FTL

Is it possible to beat the Rebel Flagship in this state? Thought I'd check here before I restart.
(I have on Mk1 Combat Drone in storage, that's it)

its theoretically possible but its going to be a bitch and a half
first problem: your weapons, as they are, do not have the ability to penetrate its shields, as in literally impossible
therefor your options for actually damaging the ship are entirely limited to getting either the ion intruder into the shield room or getting your boarders in the shield room

now problem 2: your ion intruder is stuck in a part of the ship with no connection to the shields so your only option left to damage it is sending your boarders in

however even 2 max skill mantis will not last long given the ship is protected by lv 3 doors at this point AND has a lv 3 medbay meaning the enemies will heal up fast and you'll always be fighting 2 to 1
not to mention that if you lose those mantis its game over

once you get the enemy shields damaged enough its a matter of keeping the shields down at ANY cost

now even if you manage to beat this form there is form 2

the benefit of form 1 is that its relatively harmless once its main weapon systems are down, form 2 on the other hand WILL dronespam you regardless of how intact its systems are

ONTOP of that it starts out with a MK1 defense drone which will intercept your ion intruders
and given your drone amount is incredibly low this means that if even a single ion intruder gets intercepted you won't be getting the ion intruder for either phase 2 or 3

boarding does get easier phase 2 given the doors will be gone but phase 3 is going to be another issue
it starts with a massive supershield that will take you ages to penetrate and unless you have zoltan bypass that means tanking at least 2 missile strikes which could wreck you


honestly, unless you're supremely lucky I don't see it happening

normally I'd suggest jumping away, getting your combat drone and trying again but with the amount of drone parts you have that's sadly not an option at this point

oh and in general: lv 3 medbay is a pointless waste of scrap, so is lv 3 oxygen
that one tier of shield extra is a gigantic waste as well, and so is lv 3 cockpit, lv 3 sensors and if you have bought it instead of finding it the fire beam

if those 3 weapons were the best you found this run then you have my sympathy, you got luckfucked

>and you'll always be fighting 2 to 1
start a fight in the pilot room and stay there, so you force them to "fight fair" on your terms

Then start a fire in medbay forcing any damaged people to suck fumes, assuming you can knock out enough shield strength to start a fire in the first place. The fire will then slowly spread throughout, eventually hitting the shield room. With no one to repair it you can then damage the ship directly with your shitty weapons.

Yep, this is all the shit I ran through. My only strategy at this joint is to jump away, jump back and pray the II gets into the Shield room, or at least not one of the weapons. ESPECIALLY the Laser room, which would be the nightmare.

The ability to destroy your own drones is probably the only addition I find necessary to this game. Either that or the option to target broader ship segments but not specific rooms.

he literally cannot start a fire, that's the point
his weapons as they are CANNOT penetrate the lv 4 shielding
he cannot disable the medbay, he cannot follow stragglers due to the doors so he can't actually finish off the humans properly
and even with that strat he needs to be incredibly careful timing the teleports just right to avoid the ship from locking them with stealth which is guaranteed death

unless you have the drone recycler you cannot do that sadly enough, you don't have the drone parts to pull the same trick on the ship more than once

if you can luck out and kill of all the shipbound crew then go for it, that's the only way I see you winning but as is, it'll be a very long, very rng battle constantly keeping your mantis in the cockpit and hoping you finish a single person off before he runs out to get healed

I have an idea which should work.

All you need to do is kill all the crew, and with two mantis, upgraded teleporters and a little finesse it's certainly possible. Here's how:

- Teleport the mantis into the two square empty room on the bottom left, make your tele has full power.

- Get the two least important of your humans ready for the next teleport.

- This is when the timing becomes tricky. Wait for the flagships injured crew to start running back to their medbay for healing. When they do, teleport your humans into the horizontal corridor above your mantis. Hopefully, they will have just enough time to kill the retreating enemy.

- In quick succession, teleport back your mantis then humans. Rinse repeat untill you've killed all the flagships crew but the captains.

If that doesn't work, try with the humans and mantis teleport order reversed but be very careful with their health.

Good luck!

>he literally cannot start a fire, that's the point
i had forgotten if the fire beam could do shit through shields or not.
i haven't played FTL in a very long time for the very reason this thread was started.

do be aware he needs to carefully watch out for the stealth cycle, if he gets the humans locked on the ship I cannot see them live through it
its going to require a lot of timing and skill to pull off but if you do manage to kill everyone but the guy in the weapon room you should have a guarantee of killing this form of the ship and a virtual guarantee of killing form 2

form 3 will be a pain due to the supershield though

I made OP literally after trying that about three times. The AI for the RF's crew is much smarter than the rest of the game, it does a very efficient job of cycling crew through the medbay.

I wouldn't quite call it luckfucked, maybe chancepranced. Whenever I reached a store there was basically healing and small bombs or whatever for sale (in truth a small bomb would've been great here), or I had just spent scrap buying what proved to be essential shields/cloaking. There were bugger all stores in the last two sectors before the Last Stand, and no stores in pragmatic reach within, so I just spent my remaining scrap on extra weapons bars.

I dispute the Lv 3 Oxygen claim, as if/when O2 gets hacked you can't get up to 100% by the time it starts again with only Lv 2. Lv 3 Medbay and cockpit are conditionals. In a boarding strategy ship, which I had largely been playing with before this run and was still using that mindset into this one, you want your Medbay to keep up with your Tele so your crew can get back to killing asap. Otherwise Lv 2 is good enough. As for cockpit, I got that because I had fuck-all crew for most of this run and needed the pilot to do repairs. Then in the last few Sectors I got literally 10 crew pickups. I had to turn down a Rock with 2 Green skills and dismiss three crew members.

The fire beam proved remarkably useful, but you'd never see me dead BUYING one. Shields should diminish the odds of fire, not cockblock the beam altogether.

Because you're really bad at the game and spend your money on silly upgrades and waste your resources?

yeh fire beam cannot penetrate shields, its why its a fairly bad weapon
fire bomb on the other hand is a decent one

The Stealth cycle pretty much kills that. The injured Mantis crew members would die for certain. I've lost larger boarding parties to easier circumstances.

Oh, and the captain can afford to die, as I've spared the laser gunner. ALWAYS spare the laser gunner.

Oh and drones. SO MANY Drones for sale, all crap.

>for the very reason this thread was started
OP here, what exactly do you mean by this?

normal circumstances I'd agree with you but given his loadout his weapon officer is useless
by the time he actually gets the enemy shields down weapon speed is virtually irrelevant

its not like he has say a BL2 he needs to charge ASAP

Top tier:
-Pegasus Missile
-Burst Laser Mark II
-Chain Vulcan
-Ion Blast Mark II
-Halberd Beam
-Breach Bomb II
-Flak Gun I
-Adv Flak Gun

Good tier:
-Breach Missile
-Swarm Missiles
-Burst Laser Mark III
-Glaive Beam
-Breach Bomb I
-Ion Bomb
-Flak Gun II


Decent Tier:
-Hermes Missile
-Dual Lasers
-Laser Charger (L)
-Laser Charger (S) improved version
-Ion Charger
-Chain Ion
-Small Bomb
-Fire Bomb

Bad Tier:
-Artemis Missile
-Burst Laser Mark I
-Hull Smasher Laser
-Hull Smasher Laser Mark II
-Chain Burst Laser
-Ion Blast
-Pike Beam
-Healing Burst Bomb
-Crystal Lockdown Bomb
-Crystal Burst Mark I
-Crystal Burst Mark II

Shit Tier:
-Leto Missile
-Hull Missile
-Heavy Laser Mark II
-Laser Charger (S)
-Heavy Ion
-Ion Stunner
-Mini Beam
-Fire Beam
-Anti-Bio Beam
-Repair Burst Bomb
-Stun bomb

Beyond Shit Tier:
-Basic Laser
-Heavy Laser Mark I
-Heavy Crystal Mark I
-Heavy Crystal Mark II

Don't be a trolling faggot.
FTL is a flawed piece of shit game i regret buying because it that makes choosing beams a fucking R.I.P run, especially when they're all the RNG throws in the shops.

I had a personal rule that if i wasn't able to theoretically knock out 4 points of shield in an alpha strike halfway through, the run was a fucking still born abortion.

halberd and glaive beam are good weapons that can function with a 3 and 2 shield alpha strike, and there's several weapons that by themselves are 2 or 3 shield alpha strikes

heck one of the beam ships (zoltan A) is a top tier ship

>his
I am him. Notice how I said "I" left the laser gunner alive.

Do you not know about the AI in the third phase?

Yeah you're right, I forgot about cloaking.

OP if you do try the teleporting crew route it's going to be EXTREMELY tricky lining teleporting crew in and out between the flagship cloaking.

I'm not sure but I think you can delay the flagship stealth cycle by activating your own, so that might help if you decide to try this route.

Halberd and Glaive are great. Beams can be used but you have to do it properly. git gud scrub.

8/10

>All Flaks should be top tier, so much carnage
>Pike should go in "Good tier early game, bad tier late game"
>Crystal Lockdown goes in "Good tier with Lanius boarding party, shit tier otherwise"
>Heavy Lasers aren't that bad, you just time them when shields are down

>Fire beam
>shit tier
If you can reliably get shields down it's fantastic, if you get a ton of fires going you can fuck up any ship.

Beams are great, I wish I bought more for my run in OP.

That's a thought, but I know the RF will use its Stealth to restrict my boarders under normal circumstances, so I don't know if it'll work.

>chancepranced

Yeah this, I knew I forgot something for

>All Flaks should be top tier, so much carnage
flak gun II is one tier lower than flak I because of its drastically longer charge time making it harder to volley time and alpha strike
>Pike should go in "Good tier early game, bad tier late game"
tiers are considered over the course of the game, might do an early game one in which case several weapons will jump tiers
>Crystal Lockdown goes in "Good tier with Lanius boarding party, shit tier otherwise"
don't forget rocks during a fire, but I think bad tier is a decent overall compromise
>Heavy Lasers aren't that bad, you just time them when shields are down
primary function of lasers is to bring shields down, not to deal damage, and they're supremely bad at that

Few lasers or flaks are enough to beat the game, and they are pretty common weapons in shops

ask yourself this: is there any circumstance you would rather blast a fire beam than a halberd or glaive beam? Or heck even a pike?

and lets not forget fire beam is literally useless against airless ships and can't deal damage on demand in case you need to abort a dangerous weapon's firing cycle

yes yes i fucking get it, beams are fun when they're used right. unfortunetly the boss doesn't let you use beams period.

in the time it takes you to knock down the shields to "my beam can actually be used now instead of just draining power" range against the boss, you could've been using an ACTUAL FUCKING WEAPON to deal damage to the shield and take down the boss faster.
beams are designed entirely for trash mobs and not the boss fight, and it shows by the fact no beam deals enough damage to pierce shields.

"I want to run bombs /missiles /EMP /lasers /flak ... only (in conjunction with the proper support rooms)" game says OK that's fine, here's your RNG poopoo platter
"I want to run beams..." the game will immediately shit on your chest and shank you in the eyes with a rusty needle

Teleport your guys to take out weapons. Send in ion intruder and teleport guys with it to main area. Take down shields and use the fire beam. It will destroy all systems and all crew. Then in phase 2, teleport guys right to shields and take it out with no human crew to stop you. Then firebeam it again, it'll lock down all systems and fire will stop ship from self repairing (avoid shooting oxygen room as long as you can) phase three just use all your weapons on super shield and do the same shit

You shouldn't go into any run with the idea of "I want to run x" it isn't how the game works and to think otherwise is to be naive.

>Send in ion intruder
you can't destroy deployed drones, so that start don't work sadly enough

>unfortunetly the boss doesn't let you use beams period.
I've had builds before where I wrecked phase one quickly enough with beams it didn't have the opportunity to restealth

>it isn't how the game works
it is when you've noticed how fucking shallow the design is, that you start inventing stupid challenges to entertain yourself

You're welcome

>Flak II
Yeah, but seven shots. You can pop four shields and still do three damage with that beast, even with your other weapons down. Maybe I'm biased towards big charged salvos, playing with Stealth recently and all.

I'd say that's a great idea, given the importance of progression in the game. Basically a graphical tier list, roughly plotting each weapon's value in each game third.

>crystal lockdown
Yeah that's a point but fire doesn't kill anywhere near as quickly as low O2, plus the fire uses Oxgen which can hurt the Rocks. Meanwhile low O2 puts out fires which can spare my Lanius. It's just a win-win. Rocks are easier to use without support however.

>Heavy Lasers
If you've got a suite of decent weapons already, a Heavy Laser will charge up dead quickly and can be used for a cheap 2 damage or conveniantly popping a shield. They use very little power, so on ships with four weapon slots they are useful utility weapons, "nice" additions that aren't backbreaking to power down. On a ship with three or two weapon slots, fuck em.

Oh didn't see that. Well since all the weapon systems are down, he should teleport his entire crew over and just overwhelm them. They can only heal 4 guys at a time, they won't be able to prevent him from damaging systems and cycling out his guys if he plays well. Once he gets the fire beam in, it's over

Yes, it's called any situation where I fell i can use it to kill the crew or need to cause long term chaos on their ship to stop them from repairing things.
Also airless ships are pretty rare unless you're in a lanius sector and if you're in a situation where the enemy ship absolutely 100% needs it's weapon system done you're already in a pretty bad spot fire beam or not.

In this very run my fire beam played crucial in taking down drones. Fires can still pop a system before the lack of O2 kills them.

I used a Halberd and Pike extensively the last time I killed the RF (using the Adjudicator)

in theory you can pop 5 shields (don't forget that one bullshit lategame drone build) but by the time you meet ships with that level of shielding generally they'll have enough evasion you'll take 2 or 3 shields out at best

its still a fantastic weapon, its why its in second highest tier after all, its just not as legendary as say the BL2 or the advanced flak I (literally best weapon in the game, 1 energy cost flak 1? jesus fucking christ)

Taking out the last laser guy will set up the horrible AI in the last stage. Even if I had a four room teleporter, you're seriously underestimating how fast the Lv3 Medbay heals crew. I've managed to make boarding the RF work by bombing the Medbay first, and with the Healing Teleport Augment. Not happening otherwise.

you're starting to sound like some assblasted casual neo Sup Forums that lost one too many runs in a row and decided to start blaming their lack of skill on rng.

lv 3 doors, lv 3 medbay, stealth cycle
he'd lose crewmembers at an alarming rate given the flagship crew are all max rank in everything, including combat

Yeah Evasion does hurt Flaks. Also I forgot Flak 1s use only 1 power. I think I might have seen one in a shop at one point. Maybe I'll make it a rule to always buy one during a run, just in case.

no flak 1 uses 2 power
advanced flak is a unique variant of the flak 1 used only on one ship
that one uses 1 power
its insane

Nigga, that's not true. Beams are actually super-useful against the flagship. Beams are shit for 99% of the game, but the flagship are when they actually shine. It's very lopsided and annoying, even.

Have you ever tried the Glaive Beam versus the flagship? You fucking destroy it. Literally the only reason to consider using the glaive beam.

well that and the legendary weapon pre-igniter + glaive beam

had that one once, I felt like I was cheating

It's remarkable that you have this many power slots and somehow managed to distribute them this poorly. Not to mention the hilariously shit weapons.

The game may still be winnable, but you clearly suck far too much to even have a chance at winning.

ah yeh that's true, always keep your longest charge time weapon in the leftmost weapon slot
that way if your weapons get hit you don't have to wait all the time for it to recharge

...huh. Well that is insane. Guess I'll look forward to playing with that ship. No spoilers.

Halberds are useful throughout the entire game, and Pikes are good in the beginning. I'd only call the Glaive poor until the end.

You suck at the game.

Beams are the absolute BEST weapon to have against the Flagship. I've used them for like 90% of my victories. Especially on Hard. The moment the shields are down, you can instantly wreck 3-4 systems and deal up to 8 damage in a single unblockable, pinpointed attack.

You just need to have at least two weapons that actually hit shields as well.

What are you on about. I don't need to go invisible when the RF has just his laser, and I don't need Medbay active when no-one's injured. There's pretty much no other way to distribute power. Oxygen's at 3 because it's being hacked.

>inb4 I meant system upgrades
You can't blow someone out without being articulate. Learn your terms.

And no, the game is unwinnable. I figured I might as well see if Sup Forums can spot anything I didn't before I restart. It was a good run, and I had no problems with the weapons before this point.

you could go for a very carefully boarding strat
might be fun to try, and if you make it to phase 2 post pics

I had preigniter, TWO glaive beams, and a Flak II oncr. It was filthy.

There is almost no circumstance where having it doesn't invalidate everyone else.
Maybe having a bunch of chain vulcans.

how'd you power them?
thats 11 power in total and you can have max 10 weapon power

Thoroughly discussed so far. I'll consider doing it but only because there's a potential exploit with my own cloaking.

You didn't have a good run when you picked completely terrible upgrades all around and didn't get any useful weapons when you KNOW you need to pierce 4 shields on the Flagship.

It was a shit run that you couldn't tell was shit.

Still, I'd wager I could win with your ship. You're not even on Hard.

lelbusted

in theory its possible but the timing required is in the single digit frames
on hard it'd be impossible since you NEED to avoid triggering the AI given it'd fuck you up during phase 3

False premises. I had a good run because it was fun. Enemies were challenging, a lot of variety in how to beat them, choices made a difference. You're thinking backwards if that fun seems "illegitimate" to you.

The fact that my gamble on using the Ion Intruder to deal with the RF's shields didn't pay off seems to be making you flustered, not me. What can I say.

Sorry, flak I, not II.
Who would go onto an anonymous Belgian traffic simulator forum and just tell lies?

He was clearly playing as a rebel ship.

Fuck Belgium, sincerely. I've never been anywhere so flat. It's freaky.

GROW SOME HILLS DAMNIT.

fun fact: out of the 3 members of the low countries, belgium has by far the highest elevation
you could even include denmark as an honorary member of that group given its highest elevation is like 100m

if you want to see the true meaning of flat try the dutch province of flevoland: highest elevation 8m

By elevation do you mean highest peak relative to average, or highest average elevation related to other nations?

If the former, you have a point, wow. If the latter, that isn't mutually exclusive with Belgium still being abnormally flat. Both things could be true as well.

no as in the highest point of the entire province is 8m, its a specially constructed hill where the province flag is planted
the average elevation of flevoland is negative 5m

Right, the first one. Hot damn, remind me never to go to Holland.

jk, Holland has art and buildings to make up for weird geography

to be fair flevoland is fairly unique in that the entire province has been reclaimed from the sea by engineering, effort and potentially dark magic

Which really raises more questions about how the hell Belgium came to be.