FTL - a streak attempt

[thrawn]

KC - Sector 7

Beacon 1 (83)



Collect scrap with the LRS and look for the store/s. We are good for the flagship with what we have but a halbert or a BL2 or even just an offensive drone would be a nice addition, and a drone recovery arm would be great too.



I upgrade to hacking-3 because this will allow the flak and the lasers to hit a second time during a long evasion hack and prior to a second cloak. I also add a power bar to be able to use the full hack together with full engines and the cloak, but otherwise will save for the store.


Beacon 2 (84)



A good demo for our long evasion hack together with the automated reloader. Hack initiated just as the flak projectiles are about to hit their shields.



Our weapons hit again before the hack is over and they are dead in the water.

Their missile fired but we cloaked it, and since the cloak gave us a 5 second lead on the recharge it didn't get to fire again.



Going to skip the asteroid fight to have enough time to visit a potential store at the yellow arrow beacon. Fights are good but it's important not to compromise store visits and this one is even more dangerous than usual with our very low power level.


Beacon 5 (87)



Great - this will help a lot for the flagship's zoltan shield in stage 3.


Beacon 8 (90)



Instead of trying to damage their weapons, it's possible to also go straight for the kill. The hull beam will deal 8 damage and the lasers will do 4 to shields. Then on the second volley they'll do 6 more while the ship will have only 5 hull left.


Beacon 9 (91)



Nothing good in the store. Could have had at least have more drone parts, now I'll buy just the two.


Beacon 12 (94)



The usual long hack evasion, fire into weapons, cloak, fire again.



Got a laser charger from the fight but is it worth spending 200+ scrap to replace the dual laser? It might because of the flexibility to fire it faster, but I'll wait until the end to see.


Beacon X (exit dive)



And we are at the final sector.

KC - Sector 8

Beacon 1 (96)



I'll head for the repair beacons because it would be very good to have a few extra drone parts.


Beacon 4 (99)



Tried to crew kill with the fire drone but it didn't work out.


Beacon 5 (100)



The boarding drone is annoying when you have a clone bay and can't heal without losing xp, but they'll be dead before it can cause damage.


Beacon 6 (101)



We are ready to face the flagship so it's time to spend the rest of the cash. I decide to honour the dual laser which got us through the entire game and will keep it over the laser charger, but I upgrade to weapons-7 so nothing goes offline even if we take damage in weapons.

KC - Flagship

Stage 1

Forgot to take starting screenshot but my idea was to use the fire drone to thin out their crew for stage 3, and with the first volley I took the missiles out, did 4 damage to shields, and the fire drone started a fire in hacking.



I waited with the second volley until they come out of cloak. This time I'll first fire the flak and then use the hack to just prevent the shield from recharging. This should give the fire drone the full 10 seconds to do something so let's hope it does better this time.



Not really. I'll just finish them off.


Stage 2



Stage 2 is not a time to fool around. Hack shields and throw everything at it.

Note that this time I'll use the beam to target piloting and shields, but will otherwise go for hull damage and not care about the missiles - this is because they won't fire more than once before they are dead.



They are down to one bubble. We are bound to break it with the next volley and the hull beam will finish the job.



Cloaking missiles. Flak is away and the hull beam is almost recharged.



And it is done before the drone surge alert.


Stage 3



They mind controlled weapons. I'll vent to move him out of the room and then will put the engi there.



First actual use of the defence drone and it hit the missile, but the missile had missed already.



Actually all 3 missiles missed. The defence drone fired at another right after the screenshot but missed this time.



My volleys also keep missing. So far I've sent 14 projectile's worth of damage and I think only 3 hit and the rest is from the beam and the drone.



The zoltan shield is down as we cloak the second missile volley and the first surge.



They are firing missiles for the third time but their shields are destroyed and the hull beam will finish them off in a couple of seconds. The poor engi is suffocating but the boarders were trying to break into weapons and I had to get them off his back.



Hull beam fires and they are dead before the third missiles reach us.

KC - Final ship and stats

Heading into stage 3



Upgrades



Inventory



Stats



Scrap and item summary. The systems bought were:

• Hacking - sector 4
  
• Cloaking - sector 6
  
• Drone control with DD1 - sector 7
  

[T-hawk]

T-Hawk, I fired up FTL as well based on this thread. Granted this is in lowly Normal, but I got good RNG with a sector 2 pre-igniter. Question: with a loadout of BL1, HL1, HL1, and Halberd Beam was it the right call to replace the BL1 with a Flak 2? I did, and it made the first shot devastating, but it also put me on a 20-second cycle after that versus an 8 second cycle shooting four projectiles while waiting for the Halberd.

Yes. That first shot being devastating overrides everything else. Who cares about a 20 second cycle (and cloaking should get you there anyway), that first shot should have wrecked weapons and/or drones so they'll never hurt you. The critical metric is essentially always "time until no further damage taken" and that loadout makes it almost instant.

Super pro tip with that loadout: when the shield drops from the flak (actually an instant before that as the beam takes about a quarter-second to start), fire the Halberd at piloting so that all the flak projectiles will hit by the time they make it to the ship body.

T-Hawk, let's say you are in a run where you have a halbert and hacking/cloaking/drone control with a defence drone. What other weapons and drone/s do you try complement this with and what do you do tactically - i.e. what would you hack and where would you aim the halbert and the weapons?

Pair the halberd with anything that can drop the shields. Flak 2 is best, Burst 3 (5 shots) is actually very good, other than that just get the best ratio of projectiles to weapon power. One ion shot counts because it will hit one shield bubble, but not more than that.

There is also the possibility of a two-beam loadout, which is entirely reliant on hacking shields (and the depower trick to get past a defense drone), but once you know you have enough drone parts to do that in every fight all the way, two Halberds is the absolute best weapon loadout.

Almost always aim at weapons. Occasionally drones if that seems more dangerous. Plus of course whatever else happens to be in the beam's path. Hacking is situational. Against the flagship, almost always shields, largely because the doors to the shield room block the crew from getting to all sorts of repairs, and also often you can concentrate enough fire on the shields room to kill crew there. Against regular ships, hack weapons probably most often, sometimes shields, sometimes evasion.

Drones rarely matter for offense. Besides a defense drone, I'll usually keep a system repair drone on hand if I get one. The one other bit that matters is keeping a beam drone on hand specifically for the flagship's super shield in phase 3.

Also I have to finally call you out on this, the spelling in English is Halberd not Halbert

[MJW (ya that one)]

thrawn what do you think is the worst ship for this challenge?

[sunrise089]

Thank you T-Hawk!

Your super pro tip might be too pro for me Does weapon evasion check separately for shields and hull? What happens, the projectiles hit the shield simultaneously but only the number needed to take down shields are ‘used up’ and then the remainder progress to the ship?

[T-hawk]

Does weapon evasion check separately for shields and hull? What happens, the projectiles hit the shield simultaneously but only the number needed to take down shields are ‘used up’ and then the remainder progress to the ship?

That's correct. (And not quite exactly simultaneously, they're offset by a tiny fraction of a second, like a frame or two.)

[darrelljs]

Does weapon evasion check separately for shields and hull? What happens, the projectiles hit the shield simultaneously but only the number needed to take down shields are ‘used up’ and then the remainder progress to the ship?

That's correct.  (And not quite exactly simultaneously, they're offset by a tiny fraction of a second, like a frame or two.)

Let me test my understanding of the mechanics with an example.  You have 12 shots incoming at 50% odds to hit, 2 shield levels and a dodge of 50%.

Scenario #1 (shields before dodge) - Half of the first 4 shots hit your shield, 8 get through, half are evaded, and you take 4 hits.
Scenario #2 (dodge before shields) - Half the 12 shots are evaded, 6 get through, half hit your shield, you take 1 hit.

I thought the game worked like scenario #2, but you are telling me it works like scenario #1?  That sucks, and is counter intuitive.  It's not like the pilot is waiting for shots to get to the shield to start dodging .

Darrell

[T-hawk]

Yes, it works like scenario 1. Yes, the pilot waits for shots to get to the shield to start dodging.

There is no separate "50% odds to hit" and "dodge of 50%". Shots don't have any odds to hit, it's not like a D&D attack roll. There is only one miss chance and that is the target's evasion %.

That one check is made, if any shield bubble is up, when the projectile reaches the shield; or if all shield bubbles are down, when the projectile reaches the ship body. If a missile passes the shield and you don't get a "miss" popup, it has already been guaranteed to hit. Expert play can take advantage of that time window before the missile hits - you can start moving somebody to the room where it will hit to get repairs started, or even jump away. That last happens often when you kill an enemy ship while its missile is in flight, your FTL is enabled immediately after and you can jump before that missile hits you.

[thrawn]

KC - Summary

First brush with death.



Another ship that took 12 damage.



The final loadout was ready in sector 5 after buying the flak.



The reloader worked out really well because the flak/lasers could hit twice during a evasion hack. I even almost bought a second reloader that would have made even the hull beam able to strike twice within that window and before an enemy can recloak (including the flagship).



This game I got drone control instead of mind control because it was late in sector 6 and it was possible that I don't find any system in sector 7. The defence drone did not have an opportunity to save us any damage but a fire drone helped go through the flagship's zoltan shield faster which was very helpful.



The flagship died without causing any damage.

[thrawn]

thrawn what do you think is the worst ship for this challenge?

Hard to compete with Stealth B here.

It's always interesting to see how different players approach their scrap spending. It's still baffling to me that you consistently refrain from upgrading engines and are running on Level 2 engines far into the game. The first few upgrades there are extremely cheap (15 scrap for Level 3!) and provide excellent value against the inevitable enemy missiles and bombs. I also would not spend 70 scrap on the Hull Laser (not one of my favorite weapons to begin with) when the Kestrel C already had Dual Lasers, a Heavy Laser, and Ion Stunner, a Hull Laser, and Level 3 weapons. The ship already had 6 solid weapons on board and needed multiple Weapon upgrades just to use what was sitting there unused in the hull! Paying another 70 scrap on top of that for a weapon that couldn't even be used yet is the kind of luxury that kills off runs with bad RNG, at least in my experience. Surely a Drone Control system is better there if it comes with a Defensive drone? Almost the same cost and absolutely lifesaving against many, many enemy ship designs.

Just reread this when I was compiling the summary and I realised you meant the hull beam rather than laser. I always like to have a beam weapon - halberd is king but pike/hull/mini are all good. The first thing is that they can help keep escaping ships from running by damaging multiple systems and pulling the pilot to repair. Also when hacking shields if the beam opens in piloting, this can greatly improve the projectiles' chance to hit and often you can take out all dangerous weapons with the first volley. And the hull beam is especially good against the flagship and will usually kill on the second swipe.

Re sitting unused I like to buy all my final-worthy weapons asap and if they can't be used immediately it's the lesser evil than not being able to find any weapon later. Sometimes the scrap has to be used for something else but in general I'm happy to run on low engines, shields and power for a while if I have good weapons.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Sullla's tier list only ranks Stealth B as the 6th worst ship. But this is not a contradiction as the first sentence says that it is the most RNG dependent ship in the game. RNG is the biggest nemesis in a run like this.