately, I picked the new ship but never found a teleporter or any good weapons, so I got to the final boss on that first run but the cloaking on the first phase of final boss wrecked me First impression is the game became significantly harder with the new content, since it diluted the pool of good/relevant items available in shops.

[pindicator]

And all this time i just thought i sucked. Well, maybe I still do. I'll have to try on easy

[Twinkletoes89]

First impression is the game became significantly harder with the new content, since it diluted the pool of good/relevant items available in shops.

Surely there's a lot more available in shops now because there's 2 pages of stuff you can buy now? And there's some really great stuff like the 'Zoltan Shield Bypass' attachment which means you can teleport & bomb from the start of the fight (really helped with final boss). There's more choice but its easier to get to most stuff.

Has anyone else discovered the event yet where you stumble upon them making a second boss and you have to fight it before it is fully operational? Its so awesome and that is apparently the new unlock event for the Federation Cruiser.

I loved this game before, I adore it even more now.