I mastered the original edition on normal with quite every ship... But I love the new features.

Long story short: I have to work more on my skills.

I think that's only there because during the beta some people complained.

I think easy should only be there to learn the controls and such. I started on medium right away, because I saw some videos before I bought the game and I didn't think it looked very difficult. Reached the boss in game 2, won game 3.

The devs were going for a hard game. They said they called the normal mode medium, so people would try it and not be put off by a "hard" more. They called easy a "slightly less hardcore experience".

Well, this isn't made to sell the most copies like normal games. It is what a kickstarter should be, a game that the devs wanted to make for a specific audience that paid for it.

But if you reached the rebel ship, the game is already played, the journey matters and stuff...dude.

I agree with you. But it's still frustrating to loose 9 times out of 10. :-(

I can consistently reach the last sector unless the game throws a real curve ball, usually in the form of an enemy ship near a sun that deals very diverse forms of damage (starting fires, boarding, lots of missiles) that become too much for my small skeleton crews to handle. I know why I can never beat the flagship so far: I'm not maximising my potential in the previous seven sectors. I often end up with strong defenses OR good offensive capabilites, but never both. I need to collect more scraps and be prepared to take advantage of good random events. It is a very delicate balance to strike. Not luck, just adjusting tactics along the lines of what the game gives you and taking the right risks at the right time. My big set backs usually stem from my poor knowledge of random event outcomes and odds. I can fight and protect myself well, but I haven't learned enough tricks to get that extra edge needed to master the game.

I just finished a very satisfying (but ultimately fatal) run with The Torus A (Engi ship). Strong defenses and a couple of offensive drones. I could deal with boarding parties by ganging up my engis in oxygen-deprived rooms and between the two drones and the rapid firing Ion II I could keep enemy shields down in almost every fight. Every fight was fast and furious and I was making lots of scraps for little damage taken. The problem is there were some matchups I could not handle and I had to run away from some fights. I ran out of fuel several times. Some scraps spent differently, more careful reading of the sector paths and better knowledge of the random events would have seen my ship and crew much more capable when it was time to face the flagship.

+1 to this. Also in some situations it might even be better to put max energy into engines and GTFO before you get caned. Sure you don't win any scrap, but occasionally (depending on your ship build at the moment and the enemy you happen to be facing), you might end up in a no-win situation, or just as bad, a situation where you do win but the amount of hull damage you take makes it a negative gain scenario.
My problem is that because there are so many options now, I often end up with something that kicks ass everywhere except for the final battle. Totally my fault of course. It's probably partially due to the fact that I haven't figured out how to master some of these systems for the flagship (yet). Can still do alright with the "traditional" combo of good shields, defense drones and good engines. Cloak helps but isn't essential if your shields/engines are up to the task.

By the way, does the Ion protection augmentation work against those systems that send out random ion blasts? I haven't tried it, but if so that would be one way to not get hammered so badly in those. Once I got my shields AND weapons taken out, while the enemy ship could still fire and their shields were up! I ended up winning with a boarding party though.

I figured hacking would be cool - and it is - but if you have no bombs and no teleporter and are relying on lasers/ions to bust through the flagship's shields, then the second phase can get a bit annoying as it can be a pain getting a hacking drone past their defenses. It can be done, it might just take some time...

Personally I LOVE the vulcan cannon. As long as you have enough capability to avoid damage long enough (good engines, defense drones, cloak, and/or good shields), then you just sit back and watch it rip through the enemy. It's a god-like weapon in my view, as once it's at full speed the only thing that stands a chance is a ship with 4 shields and a high-level engine, and even then eventually you'll get lucky.

Just out of interest which C layouts have you unlocked so far? While some aren't that exciting, I find most of them to be pretty cool. They all come with clone bays for a start (which I've now warmed to), and there are at least two that provide unique challenges. Most (if not all) seem to have better airlock layouts for quick venting which is always a plus. On top of that most of the C layout ships have cooler looking hulls (except the slug one which is this disgusting bright yellow for some reason - but at least it's not missing a med/clone bay!).

Yeah, you do need to figure out what works well together and what is more important than what, but once you do, the greater selection makes it easier.

Unless you got a lightning-quick killer gun combo early on, you usually need something to counter missiles, be it a cloack, hacking or defense drones.

Otherwise, you'll spend too much on repairs.

Probably, though I'm not sure if it's worth it given the likelyhood of encountering such a sector facing a killer ship.

Definitely wouldn't pass an automated reloader for it.

I just byte the bullet when I hit a ion blast sector and pray I don't get too unlucky (in terms of which of my systems get ionised, which of his systems get ionised and how capable my opponent is overall).

Yeah, the second incarnation sucks for hacking and is the main one you can't depend on hacking for.

I usually divert power away from hacking and into other systems for the second incarnation unless I get lucky and destroy his defense drone with a volley of fire.

If you're extremely good with the timing, you can probably get your hacking drone through by firing a missile or two just before it, though I admit I haven't tried it, but it should work in theory.

I also believe there is also an augment that either disables or seriously reduce the effectiveness of defense drones. Haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a good combo to have with hacking.

And finally, it just occured to me that using a teleporting bomb that does 3 points of damage or more to disable his drone system will also allow you to use hacking on the second incarnation.

Problem with that is that the final boss has some insanely good combos on the 2nd and 3rd incarnation.

In the second incarnation, he has drone surge + triple missile launch and in the third incarnation, he got power surge + triple missile launch.

Cloack will negate one of those things (ex: either the triple missile or drone surge on the second incarnation, but not both as the timing simply won't coincide).

Your evade/shields will mitigate those threats, but he'll still punch through and if he compromises the wrong system (ie, engines, weapons, shields or cloack), you can get royally screwed.

So, I find the best defense is a killer offense, especially for the third incarnation where your must punch through his shield to teleport.

I mitigate the luck factor to a minimum, by giving him at most one free missile/drone surge/power surge volley.

The vulcan cannon is just too slow and can't cope.

I mean, maybe if you got like level 4 shields, good engines, cloack and some defense/disable drones, you can weather a prolonged battle while his missile launcher is intact but that seems like some serious investment when you can just ditch one level of shield and the drones in favor of faster weapons.

I got the C layouts for the federation ships (starting ship, cruiser & stealth ship) + the manthis I believe.

In particular, I found the C layout for the stealth ship seriously lame as it got no cloack.

Ok, now I'm getting better! Beat the rebel ship with the Lanius Cruiser, the Kestrel and the Osprey - on easy. But 4500 points with the Kruos was really good in my opinion and it worked perfectly with hacking, mind control and the awesome Burst Laser Mark III! And the battery pack is quite handy in some situations when you need power for certain situations (cloning dead crew members, boosting the engines to evade missiles,...).

Yes that's definitely true. I should have said cloaking isn't essential if you have defense drones AND your shields/engines are up to the task, since a random missile could still hit you even with high evasion.

The last few times I encountered those stupid sectors I almost got wiped out due to getting my shields and drones shut down while he had a beam drone constantly pinging me. My weapons were also down so all I could do was kill the enemy crew as quickly as possible with my boarders (they couldn't disable the weapons as the enemy crew would stop them).

The last time I did buy that augmentation - but after I bought it I didn't encounter a single sector like that!

I think you need to do more than 3 damage - I had a breach II that does 3 damage and his defense drone was still active. It did shut down his boarding drone though.

Thank god he didn't have any of those ion boarding drones. They are the most annoying new drone if you have them used against you. I had one stun an entire room full of Mantis AND take out my main weapons at the same time.

I agree if you don't have cloak you'll need level 4 shields and defense drones. The shield recharge booster doesn't hurt either if you manage to find one.

With the above, the second phase isn't that bad.

For the third phase, you're right in that you need decent weaponry to take down his super-shield. A decent (powerful and/or long) beam does a good job, as do ion weapons (provided they actually hit that is). Once his super-shield is down you can teleport and take out his missile launcher, after that it gets easier.

I find that 4 shields plus decent engines (manned) do a pretty good job of avoiding damage during the "super" attack - provided his missiles are down.

Yeah the starting ship C variant isn't fantastic - haven't bothered using it yet.

The Fed cruiser is kind of cool - sure the artillery isn't as good as the beam from the other two, but a teleporter plus clone bay to start is always a lot of fun. I got reasonably far with that one, but I think I stupidly bought hacking for the last system - no drones, no cloak. Don't know what I was thinking. So naturally the flagship kicked my ass as you'd expect. The artillery flak isn't that useful against the flagship either - at least not on its own (unlike the artillery beam).

The Mantis C is awesome. I love all the ships with the larger-sized transporters, and this one has a clone bay to boot! What's not to love?

The Stealth C - I'm not sure what they were thinking. No cloak kind of destroys its intent as a "stealth ship". I haven't tried it yet, but my previous experience with shield drones isn't great - they take far too long to generate their shield to be any use IMO. On the other hand it's the only ship apart from the Engi ships that can have three drones, so it has potential to be better than the other two stealth ships - provided you survive long enough to get shields or something.

I can only make good use of the shield drone if I use it in conjunction with cloaking. Activating level 3 cloak will give the drone enough time to build two or three layers of super shield. But even then, I'm not sure if it is really worth it. The shield disappears pretty quickly, especially if the enemy is using beam drones. And it is a bit of a power hog at three units.
Still, it has saved my ass in the first and third boss fights.

It's doable. I was using the Lanis Cruiser B and managed to get a hacking drone through in the flagship's second stage by timing my drone to fire a few milliseconds after I fired the flak cannon.


I too have found the game harder with the advanced edition but I think most of the increased difficulty is because I'm not used to he new mechanics. With the Lanis Cruiser, I decided to centre my tactics around the new modules rather than trying my older methods. I HEAVILY relied on my two Lanis to board and kill the crew while using hacking to cordon off the medbay or trap dying enemy crew. The clone bay meant I could just suicide run my Lanis. Lanis by far are the best boarders due to the asphyxiation damage and they can board automated ships safely.

The boss fight was rather easy with this tactic.
First stage: Destroy rockets (obviously), hack medbay, teleport Lanis to medbay and proceed to wipe the crew out leaving the guy on the laser cannon. After that I had no problem attacking the shields and finishing them off with the flak. My shields and engines were high enough to counter all the attacks from the other weapons in time but if needed I could've take more weapons out.

Second stage: Destroy rockets, fire flak as cover for a hacking drone to the drone control, teleport Lanis to drone control, hack drone control whenever a boarding drone appears, kill shields, flak to death.

Third stage: Flak and ion bomb shield, Destroy rockets, hack mind control, kill shields, flak 'em up

My point is to embrace the new weapons and systems 'cause you'll need them...

If you have cloak, doesn't that (almost) defeat the purpose of having the shield drone? Although you mentioned it saved you in the boss fights, apart from that it would be pointless surely?

Heh, I did something similar, except with the Mantis C - 4-man teleporter and clone bay, starts with one Mantis, one Engi and one Lanius. The Mantis + Lanius were pretty good - the Mantis dealt extra damage, and if that didn't kill them then the lack of oxygen would (or at least make them run out of the room allowing me to sabotage their weapons/oxygen/whatever).

I managed to get another 3 Mantis (plus some other crew), so then I just used 4 Mantis kill squads to wipe the floor with everything. Sometimes I'd send the Lanius if encountering auto ships.

I ended up with a kick-ass equipment loadout - except I couldn't find ANY hull-damaging weapons at all throughout the entire game! I ended up with a small bomb, the lock bomb (which I started with), and the awesome Ion Blast II, plus an anti-missile drone, an anti-drone drone (couldn't find any hull-damaging drones either!), and finally found a cloak near the end of sector 6.

Wiping the flagship ended up being more tedious than anything, especially the first stage, as I had no way to damage hull directly. I ended up teleporting in my crew to destroy the missiles, ion and laser, then destroyed their med-bay and wiped out the crew. Now with the flagship on "auto" mode, I had two Mantis sitting in the missile launcher (ready for when it comes back on-line) and another two slowly rampaging through the hull, destroying systems as they come to them.

It was a pain in the first phase with the blast doors the flagship has, but it magically loses those for the second two phases so rampaging Mantis' through the flagship wasn't as painful for the second two phases - plus no on-board drones or crew to stop them either. The cloak plus drones ensured I only suffered occasional damage - one of those irritating ion boarding drones managed to sneak by me after my defense drone was taken out (but wasn't an issue once I took out their drone control), and the super-weapon managed to get me in-between cloaks a few times, but overall ended up being an easier victory than usual.

To be honest I thought about getting hacking or mind control instead of cloaking, but I'm damn glad I held out for cloaking as there's little chance of getting a hacking drone through with the weapons I had unless I took out the drone control first - and it would have been pointless anyway as I could just rampage through with my Mantis anyway.

Yeah, other than two occurrences, I found it pointless. The shields simply take too long to charge, and disappear too quickly. If the enemy has a beam weapon or a combat drone, the shield is gone in less than a second.

I give it credit for saving me against the flagship, but I would rather have had a pair of Mk. I Defense Drones. They usually take out 2 or 3 of the missiles, and will shoot down hacking and boarding drones.

Pretty much mirrors my experiences with them. I've never tried them against the flagship (opting for a defense drone instead), but in other battles they manage maybe one shield layer, which then gets blasted almost as soon as it gets up.

Once I swapped a Defense Drone II for a Shield Drone while playing the Stealth B (I didn't have shields yet), and the Defense II was more effective.

Too, sort of, add to this - an example that even unusual builds work, but also how being a bit too lax playing FTL means you pay and lose. One really important aspect of the game is also to be creative. If you can't get what you need, then try to think of a different way to take down ships. This really works well with the new AE edition extras.

See my run with The Federation Cruiser C just now (on normal difficulty). I barely made it through the first five sectors, constantly repairing & mainly just upgrading shields / engine with spare crap and doing that Zoltan suicide boarding (with mantis crew following) strategy that it can do from the get go. Once I had defence up so much that other ships couldn't really touch me - from sector six on, I swam in scrap (as opposed to struggling earlier) - but all the shops I found in sector 6 & 7 only had missile weapons AND I happened to neither just find a gun for free / get it from boarding. I literally ended up with no gun (as the ship started with nothing) in sector 7. Shop there had two bombs, so that's what I bought, and entered sector 8 with 500 scrap (reached 800 during that sector) ... but never found the shop there, either. I'd also hoped to get cloaking in the shops I visited - but after sector six (remember that's only when I actually could afford anything) none of the shops stocked that either. Bought hacking instead.

So I just upgraded whatever I could on the ship and went for the flagship seriously unprepared.

It nearly worked. Board with Zoltans and Mantis, take out med bay with system bomb and killed all the enemy crew in the first stage, then just destroyed the ship with the artillery flack cannon. Stage 2 was a cakewalk, too. Stage 3 I foolishly hacked the Flagship's laser cannon - had my system bomb to take out the mind control and two boarding crews, after all. And it'd nearly have worked if the flagship hadn't mind controlled the guy in the pilot seat and fired three missiles before I'd got the missile launcher down. And if the laser charge hadn't hit my teleporter for all three damage, setting it on fire. And if I hadn't used up all 5 of my bombs already at that stage (one missed!). And if the flagship hadn't mind controlled the pilot, again, just as I was done repairing the helm. I never got the teleporter repaired in time; once I boarded the ship and attacked the mind control unit it was too late.

So the two mistakes were hacking the wrong system and thinking that 5 bombs would be enough to take down the super shield and the mind control of a pilot less flagship. Still - it proves that it's possible to beat the Flagship with Cruiser C with almost no weaponry, without cloak or defence drones.

Got a new high score (I'd started over with AE edition and am working on unlocking all ship variants at the moment) and got the final two unlock quests that I hadn't done, until then, in that run, too, so all in all it was a good run. Am on 8 wins in 20 games now (on Normal) - most losses coming with The Kestrel of all ships :). Took 9 tries before I beat the flagship with that one. Am going through all the unlocks / achievements for each ship one at a time now. Once I actually take down the flagship with Federation C it's the Zoltan Cruiser's variants.