knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Damn, I was having my best run yet. 3rd level shields, two Burst Laser 2s, upgraded engines. I was even 1 mantis away from having six species on my ship at once.
Then an alleged civilian sector was full of pirates with 4 shields and I died horribly.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Damn, I was having my best run yet. 3rd level shields, two Burst Laser 2s, upgraded engines. I was even 1 mantis away from having six species on my ship at once.
Then an alleged civilian sector was full of pirates with 4 shields and I died horribly.
There's civilians and then there's "civilians." Technically they're not part of any military...
Sure, if the game throws some impossible scenario at me in Sector 1 that's fine, I can just restart.
But it seems that no matter how lucky or how good you play, you're gonna face a defeat anyawys in Sector 3 or so that's impossible to avoid.
So, uh, do you just consistently win on Normal without much trouble? I can't really think of a good reason to put yourself through Hard mode otherwise.
Guys, I need a hug. Last night, I got a stasis pod in sector 2. I found the Zoltan research facilily at the end of sector 2, and got the crystal guy. I had to jump out through the fleet, but I made it. I find the Rock homeworld in sector 7! I COULD SEE THE QUEST MARKER AT THE END OF THE SECTOR! OH GOD YES!
Then I used the crystal guy in a boarding operation, teleported him out too late, and he died.
okay....so im going to admit just how badly i suck at this game before i ask.
I've played this since it came out originally...on and off again. I've gotten to the boss ship maybe twice legitimately and gotten immediately creamed.
I wanted to try some of the other ships....so I cheated. I used cheat engine to hack the memory and give myself enough cash/missiles/fuel as needed to at least buy enough equipment to have a chance to win. Even with that, I have only managed to beat the game twice or so...on easy because while hacking straight numbers like number of credits/missiles/fuel/drones/hull health is pretty easy to do, doing things like making your crew invulnerable or individual ship sections arent really possible so at best i usually end up with a ship that has invulnerable hull yet is completely on fire and all crew dead.
I had an idea the other day that maybe i could hack the ships evasion to 100%. but those numbers are apparently hidden somewhere because i could not isolate it. I usually manage to survive against the boss if i have fire extinguishers in my ship, but its a close thing.
So While I'm sure none of you have cheated like I have, Hypothetically what numbers do you....erh...would you change to ensure victory.
Can you upload a video of yourself playing FTL to YouTube? I have a few ideas on what you're doing wrong (not exploring, ineffective use of crew, poor weapons control), but if you're giving yourself infinite scrap and still losing, I'm willing to bet there's something specific that you're doing wrong.
Just because I don't know what will happen, I'm going to see what happens if you kill phase 3 of the flagship with all your crew aboard.
Unless anyone already knows, and can save me the trouble...
I didn't technically lose any of my crew that was aboard the flagship when it exploded, since the game ended and they were all listed on the left side and in the final stats.
Man, FTL is FTL'ing me. Rock A for the past 2 nights to try to unlock B. 1st run, 2 missile launchers on my ship the whole time, not 1 defense drone on enemy ships. Try 2, no missile launchers to buy if I did run into a drone ship, but no drone ship again. No rock homeworld either time too.
Sure, if the game throws some impossible scenario at me in Sector 1 that's fine, I can just restart.
But it seems that no matter how lucky or how good you play, you're gonna face a defeat anyawys in Sector 3 or so that's impossible to avoid.
So, uh, do you just consistently win on Normal without much trouble? I can't really think of a good reason to put yourself through Hard mode otherwise.
I wanted to try out hard mode once and didn't see that much difference, so I just stuck with it.
You can auto-fire specific weapons
You can auto fire individual weapons by holding control while your click your target. This is especially useful for weapons which are finite or weapons which fire quickly, like the Ion's
Origin: Broncbuster
+4
tuxkamenreally took this picture.Registered Userregular
okay....so im going to admit just how badly i suck at this game before i ask.
I've played this since it came out originally...on and off again. I've gotten to the boss ship maybe twice legitimately and gotten immediately creamed.
I wanted to try some of the other ships....so I cheated. I used cheat engine to hack the memory and give myself enough cash/missiles/fuel as needed to at least buy enough equipment to have a chance to win. Even with that, I have only managed to beat the game twice or so...on easy because while hacking straight numbers like number of credits/missiles/fuel/drones/hull health is pretty easy to do, doing things like making your crew invulnerable or individual ship sections arent really possible so at best i usually end up with a ship that has invulnerable hull yet is completely on fire and all crew dead.
I had an idea the other day that maybe i could hack the ships evasion to 100%. but those numbers are apparently hidden somewhere because i could not isolate it. I usually manage to survive against the boss if i have fire extinguishers in my ship, but its a close thing.
So While I'm sure none of you have cheated like I have, Hypothetically what numbers do you....erh...would you change to ensure victory.
I think it's been said (maybe even on this page), but there are a few (legit) things you should try first:
- Start on Easy. No one will judge you. Consider playing standard version first, if the AE options are too overwhelming.
- Your ideal path through a sector is to zig-zag and hit as many jumps as you can before the fleet hits the exit. This gets you more *everything*. Don't bee-line through a sector except in very specific circumstances.
- Buy what you like, but know your limits. You can only have eight energy worth of weapons, for example.
- You should have at least two purchased systems by the end. Cloaking helps a lot (and more if you got Stealth Weapons).
- If you don't have a system you're looking for (like Cloaking) and you're more than halfway through, you should be holding enough scrap in reserve to pick it up when you find it.
- If you get to the end, take out the missile guy!
----
I had an easy Zoltan A playthrough last night where I was absolutely cruising up until stage 3--I had the Glaive, Charge Laser II, and Flak I along with Cloak/MC/Hack, so you can imagine how quickly I was plowing through the first two stages. But dat super-shield. I suddenly felt like all my enemies had up to that point. By the time I knocked him out I had three hull, four crew, and a campfire in every room (and I firmly believe Fire Suppression kept me alive--go figure).
Like i said, I've played since the original game came out, and pretty much always on easy mode. I've had some pretty good games where i thought i was kicking some ass then suddenly encounter a ship that just cleans my clock. I realize thats what makes it a roguelike but the game obviously expects you to be able to succeed eventually to unlock the other ships.
Like i said, I've played since the original game came out, and pretty much always on easy mode. I've had some pretty good games where i thought i was kicking some ass then suddenly encounter a ship that just cleans my clock. I realize thats what makes it a roguelike but the game obviously expects you to be able to succeed eventually to unlock the other ships.
Does it? It took me like 70+ hours before I eventually succeeded (once) on easy. :P
You can unlock the ships without winning, for the most part, so yeah
Like i said, I've played since the original game came out, and pretty much always on easy mode. I've had some pretty good games where i thought i was kicking some ass then suddenly encounter a ship that just cleans my clock. I realize thats what makes it a roguelike but the game obviously expects you to be able to succeed eventually to unlock the other ships.
You can always save scum too. I'm going to resort to it for this damn Rock A Drone vs Missiles and rock sector achievements. I'm getting frustrated.
Origin: Broncbuster
0
Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
I want to make a ship that starts with two Vulcans and a weapon preignitor but has no shields and only like one in other systems.
I don't think the game really expects you to win. I've got 40+ hours on record and have only the first 4 ships available. It's my mission in life right now to win with the Zoltan cruiser so that I can unlock 2 more ships in one victory. The flagship, thus far, does not approve of my plan.
I think I might have had a chance if my dudes automatically beamed back when the flagship runs away, but I lost 2 to the first form, one to the second, and then was running too lean to do any boarding in the third form. Also, I never saw a cloak that run so it wasn't an option. And the only win I have is with the Engi cruiser, and I think it was a fluke. Very drone/ion heavy run, no cloak, etc..
I don't think the game really expects you to win. I've got 40+ hours on record and have only the first 4 ships available. It's my mission in life right now to win with the Zoltan cruiser so that I can unlock 2 more ships in one victory. The flagship, thus far, does not approve of my plan.
I think I might have had a chance if my dudes automatically beamed back when the flagship runs away, but I lost 2 to the first form, one to the second, and then was running too lean to do any boarding in the third form. Also, I never saw a cloak that run so it wasn't an option. And the only win I have is with the Engi cruiser, and I think it was a fluke. Very drone/ion heavy run, no cloak, etc..
You and me both, brother.
I'm trying to beat the flagship with the Zoltan B and I can constantly get to sector 8 but just can't beat the flag ship. My latest effort was the most heartbreaking, I lose all 3 of my original crew due to my own stupidity in venting my ship while boarders were attacking my O2 unit. Ordinarily, I would restart at this point but I was stubborn and pressed on with a single slugman crew I had picked up 5 minutes earlier. I picked up a mantis in the next station along with a maxed fighting rockman that I saved from an exploding ship. I had a teleporter already and suddenly I had a prime boarder team. I was fortunate to get offered hacking and mind control systems which turned me into the ultimate boarding machine. I could beam my alpha team aboard, mind control one of their guys and then hack their medibay to keep them from healing. Since I didn't need weapons, I could put all my power into shields and engines to insure my ship survived while the boarders did their job.
This all worked until the flagship hacked my medbay. I managed to kill off their weapons but eventually my boarding crew were hurt enough to be unable to do their thing. I worked out a cunning plan to save the day, all I need to do was temporarily disable their hacking system and beam my guys back and quickly heal up. I used mind control to create a distraction and then beamed my injured team to hit their hacking unit. I had to beam them back quickly so they did minimal damage so they rushed to the medbay and started to heal. However, I greedily kept them in there too long and the flagship managed to repair the hacking unit and immediately activated it to kill my boarding team.
Has anyone managed to beat the flagship with hacked weapons?
I guess it might be possible with a drone/boarding/hacking/mind control heavy approach, but it's hard to see how you could get through their shields.
I've just been jumping out if my weapons got hacked.
Question: For some reason I thought that evasion wasn't that great but can it really be like 75%? Is that a straight up 75% chance to evade shit?! that's really good.
Imperator of the Gigahorse Jockeys.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
0
NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Question: For some reason I thought that evasion wasn't that great but can it really be like 75%? Is that a straight up 75% chance to evade shit?! that's really good.
With fully upgraded engines and a maxed pilot/engineer, you can have 55% base evasion. If you have a cloaking system, that adds 60% when active.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Has anyone managed to beat the flagship with hacked weapons?
I guess it might be possible with a drone/boarding/hacking/mind control heavy approach, but it's hard to see how you could get through their shields.
I've just been jumping out if my weapons got hacked.
Jump out is probably the best option if it latches onto your weapons or shields. Counter hacking is an option but then your hacking tool is somewhat wasted. One annoying thing is there is currently no cool down on trying to hack again if a defense drone eats your hacking attempt. I think that probably needs to get changed I have had my defense drones pick off like 8 hack attempts rapid fire in a row but eventually they shoot at a missile or just miss and then you are hacked. Seems kinda silly the AI can just span hack attempts since it has no limit to the drones charges.
0
NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Has anyone managed to beat the flagship with hacked weapons?
I guess it might be possible with a drone/boarding/hacking/mind control heavy approach, but it's hard to see how you could get through their shields.
I've just been jumping out if my weapons got hacked.
Seems kinda silly the AI can just span hack attempts since it has no limit to the drones charges.
It does have a limit, it's just tricky to catch all the modules. I've managed it with a pair of defense Is.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
0
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Hmm, I haven't played on easy at all, but I think the only differences are scrap related? Anyways here's some tips in the hopes of everyone being more successful.
You want to upgrade your shields to two dots asap and keep upgrading to stay ahead of the ships you are fighting.
You want to have a plan for missiles. Defense drone 1, cloaking, zoltan shield, shield drone, alpha strike their weapons before they fire, but you'll want something if you are going to have a successful run.
When you get in a situation where the other ship can't touch you, go get a drink while your crew skills up. Kind of cheap but that extra evasion and shield time can save your life.
Turn on show connections under options and then plan a route to hit the most beacons without dead-ending yourself.
If there are two extra jumps in range, its usually worth paying the mercenary to delay the rebels
Its almost always worth trapping the cache with missiles.
Try to jump to every nebula beacon possible, this will let you hit many more beacons.
Missiles are unreliable, since ammo and defense drones can suck.
Take all the blue options.
Events that almost always kill you: Giant Alien Spiders and Great Zoltan Eye.
If I lose crew or something goes drastically wrong in sector 1, I'll restart and save myself the wasted trip.
When planning which sector to hit next remember Rockmen=Missile Ships, Mantis= Boarders, Zoltan = Super Shields, Abandoned = No Oxygen on ships. Some of these will be better than others depending on which sectors you go to.
Pause the game frequently, especially when things are going to hell and make a plan. If there is a fire, a lot of times the best move is to abandon the room and vent it instead of trying to firefight.
The ship you start with is pretty decent to try and win the game with. The alien ships have a huge range of viability, some start off in amazing shape and some are uh Serenity. If you are just starting off the first ship is probably the best bet to beat the game.
Killing the other crew gets you much more scrap, weapons, and augments. I'll pretty much always buy a teleporter if I see one.
I just put a Mantis out the airlock because I needed to make room for the sixth unique species for the Kestrel achievement. "But Avalon! Why not throw one of the humans out? Mantis are so good!"
Would you throw Mal, Wash, or Kaylee out of the airlock of the Serenity for personal gain? I didn't think so.
0
NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Would you throw Mal, Wash, or Kaylee out of the airlock of the Serenity for personal gain? I didn't think so.
What about Jayne?
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
The ship you start with is pretty decent to try and win the game with. The alien ships have a huge range of viability, some start off in amazing shape and some are uh Serenity. If you are just starting off the first ship is probably the best bet to beat the game.
Actually, I disagree with this one. If you can get the B variant, you've got an extra piece of starting DAKKA, and a larger and more varied crew. It's not too hard to go get two of the Kestrel 'chievos, and that's all you need.
kestrel A and B are both good ships A has the burst 2 and the missile launcher which is a good combo and B has the four little lasers which allows you to concentrate on other stuff for a good long while. And given they all have the same cool down very effective volley fire without wasting any time.
Oh man the Crystal B craft with the 3 guys with lockdown and transporters...cake walk on norm gonna try hard with it.
Also just had a game on norm where I ended with 2 peg (the double shot missle) and a preigniter. tore through the first two stages of flag, last one however made it with like 2 health, most of the ship on fire and 1 crew down from full.
First victory with Advanced- Rock B! 3 health left. Virus, crystal crew, two Flak Is and a pre-igniter carried the day. Even with a backup battery I was spread thin trying to power everything.
kestrel A and B are both good ships A has the burst 2 and the missile launcher which is a good combo and B has the four little lasers which allows you to concentrate on other stuff for a good long while. And given they all have the same cool down very effective volley fire without wasting any time.
B is also great for leveling up weapons systems. Firing four lasers every 10 seconds, things level up quickly!
Some of the later sector ships are really rough now. Ran into a rigger in sector 7 that just beat the crap out of me.
Yeah Kestrel B basically also comes with a max weapons guy pretty quickly! In vanilla, it was arguably the strongest ship in the game. Of course, you are dependent on finding further weapons and systems in a way that the Fed Cruisers aren't, but your early game start is so strong with a fast 4 laser barrage, that you should not have trouble having the necessary defensive upgrades and scrap on hand to buy stuff unless you are unlucky.
Advanced edition has shaken up the tier list a bit though. Lots of the new ships are really strong and reliable.
Both Lanius cruisers are great ships and fun to play. Hacking is always handy- I mainly used it either to hold off their missiles before you barrage their weapons or to knock down the shields. Regarding the B variant, the advanced flak is obviously pretty broken with an amazing power to shield busting ratio.
Mantis B is still amazing already defending against missiles and 2 mantis boarders, but sector 1 can go badly.
Fed Cruiser C should be reasonably well balanced in terms of early game boarding (even against AI ships!) and the long term potential of the Flak Artillery + whatever weapons you can get. In theory, it's an amazing combo, but the painfully slow flak being your only ship-based offence seems like RNG could go wrong in the early game unless you upgrade it quickly after getting 2 shields. I had a lot of fun sending in the clones (including the Zoltan suicide bomber) versus AI ships, but I lost one game where an AI ship small bomb stubbornly stayed online and knocked out my clone bay and another where I had a couple of bad encounters with missiles, but I won the third normal game ok. A basically guaranteed flak 2 in addition to whatever weapons you can get must be quite a big deal.
If I absolutely had to save the galaxy with no second chances, I would take Zoltan B still.
Not sure how I feel about Stealth C yet. Looks like it has "improved" on Stealth B's status as the worst ship in the game, but maybe there is some clever way to play it...
Like i said, I've played since the original game came out, and pretty much always on easy mode. I've had some pretty good games where i thought i was kicking some ass then suddenly encounter a ship that just cleans my clock. I realize thats what makes it a roguelike but the game obviously expects you to be able to succeed eventually to unlock the other ships.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you should be able to win every game on easy.
You're right, it's a roguelike: You're supposed to play along, then encounter something that you didn't think of, get killed, and then remember that thing in the future. After playing for as long as you have, you should probably have a nice map of all possible bad things and your appropriate preparation for each of them.
For example, in my games I've discovered that hostile teleportation can be absolutely devastating -- but only around sector 3 or 4. I therefore make it a priority to gather least 2-3 mantis, plus at least door level 1 plus a crew member who can man the doors if necessary. This also means that I never make mantis my dedicated pilot, gunner, etc., because the mantis need to be free to handle invasions.
As another example, I've discovered that the final boss' combination of surge + missile attack is absolutely devastating. There are a number of ways to deal with it, but the most effective is a cloak. Now, the cloak isn't at all necessary prior to the final boss, so it's safe to delay getting cloak until sector 5 or later.
Another example -- Don't ever jump with someone in the med bay. There's a non-zero chance that the enemy ship has a hacking device, which will hack your medbay, lock the doors, and kill anyone caught inside.
Posts
Then an alleged civilian sector was full of pirates with 4 shields and I died horribly.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
There's civilians and then there's "civilians." Technically they're not part of any military...
Sure, if the game throws some impossible scenario at me in Sector 1 that's fine, I can just restart.
But it seems that no matter how lucky or how good you play, you're gonna face a defeat anyawys in Sector 3 or so that's impossible to avoid.
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
So, uh, do you just consistently win on Normal without much trouble? I can't really think of a good reason to put yourself through Hard mode otherwise.
Then I used the crystal guy in a boarding operation, teleported him out too late, and he died.
FTL (and me being dumb)
Mantis ship with the zoltan shield bypass upgrade is love.
Then I get completely obliterated in a tsunami of boarders, fire and lasers.
Oh, FTL.
I've played this since it came out originally...on and off again. I've gotten to the boss ship maybe twice legitimately and gotten immediately creamed.
I wanted to try some of the other ships....so I cheated. I used cheat engine to hack the memory and give myself enough cash/missiles/fuel as needed to at least buy enough equipment to have a chance to win. Even with that, I have only managed to beat the game twice or so...on easy because while hacking straight numbers like number of credits/missiles/fuel/drones/hull health is pretty easy to do, doing things like making your crew invulnerable or individual ship sections arent really possible so at best i usually end up with a ship that has invulnerable hull yet is completely on fire and all crew dead.
I had an idea the other day that maybe i could hack the ships evasion to 100%. but those numbers are apparently hidden somewhere because i could not isolate it. I usually manage to survive against the boss if i have fire extinguishers in my ship, but its a close thing.
So While I'm sure none of you have cheated like I have, Hypothetically what numbers do you....erh...would you change to ensure victory.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Unless anyone already knows, and can save me the trouble...
Origin: Broncbuster
I wanted to try out hard mode once and didn't see that much difference, so I just stuck with it.
Maybe it's time to switch back.
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
Origin: Broncbuster
I think it's been said (maybe even on this page), but there are a few (legit) things you should try first:
- Start on Easy. No one will judge you. Consider playing standard version first, if the AE options are too overwhelming.
- Your ideal path through a sector is to zig-zag and hit as many jumps as you can before the fleet hits the exit. This gets you more *everything*. Don't bee-line through a sector except in very specific circumstances.
- Buy what you like, but know your limits. You can only have eight energy worth of weapons, for example.
- You should have at least two purchased systems by the end. Cloaking helps a lot (and more if you got Stealth Weapons).
- If you don't have a system you're looking for (like Cloaking) and you're more than halfway through, you should be holding enough scrap in reserve to pick it up when you find it.
- If you get to the end, take out the missile guy!
----
I had an easy Zoltan A playthrough last night where I was absolutely cruising up until stage 3--I had the Glaive, Charge Laser II, and Flak I along with Cloak/MC/Hack, so you can imagine how quickly I was plowing through the first two stages. But dat super-shield. I suddenly felt like all my enemies had up to that point. By the time I knocked him out I had three hull, four crew, and a campfire in every room (and I firmly believe Fire Suppression kept me alive--go figure).
Games: Ad Astra Per Phalla | Choose Your Own Phalla
Does it? It took me like 70+ hours before I eventually succeeded (once) on easy. :P
You can unlock the ships without winning, for the most part, so yeah
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
You can always save scum too. I'm going to resort to it for this damn Rock A Drone vs Missiles and rock sector achievements. I'm getting frustrated.
Origin: Broncbuster
Yes! once the ship editor is done, I was thinking about a fire drone ship with MC.
Origin: Broncbuster
I think I might have had a chance if my dudes automatically beamed back when the flagship runs away, but I lost 2 to the first form, one to the second, and then was running too lean to do any boarding in the third form. Also, I never saw a cloak that run so it wasn't an option. And the only win I have is with the Engi cruiser, and I think it was a fluke. Very drone/ion heavy run, no cloak, etc..
You and me both, brother.
I'm trying to beat the flagship with the Zoltan B and I can constantly get to sector 8 but just can't beat the flag ship. My latest effort was the most heartbreaking, I lose all 3 of my original crew due to my own stupidity in venting my ship while boarders were attacking my O2 unit. Ordinarily, I would restart at this point but I was stubborn and pressed on with a single slugman crew I had picked up 5 minutes earlier. I picked up a mantis in the next station along with a maxed fighting rockman that I saved from an exploding ship. I had a teleporter already and suddenly I had a prime boarder team. I was fortunate to get offered hacking and mind control systems which turned me into the ultimate boarding machine. I could beam my alpha team aboard, mind control one of their guys and then hack their medibay to keep them from healing. Since I didn't need weapons, I could put all my power into shields and engines to insure my ship survived while the boarders did their job.
This all worked until the flagship hacked my medbay. I managed to kill off their weapons but eventually my boarding crew were hurt enough to be unable to do their thing. I worked out a cunning plan to save the day, all I need to do was temporarily disable their hacking system and beam my guys back and quickly heal up. I used mind control to create a distraction and then beamed my injured team to hit their hacking unit. I had to beam them back quickly so they did minimal damage so they rushed to the medbay and started to heal. However, I greedily kept them in there too long and the flagship managed to repair the hacking unit and immediately activated it to kill my boarding team.
And that's FTL.
I guess it might be possible with a drone/boarding/hacking/mind control heavy approach, but it's hard to see how you could get through their shields.
I've just been jumping out if my weapons got hacked.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
With fully upgraded engines and a maxed pilot/engineer, you can have 55% base evasion. If you have a cloaking system, that adds 60% when active.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Jump out is probably the best option if it latches onto your weapons or shields. Counter hacking is an option but then your hacking tool is somewhat wasted. One annoying thing is there is currently no cool down on trying to hack again if a defense drone eats your hacking attempt. I think that probably needs to get changed I have had my defense drones pick off like 8 hack attempts rapid fire in a row but eventually they shoot at a missile or just miss and then you are hacked. Seems kinda silly the AI can just span hack attempts since it has no limit to the drones charges.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
38thDoE on steam
Would you throw Mal, Wash, or Kaylee out of the airlock of the Serenity for personal gain? I didn't think so.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Also just had a game on norm where I ended with 2 peg (the double shot missle) and a preigniter. tore through the first two stages of flag, last one however made it with like 2 health, most of the ship on fire and 1 crew down from full.
B is also great for leveling up weapons systems. Firing four lasers every 10 seconds, things level up quickly!
Some of the later sector ships are really rough now. Ran into a rigger in sector 7 that just beat the crap out of me.
I didn't know the game modeled this!
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Doesn't help that Mantis (A) has a really rough start either.
Advanced edition has shaken up the tier list a bit though. Lots of the new ships are really strong and reliable.
Both Lanius cruisers are great ships and fun to play. Hacking is always handy- I mainly used it either to hold off their missiles before you barrage their weapons or to knock down the shields. Regarding the B variant, the advanced flak is obviously pretty broken with an amazing power to shield busting ratio.
Mantis B is still amazing already defending against missiles and 2 mantis boarders, but sector 1 can go badly.
Fed Cruiser C should be reasonably well balanced in terms of early game boarding (even against AI ships!) and the long term potential of the Flak Artillery + whatever weapons you can get. In theory, it's an amazing combo, but the painfully slow flak being your only ship-based offence seems like RNG could go wrong in the early game unless you upgrade it quickly after getting 2 shields. I had a lot of fun sending in the clones (including the Zoltan suicide bomber) versus AI ships, but I lost one game where an AI ship small bomb stubbornly stayed online and knocked out my clone bay and another where I had a couple of bad encounters with missiles, but I won the third normal game ok. A basically guaranteed flak 2 in addition to whatever weapons you can get must be quite a big deal.
If I absolutely had to save the galaxy with no second chances, I would take Zoltan B still.
Not sure how I feel about Stealth C yet. Looks like it has "improved" on Stealth B's status as the worst ship in the game, but maybe there is some clever way to play it...
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you should be able to win every game on easy.
You're right, it's a roguelike: You're supposed to play along, then encounter something that you didn't think of, get killed, and then remember that thing in the future. After playing for as long as you have, you should probably have a nice map of all possible bad things and your appropriate preparation for each of them.
For example, in my games I've discovered that hostile teleportation can be absolutely devastating -- but only around sector 3 or 4. I therefore make it a priority to gather least 2-3 mantis, plus at least door level 1 plus a crew member who can man the doors if necessary. This also means that I never make mantis my dedicated pilot, gunner, etc., because the mantis need to be free to handle invasions.
As another example, I've discovered that the final boss' combination of surge + missile attack is absolutely devastating. There are a number of ways to deal with it, but the most effective is a cloak. Now, the cloak isn't at all necessary prior to the final boss, so it's safe to delay getting cloak until sector 5 or later.
Another example -- Don't ever jump with someone in the med bay. There's a non-zero chance that the enemy ship has a hacking device, which will hack your medbay, lock the doors, and kill anyone caught inside.