"The game hates me!" Bullshit Death Discussion thread.

[MrSalt]

Hello, my name is Mr.Salt and this game is fucking stupid.

Rogue-likes, in general, frustrate me b/c of the high probability of death but this game drives me fucking wild. It isn't that you have a bad composition, or you've been struggling, or any mistake you've made at all. It just, all of a sudden, bends you over and rapes you fucking raw. RNG aside, I absolutely hate it when all choice, skill, reaction, or player agency AT ALL means absolutely DICK when this game just decides to fuck you.

I've made it to the last stage, full shields, full hull, full compliment of soldiers, three burst laser mkII's and a heavy ion cannon and I'm handling pretty much everything...Then the fucking boarding drones. Every. Single. One. Hit...The first one destroyed my O2, so no oxygen plus a breach, then another breach, then another one. Every drone explodes into the ship dealing heavy damage to every crewman. You can't fight them, you can't defend against them, you can't evade them, you can't repair your ship, you can't breathe, and now you and every other mother fucker is dead. Excuse me for not stacking me entire ship with nothing but Crystal men. I'm sorry my 80% evade is actually fucking worthless. I set all my lasers to take out the drone control but it took everything I had just to keep mending the breaches, killing the drones, just to get blown up-boarded and suffocated to death.

Now I remember why I stopped playing this fucking years ago. God damn, man, when it all goes wrong it all goes wrong at once. Quickly. Fuck FTL.

[stylesrj]

Seriously? You were defeated by those pathetic Boarding Drones? Not those missiles?
All you need is one point of damage to the Flagship's Drone Control to remove the threat of the Boarding Drone. Let it sit there in O2 or whatever until the battle is over.
I mean for the love of Meyneth, you said you had 3 good guns and an ion weapon.

I'm sorry but this is not a case of "FTL fucked me over and I must hate the game!"
You just used the wrong tactics.

[MrSalt]

Oh, I'm sorry, was "I set all my lasers to take out the drone control" the wrong tactics? How the fuck else am I supposed to give it "one point of damage" if not for my weapons, eh smart guy? Nothing. Fucking. Doing. Amazing weapons, full strength, full compliment and I got fucking raped over and over again by that cock-sucking, motherfucking "pathetic" boarding drone that my ship wouldn't evade and my weapons wouldn't touch. I don't need your fucking condescension unless I'm supposed to attack the enemy with something else other than my weapons.

Yea, this is a case of "FTL fucked me over and I must hate the game". Prick.

[stylesrj]

You didn't have any other systems available? You didn't buy a cloaking device or a drone control, hacking or mind control or even a teleporter? Just your guns?
You just went "I have all the firepower I need! I don't need to buy any of that other stuff!" and bought as much crew as you can instead of just settling with upgraded doors or something?

[MrSalt]

Oh, what happened to "all you need is one point of damage", huh? Where's the "you had 3 good guns and an ion weapon"? Suddenly all the reasons I'm just an idiot weren't your arguments after all, eh? Suddenly it's all the other systems I need, and firepower is a stupid, shortsighted way to go. I never found cloaking and I decided not to focus on drone control this playthrough. It wasn't an FTL:Advanced run and teleportation is a terrible idea that would just give me fewer crew to defend my ship. I had upgraded doors, and all the other systems. Firepower is extremely useful, as well as a strong crew so don't ham it up like all you need is shitty, underpowered system a gun or two and every system I can buy. The fact is, my ship didn't evade, my weapons missed every shot, the drone destroyed my O2 right off the bat. My run was a strong, viable strategy and I just got fucked at the eleventh hour. But, sure smartguy, you just keep trying to find ways how it's my fault because I couldn't find and afford everything, or see into the future to know that defence drones might have helped me in that one, specific battle that I didn't need once prior. This is the fucking Bullshit Death Discussion thread, isn't it? I didn't crash your "lets suck off FTL" party thread, did I? Why don't you run your smart mouth off somewhere else, because I got fucked and you and your smarmy attitude wouldn't have done any fucking better.

[stylesrj]

Any game of FTL that gives you 3 Burst Laser II's in a single playthrough is not a case of the game hating you.
You literally ran at the Final Boss with the Mega Death Laser and ignored the obvious glowing weak points and somehow it's the game's fault. This is not a bullshit death.

The game literally handed its ass to you on a silver platter with all the trimmings and even offered you proper ass-kicking footwear. You then declined and laughed away the offer and tripped on your own foot.
That's the impression I'm getting from your description of your playthrough.

It wasn't an FTL:Advanced run and teleportation is a terrible idea that would just give me fewer crew to defend my ship

From what exactly? Because you don't need 8 crew on the ship at all times.

The fact is, my ship didn't evade, my weapons missed every shot, the drone destroyed my O2 right off the bat

Boarding drones only cause hull breaches before they slowly damage the system. It's not going to destroy your O2 unless you neglect it for a bit.

But, sure smartguy, you just keep trying to find ways how it's my fault because I couldn't find and afford everything, or see into the future to know that defence drones might have helped me in that one, specific battle that I didn't need once prior

It's the Final Boss. Literally the one specific battle you can plan your loadout for.

Why don't you run your smart mouth off somewhere else, because I got fucked and you and your smarmy attitude wouldn't have done any fucking better.

Pity that I can't get a copy of your savegame where you first started the Flagship battle. Because those words just shout "Challenge accepted."

[Biohazard063]

It's the Final Boss. Literally the one specific battle you can plan your loadout for."

This.

The only thing you can rely on in FTL is what the boss will throw at you. Planning accordingly will make it a lot easier.
It wouldn't be the first time that I picked up a weapon and kept it in storage just for the final phase of the flagship.
I know you're not really here to hear options on how to prevent this and are just venting, which is fine, we've all had our moments.
Just know that there are a good amount of options to counter it and that this game is all about prepping to beat the flagship.

On easy and normal difficulty, a teleporter will often be an easy win if you take time to take out their crew (all but one on the weapons) on the first phase.
You'll have the ship to yourself on phase 2 and three, meaning your crew can easily whack on drone control uncontested.
And since you don't have to worry about them TP'ing in, you really don't need all 8 crewmembers to defend your ship.
And even if they did, airlocks and blast doors are your friend.

This is just one of many possibilities of course.

Anyway, in short, yes you got beaten, badly, but take it as a lesson that weapons alone will often not save you in the end.
You have 8 system slots for a reason, and whilst they don't all need to be filled, try out a few. See how they can assist offensively or defensively.

Good luck.

[salandit]

good lord

[salandit]

After about 5 extremely optimistic runs, I've come to the conclusion that The Vortex is cursed. It is doomed to fail. My last 2 runs, I was able to get a Weapon Pre-Igniter in the first sector. For any other ship, this means a damn good chance of at least reaching sector 6-7 that can easily snowball out of control.

My last run had me rolling a Pre-Igniter, Stealth weapons, AND a Drone Recovery Arm. Perfect right? Only thing is I was relying on a Pegasus to break shields and a Beam drone to wipe them clean after its down. This was NOT ideal. Even though I had the ground work for an extremely successful run, I couldn't get my hands on some effective shield breaking lasers. I ran out of missiles in sector 7 and was unable to kill anything. I made the jump from beacon to beacon hoping to find a store with a better weapon. I found a store when the hull was next to destroyed. The next jump was the end. A rock ship that had everything, including Cloaking. There was fire on about 3 systems when my ship went down. Greatest disappointment yet.

yeah, that doesn't sound like a reliable setup. heck, beam drones are even worse than combat drones. but really, the key to the vortex is just getting a good set of weapons. at one point, i got a flak I and another heavy laser in store - sold the rest of my stuff, was set for the next few sectors from there.

[MrSalt]

So, I'm playing the Zoltan ship and I had pretty much a perfect run. I had four zoltans powering my shields, weapons, engine and drones, and four mantis manning the navigation and sensors + 2/man boarding crew. I had two Defence Drones MkII (unpowered), two Burst Laser MkIII (unpowered), two halberd beams and an Ion Blast MkII (one halberd was unpowered, but when the shields were down/damaged I could replace the ion blast with a double beam slice).

That was all icing, though b/c the boarding crew really got me most of all my gear. This was all at the mid-game mark. Lots of gear, not enough scrap to upgrade everything, though (which is why my drones were unpowered), so my transporter wasn't fully upgraded.

Met a 3-shield enemy w/ two defence drones (one a MkII) that just shot down all my ion blasts, so my halberds were useless. Looking at the crew, they looked pretty easy to beat but I was...wrong. My first boarding crew got fucking wrecked. I don't know if they killed anybody, but my teleporter was still recharging when I needed them back NOW. Too late, they died. The enemy was lucky-fuckies and they took out my weapons, shields and engines, so basically I had to send in my second boarding crew. They also died extremely quickly and extremely ineffectually. And then I died.

This all happened in the space of less than a minute. Just, running with a perfect weapons/drone/boarding crew (not enough system power, yet, though) and suddenly one triple-shield enemy w/ amazing weapons/drones and a crew on steroids killed everyone and blew up my ship. I was so disappointed, I thought this was my run.