Defence drones shoot down boarding drones. The Defence 1 is also actually better than Defence 2 because the latter also shoots at lasers, which means it often doesn't have time to shoot the much more dangerous missiles/boarding drones. Defence 1 only shoots at the important stuff.
I had a hilariously awful playthrough last night in which one crew member died of disease in Sector 1, another crew member was killed by a violently insane refugee in Sector 3, and constant Fuel problems leading to multiple turns of drifting aimlessly in space, awaiting rescue. Eventually the lack of manpower caused a routine fire in the cargo hold to spread out of control and disable key Systems. Who needs breathing anyway? After such a promising indication of my overall mastery of the game, the whiskey got the better of me and I started my very first Let's Play. Tune in and cast your votes to decide the fate of the BFS Grogaboo and her daring crew: Kalle, Soli-chan, and Syncronicity. They might even survive to reach Sector 2.
Graaaaaaaah this fucking game. Why is this game so awesome while making me hate it so much. On my third ever playthrough I got to Phase 3 of the rebel flagship and coincidentally got the "Astronomical Odds" achievement. Because there were no repair bases on the side of the map with the damn flagship, so I couldn't repair between phases! Graaaaah. Seriously though, this game is pretty fun. I love how you start out (at least with the Kestrel) with some seriously powerful weapons, good enough to see you through to Sector 8.
This fucking game, man. When I hit Sector 6, I had a 6man crew. Debbie over there was my gunner, I had a maxed out Pilot and Engine guy (both Human), an Engi maxed on Shields and repair, a Rock with 1 rank in combat and one in repair, and a level 2 combat Mant. When I hit the flagship, I had this guy. I was gonna lose anyway (probably) but I was totally going to beat the phase 1 flagship by taking out the weapons with my boarding party and then letting the Boarding Drone + combat crew take out the enemy shields, then finish it off from a distance. Nope.
I just managed to actually beat the flagship for the first time! ...oh, wait. No. I just managed to actually beat the FIRST PHASE of the flagship for the first time, and then discovered there was a second phase. Which I might've even still been able to take, if I hadn't started the first phase down half my hull integrity because of a stupid tangle with another ship on the way over. ARGH.</nerd rage>
Yeah, the flagship fight is a nasty surprise if you aren't expecting a three-stage boss. Also, I personally think that the second stage is the most difficult of the three.
I can now easily and reliably cruise through all the sectors up to phase 2of the boss on Easy, and reach him nearly all of the time with a pretty-much maxed out craft (although precise weapons/drones/augments/boarding party composition varies). I have still yet to beat the second phase. I came reasonably close on my last playthrough, I think, but I couldn't work out a good way to put the drone control out of action. I had two pretty well trained boarders, one human, one mant, and I teleported them into the drone control to take it out of action. But in the main compartments of the ships there's something like six crew, and there's a medbay, and I didn't have the firepower to keep the medbay offline perpetually while I teleported my guys in and out trying to kill off all the crew, while simultaneously trying to keep the drone control crippled enough to allow my ship to stay alive. So my boarders would go in, wear the crew down a bit (but not kill anyone) before needing to be beamed out to keep them alive, and in the mean time all the damage I did to both systems and crews gets healed or repaired, despite my small bomb (when it was on target) and ion blaster (when it could get by the shields). I still really enjoy the game up to that phase of the final fight, though.
...three? Y'know, if this were a JRPG, I'd expect a three-stage final boss. And it would give me some awesome theme music to go with it. I love the game up to the flagship point, but I'm not sure I like FTL enough to actually try to beat a three-stage grindy boss fight where the first and second stages seemed near identical anyway.
Sure, I can see how you might think that the flagship stages are all similar because they all share the triple-laser and triple-missile systems. However, I always disable the triple-missile system as my top priority (and leave the triple-laser alone).
My method is roughly this, where the green Xs are the points I wipe out in phase 1. Triple missile launcher first and foremost, then wipe out shields and medbay as close to simultaneously as I can. The more enemy crew I can take out of the body of the ship, the better (ideally none are remaining). The big gotchas are to #1 leave the triple laser guy alive because he can't go anywhere, and #2 don't touch O2 so we don't violate #1 (the points in red). If you only have the triple laser guy alive at the end of phase 1, phase 2 is a LOT easier.
While my last Flagship encounter did go horribly pear-shaped eventually, I did manage to eke out some lulz by teleporting a Fire Bomb into the Medbay as advised.
If you kill all the crew, the AI takes over. The AI repairs every room, constantly, simultaneously. It's frigging vicious.
If all crew on the flagship die, the flagship's autopilot takes over and it acts like a drone ship... including gaining the ability to automatically repair all of its systems at a slow rate. The repair rate is still quite slow, but if you were depending on having the triple missile launcher permanently disabled by a boarding action, the auto-repair will start putting it back in action. So the recommendation is to leave one guy alive in the triple-laser room, because that's the least-threatening weapon and he can't get out to repair the shields or engine. Still, you can kill 'em all if you want. I just got a new high score by doing exactly that in a normal game where I got a Fire Beam - only crew members can put out fires, and unlike drone ships, the AI-controlled flagship will still maintain life support, so there's enough oxygen to keep a fire going. One spark will light up the entire ship. My advice for dealing with the flagship: 1. Shoot the cockpit. If you're having trouble taking down the 4 points of shields, you should target the cockpit above the shield room. Just like your ship, the flagship will have an evasion rate of 0% if the cockpit is in red. Dealing 3 damage to the cockpit will make it much easier to reliably drop the flagship's shields in one volley of laser fire - none of your shots miss, so a volley of 5 will reliably cause damage. The cockpit is a smaller room, and only 2 crew members can fit in to make repairs at a time, so it won't get back online right away, especially if you start a fire or repeatedly teleport bombs in there. Remember, 0% evade means your bombs have 100% accuracy, too! 2. Kill the crew. Normally it doesn't matter that much where enemy crew members are unless you're planning a boarding action, but the flagship fight is much longer and more likely to become a war of attrition. Any crew members left over by phase 3 will teleport to your ship in a boarding action. Go in with sensors 2 and try to target low-health crew members with your shots! You don't have to board to kill them - if you shoot a room with a laser, every crew member in that room takes damage, just like it works for your own crew. You can also try to damage the cloaking system during phase 1. The left part of the flagship breaks off when you win in that phase, so any enemy crew members left in that section are sucked into the vacuum of space and don't appear in phase 2. Likewise, crew trapped in the drone section when Flagship Mark 2 bites the dust will be gone in phase 3. Encourage the enemy to send crew into the systems that are about to go kablooey. 3. Don't rely on missiles for phase 2 unless you have multiple. Everybody notices the big fat swarm of drones launched during phase 2, but you might have been so busy panicking and cursing the developer that you didn't notice the flagship launching a defense drone. It's a mark I defense drone that will shoot down boarding drones or missiles you launch - so don't bother bringing (or powering up) a missile launcher unless you fire 2 missiles in a single volley.
...oh my. Well. Live and learn. Or read what other people say and learn, anyway, which is probably a lot faster.
As much as I enjoyed the time I put into the game, I gave up and uninstalled it in aggrevation a few nights ago. It's way the hell too random whether a build is viable for my taste.
I'm fine with a build order getting you killed almost every time it sucks. I'm not fine with any build order killing you 30% of the time because they couldn't be bothered to properly playtest their game.
I went into the second flagship phase with an awesome crew and a good ship and the game crashed. :( And the save was not, in fact, saved. I guess because it deletes it whenever it starts combat? Anyway, this was my setup going into p2: The idea was that I was going to open up with my bursts to drop the shields and then Glaive to kill the drone control room, then start killing off weapon bays with my boarding party. Use cloak once the drone system comes back online, and then kill it again with lasers. Dunno if it would have worked, but it was a thought! Anyway, I unlocked the Mantis ship this playthrough, so I have a new ship to play despite not beating the boss.
By far the sickest loadout I have ever yet had. TWO burst lasers which firing in coordinated burst could take down even a level 4 shield, and then I could immediately follow with the Glaive Beam to inflict serious damage on several rooms. The pre-igniter mixed with the Zoltan shield meant I could fire off an initial crippling volley before they'd even got their pants on, then cloak (maxed out cloak!) to recharge the glaive beam and do it again. All melted before me up to the capital ship; I never fired a single missile. To cap it all I got hold of a firebomb, so if the glaive beam was too power hungry for my requirements I could still cause chaos on the flagship. My boarding party wasn't the greatest; just one reasonably trained but not maxed out mant. Still, my flagship strategy was set; kill off as many dudes as possible in phase 1 with boarding actions and selective laser/beam fire (I depopulated most of the weapons stations except the triple heavy laser on the left, and also killed all but three guys in the main body of the ship). Come phase 2, I deactivate my beam and switch to firebombing (and still blast lasering) everything, creating chaos in the cockpit, medbay, shields and drone control, while my mant boarder once again took down the guns, using the maxed-out cloak as much as possible to avoid any power-surge drone waves (it juuust about recharges fast enough on max to let you do this; I think I had maybe two megawaves of drones where I wasn't able to cloak for, but in those cases my shield and maxed out engines with fully trained engine, shield and pilot crew saw me through). Phase 3 I had no strategy for, having never seen it, but, well..... OH YES BURN MOTHERFUCKER AHAHAHAHA VICTOLY In the end it was easy; no-one but the mant even got injured, I don't think I lost a single point of hull structure over all three phases. The dual burst laser IIs are absolutely key, I think; no other weapon comes close to the general effectiveness for the energy cost. Firing in concert, those things can bring down even a level 4 shield totally and probably damage a system into the bargain, and they recharge reasonably fast too. The glaive beam was lots of fun but was really just gravy. The fire bomb is by far the best of the bombs I've tried, though; seems like the enemy crew AI isn't particularly adept at handling fire breakouts. Also, I unlocked the second layout for the Zoltan ship by getting the achievement for having 29 units of power (thanks to four Zoltan crewmembers and maxing out general batteries, so wooo!)
Reportedly (earlier in the thread) the non-maxed-out cloak is actually superior against the flagship since it recharges faster.
With the shieldless stealth ship, even! Very nice, that can be a tough ship to get going in, but that glaive beam is ridiculously sweet.
I must be doing something fundamentally wrong. I've never seen yellow experienced people, and rarely do I get single star people at their positions. I do designate people for the positions, but .. maybe I kill the enemies too fast or something? Is there a trick to leveling up positions? ~C~
When I had two burst laser IIs (similar to Meserach and Aaron's setups above), I was killing stuff too quickly to level my guys up, especially since I also got a very early Weapon Pre-Igniter to go along with the burst lasers. My pilot was barely level 2 when ending the game. It doesn't help that your weapons systems guy gets no experience for that first round of weapons fire you do with a pre-igniter. The cheesy/gamey way to level up is to make battles last as long as possible by using underpowered weapons and not letting your weapon and shield power get ahead of the curve, so keep those old weapons around (but of course, don't keep them if you need the cash to buy new ones). This is why it's useful to stockpile your resources for when you actually need to upgrade defensive systems.
Boarding actions net you more resources than blowing up a ship (or so it seems to me, at least) and provide a good mechanism for keeping a balance between gaming the system and not leveling up your dudes.
Finally pulled off a win with the slug ship, and unlocked the mantis one on the same run. The key, I think, was making much more use of the starter breaching bomb than I had previously. I always try to conserve on consumables like missiles, but going into every fight with a bomb to the weapons was a big help. I'm not really a fan of the slug ship. The bio beam is a pain in the ass to make good use of. It has a slow cycle time and takes two shots to kill anyone, so fights drag out longer. You get more loot by killing the crew without destroying the ship, but the difference in the early sectors doesn't seem all that large. Ships in the later sectors have more crew, which means more time clearing them out, which in turn means more time exposed to their weapons. All in all, I'd much rather have a boarding party. (And indeed, I sold my bio beam once I found a teleporter and two mantis crew.) I look forward to playing with the mantis ship. Starting out with a boarding party sounds like lots of fun.
The Bio beam seems like a bit of a gimmick but the breach bomb is an excellent complement to boarding strategies as repairing breaches costs health from oxygen loss. The key to boarding tactics (or crew-killing tactics) as far as I can tell is to take out their weapons and then make sure to kill (or distract) all the crew in the weapons compartment as they try to repair. If they're not firing on you then you can take as much time as you want to take them out.
If you have a good defensive setup (3 shields and a Defense Drone I) you can tank weapons fire without really giving a shit while your boarding party kills their dudes. Which is a pretty excellent way to max out your shield and engine operators, too. :)
Yeah, keeping the enemy weapons offline lets you take your time, assuming they don't try to power up FTL and escape. Per the suggestion of quatoria I've been trying to asphyxiate everyone on enemy ships, which rarely works early on (the ships just don't have enough health to survive repeated impacts long enough) but it definitely nets you some extra salvage when it does work. I haven't had much luck with boarding, since it seems to take a pretty consistent run of luck to get a large enough crew to support a boarding party while simultaneously getting enough spacebucks to afford a Teleporter and then finding a Store that carries one.
The Slug ships are probably my favorite, their automatic breach repair is fantastic. I agree on the Anti-Bio Beam, though. I always sell it off for something else at the first opportunity.
On most recent run on Easy, with the Type A Engi ship, I have somehow managed to unlock the Stealth Cruiser, the Mantis Cruiser, the Type B Engi ship AND get a Crystal crewmember, all in the same run. During it I have also discovered that the healing bomb is fantastically useful for a strategy based heavily around boarding actions. So long as it doesn't miss, of course: best thing is to deactivate their medbay somehow and then teleport you boarders into their cockpit, which means their pilot has to stop piloting and their evade % thus drops to zero.
I beat the final boss on Easy for the first time last night! I used the starting Kestral layout. I got really really lucky on weapons and other drops and had everything in the ship by the last sector. My final setup was teleporting in Mantis and Rock guy, two Blast Laser 2s, Anti-Bio beam (I love this weapon even if it does take a little charge time and two shots), and Fire Bombs. The hardest part of the final boss fight was the first phase since I took some time to make sure I killed nearly all of the crew. That took me down to about half-hull left, but I was able to easily jump back to a repair point before the second phase. Easily survived the other two phases and yay for me!
Boarding action to take out the cap ships tri-missile battery is a staple tactic for me. Making sure that thing only fires at the most - twice - puts me at ease. I also sometimes board the cockpit to nullify the ships evasion for missile/bomb barrages but you'll need to time it right during the first phase with the cloaking intervals since you can't zap them back if they are overwhelmed while the ship is cloaked. Also I call this - Repair Droid Hero!
My second time winning this game on Easy was also with the Stealth Cruiser. Fuck you, rebel flagship, burn in hell! Fire Bomb is by far my favorite weapon. Pairing it with two Rock boarders is fan fucking tastic. Also, got the Zoltan ship that playthrough, woo!
I have had such shit luck with crew members in the last few runs, it's looking like a fucking miracle that I ever had enough warm bodies for a dedicated boarding party, let alone one made of two Mantises at the same time. Also, just FYI for anyone else who's new to the game: Quit Game not only means "Exit FTL without updating your saved progress" it also means "Exit FTL and DELETE THIS PLAYTHROUGH."
Finally beat the game on normal. I started with a Kestrel for the Burst Laser Mk.2/missile combo. This was efficient enough to let me save my scrap until late in sector 2 when I bought a Pre-igniter. Score! In sector 3 a random event gave me a second burst laser mk. 2 and all of a sudden I could fire six shots before the enemy could even hope to react. Add in a heavy laser and I had a six-energy loadout that could do a respectable ten points of damage on the first salvo alone. I've honestly never had a playthrough this easy. For the final boss I swapped out the missiles for a hull smasher laser since I didn't want to bother taking out the defense drone and it was brutally efficient.
