FTL - Faster Than Light

[T-hawk]

the prospect of Fed C lurking in the background. What were they thinking with that ship?

Fed C is two different ships glued together.  You're supposed to use boarding with the two Zoltan crew for their death bombs then bring them back with the clone bay.  But Zoltan C already had a different gimmick, so this one had to go on a Federation ship as the only other option that could justify starting with two Zoltan crew.  That explains the boarding part, and then the arty flak is a twist on the original arty beam since that's the Fed ship's trademark.  But those two angles have nothing to do with each other.

Fed C is really Zoltan D plus a twist on the arty beam inherited from the Fed series.

Agreed that it's not the bottom and that Engi B and Stealth B are worse for loss rate.  Fed C may spend the most time in losing runs (and people will intuitively judge like that) since the former lose quickly but Fed C loses through long attrition.

[TheMeInTeam]

After 15 games I finally get a no-damage flagship fight in stream series https://i.imgur.com/dxrYICd.jpg

Weapon setup was very similar to Lanius A run, but this time I had a Zoltan shield, two auto reloaders (2.4 ion damage/second) and some lucky dodges in phase 3. 3 shield ships melt to this because you only need to hit 3 ion shots before lobbing laser into shields/weapons timed to let 1-2 ions also hit weapons...but you have time to fire ~ six ion shots before halberd (or pike, before I got halberd free).

I was happy to pay the extra to equip halberd over pike...guaranteed disable on RFS cloaking/other problematic systems after only a fraction of ions hit is very useful.

This ship still doesn't reach Zoltan A tier though due to needing to fish out 100+ scrap to power tier 1 shielding. Fantastic as Zoltan shields are early on, one bad encounter with asteroid field or even just an unlucky offensive drone encounter can end the run. That penalty to win consistency has to push it down a bit...~140 scrap is non-trivial to attain right away on hard.

[antisocialmunky]

Has anyone researched this thing?  Seems like another one of those 'FTL but better....' games that promises a lot and has a flashy trailer.  I want to believe, but I've been screwed on more than one of those.  Atleast this one has a demo and seems pretty well put together unlike the last few I've seen.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/139...n=68a88e57

[Employee 427]

I forgot I ever replied to this thread! Although I'm not playing as much FTL as I was when I commented, my opinions have changed drastically, and I did make my own tier list here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comment...ection_of/

[RFS-81]

Has anyone researched this thing?  Seems like another one of those 'FTL but better....' games that promises a lot and has a flashy trailer.  I want to believe, but I've been screwed on more than one of those.  Atleast this one has a demo and seems pretty well put together unlike the last few I've seen.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/139...n=68a88e57

I played the demo but didn't finish it. This feels much more like a traditional space-sim than FTL, though you have some choose-your-own adventure sections when boarding derelict ships or stations. It was...ok. Looting enemy ships after combat was a pain, getting into docking zones can be tedious. The part of the game in the demo seems very story-focused, and I don't see that meshing well with the roguelike aspect. If I lose once, do I have to restart the whole story at the beginning?

Just a heads-up if you're going to play the demo: There's no save/load system yet, so plan in some time. I thought that the game would save on exit, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[darrelljs]

Yeah.

Darrell

[T-hawk]

Nah, that's not so great, those other two slots could both have Automated Re-loaders.  

[darrelljs]

Well I’m only in sector 4 .

Darrell

[darrelljs]

The next store I visited:



What a waste!

Darrell

[TheMeInTeam]

Freaking Lanius B .  You don't need the help on it but with boarding rewards you're probably going to get it anyway.

Erasing enemy weapons before they can fire in nearly every fight always feels good.

I forgot I ever replied to this thread! Although I'm not playing as much FTL as I was when I commented, my opinions have changed drastically, and I did make my own tier list here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comment...ection_of/

Noticed this pretty late, a few comments:

• Mantis C is way too low, if this is a "tier list by winrate under optimal play on hard".  Sulla has it too low also.  This is easily a top 10 ship and could be top 5.  I could get rating it lower on preference though.  The micro is annoying, especially the practice required before you can consistently hit enemies with stun bombs but not own crew.  Once you can do this however you have a versatile ship that can trivially lock enemies out of weapons (if crew is in there, you can bait it out) while you beat them down, stun 2-3 enemies and get free hits, and easily scale into mid sectors since additional crew + lockdown bomb (coupled with getting AI to pull piloting) mirrors the lockdown ability from Crystal B at the cost of a missile.  It even lacks the usual problem of AI scouts for boarding ships since you can just break weapons and rely on clone bay.
  
  
• Stealth A is a little too high, Stealth B is way too high.  The reality in FTL is that you can win the vast majority of runs with any ship.  Stealth B is the most RNG-dependent on hard, too many potentially bad matchups with enemy drones/minibeams early.  Even with oxygen manipulation (alters AI targeting algorithm away from weapons/cloaking on hard) and zoltan power stealing, it is more likely than any other ship to die to pure RNG.  Except below hard, where you can get cloak 3 faster and Rock A's missile count can screw you regardless of scrap w/o store luck.
  
  
• Torus suffers a bit from the usual ion hate.  IB2 fired on weapons is one of the fastest sectors 1-2 weapon interrupts in FTL (8s for two shots, before crew modifiers), power/depower combat drone so it's hitting during the open window is pretty trivial.  I'd not put it much higher though, the upper tier ships are really good.
  
  
• Lanius A is being underrated.  Yes, chain laser is mediocre and a single ion stunner isn't impressive.  But it starts with the strongest system in the game and can easily build into an ion ship, laser ship, boarding ship, etc seamlessly.  Should be ahead of Kestrel/Fed A for example.  BL2 is a superior weapon (best in the game IMO) but good systems + micro > top tier weapons in FTL, and Lanius A has the best system guaranteed before you move.  Too many flaws to reach the top but easily top 10.
  
  
• Crystal A synergy with most weapons is fine.  It's only bad with beams.  Your placement of it overall is okay in my book though.  Crew TP can make it legit good but in the early sectors you have no guarantee of that, plus slow weapons w/o compensatory systems and that hurts, because early sectors are where most losses to RNG can manifest.
  
  
• Stormwalker is like Mantis C in that it's a micro test ship.  It's not as good, but if you're mindful of things like moving crew to temporarily make enemy pilot move (drastically increasing hit chance for healing bomb) or have the timing required to hit enemy crew but not your own with missiles this becomes an average ship.  Yet another one that could very understandably have wide gap between "tier" and "preference" when it comes to ships.  Precision micro can get tiresome, plus this one does actually have some bad early matchups, scouts really lay into the missile supply for example but can still be worth fighting for 2x rewards and such.