So I just beat the game on Normal for the first time and I'm feeling incredibly fantastic. I had almost resigned myself to thinking I'd never beat it on normal so I'm pretty happy and just needed to tell the internet I guess.

Am I crazy or can anyone else identify with this feeling? And what strategies did you use when you beat the game for the first time? Or just in recent memory for you (crazy) people who beat it multiple times. I was using the Osprey with Burst Laser II, Ion Blast II, Halberd Beam and Teleporting.

The first time I used the Engi ship with two Ion Blast IIs and two drones. The final fight with the Flagship was super intense, and I literally had one HP left at the end

The second time I also used the Engi ship with the Glave beam and Ion Blast II.

I only beaten final boss once.. on easy.

Congratulations :)

I used the default ship and lots of bombs. The final fight ended with one crew member alive, the ship had multiple hull breaches, and everything was on fire.

I haven't even beaten it on easy, and by this point I never will. Good game though.

Steam says I've played 75 hours of FTL. No idea how. Tho i do have all the ships except the crystal one due to it's sheer randomness to get. I've mostly been playing on easy, but for ships that I feel are stronger i've beaten it several times on normal.

Once you figure out and break down the mechanics of the boss fight it's not that hard to beat consistently actually.

Boarding can be use to take out the triple rocket gun. Stealth can be used to evade the rocket barrage, delay the boarding drone in the second fight and dodge all projectiles in the third. However a full engine and shields (with a dude on them) can suffice instead of stealth. The weapons you have don't really matter as long as it's a healthy mix, rockets, bombs, ion, burst lasers, ion bombs, etc, anything works as long as you have enough firepower to puncture 4 shields and do damage to them. There are a lot of viable combinations. Did it without stealth compensated for by engines shields and defense drones, or without a boarding team compensated for by more raw firepower.

Then general tactic is to kill the entire crew in the main body in the first encounter (by taking out their medbay), this makes second and third fight much much easier, as your boarding team can then destroy it's insides with abandon.

I had the feeling you describe when beating Xcom on impossible ironman, but not FTL on normal tho it still felt pretty good, but by the time i did it i already beat it many times on easy so the feeling was diminished

Just beat it on normal, pretty great feeling especially since this was my like 5th game. Although I was a little disappointed in the flagship, it was real easy compared to some of the other stuff I faced that game. I did get extremely lucky with weapons though, I had a 4 damage missile, 2 of the started laser that shoots 3 times and a hull laser. I basically just put both starting lasers and missiles on the shields and then switched missiles to hull laser on empty rooms for maximum damage. I also must have gotten lucky on scrap too, because I had maxed out shields and almost maxed out engines for the most protection.

Its weird, I usually hate the thought of starting a game again after I beat it, but I want to keep playing it.