FTL - Faster Than Light

[Fenn]

I forgot about the anti-drone, that would help its survivability greatly. I've had problems with it in the past where it would stubbornly miss an enemy drone three times in a row, but perhaps that was just a lot of bad luck. I think I'll give it another shot and see how it goes.

It has the problem of being a setup with a very short shelf life; you really do need to buy regular shielding before enemy ships upgrade their weapons or you run out of drone parts. Though having an offensive capability does at least make it more likely that you'll be able to save up the 125 scrap for shields.

[T-hawk]

As you can imagine this fails to suffice against 99% of enemy ships you'll encounter in Hard Mode

You imagine wrongly, as do the armchair pilots on Reddit. The Shield+ drone is quite sufficient through the first two sectors once you see it in action.

I disagree on the count of Stealth C. The shield overcharger doesn't seem like much, but it can get up one bar of shielding before 90% of weapons can fire, which means that the average enemy ship (two lasers or 1 missile 1 laser) will only get one shot through, about the same as if you started with regular shields. Having the anti drone also helps a lot.

But the biggest difference is that your weapons take ~12 seconds to charge instead of 23. That makes a *massive* difference.

Absolutely correct. Stealth C plays quite a bit better than it looks on paper. The Shield+ drone works well enough long enough to get regular shields. Long-Ranged Scanners means you can always find income and won't fall behind the power curve. And the weapons are fantastically fast and power-efficient.

I have 7 wins to 3 losses with Stealth C on hard, which would be 8-2 if not for one brainlock cloning bay mishap. It's not top tier by any means (Stealth A is just plain better with the same advantages and better defense), but solidly in the middle of the pack. I'd definitely call Stealth C the most skill-testing ship in the game. Hope Sullla gets to it soon.

[Fenn]

Alright, I tried a run with the Stealth C again because I was clearly missing something, and it seemed...fine? The Shield+ worked a fair bit better than I recalled, and usually I was able to knock out enemy weapons on the first volley, letting it set up multiple layers of shielding. I saved enough to buy the Shields system at the end of Sector 1, and with a Burst Laser II that dropped from a battle in Sector 2, I was set for the rest of the run. Shield+ seems like it would pair really well with cloaking, letting you build up super shield layers in addition to weapons charge, but I never had enough scrap to spend on it. I sold the Shield+ drone later on for want of drone parts, but it was certainly useful while it lasted .

It does have a few problems, though; Mini Beams will still deal a little bit of damage through one shield layer unlike regular shielding, and enemy combat drones will still get shots in sometimes after they're stunned - they'll wake up in position to shoot right away before the Anti-drone can get a lock on them.

Overall though it was serviceable, and the 1-power Laser Charger stayed with me to then end - it's kind of a BLII lite. I hadn't played this ship since Advanced Edition first came out. I think I got shellacked by ships in Sector 1 on my first few tries which soured me on playing it further. Turns out I was completely wrong and an idiot the whole time !

So uh, thanks T-hawk and greenline for showing me the error of my ways.

[Sullla]

Had to write a few quick words about this FTL run last night:



Stealth A. This is the first time in many weeks that I actually had Long Range Scanners, and wow, what a difference they make. So many of my runs have had to scratch and claw for scrap due to poor luck in finding enemy encounters. Not on this run. I bought the Shield unit in Sector One with no problems, bought a Flak I from a store in Sector Two, then Scrap Recovery Arm in Sector Three, and the rout was on. Stealth A's Dual Laser + Minibeam weapon setup is very strong for the first half of the game, and godly with a Flak thrown in there. Everything charges and fires in 12 seconds, 9.5 seconds after the weapons guy maxes out experience. Plus you can Cloak for the first 10 seconds of the battle, so... Let's just say I wasn't taking much damage.

I had Hacking and a Defensive Drone by the end of Sector Five. The whole second half of the run had me sitting around with 500 or more unspent scrap in inventory, just in case something good popped up in a store. Ended up going with the four shot Charge Laser, Flak, and a Pike Beam. I wanted a Halberd Beam but never found one. This is the first Hard run where I've ever maxed Shields, Engines, and Weapons together, plus had enough power to run all of them. It was glorious. The flagship was as easy as you would expect, three damage in the first two phases and I think three more damage in the final phase.



Total was my best score to date, although still far short of T-Hawk's incredible run on post #291 of this thread. Even with a Teleporter this run wouldn't have equaled that one. I haven't seen too many scores over 6600 out there on the FTL forums, and I'm quite happy with this run.

Look at the top of my best scoring list here. Pretty obvious which Augment is the best in the game, right?

[greenline]

A nice run there. I'm surprised you could run level 7 weapons, max shields, and max evade with 23 reactor bars + a Zoltan. Often I struggle to run 8 weapons, max shields, and level 5 engines with a maxed reactor, although that might be because I tend to leave the odd power bar in cloak or mind control.

My best ever hard run was with Slug A. I believe I had picked up Long Range Scanners at some point, but the real killer was my weapons set up: Dual Lasers, Flak 1, Burst Laser 1, Charge Laser. For 7 power, that was 9 shots every 9 seconds. That allowed me to get a ton of scrap, and I ended up with Mind Control, Cloaking, and Drone Control with a defense 1 and antidrone. That with 2 mantises maxed out on fighting gave me the best defensive setup I've ever managed on hard, short of running a Zoltan shield as well.

Fighting the Rebel Flagship, the weapons were the star of the show as I managed to knock out the missile launcher at every opportunity, never giving it the chance to damage me. In phase 2 I could save the cloaking for missiles, since 51% evade + antidrone meant that the drone surge wasn't an issue. Phase 3 was no trouble since I had my own mind control and my mantises tore the rebel invaders to shreds. Not only that, but I managed to get a bunch of nice rolls and knock out the Flagship's Zoltan shield in only 2-3 volleys. Even better, the combination of a defensive drone + cloak + high evade meant that all the missiles that did get through missed! Then I knocked out the missile launcher, followed by the laser gun, which let me beat the flagship on hard without taking any damage!

Sadly I didn't take screenshots of this , although the run remains my highest scoring to date.

[T-hawk]

Pulled off a Shieldless run on Hard and gave it a full writeup.

[Gustaran]

Pulled off a Shieldless run on Hard and gave it a full writeup.

Impressive, I assumed finishing the game without shields would be impossible.

[T-hawk]

http://www.twitch.tv/vikingerik78/b/626632074?t=0m30s

Another interesting bit, this is a recording of sector 8 for a variant challenge posted on Reddit to beat the game with only one shield bubble. Score is by most hull at the end of the game. Zoltan ships prohibited. I recorded a perfect score of full health, and actually no damage taken throughout all of sector 8.

[Twinkletoes89]

I had a good run end painfully for me yesterday as I encountered a three shield ship with three Burst II lasers

It was only around sector 5 too - and normal difficulty

[Jkaen]

Its times like that I wish I could board the ship strip off the fancy guns and retrofit them onto my ship