FTL - Faster Than Light

[sunrise089]

For about two sectors, then you run out of missiles. It's good to start but you'll be replacing it.

I've not even won on normal, so big grain of salt of course...

Relying on it seems problematic for obvious reasons, but with four slots it seems nice to have. I know on higher levels there isn't excess scrap anyways, but if you're only using it some of the time and don't have other missile/bomb weapons it seems useful until you have a fourth quality weapon - 1 power for 2 shield ignoring damage seems quite good.

Is it that you need to sell it for scrap for curve purposes?

[T-hawk]

Is it that you need to sell it for scrap for curve purposes?

That's a good way to describe it. The Artemis is a nice luxury for situational use in a down-ballot slot, yes. But there's no room for luxury on harder difficulties. It's a *want* that gets sold for a *need*, most commonly a defense drone or long-ranged scanners.

[Gustaran]

Relying on it seems problematic for obvious reasons, but with four slots it seems nice to have. I know on higher levels there isn't excess scrap anyways, but if you're only using it some of the time and don't have other missile/bomb weapons it seems useful until you have a fourth quality weapon - 1 power for 2 shield ignoring damage seems quite good.

Is it that you need to sell it for scrap for curve purposes?

I kept mine until sector ~6 in my successful hard run. Some things I did:

a) Use it as a first strike option to target enemy weapons. Since the Artemis has a faster chargeup than the Burst Laser there are times when it enables you to disable enemy weapons before they can fire when the BL2 alone could not.

b) I never used it to deal additional damage to a ship that couldn't damage me, i.e. usually as long as the BL2 can penetrate shields you can keep the enemy weapons down and preserve missiles.

c) Consider surrender offers with a lot of missiles (i.e. 7 additional missiles would give me added first strike power for the next 7 battles).

d) It is useful to keep the Artemis charged in case the opponent charges FTL to jump away and your next laser salvo misses. One missile to the engines/pilot makes sure you don't lose out on the scrap.

e) If you are in danger of falling behind the curve in terms of weapon power, it is possible to use it to disable one shield layer which is useful in a laser based setup. Of course this is only a temporary solution.

f) If you see a great buy at a store and need the scrap of course you should just sell it. Then again, the RNG factor of FTL can make a bigger difference than the scrap rewards for the Artemis so it depends on your situation.

I think that's one of the great things about FTL: Every run is different. Sometimes you have a great defensive setup but find no good weapons, so you keep the Artemis. The next run you loot a halberd beam and can buy a laser, so you sell the Artemis for more important things.

[Sullla]

While we're on the subject of the default Kestrel A, I had a great run captured on stream a couple days ago with that ship. No crazy swings of good luck, no Infernal Preigniter dropping for free or anything like that, just a textbook example of a good run on Hard difficulty. Here's the saved video link if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.twitch.tv/lcsullla/c/5457603

[T-hawk]

On that very first jump, you took damage that you didn't need to. Instantly after accepting the surrender offer, you could have jumped away before the flak hit. The FTL drive is available instantly after winning as long as you're not in environmental danger, which incoming projectiles don't count as.

[Cyneheard]

On that very first jump, you took damage that you didn't need to. Instantly after accepting the surrender offer, you could have jumped away before the flak hit. The FTL drive is available instantly after winning as long as you're not in environmental danger, which incoming projectiles don't count as.

My thought when watching that fight was "T-Hawk wouldn't have taken damage there".

[T-hawk]

More micromanagement:

Early in sector 2, against the Zoltan shielded ship, about 17:30 on the stream. Your weapons get hit when the BL2 and Artemis are both just about charged. You could have fired the BL2, then immediately paused and switched over to the Artemis before it lost its charge in order to fire that too.

One tactic you should pick up, for both that one nasty Slug battle (51:00 on the stream) and a few of the Mantis fights. When there's too many boarders, vent the *entire ship* except for med bay so they have to go in there. With the medbay healing turned on, you can fight two-against-three and put the pilot back on duty. What hurt you so badly in that slug fight was the ion stunlock, but keeping the pilot in place for 30% evade would probably have been enough to avert that.

I saw you keep firing at red systems several times, then complain when it got repaired right away. That's how the game works - they can be like 99% to repairing a bar and fix it immediately even after you hit it again. Getting extra angry at it doesn't make it extra broken. If there's a system you absolutely have to keep offline, it's correct to hold fire and wait until they repair just that one bar, then shoot again to break it again.

In one ion storm fight in sector 5, you made this mistake: tried to fire a weapon (pike beam) then during the same pause turned it off to put the power into engines. This doesn't work - weapons stop functioning right away when powered off - it'll even prevent multiple shots or charges from launching.

You didn't notice that the Hull Laser 2 you picked up wasn't the same as the Heavy Laser 2 you already had. I usually like the Hull better since it's 3 shots for the 3 power instead of 2.

Not to sound all criticizey, I'm sure I've made similar mistakes. I'm falling asleep now, will watch the last hour tomorrow.

[Gustaran]

While we're on the subject of the default Kestrel A, I had a great run captured on stream a couple days ago with that ship. No crazy swings of good luck, no Infernal Preigniter dropping for free or anything like that, just a textbook example of a good run on Hard difficulty.

A default Kestrel A run ? We want to see the crazy C-layout ships!

However, it was a great display of how good the BL2 is: In the boss battle you had 5 guaranteed laser shots to hit, so the last Heavy Laser shot would deal two damage to the target system and then you could follow up with the beam.
If you had used a BL1 (same power requirement) only the beam would have dealt damage, which makes things a lot harder.

I usually like the Hull better since it's 3 shots for the 3 power instead of 2.

You had a very useful piece of advise in your report about the fact that autoscouts are unable to repair breach damage and therefore can't repair the damage to systems in the same room either. Using the Hull Laser II makes the fights against autoscouts so much easier when you get a breach in the weapon slot.

Fun fact: Had a win today with Kestrel B, but was falling dangerously behind on weapon power around sector 5. Very annoying because I had a great defensive setup including defense drones, LRS and scrap recovery arm.
My last resort was to use the "buy random weapon for 45 scrap" from the ship event...and I received a Flak 1!

[Gustaran]

I had a very strange encounter at the beginning of sector 7: A pre fight event disabled 3 of my shield bars, meaning I dropped from 3 to 1 shield bubble.

In addition, the enemy ship had a beam drone as well as a combat drone. Their laser and ion weapons just sealed my fate - the FTL charge meter didn' even reach 50% before I was anihilated.

[T-hawk]

That is a very rare encounter but happens sometimes. I've had it once in memory. Very first jump in sector 1, where it disabled 1 of my 2 bars, leaving me with no shield. And it had a beam drone. I died helplessly. Sometimes the game really is unfair.

Then again, I'm not sure we get to complain about losing one fight via shield hacking, when we win hundreds upon hundreds that way...