What is your favourite ship - and why?

[CrazyDave]

... and Zoltan ships.

Right. Those, too. Though, strangely, I usually don't run into them in the first sector or two.

[tswaters]

If I'm looking for an easy game, definitely Crystal B... it is imba. 4-person teleporter AND cloak/shields to start off? Who needs weapons? Also the crystal lockdown is great for disabling weapons or isolating crew from their medbay.

If I'm looking for a challenge, I'll whip out the Stealth B -- although, I'm pretty sure I haven't made it out of sector 3 yet without rage quitting due to a zolton shield and/or offensive drone.

[Megas Domestikos]

I like Zoltan ship the best because of the shield. Very good against boarding parties and lets you fire a shot or two before the enemy can hit you.

[omegaai]

Crystal B is the superior version of mantis B. Using the boarding strat as long as you upgrade starting systems and get at least a basic laser 1 you can beat the 3 stages of the boss without taking hull damage in normal.

The cloak gives enough defense to overcome mantis B defensive advantage, while the crystals+special ability make them great against everything except the same ships that give mantis B an issue.

Nearly all encounters have me porting into the enemy weapon room, using one crystal ability and destroying the weapons. At worse the enemy is able to fire one volley and cloak deals with it. Afterwhich I either port out or let the enemy crew enter the room. If they have a med bay another crystal uses it ability when one of the enemy crew is around 33% hp.

Hope the expansion or ftl 2 has active abilities for all crew. Nothing beats crystals atm.

[jamotide]

I still have not unlocked either Mantis or Crystal ship even after winning like 40 times.

[More Dakka]

I still have not unlocked either Mantis or Crystal ship even after winning like 40 times.

Crystal does require serious cooperation from the random number generator -- one event somewhere, followed by another random event with no quest marker, followed by needing to stumble upon the one particular unmarked node accessible in exactly one class of sector...

Mantis requires substantially less RNG assist, but it does still require a teleporter, a level 2 medbay, and some way of wiping out the crew of a mantis ship w/o destroying the ship itself (which is probably boarding if you actually HAVE the teleporter, but maybe you're scrap-rich engie/zoltan and wanted it for the blue options despite being rather iffy at mano-a-mano combat).

The only Type A I haven't unlocked is the slug ship; most runs I never pass through the Slug Homeworlds even if I try to maximize nebula sector.

Usually I'll go with the Red-Tail or Carnelian, the latter when I'm feeling more willing to take chances and hope against meeting too many autoships or Zoltan-shielded enemies before picking up weapons.

[jamotide]

Yeah, the pathetic thing is that I have looked all that up long ago and have been trying for those two the last 50 rounds. Oh well,I'm not angry,it gives me a reason to still play!
The Slug ships are pretty unique in their starting lodeouts, well worth unlocking!

[UltraMantis]

I would happily trade you my Mantis crusiers for the Slugs. I get the damned Mantis unlock event almost every time i play and have never ever seen the Slug in all my 160+ games. I must have unlocked the Gila Monster 20 times by now.

Don't get me wrong, they're great ships. So great in fact that i never play them anymore. But i read about people struggleing in them and i wonder if that's all because of a different approach to playing FTL? I mean i really do get the event almost everytime i'm in the Homeworlds and i win everytime if i have a Mantis as crew... maybe you or others play differently?

I would bet that taking the Kestrel of all ships, fiting it with a teleporter ASAP and boarding every other ship in the game is certainly going to unlock the Mantis cruiser. The early boarding attempts will be tricky until you fully upgrade the teleporter and beef up your medbay, but you should be rolling in the scrap very quickly, and having a missile to blast their medbay to pieces will help enormously as well.

[BKT]

Boarding :

1) Rock_B :
+ Very nice start-up stuffs!— 4 rocks, 2 good weapons, good augment (which can be sold later), tons of consumable.
+ Have many blue options early on.
+ 4 weapon slots.
+ Very versatile & stable ship (don't need good luck to be successful)
+ Pretty good layout.
- Rocks moves retardly slow...
- Fire can be deadly to your non-rocks crews if you're not careful.

2) Mantis_B
+ Good start-up stuffs + systems.
+ 4 slot telepad + mantis phero = very 'snappy' gameplay.
+ Solid defense.
+ Good layout.
- Need a little luck.
- Gameplay can be very boring after a while...

Non-Boarding :

1) Kestrel_A :
+ Very good weapons.
+ Fun to play!
- Artemis must be fire with care... Otherwise it can depleted your missiles stockpile extremely fast.
- Bad crews.
- Terrible layout— boarders & fires can be difficult to deal with.

2) Stealth_B :
+ Stressful + Exciting!
+ OK layout.
- 2 slot medbay.
- Luck-based.

[tswaters]

I get the damned Mantis unlock event almost every time i play and have never ever seen the Slug in all my 160+ games

This might relate to play style. If you get to the slug homeworlds, be sure that you are destroying ships with weapons and not boarding -- I find the slugs don't often surrender their 'stooorees' when you board and kill them all .

Also this one is really random -- even if you get to the shipping platform you have a choice of tailing the ship or fighting them. I've only encountered it three times -- the first time, I figured I would do what a slug did and tail them -- they sent a ship after me, I destroyed it but the platform was gone by the time I finished -- second time, I picked the opposite, attacking the ship, and was successful in the end -- the third time, I attacked again but got the same thing with the platform disappearing.

Anyway, assuming you get to the point where there is a scout ship tied to the vessel and you destroy or board it before they get away, at that point you need a slug crew member to get the blue option to find the ship in the nebula -- enhanced sensors might work for this as well, I'm not entirely sure -- probably best to have a slug on board.