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[GlyphGryph]

Unless your intent is to ion systems other than the shields, which I DO do sometimes, especially with the heavy-ion.

Laser to get down shields, and then a heavy ion blast to their weapons area.

Each shield eats 2 points of ion, but each laser takes out a point of shield. So sometimes it's more efficient to use the lasers on the shield and the ion on the systems.

[kcwong]

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.

You can combine both autofire and manual fire for best effect.

1. Keep auto fire on.
2. When starting a fight, place a target for ion weapons, which fires very fast (ion blast 1 is every 4 seconds).
3. Keep your other weapons without a target. Wait for all of them to charge up.
4. After you saw your ion cannon hits, pause.
5. Place a target for all your other weapons. Unpause and let them to fire.
6. Hit the shortcut keys for all non-ion weapons. Their current targets will be removed. Right-click to dismiss the last one.

[gimlet]

Agree, I combine that with "leave the slowest recharge weapon(s) in the alpha strike on auto-fire" (as long as they're OK to fire first, as part of the shield busting for example) and use the sound of them firing to fire the rest.  It's a nice signal that it's time to fire, so I don't waste precious seconds of recharge time

[kcwong]

I won for the first time in easy mode!

Spoiler: Boss is down! (click to show/hide)

My ship has drone control and auto-loader augmentations. The 2nd one, and the weapons I found made the boss fight a rather easy one. My ship is all maxed out except drone control.

Spoiler: Victory screen (click to show/hide)

A human crew died in a random event... that's when I only had 3 people.

Spoiler: Score (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Achievements (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: How I got there (click to show/hide)

Kestrel is a decent ship... while Engi got Ion Blast II for an easy start, eventually you will need to break shields. I've played Engi games where I meet the boss with my starting weapons. Also missiles and drones are limited and depend somewhat on chance.

Kestrel starts with Burst Laser II which is great from the beginning to the end. Fast charging, able to strip 3 points of shields. It's pretty easy to find and deploy a 2+damage weapons to be able to hit the boss through its 4-point shield.

Here's what I think after so many games:
- Save up scraps early on. You should be able to survive sector 1 and perhaps even the whole sector 2 without spending any points.
- Find stores with those savings... augmentations are very useful, some of them outright make the game for you.
- Nebula in non-nebula sectors. Always enter them - the rebel line moves a whole lot slower when you are inside. Use this to your advantage to explore as many beacon as you can.
- If you see a mantis sector ahead, make sure you have blast door maxed or you're in for a world of hurt.
-

Spoiler: My thoughts about boss fight (click to show/hide)

- Boss has 4 shields and cloaking device. You must be able to take them out, either with boarding party, bombs or synchronized weapon barrage.
- Defense Drone I, max engine upgrade, with a max pilot and max engineer. These will help you to avoid nearly all missiles the boss sends your way. The cost for Defense Drone II is a bit too high to be worth it.
- 3 or 4 points of shield is highly recommended. With 4 you have nothing to worry about drone power surges.
- Boss weapons are isolated - once you break them and kill the dudes inside, the weapons will be gone for good.
- In round 1, spend some time setting fire to the main section. Let the fire kill the crews... this way you'll have little to no boarding party later on.

[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.

You can combine both autofire and manual fire for best effect.

1. Keep auto fire on.
2. When starting a fight, place a target for ion weapons, which fires very fast (ion blast 1 is every 4 seconds).
3. Keep your other weapons without a target. Wait for all of them to charge up.
4. After you saw your ion cannon hits, pause.
5. Place a target for all your other weapons. Unpause and let them to fire.
6. Hit the shortcut keys for all non-ion weapons. Their current targets will be removed. Right-click to dismiss the last one.

This is exactly what I do, I just wish I could automate it some how. Right click on the weapon and say "Delay fire x seconds." Another good one would be "hold fire" so you don't waste half your lasers to the enemy cloaking.

I had a crazy play through with the slug cruiser last night (the first time I had used that ship). Right off the bat I had people joining my crew. I think I dismissed 6 crew members just because I was out of space!

But for all the crew and all the scrap I could not get my hands on a damn laser! In the end I had the starting bio beam and dual laser. I also had a breach bomb and an ion blast. I finally managed to get an anti ship drone mk 1. I ran out of breach bombs so quick... after that I could literally do exactly 4 points of shield damage and ONLY in this specific order:

Teleport boarders to enemy mother ship right before it cloaks
Wait for the drone to be .5 seconds from shooting
Fire ion blast, wait .25 seconds
Fire dual lasers
At this point if you are EXTREMELY lucky the enemy ships has no shields AND two enemy crew members are running to the med bay.
Fire bio beam at the two on the move.

I got the ship down to 1 crew in the first stage, but ended up way overwhelmed in the second.

[10ebbor10]

You managed to win without cloaking or boarding. Congrats, I suppose. Both are extremely usefull though. Boarding allows you to take out the zeapons, cloak allows you to circumvene special attacks.

[Haspen]

You managed to win without cloaking or boarding. Congrats, I suppose. Both are extremely usefull though. Boarding allows you to take out the zeapons, cloak allows you to circumvene special attacks.

I won three times without those on NORMAL and you didn't even notice D:<

* Haspen fake dramas, etc.

[kcwong]

You managed to win without cloaking or boarding. Congrats, I suppose. Both are extremely usefull though. Boarding allows you to take out the zeapons, cloak allows you to circumvene special attacks.

Yes, boarding is very powerful indeed. When I started playing FTL I always failed to get a teleport installed because I never found one or was out of scraps. Then I finally found one, and with two mantises too, and I was swimming in scrap.

In that game I just won, I did find teleport for sale... but auto-reloader too. I only had enough scraps for one of them.

I already unlocked the stealth ship, but never tried it... no shield is rather risky.

[Fikes]

looks like I'm gonna have to re download FTL. The modloader has well and truly buggered it up.

any way to save the... saves?

I think saves are automatically backed up to steam, if you are using that.

If not... I am not sure. I went looking for them once and couldn't find them. That being said, generally games keep the save data even if you uninstall the game.

[kcwong]

looks like I'm gonna have to re download FTL. The modloader has well and truly buggered it up.

any way to save the... saves?

Learn this, once and for all:

Programs no longer put their executable files together with the data. It makes backup and reinstall messy. That way OS can also set different access rights to protect the program files from being modified (i.e. being hacked) while letting the data to be written.

So on Windows, your program files are by default in \Program Files or \Program Files (x86), the later only appears on 64-bit systems for storing 32-bit applications.

Your data are placed under a special folder.

Start | Run. Enter "Cmd". Type "SET USER" and press Enter.

The displayed lines are environment variables. The root directory of your data files on Win7 is defined in the USERPROFILE variable. Older Windows use different variables, but look in both SET USER and SET HOME and you will find them.

Now the data files are organized in some ways in subfolders. Everyone has a different idea on how the data should be sorted (including Microsoft which published a recommendation long ago, but of course not everyone conforms to it), but there are several common folders used.

\My Documents\
\My Documents\My Games
\Saved Games\

Look under your data folder and you will find them. No need to ask for each game you own.

FTL save and highscore file can be found easily... I'll leave that as a practice.

[Fikes]

Spoiler: ^^ (click to show/hide)

[lemon10]

looks like I'm gonna have to re download FTL. The modloader has well and truly buggered it up.

any way to save the... saves?

Learn this, once and for all:

Programs no longer put their executable files together with the data. It makes backup and reinstall messy. That way OS can also set different access rights to protect the program files from being modified (i.e. being hacked) while letting the data to be written.

So on Windows, your program files are by default in \Program Files or \Program Files (x86), the later only appears on 64-bit systems for storing 32-bit applications.

Your data are placed under a special folder.

Start | Run. Enter "Cmd". Type "SET USER" and press Enter.

The displayed lines are environment variables. The root directory of your data files on Win7 is defined in the USERPROFILE variable. Older Windows use different variables, but look in both SET USER and SET HOME and you will find them.

Now the data files are organized in some ways in subfolders. Everyone has a different idea on how the data should be sorted (including Microsoft which published a recommendation long ago, but of course not everyone conforms to it), but there are several common folders used.

\My Documents\
\My Documents\My Games
\Saved Games\

Look under your data folder and you will find them. No need to ask for each game you own.

FTL save and highscore file can be found easily... I'll leave that as a practice.

Except that that isn't true for what is the majority of games.
Now does happen to be true for FTL, but the vast majority of steam games keep things somewhere (and it does vary by game a little) in the steam folder.

It may be proper to place the user data in the my documents folder, but most games don't do it, and the ones that do often place it in radically different places.

[Ultimuh]

This game is HARD!
Even on easy!
After failing several times I tried to do a pacifist run instead.
That failed as well..

[Sirus]

This game is HARD!
Even on easy!
After failing several times I tried to do a pacifist run instead.
That failed as well..

No such thing. If you can't deal damage, you can't defeat the final boss. There are also sometimes enemies that disable your engines, preventing you from escaping.

[GlyphGryph]

Pacifist run is just up to sector 5.