FTL - Faster Than Light

[El Grillo]

Very informative talk, the studio also recently released details of their new game: http://store.steampowered.com/app/590380/

[Dp101]

Very informative talk, the studio also recently released details of their new game: http://store.steampowered.com/app/590380/

That sounds amazing, I am so ready.

[greenline]

Very informative talk, the studio also recently released details of their new game: http://store.steampowered.com/app/590380/

Not digging the isometric thing they have going on there. Or the mechaesthetic

[greenline]

So there's a bunch of people diving deep in the code for the game for a mod and they've been finding interesting things. For example, on Hard, system targeting for each shot aimed at your ship is as follows:

Hard: 25% to target a system, 50% to target any random room, and 25% to target something you probably do not want them to target.

where the 'probably do not want them to target system is:

weapons: ?
drones: ?
shields: ?
artillery: 4 seconds? from firing
doors: any fires on player ship
oxygen: oxygen percentage < 50%
engines and piloting: total dodge factor > 25%
cloaking: usable
clone bay: crew being cloned
mind control: any enemy crew being mind controlled
hacking: enemy being hacked

apparentely the devs planned out those clone bay missile disasters in advance 
https://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comment...me=ftlgame

[T-hawk]

Anyone still need to know anything about this game?  This handy flowchart should answer everything:

[Modo]

FTL looks like such a small yet deep game...until you post this circuit board of a flowchart and now it doesn't look so small anymore.
Thank you.

[Employee 427]

Anyone still need to know anything about this game?  

@T-Hawk, I'm no "arm-chair pilot" and I want to challenge your assertions.

The Lanius Boarding combo is just too good; you're seriously overstating how long the draining progress takes. I find that it's always finished by at least half-way through a fight, at which point it becomes a massive detriment to enemy crew and enables more fights to be won. The MC isn't incredibly useful, yes, but it allows a distraction while the Lanius drain, especially in larger rooms. Fact is Lanius boarding crews can single-handedly wipe out a ship or, failing that, render its weapon bay completely inoperable. That isn't even mentioning how ludicrously efficient the Adv Flak is in any loadout.

The Federation Cruiser is strong because both variants begin with efficient laser weapons that can be easily added on with pretty much anything. Beyond this, the Artillery Beam is stronger than you give it credit for. It's not something to be relied upon, but it makes good supplement damage for the price, and can shut down difficult fights before they have time to really dig in to your hull without the scrap loss of fleeing. It's also invaluable against the Flagship because it means you can focus on defensive ability and shutting down the Artillery Missiles without worrying about hull damage.

The Zoltan A is mildly hampered by its wholly disastrous layout. One unlucky shot or beam-in to any key system can heavily impede or even shutdown your offensive and defensive capabilities, and you have to evacuate the entire crew from that area to vent it. The ship also suffers if you can't quickly find complementary weapons or at least hacking.

The Zoltan C is one of my very favorite ships, and a damn good one in its own right. If anything the "armchair pilots" are the ones who think this ship is bad, without really taking it for a spin. The thing is actually just a Zoltan B in disguise, if not better! Since you'll be keeping the shields offline most of the time and moving all your power into keeping the weapon and drone up, you won't need the Battery at all until they enemy launches their first volley (and by the time they break through the Zoltan shields, the fight is either won or heavily in your favor). The Ion Charge is one of the most effective stand-alone weapons in the game; it can break multiple shield bubbles for a very long time without the MKII's power gorging and inevitable chance to lose its chain. The beam drone is the perfect match for this and mows down early ships. The Zoltan C, like some other ship designs, relies on finishing fights quickly and decisively. Look how the beam drone accomplishes this beautifully: it deals fast damage, it often hits multiple times per cycle, and it never misses. You can even bypass the drone's start-up period by placing it at the edge of the enemy shield bubble, then reactivating it just as the Ion connects and downs their shields. The Zoltan C seems bad at first glance, but the lemon of a reactor is nullified by the offensive power and Zoltan shielding. It even has great vents placed specifically to protect the offensive systems. The ship is a blend of the Engi A, Zoltan B, and Stealth A designs all in one.

[TheMeInTeam]

It's strange to come into this now. I got into FTL as a result of reading about it on Sulla's site. Interesting writeups and I obviously learned a lot from them. After rookie jitters screwing my first run, I won my 2nd attempt on normal, and rarely lost doing victory laps to unlock all the ships on normal (including crystals from winning with all A/B variants). Some of the ship quests are pretty stupid (tactical approach, tough little ship, crystal quest line, intentionally spamming 2 or more missile weapons at dd1, etc) so I was happy to get these out of the way before hard.

I have an 80% winrate over past 20 games on hard now, and have come to agree with most of what I've seen here and disagree on a few things. Some points of divergence:

- Loot by sector: popular thinking was that you get more scrap from red sectors, but on Reddit someone actually tracked the scrap yield from sector type/number and it's not obvious that reds are actually better (and Zoltan sectors have a surprising number of battles for a green, more than some reds across that sampling IIRC). From my experience if you're hitting 100+ unique beacons per run on hard the vast majority of times you'll get 1650 or more scrap regardless of sector choice on hard, and that will consistently win if you spend it well (variance is pretty large too, I've had 6 green sector (one red between start and sector 8) runs where I had 2000 scrap in end screen on hard).

- I agree with Thawk that Mantis C is a top tier ship. I originally had it average, but given what you can do with boarding control I'd only give it such a grade in no-pause variants now. This thing has few bad early matchups and continues to scale well all game long.

- I disagree about Zoltan C - this is at least an average tier ship in my book. A lot of variance comes down to pushing zoltan into drones and not running the battery at all unless it looks like zoltan shields will be compromised. 90 scrap engines is a bit more than the drone control system usually costs, but this thing still has Zoltan shield. Affixing another weapon in addition to 2 power one doesn't cost much so this is sector 3 viable in < 200 scrap. You might lose to something like asteroids + offensive drone super early, but it's not alone in this regard and it scales pretty decently. Still the worst Zoltan ship and I agree that A is ridiculously good...especially if you can use the trick where you can double-tap one room with a single beam firing for 4 damage with halberd.

- Ions in general get too much hate, this weapon class is misunderstood both here and on reddit. For example, early game Engi A should not be shooting ions at shields, but rather at weapons, powering/depowering combat drone to get most out of the open shield windows. This is one of a handful of ships that can disrupt heavy laser/beam combos reliably. I consider it above average for its consistently solid early game, but not top tier.

After that, there are two uses for ions: 1 power to remove 1 shield, or sufficient throughput that you can break shields and hit weapons with them in < 15-20 seconds regardless of evasion. Here are two examples: average throughput, good systems https://i.imgur.com/JeGWJCv.jpg and excellent throughput https://i.imgur.com/kWXAojV.png. The latter can get crew kills. These setups remove the threat of enemy weapons at a speed similar to all but the best weapons in the game ( < 20s). Note I'm not targeting shields, with enough throughput piloting + weapons is better because target systems never lose ionization even for brief period shields are back and you can't miss. While I'd take 2x flak 1 and BL2 any day, runs are not always so generous. These setups both trivialized the flagship. Edit: against cloaking, just ionize it rather than oxygen and deploy an offensive drone.

- Fire weapons: drone is trash. The others are a replacement for boarding/crew kill and make most sense on 4 slot ships. Until very late game you can simply use them for more rewards in easier fights and use other weapons if you see something threatening. If you have good systems they can also crew kill flagship in phase 1, and RFS AI can't do anything about fires so it's really easy to burn out its missiles/shields in later phases then, but this is somewhat niche. Makes sense for something like cloaking + hacking + MC and fire bombs. Cloak/hack missiles phase 1, kill the crew, enjoy easy remaining phases.

- Federation anything - I agree with low placement for C, but even A is average at best, and only gets that due to BL 2 and nice crew. Arty beam is awful. No target control, slow, and worst of all it hogs a system slot where I'd even prefer MC or drones to it. I actually like Fed C's late game more than Fed A or B because flak arty at least syncs up with other weapons (not boarding though), but none of these are good ships and Fed C has some potential early fights that are awful to drag it down.

- For win consistency on hard, Lanius B is seriously a top tier ship. It isn't just the lanius boarders, it's that it starts with two systems and the most power-efficient weapon in the game. It has no bad early matchups, consistently pulls crew kills, scales up its weapons easily despite starting with 1 bar (getting 2nd weapon online is still cheaper than many ships), and needs very little beyond what it starts with to win outright. I'd still put Crystal B higher - cloak, 4 man TP, and crystal lockdown need even less help to win...but this is a top 5 ship easily.

- Stealth B is the worst ship in the game on hard, even more RNG than Rock A or Engi B. Fite me . I don't care how much you watch where the offensive drones aim, whether you're going into cloak 3 ASAP, or whatever. Bad RNG in earliest jumps can end the run and it happens more frequently than any other ship. There's also no ship in the game that needs more scrap help to become sector-3 viable (transition to 2 bubble enemies). Glaive vs 2 shields doesn't cut it, but attaching other weapon via buying weapon control 5/6 plus shields by itself costs more than you can reliably make before sector 3 on hard, and that's not counting cloak 3. Sulla talks about Zoltan C's scrap situation but it's a mere pothole compared to this! That one can make it into sector 3 with decent power, shields 2, two weapons, and an offensive drone for less scrap than you need to just utilize shields + 2nd weapon here.

- Below hard I'd instead set Rock A as worst, since you are only guaranteed 2-4 shops before you run out of missiles, and there are rare games where those shops offer no TP and no non-missile weapons. Game over.

[TankSinatra]

- For win consistency on hard, Lanius B is seriously a top tier ship.  It isn't just the lanius boarders, it's that it starts with two systems and the most power-efficient weapon in the game.  It has no bad early matchups, consistently pulls crew kills, scales up its weapons easily despite starting with 1 bar (getting 2nd weapon online is still cheaper than many ships), and needs very little beyond what it starts with to win outright.  I'd still put Crystal B higher - cloak, 4 man TP, and crystal lockdown need even less help to win...but this is a top 5 ship easily.

The Lanius B was underrated in this thread because people weren't using the mind control correctly. You teleport your Laniuses into shields. When an enemy arrives, you pause, MC the enemy, and send your boarders elsewhere. Since the AI prioritizes shields over anything else, they'll fight their own guy while your team can go bang on the weapons or medbay.

In general I don't think people were thinking enough about non-boarding crew kills. I rate the Slug A and C pretty high because they can almost always get biokills right from the start, and those early drops can really help you snowball.

Sullla's tier list faults the Rock B for being a boarding ship without a teleporter - that's not the only way to kill crew!

[TheMeInTeam]

Sulla did put Slug C 10th, and while I'd certainly drop Fed A below it you can kind of shuffle the rest of the stuff in that tier area. Starting with systems is valuable, and hacking is the best/most versatile in the game.

MC is weaker than cloaking or hacking but cheaper and doesn't consume resources in compensation. You can use it as boarding bait, but it's also useful to screw with evasion, deny repairs, or crew kill RFS by shooting into a crowd of enemies it causes in shields. Forcing a fight between two AI crew attempting to put out fires is great - they let it spread and take damage from it.

Most often with Lanius B you can board and fire flak while moving room to room - this causes AI crew to pull its pilot and tank evasion w/o MC. MC can be used to overwhelm defending crew depending on numbers from there or shield bait like you say. In most cases I'd fire flak at weapons or med bay, but you can use it to damage enemy crew also. Advance flak also allows for some pretty ridiculous damage output against 2-3 shield bubbles even with 4 power or less, so this often turns into a good gunship/boarding hybrid.

Rock B really is kind of bad, though obviously better than A. Without crew TP (can use micro tricks like above to screw evasion and bomb weapons, then stand in weapon room), fire bombs need a combination like cloaking + hacking + MC to be worth your time. Without those, they charge slowly, can miss, and many enemy crews will put out the fires between shots. The important thing in this game is to win without taking hull damage or losing crew, with killing enemy crew preferred but secondary. Fire bombs with that much support can burn out a hacked weapon room and MC the enemies to death as fire spreads, giving you good/consistent rewards without risk at the price of one missile. But Rock B doesn't start with any of that, and it's unusually vulnerable itself owing to no venting (unless you breach yourself ) + slow crew. The flexibility to transition to boarding or gunship (heavy pierce is decent as a follow-up weapon) + starting with vendor loot augment keep it out of the bottom tier, but Sulla's placement of it is fair IMO.