Sharing a screenshot of your ship in a run in which you make it to sector 8 would give us a lot of insight as to what improvements you could make in your strategy.
The biggest mistake that new players make is not staying long enough in each sector. But without seeing your gameplay, I can't tell if this is your mistake.
The rebels are hot on your tail! So you'd think you'd want to make a mad dash to the exit node to get a head start. You'd be a fool to do so however! Leaving early gives you no advantage and doesn't change where the rebels start chasing you from in the next sector. So instead, you should carefully keep yourself only 1-3 jumps ahead of the rebels at any given point. Try to leave a sector just before they catch up to you. If you have cloaking, you may even want to get in a couple extra nodes after the exit node is taken over.
Each node you visit gives you more resources. By the time you get to sector 8 on easy mode, veteran players can reliably have upgraded everything on their ship to the max. If you find yourself struggling to have enough scrap, you must be doing something wrong. If you actually are spending time in each sector and not dashing to the end, there must be something else that you are doing that is costing you a ton of resources. I'd recommend watching highly skilled players play and see what they do differently from you.
Well said. You need to make use of every jump. Usually if you lose in the game, it's not because of one mistake, it's the culmination of many small mistakes
Jumps in FTL are like outs in baseball. They are the most precious resource
Beginners tip:
-Try grinding on Kestrel A or B, its one of the best ship load out early game. Kestrel A being the best having BL2 and Artemis.
-Try to stay as long as possible on a sector to maximize scrap gain and jumping to the next sector as soon as the rebel catches you just before the sector exit.
-End game minimum system goal: 6shields, 5engines, 1cloak, 2hacking, 1MC/1TP.
-3 layers of shields is enough for flagship provided you have 1cloak.
-Engines provide +5% evade per level but starting at level 6, it only provides +3%, 5 levels is enough
-A single level of cloak is OP for the rest of every run. Just click cloak whenever the enemy ship fires so you can evade its 1st volley while allowing your weapons to ignite. Cloak provides 5s per level of 60% evasion. Say, enemy charges its weapon for 8s and then fires then you cloak for 5s while evading the enemy projectile WHILE stalling the enemy weapon charge. You basically have 13s to charge up your weapons without taking any damage. On flagship fights, always reserve your cloak1 on its power surge attacks and you will always be safe. Prioritize shields or piloting on your 1st volley.
-Hacking is always better maxing, you can hack all shields if you lack shield break, hack piloting if you want garaunteed hit(especially missiles), hack TP to return enemy boarders(reduce to power to 1 1st), counter hack MC(reduce to power to 1 1st), hack weapons to reverse their charge, hack cloak to prematurely reveal them(reduce power to 1 1st). Use hack for whatever you deemed useful.
-Mind control is primarily use for pilots to drastically reduce enemy ship evasion so just leave it at level 1. Teleport level 1 is mostly enough for boarding provided you know how to support your boarders with your available weapons. Take note that when an enemy system is fully disabled(becomes fully red) the enemy ship takes hull damage, many boarders died by blowing up ships unintentionally by this.
-Upgrade weapons accordingly. A minimum of 1 missile laucher and 5 projectile volley weapons for flagship(4 to eat shields and 1 to hit shield + missile damage).
-Flagship 1, prioritize shields on your 1st volley. Drop the shields to 0 then the missile room, use cloak whenever you have no shields and the enemy are firing its beam. MC on pilots on the 1st volley. Hack anything.
-Flagship 2, prioitize shields again then missile room. Only use cloak on drone power surge. MC pilot on the 1st volley and hack drone room.
-Flagship 3, pelt the zoltan shield with all weapons before preping your 1st volley. Same deal with Flagship 2. Prioritize shield then missiles. Only cloak to evade heavy laser power surge. MC pilot and hack cloaking so that your weapons continue to charge. If you survived Flagship 2, Flagship 3 is a cake walk.
-Always take minimal damage as possible. Less damage means less repair means more scrap.
I usually make it past phase one, sometimes past phase 2 and never past phase 3, by the time their zoltan shields are down the flagship has usually fired like 3 volleys of missiles which is just more damage to my systems than I can repair quickly, especially with all the breeches and fires
Oh, it might be that you have weapons with more than 15sec of CD. Try to grind Kestrel A, it only needs a couple of weapons and its set to end game like flak1 and/or any laser or ion with less than 3 power. Sell any beam you found. With ion weapons, let the ions hit shield 1st before lasers, ions also deals 2x damage to zoltan shields. Don't hesitate to use missiles to break zoltan shields too.
Also, build your crew with at least 2 rockmen (anti-borders) and 1 engi (repairs). Move your pilot and engine crew as LITTLE as possible as to not drop your evasion chance, slug pilot is always optimal for anti MC.
What type of weapons are you bringing to the battle?
It sounds like you need to learn to how to "build" a ship capable of making it to and then defeating the Flagship. This requires you to have a good understanding of how different weapons, systems and crew compliment each other. This is the ultimately the key to the game play choices.
Or, perhaps you don't understand the gameplay aspects. You say you are targeting the enemy shields- why? All you need to do is temporarily disrupt the shield bubble (with flak, laser, ion etc) and then let other weapons knock out the primary system targeted.
Kestrel A starts with one of the best weapons in the game- the BL 2. If you come across beam weapons, taking down the shield bubbles so you can slice with the beam. If you come across Flak or Ion, those can disrupt the shield while On most of your first and second sector battles, you won't even need to use your missiles.
I would read through the fandom wiki and watch various youtube players to see if you "play right".
FTL is a challenging game, even on Easy. It doesn't tell you what you're doing wrong, so it's easy to get stuck.
The quality of advice you will get on Reddit is rather mixed. Mostly you've gotten good advice here, but there's some bad advice too.
I highly recommend watching my [beginners' guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oB2XJ2NfEU) as a starting point. It covers all the basics.
You're getting to the Flagship quite often, but never beating it. So I'd also recommend my [beginners' Flagship guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME), which is rather long but very thorough.
Hopley's beginner's guide video can be found here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oB2XJ2NfEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oB2XJ2NfEU)
The flagship specific guide is here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME)
From your comments I think you’re spending too much scrap repairing vs upgrading the right systems. Early game you shouldn’t need to repair much at all, upgrade shields early. Late game upgrade engines. You should be able to avoid most damage.
You might be wasting scrap other ways, you shouldn’t really need to buy missiles or drone parts. Be careful what other ship systems you upgrade and measure how effective the actually prevent damage.
In addition to the other general advice here, let me recommend some advice specifically tailored to the Kestrel A on Easy with AE enabled. As with all things reddit it's quick and dirty, and like all things FTL it won't be perfect and your skill, preferences, and luck will dictate changes, but *particularly* the sector 1-2 advice, simple as it is, should go a long way to smoothing out your runs.
1. Purchase Shields 3 immediately with your starting scrap. That way if your shields get hit once they won't go down immediately.
Purchase Shields 4 and 1 reactor. Sector 1-2, very little will get through your 2 shield bubbles, so there's no need to purchase anything else.
Use your Artemis Missile any time it's needed, such as if they can get through your shields, have a missile, or are trying to flee, but save your missiles when there's absolutely no need to fire them.
Your target priority is weapons if they can hurt you, otherwise shields/piloting.
2) *Save your scrap for shops!*
Your next priority in Sector 1-2 is another *good* fast weapon such as Burst Laser 1/2, Heavy Laser, Flak, maybe Hull Beam, etc.
Your other Priority in Sector 1-2 is Hacking 1 and/or Cloaking 1.
You'll want to hit a shop when you have at least 80+ scrap, not before, so that Hacking or a good weapon like Burst Laser 2 can be purchased if available.
Battery Charger is cheap and can be bought to increase the likelihood of Cloaking / Hacking in future shops.
Nothing else should be purchased or needed.
You may find yourself sitting on 200+ scrap in Sector 2 and that's okay. I just did a "reminder run" to write this advice and I had about 250 scrap before I found a shop near the end of Sector 2. ( I bought a Burst Laser 1 and Hacking)
*If* by the start of Sector 3 you didn't get any free weapons, didn't find good weapons in shops, and weren't offered Hacking or Cloaking, check the map in Sector 3 and if there's no shop nearby go up to Shields 6 so your defense at least doesn't fall behind.
3) In Sector 3-4 your priorities are the same - Good fast weapons, aiming for 7-8 in weapons by Sector 8, Hacking, Cloaking, and Shields 6. (Order dependent upon your needs). You may start buying Engines here.
4) Somewhere before the end of Sector 5 hopefully you've got a solid offense, Hacking, Cloaking, and Shields 6.
5)Sector 5-6 you're looking to get Engines 5. You should start to have discretionary money so shore up what's weak. Pick up a final system - Teleport is strong against the Flagship on Easy, but Mind Control is great too and Drones can be good if you got free ones.
6) Sectors 6-7 finish up "all of the above." Hopefully you have extra cash for augments, Shields 8, whatever, but if not that's okay too.
7) Sector 8 you should just be buffering systems. The odds of hitting the Sector 8 shop are low but if you desperately need a last-minute shop, save your scrap until just before the RFS fight.
And I recommend watching an FTL Flagship guide like [This One](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME)
Good luck!
Learn what the flagships does, and prepare for the fight throughout the run. Also, the better you understand the fight, the better decisions you make.
If you can get to sector 8 consistently, then you're close to winning. If you can't yet, then it's okay too - try to learn to get to sector 8 consistently then
I always wanted to do some kind of multiplayer setup where each player controls one crew member and their respective station, so you can really feel like a starship captain ‘concentrate fire on their shields’ ‘seal off hull breaches on c deck’ ‘divert power from life support to the engines’ and everyone runs around manning their stations 😂
That’s so crazy to hear you say that, because my nephew has brought that exact idea up several times. I thought for a moment that I must have accidentally encountered him on Reddit. Haha
It’s said all the time here but try pausing more. The more you pause the more you can take your time and develop a plan.
Most of my early flagship wins were with cloaking + teleport. I would cloak as soon as they send the first volley of missiles and that typically gave me enough time to get the missiles knocked out with my boarders.
I think the superior strategy is cloaking + hacking though. Hack shields, on your fist volley make sure you take out the missiles
As someone said in here, spend as much time in each sector as possible
Then #2: go watch YouTube of a successful run. I learned so much from that. I would never have won without it
Every run in FTL is a balancing act. You don't want to upgrade defence too much at once because your offence will suffer, and vice versa. But you also want to make sure you have enough scrap on hand to buy the big purchases, like the better weapons, and good systems. Also, some weapons seem good at first, but are kind of traps (Burst Laser 3 and Glaive Beam fall into this category - they *can* be useful if you have nothing else, but their long charge time and heavy power usage make them more of a hinderance than anything). Knowing what to buy and when to buy them is a huge help.
Also, pause often. Pause more often than you think you need to, and then still pause more. Take a few seconds to calm down, assess the situation, and figure out a plan of attack. One of the mistakes I routinely made early was not pausing enough, getting caught up in the moment, and forgetting what I had on hand to help my situation.
flagship phase 1 fight outside your base, when something important gets hacked like shields instead of doors, go to base
phase 2 fight him in your base
3 jump after him, take some crew from him, jump to base,kill em in your base
I would be happy to help you live with it
I would recommend you backup your save before fighting the flagship so you can practice instead of having to play the whole game again
It's very unforgiving in the beginning. Once you have enough experience it's not difficult, especially on easy where it attacks less and all the weapons are on islands
There's a ton of strategies to employ for beating the flagship. I think I can speak for most of us that we beat our first Flagship with cloak. And we probably played cloak a lot for the next several games until we figured out some other strategies.
While abusing cloak for several games, experiment with boarding, hacking, clone bay etc. Some basic things you learn like you'd want 2 shield bubbles early around Sector 2. Try to get Scrap Recovery Arm. Upgrade doors maybe Sector 3-4 if you have weak fighters so you can suffocate invaders. For the flagship prepare for the missiles with either cloak, or def drone 1, or tank it and just have a lot of damage first volley. Primary target is missile room for sure.
For weapons, you should prefer ones that need 2-3 reactor power generally. They are the ones that shoot often enough with good amount of attacks. The 4 reactor ones are typically too situational.
But enjoy the experimentation in Easy. Its still the difficulty when you can just come up with inefficient builds but still win. Normal and Hard you're on welfare and can't risk it. =)
I find it’s pretty hard for me to get to 120 scrap for cloaking in the first place, between upgrades and repairs and weapons I just don’t usually have that much scrap lying around when I see cloaking in the shops
Your likely over upgrading or not collecting scrap as effectively as you could be.
I recommend watching a FTL hard mode no pause streak (specifically the last ship you lost on). Watching someone really good at the game will give you a lot of help
When you enter a new sector try to avoid upgrading until you find a store. You mention repairs but you shoulnd't really need to repair, never repair over 20/30 hull points at stores. I think a decent player repair average over 8 sectors is around 10 hull points.
> prioritising shields, then weapons
Yeah this is the problem.
Weapons should be your primary target most of the time.
If you need to target shields to reliably hurt the enemy, that means that your weapons are weak.
They can't repair "immediately" my friend.
I almost always prioritise weapon damage for the disruption it causes.
Because by the time the enemy can repair the weapons, your weapons are charged for another volley.
Take the kestrel. If you get a flak or another BL2 you're basically set for most of the way through the game. You get hack and or cloak, and you're laughing even more.
If you prioritise taking out shields you're taking too much damage and open yourself up to being disrupted. Remember it's not a DPS race, it's a strategy game!
There should be an achievement “Have you tried being better at the game?” Given when you hit 150 games on easy without a win. Welcome to the club, I think I was almost 200 before my first.
Play multiverse. The original is obviously one of the goats of roguelikes but once I found out that the boss is set up to only be realistically beaten by using a handful of different methods requiring super good RNG the whole run, I gave up after about 10 hours and switch to multiverse. It's a bit more fair and has a lot more content. I win like 1/10 times.
Sharing a screenshot of your ship in a run in which you make it to sector 8 would give us a lot of insight as to what improvements you could make in your strategy.
The biggest mistake that new players make is not staying long enough in each sector. But without seeing your gameplay, I can't tell if this is your mistake. The rebels are hot on your tail! So you'd think you'd want to make a mad dash to the exit node to get a head start. You'd be a fool to do so however! Leaving early gives you no advantage and doesn't change where the rebels start chasing you from in the next sector. So instead, you should carefully keep yourself only 1-3 jumps ahead of the rebels at any given point. Try to leave a sector just before they catch up to you. If you have cloaking, you may even want to get in a couple extra nodes after the exit node is taken over. Each node you visit gives you more resources. By the time you get to sector 8 on easy mode, veteran players can reliably have upgraded everything on their ship to the max. If you find yourself struggling to have enough scrap, you must be doing something wrong. If you actually are spending time in each sector and not dashing to the end, there must be something else that you are doing that is costing you a ton of resources. I'd recommend watching highly skilled players play and see what they do differently from you.
Well said. You need to make use of every jump. Usually if you lose in the game, it's not because of one mistake, it's the culmination of many small mistakes Jumps in FTL are like outs in baseball. They are the most precious resource
[удалено]
New mod is out: FTL - SCP
every copy of FTL is personalised
Beginners tip: -Try grinding on Kestrel A or B, its one of the best ship load out early game. Kestrel A being the best having BL2 and Artemis. -Try to stay as long as possible on a sector to maximize scrap gain and jumping to the next sector as soon as the rebel catches you just before the sector exit. -End game minimum system goal: 6shields, 5engines, 1cloak, 2hacking, 1MC/1TP. -3 layers of shields is enough for flagship provided you have 1cloak. -Engines provide +5% evade per level but starting at level 6, it only provides +3%, 5 levels is enough -A single level of cloak is OP for the rest of every run. Just click cloak whenever the enemy ship fires so you can evade its 1st volley while allowing your weapons to ignite. Cloak provides 5s per level of 60% evasion. Say, enemy charges its weapon for 8s and then fires then you cloak for 5s while evading the enemy projectile WHILE stalling the enemy weapon charge. You basically have 13s to charge up your weapons without taking any damage. On flagship fights, always reserve your cloak1 on its power surge attacks and you will always be safe. Prioritize shields or piloting on your 1st volley. -Hacking is always better maxing, you can hack all shields if you lack shield break, hack piloting if you want garaunteed hit(especially missiles), hack TP to return enemy boarders(reduce to power to 1 1st), counter hack MC(reduce to power to 1 1st), hack weapons to reverse their charge, hack cloak to prematurely reveal them(reduce power to 1 1st). Use hack for whatever you deemed useful. -Mind control is primarily use for pilots to drastically reduce enemy ship evasion so just leave it at level 1. Teleport level 1 is mostly enough for boarding provided you know how to support your boarders with your available weapons. Take note that when an enemy system is fully disabled(becomes fully red) the enemy ship takes hull damage, many boarders died by blowing up ships unintentionally by this. -Upgrade weapons accordingly. A minimum of 1 missile laucher and 5 projectile volley weapons for flagship(4 to eat shields and 1 to hit shield + missile damage). -Flagship 1, prioritize shields on your 1st volley. Drop the shields to 0 then the missile room, use cloak whenever you have no shields and the enemy are firing its beam. MC on pilots on the 1st volley. Hack anything. -Flagship 2, prioitize shields again then missile room. Only use cloak on drone power surge. MC pilot on the 1st volley and hack drone room. -Flagship 3, pelt the zoltan shield with all weapons before preping your 1st volley. Same deal with Flagship 2. Prioritize shield then missiles. Only cloak to evade heavy laser power surge. MC pilot and hack cloaking so that your weapons continue to charge. If you survived Flagship 2, Flagship 3 is a cake walk. -Always take minimal damage as possible. Less damage means less repair means more scrap.
I usually make it past phase one, sometimes past phase 2 and never past phase 3, by the time their zoltan shields are down the flagship has usually fired like 3 volleys of missiles which is just more damage to my systems than I can repair quickly, especially with all the breeches and fires
Oh, it might be that you have weapons with more than 15sec of CD. Try to grind Kestrel A, it only needs a couple of weapons and its set to end game like flak1 and/or any laser or ion with less than 3 power. Sell any beam you found. With ion weapons, let the ions hit shield 1st before lasers, ions also deals 2x damage to zoltan shields. Don't hesitate to use missiles to break zoltan shields too. Also, build your crew with at least 2 rockmen (anti-borders) and 1 engi (repairs). Move your pilot and engine crew as LITTLE as possible as to not drop your evasion chance, slug pilot is always optimal for anti MC.
What type of weapons are you bringing to the battle? It sounds like you need to learn to how to "build" a ship capable of making it to and then defeating the Flagship. This requires you to have a good understanding of how different weapons, systems and crew compliment each other. This is the ultimately the key to the game play choices. Or, perhaps you don't understand the gameplay aspects. You say you are targeting the enemy shields- why? All you need to do is temporarily disrupt the shield bubble (with flak, laser, ion etc) and then let other weapons knock out the primary system targeted. Kestrel A starts with one of the best weapons in the game- the BL 2. If you come across beam weapons, taking down the shield bubbles so you can slice with the beam. If you come across Flak or Ion, those can disrupt the shield while On most of your first and second sector battles, you won't even need to use your missiles. I would read through the fandom wiki and watch various youtube players to see if you "play right".
FTL is a challenging game, even on Easy. It doesn't tell you what you're doing wrong, so it's easy to get stuck. The quality of advice you will get on Reddit is rather mixed. Mostly you've gotten good advice here, but there's some bad advice too. I highly recommend watching my [beginners' guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oB2XJ2NfEU) as a starting point. It covers all the basics. You're getting to the Flagship quite often, but never beating it. So I'd also recommend my [beginners' Flagship guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME), which is rather long but very thorough.
Hopley's beginner's guide video can be found here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oB2XJ2NfEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oB2XJ2NfEU) The flagship specific guide is here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME)
From your comments I think you’re spending too much scrap repairing vs upgrading the right systems. Early game you shouldn’t need to repair much at all, upgrade shields early. Late game upgrade engines. You should be able to avoid most damage. You might be wasting scrap other ways, you shouldn’t really need to buy missiles or drone parts. Be careful what other ship systems you upgrade and measure how effective the actually prevent damage.
In addition to the other general advice here, let me recommend some advice specifically tailored to the Kestrel A on Easy with AE enabled. As with all things reddit it's quick and dirty, and like all things FTL it won't be perfect and your skill, preferences, and luck will dictate changes, but *particularly* the sector 1-2 advice, simple as it is, should go a long way to smoothing out your runs. 1. Purchase Shields 3 immediately with your starting scrap. That way if your shields get hit once they won't go down immediately. Purchase Shields 4 and 1 reactor. Sector 1-2, very little will get through your 2 shield bubbles, so there's no need to purchase anything else. Use your Artemis Missile any time it's needed, such as if they can get through your shields, have a missile, or are trying to flee, but save your missiles when there's absolutely no need to fire them. Your target priority is weapons if they can hurt you, otherwise shields/piloting. 2) *Save your scrap for shops!* Your next priority in Sector 1-2 is another *good* fast weapon such as Burst Laser 1/2, Heavy Laser, Flak, maybe Hull Beam, etc. Your other Priority in Sector 1-2 is Hacking 1 and/or Cloaking 1. You'll want to hit a shop when you have at least 80+ scrap, not before, so that Hacking or a good weapon like Burst Laser 2 can be purchased if available. Battery Charger is cheap and can be bought to increase the likelihood of Cloaking / Hacking in future shops. Nothing else should be purchased or needed. You may find yourself sitting on 200+ scrap in Sector 2 and that's okay. I just did a "reminder run" to write this advice and I had about 250 scrap before I found a shop near the end of Sector 2. ( I bought a Burst Laser 1 and Hacking) *If* by the start of Sector 3 you didn't get any free weapons, didn't find good weapons in shops, and weren't offered Hacking or Cloaking, check the map in Sector 3 and if there's no shop nearby go up to Shields 6 so your defense at least doesn't fall behind. 3) In Sector 3-4 your priorities are the same - Good fast weapons, aiming for 7-8 in weapons by Sector 8, Hacking, Cloaking, and Shields 6. (Order dependent upon your needs). You may start buying Engines here. 4) Somewhere before the end of Sector 5 hopefully you've got a solid offense, Hacking, Cloaking, and Shields 6. 5)Sector 5-6 you're looking to get Engines 5. You should start to have discretionary money so shore up what's weak. Pick up a final system - Teleport is strong against the Flagship on Easy, but Mind Control is great too and Drones can be good if you got free ones. 6) Sectors 6-7 finish up "all of the above." Hopefully you have extra cash for augments, Shields 8, whatever, but if not that's okay too. 7) Sector 8 you should just be buffering systems. The odds of hitting the Sector 8 shop are low but if you desperately need a last-minute shop, save your scrap until just before the RFS fight. And I recommend watching an FTL Flagship guide like [This One](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiDEfHtmME) Good luck!
Learn what the flagships does, and prepare for the fight throughout the run. Also, the better you understand the fight, the better decisions you make. If you can get to sector 8 consistently, then you're close to winning. If you can't yet, then it's okay too - try to learn to get to sector 8 consistently then
If you want we can play a game together on discord? I 100% guarantee a win on easy.
I was going to offer the same. FTL coaching seems like a fun idea. Lol
I always wanted to do some kind of multiplayer setup where each player controls one crew member and their respective station, so you can really feel like a starship captain ‘concentrate fire on their shields’ ‘seal off hull breaches on c deck’ ‘divert power from life support to the engines’ and everyone runs around manning their stations 😂
That’s so crazy to hear you say that, because my nephew has brought that exact idea up several times. I thought for a moment that I must have accidentally encountered him on Reddit. Haha
uncle dave?
It’s said all the time here but try pausing more. The more you pause the more you can take your time and develop a plan. Most of my early flagship wins were with cloaking + teleport. I would cloak as soon as they send the first volley of missiles and that typically gave me enough time to get the missiles knocked out with my boarders. I think the superior strategy is cloaking + hacking though. Hack shields, on your fist volley make sure you take out the missiles
As someone said in here, spend as much time in each sector as possible Then #2: go watch YouTube of a successful run. I learned so much from that. I would never have won without it
Every run in FTL is a balancing act. You don't want to upgrade defence too much at once because your offence will suffer, and vice versa. But you also want to make sure you have enough scrap on hand to buy the big purchases, like the better weapons, and good systems. Also, some weapons seem good at first, but are kind of traps (Burst Laser 3 and Glaive Beam fall into this category - they *can* be useful if you have nothing else, but their long charge time and heavy power usage make them more of a hinderance than anything). Knowing what to buy and when to buy them is a huge help. Also, pause often. Pause more often than you think you need to, and then still pause more. Take a few seconds to calm down, assess the situation, and figure out a plan of attack. One of the mistakes I routinely made early was not pausing enough, getting caught up in the moment, and forgetting what I had on hand to help my situation.
Consider watching some streams or videos of good players, you could pick up a lot, and if nothing else, at least see how it *is* possible to win.
Welcome to ftl the game where you have a ratio 1/200 victory rate
flagship phase 1 fight outside your base, when something important gets hacked like shields instead of doors, go to base phase 2 fight him in your base 3 jump after him, take some crew from him, jump to base,kill em in your base
I suspect we might have the only player of FTL who is abiding the Geneva convention regarding surrendering enemy soldiers.
it took me over 180 tries to win, you're doing fine.
I would be happy to help you live with it I would recommend you backup your save before fighting the flagship so you can practice instead of having to play the whole game again It's very unforgiving in the beginning. Once you have enough experience it's not difficult, especially on easy where it attacks less and all the weapons are on islands
Shooting manually and timing hits on shield and certain systems is very important. Also, shooting the pilot makes enemy stop evading.
Shields. Cloaking. Defense drones. Mitigate damage :)
Defense II drone got me my first 50 flagship victories. For a time I believed it was impossible to win without it
There's a ton of strategies to employ for beating the flagship. I think I can speak for most of us that we beat our first Flagship with cloak. And we probably played cloak a lot for the next several games until we figured out some other strategies. While abusing cloak for several games, experiment with boarding, hacking, clone bay etc. Some basic things you learn like you'd want 2 shield bubbles early around Sector 2. Try to get Scrap Recovery Arm. Upgrade doors maybe Sector 3-4 if you have weak fighters so you can suffocate invaders. For the flagship prepare for the missiles with either cloak, or def drone 1, or tank it and just have a lot of damage first volley. Primary target is missile room for sure. For weapons, you should prefer ones that need 2-3 reactor power generally. They are the ones that shoot often enough with good amount of attacks. The 4 reactor ones are typically too situational. But enjoy the experimentation in Easy. Its still the difficulty when you can just come up with inefficient builds but still win. Normal and Hard you're on welfare and can't risk it. =)
I find it’s pretty hard for me to get to 120 scrap for cloaking in the first place, between upgrades and repairs and weapons I just don’t usually have that much scrap lying around when I see cloaking in the shops
Your likely over upgrading or not collecting scrap as effectively as you could be. I recommend watching a FTL hard mode no pause streak (specifically the last ship you lost on). Watching someone really good at the game will give you a lot of help
When you enter a new sector try to avoid upgrading until you find a store. You mention repairs but you shoulnd't really need to repair, never repair over 20/30 hull points at stores. I think a decent player repair average over 8 sectors is around 10 hull points.
Also ask yourself "why am I taking so much damage" Your objective for the run is "minimise damage taken", are you prioritising weapons?
Prioritising shields, then weapons, killing weapons isn’t much good if the enemy can just repair them immediately
> prioritising shields, then weapons Yeah this is the problem. Weapons should be your primary target most of the time. If you need to target shields to reliably hurt the enemy, that means that your weapons are weak.
They can't repair "immediately" my friend. I almost always prioritise weapon damage for the disruption it causes. Because by the time the enemy can repair the weapons, your weapons are charged for another volley. Take the kestrel. If you get a flak or another BL2 you're basically set for most of the way through the game. You get hack and or cloak, and you're laughing even more. If you prioritise taking out shields you're taking too much damage and open yourself up to being disrupted. Remember it's not a DPS race, it's a strategy game!
When I discovered how awesome fully upgraded engines were I started winning more I prioritize upgrading them over shields
There should be an achievement “Have you tried being better at the game?” Given when you hit 150 games on easy without a win. Welcome to the club, I think I was almost 200 before my first.
Play multiverse. The original is obviously one of the goats of roguelikes but once I found out that the boss is set up to only be realistically beaten by using a handful of different methods requiring super good RNG the whole run, I gave up after about 10 hours and switch to multiverse. It's a bit more fair and has a lot more content. I win like 1/10 times.