I was unaware that the correct course of action upon someone being perceived as wrong was to all but insult them and state that their opinion is based on false conclusions without attempting to explain that statement beyond what feels like mere conclusory assertions at worst and incomplete reasoning at best. I had always assumed that the correct thing to do would be either to ignore them, point out the flaws in their reasoning as civilly as possible, or, in cases where the person is also asking for help, help them in order to realize what they had been doing wrong.

Don't get me wrong, you have given a few pointers, and those pointers look useful, but I am sure that this discussion will be much more productive if you reign yourself in and focus of the issue at hand without resorting to conclusory devaluations of someone's opinion and other less than helpful responses. Now to try to explain this while lucid. Ok, you will always want someone piloting the ship. From there, your priority should be to have someone in the engine room, the weapons bay, and then the shield room; if you only have three crew members (as is the case for most starting ships, leave the shields unmanned. Should you pick someone up, your first thought may be for them to man the shields; however, if you have someone manning a station who you would prefer have a support role (i.e. Engi, Rock, Mantis, and Crystal), or if the new crew member fits this description, put them to work on a system that gets used a lot, as their replacement will be able gain proficiency with that system a lot faster, making swapping out crew members at stations less of a setback.

For example, let's assume I am starting with the Kestrel. My three crew members are manning the bridge, the weapons bay, and the engines. If I pick up a Human or a Slug, they are going to man the engines, as humans have no special characteristics that might make them useful in a support role. If I pick up an Engi, a Rock, a Crystal, or a Mantis, the Human manning the weapons gets reassigned to the shields while the new crew member mans the weapons; since (at least in my experience) the Kestrel's weapons get the most play out of all the mannable systems, a untrained crew member will gain rapid experience like noone's business, which will make it easier for me to swap out the new crew member for a more suitable replacement (likely a Human, or Slug, potentially a Zoltan), who will also get up to snuff very quickly.

Should you dwindle down to three crew members again, a similar cost-benefit analysis must be done to determine who will man what station initially and upon acquisition of new personnel.

Oh it wasn't you.

Well, the real bummers are those events that leaves you no chance or you get away but your vessel is at 3hp and on fire.

All is well, then suddenly you have a way too powerful ship.

Also, planning is kind of hard in this because everything is distributed randomly. It's not enough to have the scraps, you also have to find a shop selling the kind of item you need. Same for the drops during events.


Interesting, I should reread that after a good night's sleep: it's getting late here. :P

I think there may be a flaw in your (or, possibly, my) reasoning here. As I see it, while it's true that a new recruit will gain experience on a more commonly used system faster, they'll also have to get more experience to 'catch up' with their predecessor. If each system has an (approximately) fixed rate of xp gain, then it'll take the same amount of time to gain the same amount of xp the second time around, whichever system we're using. The only difference between the systems would be that the setback would be more severe in a 'high xp' system, as the effects you've given up are greater, so you should switch out with a low xp one like shields.

Oh I tried, I tried it alot. You might not be aware of the fact that this is his third thread of this type. I don't mean ignorant as an insult, it just means that someone deliberately ignores facts. And if that applied to anyone ever, its Dr.Z. I might sound somewhat bitter, but you will get there eventually, that is if you bother long enough with him.

I am well aware of the past posts this person has made, as I have read many of them. Notice the part where in spite of that I remained civil and took the time to try to explain myself in a calm and reasonable manner, explaining my reasoning as thoroughly as possible. Should Dr. Z begin to become hostile as a result of my posts, I will either ignore him or attempt to reason with him, depending on the circumstances and nature of the hostility.

As far as I can tell, experience is gained when the system is successfully "used", meaning every time a weapon is fired (weapons), every time the ship successfully evades incoming fire (bridge/engines), and every time the shields are brought back after an attack brings them down (shields). You don't want to have to grind a newbie up to snuff by letting the ship get hit more than it needs to, so weapons is actually the ideal place to dump someone you intend on replacing, as that system is going to get used all the time in order to proceed.

But this is true of grinding up your original character, too! Perhaps an example is in order. Say that, on average, my weapons manner will get 10xp each battle, and can level every 50xp. Meanwhile, my shields manner will get 2xp every battle, and has the same levelling requirements as the weapons manner. Note that I picked these numbers out of the air, and that it's likely the actual system would increase the requirements each level, but that's neither here nor there for this example.

After 25 battles, Weapons will have 250xp, which gives him 5 levels. Shields will have 50xp, giving him 1 level. Weapons is, of course, 5 times as powerful as shields at this point.

Now I decide to swap out one or the other. If I swap out Weapons then, assuming my new recruit has no skill in it already (which is reasonable to assume, given that he's probably the new crew member), after another 25 battles he'll have the same 5 levels as my original. If I swap out with Shields, then after 25 battles, he'll have 1 level: the same as the original, again. Thus, it's taken the same time to grind either of them back to the point their originals were at. Hence, as the amount of xp you lose access to by removing someone is directly proportional to how easy it is the get that xp, the ease of getting xp doesn't affect how quickly you can return them to the level of their predecessor. :)

However, as I said above, by replacing Weapons, you're missing out on the benefits of 5 levels' reduced charge time. By replacing Shields, you're only missing out on one level. That, compared to what you could have had if you hadn't swapped them out, will be true for the rest of the game, too. Now, here the scaling xp needed to gain levels would have an effect, as this difference would gradually reduce, but you'd still always be worse off replacing weapons than shields, as you've 'lost' more xp.

I'd like to apologise at this point to the OP, for somewhat hijacking his thread. If you're not convinced, it might be a good idea to carry this on via PM, and just post what we agree on in the end.

Yes, you are so much better than me, thanks for the enlightenment.

You might wanna check the ftl promo thread in the general discussion where I tried your tactics and was quickly called an idiot, a flamer,a child and now in this thread "someone who wouldn't get off his back". I restrained myself quite alot I think.

This game is intendendly based on luck. Devs said the good player must have 10% success.
This game is harsh, however I still like it.

I remember reading that somewhere, and with regards to Normal, I believe it. I had been under the impression that OP was referring to Easy, but it seems that I was wrong to do so. Normal was pretty much designed to make the game plot feel like as much of a suicide mission as it is, while Easy is the mode to play if you actually want to be able to reliably complete the game, barring some really bad luck.

I think I've done some 30+ playthroughs and, unless I go for a specific achievement or just try something silly, I think my winrate is around 80%.

The advice so far has been good. IMO probably most important bit is that you should always try to keep around 50-100 scrap in the bank at almost all times. The game requires you to adapt, and your scrap reserves are a measure of your adaptability. Not affording a second Burst Laser II or whatever can easily break your game when you're no longer able to breach shields reliably.

So: never buy anything just because it's nice to have. Know when you'll need it and when you'll have the energy to be able to use it. Shield and engine upgrades should generally be delayed as long as you don't take much damage. Good weapons are the rarest items in the game and should sometimes be bought before you can afford to use them, but this is always a risk. Installable systems can be delayed, since a lot of shops tend to offer them.



That said, I'll try to give a specific general strategy that I find works most of the time with little adaptation, although it can be a little boring:

Play the Osprey. The Osprey's unique advantage, the artillery beam, frees you from worrying about the ability to pierce shields and the need to hit a high-evasion ship reliably. This means that you should avoid spending on weaponry and concentrate only on defense.

Upgrade your shields on time - not too early but not too late. Save up for a drone system and a defense drone Mk I (since Mk 2 takes two more energy with almost no additional benefit). Maybe in about 1 in 5 playthroughs you will have difficulty finding a drone system and a defense drone before sector 4. Compensate by upgrading engines.

Now you should be reasonably well protected from everything except bombs, but those are rarely a huge threat. Engine upgrades help.

Continue upgrading your shields, engines and artillery beam. These alone can win you the game, but try to realize at least one of the following opportunities:
- Get a missile or bomb weapon. Only use it to keep enemy ships from fleeing or to take out especially dangerous looking weapons. Otherwise save your missiles.
- Get a drone recovery arm to ensure you won't run out of defense drones. I find that by using drones sparingly and being prepared to buy the recovery arm at any time I almost never need to buy drone parts.
- Get a teleporter. Somewhat counterintuitively, the Osprey is a very good boarding ship since you start with a mantis and a rockman and the artillery beam saves you money for the teleporter system while still handling ships that are dangerous to board. The teleporter synergizes well with the missile/bomb weapon since it can be used to take out the medbay. Sometimes you're lucky and the artillery beam also does that for you.

Wow 10%, can you imagine if they had really done that? If even the best players would only win 1 of 10 games? The forum complaining would probably collapse the whole internet.
Although to be fair, some people, including me, complained on the official forum that game is way too easy on normal and asked for a hard mode.

What kind of answer is that? Obviously, anyone would have problems weaseling their way out of a game over screen. The real question is, what happens prior to that?

The difficulty curve is quite smooth, the game does not throw ships at you that are too powerful for the sector they are in. When I lose, it is due to being gradually worn out by 3-4 HP at a time, rather than a single bad encounter.

It is exactly because everything is distributed randomly that you have great chances of winning the game. There is no single viable strategy, there are several. You will eventually be given *something* to win with, be it a teleporter, an extra weapon, or a good drone. It is important to adapt your plan based on what you get, not on what you think would work best. And it is equally important to be able to recognize these things and afford them.

Honestly, I believe that Jonesy89's poins 3-5 in his post are the key ones. The reason why Nesasio is so powerful despite its lack of shields is that it can run the first 2-3 sectors without almost any upgrades whatsoever (all you really need is the cloak and weapon upgrades), easily amassing 300-400 pieces worth of scrap reserves, which allows you to buy whatever items you find at the nearest store.

I happened to get an impression that you want the best possible outcome, and you dismiss the alternatives when it is not available. For example, you implied that you need a teleporter+mantises build to be able to board enemy ships. You don't. You can board - and quite efficiently - with Engies, of all crewmembers. All you need to do is to disable enemy's weapon system and medbay and then run around their ship disrupting their attempts at repairs and wearing them down. The same can be said of weapons. Jonesy89 made a good point about the hull beam - it may not seem that fancy, but it can mean a difference between having enough firepower to overcome enemy defenses or dying horribly. Making full use of what is available to you is one of the most fun things in this game.

Just remove the mods from your game. The game is a rogue one, don't add a saving feature and you'll have your hard mode.

To my knowledge, there are no mods that add a save feature. There is always FTLedit, but it is an editor, not a mod.

In any case, I seriously doubt anyone here is save-scumming. Why did you even think that?

Then I guess I'm a bit right concerning the implied luck. :P
I'm sorry but this argument doesn't make sense. What use is there for a great drone if you don't have enough power in that system or enough parts? A teleporter when you have just 2 engis as crew, etc, etc...
I'm still playing on normal, not easy. It may be so on easy, haven't tried that ship on that difficulty.

Well, you're wrong. I quite like a challenge. But it is not always a challenge, sometimes it becomes a landslide (most often at your disadvantage, but not only).
Thanks for the teleport strategy. Can be useful if one have lvl 2 sensor to see what species are there.

Thanks for the heads up!