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FTL: The RNG is a cruel god

Melancholeric said:
Okay, maybe I should have elaborated - fucking Flagship is a shit that should have fucking died.

On my first, second and third attempt I couldn't even get through shields before it bulldozed me.

On my fourth attempt I disabled the weapons and shields with a fire bomb and Mind Control, but drones murdered me in second phase.

On my fifth attempt I started teleporting crew into weapon stations and hitting it with the Glaive, but it breached my shields and filled me with holes.

On my sixth attempt I hacked its shields and blasted with everything I got (kept Defense Scrambler all the way for Flagship fight) but boarding drone broke half the systems on my ship, killed most of my crew and left me a shattered husk in the third phase.
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Tip: Get engines. Like, I would consider good engines a higher priority than good shields actually (for the flag, shields are more valuable for normal encounters). That extra dodge chance can make a lot of difference, especially since it applies to missiles as well.
 
Arcus2611 said:
What? Outside of dumb accidents, the medbay is generally a much better option; it's rare that I get into a situation where I can't extract my teleporter team before they die even with a level 1 teleporter, and the clone bay all but guarantees that my teleporters are going to be suffering repeated deaths due to attrition, with the resultant experience loss (and god forbid the clone bay gets taken out of commission). As for the random events; a) I can always just choose the option that doesn't risk my crew or even better pick a blue option; b) some events don't allow you to revive lost crew.
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Well first off, the bit about some events not letting you receive lost crew is 100% false in my experiance. I've had crew get eaten by alien spiders, burned to a crisp, blown up while trying to disable a space mine that latched onto the ship, and outright winked out of existance by a Zoltan hermit wielding a rip in the fabric of space and time, and they've all come back just fine. The only exception to this in the entire game is that one event involving the Engi virus that will assimilate one of your Engi crewmen if you pick the blue option, and that particular instance is completely negated seeing as right after the resulting battle you end up getting the Virus as a crewman, and it comes in the form of an Engi with max XP in all his stats. All in all, the immunity to crew deaths by random events alone more than justifies the status of the clone bay as being the superior pick in my opinion.

Second, from a purely tactical level, the clone bay is still better since unless you have someone actually dying on you, you can leave the thing totally unpowered and it'll still heal your crew. A maxed out clone bay will passively heal 33 HP to everyone on the ship each jump even if it's unpowered, which is enough to fully heal everyone who isn't a Rockman inside of 3 jumps even if they were on the brink of death. Considering that if you're in a situation where your non-boarding crew (and with them you can still always just go a few jumps without actually sending them through the teleporter if you really need to heal them up) are consistently taking enough damage that 33 health per jump isn't enough to keep them alive, you've almost certainly fucked up enough that a medbay isn't going to help you regardless, I can't really see that as being a point against the clone bay. Even the XP penalty for them being brought back is a non-issue since unless you have them assigned to door control or sensors (in which case XP doesn't matter anyway since there aren't stats that improve a crewman's ability to use the doors or sensors) or otherwise just have them doing absolutely nothing, the drop in XP is small enough that you'll almost certainly get it back with interest by the time you're a third of the way through the sector you're on.

Plus, using a clone bay allows for what is possibly the second most sadisticly hilarious strategy in the game, where you take a ship with a few Zoltans on the crew, a teleporter and a clone bay* at which point you use the Zoltans as motherfucking suicide bombers that get sent onto the enemy ship, explode once they run out of HP, get remade in the clone bay then get get sent back by the teleporter, at which point the cycle repeats until the enemy crew is dead. It's not the most efficient use of the Zoltan by any means I'll admit, but goddamn if it isn't funny as all hell.

*The Federation Cruiser Type C is absolutely perfect for this strategy since it starts out with all of these things right off the bat. Hell, I am at least 95 percent certain that the devs deliberately designed it so that this would be it's primary method of combat, since otherwise it's weapons and shield system suck ass at the start of the game.
 
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Arcus2611 said:
Tip: Get engines. Like, I would consider good engines a higher priority than good shields actually (for the flag, shields are more valuable for normal encounters). That extra dodge chance can make a lot of difference, especially since it applies to missiles as well.
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I had maxed out my engines on 3 out of 5 Flagship runs.
 
searcher8 said:
Well first off, the bit about some events not letting you receive lost crew is 100% false in my experience.
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Unknown Disease on Mining Colony
Small research station with no response (The crewmember turns hostile, so you can't revive them)

Dude, just because you haven't experienced the events personally doesn't mean they don't fucking exist.

Second, from a purely tactical level, the clone bay is still better since unless you have someone actually dying on you, you can leave the thing totally unpowered and it'll still heal your crew. A maxed out clone bay will passively heal 33 HP to everyone on the ship each jump even if it's unpowered, which is enough to fully heal everyone who isn't a Rockman inside of 3 jumps even if they were on the brink of death. Considering that if you're in a situation where your non-boarding crew (and with them you can still always just go a few jumps without actually sending them through the teleporter if you really need to heal them up) are consistently taking enough damage that 33 health per jump isn't enough to keep them alive, you've almost certainly fucked up enough that a medbay isn't going to help you regardless, I can't really see that as being a point against the clone bay.
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So? I can also leave the medbay unpowered until I need to heal, and outside of some environmental hazards or having to flee from an enemy ship, there's always going to be time to heal up everyone to full health before you jump to the next beacon.

The medbay lets you heal your boarders without having to make them commit suicide or make an FTL jump. It ensures that your boarding crew will always start every encounter at full health, instead of being at 50% health or near death because you were using a clone bay. How is that not tactically useful?

And congrats for bringing up the maxed out clone bay, which would cost 145 scrap for me to get if starting from a ship with a medbay. Or I could just save myself the scrap and stick to a level 2 medical bay, which lets me heal my crew in between jumps and is generally more reliable because 90% of the time it's possible to extract your crew before they expire.

Even the XP penalty for them being brought back is a non-issue since unless you have them assigned to door control or sensors (in which case XP doesn't matter anyway since there aren't stats that improve a crewman's ability to use the doors or sensors) or otherwise just have them doing absolutely nothing, the drop in XP is small enough that you'll almost certainly get it back with interest by the time you're a third of the way through the sector you're on.
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The XP penalty absolutely does matter for your boarders, because when they're dying every 2 teleport assaults on average they're going to be losing a lot of combat XP, which is going to reduce their effectiveness in combat and make them more prone to dying. Or if, you know, you don't have that many crewmembers and need some of them to pull double duty as boarders.

Plus, using a clone bay allows for what is possibly the second most sadisticly hilarious strategy in the game, where you take a ship with a few Zoltans on the crew, a teleporter and a clone bay* at which point you use the Zoltans as motherfucking suicide bombers that get sent onto the enemy ship, explode once they run out of HP, get remade in the clone bay then get get sent back by the teleporter, at which point the cycle repeats until the enemy crew is dead. It's not the most efficient use of the Zoltan by any means I'll admit, but goddamn if it isn't funny as all hell.
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I've played with the Fregatidae. It's honestly not that effective, and the only reason you'd want to use it is for the amusement/novelty factor or because you literally have no other choice, because you don't with the Fregatidae.


Look, I won't deny that the clone bay can be useful, but for most situations the medbay works just fine.
 
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So, I'm trying to unlock the Crystal Cruiser (with the Tektite, because just getting the stasis pod is hard enough), but the RNG just refuses to cooperate.
 
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Man I am just relentlessly shit at this game. I still have yet to beat the Flagship, even on the easiest difficulty. I came pretty close last time, and got to Stage 3, but my maxed-out pilot got mulched by a Boarding Drone on Stage 2 while I was distracted scrambling the auxiliary crew to deal with damages from the drone spam and rerouting weapons, and his replacement had only one level of piloting. I then got fucked up by an unfortunately-timed power-surge barrage in Stage 3. This despite three layers of shields, a maxed-out stealth drive and maxed-out engines. And like half the crew died on the previous stages of the fight.

I need to get better at pausing when I'm getting overwhelmed. Also fuck boarding drones with a splintery baseball bat.
 
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Strunkriidiisk said:
Man I am just relentlessly shit at this game. I still have yet to beat the Flagship, even on the easiest difficulty. I came pretty close last time, and got to Stage 3, but my maxed-out pilot got mulched by a Boarding Drone on Stage 2 while I was distracted scrambling the auxiliary crew to deal with damages from the drone spam and rerouting weapons, and his replacement had only one level of piloting. I then got fucked up by an unfortunately-timed power-surge barrage in Stage 3. This despite three layers of shields, a maxed-out stealth drive and maxed-out engines. And like half the crew died on the previous stages of the fight.

I need to get better at pausing when I'm getting overwhelmed. Also fuck boarding drones with a splintery baseball bat.
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In my experience a defense drone is a better use of two power and scrap than max engines, 6 engines seem to be enough most of the time. Both levels of defense drones can shoot down boarding drones. If you manage to take out the missiles before the flag starts launching boarding drones, the drones won't be able to make it through at all.

Take my advice with a half pound of salt, as I'm also pretty bad at this game. I've only beaten the flagship with advanced content active on easy with the Rock cruisers.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
Man I am just relentlessly shit at this game. I still have yet to beat the Flagship, even on the easiest difficulty. I came pretty close last time, and got to Stage 3, but my maxed-out pilot got mulched by a Boarding Drone on Stage 2 while I was distracted scrambling the auxiliary crew to deal with damages from the drone spam and rerouting weapons, and his replacement had only one level of piloting. I then got fucked up by an unfortunately-timed power-surge barrage in Stage 3. This despite three layers of shields, a maxed-out stealth drive and maxed-out engines. And like half the crew died on the previous stages of the fight.

I need to get better at pausing when I'm getting overwhelmed. Also fuck boarding drones with a splintery baseball bat.
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This is the point where I step in and contribute my orthodoxy of the Church of the Defense Drone I, which will absolutely protect you from as many instances of bloody missiles and boarding drones as it can, without wasting its time on stupid laser shots which are the reason your shields are there in the first place.

Speaking of shields, max them instead of engines. They don't have diminishing returns.

And finally, a serious piece of advice. You should take a second and reorient your view of the passage of time in FTL. Pausing is not something you do when things are growing hectic and you desire the time to decide what to do without everything going off in its next cycle; Unpausing is what you do when you have everything arranged to your advantage and you intend to allow the next cycle to occur. FTL is not kind to those who try to play fast.
 
Salty said:
And finally, a serious piece of advice. You should take a second and reorient your view of the passage of time in FTL. Pausing is not something you do when things are growing hectic and you desire the time to decide what to do without everything going off in its next cycle; Unpausing is what you do when you have everything arranged to your advantage and you intend to allow the next cycle to occur. FTL is not kind to those who try to play fast.
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Aye. People insist that FTL, like for example, Hearts of Iron is "Realtime With Pause".

I say they are turn based with simultaneous but manually determined turns.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
This despite three layers of shields, a maxed-out stealth drive and maxed-out engines. And like half the crew died on the previous stages of the fight.
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The upgraded cloak is actually counterproductive for dealing with the Stage 3 Flagship, because the cloak duration + cooldown is longer than the timer on the superweapon. The unupgraded cloak will come off cooldown juuust in time for the superweapon volley, and takes up 2 less bars of power.

(Honestly, cloaking isn't that great when dealing with the flagship. The superweapon is survivable with good engines+shields unless you got fucked up by the previous two stages)

Also, during Stage 1 you should focus on disarming the flagship (prioritise the missile launcher, ion, and beam in that order), then exterminate most of the crew so you'll have an easier time in subsequent stages.

If you can't kill most of the crew before Stage 3, make sure you have at least one level of upgraded doors so you can vent the rebels when they rush your ship.
 
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Also remember: your crew doesn't need to breathe when they're being shot at. Move power from O2 to engines whenever the flag fires missiles or ions.
 
foamy said:
Oh hey, is that a tentative release date I spy? 'Early 2018'?
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Yeah I've been wondering. The February Announcement trailer showed a game whose graphics and gameplay looked mostly complete and was presumably at the "add more missions/stuff" and "bugtesting/playtesting" phase, though that could've been a careful illusion.

Overall I find the premise behind why they made the game interesting. One of the bigger issues with FTL is that the AI is dumb and doesn't make any effort to focus shields/engines for a hull kill or life support/medbay/doors for a fire/crew kill.. which is just as well because the game would be unfun and unwinnable if it was. But at the same time it meant the primary killer wasn't random events, but the time where the RNG really does cause the AI to do an efficient hull kill or crew kill attack pattern, leaving you stuck in a positive feedback loop where existing damage precludes you from repairing damage faster than incoming damage.

Into the Breach specifically avoids that making enemies 100% dumb and 100% predictable but cheerfully gives them vastly superior numbers, so you must use your superior skills to beat them and then feel awesome for your triumph over impossible odds. In some ways it feels like a logical extrapolation from games like Advance Wars, where you faced a similar situation of "superior yet dumb enemy" but the AI didn't telegraph moves and sometimes didn't do the stupid thing you count on them doing. Into the Breach removes that element by making moves 100% telegraphed, then reduces the theater scale to "3 units vs a half dozen or so units on an 8x8 field" so the telegraphing isn't an impenetrable web of attack arrows.

That said my biggest concern is stuff like this:
It lets you set your own difficulty in some decisions, too: you always have a choice of at least two missions to take next,and their difficulty is made clear beforehand, and the rewards aren't substantially better for taking the harder challenges. Heck, even the endgame is accessible. There are four islands, but you can attempt the final mission after completing just two of them and that mission scales to your squad's current level. All of these things have meant that I reached the final mission on my second attempt.
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I'm ok with them having a pansy mode, but only so long as they have comparable difficult to FTL modes too. And I definitely don't like the idea of difficulty being "you arbitrarily chose to pick the more difficult of two missions because reasons" or the idea of a scaling final mission, if the game is hard it should be chosen at the start not dependent on a player making willfully stupid decisions to make life more difficult for themselves. But then again Through the Breach sounds like it is quite structurally different from FTL so maybe it works, I dunno.

Speaking of, I didn't like that the primary way FTL got harder at higher difficulties was just cutting your scrap down. I'd have preferred it to just have tougher and tougher enemies.
 
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firefossil said:
Speaking of, I didn't like that the primary way FTL got harder at higher difficulties was just cutting your scrap down. I'd have preferred it to just have tougher and tougher enemies.
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Incorrectomundo. Not only is your scrap decreased, but upping the difficulty allows for harder enemies to appear. For example, on Easy, the first sector has zero ships with more than 2 shield bubbles, Rebel AI craft have no shields, and any Zoltan ships lack a Zoltan shield. On Normal, first sector AI assault craft can have shield bubbles, and Zoltan ships can have Zoltan shields. On Hard, all previous restrictions are scrapped, however, 2 shield bubble ships can still show up. Difficulty as you go from sector to sector also increases, as the ships can have more power/systems earlier. A sector 6 fight on Easy can occur in sector 3 on Hard, which is not a solid rule but more an analogy to ease understanding.

Basically, it already do that.
 
foamy said:
You do get noticeably harder enemies as you move up the difficulty levels :p
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E73S said:
Incorrectomundo. Not only is your scrap decreased, but upping the difficulty allows for harder enemies to appear. For example, on Easy, the first sector has zero ships with more than 2 shield bubbles, Rebel AI craft have no shields, and any Zoltan ships lack a Zoltan shield. On Normal, first sector AI assault craft can have shield bubbles, and Zoltan ships can have Zoltan shields. On Hard, all previous restrictions are scrapped, however, 2 shield bubble ships can still show up. Difficulty as you go from sector to sector also increases, as the ships can have more power/systems earlier. A sector 6 fight on Easy can occur in sector 3 on Hard, which is not a solid rule but more an analogy to ease understanding.

Basically, it already do that.
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I am aware. However the primary source of difficulty is the decreased scrap. Not that any of you would notice because everyone here plays boarding strategy to compensate both for the decreased scrap and the tougher ships. I mean yes the greater prevalence of Zoltan Shields and Medbays and the like can make your life more difficult, but boarding is still far easier, especially against the ridiculous ships that have like a bajillion guns and 5 shields and other such nonsense.
 
The increased rewards for boarding are certainly attractive, but the rebalanced teleport cost, combat damage, and, with AE, the additional systems and harder targets (f'rex the Lanius) mean it isn't optimal in all circumstances any more. Crew kill can be achieved in other ways, and I've beaten the flag a bunch of times without a teleporter.

I think my favourite was hack drone + defense scrambler + beam. It's guaranteed murder regardless of what defenses an enemy ship had. :)
 
Defense scrambler stuffs defense drones, which are the only thing -- outside of lucky shots -- that can shoot down hack drones.

Hack 3, Defense Scrambler, 2x Halberds, faceroll everything. Bonus points if you have a DDrone/Cloak/ZShield defense combo going on as well.
 
firefossil said:
I am aware. However the primary source of difficulty is the decreased scrap. Not that any of you would notice because everyone here plays boarding strategy to compensate both for the decreased scrap and the tougher ships. I mean yes the greater prevalence of Zoltan Shields and Medbays and the like can make your life more difficult, but boarding is still far easier, especially against the ridiculous ships that have like a bajillion guns and 5 shields and other such nonsense.
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I play blaster strat. Fed Cruiser or literally any ship with the Captain's Edition Artillery system. Blow 'em to Hell and forget the shields.
 
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