Multiple System Failure

[hermanJnr.]

This is the most basic question ever, but how on earth do you try and address several of your key systems getting hit at once?

I did some googling, and apparently the AI is able to shoot a 3 burst laser at 3 different ship components (something the player obviously can't do). This seems a little unfair to me, and accounts for the times when I've suddenly had my shield, weapons and engine all collapse almost instantly after one shield penetration...

Almost every time I die, it always seems to be because the hostile ship was able to totally destroy my offensive abilities, then take me to bits. Those three or four bars of energy on the weapons slot seem to take forever to repair, even with Engis, and meanwhile the opposing ship just sinks missiles into my life support and shields, which means that even if I get the guns back online I'm dead regardless.

Perfect illustration, my Engi ship just died to a bargain basement Rebel Rigger with two lasers after it was able to pull off the following:

1. Disable my shield/1-shot my weapons with the first volley.
2. Knock out + set fire to my life support and door control with the next volley.
3. Took out my drones + shield with the next two.
4. Next 3 hits all opened up hull breaches (this seemed particularly ridiculous!)

Even with the 2 Engi crew you start with on that ship, I was totally overwhelmed even when I tried to focus on one problem at a time. Was it just a case of the great RNG deity smiting me mercilessly, or is there a definite knack to controlling things when your offence collapses?

(As a side note, I find my defensive knowledge kind of rubbish at present. I basically buff shields and engines and pray I don't get missiles to the face, which I always do. But then I don't have money for anti-missile drones )

[Dralax]

A bit more details would be nice to adress that particular situation as it is really difficult to make a general statement about priority of repairs. Obviously anything that isn't weapons/piloting/engines/cloak/shields/def drone can wait until after the fight (particularly the oxygen system - way too many people are obsessed about having O₂ online no matter what). Beyond that it's all situational. Depending on circumstances you might want to just ignore damage and finish the enemy off, take a more defensive approach or simply run.

As for the general defense strategy: early on I prefer to focus on getting shields 2 and then 3 and having enough firepower to knock down enemy weapons in the first volley. If I already have that or upgrading my weapons further is too costly/not possible, I'll go for drone control or cloak, preferably both and then shields 4. Engines are less of a priority. I usually aim for lvl 4 in sector 1-2, mainly for the faster FTL and because it's cheap, lvl 5 at some point before getting drones/cloak and then I only upgrade it if I have too much scrap.

[BKT]

... a bargain basement Rebel Rigger with two lasers ...
...
4. Next 3 hits all opened up hull breaches (this seemed particularly ridiculous!)

You should be grateful; death by Heavy lasers is one of the rarest occurrence in the game and it's ranks among some of the most beautiful moment you could witness in FTL— a slow and painful death, with the sound of constant gunfire, none of which are yours, and the sound of various siren and warning, and with fires and holes scatter all over your ship's hull and systems, which are now red. Just beautiful...

[kilnborn]

This is the most basic question ever, but how on earth do you try and address several of your key systems getting hit at once?

I did some googling, and apparently the AI is able to shoot a 3 burst laser at 3 different ship components (something the player obviously can't do). This seems a little unfair to me, and accounts for the times when I've suddenly had my shield, weapons and engine all collapse almost instantly after one shield penetration...

Suppression. It's one of the basic concepts in the game. Suppressing the reduction of your scrap returns (remember: don't think of it as a space battle, think of it as a harvest. You're harvesting scrap from each jump, and some jumps have a negative result).

Almost every time I die, it always seems to be because the hostile ship was able to totally destroy my offensive abilities, then take me to bits. Those three or four bars of energy on the weapons slot seem to take forever to repair, even with Engis, and meanwhile the opposing ship just sinks missiles into my life support and shields, which means that even if I get the guns back online I'm dead regardless.

They did to you what you should have done to them before they could do it to you. If you're in an Engi-A (Torus), you can target your ion blast at their weapons. Anything that hits a shield is great, but even better is when you disable their weapons.

Sometimes you'll get into a loop where your drone hits their shields, you hit their weapons, then the shields come back up and you're not doing damage. You'll want to switch out a shot on their shields when that happens.

Perfect illustration, my Engi ship just died to a bargain basement Rebel Rigger with two lasers after it was able to pull off the following:

Rebel Riggers are by far the most dangerous opponents.

(As a side note, I find my defensive knowledge kind of rubbish at present. I basically buff shields and engines and pray I don't get missiles to the face, which I always do. But then I don't have money for anti-missile drones )

Engine upgrades tend to be more important than shields, but engine upgrades are dwarfed by leveling your helm and engine crewmembers. You get +10% from doing so, which is the same as two (early) levels in engines. Furthermore, going from 30 to 40% dodge has much better returns than going from 10 to 20% dodge.

If you run into an early ship that can't actually hurt you, and it fires things you can dodge (occasionally you'll run into a Rigger with a mini-beam and a beam drone... you can't use those), you can just turn off auto-pause, set the game off in the corner, and come back in a dozen minutes or so to a fully upgraded pilot and engineer. This is worth doing.