FTL - Faster than light

[Comrade]

Anyone had a problem with oxygen in this game? I've had a couple of times where a battle has caused an oxygen leak, but then after the enemy ship's destroyed and I'm patched up, I just seem to be unable to stop the leak. Everything is repaired - the O2 and the doors, and all the doors are shut, and there's no breaches anywhere. But slowly all the air leaks out, and the only way to keep my guys alive is for them to never leave sickbay. It might have something to do with the doors, as I think they were damaged each time, but as I said, I repaired them. Maybe it has something to do with my general tactic of leaving all the corridors open to vacuum that I can (immediately puts out fires and starts killing any intruders), but I always close every single door in desperation.

At this point, I'm wondering if it's a bug - but is there something I missed?

[Eats hoops and leaves]

I've not heard anything like that apart from you. I doubt it's a bug.

[just_killing_time]

Anyone had a problem with oxygen in this game? I've had a couple of times where a battle has caused an oxygen leak, but then after the enemy ship's destroyed and I'm patched up, I just seem to be unable to stop the leak. Everything is repaired - the O2 and the doors, and all the doors are shut, and there's no breaches anywhere. But slowly all the air leaks out, and the only way to keep my guys alive is for them to never leave sickbay. It might have something to do with the doors, as I think they were damaged each time, but as I said, I repaired them. Maybe it has something to do with my general tactic of leaving all the corridors open to vacuum that I can (immediately puts out fires and starts killing any intruders), but I always close every single door in desperation.

At this point, I'm wondering if it's a bug - but is there something I missed?

The only thing you haven't mentioned is making sure you have power to the oxygen. I guess they'd gradually breathe it all if it's not being replenished (not sure?).

[deerokus]

Haven't had anything like that happen. Odd.

And yes, if the O2 room is off then the air supply is used up. Also, it only shows an average level over the whole ship.

[Unofficial Who]

The only thing you haven't mentioned is making sure you have power to the oxygen. I guess they'd gradually breathe it all if it's not being replenished (not sure?).

Bang on the money there. I've had a couple of disasterous runs in nebula systems where I've diverted power to shields engines and weapons during a firefight and then had my crew die because I've forgotten to reroute power back to the O2 generator and med bay.

edit: As Deerokus said, the O2 level is an average of the ships oxygen. Be careful with rooms that are still very pink as that means the oxygen hasn't replenished there yet. Useful to know if you've opened doors to space as a way of sapping intruders health or fighting fire.

Edited September 28, 2012 by tssk

[Eats hoops and leaves]

Have you been in a plasma storm when it happens? Sometimes they suck so much power out of you that systems shut down.

[just_killing_time]

Have you been in a plasma storm when it happens? Sometimes they suck so much power out of you that systems shut down.

I avoid those bastards* like the plague if I don't have spare power, or systems I can reroute power from.

edit: *The nebulae in general.

[Karzee]

Anyone had a problem with oxygen in this game? I've had a couple of times where a battle has caused an oxygen leak, but then after the enemy ship's destroyed and I'm patched up, I just seem to be unable to stop the leak. Everything is repaired - the O2 and the doors, and all the doors are shut, and there's no breaches anywhere. But slowly all the air leaks out, and the only way to keep my guys alive is for them to never leave sickbay. It might have something to do with the doors, as I think they were damaged each time, but as I said, I repaired them. Maybe it has something to do with my general tactic of leaving all the corridors open to vacuum that I can (immediately puts out fires and starts killing any intruders), but I always close every single door in desperation.

At this point, I'm wondering if it's a bug - but is there something I missed?

This has caught me out several times and it's not a bug, it's just that your O2 unit has been switched off/failed (I think it tends to happen in a Nebula once the unit has been hit). Check the bottom right of the screen and you'll see that the 'O2' is grey so click on it to turn it back on (as long has you have a spare power bar). It helps to bung an extra bit of power into the O2 unit to prevent this from happening.

[Yix]

I've had similar experiences to Comrade: O2 is powered, no breaches and all doors closed. I've found opening and closing all doors in quick succession solves it, but if they were never open in the first place, I have to assume it's a bug. Fortunately it doesn't occur too often, although the times it has before I found a solution were very frustrating.

[pauc]

I thought I'd finally managed a successful playthrough.

That bastard at the end has multiple phases. The dirty scunner.

[RubberJohnny]

Does anyone have any tips for boarding related strategies? It seems like great fun, and you get a lot more stuff for taking ships whole, but I imagine you've got to turtle up a bit - shields for lasers, defence drones for missiles, etc.

[revlob]

Does anyone have any tips for boarding related strategies? It seems like great fun, and you get a lot more stuff for taking ships whole, but I imagine you've got to turtle up a bit - shields for lasers, defence drones for missiles, etc.

Mantis have a high attack, and Rockmen have lots of health, so both make for the best boarding parties. But to begin with, you must know the battles you can win. Without any combat experience, all races are a bit squishy, so you may want to hold back on using your teleporter until you discover a pirate ship with a single Slug or a couple of Engi on board, preferably without a medbay. Keep an eye on your teleporter and get a feeling for how long it takes to recharge. You can always pull your men back, heal them up, and return them if they get in trouble.

You can use room sizes to your advantage when you are outnumbered, rooms can only contain 1 enemy per square, so aim to arrive in a smaller space to stop yourself from being immediately swarmed. Don't fight in the enemy's medbay (unless it's damaged), even with double-promoted fighters you'll find it very difficult to do more damage than they get healed. Bear in mind that the enemy cannot repair a room if you're in it, so targeting the medbay with your weapons before beaming over to the damaged room is a good way to stop enemy crew from retreating. Just don't forget to turn your weapons away from rooms containing your men!

It might sound like a crazy idea, but try taking out the O2 room if you can. The AI prioritises that quite highly, so if you need to distract enemy crew, it makes for a good target.

It goes without saying, never try to board an AI-controlled ship.

[Wiper]

Further to that, remember that you don't have to stop firing on the enemy while your men are aboard (until the ship's hull is critical, at least), so there's nothing to stop you from suppressing the enemy's weapons/drones while your boarding party deal with the crew. This is even easier if you've got ion weapons (particularly ion bombs) to keep their guns disabled.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

My newest boarding tactic is to send the boarders over almost immediately, and then bomb/missile the medbay once the enemy crew makes a beeline for it to heal up. This often kills the crew as well as disabling the medbay, making your boarders' lives easier than if you just disabled the medbay right away.

[Eats hoops and leaves]

I am so bad at this game. I never last long enough to really try out new things. I've not even had one success with bording properly. What handful of tips would you give a bad gamer like me? I never know if I should save up scrap for something big or immediately start upgrading my shields and power.

And how on earth do you use the stealth ship successfully?

[Wiper]

The stealth ship is a challenge to use, and despite the usefulness of stealthing generally I would say success with it in the long-run relies on you finding someone to sell you shields.

General stealth tips, though:

Don't cloak at the start of a battle. Wait until the enemy fires its first volley of dangerous shots (when you have shields, this means a missile barrage), then cloak immediately: this bumps your evasion up by 60%, meaning that you can get to 100% evasion with decent engines and/or crew. The one exception to this is enemy beam weapons: once they start firing they will hit you, even if you cloak, so make sure you get your cloak in before they charge up, and hope you take down their guns before they get the chance to fire. Shields solve this issue.

If you get the chance to install the stealth weapons augmentation, do so! Fully-upgraded cloak plus stealth weapons allows you to unleash fifteen-seconds of firepower on your opponent while they sit, unable to even charge their weapons. Combined with the time approaching that first cloak in which your opponent hasn't hit you you should be able to devastate most enemies before they get the chance to land a single shot.

Other than that, though, just remember to pump points into your engines early on (improving your evasion in and out of cloak, as well as your ability to run from a fight you aren't up to), and pray that you find the necessary upgrades to go toe-to-toe with the enemies you'll encounter in the later stages.

[Eats hoops and leaves]

I just saw some shields but they were 150 scrap!

I love the layout of the stealth. My ultimate dream is to fly a ship operated entirely by droids with all the doors open to vacuum. In my head this means no danger of fire and organic boarding parties. I'm so excited by this prospect. Is this even possible?

[Rudi von Starnberg]

You can't use drones to man stations and thus get boosts, which is absolutely critical as you get to the later sectors - you can only use them to repair systems or repel boarders.

I would recommend not using the stealth cruiser if you're having lots of trouble - it's so dependent on careful use of its facilities in the first few sectors to get enough scrap to afford shields. If you do insist on using it, the way to do it is to get level 2 cloak as soon as possible and cloak when the enemy fires their weapons, so that the shots miss you. Also put lots of power to your engines since you start with a hefty evasion bonus if you do so. Then, target your enemy's weapon systems and take them out immediately; this should let you tear them apart with impunity.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

Some more general tips - explore as much of each sector as you can before the rebel fleet catches up and forces you on to the next one. Turn on the option that shows you paths from beacon to beacon when you hover over them - this is very useful so that you don't get yourself into a dead end. Try to travel to beacons that are adjacent to as many other beacons as possible, so you pick up on distress signals and stores more easily, but make sure you're not just beelining for the exit or you'll find yourself without scrap and resources needed to survive.

Don't use missiles and drone parts in the early sectors unless you absolutely need to. Most of these ships start with dual lasers or whatever as well as the missile launchers, so you can get through shields and take out systems with just the lasers until you start facing ships with 2 blips of shielding or more. By the same token, you absolutely need shield-piercing capability or a damage output high enough to bash through the increasing layers of shields as you get further and further in.

[revlob]

Some more general tips - explore as much of each sector as you can before the rebel fleet catches up and forces you on to the next one. Turn on the option that shows you paths from beacon to beacon when you hover over them - this is very useful so that you don't get yourself into a dead end. Try to travel to beacons that are adjacent to as many other beacons as possible, so you pick up on distress signals and stores more easily, but make sure you're not just beelining for the exit or you'll find yourself without scrap and resources needed to survive.

I had no idea you could do this! That would have saved me a few encounters with the fleet.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

They only just added it in a patch.

[Wiper]

You can view the available routes on unvisited locations?

There's a patch!?

Thanks for that info, Rudi

[RubberJohnny]

Reached a stalemate here - ran out of missiles, and I didn't have enough firepower to break through the enemy shields and attack systems directly (to be honest, this became a bit obvious in the last few sectors, but I was solving everything through boarding actions nicely). Boarding the main ship is an exercise in futility, my guys are maxed out combat characters, and whichever room I drop them in, enemies simply flee to the medbay when nearly dead and switch out with a colleague - and I can't pursue them, killing them before they get there, because they have blast doors. I can't fight them in the medbay in the hopes of taking one down per teleport jaunt because I can't dent their health - it's a fully upgraded medbay. I can't re-launch a boarding drone, it chose that bit randomly and is stuck. I can make endless hit and run attacks pretty safely, which solve precisely nothing. I can't save and come back because I'm in combat (although it can't attack me), and I can't swap out modules in combat.

A shame, because this was a brilliant run - I had all power and a good deal of systems and all weapons/modules slots completely filled out. The slug nebula sectors are brilliant for boarding runs - slug interceptors have only two slugs - you can get loads of scrap from beaming a Mantis/Rock and a regular dude into the cockpit and capture them before weapons even come online, and those interceptors are incredibly frequent.

I wish this had an option to turn permadeath off and restore from a save like The Binding of Isaac does, for situations like this.

[Eats hoops and leaves]

I know you're supposed to adapt to what you come across, but what are the first things you upgrade on a fresh run with the Kestrel? On easy i'm sat here with 30 scrap.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

I don't upgrade anything immediately. Getting a second level of shields is usually one of my first purchases; more engine power for evasion or door upgrades to help against boarders are also good early upgrades. If you find weapons, then weapon power is a good shout; if you get certain crewmembers, then a teleporter.

[Eats hoops and leaves]

Something clicked! I got to sector 6. I was overran by a mantis boarding team. I didn't really know what to do But now I have a third ship!

I did what you suggested and just whacked my shields up as far as I could take them. The main issue was my underpowered weapons,.

[Lorfarius]

Has the Steam version not been updated? I can't see any change on the sector maps for jumping.

[RubberJohnny]

One nice usability thing I'd like is when you get a new weapon or crew member, to include the little graphic icons that you get in the stores into the text boxes - the ones you can mouse-over for details. It would make that more of a "hell yeah" thing, as it is, it loses impact because it's far too easy to gloss over a piece of familiar text.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

Has the Steam version not been updated? I can't see any change on the sector maps for jumping.

You have to enable it in the options, like I said.

[Lorfarius]

Ah, being daft!