Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

All your guides, strategy discussions, request for help on how to play go here. Please use [SPOILER] if relevant.
Agg Shell
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:24 pm

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby Agg Shell » Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:41 pm

rannl wrote:
did you know that the mantis has a single blue option


wrong. you know that slug area that says they will repair your ship "for free"? there is a blue option if you have a mantis that lets them oversee the repairs.
Are you a mantis? Do you lack ships to fight and Zoltans to chew? Look no further! Come to your nearest mantis warcamp in the Zoltan Homeworlds or Zoltan controled sector and ask for a free brochure about how to farm the Zoltan! Results may very.
Kesin
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Feb 03, 2013 10:27 pm

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby Kesin » Thu Feb 07, 2013 1:21 am

These two are new to me:

Healing your drones isn't subjective based on if a drone is "on" or "off". Send a zoltan into your drones bay, and even with all of your drones off, that one power is enough to heal your drones.

So long as you have one health in your cockpit, and a crewmember, your ship retains all of its' dodge (minus the pilot) whilst he and/or your crew's repairing it.
greetingsfromoslo
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 11:47 am

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby greetingsfromoslo » Thu Feb 07, 2013 11:33 pm

You can board two separate rooms on the rebel flagship if you target one of the single isolated weapons rooms. I have a scum save to try out how it turns out when you target the different weapon rooms. I'll do that over the weekend.

An attack drone have a "sweet spot", a certain angle in their cycle of movement that makes them fire two shots in quick succession, a quick "double" attack where the last shot will come in between the shield recharge cycle of your enemy. If you have limited resources to suppress your enemies shields entirely, you can still take down the ship given enough time for your drone to find it's sweet spot. I had to fight an AI ship with two shield points with only a heavy ion gun and a MK1 attack drone, but by leaving my own ship idle with the ion gun on autofire and let the drone find its sweet spot in sync with the ion discharge enough times I was able to take down the ship. Meanwhile I made myself a sandwich. What really helped me was that the AI ships armament wasn't able to penetrate my shields, and that I had a defense drone to exhaust my enemy of it's missiles before I left my ship to it's own devices. Since I've just stumbled over this and observed it only against a small ship, I'm cautious and suggest it may only apply to the smallest types of ships.

Mister Sammy wrote:I'll start us off.

Did you know that you can run a fourth injured crew through a full medbay and he or she will be healed?


I do this it all the time. It's best to micro a rock crew member since they have only half the movement speed, thus doubles the time for each click that makes them pass through. I also think you can run more than one crew member through a crowded MedBay and have them healed. I'll double check that over the weekend.
Teoes
Posts: 29
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2013 6:15 pm

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby Teoes » Fri Feb 08, 2013 9:25 am

greetingsfromoslo wrote:You can board two separate rooms on the rebel flagship if you target one of the single isolated weapons rooms. I have a scum save to try out how it turns out when you target the different weapon rooms. I'll do that over the weekend.


I know that if you try to send a 4-man boarding party into the Flagship's missile room, the two spare crew end up in helm control. This is great for getting a head-start on tearing the shields down in phases 2 & 3 when you've already killed the crew.***

I'd be very interested to see what happens with the other 3 weapon rooms - please do post your findings! I may have a bash at it myself over the weekend too. I'm thinking it'd be OP if sending 4 people into the beam room dumped the extras to the missile room.. just think of being able to get two weapons offline at once.

***EDIT: Ive just tested it. Whichever weapon room you try and send four crew over to, the excess two end up in helm control.

Second edit: cross-post? lol.
Last edited by Teoes on Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
greetingsfromoslo
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 11:47 am

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby greetingsfromoslo » Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:56 pm

Teoes wrote:
greetingsfromoslo wrote:You can board two separate rooms on the rebel flagship if you target one of the single isolated weapons rooms. I have a scum save to try out how it turns out when you target the different weapon rooms. I'll do that over the weekend.


I'd be very interested to see what happens with the other 3 weapon rooms - please do post your findings!


No matter which of the weapon rooms you target, the leftover crew will be teleported to the pilot room. I tried with both three and four boarders to see if the number of boarders would make a difference.
Kenshkrix
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:00 pm

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby Kenshkrix » Sat Feb 09, 2013 12:27 am

If you depower an attack drone so that it drifts slightly out of the enemy's shield, when repowered it'll fire instantly, allowing you to time drone shots.
Every projectile has collision, its possible for anything to shoot down missiles, lasers, drones, etc.

If your attack drone is flying towards the firing line of the enemy missile launcher, depower it, wait until their missile launcher turns green, then repower the drone, it and the missile launcher fire at the same time, allowing for deliberate missile interception.
Roughly half the time the drone will either shoot the missile down or fly directly into it, depending on missile launcher cooldown and how far the drone drifted while unpowered.
wissenschaft
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Feb 07, 2013 12:41 am

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby wissenschaft » Sat Feb 09, 2013 10:55 am

I just won my first game on normal. Took a whole week of work and had to reinstall FTL so I lost my previous stats. No big deal since my stats are all dominated by my 4125 point normal victory!

Forget all ships besides the all mighty Kestrel Cruiser. I won with the Kestral A in fact. Not quite as balanced as the Kestral B but its starting weapons can last you all game long. This was my set up:

Kestral type A
Weapons:
1x Burst Laser MK 2
1x Artemis Missile
1x Heavy Laser MK 2
1x Heavy Laser MK 1
Teleporter lvl 1
Max Clock
Shield lvl 4
Engine lvl 4

Argumentations:
Stealth Weapons + Shield Regen

Note: early on I got a Hull Beam as a reward so I was using the Burst Mk 2 laser + the Hull Beam for most of the game and re-adding the missile once I could afford to upgrade my weapons control again.

Tips:

1: Choose between Drone control and Cloak. You don't need both nor can you afford to power both to the max. Cloak + max crew bonuses + lvl 4 engines = 100% dodge chance and a base dodge of 40%. On the other hand, 1 defense drone mk 1 is all you need for protection vs the final boss though, obviously, 2 defense drone mk 1 are best.

2. Don't overlook the other lasers, the Burst Laser MK 2 is NOT the be all and end all of lasers. Heavy Mk 2 Laser is great for destroying systems. Hull Smasher Laser Mark II will do a max of 6 damage to an empty hull, thats better than most beams can hope for. Both cost only 3 power so make a great compliment to cheaper lasers.

3. When using Laser spam to punch through shields, make sure you have at least 6 shots. This will allow you to reliably get through 4 shields as long as you fire all the lasers in one alpha strike.

3. lvl 4 shields makes you nearly impervious to everything but missile and Ion weapon spam. Take those out and your invincible vs the final boss.

4. CREW CREW CREW! Try your best to get a maxed crew because your going to needed them especially vs all the boarding teams that get sent after you on Normal. Expect to lose some crew on your way to victory.

5. Get Shields level 2 as soon as you can. It helps a lot.

6. Laser Spam is GOD in this game. Even the final boss on normal dies to laser spam quickly.
mattlistener
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2013 9:15 pm

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby mattlistener » Fri Feb 15, 2013 5:20 pm

UltraMantis wrote:
mattlistener wrote:Only pay scrap to recruit an 8th crewmember in sectors 7 or 8. You want that last slot open most of the time so that you can benefit from "gain a crew" events. Exception would be if it's going to make the difference in pulling off "kill the crew" combat wins that reward extra scrap 2+ times.

You allways get those events. You are then asked to dissmiss one of the 9 crew, since 8 is max. Usually it's the Johnny-come-lately that gets spaced, but not allways. ;)


I wasn't saying you wouldn't get those events, I was saying don't pay scrap for an 8th crewmember so you can _benefit_ from the event and spend the scrap on something else. Scrap is scarce on normal, once you're to 7 peeps you probably want to save it to spend on some other part of your endgame kit.
greetingsfromoslo
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 11:47 am

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby greetingsfromoslo » Sun Feb 17, 2013 6:26 am

wissenschaft wrote:1: Choose between Drone control and Cloak. You don't need both nor can you afford to power both to the max. Cloak + max crew bonuses + lvl 4 engines = 100% dodge chance and a base dodge of 40%. On the other hand, 1 defense drone mk 1 is all you need for protection vs the final boss though, obviously, 2 defense drone mk 1 are best.


I recently came to the same conclusion. I think it's easy to overestimate the value of the Cloak, while the Drone Control for defense purposes is underrated. When an enemy is depleted of missiles, you can easily pick them off at leisure, or even sit idle for a while and farm some skill levels for your crew. The Cloak on the other hand, only gives you a 100% dodge against the enemy missiles when you have upgraded engines AND still it only protects you against half of the missile volleys because of the cool down. Drones are deployed instant and their effect is limitless, given that they are not shot down. Drones cost drone parts, but with either system configuration you always get a Teleporter to boost the loot generation, so they are usually not hard to accumulate in sufficient numbers for your needs. In total drone control is cheaper, more reliable and more flexible than the simple Cloak. I have changed playstyle to get the Drone Control BEFORE the Cloak, if there's a Defence Drone on the offer as well. With the money saved it's also easier to upgrade the Shields.
Agg Shell
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:24 pm

Re: Did you know? List little tips and tricks here!

Postby Agg Shell » Sun Feb 17, 2013 5:58 pm

tip: you can still jump away (if your ftl is charged) even if you're dead! you'll die instantly after the jump, though. and even if you go to an area with free repair, you still die. so you can die with hull points left, not because of killed crew :D just a lolsy thing i found out.
Are you a mantis? Do you lack ships to fight and Zoltans to chew? Look no further! Come to your nearest mantis warcamp in the Zoltan Homeworlds or Zoltan controled sector and ask for a free brochure about how to farm the Zoltan! Results may very.