FTL - Faster Than Light

[greenline]

This thread has been awful quiet for a while now. As a discussion point, I wrote up my own version of an FTL Tier List for the different ships in the game. I'm curious to hear other opinions on where all of you would put your personal rankings. Obviously we won't share identical rankings, but I'm hoping that there's a general consensus on what's high tier, low tier, that sort of thing. Or maybe not - that would also make for a fun discussion too. Enjoy.

Overall, I think its pretty good.

A few nitpicks-

For all of the slug ships, I would put their upgraded doors as a significant advantage.

You list the Crystal B as having an early advantage in boarding compared to the Mantis B, but I disagree; Mantis B having a built in option to kill auto scouts in the first sectors (boarding drone) makes it equal, if not stronger, than the Crystal B very early on.

Given how strong Crystal A is, I'd put it one tier up. Four crew and the crystal weapons is a killer combination.

I'd put Zoltan B a tier down, because the 100 scrap payment on the first shield level can be quite crippling for many runs, since that's 100 scrap not being spent on engines, weapons, or further shield upgrades, plus the weapon setup is unreliable later on. I think Stealth A would be better placed there, since having long range scanners and upgraded engines more then compensates for the similar scrap deficit spent on shields in my opinion.

I don't get your hate for Rock B; you can run a gunship setup on it just fine without having to use a teleporter, which means that you can sell the fire bomb for a cool extra scrap bonus.

Similarly, for Kestrel C, I think the weapons are a solid enough bonus to keep it in the average tier, although I can understand that it was already pretty crowded.

The one place where I really disagree with you is on Stealth B; personally, I think it's the worst in the game by far. Beyond the luck factors you mentioned, what really kills the ship for me are the atrociously high scrap requirements: 125 for shields, 50 to upgrade to level 2 shields, 50 to upgrade cloaking to level 3, ~120 to upgrade weapons for any two power weapon, or 80 for hacking to drop the shields for the glaive beam, and that's not even counting reactor and engine upgrades. That ship took me the longest to beat hard mode on by far in terms of restarts, and I'm not keen on trying it out again.

edit: also, there isn't a link to the tier list on your main FTL page

[El Grillo]

Hey there Sullla, this is mzhao1992 from your stream. You may not remember me, but I appreciate your informational streams and have had a lot of fun watching some of your more challenging attempts. I agree with you on the majority of your points, but one thing you may have overlooked on the Engi A is the Ion Mk 2's ability to split its fire towards more than one enemy system, and more tricky setups with 2 ions of varying cooldown can disable two systems reliably while occasionally hitting a third. This applies mostly to when enemy ships have 1-2 shield bubbles in sectors 1-3, but that's at the critical juncture where you're trying to minimize damage taken to conserve scrap for better weapons and system upgrades.

With 20% CDR from crew, the Ion Mk 2 fires once every 3.2s, dealing 5s of ion damage. The commonly drawn conclusion is that it can eventually knock down all of a ship's shields, but we can also conclude that this is overkill if we keep the Ion Mk 2 aimed at the shields. Instead, consider alternating between shields and weapons in a 2:1 ratio as their last shield bubble goes down. This is especially applicable in sector 1 against 1-shield bubble enemies, where you avoid taking damage from most weapons setups by ionizing the second weapon. Think of the otherwise-dreaded 2x Heavy Laser - a single point of ion damage will de-sync them and effectively nullify that ship as a threat, even if you never inflict any additional ion/conventional damage to their weapons. Give it a try, you may be pleasantly surprised. Ions don't have to be low skill cap

Even in the most straightforward use case of auto-firing the Ion Mk 2 against a 2-shield bubble enemy, it's significantly better to aim at weapons, not shields. Doing this results in doing enough ion damage to take out their shields, at which point the shields will be locked down for the next ~6-10 seconds. That's enough time to fire 2-3 times at weapons. Then the enemy shields will come back up, at which point you repeat the process. This approach effectively draws out the battle but keeps their last weapon out of the fight or de-synced, which results in far less damage taken. Against 1-shield bubble enemies, auto-firing at weapons is even more effective - you only need one hit to take down their shields, and you can ionize one of their weapons in the first 10s of a fight, before they get a shot off. When this works, the only ships that can damage you are ones with a missile in the first slot.

[T-hawk]

Good list. I agree with about 20 of the ratings, but here's the few I have to argue in descending order of severity.

Lanius B is the big misrating I want to call out. It just doesn't work in practice like it's supposed to. The armchair pilots on Reddit think it's great too but start discussing with them and you can tell they haven't actually played with it. "The Lanius will immediately drain all of the Oxygen" -- This doesn't actually happen. It takes a good ten seconds to drain, longer against upgraded oxygen systems, by which time you've either killed the enemy anyway (fighting 2v1) or your Lanius are almost out of health anyway (fighting 2v2). The suffocation doesn't get you any extra damage since the AI crew just runs into another room and you have to chase them. And mind control doesn't support boarding nearly as well as everyone thinks either, the MCed guy just runs off uselessly. And the Adv Flak is also lousy support for boarding. Lanius B is less than the sum of its parts. It's still good (tier 2) but that's just because boarding is good, not because it's any particularly good at boarding.

I think Mantis C belongs in the top tier. It's the only 4-man boarder that can deal with all situations (autoscouts, zoltan shield) right from the start. 4-man boarding is that good that it automatically bumps any ship up to top tier. Clone bay is better than med bay since it makes run-ending disasters less common, including rendering Lanius self-asphyxiation not a problem.

Fed A is decidedly not top tier. The artillery beam stinks. Just like ions and drones, it takes way too long to not break any important systems. It wins but you take a pounding meanwhile. Newbies like it because it wins brainlessly and they don't realize that the 5 damage taken per fight while waiting is not acceptable. I pretty much just turn it off around sector 3 and leave it off. And of course its worst sin is occupying a system slot that blocks out something of hacking or cloaking or drones, all of which I'd always rather have.

I'd bump Fed B down a notch for the same reasons.

Fed C's flak artillery is less bad because at least it clears the way for a good weapons barrage that can AIM at what you need broken. But yeah the overall ship is still garbage, artillery + teleporter is the worst anti-combo of any ship.

Zoltan A... I'd put it in demigod tier. It just doesn't lose, as you say. It wins closer to 100% than anything else, even Crystal B. It really is a head above all the other gunships. If I had to win one game or die, I'd take this one. The boarding ships win more convincingly, but are prone to the occasional teleporter or clone bay disaster. Zoltan A just always gets the job done with no weaknesses.

Crystal A's weakness is actually the piercing nature of the crystals. They can't drop the last shield to clear the way for a beam. Tier 2 is right for it, it's still good, but has trouble getting to the best loadout of bursts and beams.

Agreed that Slug C is fun and very overlooked. I think the silly name acts against it.

You're very right on Zoltan B, people rate the ion cascade based on its best case scenarios, and don't realize that when they run into an autoscout (or the flagship) with big cloaking and evasion, the ensuing loss is the ions' fault.

You're also absolutely right on Engi A. Good for newbies but doesn't improve with skill, so mid-tier for experts.

Also right on Stealth C. Tough but not garbage. Yes it works better than the armchair pilots think. This is actually my favorite ship to play, the most skill-testing of the gunships. (Although Stealth A is just better at everything.)

Also right on Slug B. It's gimmicky, but just about always seems to make it long enough to get a med/clone bay and start playing as a normal boarder. Not garbage tier.

And Zoltan C, yes, people just haven't tried to play it enough to realize how bad it is. Like ions, they judge it on its best-case outcomes (when the z-shield gets through to late game) and overlook the bad results. They blame the OMG OP double BL2 enemy ship that killed them, and not the crappy drone that couldn't break those BL2s.

I used to like Kestrel B too, but have gotten bored with it. It's a significant problem that it has to swap out a laser to make any weapons upgrade. Nerfs the fun factor quite a bit when buying something like a Burst 1 is half as useful for Kestrel B as for any other ship. Effective but dull.

[greenline]

I think Mantis C belongs in the top tier. It's the only 4-man boarder that can deal with all situations (autoscouts, zoltan shield) right from the start. 4-man boarding is that good that it automatically bumps any ship up to top tier. Clone bay is better than med bay since it makes run-ending disasters less common, including rendering Lanius self-asphyxiation not a problem.

I would disagree; certainly, the Mantis C can deal with a lot of things, but it certainly can't deal with them well. Getting rid of a Zoltan shield takes 3 bombs minimum, while your ship takes a pounding with its bare minimum defenses, and the early boarding party of a mantis and a lanius is a lot slower than you think it would be, doubly so if one of them dies and has to revive (commonly occuring with the lanius who you can't asphyxiate and revive before each battle). Throwing the engi in makes it more lethal, but then you're a sitting duck with 0 evade and one measly shield bubble. Yeah, it can snowball if you find extra crew early, but if you don't, you'll certainly be taking a beating. In my opinion, that makes it solidly mid tier.

Fed A is decidedly not top tier. The artillery beam stinks. Just like ions and drones, it takes way too long to not break any important systems. It wins but you take a pounding meanwhile. Newbies like it because it wins brainlessly and they don't realize that the 5 damage taken per fight while waiting is not acceptable. I pretty much just turn it off around sector 3 and leave it off. And of course its worst sin is occupying a system slot that blocks out something of hacking or cloaking or drones, all of which I'd always rather have.

I'd bump Fed B down a notch for the same reasons.

It's true that the arty beam is far from a top tier system, but I'd still prefer starting with it then nothing at all. Firstly, having it means you have an option of damaging ships whose shields you can't penetrate, should you not find any weapons. Certainly not an ideal option, but an option nonetheless. Secondly, having it gives you a system to upgrade in the end game if you haven't found any other systems. Sure, it'd be better to have hacking or something in its place, but if you have enough scrap to consider buying those systems in addition to actually finding them in stores, you were probably going to win whether or not you had hacking over the artillery beam, whereas a struggling run that found no extra systems might have that extra system mean the difference between life and death vs the flagship.

[Sullla]

Thanks everyone for the comments. I think that we're generally in agreement on most ships; getting the same opinion on roughly 20 out of 28 ships isn't bad at all. A couple comments:

Greenline, it looks like most of our disagreements are relatively minor, and I think you make some good points. With regards to Stealth B, yes, that ship has some huge disadvantages. However, unlike the worst ships in the game, it also has some huge advantages to compensate. I can't rate the ship down with Federation C and Zoltan C when it starts with Long Range Scanners and Cloaking - those are major edges! I'm happy with where I put it, a bad ship that nonetheless has some nice goodies to avoid bottom tier.

El Grillo, you're right that firing the ions on the Engi A against weapons works better than against shields. That's something I should have been doing when I played that ship. However, it's still an ion + drone setup, and that's an inherently crummy way to deal damage. I would take every ship in my top two tiers over the Engi A. This is another ship where I'm very happy with the ranking - I think it correctly belongs at the top of the "average" tier. You are welcome to disagree.

T-Hawk: good points about the Lanius B. I think you're correct that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I have to admit that I haven't had as much success with Lanius B as I've had with Zoltan A. (Seriously, why does the online FTL community underrate that ship so much? Zoltan A is crazy good!) On reflection, if I were doing this again, I think I would drop the Demigod tier and put Lanius B into the same Tier 1 group with the other ships, with Zoltan A as the top ship in the group. Lanius B is still a wonderful ship, but on further reflection more correctly on the same power point as roughly the Kestrel B.

I don't agree with the Mantis C being ranked higher. That ship has a rough early game until it gets rolling. Perhaps it's my general dislike of boarding, but I still see that ship as strictly average. I also stand by my ranking of Federation A in Tier 1 (albeit the weakest ship in the tier). While I agree that the Artillery Beam isn't particularly great, it's still a helpful system to have, especially on those runs with poor weapons luck. I just can't put a ship with a starting Burst II Laser, excellent crew, and the Artillery beam any lower on the list. I've sat here and gone through all of my ships in the above average Tier 2 list. I wouldn't put any of them above Federation A. What would go there? Crystal A? The Burst II Laser is at least as good as the crystal weapons (probably better) and Federation A has the Artillery Beam. Lanius A? I love Hacking too, but Federation A's weapons are way better, and better crew, and of course the Beam is still there. Federation A is a better version of the Kestrel A, and I don't think either Slug C or Engi C is really in the conversation. Anyway, I don't think we're really that far apart on this, I get the feeling that you'd put the Federation A near the top of Tier 2, while I like it at the bottom of Tier 1. Pretty close all things considered.

Thanks all, this was fun.

[Sullla]

(Sirian's One More Thing post)

This blog article about roguelike game design was linked on FTL Reddit today, and it's worth a read. Very good discussion.

[T-hawk]

(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.

[greenline]

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.

Isn't that, in itself, arguing for the best case scenario, since the bad runs won't have the scrap to buy three systems, or just won't find them in stores?

[Gustaran]

(Sirian's One More Thing post)

This blog article about roguelike game design was linked on FTL Reddit today, and it's worth a read. Very good discussion.

I think that's a terrible article.

So the author's premise is: "Roguelikes should not have unlocks between runs because all the scrubby players are not smart enough to realize that their own mistakes are holding them back and not a lack of meta progression"

a) It is beyond me why any player would think the unlocks in FTL serve as a power progression at all (like let's say armor or stats in Rogue Legacy). Just from looking at the bars/levels of different systems it becomes immediately obvious that different ships are supposed to offer a different playstyle and not a significant power upgrade. It's not like Kestrel A starts with a 2 bar shield, Kestrel B with 4 bars and Kestrel C with 6 bars.

b) That graph...

c) I strongly dislike people that tell others how or why they have to play a game. Yes, some people will blame the game when they fail to graps certain core mechanics but you find these type of players in all games, not just roguelikes.
The idea that unlocks are a distraction that keep players from reaching their highest potential is quite a patronizing statement.
Maybe some players don't need to be able to beat the game with every ship on hard to have fun? Maybe some players are quite content beating the game on easy difficulty and are enjoying unlocking new ships even while not beating the flagship? Maybe some players are working adults with a demanding job and a family and not really keen on reading through strategy guides and learning about advanced strategies like diminishing returns, the power curve and optimal weapon setup theorycrafting?

Nowadays, there are so many games out there and affordable through things like Steam sales, I would guess I am not the only one with a lot of unplayed games in their Steam library. In turn that means that not everyone is able or wants to spend 70+ hours to learn the intricacies of a game to beat it on the highest difficulty.
If that's what you want to do and you have fun doing it: Great. But don't tell other players they have to play the game the same way you do.

[T-hawk]

Isn't that, in itself, arguing for the best case scenario, since the bad runs won't have the scrap to buy three systems, or just won't find them in stores?

I don't think so. Even the worst-case runs, in my experience, are able to fill all the system slots. It does take some planning ahead, save some money for the systems before what might be the last stores in sector 6 or 7. But you can do that, you know what the systems will cost.

The artillery beam's problem is that the cases when it works are not those worst 20% when you desperately need help. It doesn't save you when you're getting shredded by missiles or flak. It's the converse of win-more, "lose-less", but you're still losing and taking damage while waiting for it to work. Its window of effectiveness is when you're having merely bad but not terrible luck, which are the cases that you can manage with skillful play. Newbies like the artillery beam because they don't have that skill, but it's mostly dead weight for an expert.