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[GreatJustice]

Generally speaking, the Red Tail is going to win the game if you know what you're doing and aren't horrifically unlucky, since 4 lasers can last well into the fourth or fifth sector. Inversely, the Basilisk is probably the best ship in the game if you get a bit of luck (get a good bomb or two + Mantis/Engi crewmembers), but it can also be beaten by laughably weak enemies early on.

[Kagus]

I generally try and get in as many fights/encounters as possible, and try not to run away unless I know I can't take them down without significant damage and casualties.  Every fight is just another oh-so-precious chance to get some scrap and fuel.

Also, doing my second Shivan run.  Fun times, and we've gotten pretty far.  I'm running a rather peculiar weapons loadout, thanks to my pyromania and desire to board everything, and through that I've found that the Ion Blast Mk.II, given enough patience and precision, can bust any level of shielding.  This is because it has a base recharge of 4 seconds, and every time you hit the same system it adds another point of ion damage and locks it for 5 more seconds.  This allows you to stack infinitely, provided you can keep hitting the system/shield.

I'm basically just using that, an ion bomb for quickstarts, and a fire beam.  If I'm up against one of the few enemies I don't want to burn out, I also have a halberd beam.

Also, thanks to hilarious luck, I've just now recruited my eighth rockman crewmember...  We're a full team of rockers, now.

I actually specifically went against my better judgement and dismissed an engi to make room for the last rock, just so that I could have an entirely-rockman crew.  I mean, hey...  If you're gonna play a game, you might as well have some fun.

[GlyphGryph]

First, I didn't realize Neonivek had totally moved the goalposts, but you're right, he has! In that case, yes, some luck is required.

But as far as fighting the boss - Kagus, the weapon rooms on the boss are entirely disconnected. A cloak + boards means the enemy can only effectively get off one volley before you take down (to begin with) their rockets, which you can then evade, and shortly after their entire offensive capability is rendered irrelevant. Literally every weapon room is completely isolated, and the final forms make it even easier.

The Cloak is what lets you avoid everything ELSE he can throw at you. Drone Waves, Super Laser Blast Attack, both are rendered completely irrelevant by the cloak. You simply go stealth and let it run it's course.

If you have both, and enough damage to overcome it's defenses even 1% of the time, victory is guaranteed, because boarders+cloaking means he cannot hurt you. The most he can manage is a stalemate which is (again) not a luck-based thing during the fight, it will be obvious whether you will or will not beat him by the time you get to him.

If you manage to get ahold of a bomb or missile of any sort, even as your only weapon (and you have enough missiles to use it), the stalemate is ruled, since you can blast their door control and juggle the crew down to 1 on the first form and then have your way with the things from there on out. If you have 5 points of attack, you can overcome through sheer force of arms. If you have GOOD boarders (as opposed to just "boarders"), and you bothered to actually upgrade the teleport, you don't even need that.

[Kagus]

Speaking of boss boarding runs, I just smashed him to bits with my second Shivan run.  I really do quite like that ship.

Only used the weaponry I mentioned in my previous post.  Use ion weaponry to beat the shields down into submission, then light the whole ship ablaze with a fire beam.  That was mostly just for the first form though, there weren't enough people left to validate that tactic for the other forms (and I did miss using it...  I love burning stuff).  Then I just used a halberd beam to disintegrate rooms at random.

No cloak, no defense drone (even though I was desperately keeping an eye out for them), just maxed shields and decent engines.  Didn't take a single point of damage for the first two forms, only reason I took damage on the third was because I couldn't bring the shield down quickly enough to neutralize the missile turret until it had let off a couple rounds.

8 rockmen to victory.  Never lost a single crewmember, outside of the engi I dismissed to make room for rocker number 8.


A lot of ships went the way of having their crew pummeled into smears while the entire ship was consumed by a raging inferno.  It's quite the fun combination.

[Darkmere]

Yeah, the flagship crew doesn't respawn between phases. if you can kill everything but the laser turret gunner (which requires a teleporter and a missile or bomb of any kind during phase 1) then you can just continue sending your boarders back to the ship in the other phases to disable every system they have and blast the ship at your leisure. Systems shops are by far the most common, and if labeling the ability to find a single missile-based weapon "luck," you probably need to rethink playing roguelikes.

[Neonivek]

Your skill and knowledge of the game is basically what is supposed to lower the luck requirement.

It is sort of the roguelike philosophy. You will die just because of back luck and often you never stood a chance as soon as the game said "start", but the skills you gain are genuine.

[monk12]

Your skill and knowledge of the game is basically what is supposed to lower the luck requirement.

It is sort of the roguelike philosophy. You will die just because of back luck and often you never stood a chance as soon as the game said "start", but the skills you gain are genuine.

That first sentence is why I don't consider FTL to be more luck-based than skill-based, because I believe it applies to FTL. Across all of the shops you'll find in the game, you will find some combo strong enough to beat the boss if you play it right. It might be a very offbeat combo that requires a lot of skill to execute, but it's really hard to go the entire game without finding something that could work. Of course, some games are much easier or harder than others or will require impeccable skill with your cloak/teleporter/weapon volleys/whatever, but pretty much every game I lose I can look back and say "I should have bought X instead of Y" or "I shouldn't have made X choice in the random event" or something of that nature.

Dammit, did that expansion come out yet? I want to play some FTL now...

[Darkmere]

Yeah, Monk12 nailed it. It's so much more skill than luck barring a hard-counter series in the first sector or so. It reminds me of Binding of Isaac in that regard; once you get the basic mechanics and competence with a range of ships, you're able to perform decently in the vast majority of circumstances.

[Leafsnail]

Yeah I did mean the laser guy.  It can take a good while to kill off everyone in the first stage, but I find it's almost always possible if you're patient by eventually whittling them down and hitting their medbay.

Generally speaking, the Red Tail is going to win the game if you know what you're doing and aren't horrifically unlucky, since 4 lasers can last well into the fourth or fifth sector. Inversely, the Basilisk is probably the best ship in the game if you get a bit of luck (get a good bomb or two + Mantis/Engi crewmembers), but it can also be beaten by laughably weak enemies early on.

I think you're wrong about the Basilisk losing to weak enemies.  There are some ships you can't possibly kill early on, but it also has possibly the best starting defenses in the game (two shields and an defense drone - that makes it virtually untouchable for a good while).  That means you can just run away from Zoltans and Drones, and still come out ahead because you're boarding everyone else.

[EnigmaticHat]

Zoltan B is the real luck based start.  Your weapon loadout could theoretically kill the final boss right from the start, but if you meet a beam drone or an asteroid field you're going to be seriously hurt.  If you meet them both at the same time before you manage to buy a shield generator, you die.  Period.

[BurnedToast]

Your skill and knowledge of the game is basically what is supposed to lower the luck requirement.

It is sort of the roguelike philosophy. You will die just because of back luck and often you never stood a chance as soon as the game said "start", but the skills you gain are genuine.

That first sentence is why I don't consider FTL to be more luck-based than skill-based, because I believe it applies to FTL. Across all of the shops you'll find in the game, you will find some combo strong enough to beat the boss if you play it right. It might be a very offbeat combo that requires a lot of skill to execute, but it's really hard to go the entire game without finding something that could work. Of course, some games are much easier or harder than others or will require impeccable skill with your cloak/teleporter/weapon volleys/whatever, but pretty much every game I lose I can look back and say "I should have bought X instead of Y" or "I shouldn't have made X choice in the random event" or something of that nature.

Dammit, did that expansion come out yet? I want to play some FTL now...

It's just not finding weapons in shops that makes it luck based (though in theory you could never find any shops at all ever).

It's being able to afford those weapons, and the upgrades to use them.

Run into an enemy with a breach missile in sector 1? you're spending all your scrap repairing the holes in your hull (since it's going to hammer you a few times before your low level engines charge to run), and since you have no scrap for upgrades the next rank of ships beat you up more which means more scrap spent on repairs which means...

Basically, it's very easy to get screwed over at the start by bad luck, before you have any chance for skill to come into play. If you manage to hit sector 2 in good shape, then yes, it *mostly* comes down to skill, but sector 1 is absolutely luck based for the majority of ships.

[Kagus]

Just had my first win using the Torus.  I was again attempting to unlock the stealth ship, but nooooo...  No engi homeworld existed.

Anyways, I wanted to see how far a dude really could get just using drones.  As it turns out, not very far.  I did win, of course, but that's not because of the two stupefyingly expensive (both in scrap and energy) attack Mk.II drones I was fielding.  No, it's because I. AM. ION MAN.

Torus starts off with the ion blast Mk.II, and I found a Mk.I in a shop at one point.  This gave me enough ion blasting power that I could level any shields in the games within moments.  I did actually finish off the final boss using drones as my only hull damage source, but that was mostly just to prove a point.  Mostly I was carving people up with a pike beam I'd found along the way.

[BigFatStupidHead]

Getting to the last sector in the Vortex is basically winning.  Actually beating the game is like, super winning.

I guess I'm unusual in that the Vortex is the first ship I beat the game with. In other news, there is no loss worse than having a great game with huge setbacks and triumphant comebacks, only to lose it all because the game crashes entering the last sector.

[EnigmaticHat]

Your skill and knowledge of the game is basically what is supposed to lower the luck requirement.

It is sort of the roguelike philosophy. You will die just because of back luck and often you never stood a chance as soon as the game said "start", but the skills you gain are genuine.

That first sentence is why I don't consider FTL to be more luck-based than skill-based, because I believe it applies to FTL. Across all of the shops you'll find in the game, you will find some combo strong enough to beat the boss if you play it right. It might be a very offbeat combo that requires a lot of skill to execute, but it's really hard to go the entire game without finding something that could work. Of course, some games are much easier or harder than others or will require impeccable skill with your cloak/teleporter/weapon volleys/whatever, but pretty much every game I lose I can look back and say "I should have bought X instead of Y" or "I shouldn't have made X choice in the random event" or something of that nature.

Dammit, did that expansion come out yet? I want to play some FTL now...

It's just not finding weapons in shops that makes it luck based (though in theory you could never find any shops at all ever).

It's being able to afford those weapons, and the upgrades to use them.

Run into an enemy with a breach missile in sector 1? you're spending all your scrap repairing the holes in your hull (since it's going to hammer you a few times before your low level engines charge to run), and since you have no scrap for upgrades the next rank of ships beat you up more which means more scrap spent on repairs which means...

Basically, it's very easy to get screwed over at the start by bad luck, before you have any chance for skill to come into play. If you manage to hit sector 2 in good shape, then yes, it *mostly* comes down to skill, but sector 1 is absolutely luck based for the majority of ships.

Why run?  A breach missile takes 3 power, and most ships in the first sector have 2-4 weapons system power and a single shield layer.  One good hit to the weapon system should disable the breach missile.  Most of the playable non-boarding ships in the game have a decent chance of doing that before the enemy can fire the missile even once, otherwise you should take one or, at the most, two hits before you can get it offline.

The first sectors are luck based, but they're also easy compared to the rest of the game.  If you're running a solid ship like the Kestral, Torus, Adjudicator or Red-Tail, you should be able to get out of the early sectors more powerful than you started them basically every time.

[BurnedToast]

Well that was just the most "screw you" weapon that popped into my head, I guess it wouldn't be as bad in sector 1, but the point remains - you get beat up too badly (if not by missiles then by drones or beams or whatever) and it's just a downward spiral of never being able to afford any upgrades because you spent all your scrap on repairs.