FTL:AE Guide: Victory in Hard Difficulty

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ittarter
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2015 7:13 pm

FTL:AE Guide: Victory in Hard Difficulty

Postby ittarter » Sat Jan 17, 2015 7:39 pm

Printable .pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1BpvSjr4AALc0NKR3BKRHpodmM/view?usp=sharing
Steam edition http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=373609260

This guide discusses successful and unsuccessful playstyles, specific ship strengths and weaknesses, route planning, resource management, and battle tactics in FTL: Advanced Edition.

It also assumes you are familiar with the basic terms and play of FTL, have beaten FTL on Easy or Normal difficulty, and are attempting to improve the quality of your play. If you haven't beaten FTL yet, I recommend AyCarrumba's guide: "From 'Oh No!' to Pro", published on reddit/ftl/. Google it.

This guide does not currently cover several advanced topics such as modding, achievements, and community challenges (e.g. No Pause, Shieldless). Nor does it provide exhaustive databases of items or events, which may be found at ftl.wikia.com.

Personally, I think that for many players, the best way to learn this game (besides your own practice) is to watch an expert play. However, I hope that these observations can be of some assistance to people looking for an organized resource. I make no attempt to be exhaustive but simply to stick to the most important points for each issue.
Fibonaccio
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2014 1:34 pm

Re: FTL:AE Guide: Victory in Hard Difficulty

Postby Fibonaccio » Sun Jan 18, 2015 5:52 pm

Pretty good guide. There's a couple other things I can add, some ship specific, some general:

Torus A, Early Sector Drone Usage
Dangerous Enemy -- Fire the drone at ~1/2 ion charge, and the drone will pop the shield so the ion can disable the enemy leto or desync laser+mini.
Safe Enemy -- Fire IB2 at O2, go afk for 5 minutes, come back with leveled guys and extra rewards.

Zoltan Ships
Prioritize upgrading engines and NOT shields and reactors. The more you evade, the more you don't need shields and reactor to operate them. The more scrap you save, the more you have pre-ignited glaive beams and can continue skimping on shields. There is a stall effect that happens with Zoltans when your offense doesn't win/cripple fast enough, where suddenly now you need regular amounts of defense and have to pay a lot. Finding good weapons is harder than upgrading shields, in the sense that the former requires a store. So do your best to get weapons at the expense of shields. Every ship "needs" shields and engines by the end, we're just talking about the optimal upgrade path. May as well skimp on shields by using the offense+evade+supershield synergy to help increase the chance of a good offense. Ideally skip Zoltan sectors when using this style, as their shield ruins the cripple-before-losing-shield strategy.

System Padding
How many times do you lose or have read a story about "the missile hit my pilot / weapons / shields forever"... Especially early on, where you absolutely need your IB2/BL2/Halberd/etc., pay 35 scrap to block the enemy leto or BL2 from permanently disabling you. The upgrade doesn't really go to waste as you're about to add more weapons, but if you're near a store, it's better to actually have a weapon then to prepare to use one (save to buy one). Similarly, pad shields as a potential first buy. The first main buy is often shields level 2. You may as well buy the 3rd bar for 20 to prevent the random autohacker disabling your shields entirely, or the one asteroid from hitting your shield, etc. That immediate 20 scrap can save you from losing in sector 1 (or nearly losing, requiring repairs or play style changes that equate to future losing). Finally, the 20 scrap pilot upgrade has similar benefits, and happens to give blue choices later on. Of these 3 pads, the only one that actually sets you back, in that you weren't about to upgrade it anyway, is the pilot, so you'll have to judge for yourself if it's worth it.

Boss Fight, Cloaking
I disagree in the guide where it says bar of cloak to dodge specials in fights 2 and 3. At the beginning of the fight, 3 bars of cloak will dodge the initial missile volley AND the special, if you can afford the power. Level 3 cloak may not even be possible at some final scrap levels, so in those cases I agree with the guide.

Missile Weapons
Hard mode is HARD. You can't afford to waste scrap. Wasting scrap is selling a good weapon, because you lost 50% of the value. Converting a civilian sector "oh look a hermes missile floating out my window!" for a hull laser 2 at a store out of a preference for lasers means you can't buy drone recovery arm, scanners, hacking, boarding, etc. or in dodgier runs where you still have 2 shields at the beginning of sector 5-6, you wait that much longer for shields and end up fly around with 3 hull hoping your defense drone I never forgets to shoot. A free weapon is basically the greatest gift the game can give you, except for maybe "oh look a pre-igniter floating out my window!", but I've not seen that. Exceptions would be when you have an abundance of scrap, then you might as well convert to 4 BL2s given the chance, but in an average run where every bit helps, there is nothing wrong with using missiles. Just try not to run out. (I say this because most advice, including this guide, comes across as "missiles are useless always". Except for when they save you throughout the entire game.)

Battery
Battery is twice as good (temporarily) as equivalent reactor in an ion storm, battery is still cost effective in regular fights, including the upgrade, once reactor bars are >=30 cost. Their temporary nature is mitigated since generally you only need anti-enemy-alpha levels once before you have the advantage. Usually some combination of transfering shield->engines, hacking, IB2 offline briefly, cloaking, etc. is sufficient juggling that you only need the battery right before charge ion + hermes + glaive comes at you. Potential drawbacks are that this improved "reactor" can be destroyed or even reversed against you with hacking. Also weak offense ships or difficult boarding situations might extend the fight and leave you weak. All in all, it's not exactly a "must buy" at every opportunity, but it's a "if you didn't buy by the end you probably made a mistake".

Extreme Power Management
Even things that "need" to be powered can be switched. Say you have 2 shields. If the enemy fires a BL2, turn off a shield after losing it (i.e. after the first laser hits) and increase evasion if you don't need the immediate recharging, like another weapon incoming or asteroids, but if completely out of shield protection (2 hits from BL2) you can decrease to a single layer. In general, the rule is to pay for only charging the next level of shields. On a more extreme level, this kind of micro can give your FTL that very little bit more that dodges the solar flare, for example. Related to all this, you don't need to purchase 4-6 bars of power in the midgame to run everything except medbay. Early on, you often need 2 shields. After that, you occasionally could use a 3rd shield but will consistently need engines for missiles, so many people know the 4 shield bars and 4 engine bars "rule". But often the enemies with missiles and bombs have a basic or heavy laser so you really only need 2 bars of shield powered. Rarely do you actually need 7 reactor bars for this (+1 from oxygen when they fire), and in more dangerous situations, you can e.g. turn your flak off right after it fires to dodge the missile, then re-power it. The net effect over time of constantly being power starved is yes, you take a few extra hits from those times where it would've paid to have spent 40-100 scrap on the reactor, but now you have 40-100 scrap. That's the difference between obtaining hacking/drones/BL2/etc and NOTHING. I will trade a few hull points for hacking. Also, in rare, RARE cases, turn off weapons and run, and lose ~20 scrap. This is somewhat aimed at a popular youtuber who likes to have 8 zoltans on weapons with 35 reactor bars by sector 3, with no systems and just a dual laser, but says "I think I didn't make any mistakes." (!) (No offense to him, I enjoy his videos very much!)

Counter points are welcome, I enjoy "arguing" these kinds of things. The random nature of many aspects of the game means it's very easy to theorycraft reasonable arguments, and very difficult to theorycraft the perfect argument. If somebody could make a neural-net-based bot to play this game, it would be very interesting to watch its decisions. Looking for grad students with spare time here.

EDIT:
Ion Pulsars
You can disable engines and shields right before the strike and take no or 1 ion damage instead of say 4.
The Captain
Posts: 390
Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2013 1:44 am

Re: FTL:AE Guide: Victory in Hard Difficulty

Postby The Captain » Mon Jan 19, 2015 3:23 am

@OP: a lot of good info in your guide. I usually don't upgrade a Medbay to L2 unless I have a Teleporter (and only after it goes to L2), or I have extra scrap at the end. Clone Bay is a different matter, as it doubles your healing per jump. I'm more likely to upgrade Clone Bay to L3 than Medbay. On rare occasions I might have scrap for L3 Doors, but rarely both that and L3 Piloting. And the plural of "nebula" is "nebulae."

Fibonaccio wrote: ...
Boss Fight, Cloaking
I disagree in the guide where it says bar of cloak to dodge specials in fights 2 and 3. At the beginning of the fight, 3 bars of cloak will dodge the initial missile volley AND the special, if you can afford the power. Level 3 cloak may not even be possible at some final scrap levels, so in those cases I agree with the guide.

Is this still the case in AE? I thought they changed the timing. Anyway, I can't often afford L3 Cloak, but I try to get L2 for buffer.

Missile Weapons
Hard mode is HARD. You can't afford to waste scrap. Wasting scrap is selling a good weapon, because you lost 50% of the value.

Missile weapons aren't good weapons.

Converting a civilian sector "oh look a hermes missile floating out my window!" for a hull laser 2 at a store out of a preference for lasers means you can't buy drone recovery arm, scanners, hacking, boarding, etc. or in dodgier runs where you still have 2 shields at the beginning of sector 5-6, you wait that much longer for shields and end up fly around with 3 hull hoping your defense drone I never forgets to shoot.

I doubt I'd buy a Hull Laser Mk II, but a Mk I would probably be more useful (needing only 2 power).

A free weapon is basically the greatest gift the game can give you, except for maybe "oh look a pre-igniter floating out my window!", but I've not seen that.

Maybe if it's a weapon you're going to use. Otherwise, it's good or less, depending on how much scrap it'll sell for.

Exceptions would be when you have an abundance of scrap, then you might as well convert to 4 BL2s given the chance, but in an average run where every bit helps, there is nothing wrong with using missiles.

I'd say use missiles if you have to, until you can get something better.

Just try not to run out.

HA! Accepting surrender in early sectors when they offer a lot of missiles will help, as the scrap reward for blowing up the ship won't be that much more, but if you're accepting surrenders later, then you're missing out on a lot more scrap.

(I say this because most advice, including this guide, comes across as "missiles are useless always". Except for when they save you throughout the entire game.)

I would probably say missiles are often useless. Sure, when you start with one, use it until you can replace it - or if you keep it, it should just be a supplemental weapon, when your other weapons are doing most of the work. Missiles aren't likely to save you throughout the entire game, as you will probably run out rather quickly. You will encounter more enemies with defense drones and/or enough evasion where they're not so effective, and ammo is expensive to buy. If not lasers or beams, I'd rather get bombs - they don't do hull damage, but at least they can't be shot down.

EDIT:
Ion Pulsars
You can disable engines and shields right before the strike and take no or 1 ion damage instead of say 4.

Did you mean "depower" instead of disable?