Who has actually beaten this on normal?

[AngleWyrm]

73 normal runs, 68 victories.
15 easy runs, 14 victories.

Cool story bro.

[Koey]

Woot just beat first time on normal with the Federation Ship A, got lucky with a Burst3. Timed the Burst 2 and 3 to deal 2 damage.

[Durus]

Beat it with Slug A on normal the other night.
Clocked in 54 hours of playing FTL now, finished it many times on easy and have all A ships unlocked and just 3 Bs left to go. Been playing easy to learn/unlock ships. Can beat boss reasonably often on easy.

[embair]

Plus a lot of them don't bother to read guides/wiki's.

For the record, in my (and probably many other) case it's not about not bothering, but about actively avoiding them. Obviously everyone finds different things fun, but I'm personally puzzled by the people who want to skip the learning curve, and win the game asap, as if there's some magical box of fun waiting for them after they beat the boss.

Finally beating the boss is rewarding, yet as far as i see it the psychological reward is precisely equal to the amount of effort you spent getting there. So to anyone who hasn't beaten it yet. I envy you!

[Swiffle]

Wow, finally beat this game on normal with the base layout of the Torus. Wasn't a kickstarter backer(sorry! didn't know about the game back then)

Didn't want to spoil game with guides and wikis so didn't read too much on it. Figured out a lot through trial and error, mostly error. Boarding parties blown up, had a boarding party suffocate. Also lost a boarding party as a ship FTL'd away

Did start on Easy, managed to win once. Normal is so much less scrap though, had to maximize events and not have anything dumb happen.

Love this game!

[justin xiang]

I have only played on normal and I've beat the boss three times now. When I die it almost always in the first few sectors. First time was with lasers, second time was with weapons and boarding, third time was with 1 ion mkII, a halberd beam and small bomb (i died a second after he died but it still counted as victory )

I'm in the same boat with the fellow who said they liked staying away from the guides. I only started looking up actual stuff online on the game after I beat it the first time. Trying to unlock ships now.

[Kiver]

Reading the above it's great to see there are lots of possible ways to get the job done. I just scrapped through my first normal victory after a good few attempts and a slice of luck. Would agree with those above saying that boarding parties are the easier (not easy!) way forward both before the boss fight (getting extra scrap) then during (you can take out weapons etc). I also found the cloak invaluable in avoiding damage. I think using a boarding party and cloak might be easy(ier) mode for normal

I didn't have great weapons or any drones and was only able to field either a Hermes launcher/Hull Laser II or deactivating one of those and running a Healing Burst/Fire Bomb alongside. The fire bomb proved very effective on the drone stage which was a good job given the launcher was rendered completely useless until the drone control was down.

The last fight went down to the wire even though it started with no crew (should have left 1 alive so no AI repairs???). I went in heavilly damaged with only some strategic cloaking getting me through to the death where I was pounding away the shields with the launcher and the hull with the laser. I feared the worst as its' launcher came online with me down to 3 hull and the cloak on cooldown but a large slice of 3 miss luck later and the hull laser finished the job.

Another thought that occurs is to consider going with the Osprey as that may make it easier for some. You can focus on defence, while the artillery cannon does guarenteed damge every shot, no matter what shields remain.

[acqsen]

40hrs of gameplay | 40 runs | only one win
All but 1 game end at sector 5

My winner - Kestrel A.
Shield + Engines maxed. Mk1 and MK2 def drones. Weapon preigniter, ion bomb, 2x tripple lasers, beam.
Can't loose in that. Check pic.

Win recipe:
1. Luck. (I've found ion bomb, and second Tripple-Laser)
2. Knowledge - found out you don't die if you cross the curved red line on the right side. Was a surprise for me.

[CocoaRobbins]

Yeah guess I'll keep at it, but seriously that's so many drones. I mean, I even made it back there and aimed everything at the drone bay, no luck. Guess I'll pray for 4 burst laser 2's.

[embair]

The fun part is, even if you completely destroy the drone subsystem, the drone swarm "power surge" attack will still keep happening (although they are a bit weaker since they are no longer backed by the regular drones). So it really comes down to having at least L3 shields and around 50% evasion (=upgraded engines and veteran pilot + engineer). Of course stealth subsystem comes in handy too (though the cooldown is longer than the surge attacks frequency so you can't rely on it alone). That's my experience at least.

EDIT: And of course if you get your hands on Defense Drone II, that helps a lot as well.