FTL - a spaceship Rogue-like

I only aim for the weapons if they have a missile or a bomb attached to their ship. Most other weapons I can tank with good evasion and shields, so I focus on blowing up their shields, cloaking device, then engines, to make killing them faster, and reduce the chances of the RNG getting spiteful.

Also, just because you can power a full cloaking device, doesn't mean you need to. Helps with the final battle, if nowhere else.

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.

I would, if people would stop interrupting me every time I try to record!

Well, I've somehow made it all the way to Sector 8 and I still have only the Basic Lasers. I'm gonna be lucky if I can fucking hit anything...

^ You mean by chat and such? Why not just goes offline then record?

Give me cute or give me...something?

(ETA: If the above doesn't work, try here.)

edited 27th Aug '14 12:11:50 AM by Twentington

One thing I can recommend is that when you aren't being pummeled by asteroids or cooked by a star, be sure to give your guys time to repair all of your systems and then get back to their stations before moving on. The time limit is only based on jumps, after all, so you have all the time you need to get things fixed up before you have someone shooting at you again.

Can't watch it all right now but from the first 30 minutes:

Don't repair fully at stores; many events/quests repair hull damage for free as a reward which will be wasted. I usually just go to the first bar of green.

With two Mantis, a Lanius, and a teleporter before the end of the second sector, most ships should fall to boarding without too much trouble. If I were playing this I'd keep the four basic lasers, concentrate on defenses/upgrades, and grab mind-control/hacking, not even bother looking for more weapons unless something very nice pops up as free loot.

My own preference for boarding aside, 2nd shield bubble (still not upgraded by sector 6???) and/or drone subsystem > the excessive number of weapons you bought. If you were to change one thing, change this — upgrade the ship! Don't spend all your scrap on the merchants' shiny new toys!

Crew positioning: if the Mantis are your boarders, keep them in the teleporter. Why are they in the shield room? Your slug isn't doing anything in the weapons room, put him in security for stronger doors. Pay attention to who's highest-ranked at a station and if multiple people are in a room make sure they're the one actually manning it — you had somebody with two stars at weapons for a while, at some point it changed to your slug with one star. If you're boarded in a random event, send everybody, they're not needed at their stations, and it'll distribute the damage more evenly, so it takes longer for individual crew to need healing, so someone can always be in the room under attack and protect vital components.

Only the sun has stopped.

I've tried boarding with a Lanius before, and they got their ass handed to them. Againast an Engi and a Zoltan.

The weapons are usually cheaper. When it costs 100 scrap to bump up to the next level of shields and you only have 75, it's not an option. Look how pathetically low my scrap is most of the time, even factoring the scrap recovery arm and the weapons I bought.

Also, I got kinda weapons-happy because the run before it, I managed not to hit a single store that was selling weapons, so I went all the way to Sector 8 with just the Basic Lasers. Naturally, I could barely hit anything after about Sector 5 onward...

edited 27th Aug '14 7:29:23 AM by Twentington

Some thoughts:
In general, make more use of pause - think before you act.
First fight:
you could have avoided all damage if you would have attacked weapons first.
Don't forget to repair before jumping unless you are in an asteroid field or near a supernova.
Second + third fight:
Well done in general.
Fourth fight:
Targeting the mind control was correct, but your second target should have been weapons. With your firepower right there, you don't have to worry about that 1 shield.
Fighting against the rebel pursuer:
That's something that was easily avoidable. Just jump to the already visited sector. But getting into that situation was bad planning. Another thing, use your scrap to upgrade, you could have gotten shields 2 by now.
Overall you took 14 points of damage so far. Every single one was avoidable!
And depower your med bay to increase power to your engines while no one heals in the med bay. This additional evasion could have helped you against the missile that hit you in the next fight. Seems like you realized that by yourself later.

Not going to comment every fight now, but as far as I have watched, you don't sufficiently prioritize the enemies weapons in the first sector.

Buy the small bomb was fine, but the heavy ion was imho a misinvestment. During the nebula fight in the ion storm, with upgraded shields/reactor that you could have easily had by now, the enemy ship wouldn't have been able to damage you at all. The enemy had no med bay, while you had a teleporter. Such an easy target to board.

(skipping to end fight)
You have the crew teleporter. Use it to disable the enemies weapons. That would have almost won the first phase by itself. You are also missing important upgrades that you could have had if you would have wasted less scrap on repairs. With only two shields maximum, and not boarding the enemies weapons, your quick demise in the end fight was basically unavoidable.

Overall, concentrate on protecting you ship. More shields, more evasion, more defense drones. More targeting enemy weapons. Less wasting money at shops. (Both for repairs and for stuff you don't really use like that heavy ion). As soon as you got those 3 flaks as weapon, you need to synchronize their attacks, don't just randomly fire them when they get ready. Just to make it clear again. Attacking weapons in sector 1 would have probably saved you 14 damage. I've finished normal playthroughs with taking less damage than that in the whole game. :)

Another thing, I think you need more patience to observe and to plan. Play the game slower.

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

To be fair, I think that pace might have been a desire to not have an hours-long video for watchers.

Yes, definitely target weapons first more often. I thought I mentioned that but I guess I didn't.

Only the sun has stopped.

I always play that fast.

Watching this makes me want to play again now...maybe when I have time later I'll figure out how to record it and upload an example myself.

Only the sun has stopped.

Not the last 25 times I've tried it. Every other time I've sent crew into the weapons rooms, they've destroyed them so slowly that my ship still had a billion holes blown into it before even a single weapon room on the flagship was harmed.

That's what the cloaking device is for. It protects you from that first volley of missiles long enough to smash the high risk weapons.

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.

Hm. Well, I just died on my Red-Tail recording attempt two jumps from exiting sector 5, so I guess that wouldn't be a terribly helpful demonstration of anything. I'll try again later.

I did at least earn the last achievement I was missing for that ship, though, entirely by accident.

edited 27th Aug '14 7:56:58 PM by montagohalcyon

Only the sun has stopped.

I've just gotten the Kestral B to sector 8. The four default lasers have served me well, so I never upgraded.

The Flagship has 4 shield bubbles.

Unless you're playing vanilla easy mode, apparently that has only a level 3 shield.

Or at least, that was what I saw when Super Jeenius played it.

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.

@Twentington: No wonder you have been complaining about this game for the past 4-5 months...your playstyle...just...wow.

Others have said a lot of things already, so I'll only add in a few things:

• In roguelikes, defense is always better than offense. While, yes, in this game you need enough offensive power later on, but it's always BETTER to focus on defense over offense, since you have limited health that can't be easily replenished, and it takes time for guns to charge up, means that they enemy WILL get to shoot at you, so you should aim to avoid those damage.
• TAKE YOUR TIME. You jump at the earliest opportunity, even when you can spend time to repair stuff...slowing down also helps with route planning so you won't jump into dead end, or just jump into location that you can't get out other than needing to go through rebel-held node...
• Upgrading tips: get to 2 shield block asap (generally you should get this by the end of sector 1 or early sector 2), then start spreading things around. By sector 7 you should have at least 3 shield blocks and 5 engine bars...don't increase either of those over this point unless you are satisfied with other systems already and have spare scraps...shield is expensive and engine has diminishing return after 5th bar...also get door upgrade over sensor or pilot as a first thing if you're upgrading your subsystems.
• Don't get Heavy Ion...just...don't. It sucks. Ion I and Heavy Ion both need a pair of them to actually work on keeping things down...if you want ion, find Ion II, Charger Ion, or I Bomb instead...
• Learn better target prioritization. Guns are generally always the first thing you should aim (but not to completely destroy it at first, just to make their firepower low enough for your shields+engine to handle). Also ALWAYS target bridges over engines...bridges only have max of 3hp, but engine can have 8...others have said on this already, so eh.
• Generally, try to keep your reactor power up with your system upgrade...it doesn't matter if you have 6 engine bar if you have power to only operate 3...

No wonder why you are so starved on scrap...you have 1 shield block as far as sector 6! Really, get more defense, so you can spend less on repairing...

edited 28th Aug '14 8:08:16 AM by onyhow

Give me cute or give me...something?

Every single time I've sent my crew in the weapon room without a means to lock it down (crystal crewmember, crystal lockdown bomb or hacking), the weapons were still operational at the end of the fight. In fact, this applies to any system or subsystem.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

^ I think he means by the boss, and since Twentington is playing on Easy (presumably), the room is separated and easily attackable...on hard? Yeah...I actually just generally decide to NOT board the flagship when I'm playing on hard...

edited 28th Aug '14 12:52:26 AM by onyhow

Give me cute or give me...something?

Because I always play with Rock B, I can get away with boarding by setting fire to any room that I want to invade. The combination of fire and well trained Rocks makes even the Flagship a battle in my favour.

Although I'll admit that the Flagship medbay is probably the hardest brawl to win, even with a level 3 teleporter.

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.

D'oh! How could I miss that? "first phase" was even included in the quoted sentence! X(

Note: I haven't tried hard mode yet, but I dread it. I'll probably do it with both Crystal B and a hacking module, to make sure they can never repair that thrice-damned missile launcher.

I won't need to hack the medbay like I usually do, if they can't flee to it.

edited 28th Aug '14 1:03:33 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

^ Generally I find to just overwhelm the thing with firepower to be easier...although hacking drone to the shield room is actually effective if you can start fire in that area, since the gun rooms and the helm is only connected to the rest of the ship via the shield room, if you can set fire in that area, things are FUN!

edited 28th Aug '14 8:06:20 AM by onyhow

Give me cute or give me...something?

What about later sectors, when I'm firing at the weapons room a billion times in a row, and not a single freaking hit lands? Isn't that when I should prioritize the engine and/or steering so they'll stop dodging all my shots?

But it's a catch-22, because shield blocks are hella expensive and I can never scrounge up enough scrap to get them built up.

edited 29th Aug '14 12:50:48 AM by Twentington

^ Expensive? Seriously? Getting the 2nd shield block require only 90 scrap total (shield bar 3-4 and 2 energy)...easily achievable even by sector 1...the PRIMARY reason why you are so scrap starved is because you spend SO MUCH on weapons (5th and 6th and beyond bar are EXPENSIVE you know), and you spend WAY too much on repairs...due to not having enough defense in the first place.

You focus WAY TOO MUCH on weapons...

And really did you properly syncfire your gun? Also: if you have problem just getting hit, then get other systems to help...

edited 29th Aug '14 12:53:32 AM by onyhow

Give me cute or give me...something?