Which is more difficult to defeat?

Haven't played Luftrausers but the ending boss in FTL on easy was incredibly hard for me. On normal I've failed a couple times within the first stage or two but even at my best I die pretty quickly, he always seems to hack my hacking or shields and it just fucks me up.

The flagship in FTL seems like some Revengeance Senator level difficulty spike. Fuckin Senator.

@nightriff: Yeah, the addition of hacking is a real wild card, because sometimes he hacks something almost completely irrelevant (sensors, medbay), but other times he hits a really key system and you're in trouble. Sorry if these tips sound like no fun because I'm recommending you always do the same thing every run, but my basic tips to have a better chance against him are:

• when the battle first starts in phase 1, unless your weapons are crazy OP, don't even worry about attacking, just power down all your weapons and reassign power elsewhere
• have a teleporter, and teleport 2 guys into the weapon room for the burst missile launcher ASAP
• always have a defense drone mark I, to shoot down some of the missile bursts he fires at you
• on a similar note, try to have max engine power so your dodge rate is as high as possible, again, primarily to get around those missile bursts
• it's rarer, but a hull repair drone is a godsend to use in between each form of the boss (but don't leave it equipped if you have a combat relevant drone to use instead)
• have 3 shields, and if you really have the scrap lying around (which you might on Easy) then get to 4 shields
• seriously the cloaking is bullshit, so just try to use your teleporter to disable all the weapon rooms as quickly as possible in the first phase, then once that is done power up your weapons and start slowly hammering his shield room
• for phase 2, that defense drone mark I you should have will shoot down most of the boarding drones that are headed for your ship, though they seem to have slightly nerfed the defense drone in AE so its response time is a little slower or something, so some of them will make it through
• again use the teleporter to disable the weapon rooms, then attack
• for phase 3, once you bring down the green shield, again, teleporter to disable his main weapon rooms as quickly as possible. With that done, if you have max engines and 3 shields or more, the super shot thing he does against you usually shouldn't be that dangerous unless you get incredibly unlucky.

The issue is that even if you have all these things I recommend, you also need to have hopefully found a weapon combo that can actually punch through 4 shields (especially when the stupid boss also has good dodge rate, and cloaking in phase 1).

@bisonhero: Thanks for the tips! Do you experiment with different strategies each time you play or the fact that you've played so much you know what you like and always do that? I went with a build of the Mantis cruiser and built the ship around teleporting and burning the crew alive and while it was extremely effective, finding out that an AI just takes over the final boss if everyone dies was extremely disappointing and had to just sit there and wait for the ship to kill me. Now I probably should've kept a missile launcher on the ship but hacking, ion, fire beam and boarding was so effective I didn't think I would need to have a backup plan.

I'm leaning towards Luftrausers as it is possible to get lucky with drops in FTL, I remember getting an insane build that made the last boss rather managable. On the other hand, Luftrausers requires pure skill, at least I think it does I haven't faced the blimp enough to come to a definite conclusion.

@nightriff: I still experiment with different weapon combos, but I usually follow an upgrade path similar to what I outlined (max engines, 3 shield layer, getting teleporter and drones). With the new update, though, I've been experimenting with the mind control/hacking in all sorts of combination. Hacking is really fun.

Yeah, it's too bad that your fire/boarding-based build didn't work on the boss. It sort of can though, just make sure you leave one man alive in one of the isolated rooms (like the one on the left that shoots the three-laser burst). I guess once you destroy all the systems with fire or your boarders, you didn't have any way to deal damage unless they could repair systems first and then you could break them again with fire/boarders for 1 damage. Even with a good boarding party like that, I still recommend you have at least one damage source, so that if you encounter unmanned AI ships you can still do something to them (since boarders and fire don't really affect them).

With the Melee body, you can fuck up a Blimp relatively easily as long as you stay inside of it and dodge the projectiles.

I have played both of these games and have completed neither challenge. I at least feel like the blimp is possible, I've come pretty close before (the melee body+laser). Its just that battleships get in the way. FTL, I was never in love with so I got to that boss and said "I'm good."

I agree with @alexandersheen:

Your mom!!! JK I'd say the top one.

@kick_assgeist: Adding you now.

Never played FTL (despite owning it). But I beat that blimp by my second hour with Luftrausers, so probably the FTL boss?

Doesn't seem remotely comparable.

It's worth noting the boss doesn't change between easy and normal in FTL, haven't played on hard yet.

@fredchuckdave: Yeah, the fight doesn't change, I just mean I've heard a fair number of people say "I can barely beat FTL on Easy!", which is crazy to me, because you get so much extra scrap on Easy. So yes, it's the same fight, but I chose Normal because some people seem to think that is a tough feat.