FTL - Faster Than Light

[jez9999]

For cloaking on flagship phase 3 - what you want to do is trigger cloaking a little early relative to the first laser surge, so it ends as quickly as possible after the surge passes, so that its cooldown can recycle just before the second surge impacts.  (DON'T cloak the first missile volley on phase 3, cloaking the laser surge is more important.)  Also, the fourth shield layer and engines 6-8 do help noticeably against the surge, although those are expensive of course.

Yeah, I think I did cloak their first missile volley which prevented me cloaking the first surge. What do you do if that volley takes out your cloaking system then? lol

Have you learned about milking enemy ships for skill training?  Find an enemy ship that has no way of penetrating your shields - most typically this happens in sector 1 or 2 after you upgrade to two shield bubbles, when you find an enemy ship with no more than a two-shot laser and no missiles or beams.  When you find this setup, you can sit idle as long as you like until your pilot and engines guy both reach max evasion skill.  You can also get skill in shields and weapons with this - set one weak weapon to autofire if it won't ever break through and damage the target.  Opinions vary on the legitimacy of this tactic, but I've always used it.

Yep, I read about this quite early. Pretty much always get my guys trained up to gold standard.

[T-hawk]

The answer is to have cloaking upgraded to level 2 before the flagship (you should do that as soon as you can anyway after buying cloaking), so a 1-damage missile hit doesn't break it. Level 2 cloaking is really great in most fights, but against flagship phase three you only need 1 level worth - you want it to recycle faster to dodge the laser surges (they aren't delayed while you're cloaked, unlike regular weapons), so the extra level now acts as a buffer against damage.

[jez9999]

Is there ever a reason to upgrade to level 3 cloaking?

[jez9999]

Had another successful run on normal difficulty with The Nesasio; 34 ships defeated, 95 beacons, 1864 scrap, 9 crew hired. Less scrap because I was avoiding all beacons with environmental hazards to get that achievement. I think I discovered another little trick; the defense drone doesn't shoot down hacking claws with 100% reliability, so on ships that fire many of them (basically the first boss fight), look at where the claw is heading and if it's heading for a minor system, let it attach by powering down the defense drone. Need to experiment more with this to see how viable it is, but although I fielded a defense drone, their 5th hacking claw attached... to my piloting system. Which regularly screwed my evasion up majorly. Still managed to survive though, but it is a major disadvantage. I should probably have let one come in and attach to sensors or (ideally) doors.

[T-hawk]

Sure, level 3 cloaking is even better than level 2, although it's more expensive and it's harder to find yet another power bar to allocate to it. I usually prioritize it sometime after weapons 6-8 as required by what I've got, shields 6 (3 bubbles), engines 5, hacking 3, doors 3 (that's more important for flagship phase 3.)

Yes, micromanaging to let a harmless hacking drone through is a strategy too. The skill ceiling for this game is so high, always more tricks to do and discover, and that's why we love it so much.

FYI, we usually call the ships by the designations like "Stealth A" or whatever - it seems easier to remember which ship is which by those names, I'm actually not sure offhand which one is the Nesasio.

[jez9999]

The Nesasio is indeed Stealth A.

The reason I asked about stealth level 3 is that level 1 seems to be long enough to dodge a projectile volley, level 2 seems to be long enough to allow a long-charging weapon to charge, but I don't really see the benefit in cloaking even longer. Allowing a super-long-charging weapon to fully charge?

[Jabah]

I would say level 3 cloaking is more an insurance/damage control against (un)lucky damage from missiles and/or boarders depending on your configuration, especially against flagship.

Small tip that I couldn't find in T-hawk or Sullla writing (afair) is that I found defensive drone to be also quite efficient to gain time versus hacking drone and boarding drones from Flagship where you will obviously need to power and use a def drone anyway, so I will leave it on until hacking/boarding manage to go through (it will at some point, and then I micromanage on/off the def drone).

[T-hawk]

Yeah, cloaking level 3 helps for slower weapons, most notably the Glaive Beam and Flak 2, also the 19-second Burst 3 or 20-second 4-shot charge laser. It also helps buy time for other situations - fighting boarders or fires, or waiting out ion damage, or doing repairs, or charging FTL to run away. One particular use of max cloaking is in a fight with an ASB - you can often cloak against an early enemy missile and stay cloaked until the ASB fires as well. That said, cloaking 3 isn't a high priority; it tends to come in sometime around your 24th or 25th power bar after near-max weapons and shields and engines and hacking.

Yeah Jabah, I'll let a defense drone shoot down boarding and hacking drones too. Although there are some cases where you want to be careful about that - notably the Federation ships have the weapon room in a bad place, all the way at the end of a long ship, so that the defense drone will often be too far away to hit a weapons-hacking drone fast enough - so if you just leave the defense drone on and shooting, it's likely to shoot down other drones and then miss the one that's targeting weapons.

[jez9999]

Just played a game through with the Zoltan Cruiser A. Mental note: pay attention to your own advice. I had a hull breach laser with a couple of shots, a Halberd beam, and a breach missile I spend half the game spending money to upgrade the weapons system for. Utterly dreadful strategy, because I didn't have at least 2 reliable shield-busting weapons, and the breach missile missed a ton of times in the late game. In fact I'm thinking that missiles in general aren't very useful in the late game because of their capacity to miss. I ran from several fights in sector 6, and in the middle of a fight with a rebel ship where I was taking heavy damage, I just gave up.

I think the trouble is that in a past game, I had had a breach bomb and it had been very useful, so I assumed this missile would be equally so. But it wasn't.

Missiles: ok in the early game, dreadful in the late game, probably worthless, actually. And why do I have this obsession with finding a powerful weapon and spending half the game building up my weapons system to power it? Grrrrr...

[T-hawk]

Breach Bomb II is very good because it's 2 power. Breach Missile is bad because it's 3 power. That difference is hugely significant. Also the breach missile can be shot down by defense drones, and it's also four seconds slower. (The miss rate is the same, for them and for everything except a beam.)

Missiles are generally bad, but mostly because the damage/power stats on each of them isn't good enough. The exception is the 1-power 2-damage Artemis that some ships start with, and that's pretty decently usable, at least as long as the ammo lasts (and you really don't want to waste scrap on buying more ammo.)

Missiles are good for the computer ships because they don't have to worry about attrition or affording ammo, and because they're not smart enough to focus a burst of projectiles to pop the shields, like we human players can do with a better loadout of bursts and beams.