(shouting)

Anyone been playing FTL recently?

do you like them video games? what about those there romhacks? well pop on in here and talk about them then! what are you waiting for?!
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TheVulpineHero1
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Anyone been playing FTL recently?

Post by TheVulpineHero1 »

I've been having a bunch of fun with it myself, and wondered if any talkhausers had been messing around with my favourite space-themed death simulator. Man oh man, that rng and its ability to decide your fate almost completely independently of player skill. Fun, amirite?

My favourite ship
(I'm only missing the B layouts for Zoltan, Stealth and Crystal)
is definitely the Slug A. There's just something innately satisfying about cranking up that bio beam and destroying all the little red dots like it was no thing. With added maniacal laughter, of course. (For personal reasons, I choose to hear all maniacal laughter as Santa laughs. Something like, "Ho ho ho, I just destroyed all your hopes and dreams! Merry Space Christmas!")

On entirely the other hand, Mantis A just smells of tears and failure to me. That ship just gets brutalised so hard whenever I use it. Truly, Mantis A is the sadomasochist ship. It invites pain.

Any of you guys got any opinions or amazing/ridiculous runs I can be all jealous about?
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Paperkoopa
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Re: Anyone been playing FTL recently?

Post by Paperkoopa »

Yeah, I've played it aswell.
I'm so terrible at the game though that I haven't unlocked anything fancy yet, so I couldn't try all those amazing ships (Also because I refuse to play the game on easy).
So yeah, I really should play the game some more if I'm not actually playing Dark Souls right now.
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TheVulpineHero1
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Re: Anyone been playing FTL recently?

Post by TheVulpineHero1 »

It's weird, in that the Kestrel is actually maybe one of the top three ships anyway. Apart from maybe the Zoltan ship (which is super easy to get, and comes with one of those 5-health extra barriers), it's pretty much the ship I'd pick if I desperately felt I needed to beat the last boss or something. Most of the other, fancier ships are either downgrades or sidegrades in terms of how good they are.

What do you have trouble with when playing? There are a bunch of general stuff that's fairly obvious (like, don't neglect your engines because they're just as important to your defense as your actual shields, if you have tons of lasers try and fire them all at once, buy level 2 doors early on, that kind of thing), but it's hard to give specific tips since a lot of the problem is resource management and risk assessment. I know that most of my deaths either come from the end boss, running out of fuel whilst I have no scrap, and getting hit in the oxygen whilst I have boarders on ship. ;.;
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Paperkoopa
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Re: Anyone been playing FTL recently?

Post by Paperkoopa »

Fuel, teleporting enemies, rockets and fire.
Just by writing this I realize how bad I am at this game... I would always go for a strong shield so nothing can hurt me, but then there are these missile guys and I'm done for.
Gotta play more risky next time.
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TheVulpineHero1
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Re: Anyone been playing FTL recently?

Post by TheVulpineHero1 »

Paperkoopa wrote:Fuel, teleporting enemies, rockets and fire.
There's nothing you can really do about fuel, other than get lucky/accept enemy surrenders if they're offering like 4 fuel or something, but the rest is just teething pains. Teleporting enemies? Buy level 2 doors. They keep enemies in one room for a while, meaning you can open a bunch of airlocks and vent the oxygen in rooms enemies are in/are going to be. By the time they actually manage to bust through the doors and fight your crew, they'll probably be half-dead anyway. If you then take the additional precaution of fighting them in the medbay (with it turned on, of course), teleporting enemies just become free combat experience.

Same thing with fires: level 2 or higher doors will prevent fires spreading from one room to the next, so you can just vent the oxygen in that room so you don't have to worry about it. Seriously: level 2 doors. One of the most valuable (and cheapest) upgrades you can get, and one of the biggest steps you can make towards longer runs.

As for rockets...yeah, depends on your ship. You'll either wanna go with defense drones if you've got the resources, or engine upgrades if you haven't. In FTL, your evade chance is as important to your defense as your shields are, and (discounting defense drones) the only way you can really defend against missiles. In the first few sectors, I usually spend all my scrap getting a base set-up of two layers of shields and 25% evade chance (which I *think* is three powered engine upgrades if you have both engines and pilot systems manned). Keeping the engines manned where possible is also a good habit to be in; not only does it give you an extra 5% evade (which is equal to a free engine upgrade) but it allows that crew member to accumulate experience in engines. Sounds obvious, but since they get a point of exp for every shot they evade, they level up after 15 (and again after another 15) and they increase the evade chance when leveled up, it quickly becomes a cascade effect. The better your evasion, the easier it is to get higher evasion and not eat missiles for breakfast. The pilot does exactly the same thing with exactly the same progression, but for most fights it's sorta mandatory to have the piloting system manned, so yeah.

Although, even if you do all that, you'll still lose against the last boss more times than not. xD
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