Defense Against Missiles [A How-To Guide]

[NWade]

Although FTL has a lot of randomness to it, there is also a lot of strategy involved! The situation you find yourself in will dictate which strategy you need to use. You really need to keep this in mind, and change your actions/strategies throughout the game. I see a lot of people posting about hull damage and dying early, and I think defending against missiles is one of the problems people run into. Beyond mere survival, better missile-defense means you spend less scrap on repairing your hull - and more scrap goes into ship upgrades (so you can survive in later sectors).

The first thing to understand is that your main shield never helps against missiles or bombs. There are only three ways to defend against missiles:

1. Dodge the Missile
2. Have a Defense Drone (which will usually shoot down the incoming Missile)
3. Prevent the enemy from firing its missiles

This knowledge can guide you to what you have to do, in order to maximize your missile defense.

DODGING MISSILES
The "Evade" skill is critical here. There are several ways you increase the chances you can evade a shot -

• Improve your Engines (upgrade them and don't forget to provide more power to them)
• Put a crew-member at the Engine-room station (this provides an initial boost; and then it will get better as the crew-member levels-up their engine skill)
• Put a crew-member at the Helm station (this is always better than the autopilot - even a fully upgraded helm is only half as good as an actual crew-member. And the crew member's boost will get better as they level-up their piloting skill)

DEFENSE DRONES
This is pretty straightforward. Getting a level 1 or level 2 defense-drone takes a lot of the "bite" out of enemies with missiles. The upside of having a defense drone is that you'll hardly ever take a missile hit with one active. The downside is that drones require power and are a consumable item - so now you have to either get drone parts while exploring, or spend scrap to buy them at stores. You never run out of "evade"; but you can certainly run out of drones! Also, you need to pay attention to the drones during combat. They can occasionally fail, get destroyed, or lose power (because your drone room takes damage). When they're working, they're far more effective than relying on your evade skill; but they also take more effort to manage.

MANAGING POWER AND CREW IN COMBAT
Since we're talking about upgrading and powering your systems, let me also spend a minute talking about how to "improve" your defense by managing power during a battle. The key is to match your defensive systems with your enemy's capabilities. The PAUSE feature is your friend - use it! Especially during the first moment you enter combat. Take a minute to examine the enemy ship. After your first few play-throughs you will learn to recognize which weapons are which. Set your strategy (tips provided below), change power levels, target weapons, and give crew orders... only un-pause after you've done all this.

If the enemy you're fighting only has lasers/beam-weapons:

• Make sure your shields are fully-powered. If you need to, remove some power from your medbay** and/or engines so that you can fully power your shields.
• Have a good crew-member sitting at the shield-room console.
• If you have excess crew, put one in the shields room so that they provide additional repair speed if the shields become damaged.
• Unless they have a lot of lasers and you have a Mk II Defense drone (which can take out incoming laser-fire), do not waste a defense drone - save the parts. I recommend this, even in an asteroid field (drones can take out asteroids just like missiles, but the asteroids can take out your drone and then you've really wasted the parts)!

If the enemy you're fighting can hurt you more with missiles/bombs than with lasers:
NOTE: This is more than just counting how many weapon systems the enemy has. You have to factor in your shield-level and the enemy's power/charge-time of any lasers/beams, to understand how likely it is that the enemy can do hull/system damage with their lasers/beams.

• Make sure your engines are fully-powered. If you need to, remove some power from your medbay** and/or 1 level of shields (which frees up 2 energy) so that you can fully power your engines. This maximizes your evade skill.
• Have 1 good crew-member in both the engine-room and at the helm.
• If you have excess crew, put one of them in the engine-room and/or the helm - so that they provide additional repair speed if these systems become damaged. If you only have 1 spare crew-member, I advocate putting them in the engine-room.
• If you have defense drones, ignore the previous bullet-point and place at least 1 spare crew member (who's good at repair) in the drone-control room. You want quick repairs so that the defense drone comes back online without too many missiles getting through while the system is damaged!

**BEWARE if the enemy has a Transporter. You may need to shift power back to the medbay if you get boarded

TARGET PRIORITIES
Deciding what part of an enemy ship to attack is a very complicated subject. Any advice I give here is going to be a general rule-of-thumb, not a directive to follow 100% of the time. But in general, if the enemy has missiles and/or bombs you want to take out their weapons systems as soon as possible. The less damage the enemy can do to you, the easier it'll be for you to take your time in combat and whittle them down (or board them and kill their crew, if that's how you roll).

• The most effective way to do this is with your own missiles/bombs aimed at their weapons-room.
• If you only have lasers/beams:
  
  1. Make sure autofire is on (yes, have it on despite what some people say about it - you'll see why in a moment).
  2. Make sure your weapons are activated, but un-target all of them from anything (click on a weapon to get the targeting reticle, then right-click out in space to clear the target without powering the system down).
  3. The weapons will charge and turn green.
  4. As soon as all of your weapons have turned green, pause the game.
  5. Now select each of your lasers and target the enemy's weapons-room.
  6. When you un-pause, all of your lasers will fire in unison and the volley should get through several layers of shields - hopefully damaging the weapons room.
  7. If you have any beam weapons, pause the game as soon as the lasers hit the enemy ship.
  8. Target the weapons-room with your beam(s).
  9. Then unpause and the beam should fire immediately (before the shields regenerate).
  10. Rinse and repeat this series of steps until the enemy missile/bomb systems are all offline.

Once you take down their weapons systems, you can often take a 1-2 rounds to target the enemy's shields and try to damage those (so that future laser volleys do more hull damage). But be sure to come back to the weapons-systems and hit them again (even if they're still red) - to ensure that the enemy doesn't get their missiles/bombs back online.

CLEANUP
The Rebel fleet only advances when you jump. So be *sure* to take some time after each combat/encounter to heal your crew, repair damage, let Oxygen levels recover to 100%, etc. Open your ship screen before you jump and decide if you want to spend scrap on upgrades, or re-arrange equipment. Only jump after doing these things.

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I'm sure I've forgotten a few things, but I'll come back and edit this as I find things to add (or people remind me of items). Hopefully these tips and ideas will give you a better chance of surviving the dangerous Galaxies in FTL!

Enjoy,

--Noel
Edited to clarify the autopilot/helm situation

[Adso]

Does anyone know when to-hit chance is calculated? I'm assuming that after you see a missile fire, but before it appears on your side of the screen, you can power-up your drive and the evade will be counted, much like you can cloak reactively.

[Flair]

Zoltan Shield also tanks missle hits.

And I think the evade is calc'd as it reaches the point where it would hit your shield. Its exactly the same as the cloak, if you cloak after a missle passes the will-I-hit calc it will still hit, as I've done it XD

[NWade]

Zoltan Shield also tanks missle hits.

Yeah, I debated putting that in. I didn't want to be spoiler-y about those (either defending against them or dealing with them if you have 'em)... I figured this guide was more newbie-oriented and folks who were all up on Zoltan shields would have figured out a lot of this stuff by the time they got 'em.

--Noel

[jonathino001]

You forgot some very important ones. CLOAKING. do not underestimate it! not only can it be used to prevent enemy weapons from charging but if you have decent evade you can use it after the missile has fired to avoid it completely. this usually gives you enough time to take out their weapons system without taking a hit.

And useful augmentations: Rock plating, Titanium system plating

Rock plating, what more can I say? occasionally you won't take hull damage. One thing to note: the only permanent losses from any battle are crew death and hull damage. Everything else can be fixed for free on the fly. so less hull damage is very helpful.

Titanium system plating is actually something I personally never use even though the stealth cruiser is my personal favorite ship. I always sell it to make the 150 scrap needed for shields (it sells for 50, you start with 30 so you only need to make 70 scrap before you find a store with shields). But if anyone out there plays this ship and keeps it then you won't have to worry about missiles taking out your systems, which means less time spent repairing, quicker killing of the enemy and as a result less hull damage

Just a few strategies I had to add. Their all dependent on which ship you choose. I strongly recommend buying a cloak if you don't start with the stealth ship, It makes the missile far less threatening and got me out of tight situations on countless occasions.

[keyzcz]

Missiles can be easy to shot down with basic drones.
But if enemy is firing more than one missile at the same time you need more drones or better defensive drone.

You have to launch drones carefully because if they will be at same place they will not shot down rocket at oposite side in 100% cases. Just look where they are aiming.
If rocket is flying from east and drone is on west and have laser to west,he have to tunr his laser...and someties he is so slow

Mutch worst are bombs.They can not be shot down only dodged.

[UltraMantis]

I think the Autopilot is only ever used when the station is unmanned. It allows the pilot to move and deal with intruders or fires or critical damage. The autopilot bonuses cannot stack with the pilot bonus because either the pilot is manning the station or it's on autopilot. Can't be both.

Very through guide otherwise.

[NWade]

I think the Autopilot is only ever used when the station is unmanned. It allows the pilot to move and deal with intruders or fires or critical damage. The autopilot bonuses cannot stack with the pilot bonus because either the pilot is manning the station or it's on autopilot. Can't be both.

You are correct - I phrased this poorly. What I meant was that *any* crew member at the helm is better than an autopilot (even a fully-upgraded one). I'll edit the original post with better verbiage.

Thanks!

--Noel

[Spazticus]

I'd like to add one point regarding drones - the Drone Recovery Arm augmentation is very beneficial, especially if purchased early on. I try to get one by the end of sector 2, every time I use the Torus. I find I almost never have to buy another drone after acquiring that, as I'll often have 30 or more drones gained from encounters by sector 8. That's much more than enough to beat the boss, and if you have that many by the end of sector 7, you can just trade the Arm for another augmentation.

EDIT to add: One other note on drones getting destroyed: Obviously, shipboard drones can be destroyed by the enemy crew or weapons fire. In my experience, Defense Drones and Anti-Ship Drones don't get destroyed, but they will float away when your drone system gets sufficiently damaged/locked down by ions. As soon as power is restored, the drone(s) will resume functioning as normal, with no extra costs. I suppose it's possible that they can float too far away, and you have to expend from the drone reserves to activate another; but so far that hasn't yet happened to me.

[thewbert]

I'm curious. In step one of targeting priorities you wrote:

Make sure autofire is on (yes, have it on despite what some people say about it - you'll see why in a moment).

But then you never explain why you would want autofire on. In order to focus fire on a system and take it down, you want all your weapons to fire at the same time, which means having autofire off. Autofire is only really useful if you're pinging someone's shield with an Ion weapon and doing the actual killing with drones, for example, or in cases where the enemy's shields have been completely knocked out and you just want the weapon to fire as soon as it's charged.

Or maybe I'm missing something. What part of your steps specifically requires autofire to be enabled?