FTL - Faster Than Light

[TheMeInTeam]

Crew TP is no joke if you don't mind the added micromanagement. I showed off the plays it has with hacking, but vs most ships after initial combats the AI will pull its pilot to fight you (don't board in piloting) which tanks evasion. You can also cause this effect by simply moving between rooms in the ship...for whatever reason even ships with 5 crew will shuffle the pilot out and give a window of low evade, which makes it a lot easier to shoot out weapons, medbay, or clone bay. Most importantly though it gives you a means of somewhat quickly winning encounters even in runs where weaponry is scarce. My kestrel A run was more awkward since I had TP/MC/drones...IMO the weakest 3 system combo and only functional there because flak/bl2/pike/artemis is plenty to suppress weapons with a pulled or MC'd pilot.

Mantis C is "awkward" early but actually pretty strong, depending on how you control it. Along with slug B it's the most micro-intensive early game ship in the game, since you will get considerably different early game mileage depending on how well you time bombs with how your crew moves between rooms. Controlled optimally, its only bad earlygame matchup are ships with zoltan shields (needs 3 bombs to get through and takes a while)...scouts aren't a problem for it and early medbay/clonebay can be handled by the bomb/boarding combo easily enough.

Compare this to other ships though; it's not completely shut down by a stray hit to weapons, gets crew kill scrap rewards, has only one bad matchup, needs very little scrap to have decent defenses and before the first jump carries an offense that continues to be viable going into sectors 3-4 without needing to pick much up in the way of weapons. You could pick up a random ion weapon or zoltan bypass (for super shields) and carry that + starting weapons into end game with few system purchases, winning comfortably. The micro is certainly harder than most ships but the general lack of heavy weaknesses coupled with *guaranteed* scaling (and strong scaling at that) make a good case for this being a high tier ship.

I don't share the common dislike of 2 man TPs, but the 4 man version is still obviously better.

[T-hawk]

This is great discussion on Mantis C.  It doesn't get uprated because it doesn't feel fun, it doesn't win dramatically or overwhelmingly.  It wins consistently against everything and earns a top tier ranking for win rate.  But consistency isn't sexy.

I seldom buy a 2-man teleporter for a ship that doesn't start with one.  It takes quite a while for boarding rewards to pay back the 80 scrap cost, and it consumes a system slot that requires passing up one of drones/hacking/cloaking.  It's useful on occasion, particularly if you already have Mantis or Rock crew but weak weapons, although you still need some way to deal with a medbay.  A 2-man teleporter demands upgrading to level-2 ASAP, to either retrieve the crew quickly (including from airless autoscouts), or to send two more.

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not impressed by drones, especially on ships with their piloting or especially weapons/drone control stuck into the "no detect" zone. I consider cloak/hack/tp *strictly* better than cloak/hack/drones on literally any ship that can send something the quality of two humans or better on offense w/o compromising evasion. Regardless of weapons. Unless I start with the system or *need* that offensive slot, I only buy drones for dd1 because it's the only option that keeps missiles from ruining me in the near future (and build can't reliably shoot them out first).

Crew TP isn't just "pay itself back" investment. Crew TP directly harms enemy evasion in practical cases and along with hacking serves as a replacement for proper weapons. When I bought it in that stealth A run, I did so fully anticipating to use boarding to kill every non-auto scout fight remaining in the game with minimal damage using just TP + hack with cloak for missiles. I wasn't wrong either; that setup can go sectors w/o taking damage and safely bank > 150 scrap on hard routinely. Without hacking, crew TP is a lot more situational and contingent on weapons (can't just hack scout shields and blow up their weapons for relatively safe fights, or completely trash them like I did with breach 2/flak 1/halberd on Mantis A which is a competent gunship setup).

It also carries more utility in the flagship fight than defense drones if you have cloaking/hacking. After 0 hull damage crew kill in phase 1 you board missiles instantly in phase 2 and can break them before they fire, freeing up your hack to go on anything you feel like - typically shields, piloting, or drones. This is more utility than even drone control with dd1 + anti-drone. Finally in phase 3 if you don't have a bypass, drones might save you 1-2 hp compared to crew TP, since you're probably going to eat first missile wave and cloak the missile + laser + surge alignment, it's not enough to boost drones.

Assuming you already have one of hacking or cloaking, I actually consider drone control an inferior purchase to mind control, and definitely inferior if you have both. Not just for anti-MC in phase 3, but also for hacking weapons + still reducing evasion substantially or using MC to block repairs (if you wait for two crew in one room, MC will force fight in that room and block repairs...you can finagle to force MC vs enemy crew fights while boarding too). Bonus points for not using up a drone resource alongside hacking.

Edit: There's another reason crew TP is pretty good - its 90 cost is less expensive than purchasing weapon + upgrading weapon control after weapons 4 (weapons 5 costs 50, weapons 6 costs 75). Depending on what you're carrying at present, the combination of crew kill rewards plus ability to abuse AI into having no pilot when your weapons hit make this an attractive option in general when there aren't good weapons for sale, again as long as you have humans or better to send. The cost scaling into mid sectors compares pretty well, and is amazing if you have hacking.

[TheMeInTeam]

Finally got some footage using ions more than just early game Engi A.  Going through each ship for a win on hard in this series, so far I have 11 wins, 2 losses.  Two games went ion-heavy, a third was just IB 2 start to finish on Engi A.  So not really 25%, but still making a decent showing so far.  I'm definitely not passing this kind of stuff up though: https://i.imgur.com/wiK9v9y.jpg

Neither loss came from ion struggles.  One was the Fed A one I mentioned earlier, and more recently I got Engi B'd within a few jumps in sector 1 (before even 50 scrap for 2nd shield layer got weapons hit --> shields hit --> system fail cascade).

With that dumpster fire out of the way, in 2nd attempt I managed to not die for a few jumps, bail some water out of the ship (sold drones for shields 4), and get Engi B out of sector 1.  From there, I bought IB 2 in sector 2, then hacking.  This run sucked.  I killed 45 ships on 98 jumps and got 1568 scrap for that.  Unsurprisingly, terrible income = late upgrades to shields and evasion, but I mostly avoided bad damage.  Mostly, because in one fight vs zoltans I made the mistake of shooting their shields with heavy laser, prompting 2 zoltans to fix it (blocking ionization completely!).  AI will never do this by default, so I basically FORCED it to wall me .  What a choke...at least it didn't cost me the game.

The other ion-heavy run was Lanius A.  Bought IB1 early, got a pike drop, easily saved up enough for cloaking by mid sectors, and ran charge laser + ion stunner + IB1 + pike until sector 7, where I traded out charge laser for ion charger just before sector 8.  Recalling the discussion here about preventing damage with ion play, I went back and watched my footage on this run.  From the start of sector 6 until meeting the rebel flagship, this ship took 0 damage.

Here are the two final builds:

- https://i.imgur.com/XNfaAxt.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/P2pIaYt.jpg

Both of these merit some micro discussion:

Lanius A:

• Most fights go 3 ion hits, then fire chain laser as 4th ion is firing, MC piloting, pike beam piloting + weapons + anything else you can.  Pike + possible chain laser hit + possible ion hit cripple weapons. Ions tend to stop missing due to the damage.
  
• Since we have MC for the evasion debuff both hacking and cloaking can be used defensively.
  
• Enemy cloaking was hacked in two cases.  I'm not sure I saw a dd2 in this run, but those can also be hacked.  Vs most stuff cloak/hacking weapons makes you immune to damage if necessary though so we only need this rarely (hacking is not consistently needed).
  
• Took an unnecessary hit from missiles before jumping out of a weapons hack in 1st phase of flagship.  When I returned it hacked clone bay and the ensuing fights were a joke.  1767 scrap on 102 beacons.
  
• Not only did I not take damage until the flagship over the last 3 sectors, this run literally never dropped out of green health...that's about as solid as you can ask for on hard.
  

But Lanius A is a high tier ship that starts with the best system in the game (more than offsetting its otherwise mediocre/average starting weaponry), so let's look at the other end of the spectrum for micro:

Engi B:

• Most fights go "aim IB2 and heavy ion at weapons", then heavy laser weapons once shields are down. 
  
• Unfortunately with bad shields/evasion due to poor scrap, I had to use tier 2 hack on weapons frequently.
  
• Once weapons are hit, allow 1-2 more ion shots on them and switch ion shots to piloting.
  
• While more shield layers take longer to go down, the requisite ion buildup also lasts a long time once they are.  Heavy laser gets multiple shots...typically thrown on weapons, shields, or piloting.  Again, do not shoot shields vs zoltans ffs .
  
• By hitting piloting, we accept that cascade on shields resets, but also ensure it's easily stripped.  Weapons are almost never a threat after that first hit.  With cloaking, remove that "almost".
  
• I did encounter dd2 + 3 shield layers + dangerous weapons in this run.  I hacked drone control in that fight, and didn't let it or weapons come back.
  
• Late in the game I told the stream I'd win for sure if I got cloaking.  Then I got cloaking ^_^.  One of the handful of reddit posters who wins on hard routinely said I was weak to ships that run away, but while a few tried none ever escaped.
  
• After farming this poor bucket up to shields 8 in sector 8 I simply cloak/hacked missiles in every phase, aimed ions at piloting, and shot out RFS cloaking (phase 1), drones (phase 2), and MC/lasers (phase 3), taking 0 damage until phase 3.
  
• Does anybody know why sometimes RFS crew doesn't board in phase 3?  I was prepared to jump away, but they just stayed put.  This happened in my Zoltan A run too.  The only common factors between the two is that I got sub-1600 scrap and don't think I killed any RFS crew in phases 1 or 2.  Neither of these seem to predict "no boarding" in phase 3 consistently.
  

To me the main takeaway from this is that good systems are a dominant consideration in FTL, and micromanagement/decision making are more predictive of success than having top tier weaponry.  If we're measuring how effective something is by how consistently it avoids damage in random encounters and wins the game, ions are fine to keep on hand throughout the game.  These are among the more dominant wins in my series so far, but that's more an advertisement for how good cloaking + hacking are than it is support for ions.

Which means if you can safely use ions to save for these systems, prioritize doing so!

[Mardoc]

Finally got some footage using ions more than just early game Engi A.  Going through each ship for a win on hard in this series, so far I have 11 wins, 2 losses.  

Can you give a link to your channel? Sounds fun to watch, at least if you're saving the streams rather than only broadcasting live.

[TheMeInTeam]

Finally got some footage using ions more than just early game Engi A.  Going through each ship for a win on hard in this series, so far I have 11 wins, 2 losses.  

Can you give a link to your channel?  Sounds fun to watch, at least if you're saving the streams rather than only broadcasting live.

I forget offhand whether I'm using an "I" or a lowercase "L" for Twitch, but it's otherwise my username here.  I'll edit in which it is later. Edit: https://www.twitch.tv/themeinteam

Since these are all recent, even the non-highlighted ones should still be available.

[Fenn]

Thanks to these posts I started up FTL again after a long break. Jumped back into Hard difficulty, with Zoltan A so I wouldn't have too tough a time. Surprisingly I ended up winning on the first try! The first sector saw plenty of scrap, enough to buy the second shield bubble and an Auto-Reloader from a store - no weapons for sale there. Sector 2 saw a Hull Laser II drop from a fight, and from there things kept getting better; adding a Flak I from a later store in Sector 3 gave me an endgame-ready setup then and there...once I had enough weapons power to run them all.

I had my biggest scare at the start of Sector 4, when while saving scrap for a store I ran up against a Slug cruiser with three shield bubbles, a Charge II laser, Ion Blast, Mind Control - and crucially, two Engi crewmembers. At this point I could only run two of the Halberd Beam/Hull II/Flak trio, and that meant I couldn't quite get any damage to stick between dodges and the Engis repairing everything. Took at least ten damage chipping away at them before they ran away. I wised up and upgraded weapons after that, and the difference was immediate: enemy ships just melted away; hardly anything was a threat past the first volley for quite awhile.

In Sector 5, I had a chance to purchase an Ion Blast I to fill out the last weapon slot, but considering the 100 scrap cost of upgrading Weapons to Level 8 I passed on it. Instead I took advantage of the 20-odd drones in storage and bought Hacking, and then picked up a second Automated Reloader. Without having Cloaking I usually hacked enemy Piloting to ensure everything hit - by the time the Zoltan shield came down the enemy was usually past doing damage. The one exception was ships with attack drones. Sector 7 saw the ship hit Level 8 shields and one last purchase of Mind Control to round things out. Then it was on to the flagship, still rocking the same weapon combo from Sector 3 - apart from that one Ion Blast I hadn't seen anything potentially worth buying.

Fortunately that loadout was more than enough. The first phase saw some damage when the missile launcher got a second volley off, but otherwise the final battle was just about perfect. Hack piloting, fire everything at shields/missile launcher, win. Even phase 3 didn't last too long - for once the Flak launcher having a much shorter cooldown than the other two weapons came in handy.

Thanks for the interesting discussion guys! This game is a lot of fun even with all of the time I've put in it. And I still haven't touched any of the big mods out there.

[TheMeInTeam]

A lot of the mods seem to like adding variance without much extra decision making. Some of the ship mods can be interesting though, as long as they're not super strong.

With your setup I wouldn't buy IB1 either, definitely just fish for systems over weapons 8. Usually purchase preference is shields 2 > good systems > weapons > augments > crew, though some ships have exceptions. If your weapons are able to consistently break enemy's ability to damage you then support systems are the most useful pickups. Especially because picking up systems early depollutes the pool in the future, so you have more chances of getting what you want (battery in particular is a good purchase for this reason).

I'd imagine hacked shields --> halberd piloting/shields/missiles would be the way to go with mind control vs flagship and your weapons. Halberd doing damage to piloting + MC would set evasion to 0 until another crew goes in there, which will take time with hacked shields door block. Between halberd and hull laser you'd have 4 damage on missiles to break them with door block from shields towards that too. Flak can just be thrown on shields so that they take 5 damage (halberd + flak), leaving 2 layers, clumped enemies, and a lot of chaos.

With some other setups I do indeed prefer to hack piloting since MC can't guarantee 0 evasion w/o halberd beam and can still be used to block repairs on missiles. With cloaking + hacking I nearly always hack missiles because the ability to completely ignore that system changes the dynamic of the RFS fight so much.

[Fenn]

You're right that hacking Shields would have been the better option. I confess I don't tend to consider that route against 4 shield layers without Level 3 Hacking which I was just short of buying, and with how well the fight went there wasn't much call to reconsider my strategy.

I've yet to win on Hard with every ship. I might try and do that, even with the prospect of Fed C lurking in the background. What were they thinking with that ship?

[TheMeInTeam]

You're right that hacking Shields would have been the better option. I confess I don't tend to consider that route against 4 shield layers without Level 3 Hacking which I was just short of buying, and with how well the fight went there wasn't much call to reconsider my strategy.

I've yet to win on Hard with every ship. I might try and do that, even with the prospect of Fed C lurking in the background. What were they thinking with that ship?

Fed C is rough, but I still consider Engi B and Stealth B worse on hard.  Flak arty is a bit better as a gunship transition than arty beam and having multiple systems that contribute to offense early means you have less chance of just straight up dying to something in one encounter (a real problem for Engi B and Stealth B).  Basically, you're not a total sitting duck with no counterplay no matter what you do if something unfortunate hits weapons/shields repeatedly before you farm 50 scrap, and at least your boarding offense isn't slower to get onto enemy ships than most sector 1 enemy weapons.  These don't make Fed C good or even average, but they're just enough to keep it from being the worst ship outright.

It's still pretty miserable though.  Against medbays you're stuck loading up all 4 crew into their ship with lots of micro to bait prioritization of defending shields (while you break medbay) or just waiting for flak arty...if target has a missile or you're not on 2 shield layers yet this is awful.  Zoltan shield enemies take ages to kill.  This was my last run with it https://i.imgur.com/guoRkOQ.jpg.  The flak artillery is a bit cheaper than the top level weapons upgrades, so there's that.  I'd still rather not have it, even starting with MC would be preferable.  As for final system on this ship, I advocate hacking because it has both offensive and defensive utility as needed.  With any other system you need good weapons to support boarding, especially vs flagship.  After hacking, cloaking > MC = drones (depends on weapon specifics).

On the bright side, other than the Zoltan ships this one is the only ship that can put 2 zoltans in shields to block ions, so that's a small help and it means that if you don't get shanked in the first two sectors you'll have a little extra power to play with.  I don't like boarding with them in first wave, though they can go 2nd wave if it helps end the fight.