Faster Than Light | Decisions, decisions.

Decisions, decisions.
Patreon requests a makeshift boarder
My opinion on ships 100 hours in
Did I win the RNG lottery with these weapons?
[CE] Suggestions for Zoltan C?
Rainmeter + Wallpaper Engine makes for a great desktop (sorry about the watermark)

Decisions, decisions.

Posted: 15 Jul 2020 09:57 AM PDT

submitted by /u/IntenseDabaroni
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Patreon requests a makeshift boarder

Posted: 16 Jul 2020 12:10 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Cweeperz
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My opinion on ships 100 hours in

Posted: 16 Jul 2020 12:44 AM PDT

Inspired by this post, these are my thoughts on all the ships I've played after 100 hours of playtime. That post was mostly memes, but this one is pretty cut and dry. I had been told that the game was insanely difficult so I've mainly played on easy difficulty, however I recently decided to try normal and I'm actually 2/2 so far. I have played and won with the A and B variants of each ship, mostly to unlock the crystal cruiser, and haven't played any C ships yet (except rock C to get the 100% steam achievements).

These are my thoughts on the ships. I can tell I'm going to play a ton more and am excited to compare my thoughts after another 100 hours.

Kestrel A:

This ship is meh. The only real thing it has going for it is the Burst Laser II, which seems to be one of the best weapons in the game. The ship has no systems and pretty crummy crew but not major disadvantages.

Kestrel B:

Autofire central. Pretty similar to Kestrel A, however with the A variant if 1 weapon gets knocked offline (the BLII), you're screwed. With the kestrel B this is not the case. I feel like with hacking you could probably do pretty well against the flagship with just the starting weapons, which allows you to build pretty defensively. Good ship but not super engaging.

Engi A:

This thing is so boring. Hope ion lands, hope the drone targets an important systems. I really am not a huge fan of drone systems, so these ships aren't for me. The only drone that I ever consider is the defense drone I. This ship is the one I struggled most to get a win with, but I was also new to the game.

Engi B:

Played 1 time and won for the crystal unlock. No desire to touch this ship ever again. Heavy laser is a good weapon that can stay the entire run, but having only 1 crew just sucks. Also the venting on this ship is pretty terrible if you get a fire in the top right.

Fed A:

Similar to the Kestrel A, this thing has the BLII, which means its automatically a strong ship early. This ship has the artillery beam and improved crew compared to the Kestrel A. The only thing I really dislike is the lack of starting systems and the weird layout. Played it twice for achievements, won both. No real desire to do it again.

Fed B:

Dual lasers are good but I'd rather have Fed A's BLII. I guess having level 2 artillery beam is nice but other than that it just seems like a downgrade. I've played it once for the crystal unlock and don't really have a desire to do it again. I heavily prefer being able to target things myself rather than leaving it up to rng,which explains why I don't love the artillery beam or drones.

Zoltan A:

My favorite weapon and my favorite augment all in one. This thing is an absolute powerhouse. The only thing I don't love is the layout (you have to vent the shields and the weapons to vent the engines for instance).

Zoltan B:

I'm not a huge fan of Ion weapons, but this combo works fairly well and even if it isn't as good as the halberd beam, it's fun to maximize rooms and systems hit with the pike beam. The extra scrap required to get your first shield sucks but zoltan shield is just so good.

Stealth A:

One of the strongest ships in the game without a doubt. Long range scanners are ludicrously good and starting with cloaking is amazing. If you can get shields in sector 1 or 2 without taking too much damage the runs seem to snowball out of control. I got my highscore (5206) with this ship. It's not a great score compared to what i've seen on here, but it was also one of only 2 games I've played in normal. For some reason it stresses me out to play in normal even though I haven't lost in it yet. I imagine once I do lose it'll be easier to keep going at it. The achievement "Phase Shift" was the last one I needed to 100% the steam achievements and was so frustrating to get!

Stealth B:

As far as I can tell this is the ship that puts your fate most into the whims of rng. I've played this ship one time and had the good fortune of finding a pair of automated reloaders, which made the first half of the game a cakewalk. Unfortunately I couldn't find any other weapons for forever and had to rely on hacking to lower shields for almost every ship in the second half of the game. I found a flak towards the end and it was an easy win. I could see this ship leading to some very frustrating loses and some incredibly snowbally wins.

Rock A:

I hate this ship. At least you can sell rock plating and your missiles to get a decent weapon if you find an early store?

Rock B:

Just give this ship a teleporter please! Event with boarding I still don't like it, rocks are just too slow. Losing a run because to fires that you cant put out is also incredibly maddening, although in hindsight I could've put everyone in the medbay and turned the oxygen off.

Slug A:

Anti-bio beam is so fun! Dual lasers are also pretty good considering this ship has 4 weapon slots. For some reason I just really like the slug ships, I think because they force you to alter your play style a bit. Other ships do this too but maybe not in as fun of a way (cough Rock A).

Slug B:

This thing is hilarious. Obviously it's not very strong, but I love the meme power of boarding with slugs and a healing bomb. I actually really enjoyed my singular run with this ship.

Mantis A:

We're finally getting to the boarding ships! I absolutely love to board. Sometimes I want a very fast run with speedhack on and a pure gunship like the stealth A, but boarding has my heart in the end. I also really like mantises. Getting in there and killing the crew super fast is just a fun way to play, and you get extra scrap! Unfortunately this ship only has a 2 tile teleporter and teleporting is pretty much your only option since the basic laser doesn't work if an enemy has a single shield. Sure there is a small bomb, which seems to be one of the better uses of a missile, but I view missiles as temporary solutions rather than long term ones. Maybe that type of thinking won't work when I play at higher difficulties, we'll see.

Mantis B:

4-tile boarding is just so good. Also, 2 shields?? It doesn't matter that you don't have weapons when you can live forever with your two shields and repeatedly heal up your mantises. You don't really have to worry about missiles either with the defense drone. The only real problems are 1) medbays and clonebays, but hopefully by the time those are super common you have weapons or hacking to take them out, and 2) auto-drones, which as far as I can tell you just lose to unless you have level 2 teleporter and they dont have cloaking. This and the Engi B are pretty much the only ships I've started the game with thinking "ok I need to get more crew asap". Oh also 11 reactor power wow.

Lanius A:

This ship is pretty unremarkable except for hacking, but it doesn't really have any downsides which makes it above average in my opinion. I don't love the weapons and would hope to replace them, but they're definitely serviceable, and the hacking can buy you time to let the chain laser spin up. Since I unlocked Lanius B I haven't really touched this ship.

Lanius B:

Jeez is this ship good. Even without the weapons it'd probably be one of my favorite ships, but then you throw in the advanced flak?? Probably the best weapon in the game?? I really love how boarding with lanius and mind control plays out. Board into an important system so the enemies prioritize coming to you, mind control one of them once they're all in the room, go destroy some other system while they're all distracted. And when they do come to fight you there probably isn't any oxygen in the room. It's so fun.

Crystal A:

I really like this ship. Sure it isn't as overpowered as the B variant, but it's a really good gunship still. As weird as it may sound, I just really like the sound the crystal heavy makes. There aren't really any downsides to this ship, the weapons are good (except that defense drones will shoot them), the crew is great, and you start with a free 40 scrap in crystal vengeance.

Crystal B:

This thing is so OP. Most ships that I think are good start strong and snowball, however the Crystal B isn't incredible at the beginning of the game, but scales extremely well. I really like interactive systems in this game like boarding and tend to dislike automatic systems, such as drones and artillery beam (though I'm learning there may be more micro to drones than I previously thought). Lockdown adds an extra bit of micro and that is something I really enjoy.

Tier list:

This is a rough tier list of all the A and B ships. I'm interested to see how my opinion changes over time. I probably applied some bias on ships I enjoyed to play more. Ships are listed roughly best to worst in each tier.

S tier: Lanius B, Crystal B, Stealth A
A tier: Zoltan A, Mantis B, Crystal A
B tier: Lanius A, Kestrel B, Zoltan B, Mantis A, Slug A
C tier: Federation A, Kestrel A, Federation B
D tier: Stealth B, Slug B, Engi A
F tier: Rock B, Rock A, Engi B

submitted by /u/sawyerwelden
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Did I win the RNG lottery with these weapons?

Posted: 15 Jul 2020 07:08 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Kkossy
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[CE] Suggestions for Zoltan C?

Posted: 15 Jul 2020 07:11 AM PDT

I'm getting a little bit frustrated. In almost every run I'm off to a good start by making the most with the zoltan shield and upgrading engines early and a LOT of power micromanagement (particularly, moving the zoltan from shields to the engine room while I still have super shields), all great for the first 3-5 sectors but things start to get very nasty further ahead.

With that in mind tend to concentrate ship upgrades above anything else (not to much on reactor though) that way I can stand a chance against ships with 3 and sometimes 4 layer shields, however at the end (sector 7-8) it always comes down to my weapons. Every single run I've had so far gets obliterated at some point because of being badly armed in the end game. (maybe later I'll post screenshot of the first weapon set that got me to the flagship).

I'm currently trying this on easy but a normal run would be on the way as well. Thoughts?

submitted by /u/Salamese
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Rainmeter + Wallpaper Engine makes for a great desktop (sorry about the watermark)

Posted: 15 Jul 2020 01:44 PM PDT