Remove ads

FTL: The RNG is a cruel god

foamy said:
Goddamn but I hate early sectors as the Stealth Cruiser B. Not having shields makes your only weapon incredibly vulnerable to any jackass with drones or beams (or beam drones, damnit).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As awesome as the Stealth B's starting stuff is, there's a reason I generally prefer the A.

But yes, down with miserable beam drones.
 
Constantly running damage control in the Stealth B is crazy intense. It can actually be kinda fun in that way.
 
Last edited:
cB557 said:
Constantly running damage control in the Stealth B be is crazy intense. It can actually be kinda fun in that way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, until you eat five mini-beam shots to your weapon room in a row. I swear they prioritize it. :(

Mini beam cooldowns are just fast enough to get in while the Glaive is warming up; you need auto reloaders, a levelled weapons tech, a preigniter, or cloak 3 to beat it. Cloak 3's usually the easiest to get, but it runs 70 scrap (50 for the cloak, 20 for the power since it's your first buy) and hugely slows down getting shields 1, which is critically needed to deal with drones and asteroids. You can avoid asteroids to some extent with the LR Scanners, but occasionally the game forces you to go through one.


Also, on Hard, you can run into Zoltan shields and cloaking ships with beam drones in Sector 1, which is basically "WELP RESTART" time. :(
 
foamy said:
Yeah, until you eat five mini-beam shots to your weapon room in a row. I swear they prioritize it. :(

Mini beam cooldowns are just fast enough to get in while the Glaive is warming up; you need auto reloaders, a levelled weapons tech, a preigniter, or cloak 3 to beat it. Cloak 3's usually the easiest to get, but it runs 70 scrap (50 for the cloak, 20 for the power since it's your first buy) and hugely slows down getting shields 1, which is critically needed to deal with drones and asteroids. You can avoid asteroids to some extent with the LR Scanners, but occasionally the game forces you to go through one.


Also, on Hard, you can run into Zoltan shields and cloaking ships with beam drones in Sector 1, which is basically "WELP RESTART" time. :(
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You did not pray to RNGesus hard enough.
 
foamy said:
Goddamn but I hate early sectors as the Stealth Cruiser B. Not having shields makes your only weapon incredibly vulnerable to any jackass with drones or beams (or beam drones, damnit). This took quite a few attempts, almost all of which restarted in either Sector 1 or Sector 3. :(

On the other hand, when it works, it works great:



Augs were long range scanners, auto reloader, and stealth weapons. :)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I've been trying to get a run through with the Stealth B as well on hard. I had one run going well, but I found a weapon pre-igniter and purchased it early instead of shields. It seemed like a great choice until I started encountering units that could tank 1-2 glaive beam shots and then it reverted back to the glass cannon hoping for no hits on the weapon room.
 
About glass cannons(Not exactly, but you made me remember this): my favorite battle against the Flag Ship was done with what i remember being a Rock Cruiser, with a ion blast 2, a fire bomb and a heavy pierce I as weapons(I have the screenshot) but without any form of stealth or missile destroying drones. I ended the second battle by losing more than half of the Hull(in the first i had lost surpisingly few points of hull) and only survived the third phase because the RNG decided to love me and there was an unconquered shop close to the federation base, thus allowing me to spend most of the scrap i had to repair the hull and win against the flagship with only four hull remaining.

I still remember the excitation!
 
The Last One said:
I've been trying to get a run through with the Stealth B as well on hard. I had one run going well, but I found a weapon pre-igniter and purchased it early instead of shields. It seemed like a great choice until I started encountering units that could tank 1-2 glaive beam shots and then it reverted back to the glass cannon hoping for no hits on the weapon room.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Stealth B really needs just one ion cannon to help it out. Problem is, there's so many other priority upgrades you need too. :(
 
foamy said:
The Stealth B really needs just one ion cannon to help it out. Problem is, there's so many other priority upgrades you need too. :(
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yep, particularly since scrap is limited by no boarding and the constant hull repairs. Still I finally managed to pull it off. Lucked out in finding a Flak I early on, which gave me a bit of breathing room to build up the scrap for upgrades. A free shield supercharger schematic in sector 6 helped things as well. Even then, the last round of the flagship was a nail biter, desperately trying to fend off the swarms of boarders while the superweapon and missile launcher made my day crap. Scraped through with 3 hull.

 
Nice. Especially if your previous experiences with the bird were on Easy... Hard is a whole 'nother beast even from Normal.

EDIT:

Also, the shield overcharger I found very useful for the boss's third stage, since it interrupts its boarding and let my dudes murder his dudes; if you're max-ranked cloaked and have spiked evasion and shields you can just go to cloak when the missile launcher fires, and in the interim the overcharger will pile up enough shields to stuff the teleporter and mind control station.
 
Last edited:
foamy said:
Nice. Especially if your previous experiences with the bird were on Easy... Hard is a whole 'nother beast even from Normal.

EDIT:

Also, the shield overcharger I found very useful for the boss's third stage, since it interrupts its boarding and let my dudes murder his dudes; if you're max-ranked cloaked have have spiked evasion and shields you can just go to cloak when the missile launcher fires, and in the interim the overcharger will pile up enough shields to stuff the teleporter and mind control station.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Speaking of:




And when foamy saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer...
 
Last edited:
foamy said:
Speaking of:




And when foamy saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Captain's Edition. And to make it worse on yourself, wipe your save on download of the mod.
Conquer that world and return to Me.
 
FINALLY got a win in the Lanius cruiser. A or B layout, I just never had any luck with them. I always took that unlucky hit that brought an early end. Until this run. This run in the Lanius B featured:

  • Finding a DNA bank in a store early with enough scrap to buy it
  • Stumbling across the Mantis Cruiser event in an early sector right after upgrading the clone bay
  • Getting a free Flak Gun 2 from the second part of that chain
  • Free breach missile shortly after
Once I had the DNA bank and Kazaawhatsits & another Mantis to back up my Lanius boarders, I was rolling in scrap. Add in enough weapon power to run both the Flaks or the Flak and the Breach for those pesky medbay ships and the Rebel Flagship was almost anti-climatic.
 
The Lanius ships are interesting to play with. There's actually a really sweet setup you can get if you manage to find a Defense Scramber and a heavy-duty beam weapon. The defense scrambler more-or-less guarantees the hack drone can get through, at which point you hack their shields and punch them in the face for 10+ damage. 20+ if you have two Halberds, which basically oneshots any ship in the game outside of Zoltan shielders. :D
 
... you had two defense drones, four shields, seven power for engines, a rank three hack drone, and a four-man teleporter. How'd the flag manage to hurt you so bad?
 
foamy said:
... you had two defense drones, four shields, seven power for engines, a rank three hack drone, and a four-man teleporter. How'd the flag manage to hurt you so bad?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I've never really put in the effort to get really good at micro like you are, so I ended up leaving shields and engines a bit damaged at a few points which caused me to take even more hits. Also, because of the four man teleporter I ended up deciding to send my boarding party to the main section of the ship instead of sending them over in groups of two to take out the guns. Don't think I'll do it that way next time I'm doing a four man teleporter ship.
 
Played a few games again...

Double Burst laser 3 + Cloaking 3 is totally OP (as long as the flagship doesn't hack your weapon system, but you just need to jump away and try again). Unfortunately I couldn't afford the augment to start the battle with all weapons charged when I found it in a store at the beginning of the game, that would have been even more ridiculous
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top