FTL - Faster Than Light

[T-hawk]

High Score.



I got incredible luck with a Small Bomb in the very first fight. That's the single best weapon for Mantis B, to take out med/clone bays on just the 1 starting weapon power, so the boarders can win everything.

And got Long-Ranged Scanners from the first store, which is the other key piece, to fight as many ships as possible. Standard tactics from there, upgraded the teleporter to be able to board automated ships. The massive income from scanners and boarding got me cloaking in sector 2 and up to shields tier 3 in sector 3, snowballing far far ahead of the curve.

Even bought a Pre-Igniter in sector 6. The endgame weapon loadout was Flak I + Hull Laser II + Hull Laser II. The latter aren't that great (3:3 power:shots, slow-ish at 15 seconds, only single damage to system rooms) but are slot-efficient which Mantis needs.

Sector 7 was the Rebel Stronghold where I found the incomplete flagship event (two big payouts and delays them two jumps), plus it had about six nebula beacons, adding up to loads of lucrative encounters. I fought as much as possible in sector 8 too before the flagship, about six more payoffs.

The flagship went down with standard stuff, whack the missile weapon then the medbay to kill the crew in phase 1 and it was easy from there.

7980 score, without rebel farming (fought a rebel fleet ship at sector exit a few times but never more than that.) 113 beacons thanks to those lengthy sectors 7 and 8. 2750 scrap on Hard which is the real legit record, that can't be farmed or milked.

[Dantski]

Nice run T-Hawk, 17 crew hired is also rather high. Did you run into some nasty events that kept killing them off or something else?

Even though in writing it looks like a perfect easy run I imagine you had some frustration along the way with bombs missing multiple times and elongating fights.

[Gustaran]

Wow, 2750 scrap on hard is a crazy high number, I never even managed to get this much scrap on easy/normal difficulty.
Does anybody know how much higher scrap rewards are on lower difficulties?

[T-hawk]

It counts as hired crew every time you get one even if you already have 8 and don't keep the new one. 15 or more crew in such a run is normal since most fights that you win by boarding have a 1/8 chance to find a new crew member.

Bombs missing actually wasn't much of a problem. I had the ship tanked up so far ahead of the curve on defense that I could just wait for another bomb. Not much can get through high shields and engines, defense drone, and cloaking. Also I cut the bomb anyway in favor of a standard flak+laser setup sometime around sector 5 or 6.

I wish I had the numbers for scrap changes on the difficulty levels and also for normal kills vs boarding. I don't. Best guess I can make is about 15% less on Hard than Normal.

[T-hawk]

So now I finally had a real run using a Vulcan. (Didn't finish yet, had to stop at sector 7 to get to sleep, but looks to be on track for a win.) With Engi C. I still bought it way too early (sector 1!) but at least this time didn't pair it with a teleporter.

What makes the Vulcan sing is max cloaking and hacking. Cloak for 15 seconds, wait for 10, then drain the weapons of that charge and block 10 more, which total just happens to match cloaking's cooldown so then cloak again. That gets the Vulcan to full chain before the enemy shoots at all.

But it still takes the Vulcan a while to actually drill through the shields. With any amount of enemy evasion, it barely keeps up with shield regeneration. It mostly doesn't break through for damage by itself, just keeps the shields down. It needs other weapons or drones for the actual damage. And a Defense Drone II versus a Vulcan is a hilariously spectacular fireworks show -- but effective on the part of the drone.

It's not the best weapon in the game. I'd rather have a Glaive Beam. Same deal of 4 power and a long charge and relying on other weapons for support, but deals its damage more immediately and effectively across multiple system targets. I'll see how the Vulcan does on the flagship, but I think I'd rather have a Glaive there too to whack both the missile weapon and shields together.

The Vulcan feels like overkill win-more. If you can turtle long enough to spin up the Vulcan, you can turtle long enough to win in any number of other ways, including beam weapons which do the same job faster and more reliably. It's still very good if you don't come across beams or enough shield-stripping for them, though. It's one of many solutions.

[Gustaran]

Has anyone actually managed to win a game with Stealth C or Mantis C on hard?

Even on lower difficulties, I find especially the Mantis C incredibly annoying: Yes, you can kill autoscouts with the Lanius, but it takes ages to kill a ship by damaging single systems one at a time. In addition the combination Lanius/Mantis is not very appealing - two Mantis/Lanius would be so much easier...

[T-hawk]

I haven't tried Stealth C or Mantis C yet, will get there soon. I did get Stealth B on hard.

Just did Slug C. I don't know why this ship exists. There's nothing at all unique about its play style, nothing like the other Slug ships with the anti-crew weapons. Starting with Mind Control is marginally entertaining but doesn't really do anything without a teleporter. (I know about the trick to mind control a pilot to nerf the evasion just before a volley hits. Which is just a worse version of what hacking does anyway.) The whole hing just turned into a bog standard lasers-and-beams setup, slighhtly crippled by only being allowed one of cloaking or defense drones (for ships where this choice happens, like Federation thanks to the arty beam, ALWAYS opt for cloaking.)

Okay, there was one entertaining tactic. Mind control enemy crew to kill each other until the last one left is a Mantis. Destroy their oxygen system. Repeatedly mind control the remaining Mantis faster than he can repair the oxygen, until he suffocates. Counts as a boarding win so you get the higher rewards.

I don't have any problem waiting as long as necessary for boarders to chip-damage an autoship. I did Lanius B which does that same thing as Mantis C would. Agreed that just one Lanius crewman does look like a pain to manage.

[Gustaran]

Okay, there was one entertaining tactic. Mind control enemy crew to kill each other until the last one left is a Mantis. Destroy their oxygen system. Repeatedly mind control the remaining Mantis faster than he can repair the oxygen, until he suffocates. Counts as a boarding win so you get the higher rewards.

How do you manage tactics like these? Whenever I try killing of the crew by different means for higher rewards (i.e. hacking oxygen to suffocate crew) I take quite a bit of damage in the process: Either I keep targeting weapons, but then the ship is usually destroyed before the crew is dead, or I don't and take more damage then the scrap gain is worth.

Or do you only apply these tactics agains ships that are unable to damage you at all ?

[Jkaen]

I never try the tactic with anything that has missiles as its too risky, if you get ahead of the curve on shields though there are plenty of enemies who cant break through, especially if you can take out the weapons in some way (i.e. hack, ionise etc)

[T-hawk]

Or do you only apply these tactics agains ships that are unable to damage you at all ?

That.

It's not necessarily that the ship couldn't damage you in its original state, but that its current state can't damage you. Maybe there's only one crewman left who will always prioritize the shields and oxygen and never get back to the destroyed weapons. Or maybe they ran out of missiles thanks to your defense drone shooting them all.