FTL: Fun at first...

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Originally Posted by MetalMat

Normal is on a different level, I did finally beat it. The final boss is insanely hard, best ship is the Noether imo. The pike beam works well throughout the game, the 2 ion cannons work well early but they really need to be upgraded to dual lasers at the least. Tactic I used was to fire all my lasers and when their shields dropped to use the pike beam, you can get a good deal of damage with it.

I actually prefer to keep the ion blasts over the pike beam as I progress. With the fast reload aug and a full level weapon guy they fire insanely fast. I tend to like weapon setups that have 2 somewhat high energy requirements and 2 ultra low ones and the ion blasts fit that. I'm not a fan of beam weapons; just takes one shield bubble getting up and most of them are useless and they're all very slow to boot. Even the zoltan ships can't power everything at max so it's good to have some low power slots that would otherwise go to waste.

[byteman99]

Originally Posted by MetalMat

The Basilisk is fun to play, you can easily annihilate another ship by sending over 4 Mantis/Rockmen, a boarding bot and breach bomb the med bay. However this tactic will not work on the final boss......

I almost got it to work.
I had the first ship with high engines, max cloak, max teleporters, decent weapons, that device that lets you fire under cloak, and 4 manti crew 2 rock crew 2 human crew. I was able to dodge most of their attacks while lowering their shields. Once i got the shields to a low enough level, I was able to send my boarding party. But when I got close to destroying them, the fricking ship jumps to warp and takes 6 of my crew member. And on the next fight, once they sent in the boarding drone it was all over for me.

[splat_ed]

The tactic I used (on easy!) was teleport two guys into each weapon bay to destroy it, keeping full power to shields, teleported, engines and drones (lvl 2 ship defence). Then killed all crew elsewhere... Hard part was dealing with med-bay.
Could pick it apart at my leisure.

Phase 2 just required a drone defence up as that can shoot down all their boarding drones until they run out. Repeat with teleports to destroy their weapons.
Phase 3 repeat but needed weapon power first to remove super shield.

Not quick, but it worked for me. First time I beat the boss (about 15 hours playtime...

This on the Kestrel.

Next onto easy mode with other ships. Possibly try some mods

[slashbinslashbash]

I finally beat the game with the Osprey (upgraded Fed ship). I found virtually no weapons for purchase during the entire game, and no cloak either. But I got a Scrap Recovery Arm pretty early on and just ended up getting a buttload of scrap. I had every system on the ship almost 100% upgraded by the end, but my weapons loadout was a mere Burst Laser II, 2x Ion Blast I's, and a Bio Beam. I did manage to have 2x Reloader augmentations (picked up the 2nd in a store in in Sector 8, I ditched the Scrap Recovery Arm for it) and enough Weapons energy to run all 4 weapons at once. Oh and the Artillery Beam was maxed out too, it is pretty friggin' sweet at 20sec recovery time. Lastly I had my teleporter maxed, with 8 crewmembers, 1x Mantis and 3x Rock for fighting.

On the Boss ship, on the first encounter I kept the ship alive while picking off the crewmembers 1 by 1. I turned off the Burst Laser and the Artillery Beam. Of course I took out the weapons bays first, and while it sat helpless I kept pounding it with my 2x Ions and the Bio Beam (when the Ions had the shields down) and sent over my boarding party repeatedly, beamed back for healing, beamed back to attack more crew, etc. Kind of a PITA when it kept cloaking, etc. but gradually I won the war of attrition. Once all the crewmembers were killed (they don't regenerate from battle to battle) there was nobody there to repair the ship when I attacked systems in later battles. The 2nd encounter was a joke, I actually lost 3 crew when I accidentally destroyed the ship (forgot to turn off the Artillery Beam) without teleporting them back. Even without a cloak, it was pretty easy since I had the Drones disabled pretty early with my boarding party. Not to mention that I was close to 50% Evasion with my Pilot, Engine-man and engines almost powered to max. The final encounter was quick and easy.

All in all I was pretty surprised. I had a nearly maxed-out ship, but I was really worried about not having a cloak or any really powerful weapons. Of course the Artillery Beam is awesome, but it really needs that 4th upgrade to get 20s reloads to just totally kick ass. And I had a great crew for boarding as well. And 2x Ions, even though they were just Level I, was pretty nice, esp. with the 2x Reload augmentations, they were both firing every 5 seconds or so. It was pretty easy to beat an enemy's shields down, and keep them down. They only require 1 power too, which is great.

[Fanatical Meat]

are you all on easy? I keep getting my ass beat on normal by 3rd or 4th galaxy. I do have one unlock been trying to get have all races aboard

[slashbinslashbash]

Originally Posted by Fanatical Meat

are you all on easy? I keep getting my ass beat on normal by 3rd or 4th galaxy. I do have one unlock been trying to get have all races aboard

Yeah, the few times that I've tried Normal difficulty, I die pretty quickly.

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Beat the game on normal with the Type B Mantis ship ^.^ Boss seemed just as easy on normal vs easy...

[lupi]

finally got around to toying around with this, about 3 or so hours and damn it can be hard at first. first couple games I tried racing through each region as quick as possible, got mnimal scrap or items and would in later regions get face stomped. main problme so far is that I've been losing crew too easy and almost never picking up any new ones, and if you hit one of those solar flare zones with only 1 or 2 peeps, its a game over situation.

[Craig234]

I only put 1 or 2 hours into this I think, and it just seemed hard and frustrating. I'm surprised how many really like it. But I'm glad so many are enjoying it.

[walkur]

remember, fires and boarding parties need oxygen.
opening sections to space can be a lifesaver (upgraded doors can safe your life)

[EDUSAN]

i played like 27hs of FTL and i couldnt beat it

i feel so bad... but now i dont feel like returning to it, feel like i played it enough... but i hate not being able to beat it