Balancing the FTL ships

[The wise Sten]

When the DRB is buffed to increase speed by a lot more, it becomes sorta awesome. Having repair drones that are as fast as mantises is magnificient, and they react instantly to damage.

DRB just needs a buff. No need to remove it. Can easily be done with mods too!

[SgtFrog]

When the DRB is buffed to increase speed by a lot more, it becomes sorta awesome. Having repair drones that are as fast as mantises is magnificient, and they react instantly to damage.

DRB just needs a buff. No need to remove it. Can easily be done with mods too!

In Captain's Edition, DRB is boosted up to 100% more speed (drones now travel TWICE as fast), instead of 30% more speed. It's hilarious to watch the drones zoom from room to room, fixing damaged systems almost as fast as they're damaged!

But yeah, the Engi-B starting weapons are still kinda bad.

[Eji1700]

Yeah it's really the combo of the whole thing. No doubt drones could be better and that'd work too, but it needs to be more than just the drones really. Either way i decided to do an engie B run last night on normal to see if it's as bad as I remember. I'm a little of 3/4ths the way, but honestly I sold everything at the first station for a crew member and defense drone mk2(which I almost never use). I only kept the heavy laser to go with my two mk2 bursts, and even ditched the ion. It really is sorta sad that basically step 1 in making it work is to just instantly get rid of its identity.

[5thHorseman]

It really is sorta sad that basically step 1 in making it work is to just instantly get rid of its identity.

Very much this. I'm big on playing the ships as they come. I all but refuse to put a teleporter on a Fed ship, for example, and instead put those 3 power into the beam. But the Heavy Ion is like a missile: Slow and punishing if it misses. I'd happily trade in those weapons for an Ion 1 and dual lasers or even a BL1.

[BirdofPrey]

When thinking about this issue, it occured to me, the A ships seem to be solid for the most part; it's the B ships that run into problems, and I think it's because they have the idea of Ship A's niche but more of it.

Zoltan B relies on it's overshield because it lacks shields, similarly Stealth B needs its cloak so much more because it lacks the system casing of A. THis means certain situations trip the B ships up much more, Mantis B can't take on an autoscout and Zoltan B won't slog through a long battle if it fails to slay or disable an enemy in with the first couple of slashes.

Still While I have, Oh that's not good", moments occasionally with most of the B ships like when my Mantis his an autoscout, or an unhappy occurrence removes my overshield in the zoltan, this is usually the exception on occasional enemies. Engi B has trouble with a lot of enemies leaving me to constantly be going "Fuck you ship" That's disappointing because I LOVE the concept of the ship crewed by drones.
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I think the drone selection of Engi B is fine, I like repair drones on any ship before I get a 4th or 5th crewmember since it lets me repair without losing the manning bonuses, so leave those be the only time they start having problems is when you hit problems with lots of systems down. The AP drone does need work though; it's really only there to occupy enemies till you can space them, but that's not the ship's fault

Similarly, I don't mind the single crew member, though I do like to boost the roster when I can (as with any ship). it's a concept that I love. THe problem is the rest of the ship doesn't compensate for the one crew member, it on'y has one manning bonus for dodge, but doesn't have an uprated engine to compensate; you aren't manning the weapons, but they are slow to fire, you have no one to fight boarders but AP drones suck at their job.

Weapons are the biggest, it has 2 shots to a salvo so it can only deal with 1 layer of shields if it hits and it fires so damn slow if you miss either of your shots, you are screwed a lot of the time, a dual laser would be a great fix, though I'd prefer a different ion weapon as well. If I can disable weapons more quickly and reliable till I get more crew, I can better live with the bad engine, but I still wish it were a level 2 or 3 to start with to make up for not having anyone to man it. I'd also like to have unrated doors to better control the flow of fire and enemies since I am reliant on drones to handle those things, but, again this isn't a necessity. The lack of sensors doesn't bug me all that much even if they are nice to have.



I should say that with the layout and starting equip, once you can get past the early game hump, the Engi b cleans up VERY well, it's just a matter of getting past that initial hump, and I think the key to that is a better weapons layout.

[SgtFrog]

I agree with you for most of the B ships (Rock B has no door-control and Slug B has no medbay AAAARRGH), but Zoltan B was the very first ship I beat the game with. The Pike Beam is a kick-ass weapon if you can stack ion-weapons in the other slots to shut down enemy shields and keep them shut down. I didn't have a problem getting enough Scrap for shields, since the Pike Beam can easily do 4-5 damage in a go if you position it right, and most every enemy in Sectors 1 and 2 have only one shield anyway.

[BirdofPrey]

Yeah, I actually prefer the Zoltan B to the A on layout alone, but the weapon selection is great, but that doesn't change the fact it has a huge flaw by having no shields, and it has led me to bad places before (like just now on my last game when I ran into a drone ship then another drone ship)

At least it has the system installed unlike the stealth ship.