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[highzealot]

I'm not sure if what I'm about to say applies to V1.4 of the manager since I'm still using V1.3 but I assume it should.

The files and folders inside the folder in the zip should be put inside C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FTL Faster Than Light.

Spoiler: How the folder should look afterwards (click to show/hide)

[EnigmaticHat]

You know what?  I don't complain about luck.  Minus unavoidable death that is a beam drone against unshielded ships, the game is fair.  Even when I ran into an unavoidable asteroid field as the stealth ship, I didn't complain.  Luck is part of the game.

But this. Is.  Bullshit.  I take the Vortex for a spin, because I'm a masochist, and have the most epic game ever. I exit the first sector with a crew teleporter (still not sure about that purchase) a burst laser 2 (best shop ever!) and a heavy laser.  And nothing else.  I never have any fuel or health, and I'm constantly doing crazy stuff to take out enemy ships.  Beating a better armed slug fighter with a single mantis boarder by taking out its unreachable life support, beating a rock bomber by constantly repairing until it runs out of bombs, teleporting onto enemy ships and then winning the combat by shooting their under repair components to damage the crew.  I never have anything but the bare essentials (no sensors for me); but I manage to scavenge together a decent ship and, most vitally, an ion bomb launcher.  I know with that thing in tow, two bombs to the shield the flagship is down a life.  I only have three missiles entering the last area, but I know a repair station gives out around five.  If I can hit 1-2 repair stations, I can probably win.

Then it happens.  I enter the last stand, and hit jump.  Two of the repair stations are directly in front of the flagship.  The base is in an isolated area with only one way out.  The last repair station is in that area... but backwards, so I would have backtrack through the base to reach the flagship.  I decide I have to risk it and head backwards.  I get in a fight I literally cannot win without ion bombs I can't spare, and decide to run.  My engines charge, and I look at the map...

And the rebels are taking the repair station, which has ceased to be a repair station.  AND the bottleneck leading out of the base is also getting taken.  AND the flagship has destroyed one repair station and is jumping to the next.  There are now no repair stations for me to pick up missiles from, and no possible way to reach the flagship without getting caught by the fleet.  And that's how I lost the final fight after one jump through sheer dumb luck.

[sneakey pete]

I did end up beating the game last night. I got the upgrade that allows you to bring fully charged weapons into a fight (edit: weapon preignitor). Its almost overpowered, i'd say.

[NobodyPro]

So I finally managed to finish this game using the Engi ship, which I named The Scylla.

Started off normally, dumping scrap into shields and power so that I can breeze through the first five sectors. In the sixth sector I gain a free Hull Laser I which makes combat even better but the trade-off was that I dumped scrap into the necessary weapon upgrades. Then I started to run out of fuel on my way to a quest marker.

I'm halfway across the sector when it finally runs out. I wait and I manage to pick up fuel pretty consistently and make it to the quest marker. Stealth Ship, woohoo! Rebel fleet is getting closer but I think I'll luck-out on fuel again.

Then they reach my stranded-ass ship. I'm stuck amongst the fleet, running on fumes for five jumps before I finally make it out of there.

I manage to pick up a Heavy Ion on my way to the final stand and when I finally get to the repair station so I can confront the flagship I have three jumps until I'm screwed. I need to destroy the flagship on Every. Single. Jump.

Amazingly, the Heavy Ion actually became useful during these fights as I just autofired it at the shields for the most part. My Hull Laser shot the engines out so that they had 0% evade, the anti-ship drone took out their cloaking early so that wasn't a problem. Second fight was more of the same, level 4 shields tend to negate beam drones. The third fight however, I had to autofire all my weapons at systems just so I could concentrate on keeping my ship in one piece. Both my Mantis crew members and my anti-personnel drone perished in the ensuing fight so that the rest of the crew could breathe easy (literally) and by the end I had a breach in every second room, my sensors, teleporter, engines and cloaking systems were all scrap and the three remaining crewmen, two engi repairmen and Freeman, the original captain, were fighting the last boarder in the med-bay.

Won by the skin of my teeth, one bar of hull left.

[Fikes]

I won as the Rock ship. It was a pretty close flight. I almost lost the second stage and had to run to a repair base. Caught the mothership 1 jump before defeat.

Pretty decent score so I decided to play again as the federation cruiser. I managed to unlock the slug ship on the way to the final stage. I had two perfectly trained mantis boarders and managed to knock out the med bay and kill all troops but one in the second stage. In the final stage I put everyone on the mothership and blew the thing up. Victory screen had the ship name but now crew.

[kcwong]

New player here! Loving it and having the "one more beacon" syndrome.

On easy mode, I reached the boss once. Won the first two rounds, but then hull was in the reds so I went for a repair - and forgot the boss would be faster than me... an embarrassing defeat.

After three days of playing I learned to not spend any scraps early on, and got my hands on a teleporter with two mantis crew - boarding is awesome!


I have a question though, about beam weapons. To have them do anything, you need to break/disable shield first. But do you need to time it yourself?

As in:
1. Get beam weapon to be ready to fire
2. Fire other weapons to disable shield
3. Watch shield break and quickly pause
4. Fire beam weapon and hope their shield don't get back up before the beam lands

Or:
1. Get all weapons ready to fire
2. Fire all weapons (select beam weapon last?)
3. Watch shield breaks first then beam hits

Or even this:
1. Get all weapons ready to fire
2. Pause
3. Fire other weapons
4. Unpause and quickly pause
5. Fire beam
6. Watch shield breaks first and then beam hits

[The Darkling Wolf]

I usually fire my beam before my other weapons have hit, it minimizes the risk of it being wasted on hitting their shields.

[kcwong]

I usually fire my beam before my other weapons have hit, it minimizes the risk of it being wasted on hitting their shields.

So it's option 3 - fire shield-breakers, unpause and quickly pause, fire beams?

Or is it possible to simply pause and fire them all at the same time?

[Stworca]

Why would you pause? 

Set the regular weapon on auto fire, and hold the beam on targeting. Just as the shield is down, start the beamage. Shooting the beam and the breaker at the same time, wastes the beam, as it has faster travel speed.

[The Darkling Wolf]

I usually fire my beam before my other weapons have hit, it minimizes the risk of it being wasted on hitting their shields.

So it's option 3 - fire shield-breakers, unpause and quickly pause, fire beams?

Or is it possible to simply pause and fire them all at the same time?

Firing them all at once usually results in the beam hitting shields, so you'll need to time it a bit.

[Neyvn]

Beam weaapons have something of a half second delay when it comes to desiginating the target line and them hitting. The best method is to have your line at ready as the shield goes down and if its not already destroyed consider having the beam start through the shields and ending in the weapons. if its already destroyed. Finish in the shields just to maintain any half repairs that may have been done to the system. The best weapon to use on are bombs due to their high dmg and hit chance. Use missilea on weapon/medbays when people are there due to thier high splah damage to that room and use any lasers on bridge or weapons to keep the enemy ship dead in the water.

[GlyphGryph]

I fire the beam when my weapons hit. I also tend to fire my slowest weapons first. I play with /very/ precise timing - and I don't want to waste the beam if shots miss anyway, since it usually takes the longest to charge. Generally, I am for all of my shots to hit within the same second, and laser as soon as the shields go down. I never, ever use autofire on a laser ship, unless it's ion based - and even then I disable it on ships with enough shield points they might have a conceivable chance of recovering.

Sometimes I'll lose the tail end of the beam for the longer running beams, but I always aim for the priority rooms first, and the tail end is usually against something unimportant, so it's obvious where my priority lies there.

Having stronger beams certainly make it easier, though.

Also important to note - angles!
Minibeam can easily deal 4 damage (across 4 rooms) on almost every ship in the game, and 5 against others. The ones you can't will be pretty obvious. Other beams can hit more - remember that you deal full damage if you touch a single pixel belonging to that room.

Firebeam is different though - that one, you're not aiming for rooms, you're aiming for squares. So hit as many squares as possible.

[kcwong]

Beam weaapons have something of a half second delay when it comes to desiginating the target line and them hitting. *snip*

Yes, I noticed that too... when I got my first beam weapon, I had trouble timing it; also tried a beam drone and found out it is ineffective without proper support, so I simply sold all beam weapons (in my first few runs I'm always hurting for scraps).

I'll try again next time I found one...

[EnigmaticHat]

One thing I've found with heavy ion: its only useful if you have another ion weapon.  Heavy ion on its own = 2 ion damage to shields, which then runs out and their shield recovers before you can fire again.  Heavy ion + ion blast = 2 ion damage to shields, then 1, then 2, ect. constantly draining power that can't recover.

Of course, ion blast 2 will reliably depower any shield unless the enemy has cloak, so heavy ion STILL isn't that great of a weapon.  My favorite engi ship build ever was ion blast 2 + two burst laser 2s.

[Fikes]

I really really wish you could set the delay on auto fire weapons. It is so much more comfortable to have all the same weapons right now, simply because then you can turn them on and cause max damage to shields.

When I get weapons that fire at different speeds or beam weapons I end up turning off autofire and pausing the game constantly.

In general I avoid beam weapons for this reason.

Some tips I have found: Fire ion weapons first. If the enemy has three shields and you fire one laser at them followed by 1 ion, they will two shields and none recharging. If you fire ion first followed by laser they will have two shields with 1 recharging (ie 1 effective shield).

Also always fire your high damage weapons last. A two damage laser only takes out 1 shield.