clash of the titans, on hard/advanced

[rhaining]

As I'd mentioned in an earlier post, getting the Crystal ship achievement "Clash of the Titans" on Hard mode with Advanced content enabled was extremely difficult and painful. I do not recommend it for the faint of heart. I was ultimately able to do it, but it literally took me ~100 runs to do so.

Screenshots:
http://postimg.org/gallery/2w6ku2ypg/bd4d9f3a/

Besides getting all the achievements on hard/advanced, my other goal was to maximize my win ratio. These two goals do not mesh well. It is impossible to get the Clash of the Titans achievement on MOST runs. You must be lucky to have the kind of map that will allow you to attempt the achievement, then lucky again to find all the ships you need. (If you can find the ships, killing them is pretty straightforward.)

Pre-AE, I was able to get this achievement in 10-15 runs -- painful but not that bad. (By contrast, some players had an extremely difficult time unlocking Crystal crew the "real" way pre-AE, whereas it took me ~10 runs.) So I knew what to expect. But when Advanced content is enabled, Rock sectors become significantly less common. Now instead of 14 sector types to choose from (~2.5 of which really help you, counting Pirate as half), you have 16 sector types, and I can't recall ever seeing a Rock ship in the extra 2 sector types (Rebel Stronghold, Abandoned). Perhaps even more significant is the fact that there are many more Augments for the game to choose from, so Long Range Scanners, which are extremely helpful when hunting this achievement, come up far less frequently. More times than I can remember, I found my way into Rock space without an LRS, and ended up only killing a few Rock ships. (Needless to say, I always scoured those Rock sectors, staying well past the Rebels taking the exit beacon.) I would estimate I found an LRS early enough to be at least a little helpful ~10% of the time.

In addition, there was a new bug when AE first came out which caused Pirate Rock ships not to count. Actually this bug existed in an older version of FTL as well, but it reappeared in early AE. I have no idea how many runs I spent hunting this achievement before finally reading that the achievement was buggy. 30? Would I have gotten the achievement in those 30 runs? Maybe. I vaguely recall finding 3 Rock sectors in 2 runs OUT OF ~90 RUNS, and I vaguely recall swearing that I had killed enough ships in the earlier of those 2 runs yet was still denied. The 2nd time I found 3 Rock Sectors, I failed to find enough ships in them -- see, lack of LRS above. I couldn't accurately estimate how many times I entered 2 Rock Sectors, or how often I entered Pirate sectors.

In any case, after ~90 runs of frustration, I gave up. I posted to getsatisfaction.com/ftlgame an official request to ease the difficulty of this achievement when playing with Advanced content enabled. The devs graciously said they'd look into it. And because I still wanted the achievement on iOS's Game Center, I capitulated and played on Hard with Advanced content disabled for ~10 runs until I got the achievement.

THEN, IN MY VERY NEXT RUN, on Hard/Advanced, when I was trying to do something completely different (I was trying to see how much scrap I could have to spare while winning on that mode), I found a Rock sector in sector 2 and got SIX ROCK SHIP KILLS! I had never had such a great start. I took screenshots (linked above) as I went. Then another Rock sector in sector 3 and SEVEN MORE KILLS!! And yet another Rock sector in sector 6 and FIVE MORE KILLS!!! FINALLY! Alas, I did not get the pleasant achievement popup during this run, but still, I *finally* satisfied the conditions of this achievement, on Hard/Advanced. I never got an LRS in this run, either, but IIRC I got maps from other events in both sectors 2 an 3. I even failed with one Rock ship, killing the crew instead of the ship. (Because I was "pennypinching", I had very weak weapons.)