FTL - Faster Than Light

[T-hawk]

I came back to this game to start up a new project.  Still in progress, but lots of reading material here for anyone who likes.

http://dos486.com/ftl/series/

[Sullla]

T-Hawk, this is fantastic. I only had time to read the first Kestrel A run but I'm eagerly looking forward to the rest.

[haphazard1]

Fun reading, T-hawk. Thanks!

[sunrise089]

Awesome, thanks for posting T-Hawk!

[rho21]

Thanks, T-hawk. Just what I needed when I woke up a couple of hours early.

Whoa, got galactically lucky when 4/6 shots missed from this double Burst 2 volley!

At 34% evade, 4 misses out of 6 is about 8.7%.

[T-hawk]

I may go a little overboard on the language and intensifiers.  It's a different style of writing than the Civ stuff, trying to convey the feel and impression more than technical accuracy. The thought in the moment wasn't "what were the odds", it was "my expected damage taken for this fight just dropped by infinity".

I have some more done towards the next page, will finish that to post by sometime next week most likely.

[TheMeInTeam]

You definitely do not need cloaking vs flagship (per Zoltan A run), but if you lack it 4th shield layer is a lot safer.  Since cloaking costs less than 4th shield layer, it is a more efficient purchase when deciding between the two.  However, cloaking isn't always available when you can realistically purchase it.  Most ships on hard can have both.

Selling IB2 to use BL3 is a significant misplay and you paid for it throughout the run in Engi A.  As you say in your intro, the point is to win fights w/o taking damage.  BL3 is among the worst weapons in the game in this role, and will consistently take longer to shut down enemy weapons.  With different weapon retention choices that run you could easily have had cloaking + hacking + 4 shield layers, even with small bomb/flak/bl1 that should win at 20+ hp.  Ion hate goes too far: https://i.imgur.com/p1YEv4p.jpg

Still, very impressive write-ups and win streak, my best recently was only ~15 before I got snipped early in a run.  It's interesting to see such a major style differential, you are rarely winning with shields 8 unless rich, where I almost always have it.  Lots of 20+ hp wins in both cases.

[T-hawk]

You definitely do not need cloaking vs flagship (per Zoltan A run), but if you lack it 4th shield layer is a lot safer.

That's a very good point I hadn't thought about.  That 4th shield (and also engines 6-7) is a lot more valuable without cloaking, since you need it to hold up against the drone and laser surges.  I will definitely keep that in mind, prioritize that over whatever else gets the scrap that didn't go into cloaking, which is usually marginal upgrades like piloting, medbay, MC.

The big constraint against the 4th shield is power consumption.  I often can't find the power to run it even at max.  8 power in weapons, 5 in engines, 2 in each of cloaking and hacking and drones (or teleporter or MC)... that's already 19 leaving only 6 for shields even at max reactor!  Backup battery and zoltans can help of course, but I've had several cases where there's no power available to run the 4th shield by any means.

Artillery beam has the same problem: there are 25-27 better uses of power bars and no amount of scrap can buy you more.  Before Advanced Edition, I definitely went for the 4th shield more often, when there wasn't hacking/MC also competing for power.

I never mentioned it but as I progressed, I paid more attention to always buying enough power to have everything running at once at the flagship.  We like the games of playing lean on power and twiddling it around as necessary... but I started to find (in some failed attempts at this streak) that really became a liability at the flagship, I lost sometimes when a shield or defense drone or some engines or even a weapon got depowered when I didn't notice.  You don't have the luxury to twiddle power at the flagship, that is when you do want everything running at once, you're always using defense drone and hacking and cloaking and all weapons and it goes long enough that you have to keep an eye on oxygen and medbay.  At this point my greatest win-expectancy liability isn't the ship capabilities, it's my own potential lapse of focus, and power robustness is a defense against that.

Selling IB2 to use BL3 is a significant misplay and you paid for it throughout the run in Engi A.  As you say in your intro, the point is to win fights w/o taking damage.

I can see this point but I'll state my case as well.  I think the BL3 is better than IB2 specifically against 2-shield ships.  I think I deliberately traded off performance in sector 2 for better in sectors 3 and 4.  Sectors 3-4 are where the bulk of attrition losses happen, against 2-shield ships that you can't reliably punch through.  That was my overriding concern.  You're right that IB2 interrupts weapons faster against 1 shield, but I was less worried about that.  Remember I sold the IB2 to buy the defense drone, which already accounted for significant damage reduction.  The point is to minimize damage, but you're not looking for the greatest likelihood of zero, you seek to minimize the overall expected value.  I was willing to accept 1-2 potential damage from one volley for the BL3's greater likelihood to avoid greater disasters of 5+ damage throughout multiple volleys, when the IB2 gets foiled by high evasion or cloaking.  Also the BL3 deals damage to kill all by itself without spending a drone part on the combat drone as the IB2 requires, and drone parts do run out.

Short version: the BL3 can reliably handle 2-shield ships all by itself, the IB2 can't always.  You're right that BL3 isn't great overall, and that IB2 is better against 1-shield ships, and as part of an ion stack may be better against 3+ shield ships.  But I think BL3 is better specifically against 2-shields (given that I had a defense drone too) and that was the greatest threat to my win expectancy right then.

[TheMeInTeam]

The big constraint against the 4th shield is power consumption. I often can't find the power to run it even at max. 8 power in weapons, 5 in engines, 2 in each of cloaking and hacking and drones (or teleporter or MC)... that's already 19 leaving only 6 for shields even at max reactor! Backup battery and zoltans can help of course, but I've had several cases where there's no power available to run the 4th shield by any means.

Many weapon configs don't require 8 power, and similarly cloaking can be 1 power for most of the flagship if not all. If you actually do have level 4 shielding, one of the strongest plays is to just hack RFS missiles and cloak/hack chain them (1 power cloak, 2 power hack). With weapons 6 and that system setup you're spending only 9 power, so you have enough to power the shields and use usual oxygen swapping into engines as-needed.

Power toggling defense drone is worth doing vs RFS if you're rich enough to have marginal evasion upgrades otherwise, since reactor is capped. Otherwise most toggling is between that, oxygen, and engines. While you *can* toggle shields off after 1st layer gets hit with pause buffering and dump that into evasion, I hate doing that because it's tedious and almost never necessary. Only for rough early sector situations.

I agree with you that the artillery beam sucks, for many reasons actually. Power hungry, undue expense to upgrade, works poorly with standard weapons (flak artillery is still bad, but less bad for this reason), and worst of all opportunity-costs you out of a more useful system. I'd consider it an advantage if it could be sold, similarly to how one should treat crystal vengeance .

I can see this point but I'll state my case as well. I think the BL3 is better than IB2 specifically against 2-shield ships. I think I deliberately traded off performance in sector 2 for better in sectors 3 and 4.

IB2 fires ion/3.2s with expert gunner (likely you'll have one by sector 3 even w/o grinding, if using IB2). BL3 takes 15.2s to fire also assuming expert gunner. IB2 will just barely fall short of firing 5 shots in the time it takes BL3 to charge, and will remove 2 shield layers after 3 hits.

Not only can IB2 then hit weapons directly, but if you have any secondary weapon (cheaper to hook up given 3 power), hitting the weapons with that weapon first then tagging it with an ion will guaranteed drop two enemy weapons, and the ion buildup remaining on shields is long enough that fast charging weapons can get a 2nd shot off on something else before enemy ship restores shields. This double-tapping effect on weapons is how I ran that ion-heavy lanius ship from sector 5 to the flagship w/o taking damage.

In your case I'd have likely sold BL3 rather than IB2 to grab dd1 or maybe a low power weapon. IB2 is a better weapon overall, even for shutting down enemy weapons before they damage you. Depends on what else is available in the shop though, I usually try to pick up at least a heavy laser or something. The alternative is more ions, enough to overwhelm evasion + lock down piloting + weapons permanently (or piloting + cloaking --> shoot something damaging into weapons or cloak/hack them).

I actually have the opposite conclusion to yours; IB2 is still better vs 2 shield ships and starts being too outclassed vs 3 shields by itself. The reason is that you get more support systems on enemy ships and more opportunity for chained miss trolling on 3 shields...but both of these weapons are inadequate by themselves vs 3 shields and need more weapons + systems to deal damage. BL3 can at least do damage but vs evasion there's too high a chance you hit for 1 or nothing vs 3 shields. 2nd/3rd weapon are cheaper to attach alongside IB2 however.

[T-hawk]

if you have any secondary weapon ... hitting the weapons with that weapon first

You're arguing right past me at a completely different case.  I had no secondary weapon and no knowledge of when I would.

I was preparing to get through sectors 3-4 entirely on what I had right then.  The Burst 3 alone can do that more reliably than the IB2 alone, particularly considering that the IB2 requires consuming combat drone parts too.

Sure, IB2 plus a heavy laser or maybe even an IB1 might be better than the BL3.  I didn't have that.

I might even use the BL3 and hold on to the IB2 in case a good pairing does come.  But not when the IB2's sell value could be turned into the more immediately urgently useful defense drone.  That's the real concern - the defense drone was the bigger swing than any differential between the weapons.

Ultimately, we're probably both right, it was a solidly winnable run either way, we'll never know whose approach might have resulted in like 99.2% win probability instead of 99.5% or some such.