The Long Game
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2016 5:43 pm
I proudly present the new highest high score in FTL AE, and the first six digit high score to boot:
The primary goal was to get the last Zoltan cruiser achievement, where you can't upgrade your reactor until sector 5, which worked out (when you save+resume a game, the NEW label vanishes):
The secondary goal of this mission was to defeat the flagship without hull damage, as the Noether was still missing this check mark. Secondary goal was accomplished:
I bought a Weapon Pre-igniter, Flak II and Heavy Laser, and found a nebula in sector 7 to exploit, albeit with a slightly different weapon setup as shown in the flagship battle, where I've swapped Pike Beam with Breach Bomb II:
The grand strategy consisted in firing the pre-ignited Flak II, slicing with the Pike Beam and the Hull Beam and firing the Heavy Laser at the enemy weapons:
In most cases, the second Flak II volley followed by the beams sealed the Elite Fighter's fate. I cloaked the first Burst Laser fire of the enemy and in most fights the Zoltan shield was unscratched. In almost 3,300 fights against the Elite Fighters, the Zoltan shield was completely depleted only 4 times, and enemy boarders teleported on my ship only three times. This only happened, when the Flak II failed to remove all enemy shield layers and the Heavy Laser missed as well. While I took no hull damage during the whole Elite Fighter trial, it is conceivable that with enough fights, you will miss everything five times in a row and either receive hull damage or have to jump away, so there's a (very high) upper limit to the high score.
After initial exploration of all nebula beacons, I mostly fought against only two fighters, jumping back and forth, here the second type:
FTL is like a Tea Ceremony: all necessary steps are stereotypically repeated until there's a natural flow without thought, and you can let your mind wander... and fall asleep, which luckily only happened twice during this long game. I mostly played in short bursts of only a couple ships a day, so it took several weeks to finish this one run. I'm now a Zen Master of shooting down Elite Fighters with muscle memory.
A better (faster) setup would have consisted of an additional Automated Re-loader and two Flak Is instead of a Flak II and a Halberd Beam instead of the Pike and Hull Beam; the Heavy Laser is good in all cases, although with the Shrike an Advanced Flak would have been a slightly better option.
Although I've done a couple of boarding stints to gold level my boarders, almost all Elite Fighters were destroyed.
I have not used any mods or cheats or other game-enhancing features, I've played with vanilla FTL AE on hard mode. I haven't backed up the save game either. This was the second attempt to break the 100,000 points threshold, the first try was with the Vortex, but after defeating about 2,200 ships (translating to roughly 66,000 points) the game crashed and the save game and the profile were deleted. Here's the only screenshot I took while the game was still on (Sep 5 2015), the strategy there being hammering the enemy weapons, instead of slicing the hull with beams:
I've a thing for FTL high scores.
My first putative world record was still in the original game on Sep 21 2013, with my first flight of the Carnelian, scoring 16,721 points in normal mode and using only boarding to eliminate Elite Fighters.
This record was defeated by nakedian on Nov 19 2013, using the Adjudicator on easy mode with a high score of 38,185 - but without defeating the flagship.
On Dec 31 2013, I had a run with the Red-Tail that scored 40,207 points, still on the original FTL in normal mode. In that run, I still mostly boarded enemy fighters, but also destroyed a good deal. I think the record of most combat kills of 2,482 is undefeated, and it is probably still the highest score on original FTL normal mode.
An unknown/unnamed hero achieved a new world record high score in FTL AE hard mode with 59,028 points using the Bravais on May 3 2014, and as far as I'm aware this record was undefeated up to this day.
A long game, and a long post. It would be awesome if this post would inspire others to try for higher high scores, until we explore the limits of the variable storing the score...
The primary goal was to get the last Zoltan cruiser achievement, where you can't upgrade your reactor until sector 5, which worked out (when you save+resume a game, the NEW label vanishes):
The secondary goal of this mission was to defeat the flagship without hull damage, as the Noether was still missing this check mark. Secondary goal was accomplished:
I bought a Weapon Pre-igniter, Flak II and Heavy Laser, and found a nebula in sector 7 to exploit, albeit with a slightly different weapon setup as shown in the flagship battle, where I've swapped Pike Beam with Breach Bomb II:
The grand strategy consisted in firing the pre-ignited Flak II, slicing with the Pike Beam and the Hull Beam and firing the Heavy Laser at the enemy weapons:
In most cases, the second Flak II volley followed by the beams sealed the Elite Fighter's fate. I cloaked the first Burst Laser fire of the enemy and in most fights the Zoltan shield was unscratched. In almost 3,300 fights against the Elite Fighters, the Zoltan shield was completely depleted only 4 times, and enemy boarders teleported on my ship only three times. This only happened, when the Flak II failed to remove all enemy shield layers and the Heavy Laser missed as well. While I took no hull damage during the whole Elite Fighter trial, it is conceivable that with enough fights, you will miss everything five times in a row and either receive hull damage or have to jump away, so there's a (very high) upper limit to the high score.
After initial exploration of all nebula beacons, I mostly fought against only two fighters, jumping back and forth, here the second type:
FTL is like a Tea Ceremony: all necessary steps are stereotypically repeated until there's a natural flow without thought, and you can let your mind wander... and fall asleep, which luckily only happened twice during this long game. I mostly played in short bursts of only a couple ships a day, so it took several weeks to finish this one run. I'm now a Zen Master of shooting down Elite Fighters with muscle memory.
A better (faster) setup would have consisted of an additional Automated Re-loader and two Flak Is instead of a Flak II and a Halberd Beam instead of the Pike and Hull Beam; the Heavy Laser is good in all cases, although with the Shrike an Advanced Flak would have been a slightly better option.
Although I've done a couple of boarding stints to gold level my boarders, almost all Elite Fighters were destroyed.
I have not used any mods or cheats or other game-enhancing features, I've played with vanilla FTL AE on hard mode. I haven't backed up the save game either. This was the second attempt to break the 100,000 points threshold, the first try was with the Vortex, but after defeating about 2,200 ships (translating to roughly 66,000 points) the game crashed and the save game and the profile were deleted. Here's the only screenshot I took while the game was still on (Sep 5 2015), the strategy there being hammering the enemy weapons, instead of slicing the hull with beams:
I've a thing for FTL high scores.
My first putative world record was still in the original game on Sep 21 2013, with my first flight of the Carnelian, scoring 16,721 points in normal mode and using only boarding to eliminate Elite Fighters.
This record was defeated by nakedian on Nov 19 2013, using the Adjudicator on easy mode with a high score of 38,185 - but without defeating the flagship.
On Dec 31 2013, I had a run with the Red-Tail that scored 40,207 points, still on the original FTL in normal mode. In that run, I still mostly boarded enemy fighters, but also destroyed a good deal. I think the record of most combat kills of 2,482 is undefeated, and it is probably still the highest score on original FTL normal mode.
An unknown/unnamed hero achieved a new world record high score in FTL AE hard mode with 59,028 points using the Bravais on May 3 2014, and as far as I'm aware this record was undefeated up to this day.
A long game, and a long post. It would be awesome if this post would inspire others to try for higher high scores, until we explore the limits of the variable storing the score...