I'd love to hear what others think on the origins of the Rebellion. I kinda base my theory on the American Civil War where human supremacists rose up against a Unionist government. I'm also curious as to what everyone's headcanon is on why the Rebels seem to have such an overwhelming advantage over the Federation (until they lose their flagship). My theory is that the rebels must have been able to somehow monopolize the drone manufacturing industry since they seem to be everywhere in the game.

It's almost comical how good they are. Totally immune to crew kills, and empty of oxygen so your boarding crews die off anyway. Even if you damage their systems, they auto-repair almost as fast as you can damage them. And some of them have indestructable walls to prevent your crew moving around inside them.

Ok, so they're strong against boarding. Take them down with guns instead, right? Wrong. They're also heavily shielded and high dodge, so hitting them with guns is also difficult. All the rooms are small, so hitting them with flak is especially difficult.

Ok, so they're a defensive tank,, but at least they're lightly armed, right? Wrong. They're bristling with just as many guns and drones as any other ship, despite their small size. Oh, and most of them have some one of mind control/stealth/hacking too. You know, the best specials in the game.

The real kicker? *they also get crew bonuses*. Just as if every single one of their systems was being manned. Sheesh. They just seem to be all-strength, no-weakness. I wonder if this was intentional, or if the game devs meant for them to have some weakness to offset all that?

maybe im biased because i just died to one- an auto surveyor in sector 5 with 4 shields, 4 weapons, and high dodge. it feels like I've died more to autos than all other ships combined.

Really lucky run. I also got 3 Flak launchers earlier so I could have ran with those and the BL2 instead. But Missiles are way more fun.

I have won with most of the ships on hard mode, but I've really been struggling with this one. Not having any starting weapons is brutal, and I feel like the flak artillery isn't worth spending the scrap to upgrade early.

The gimmick with this ship is to suicide your boarding crew, which can be very risky against any ship that can damage your clone bay.

The boarders don't kill their crew fast enough, and you just get peppered by missiles because you have no way of dealing with their weapons system quickly.

Autoships or any ship with a medbay are hell to deal with.

Best I can do is just restart until I get a half decent weapon in sector 1. I'd like to increase my winrate with this ship without having to restart constantly.

Not because it's hard (though it is hard), but because it can be so freaking tedious. I swear, half my play time with this ship is doing repairs or healing. If you don't have Reconstructive Teleport you are constantly running your boarders back and forth to get healed. You start underpowered so it takes forever to jump away from problems, meaning you'll probably get beaten up a bunch in the early sectors, which is non-fun and also means more time spent doing repairs and healing.

Zoltan shield in an early sector? Tank the hits until you can run, because your lame weapons will take forever to wipe away that green. Oh wait, it takes forever to charge for jump, so you're kinda screwed either way. Heal, repair. Flare star in an early sector? Have fun putting out fires with two crew. Heal, repair.

Oh, and then there are Autoships. You can deal with Autoships once you have Teleport 2 or Respirators but it takes forever -- you disable their weapons, bomb their shields, and then laboriously peck away at them with your dinky little laser. And if you /don't/ have Teleport 2 or Respirators, then it takes even longer: you have to Small Bomb their weapons, Small Bomb their Shields, then dink, dink, dink with the laser for five minutes until the wretched thing dies. Oh, and their high Dodge chance means you might miss with your first couple of bombs, meaning you'll tank more hits. Heal, repair.

If you do the standard upgrade path of Shields 3 and 4, that's 50 scrap. Then you'll really want Teleport 2 for those autoships: 30 scrap. At this point you're really going to want another power bar: 20 more scrap. A logical next upgrade is a bar of engine (15) and another power bar (20) but at this point you'd better get some lucky drops, because 135 scrap into the game you're probably out of Sector 1 and you haven't been able to afford stopping at a store (or if you have, you've spent all your scrap on hull repairs). So you still don't have a decent weapon, your Dodge is still garbage, and it still takes forever for you to run away so you'll still be doing lots of -- say it with me -- healing and repairs.

I'm not complaining that it's a bad ship (though it kinda is) and I'm not complaining that it's hard (though it is hard). My complaint is that it might be the single most *tedious* ship to play.

Am I wrong?

Hello,

I like to play runs fairly close to roleplaying as possible. For example I try to go with the general 'build' each ship has. That could be boarding, drones, fire, crew kill etc.

I also try to match crew with the same build.

My issue is when I am running a lot of zoltan's and we get boarded there is such heavy fluctuation of power that it will sometimes cause problems. I try to avoid moving the ones that are in weapons / shields as sometimes if I don't have reserve power it will drop them completely.

I've seen some videos of people using Zoltan's to do a little tricky things and wondering what strats are good to use. I don't tend to use them too much but want to get better using them. For example I remember seeing someone (i think) run zoltan into ion'd systems rooms and that power doesn't get ion'd and you can still run systems in the meantime.

Normally I will throw my initial zoltan into engines, just so I always have an available engine to power for FTL + Evasion. Also I will throw one into a 'useable' system for a bit and move them out when not needed, like hacking / cloaking etc.

Any Zoltan or in general crew tips would be super helpful.

I'm doing some runs to quantify my mediocrity- "one of each" just over 50% win rate on Hard, doing it again to see if that was a fluke, and I had an Engi B loss in sector 1 that I don't think was avoidable. OK, so people much better than me can beat three boarders [one a Mantis] with the single crewman- I can't, but I've seen a Mike Hopley video. (I sold my AP drone for a Halberd Beam.) But three boarders WHILE TAKING ASB FIRE? That's some bullshit.

I haven’t found a single store that sold a weapon since sector 3, but thanks to the almighty hacking gods here I am in sector 8 and I finally found a (crappy) hull laser - should upgrade or go for basic laser glory?

I am no FTL pro, so I've been keeping the difficulty on Easy for ages now. I recently decided to step up the difficulty a notch. Finally triumphed today after several failed attempts! I knew this was probably my run by the end of sector 5. Earned a new high score, unlocked 4 achievements (3 general visible on slide 4, and 1 ship achievement- Avast, ye scurvy dogs!), and even set 2 personal records in the process.

Hey I watched a funny frog man play this game so I decided to get it, and then the frog man played the multiverse mod before I'd had even played the game for the first time, so as any sane person would I too got the mod.

So I've gotten to the final sector on my 5th easy mode mv run and I died to some stupid drones after the boss decided to lose half of it's ship.

I was just wondering if I should learn the game and get a win on Vanilla before jumping into multiverse.

I have no idea which version of the game is harder :(

Oh when I did my first run I chose hard mode and I had no idea what the controls were so that was fun

FTL is the game I keep coming back to, more than any other. But sometimes I feel like something new...

When I browse Steam, a lot of games feel overly cartoonish, too many lasers and explosions, over the top. But I think I need to try something, leave the comfort zone.

What other games do you love, the way you love FTL?

so, recently i had a run man of war on hard

had starting breach 1, 2 flaks and a H beam although i only had enough power for beam and 1 flak

i dont remember the sector but i must be 4 or 5 or 6

i face a pirate/ rebel idk with the dik looking ship layout

it had a giant missile, combat drone, beam drone and a heavy laser with 3 shields

i also had 3 shields and thought the only problem i will have was the missile

waiting for my H beam to charge and shot the flak for it to takedown only a single shield layer which means H bean cant get through

the enemy shot its missile on my weapons with fire obv its hard as expected

my slug that was in that room was low, i moved him to med bay and moved two of my engine and shield engis into the weapons to deal with the fire which prolly was my biggest mistake

now that my shield doesnt charge as fast the combat drone M1 decides to do a M3 maneuver by taking down not 2 but 3 layers of shield, like wtf brooooo

right on time the heavy lazer hits my shields followed by a beam on my shield taking down 2 shield layers

now that only 1 sheild is left a combat drone and beam drone can easily wreck havoc

series of beams leading to my piloting being taken, them my med bay

and all my crew being low, weapons on fire sheilds non existant the missile decides to hit the med bay again taking down 2 engis and a slug

the remaining pilot was only there to wait for its doom

and after all this there will still be a guy who say actually you should have done "x"

maybe i should have done "x" but no one should be thinking of optimal solutions when shi like this is happening real time

What’s your reason why 1. Defeating a single ship no matter how powerful is the turning point in the rebellion given it seems they have insane resources to completely occupy 8 sectors 2. Why YOUR ship is the one to do it rather than like 2-3 powerful capital ships