FTL: Advanced Edition

[PallElendro]

Got two Mantises killed by boarding the Flagship in Stage 1 and not noticing that the Flagship doesn't asplode, AND that busting a system depletes hull health.

[Kalmageddon]

Ever since the Advanced Edition I CAN NOT defeat the flagship, at least on normal.
Doesn't matter how obscenely upgraded and armed I am when I get there, the flagship destroys me simply by virtue of hitting me enough times. On my latest run I got there with the Basilisk, lvl 4 shields, 48% evasion, Ion Reversal (or whatever is it's name) augment, fully buffed mantis boarding party, defense drone, Burst Laser 5 AND Breach Missile and I still got my ass kicked.

Basically, Phase 1 is always catastrophic for me, it seems like the flagship awlays manages to hack either the Pilot section or the Shields, which results in me not being able to avoid enough damage to survive the next 2 phases, even if I immediatly send my Mantis boarding party to destroy the 2/3 remaining weapons.
Oh and Phase 2 special ability is a pain, even with 4 shields a few shots always manage to get through.

Which means that by phase 3 my ship is on red hull health, the flagship mindcontrols my pilot, uses its special ability and it's gg.

Basically, mind control and hacking on the flagship is ****ing OP, that's what I'm saying. This game has never been frustrating up until now, but I'm starting to change my mind.

[Rodin]

In my experience, the first round comes down entirely to what the flagship hacks. If it gets you in the pilot, engine, or shields, you're pretty much screwed. Weapons isn't too bad as long as you have boarders, because you're wiping out its weapons that way anyway and once the flagship is harmless you can just grind it down between hacks.

Second and third waves, the essential item is always a cloak. No matter how good the rest of my ship build is, unless I have a cloak, that's it. The specials just aren't survivable without it (or at least, I've never beaten it without one).

[Grif]

Second and third waves, the essential item is always a cloak. No matter how good the rest of my ship build is, unless I have a cloak, that's it. The specials just aren't survivable without it (or at least, I've never beaten it without one).

They're survivable without cloaking. But you have to be working on their drone systems almost immediately, have Shields 4, Shields Augment and fully trained crew, as well as reasonable evasion. My first AE win was through this, as well as a few wins in the original.

[Kalmageddon]

In my experience, the first round comes down entirely to what the flagship hacks. If it gets you in the pilot, engine, or shields, you're pretty much screwed. Weapons isn't too bad as long as you have boarders, because you're wiping out its weapons that way anyway and once the flagship is harmless you can just grind it down between hacks.

Second and third waves, the essential item is always a cloak. No matter how good the rest of my ship build is, unless I have a cloak, that's it. The specials just aren't survivable without it (or at least, I've never beaten it without one).

See, I have a problem with this.
In a game that is all about random encounters and managing to get by with what the game gives you, where you have a ton of different weapons and augments, having what basically amounts to a required set of items needed in order to beat the game is a huge turnoff. I might be having a ton of fun playing with a strange loadout that actually somehow works against most random encounters, but as soon as I get to the Last Stand I'll say "well, that was fun, might as well restart now because without X item I can't beat the flagship".
I'm fairly sure the game wasn't like this before the Advanced Edition, at least, I've completed it multiple times without Cloak or even without Burst Laser before. Now, it's just impossibile or at least disproportionately difficult, requiring just dumb luck instead of skill and risk management.

[Ailurus]

Second and third waves, the essential item is always a cloak. No matter how good the rest of my ship build is, unless I have a cloak, that's it. The specials just aren't survivable without it (or at least, I've never beaten it without one).

Gotta go with Grif on this one. Cloak is nice for wave 2, but with a little luck, max shields, and high evasion its survivable (otherwise, vanilla federation cruiser would be unusable, which it isn't). However, for wave 2, it really depends on how you did on wave 1. If you beat wave 1 handily, wave 2 should be survivable. If you just squeaked by on wave 1, then you're doomed on 2 w/o cloak. (And, while I haven't tried them out vs. the flagship yet, I think anti-combat drones and shield overcharge drones could both do a good job helping in stage 2 too.).

For wave 3, if you've a means of reliably knocking out the missile launcher and triple laser cannon, then you're fine. Even if an occasional shot from the supergun get through your defenses (which it seems to do very rarely with good defenses), it shoots slow enough so that it shouldn't do any significant damage.

[Kalmageddon]

Gotta go with Grif on this one. Cloak is nice for wave 2, but with a little luck, max shields, and high evasion its survivable (otherwise, vanilla federation cruiser would be unusable, which it isn't). However, for wave 2, it really depends on how you did on wave 1. If you beat wave 1 handily, wave 2 should be survivable. If you just squeaked by on wave 1, then you're doomed on 2 w/o cloak. (And, while I haven't tried them out vs. the flagship yet, I think anti-combat drones and shield overcharge drones could both do a good job helping in stage 2 too.).

For wave 3, if you've a means of reliably knocking out the missile launcher and triple laser cannon, then you're fine. Even if an occasional shot from the supergun get through your defenses (which it seems to do very rarely with good defenses), it shoots slow enough so that it shouldn't do any significant damage.

Two things:
Anti-drone drones don't do squat. They fire too slow and the flagship can just spam more drones anyway. Plus, with all the bullets flying around, they'll probably get destroyed by a stray shot.

For phase 3 you have to deal with Mind Control, which can screw you over, BAD. A Mind Controlled Pilot basically means 0% evasion, if you have upgraded the system there you might retain a bit more, but it doesn't make much of a difference. Without Zoltan Shield Bypass you can't even board and destroy the weapons before they fire.

[Ailurus]

Two things:
Anti-drone drones don't do squat. They fire too slow and the flagship can just spam more drones anyway. Plus, with all the bullets flying around, they'll probably get destroyed by a stray shot.

I've seen AI-controlled anti-combat drones effectively shut down two of my drones, so I assumed it could take out the non-special-event drones that the AI sends against you, but could be wrong about that. As I said, haven't tested it.

For phase 3 you have to deal with Mind Control, which can screw you over, BAD. A Mind Controlled Pilot basically means 0% evasion, if you have upgraded the system there you might retain a bit more, but it doesn't make much of a difference. Without Zoltan Shield Bypass you can't even board and destroy the weapons before they fire.

Cloak does squat against mind control though (other than temporarily delaying it). The most effective counter is (once you take down the super-shield) hacking. Secondly, use your own mind-control to undo their mind-control.

I can't effectively comment on Hard difficulty, since I haven't tried it, but there is no required set of items or systems you need to win on Normal. Sure, some might make it easier, but winning without cloak is quite doable. I did it on Normal difficulty in vanilla, and I've done it on Normal in AE. If there is an essential system, I'd say its drones for defense drone mk 1, but even then I'm curious if cloak + hacking (might need to get lucky and get a pre-ignitor to take down enemy zoltan ships) would be enough to counteract it.

[Impnemo]

This game... oi.

Been trying to do the Mantis B on normal with AE, and sector 1 is full of zoltan super shielded ships or the auto assaults that have each compartment segmented so the boarding drone can only hit one system. Running into ships with burst 2s and pike beams AND a combat drone, all in sector one. I throw up my hands and jump in the Fed B and 3 jumps in I get a flak 2 from the saving a shipwright event.

[Yana]

Finally unlocked the Crystal Cruiser. Whoever mentioned the Rock C strategy was a genius. A shame that there's no indicator for the Crystal system if you use the Rock C cruiser instead of finding the Crystal Stasis Pod. I almost didn't make it to the proper beacon before the Rebels caught up with me (Not that it would have made much of a difference, I was running three Swarm launchers with an explosive replicator. I'd mc the pilot and then deluge their weapons' compartment with 9 missiles!)

[Silverraptor]

Finally unlocked the Crystal Cruiser. Whoever mentioned the Rock C strategy was a genius. A shame that there's no indicator for the Crystal system if you use the Rock C cruiser instead of finding the Crystal Stasis Pod. I almost didn't make it to the proper beacon before the Rebels caught up with me (Not that it would have made much of a difference, I was running three Swarm launchers with an explosive replicator. I'd mc the pilot and then deluge their weapons' compartment with 9 missiles!)

Your welcome. Glad I was able to help.

[Hydranova]

Stupid death: beaming your entire mantis crew into the Flagship's medbay, hoping you can hack it while forgetting they're hacking your hacking station.

[Tengu_temp]

This game... oi.

Been trying to do the Mantis B on normal with AE, and sector 1 is full of zoltan super shielded ships or the auto assaults that have each compartment segmented so the boarding drone can only hit one system. Running into ships with burst 2s and pike beams AND a combat drone, all in sector one. I throw up my hands and jump in the Fed B and 3 jumps in I get a flak 2 from the saving a shipwright event.

The RNG giveth and the RNG taketh away.

Though seriously, that's a strangely heavy weapon setup for sector 1.

[t209]

I tried it yesterday. I need an opinion on charged laser and chain laser (The first one need four shots to be a worthy weapon which might take 16 to 20 seconds).

[Hydranova]

I'm pretty sure I had the opportunity to run two Vulcans. Should I take the chance if it ever happens again?

[Yana]

Getting two shots off every second, thus overwhelming any set of shields through the sheer volume of your firepower?

Why are you asking this question, my good sir?

[Ailurus]

I'm pretty sure I had the opportunity to run two Vulcans. Should I take the chance if it ever happens again?

Maybe once for the memories, but its not really practical. You *could* run two vulcans, but that would require maxxing out your weapon systems, and sticking 8 power in it, which gets very expensive up until the last sector or two, and even then not always necessary or even doable depending on what else you pick up. Plus, 2 vulcans is really overkill - one is capable of demolishing pretty much anything, so running two instead of one plus a couple smaller, versatile things seems a waste to me.

Unrelated note, but even after using them more, I really can't warm to the Lanius. In theory they're nice, they're just impractical. In my experience they're difficult to get (one abandoned sector event and rare appearances in stores are all I've seen, outside of the ships that start with them), and even if you do get some they're just so cumbersome. Difficult to have them man critical systems, since you can't rush in crew to help with repairs without them all gagging. Difficult to use them to fight off boarders - while they do get (non-robot) boarders off key systems, they can't actually kill them, since the enemies just run away. (Unless you have high-level doors, but if you have high-level doors, just lock them in and vent them to space normally). And while the suffocation is a neat trick in boarding actions, I still prefer mantises for killing speed or rocks + fire if I have fire since those combos get rid of the crew faster. And, in a mixed-race crew it adds a huge headache of constantly needing to reshuffle everyone to get places with the lanius keeping some rooms vacuum-sealed. The concept is fun, but unless you design a whole strategy around them (such as a suffocation boarding team) they just seem like other races could fill their role a lot better, unless you want to board drone ships.

[Rakaydos]

In the Landis A, I've taken the strat of having the landis man the weapons and shields, and depressurize everything except the pilot and engine rooms, and perhaps the O2 room for emergency repair situations. Level 2 doors means that in the event of a boarding action you turn off O2 production and shut the doors unntil the boarders go away- just remember to open the outer doors again when you turn the O2 back on. And each of your landis manages repairs for half the ship.

It's a similar strat for the Engi B.

[Rodin]

They're survivable without cloaking. But you have to be working on their drone systems almost immediately, have Shields 4, Shields Augment and fully trained crew, as well as reasonable evasion. My first AE win was through this, as well as a few wins in the original.

I think my most frustrated flagship loss was the one where I immediately hammered the drone systems, got them down before it could fire the super-weapon, and then ate the full firepower of the drones anyway because the flagship doesn't need a drone controller to launch a dozen drones at you.

[Sam cw]

Well, I just beat the flagship on hard with the Crystal B. Hooly crap was that intense. I was playing power juggling all game just to squeak a little more juice out from my meager scrap rewards. Things were especially tight in the mid-game, where I went through several Rebel sectors in a row and had no guns to deal all the automated ships I ran into for most of it. Eventually I was able to get a good set of weapons going alongside my 2x Crystal and 2x Mantis boarding party of doom and it was mostly smooth sailing up to the flagship.

Oddly enough, it was the first phase that was the hardest and the second that was the easiest. The cloaking in phase one lined up perfectly to neutralize my Flak 2 if I fired as soon as it was ready, which cost me some time since I had to line it up with the boarding party hitting the shield room. All the while the missile launcher was reminding me why I take it out right away whenever I can. The Lockdown ability on the Crystals was huge for keeping the enemy crew out of the shield room so they could make the flagship vulnerable to my guns, it may not have been possible to win without it. I also lucked out majorly on the Hacking target. It hit the sensor room, which is easily the safest place it could have gone. Phase two had the weakest defenses and was dispatched pretty quickly, causing me the least amount of damage in the process. Phase three was pretty much the same, minus the extra time spent knocking down the Zolton shield. I actually ended up using my cloak for the missiles instead of the power surge laser volleys.

Final load-out was Shields 4, Engines 6 (48% evade), Weapons 6 (Flak 2/ Charge Laser L), Cloaking 1, Mind Control 1, Teleporter 2, with an Automated re-loader and reconstructive teleport for augments.

[Airk]

I'm pretty sure you can shoot down hacking 'drones' with Defense Drones IF you get the latter out IMMEDIATELY at the start of combat. Any later, and it won't 'power on' until after you've been hacked.

[Lunix Vandal]

Yes indeed -- as long as you're able to cloak through the missile volleys (so it can't use the missiles as cover to land the drone) and your drone doesn't get hit by a stray laser or ion shot, it is quite possible to run the Flagship's first phase completely out of drones simply by shooting them all down. Unfortunately, it resupplies before you fight the second phase, though you can of course send the drone out again to shoot down Boarders.

Protip: Press the pause button before closing any dialogue box that leads to a fight -- the game will stay paused afterward. This lets you pull some useful tricks, such as ...
... juggling which weapons are powered without delaying the first volley.
... fixing your power levels when you jump directly from a nebula's ion storm into a fight, again with no delay in service.
... doing that annoying thing the AI does and cloak immediately (actually no don't do that; save it to dodge a volley).
... immediately starting to depressurize portions of the ship.
... getting Anti-Ship and/or Defense drones out slightly faster (they'll appear instantly at their assigned orbit, rather than after a short delay).
... getting a Hack Drone out in the shortest possible amount of time -- this one's risky if the enemy has a drone control, since you won't be able to see if they have a Defense Drone or not.
... firing off Mind Control before the enemy is able to cloak(!). (This trick doesn't work with the Teleporter -- its animation isn't fast enough.)

There are, however, a few events where those last two won't work because the enemy ship's layout isn't revealed by the time of the last screen of dialogue. IIRC this mostly happens with encounters where the ship is present, but starts non-hostile.

[Rodin]

New stupid death: Needed an extra bar of emergency power during a fight, didn't have anywhere I liked to pull it from, so I pulled it from my Oxygen. After all, I have enough to last me for the fight, and it's better than pulling it from my engines or shields, right?

Then I forgot that I did it.

Then I went to the bathroom at the end of the fight.

Cue jaw-drop as I realize I suffocated my entire crew and screwed up a Rock B run that was going swimmingly.

Mistake that almost resulted in death:

Boarding the flagship and using fire to flush out the crew, carefully leaving one guy alive in the weapons systems so the ship won't go under AI control.

Successfully trounce the crew, and then realize I set the Oxygen system on fire. Oops? Second and third waves were then a royal pain against AI Flagship. Fortunately was on Easy, so I just about managed to scrape through with 2 Hull points remaining by sending pretty much my entire crew across (minus my pilot and engineer) to beat the Flagship to death with their fists and keep the automatic systems suppressed.

[Impnemo]

So, I did not know you could double KO the flagship. Was a bad run on normal, couldn't get cloak or hack or drones. Had high evasion but the first volley in phase 3 hit my helm and set it on fire. It blew apart my Fed B as I fired off one last volley my flak guns, marks 1 and 2. Both ships broke apart but it still granted me the win.

[Rodin]

Didn't think I would see a worse place to get hacked than Pilot/Engines.

Boy was I wrong. Flagship hacking Oxygen supply. Either you have the firepower to disable the hacking subsystem, or you die as your entire ship runs out of oxygen on the second hack.

My Vulcan did not get up to speed fast enough.

Edit:

Just got the Kestrel C and...am I missing something? The ship looks really, really bad on paper. Poor starting weapons, no augmentations, and no real "gimmick" to it.

[Ailurus]

Didn't think I would see a worse place to get hacked than Pilot/Engines.

Boy was I wrong. Flagship hacking Oxygen supply. Either you have the firepower to disable the hacking subsystem, or you die as your entire ship runs out of oxygen on the second hack.

Yeah, o2 can be messy if hit by an upgraded hack. Of course, it does (finally) provide a reason to upgrade your own oxygen supply. Its still not high priority, but its a reason.

[Grif]

Yeah, o2 can be messy if hit by an upgraded hack. Of course, it does (finally) provide a reason to upgrade your own oxygen supply. Its still not high priority, but its a reason.

Upgrading oxygen slows down the hacking?

[Alex Knight]

Upgrading oxygen slows down the hacking?

No, but it *does* speed up the oxygen replenishment between hacks

[Lunix Vandal]

Upgrading oxygen slows down the hacking?

Indirectly, yes. Unless supplemented by ion weapons or hard damage, a Hack by itself can't asphyxiate any ship with an equal or higher power level in its air system -- the air simply regenerates too quickly between hack pulses.

Just got the Kestrel C and...am I missing something? The ship looks really, really bad on paper. Poor starting weapons, no augmentations, and no real "gimmick" to it.

I'd say it's in the middle of the pack -- the Dual Laser is amazing for its power cost, and with the Ion Stunner besides you've got roughly equivalent firepower to a Burst Laser II, but on a 2-second-shorter cooldown (just delay the first laser volley until 1-2 seconds after the Ion, then turn on autofire and go to town). The "gimmick" is that it's one of the few ships that starts with a Lanius, a Clone Bay, and/or upgraded Sensors. It also looks like the airlocks are set up to easily vent anything outside of the ship's nose, meaning firefighting and killing boarders should be fairly easy once you get the doors upgraded.

Also, let's reserve "really, really bad on paper" for the likes of Engi B, Slug B, and Zoltan C.

[Fjolnir]

I actually love upgraded hacks on the enemy O2 when available, I agree it is suboptimal vs the flagship but it seems to go alright if you work on shields first then max hacking, especially if you have ion