Subset Games Forum

Twinge wrote:Tier 0:
Carnelian (Crystal B)

Honestly, I find the Crystal A to be one of the most OP ships in the game. I understand how people think that the Crystal B is the most OP ship in the game, It starts with shields, cloak, 4 man teleporter, and 3 crystal crew, I can see how it is heavily boarding oriented. Maybe I just dislike boarding ships, however, there are so many situations that can cripple this ship in seconds. Lucky missile in between cloak that hits your teleporter while your crew is on the enemy ship? Crippled. Have your other crystal crew member repair it while your other crew membets are still on board the enemy ship? Nope. The next missile gets through your shields and hits another one of your vital systems. Your crystal crew members on the other ship are dead by now and now you barely have enough power to jump away. Now you are crippled to one crew member with no weapons and an obscure ship layout. Your reaction to this is and you restart in dismay. You can pretty much disable most ships in the first three sectors, but as soon as most ships have more than 2-3 crew and a med bay or a teleporter, this ship is crippled beyond belief, unless you have a weapon that can manage to bypass shields, which you need some luck to acquire in FTL. A ship isn't always worth the sum of its parts. The Crystal A just has so many plus sides to it. For one it starts with four crew, which is always a good thing because you can man all vital systems from the start. It's starting weapons can get you all the way to sector 5 without many problems. Giving you plenty of time to upgrade shields and engines. I got level four shields on this ship without even having to get better weapons. The heavy crystal is a weapon you can keep all the way through the game. I completely wrecked the flagship with a teleporter and cloak. Those two systems are really all that you need to destroy the flagship. I beat the flagship with a Vulcan chain laser, Swarm missile, Ion burst I, and Heavy Crystal I. There are just so many things I can see going against the Crystal B, lucky missiles, large boarding parties from events, certain beams, and more. I would appreciate some feedback on my thoughts and would appreciate any response on this topic. I also have many thoughts on the Simo-H, but I will save that for another post. Happy spaceflights!

You can not be serious or it's just you don't like / master a boarding ship as you said. 4 TP + cloaking + 3 crystals at start is clearly overpowered. The only thing you may need is a weapon to finish auto-scout ships and take down zoltan shields, even a basic 2x lasers would make the deal. Against all other ships, 3 boarding crystals will kill ennemy crew in less than 30s most of times. Oh and medbays or clonebays aren't really a problem with the crystal ability to lock a room and i don't talk about the tons of opportunities to get free crew members and better loot with boarding ship.

Crystal A is really far behind that. His weapons are strong enough(but don't synergise much with some others like beams) but take 13s and 15s to charge, meaning you will often take some damage in long space fights, also you won't be able to avoid missiles and ship layout is far too wide and unbalanced to multitask when you have to deal with boarders or make some repairs.

I play exclusively in hard and while i will win almost 100% of my runs with Crystal B, i'm not sure to win half or even 1/3 with the layout A.

If i had to rank it, i would even position it behind Zoltan A & B, Lanius B, Mantis A & B, Stealth A, Kestrel A & B and Slug A.

Smexy: Board with all 3 Crystal Crew to start if you're boarding an enemy that 2 Crystal Crew cannot dispatch by themselves. Then you don't care at all if your Teleporter or anything else is hit by a missile.

One thing Ive noticed. Nearly all the C layout cruisers suck. Except for Engi, Slug and Rock, the C's are just plain bad.

5/8 is "nearly all"? One more non-suck one and it's be 50/50.

And I personally think the Theseus is good merely for having a 4-man teleporter, so that's your 50/50

The Thesues sucks. Easy difficulty, 12 losses straight, and yet to win with it. Your crew is terrible for boarding, and you have no weapons or start with lvl 2 shields like the Basilisk. And on the Basilisk you have a boarding drone too to support your crew. The Theseus feels like an inferior Basilisk, and I forgot to say that the Rock C is passable, not good. The Kestrel C has the same bad airlock layout, the Fed C deserves to burn. The Zoltan C looks good, but if the battery runs out or you get boarded? Poof! No more power for you. The Theseus has a bad crew for boarding and no weapons, and it doesn't have good enough defences. The Stealth C is just a train wreck, with worse defences, same weapons as the Nessassio and a useless overcharger drone. If you had 2 drones instead of one, it would be better, but as it stands it sucks.

OC2142 wrote:The Thesues sucks. Easy difficulty, 12 losses straight, and yet to win with it.

Granted I've only played with it the one time since AE came out, but I managed to win with it in spite of a terrible loss near the end of the run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ilcYxm ... rtHH2Wa7zF

Starting with a 4-man teleporter is like starting with a weapon pre-ignitor. Sure, the ship might suck otherwise but IT HAS A FREAKING WEAPON PRE-IGNITOR.

5thHorseman wrote:Granted I've only played with it the one time since AE came out, but I managed to win with it in spite of a terrible loss near the end of the run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ilcYxm ... rtHH2Wa7zF

Starting with a 4-man teleporter is like starting with a weapon pre-ignitor. Sure, the ship might suck otherwise but IT HAS A FREAKING WEAPON PRE-IGNITOR.

The problem is, like the Engi B. You might get lucky and pick up extra crew who know how to fight better or you'll be stuck with the starting crew for several systems.

I once played a game of Captain's Edition where somehow for all 8 sectors, I never picked up any crew via events for the Shrike. Yup, not even a Human or something to suffocate in the oxygen-free environment.
There wasn't even a Lanius or AI in stores to supplement the ship, even though I clearly was in a Zoltan sector at one point.

So it all depends whether or not you get lucky and I can see why people don't like it very much. The Federation C has the same sort of flak going for it as well. If you had a second Mantis, those Zoltans can be regulated to making your shield ion-proof.