primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2020-04-02 10:29 am
primeideal) wrote2020-04-02 10:29 am
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FTL: Finally, Triumph Long-Awaited
After 284 hours and 591 games (yes, they keep statistics), I have beaten FTL on normal difficulty.
First of all, I was a little harsh on Crystal B the first time around. It is indeed the case that the idea is to defeat ships by teleporting on, killing the crew, and teleporting back. In early levels, most of the enemy ships won't have a medbay or a clonebay anyway, so it doesn't matter if the enemy crew tries to run around; you can chase them, and if your crew are injured, teleport them back to heal in the medbay and then repeat.
And the no-crew, no-oxygen ships are difficult to beat for this reason. However, if you're in an asteroid field (or have weapons installed), you can send two Crystals in to take out the shields, heal them, and then wait for the asteroids (weapons) to do the rest.
When the opposing crew has a medbay, that's when the lockdown is really useful. You want to set it up so that you're at a numbers advantage (ie, not one Crystal against four Mantis), and then when the enemy characters are low on health, lock down so they can't escape.
Clonebays are more difficult. The best strategy is to fight until some/most of the crew are badly injured but not dead, then come back and heal. Then, on a second teleport round, jump to the enemy clonebay and quickly kill off the stragglers, before trying to disable the clonebay. (If there are other healthy crew, you might need to lockdown to keep them *out* while you destroy the clonebay.) What you don't want is people respawning and trying to fight you, thus preventing you from destroying the clonebay. But anyway, it can be done.
The internet told me (and I didn't mind "cheating" on this part) that the Crystal ship augment is not all that good, so it's probably good to sell it at a store early on and then use that money for early shield/etc upgrades. I've found that sometimes you will luck into weapons along the way, so despite the extra cost to get a decent weapons system, with this ship it's not really worthwhile to buy weapons at a store. Ditto hiring crew--if you're defeating ships by killing the crew, you're going to free a lot of slaves. In fact several times I've gotten over capacity and had to fire people!
The setup comes with a four-capacity teleporter, so if you fill it, that leaves up to four people for pilot/engine/shields/weapons--ie, you won't have people to spare to staff the door/engine rooms, so you might want to upgrade them with money. This might come at the end, because I've maxed out the reactor a couple times--you won't be able to take shields/engines all the way if you focus on maxing out cloaker/teleporter/medbay first (which is kind of the thing to do).
The first stage of the flagship is "teleport aboard, kill everyone, starting with the people in the isolated weapons rooms." You want to leave one person alive (they will escape to the medbay if they can, so don't destroy that) because that prevents the AI from taking over and auto-repairing the broken systems. After that, work on taking out cloaking and/or hacking depending on what they hacked, or shields to get your weapons viable. (If you have a missile, using missiles on the flagship shields is worth it.)
Stage two, they attack you with drones. Teleport your guys to the drone room, take that out, and then repeat the weapons-room stuff while cloaking as much as possible. I'm not saying either of these two steps are easy, because they're not, but I got past them several times with this ship before the successful run.
So. I was lucky to get plenty of weapons--Pegasus missile and flak gun I kept, two ionizers I sold off. We also had the "random guy on a moon named Charlie who winds up joining your crew..." FOUR TIMES. (Having an upgraded medbay helps, but still!) It's almost as good as the fic!
I almost ragequit in sector 7 when I was fighting a Mantis ship with cloaking and some kind of clone or medbay. But then I was like "well, I'm already in sector 7, this isn't that bad, I'll just teleport away from these guys." Good call, self.
Then I got pretty lucky with a bunch of "repair hubs" in the last sector so I hit them up to upgrade doors/sensors before the finale.
Stages 1/2 were pretty much the same. Stage 3, they have a Zoltan shield, a "superweapon," and mind control. (They also teleport over to kill you if you haven't wiped out the crew in stage 1, but that's not an issue with this ship.) So the first thing to do was throw missiles/flak to take down the shield. The mind-controlled guy was in the teleporter group so I sent the others to chill in the medbay and not kill him while he was in a rage. Once that calmed down and the shield dissipated, go over and start ripping up the mind controller/shields/etc. Again, the one remaining crew will fight you, but not for long.
Usually, in this stage, I just lose to hull blowing up/oxygen breach/something like that. But I'd gotten a cheap oxygen upgrade at Joe's tune-up place or something (which is the only way I ever spend money on oxygen), and just ignored the breached rooms since they weren't mission critical. I kept throwing missiles, and...
The shields are down, I don't know how much HP I have left because I was having issues with the airplane mode and print screen buttons.
The cloak room is on fire and I have 6 HP left, but this is happening
Victory!
Will I play again? Probably--there are ships I haven't unlocked (Slugs, Lanius B, Stealth B/C). But now I can move onto "Into the Breach" and the other stuff that's on sale. :p
First of all, I was a little harsh on Crystal B the first time around. It is indeed the case that the idea is to defeat ships by teleporting on, killing the crew, and teleporting back. In early levels, most of the enemy ships won't have a medbay or a clonebay anyway, so it doesn't matter if the enemy crew tries to run around; you can chase them, and if your crew are injured, teleport them back to heal in the medbay and then repeat.
And the no-crew, no-oxygen ships are difficult to beat for this reason. However, if you're in an asteroid field (or have weapons installed), you can send two Crystals in to take out the shields, heal them, and then wait for the asteroids (weapons) to do the rest.
When the opposing crew has a medbay, that's when the lockdown is really useful. You want to set it up so that you're at a numbers advantage (ie, not one Crystal against four Mantis), and then when the enemy characters are low on health, lock down so they can't escape.
Clonebays are more difficult. The best strategy is to fight until some/most of the crew are badly injured but not dead, then come back and heal. Then, on a second teleport round, jump to the enemy clonebay and quickly kill off the stragglers, before trying to disable the clonebay. (If there are other healthy crew, you might need to lockdown to keep them *out* while you destroy the clonebay.) What you don't want is people respawning and trying to fight you, thus preventing you from destroying the clonebay. But anyway, it can be done.
The internet told me (and I didn't mind "cheating" on this part) that the Crystal ship augment is not all that good, so it's probably good to sell it at a store early on and then use that money for early shield/etc upgrades. I've found that sometimes you will luck into weapons along the way, so despite the extra cost to get a decent weapons system, with this ship it's not really worthwhile to buy weapons at a store. Ditto hiring crew--if you're defeating ships by killing the crew, you're going to free a lot of slaves. In fact several times I've gotten over capacity and had to fire people!
The setup comes with a four-capacity teleporter, so if you fill it, that leaves up to four people for pilot/engine/shields/weapons--ie, you won't have people to spare to staff the door/engine rooms, so you might want to upgrade them with money. This might come at the end, because I've maxed out the reactor a couple times--you won't be able to take shields/engines all the way if you focus on maxing out cloaker/teleporter/medbay first (which is kind of the thing to do).
The first stage of the flagship is "teleport aboard, kill everyone, starting with the people in the isolated weapons rooms." You want to leave one person alive (they will escape to the medbay if they can, so don't destroy that) because that prevents the AI from taking over and auto-repairing the broken systems. After that, work on taking out cloaking and/or hacking depending on what they hacked, or shields to get your weapons viable. (If you have a missile, using missiles on the flagship shields is worth it.)
Stage two, they attack you with drones. Teleport your guys to the drone room, take that out, and then repeat the weapons-room stuff while cloaking as much as possible. I'm not saying either of these two steps are easy, because they're not, but I got past them several times with this ship before the successful run.
So. I was lucky to get plenty of weapons--Pegasus missile and flak gun I kept, two ionizers I sold off. We also had the "random guy on a moon named Charlie who winds up joining your crew..." FOUR TIMES. (Having an upgraded medbay helps, but still!) It's almost as good as the fic!
I almost ragequit in sector 7 when I was fighting a Mantis ship with cloaking and some kind of clone or medbay. But then I was like "well, I'm already in sector 7, this isn't that bad, I'll just teleport away from these guys." Good call, self.
Then I got pretty lucky with a bunch of "repair hubs" in the last sector so I hit them up to upgrade doors/sensors before the finale.
Stages 1/2 were pretty much the same. Stage 3, they have a Zoltan shield, a "superweapon," and mind control. (They also teleport over to kill you if you haven't wiped out the crew in stage 1, but that's not an issue with this ship.) So the first thing to do was throw missiles/flak to take down the shield. The mind-controlled guy was in the teleporter group so I sent the others to chill in the medbay and not kill him while he was in a rage. Once that calmed down and the shield dissipated, go over and start ripping up the mind controller/shields/etc. Again, the one remaining crew will fight you, but not for long.
Usually, in this stage, I just lose to hull blowing up/oxygen breach/something like that. But I'd gotten a cheap oxygen upgrade at Joe's tune-up place or something (which is the only way I ever spend money on oxygen), and just ignored the breached rooms since they weren't mission critical. I kept throwing missiles, and...
The shields are down, I don't know how much HP I have left because I was having issues with the airplane mode and print screen buttons.
The cloak room is on fire and I have 6 HP left, but this is happening
Victory!
Will I play again? Probably--there are ships I haven't unlocked (Slugs, Lanius B, Stealth B/C). But now I can move onto "Into the Breach" and the other stuff that's on sale. :p