FTL - a spaceship Rogue-like

I ended up with FOUR flak guns by about sector 5. You have no freaking idea how easy the last leg of the game was. Flagship could barely even touch me.

Flak weapons are top-tier, but using /FOUR/ at once is probably ill-advised. I mean, sure, the enemy shields won't stand a chance, but you'll have a /bitch/ of a time actually hitting the important systems consistently. That's why I pair Flak with Beam weapons. The ultimate combination of shield destruction and accuracy.

True, but going all-flak, you chip away at the ship so fast it hardly matters what you hit.

Also, I can never get the enemy shields to stay down long enough for a beam to do anything.

Hence why you use a beam weapon that can pierce shields. So if you target the shields first, you'll have an easier time cutting through it in future attacks (or killing people).

Yes. But knock enough levels off those shields (such as with a flak gun) and you cut through it anyway. So even if they do bring their shields back on, it'll be one at a time, and only slightly reduce how hard I'm hitting them.

edited 30th Dec '14 9:41:25 PM by Ekimmak

I thought even the glaive could be stopped cold by enough shields?

Anything with 5 shields stops even the most piercing beam cold.

Fortunately, guess which rule the Flagship doesn't break?

You only need 3 shield block to block ALL beam weapons (except arty beam)

And the final boss' beam is just a Halberd, not Glaive...

edited 30th Dec '14 9:41:11 PM by onyhow

That's what I'm talking about. Against a four-shielder I can't get their four shields down long enough to nail them with a glaive afterward. They always get repaired too fast.

You need to have the glaive ready to fire as soon as the shield is down.

Anyway, another hard win with the Shrike...oh boy, the 2nd form hurt a lot and the 3rd gotten nearly killed me with its super weapon...kiled it at the last second possible.

Has anyone taken a look at this?

Playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0sH_FZ07FYNKZ9v1MJqQFxBHb4VSsk3B

The series isn't finished, and probably will never be^note Hasn't been updated in a year, L Per has stopped making videos three months ago, and it's a little outdated, not factoring in new information revealed by the Advanced Edition, but I've been dying to discuss, or at least read more analysis of the story and world behind FTL.

I don't 100% agree with everything mentioned in the videos, and I'm willing to explain why. So what do you guys think?

I heartily disagree with the assumption that the Engi commander wanted to get you killed when suggesting you to fight the flagship, simply because it contradicts the game mechanics. You lose the game if you don't beat it. This is explicitly stated to be because you would lose the last bastion of the federation. There simply isn't much choice in sending you against it, as the federation lacks ressources to do so. On the other hand, you win the game by just beating this one ship and presumably the war, implying there's a lot more to the flagship being the weakness of the rebels than the game tells us. That said, it's clear the Engi experience internal division and keep secrets from the federation, though said secrecy is the reason we don't get much into that.

edited 2nd Jan '15 8:59:26 AM by Mastah

@Mastah I also disagree with the idea that the Rebel flagship is far from their weakness. For one, the intel that the Captain of the Kestrel Cruiser tells to the board isn't actually quoted, it's just a one line summary. (Reflecting the general brevity that FTL uses to describe events.) Considering the result of defeating the Rebel Flagship, might as well been ground-breaking and important enough to justify a galaxy-wide search^note "search" being clearly emphasized several times within the narrative for the Captain and his ship on the Rebel's part.

The guys in the video are half-true: the Flagship certainly isn't a tactical weakness^note As Yahtzee said, having more offensive capability than Stephen Colbert at a White House correspondent's dinner., but it most certainly is a strategic weakness, throwing the Rebel fleet into chaos and presumably setting them up for their eventual defeat.

I'm heavily speculating here, but my theory of why the Rebel Flagship is a strategic weakness is because it holds all of the Rebellion's top officers, which presumably contain their brilliant strategists and charismatic leaders on par with Hitler on the charisma scale. (Otherwise, how would they have become so powerful and well-supported?) When you destroy the Flagship, you essentially decapitate the Rebel fleet's leadership. Thus, resulting in a powerful blow to morale and forcing more incompetent and less inspirational deputy commanders to step up. This chaos would give time for the Federation to regroup, rebuild, and move to the offensive. Not only that, but possibly make other more recalcitrant races reconsider their stances on the war and throw their support to the Federation's cause. (Thus eventually winning them the war.)

I must say, I do not agree with the idea that the Federation allowed pirates and slavers do their pirating and slave trade. For one, there's no evidence supporting it: the introduction message when you enter a Pirate sector mentions that prior to the war there wasn't so many space pirates running amok nor was the slave trade so blatantly obvious. The existence of intergalactic crime at such levels can really be easily explained as a casualty of war, rather than another shortcoming of the Federation.

I think that the apparent lack of Federation support during the game seems to stem less from the idea that the Federation was highly incompetent and oppressive^note Though you can't really discount the former. It takes a special kind of political and military bungling to allow the Rebels to become so powerful., and more of the idea of Know When to Fold 'Em, in that it's better for you own health and strength to simply weather the storm and deal with the aftermath than burn away everything you have for a hopeless cause. The unlocking of the Zoltan and Rock cruisers are notable in that you essentially "prove" yourself, and the Federation cause, worthy. (Although I do acknowledge that in the unlocking of the Stealth Cruiser, the Engi group discussing it sure is suspiciously reluctant to help you.)

It could be because of the rebels pulling sneak attacks in stolen vehicles. Isn't it that very questline where they mention that the Rebels were likely using ships under false banners to force apart relations between the Engi and the Federation?

Fuck this game sometimes. I'm trying to unlock the alternative layout for the Stealth Cruiser by getting the achievement for getting to sector 8 without jumping into an enviromental hazard, and I keep running into sectors where the only possible route to the exit is through an enviromental hazard. And to make things worse, the first time it happened was on sector 7 (since then I've been running into them by sector 3. The game really hates me today).

Best to try for the other Stealth ship achievements instead. It's like watching a toaster: it'll never happen when you're looking.

Well, I have one of the others, so I eighter need that or the one where you avoid 9 damage in a single cloak, and I don't know what does 9 damage in a single volley (even the flagship's laser barrage only does 6).

Power surge plus triple laser should do it.

You can also try going to a Rock, Abandoned or Rebel sector, and try to cloak something like a Flak II + Burst Laser I or similar - Flak II is 7 projectiles and will be most of the 9 damage you need to dodge at once.

...are you sure the flagship's barrage only does six? Dodging that is how I got that achievement, I think.

The barrage is 8 shots I think. Technically that would be 16 damage due to each shot being heavy laser. But I'm not sure how the achievement consider the damage thing.

Well, I cloaked through the barrage and it didn't trigger the achievement. According to the wiki it does 6 damage total, but I'm not sure how accurate that it.

Maybe it was the missile barrage instead?

x3: I've gotten hit by those lasers before (like when the Flagship hacks my shields) and can verify that both the normal triple laser artillery and the Phase 3 power surge's lasers only do 1 damage (but can start fires or breach like a heavy laser).

If your ship of choice is blown up a split second after you've captured an enemy ship via boarding party (flak II launched and pulsar disabled shields/engine as the last man fell), I wish you could just continue on the hijacked vessel with surviving crew.

Edit: You know what else is great? Forgetting to check if your planned route actually connects to the sector exit at the next-to-last beacon, not realizing until you're there, and having to backtrack across ten rebel-held beacons.

Edit 2: Made it! With two hull strength, zero fuel or drones, and 12 scrap, so it may still be definitely was a death sentence, but an accomplishment regardless.

edited 10th Jan '15 4:18:45 PM by montagohalcyon

Well, you did survive, so...you might have a chance. Just hope that the RNG doesn't screw you over.