EToaster

Glad to see new people getting into this awesome series. The exploration, music, and character customization elements are what really draw me into it. Don't be afraid to Rest your characters at the Explorer's Guild if their skill sets aren't working out for you. The 2 levels it costs really aren't that big of a deal.

The real things you want are good support skills like full party buffs, good debuffs (not poison/exhaustion) that hit the entire enemy party with an appropriate booster skill attached, high level magic with Mind Charge and an appropriate Boost or Amp skill available, powerful physical skills on a Persona with high strength and Power Charge. Hama and Mudo skills with their appropriate booster are extremely effective against anything that doesn't resist them, but a later party member can cover that for you when the enemies start getting harder anyway.

If you can get one Persona with all 3 Auto-Ma buff skills, then that's an amazing help as well.

I board with almost every ship I play because it's such an effective strategy. The key is to set up an advantageous situation for your crew. Shoot at their weapons if they're dangerous, but primarily you want to attack the crew of the ship so that your boarders will have an easier time. Always warp into a 2 space room so you can't get outnumbered. Piloting is a good place to start as the pilot being attacked reduces evasion (but notably does NOT prevent him from jumping if they're trying to escape). Bomb type weapons make great boarder support as you can damage systems and crew without risking your own boarders by hurting the enemy hull.

I don't think damaging O2 is an effective strategy most of the time, unless they enemy ship literally can't hurt you through your shields. It just takes way too long to suffocate them, and they'll be repairing it the whole time, so you'll either be wasting a lot of missiles on bombs or damaging their hull slowly.

@gladspooky: @gladspooky said:

@Artemesia said:

@gladspooky said:

@Artemesia said:

@gladspooky said:

@Artemesia said:

To the OP, have you been paying attention to the OXM youtube videos? If not, you may want to check them out.A bit more representative of what the real game is like.

Wow, they even took everything out of the Interceptor parts. Now it's just some clunky, pseudo-vector bullshit where you don't do anything.

Are you talking about the lack of UFO DETECTED BLOW IT UP sections? Those are still in. If they weren't, why would there be UFO Crash Site missions?

...That's not what I wrote at all.

That's what I interpreted it as because it didn't really make any relevant sense at all. There isn't even any interceptor footage in the youtube videos.

Uh, yes there is. He shoots down a UFO before one of the missions. It's the mission with a crashed UFO. And it looks nothing like the screenshot you posted. There are no buttons to hit and his ship just attacks by itself. Though I suppose he could be playing an early build or something?

From the video, it looks like the same interface, just with some buttons missing. It's possible that more options there are unlocked later or through upgrades.

Taking out drones gets rid of its boarding drone and its 2 basic drones that are always attacking, you, which lowers the effectiveness of its drone swarm. Honestly never had too much issue with it, though. Most of the drones are beam drones that can't do any damage as long as I've got 1 shield. Evasion really is king in this game, and I've always prioritized having 52/55% evade by the time I reach the boss.

I just had a really tense moment with the 3rd phase of the final boss. It was my first try with the stealth cruiser, and things were going really well, but I lost my 2 mantis before I reached the boss...I think the AI is learning my tricks, because they bombed my medbay while they were returning from a raid to heal up. I also lost the 2 spare crew members I was boarding with in the first phase because the boss was destroyed by a fire when I didn't expect it.

Anyway, I had a halberd beam, dual laser, and small bomb launcher. I went into the third phase and ended up retreating because I had most of the remaining enemy crew on my ship, and a lot of my systems were damaged. Then I realized I only had 1 missile left, and if I didn't manage to land it on the shield generator, there would be no way for me to pierce the shields at all. Firing that thing off and seeing it land was such a relief. Of course, while the credits were rolling, I realized that I could have sent in my support crew to smash the shield generator, but thankfully that wasn't necessary.

Is it really that odd that you need to have your defenses beefed up for a protracted battle against the enemy flagship? As long as you DO have your engines at or near max with skilled crew on them and a few shield bars, it takes the boss ages to do any serious damage to you. So as long as you have some way to get past its shields, you should be fine. I beat it on normal last night with only 4 crew, a small bomb launcher and 3 basic lasers. The entire enemy crew just ran into the shield room when I started bombing it and died in a series of explosions and fire.

@Bio2hazard said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying FTL - but it's not a fair game at all. If RNG decides to throw a strong enemy at you, you just can't do anything but sit there and watch your last hour go down the drain. I love roguelikes, heck, I'm even developing one, but most roguelikes always provide you with means of escape if things go south. FTL does not. You can be doing absolutely amazing, and then be matched up against your perfect counter-build that you simply cannot damage with your loadout and can blast your ship to pieces before your FTL comes back online. I suppose I wish FTL was a bit more about skill than it is about randomness but as long as you can accept that and deal with it, you'll get your money's worth and then some.

Well you can run away from enemies, but that does involve surviving for a bit, and possibly having upgraded your engines a few levels. You'd be surprised some of the stuff you can pull through when you know the tricks to handle things. Boarders for example--the best way to handle them is to vent the air out of a large portion of your ship and corral them into your medbay where your guys will be healed and they will not. In general, some shield and engine upgrades will go a long way to boosting your survivability. Don't underestimate the dodge chance on your engines. It can save your life, especially from missiles.

Also, consider upgrading some systems even if the effects aren't too important to you, because each upgrade also gives the system an additional hitpoint before it goes offline completely.

Surprisingly, I've been enjoying the Black Hole table the most. It's relatively simple, and really easy to lose all your balls really fast on, but I like the style.

Yeah, if you sing the cloth unfreezes and connects back to the bridge, allowing you to cross.