FTL - Faster Than Light

[Sullla]

You're correct, Wyatan. The ion weapons are still something that I'm trying to get a good feel for. There's a fine line between an ion weapon that knocks off one shield bubble and does nothing else, and the cascading ion sequence that eliminates all shields and keeps them permanently depowered. I need to play around more with the ion weapons to get a better handle on how they function with more than one of them in operation at a time. They feel like the weapons with the highest skillcap to use effectively, since they never directly deal damage.

I also don't think that everyone is giving the expansion enough credit. It's certainly a fair criticism that the extra stuff adds more micromanagement to the game: managing a Backup Battery, Hacking, Mind Control, etc. does add to the overall workload, no question. At the same time, I don't agree that these are pointless extra content for the sake of having more content. One of the criticisms of FTL on release was that there wasn't enough to do, and that the game could have been filled out with more options. This was a small enough game that adding a few more weapons, augments, and systems was a net benefit. You can easily hit the point of needless complexity, but for a game that had exactly three systems (Drone Control, Cloaking, Teleporter) in its original state, and no need to pick and choose between them on most ships, I don't think FTL had reached that point yet.

Similarly, let's not get carried away in praising the original release version. I agree that the simple design is brilliant, but the balancing was somewhat lacking. The Teleporter was clearly overpowered in terms of scrap rewards, the rebel fleet posed little threat, the flagship could be cheesed and turned into a joke battle, some of the item costs in stores were badly priced, etc. The designers did a complete rebalance when they released the expansion, and it's a lot better overall. It's amazing how much more threatening the flagship is now with the one simple layout change (on Hard) to remove the weapon pods, and the addition of Hacking/Mind Control. Hard difficulty adds a much needed option for expert players who could win nearly all the time on Normal. And the overall interface has been cleaned up, you can save crew positions now, etc. The product is a lot more polished and balanced now. I agree, all credit to the original design idea, but let's not go overboard either.

Gustaran: you have 100 unspent scrap! Upgrade your Cloaking and Drone Control as a damage buffer, so that take one missile to either system won't knock it offline. It's also pointless to upgrade Oxygen beyond level 2, and if you have this much spare scrap, upgrading the Medbay would probably help a lot in repelling the boarders in the final flagship phase.

[Gustaran]

Gustaran: you have 100 unspent scrap! Upgrade your Cloaking and Drone Control as a damage buffer, so that take one missile to either system won't knock it offline. It's also pointless to upgrade Oxygen beyond level 2, and if you have this much spare scrap, upgrading the Medbay would probably help a lot in repelling the boarders in the final flagship phase.

Good call, only now I realized that even unpowered upgrades serve as a damage buffer. The reddit guide states that one bar in cloaking is sufficient, so it never occured to me to upgrade it any further (which I should have done of course - especially preserving cloaking longer would have made a big difference).

[T-hawk]

I think this is the closest bossfight victory I've ever seen: I killed the boss and died 2 seconds later to a missile:

It did register as a win!

Yup, that is a quite nicely implemented mechanic. As long as the flagship dies first, even if by a microsecond, you get credit for the victory.

Best I've seen, from Reddit: http://i.imgur.com/HAEdGQj.png?1

You're correct, Wyatan. The ion weapons are still something that I'm trying to get a good feel for. There's a fine line between an ion weapon that knocks off one shield bubble and does nothing else, and the cascading ion sequence that eliminates all shields and keeps them permanently depowered.

This doesn't actually happen all that often in my experience. Ion stunlock takes at least three power worth of ion weapons and usually four to make up for enemy evade, which leaves precious little room for damaging weapons. And it takes too long to get started, where you'll eat several weapon salvos before you drill through enough shields to land damage on the weapon room. There's an ion chain gun that ramps up its ion strength and can eventually stunlock all by itself on 2 power, but it takes forever to get there. If you can turtle long enough for that to work, you're turtling long enough to kill by plenty of other methods.

Simple bursty damage with lasers and beams works out better to knock out enemy weapons quickly and defang the threat. Ion stunlock is neat to see when it comes together, but it's pretty rare to actually have a successful ship doing it. The Engi A ship is built around it with the starting ion gun and combat drone... and I've died several times with it as the ion misses that one critical combo-breaker shot or the drone relentlessly attacks everything except the missile system that's killing me.

I also don't think that everyone is giving the expansion enough credit. It's certainly a fair criticism that the extra stuff adds more micromanagement to the game: managing a Backup Battery, Hacking, Mind Control, etc. does add to the overall workload, no question.

I hate the battery, which is pure micromanagement labor as compared to two plain additional reactor bars. Mind Control usually poses near zero strategic threat but you have to micromanage two health totals to parry it.

Hacking isn't a micromanagement problem, it's a power level problem, where one small gadget overcomes 8 power worth of shields or engines and circumvents the entire razor sharp careful balance of weapons vs shields. As for the flagship, it's not a well-designed threat, it's a Big Huge Dice Roll that could do anything from zilch to murder an otherwise perfectly played run.

Lanius crew are also a micromanagement problem. The oxygen sucking sounds like an interesting changeup but is really just laborious to deal with. I hate accidentally leaving someone with a Lanius BEEP BEEP BEEP OH SHIT dammit gotta click over to med bay AGAIN.

At least the Cloning Bay works to reduce micromanagement, where you can neglect crew to simply die rather than trying to run off to med bay at precisely 1 health. I've come to like that one. It does introduce some good variety between ships. Although the "clone therapy" trick to heal by intentionally dying is still silly.

The expansion weapons are mostly pretty cool and well done, and yes the game did need more variety in that area, on the enemy side as well as yours. But I think FTL would have been better served with more focus on that core mechanic of weaponry rather than branching out to too many other areas.

It's amazing how much more threatening the flagship is now with the one simple layout change (on Hard) to remove the weapon pods

Yeah. Wow. Took me several fights (and losses!) to grasp that.

It's the common gaming trope of "the only point of damage that matters is the last one". The flagship mostly just wouldn't get there. The drone and laser special attacks might hit once each for 5-10 hull damage, not enough to kill you. That missile launcher though, that will get through for that last 10 damage for the kill.

[Wyatan]

The thing is, when you're using lasers to drop shields, those shots are utterly wasted: you drop the shield bubbles to let your other shots through, and the bubbles get back up right afterwards (that's with the usual scenario where you're targetting weapons first).
With Ion, you're not dealing any damage either, but each shot makes the following shot more effective.
That makes it far more efficient than lasers.

Now, obviously, you need to stack enough Ion firepower for the stacking to take place. Ion Blast II (3 power, 1 slot) or 2x Ion Blast I (2 power, 2 slots) are usually the way to go.
High evade is an issue, but it's also an issue for the standard laser shield dropping approach.
Defense Mark II / Cloaking on the other hand are weaknesses specific to the Ion approach.

Having 4x Laser Burst II will obviously make Ion completely useless. What I've found about the Ion gun approach, is that it allows you to cruise through the game for a long time with minimal investment into the weapons system. That means you can spend more early on your defensive systems, which means you're guaranteed a farming opportunity, and you'll find more ships that you can just asphyxiate (so more scrap / rewards) because they can't hurt you.
There's a nice snowballing effect there.

So you're right that that Ion doesn't make for fast kills... but you don't care since you've been buffing your defenses almost exclusively.

[Dantski]

The thing is, when you're using lasers to drop shields, those shots are utterly wasted: you drop the shield bubbles to let your other shots through, and the bubbles get back up right afterwards (that's with the usual scenario where you're targetting weapons first).
With Ion, you're not dealing any damage either, but each shot makes the following shot more effective.
That makes it far more efficient than lasers.

Now, obviously, you need to stack enough Ion firepower for the stacking to take place. Ion Blast II (3 power, 1 slot) or 2x Ion Blast I (2 power, 2 slots) are usually the way to go.
High evade is an issue, but it's also an issue for the standard laser shield dropping approach.
Defense Mark II / Cloaking on the other hand are weaknesses specific to the Ion approach.

Having 4x Laser Burst II will obviously make Ion completely useless. What I've found about the Ion gun approach, is that it allows you to cruise through the game for a long time with minimal investment into the weapons system. That means you can spend more early on your defensive systems, which means you're guaranteed a farming opportunity, and you'll find more ships that you can just asphyxiate (so more scrap / rewards) because they can't hurt you.
There's a nice snowballing effect there.

So you're right that that Ion doesn't make for fast kills... but you don't care since you've been buffing your defenses almost exclusively.

But there's big problems with not being able to kill ships quickly. Firstly you'll have difficulty stopping ships from escaping which consequently means you'll make fewer jumps and collect less scrap. Secondly its extremely unlike that your stronger defensive setup is immune to damage, if you don't have a defence drone missiles will be doing more damage over time than with a more offensive build. While you might be able to afford a 3rd or 4th shield bubble earlier or get your evade increased earlier, there's still enough enemy ship layouts that will hurt you just as much if not more because you aren't damaging or disabling their weapons quickly.

The only Ion weapons I use regularly are the Ion Blast II because of the short recharge time which will often take down all shields given enough time and can usually take down a couple of shield layers before my other weapons are charged and the Ion Bomb which deals 4 Ion damage and can knock out a system for a good long while. I don't like the long charge time on the bomb though.

I'll have to give the Ion Intruder drone a try sometime, has anyone spent much time with it? I'm a bit put off by the fact that you can't control where it goes so it'll probably end up going for the enemy doors first.

[Gustaran]

Defense Mark II / Cloaking on the other hand are weaknesses specific to the Ion approach.

One major problem with the Ion setup can be phase 1 of the bossfight. I made it to the boss yesterday with Stealth A and an "Ion Blast II/Halberd Beam/Heavy Laser" setup. Problem: If you don't have hacking to disable the cloak, the bossfight will end right there, because the moment you are getting close to ionizing the shields, the boss will cloak and the ion damage will wear off.

[T-hawk]

One major problem with the Ion setup can be phase 1 of the bossfight.

That sums it up very succinctly. Any gimmick setup will find some situation where it won't work. That goes for ion stunlock, missiles, combat and beam drones, anti-crew fire or bio beams or bombs, even teleporting. There exist countermeasures for all of these and eventually an AI ship will roll one. And it can take only one bad enough situation to end any run, of course.

The only setup that reliably always works with no countermeasure is enough burst lasers to pierce through the enemy shielding. So that's why I build almost every ship to that principle, as long as the item gods are at all cooperative.

[darrelljs]

even teleporting

This game needs a mode like Star Con II's super melee...it would be fun to take a Mantis B typical loadout up against one of your typical laser loadouts (i.e. not one with four burst 2s) .

Darrell

[Gustaran]

The only setup that reliably always works with no countermeasure is enough burst lasers to pierce through the enemy shielding. So that's why I build almost every ship to that principle, as long as the item gods are at all cooperative.

Indeed, an array of burst lasers is the best option, especially considering the short charge time which usually allows you a first strike onto enemy weapons, thereby minimizing damage taken. But as you said there remain two major problems:

a) More often than not, you can't find enough burst lasers or you simply can't afford them at the time they pop up in stores. If I am not mistaken especially on hard difficulty sometimes you have to work with the weapons you find.

b) A pure laser setup is a lot weaker if you use a ship with only three weapon slots. Especially the Heavy Lasers are suddenly much worse if you need to get through 4 layers of shield and take possible misses into account.


I believe there are other approaches that are interesting, especially for the aforementioned 3-weapon slot ships:

1) Use fully upgraded hacking to disable shields. If timed correctly you can completely drain a four layer shield. This requires the depower trick/cheat against defensive drones though.

2) Rock teleport/Firebomb. If you have a Clone Bay this is extremely hard to stop as well, since the enemy crew leaves a room where all tiles are on fire and your rock boarders are invincible to the fire.

3) I am a big Vulcan fan. If you use it in your first weapon slot and a have a reliable defensive setup this will win very often. One point in hacking to disrupt a possible cloak and not much can stop you.

To me creating a setup with the weapons that become available during a run is a big fun part of the game. Sure, everyone knwos that a Burst Laser MK2 is awesome, but I think playing a run in which you have to deal with bad weapon drops is where actual skill shows.

[antisocialmunky]

On advanced, EVERY time I go vulcan, I lose the game because it takes too long too punch through shields of high dodge ships late game.

I much prefer something like double flak or burst laser because you don't fight shield recharge.