Let's Play FTL: Faster Than Light!

Fine, I'll display some sense of self-preservation. Killjoys.

Pirate sectors are easier than Rebel-controlled ones, but not by much. The nicest thing about them is that you'll find just about every kind of threat here, so odds are good your ship will be able to handle at least one.



Anyway, distress beacons, sure!



This event CAN be a trap, but only after you lead them home. Players who bought Advanced FTL Navigation (and if so: why) can use it for a blue event here to bypass the quest and get a reward.



Even if you don't ever do the quest, they give you some pay up front, so if you're a jerk or expecting a trap, you can just leave it at that.



We will be doing the quest, but first things first, store and distress beacon.



Hey look we're in a Rock ship!



Hey look it's the first step of the Crystal sector unlock quest!



Hey look we're in Sector 6 and there's no sign of Zoltan sectors ahead.



Hey look we got a Hull Missile.



We immediately sell it here. Okay, not immediately. The Hull Missile has two distinct advantages over the Breach Missile: it charges significantly faster, and it consumes one fewer energy. The fact that it can't do double damage if it hits a system is kind of moot if you're using it, because your goal with a Hull Missile is to end a fight before it begins.

Anyway, stuff to buy. None of the drones or systems looks worthwhile to me...



The weapons are somewhat tempting. The Heavy Ion deals 2 ion damage per hit, but it recharges too slowly to ionlock systems itself. The chain ion CAN do this, as it increases ion damage every turn, but being a chain weapon, you need to have the right kind of setup for it, and I'm not really feeling it with this one. The Burst Laser Mk III fires five shots, but it has a long charge time and more power requirements than the breach missile.



So screw it, we have infinite scrap anyway and nothing here's worth my interest.



Full hull repairs.



Eh... I don't really wanna deal with a ship that has cloaking and a medbay. While a ship is cloaked, you can't teleport crew on or off of it. That means if stuff goes sour while Bass and Blues are on there, and they cloak, they're basically dead in the water.

That said, I had no idea this encounter had a blue event for engines.



LATER SUCKERS



Oh good, you don't have shields. I'm just going to kill you to pieces if that's cool.



I immediately power on the combat drone, and they immediately power on mind control, planting messages in Rush's head that he is an unstoppable killer robot built like a hunting hound. He does the logical thing and starts chewing on the sensor array.



The Combat Drone, meanwhile, hovers around their ship firing its Basic Laser, effectively doubling the number of asteroids they have to deal with. It still dodges like a maniac, but now rather than dodging a 4 damage Breach Missile, it's dodging Red-Tail's starting armament.

See, I can learn things.



It takes a while, but eventually their engine starts taking hits, and without shields, that's a death knell for them.



Annoyingly, a stray asteroid hits my combat drone instead of their ship, destroying both. No problem, I have other weapons.



FIRE THE HULL SMASHER



Weapon wishlist: Hull Smasher Laser Mk II. One of my personal favorite weapons, that.



Since there's so many beacons clustered by the exit, there's less pressure to surf the wave here.



Hahahahaha



This fight looked like a total non-issue at first, but I quickly discover that's not the case. Between their Ion Blast and the Ion Charger, they can actually ion-lock my shields totally. That plus their Halberd Beam... well, it's bad news.

In the interest of survival (and because MY FIRE BOMBS KEEP MISSING AAAAAARGH) I pump power to engines to expedite our retreat.



If they didn't have a medbay I'd just board there and be done with it, but they do, and hell if I'm going in there without a fire.



So yeah, screw it, you guys can have that beacon, we don't want it.



The quest turns out to not be a trap, and we are rewarded with superfluous hull repairs and a new store.



Hacking would be nice, but y'know what would be even nicer?



Selling this stupid thing. It's cost me much more than it's worth to try using this Breach Missile, so I sell it off...



And buy a fancy new Flak Gun Mk I to replace it. Again, the drones aren't really interesting to me, and of the weapons, the Repair Burst is worthless to me and the Chain Laser doesn't do the job I need as well as the Flak Gun. My plan with it is simple: fire enough shots that my other, beefier lasers can get through the enemy's weakened shields and do some real damage. Now we have a weapons suite that works even when we can't board.



I'm kind of annoyed that we haven't been boarding as much of late.



Friggin' ships with medbays. Friggin' pulsars.



There we go, first try. Now we get to get back to what the USS Thomas Light does best.



RAIDING AND PILLAGING... IN SPACE



This isn't a complete cakewalk though. They have a Heavy Laser Mk II, which is bad news when you don't have shields.



What's worse, their ioned systems are ones we don't care about or want ioned, like oxygen.



Once our shields get unlocked, I devise a genius plan for the next time the pulsar rolls around.



My crew, of course, moves onto bigger and better systems to destroy. That medbay's staying dead.



Just before the ion pulse, I completely lower shields. The only major weapon that hits it anyway is their heavy laser, and if I leave shields up it'll just get ioned to uselessness.



But by lowering the shields, I increase the odds of the ion damage being spread around to non-essential systems, and if the shields aren't there, I can immediately bring them back up, ensuring our safety while our boarders finish breaking stuff.



And I take them down just before their weapons fire again!



One more jump, although my shields remain ion-locked after the medical treatments.



Thankfully there was nothing of note in this area.



Whenever jumping from a non-hostile beacon, your ion-damage is instantly and fully recovered. This does not hold true if you jumped from a hostile beacon, regardless of whether the hostility is environmental in nature. So if you're gonna flee a pulsar to not die, try not to flee into an asteroid field if you can help it.



Cool, free stuff.



So, next up. No more Stronghold, but there is a Rebel controlled sector as a consolation prize. Or if you prefer, we can explore the Slug sector and see what those tricky slugmen are up to.



Naturally, I fully upgrade sensors just before this point to influence the decision. (Also weapons, because I want the entire suite of spam ready to go at a moment's notice.)



Crew check: Bass is almost as good as Blues at punching dudes until they die!

But yeah, the sectors. Choose whichever you deem most hilarious.

Next Time: How to Kill a Random Number Generator

slogge

Slugs!

Sluggo

rebels. gotta be the rebels. we woulda had em last time if we weren't on the ropes

I just happened to come in on this, hadn't really noticed which thread I'd clicked, and thought there was yet another Shantae costume vote of some sort happening.

Slug Man needs to be defeated first.

Slug! Slug! Slug!

Slugs: like the Hutts, but psychic because that makes them more fun.



So, most of this sector is nebula, so my new and improved sensors complete with crewmember won't do much. Given an easy option to actually showcase them, I gladly take it.



SO OF COURSE IT'S AN UNMARKED ION STORM FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER

Ion storms are seriously dangerous in most cases, but unlike most hazards, they are SUPPOSED TO BE exclusive to beacons within nebulas. This one just jumped out of the damn ether to start this sector off on the wrong foot. What the hell, FTL, you're making it very hard for me to like you.



Anyway their ship has stupid nonsense stuff and I hate it. They can't power all their systems at once on account of the ion storm, but we can hardly power anything because I've been slacking on reactor upgrades.



Our Heavy Pierce Laser only gets in enough damage to render itself completely useless. Meanwhile, they have their way with our completely unprotected ship.



Boarding to destroy the weapons proves slightly less viable.



Bass nearly died on the first jump in a sector because ion storms where they literally should not be, this is like a cardinal rule of FTL.



Screw this stupid nonsense.



OKAY, NOW LET'S DO THAT AGAIN, BUT WITH LESS CHEATING.



Okay, four layers of shielding, two laser systems, and a glaive beam. Not cheating, especially since our defenses can, y'know, keep up with it. We've just been swimming in scrap the whole game is all.



Can we, y'know... not fight?



Figures. And of course they have a medbay.



Also most of our ship is on fire.



Fine, let's get the spam suite up. (Why did I power the Hull Smasher on and not the Flak Gun? I don't know)



There, take some weapons damage you honorless ionless miscreant.



But because the fire has been wrecking our shields, they still get some damage in.



By the time we get it fixed, we need our crew to be slightly less dead.



Okay, now the fight can start for real.

This is also the first instance where the thing I was TRYING to showcase comes up. At maximum-level sensors with a crewmember working the system, you can see the power levels of enemy ships in complete detail. Captain Nights' ship, while terrifying, has little power in engines, so he won't dodge much (THANK YOU) and his other systems are vestigial at best.



What I should do at this point is try powering the spam suite up again to destroy his weapons, but I try firebombing it, since his engine strength is so low.



It works, huzzah!



We get a readout of the condition of their weapons as the fire does its work, and their laser charger drops offline quickly.



Their other weapons can still punch through our shields because the Glaive Beam is seriously strong.



And unfortunately, their medbay lets them cycle crew in and out to fight our dudes, so we're making little headway there until we can firebomb the medbay.



See this is when you're SUPPOSED to beam rock crew out, I'm just being sloppy.



I never did explain teleporter levels, did I? Like the clone bay, increasing the teleporter's level mostly serves to absorb systems damage and keep it intact, but there are technical reasons to power it beyond the basics. The more power you invest into the system, the shorter time that system remains ion-locked. For this reason, it's best to only put a bit of power into the teleporter if you need the rest elsewhere, but to put it on full power if getting the crew out of a sticky situation is more important (for example, if you want to try boarding an autoship, or to board a ship equipped with a cloaking device).

Right, let's finish the job.



This is still pretty slow going, so their glaive beam gets another hit in, albeit a relatively weak one.



Yay Bass' combat skill is maxed out.



Not worth the trouble honestly. Like, that is a lot of scrap, but I need fuel more right now.



Still, we can get our reactor to slightly stronger levels in case more ion storms decide to break the laws of time and space.

I will never not be salty about that.



Distress beacon! You guys like distress beacons, right?



This is a pretty simple encounter that only has good benefits.



I don't know whether the statement willcoon provided as to the slug's speech giving away the answer still holds, but I have good enough memory to basically get this every time, even before I knew it was an event where paying attention would help.



So hey, slug crewmember. With a pretty nice array of skills, too.



This was actually a tough decision given Rush's high repairs skill, but in the end, I decide that Eddie's unique strengths will be very helpful for this sector, and his repair skill isn't bad either.



Oooh, store. Let's snag some fuel and stuff there.



Oh good, not an ion storm, just a Mantis boarding ship.



Since they have a medbay, we'll need to take care of that somehow before we can take the fight to them, so we'll just work on repelling their boarders for now. Granted, I could do a fork attack by having Robert Smith defend the helm while Bass and Blues jump to their ship and destroy key systems (the teleporter would be a fun choice) but that didn't occur to me.



Their weapons are scary, but tolerable for us. I don't honestly need shields at 4 and don't know why I put them there, but either way their laser can't touch us, and their missile gets countered by our defense drone. The only worry is their bomb.



Speaking of bombs, ours misses again because FTL is a well-designed game.



The next time they board, I have the good sense to send Robert Smith in as backup.



Their bomb system is just a small bomb, but it packs a kick nonetheless.



Eventually, they run out of missiles, because enemy ships DO have a limited supply of missiles and drone parts. This means I can take the heat off of our defenses and switch to more offense.



Again, the idea here is to just fire so much that their shields can't hope to take it.



Just like that, their shields bite the dust, and all it took was a single flak shot. Note that even though it says it missed, all three shots still hit their shields.



Not sure why I bothered shooting their weapons with my stuff, the medbay and teleporter are the big threats here. Oh well.



With their medbay totaled and on fire, the rest of the ship becomes easy pickings.



I'M IN YOUR COCKPIT, PAY ATTENTION TO ME



Nice. Now we can spend the fuel-allocated scrap on missiles instead.



So, Slug sectors pose a certain risk while shopping. Occasionally they'll jack up the price something fierce, hoping to get a really great deal from it.

Thankfully, this one is comparatively honest, and he has some interesting wares for us.

The Repair Arm is a bit of a double-edged sword. Whenever you gain scrap, it automatically deducts some of the scrap you would gain to instantly repair your hull. This would be a great purchase for us right now, but I don't really want to buy it because reasons.

The Defense Scrambler is the starting augment of Tetragon, the type C Engi ship. While it's active, enemy defense drones do nothing but spin around randomly, letting you use your own drones, missiles, and hacking modules with impunity. I mean, you can still use hacking modules because exploits, but even so, it's a very powerful augment with the right ship loadout (like, say, Bulwark or Tektite).



The weapons are nothing to sneeze at either. The Pegasus Missiles are a slightly more RNG resistant spin on the Breach Missile, recharging a bit faster and firing two shots. Again, this lets it bypass defense drones with ease since they can't handle both shots, but the shots are individually weaker. In practice, though, this really just means that the system won't suffer a breach for sure. Well worth the tradeoff.

Breach Bomb Mk II is stupidly powerful, dealing 3 systems damage and guaranteeing a breach while also murdering the hell out of crew. The power consumption and recharge are, again, better than Breach Missiles, so while you won't be able to destroy ships with it, you'll render systems completely junk just in time to board and riot.



But hacking/teleporter is too powerful a combo not to use.



Let's see if I can show what I mean.



Prior to AE, most of the hacking attempts in the game came from Slug events. Their hacking modules weren't as fun as ours, and would usually just disable or impede a system, limiting how much power you can allocate to it. They're also weak enough that you can use your own hacking system to counter them, but in this case oxygen has always been an excellent system so we just say it's fine.



And it's fine. Now, back to the fun.



Unfortunately, they don't have a medbay, so I can't do as goofy of stuff as I do want, but they do have a mind control system and clone bay. So here's the plan.



First, hack mind control. If they had any non-Slug crew, the pulse would reverse the mind control on our unit and affect one of theirs, but here it just breaks their mind control effect, which is fine and acceptable.



The more important part is that it locks the doors on the room, meaning we can just leap into the clone bay and wail on it unimpeded while their crew tries to break through two doors.



What's more fun is that you can lock/unlock the doors really easily by just powering the hacking module on and off. This works best with medbay hacking, but it can work in other ways.



Anyway, having a fully upgraded teleporter means I can beam my crew back, send them to the medbay to heal almost instantly...



And send them right back in with hardly a second's respite for the enemy crew.



Mind control's destroyed now, so I can stop constantly hacking that to keep my crew from infighting.



They got the clone bay fixed at some point unfortunately, so I need to break it AGAIN.



And there we go. Hacking and teleporters: completely ridiculous in the best ways.



I think we need MORE HACKS



Again, with so many beacons clustered around the exit, we'll just bypass the surfing for today.



This is a fun choice. The option you choose will have it's effectiveness hacked, but the ship in particular is very powerful, so you need to be careful.



To wit: WHY DO YOU HAVE THREE ION BLASTS



They also have mind control and cloaking. Now, what I should be doing is hacking their weapons, because that array is seriously strong.



But instead I panic and hit their mind control system as before, because mind control on a boarding ship is dangerous, and hey, same layout as before, so I can break the clone bay and then fight elsewhere with impunity, right?



This goes about as well as can be expected.



And they cloak right as Bass' health goes critical.



Yes, our shields have four points of ionlock to them. At this point, a smart captain would cut their losses and GTFO.



I am not a smart captain and the RNG is a complete asshole.

Fine, we'll run from TWO encounters this sector.



I don't have enough scrap for this shop, and even if I did, only the Shield Overcharger drone is worth considering.



Really though, I just wanted a moment's respite to recharge the shields and see if I can't do something about that hot mess.



The crew I killed stays dead and the hacking attempt ceases, but they're still as armed to the teeth as ever.



Screw it, let's take the fast crewkill before they can perforate us.



This plan encounters some complications.



Okay do firebombs just not do things anymore, is that how this works now?



I DON'T NEED FIREBOMBS, I JUST NEED YOU TO DIE DIE DIE



I hate this sector so much.



Now to handle the fires.



Eddie's innate telepathy lets him detect the state of rooms adjacent to him, so we can see that there's still quite a bit of fire that needs putting out.



If you're going to be a cheater SO AM I



Up here next, we can hit potentially more jumps this way.



Hell no hell no hell no.



Hell no.

If you try talking to him normally, he'll bombard you with a bunch of legalese for a few boxes until either he opens a store and gives bonus fuel, you get boarded, or you get boarded and your weapons are disabled. Having a Slug crewmember lets you just skip to the fight before they can board, but I don't wanna mess with that ship even under the best of circumstances.



These guys offer no such courtesies. They have a medbay rather than a clone bay, and no pesky mind control system I need to worry about, so I want the hacking operable to showcase it in full.



Our medbay is too pro to be disabled by YOU.



I could hack their medbay, but I'm gonna try to save that display for the flagship. Let's hit oxygen instead.



Oh, only one bar of power? You really shouldn't do that in a Slug nebula...



You never know when it could be hacked.

Yes, we just dropped their oxygen levels shipwide from full to 40% in 10 seconds. And once we take care of their so-called professionals, we're gonna send our guys in to make sure it stays even lower.



By the time our hacking module has recharged, they've only gotten up to 65% oxygen. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.



The doors on their ship are annoying, but not a huge deal for us. If we hacked them, we could have our guys run around and destroy stuff unimpeded, but that's usually a better tactic for Mantis boarders, who have way better mobility and offense.



Another hacking pulse is on the way, get back over here.



Their ship is now empty of oxygen.

Hacking systems are so, so fun.



Understandably, they spend much of their time hiding in their medbay, but weak medbays can't outpace the damage from oxygen loss. I don't know how strong theirs is, though.

LET'S FIND OUT, SHALL WE.



With the system destroyed and oxygen levels depleted shipwide, their weakened crew has no choice but to retreat to the medbay. Our crew, of course, has to retreat too, but they're a lot hardier and can stick around long enough to finish them off.



MY HACKS ARE STRONGER THAN YOUR HACKS



One more encounter for the road.



First though, I want even better engines strength.



PFFFFFFFFFFFFFF



This ship is actually dangerous though. Unlike the other genius who tried this, their mind control and clone bay aren't adjacent, and they're using fire bombs rather than fire beams.



Their mind control system still needs to die first.



I also firebomb weapons because HEY GUYS YOU LIKE IONLOCKING, RIGHT



Their luck with firebombs is no better than mine, but somehow they manage to get mind control through immediately after I hack it. Why, I do not know. Point being, Bass decides to go take a tour of the Slug ship rather than destroying it to bits.



By the time that snafu resolves itself, our shields are in poor shape and they're out of firebombs.



FINE WE'LL RUN FROM THREE ENCOUNTERS THIS SECTOR



I hate. Not anything in particular, I just HATE right now.



And we have a nice juicy target to direct that hate towards.

Next Time: Everlasting Peace Via Wholesale Slaughter

So... This is going well...

this is why i said rebels

Honestly, when it's not the RNG stomping on my face, we're doing exceptionally well, about as good as Shivan can muster. All we really need is Reconstructive Teleport and suddenly we don't even care about vestigial firebombs (or now that we have a hacking system, a Fire Beam so we can just board after all of their ship catches fire).

Do this to the flagship:

Cool. My recent best run was also a hacking/teleporter ship where I had a mantis boarder.

Yeah make the intel runner that's barely standing go fight the military juggernaut without backup, okay.



Plan here is simple. Get to the first repair station, meet the flagship for phase 1, then see whether I can duck out for further repairs or not.



Uh-huh. This is a Sector 8 ship, that's for sure.



Let's hack their medbay this time to demonstrate how useful this is for boarding. To improve matters, this also locks off their oxygen room, so I start my assault there.



First off: wounded crewmembers stop fighting and flee to the medbay, but discover it locked and are easily picked off, which is great.



Second: once the doors lock around crew within the medbay...



I can hack it to severely wound them. I'm kind of amazed this guy didn't die, honestly.



No big deal, though. We've basically got this in the bag.



It's kind of amazing how utterly useless to us this reward is.



The repair station does us much better.



At this point we really do need as much reactor power as we can spare.



More fights, woo.



No way in hell am I boarding without first doing some damage to their ship systems, but that in and of itself is a problem.



Their Shield Overcharger drone gives them a gradually generating Zoltan Shield, making it impossible to board and reducing the shield damage that even our spam array can put out.



Once one of their stray lasers takes out my defense drone I decide to call it quits before that missile down there hits.



Oh boy it's the Federation base how exciting.



So yeah. We can meet the flagship at this beacon, hit repairs, and try not to die to the Rebel fleet on the way back into the fray. It's a sound plan.



Before doing anything, I power on the defense drone. As in, I pause during the opening dialogue box to ensure I have the maximum time needed. The idea here is that if I can shoot down their hacking drones, this fight becomes much easier.



But because the RNG loves us so very, VERY much, it completely misses the first shot, and on a very critical system to have hacked, too.



OH NO OUR SHIELDS HAVE BEEN DRAINED.



Given this frankly-not-surprising-at-all turn of events, I go for the most dangerous system first: namely, the beam weapon. Missiles are the conventional first choice to board, but we have a defense drone and excellent engines, so they're less dangerous.



I mean, they can still do damage.



Wheee more hull damage.



And we're already at 75% hull. Splendid. Beautiful. I hate dice.



The ion weapon isn't normally that dangerous, but when my shields might deplete at the drop of a hat I don't need them staying depleted, or worse, having critical systems I need ioned.

I then wrap it up by destroying missiles. Also, huh, despite being a heavy laser, the shots only deal 1 damage. Maybe it's a hull weapon, I dunno.



Next up is killing their crew. We need to do this now, because their ship is infinitely safer to fight on than ours.



The main thing to do is to leave hacking unpowered until their crew runs in to heal, then to power it on at full blast and hacking pulse. This will for sure kill them while denying them their main recovery resource, and at the same time lock out the crew that takes over for them when they, in turn, need to heal.



Takes me a couple of tries to get the timing on this.



And all the while, we're not doing a lick of damage to their hacking system and they're able to take us on more or less indefinitely.



Eventually my brain starts being a brain and we get them proper killed.



And there we go. Ordinarily I'd then have my crew walk around on their ship and break shields so I can spam them down...



But for now, I settle for the hacking system, since the spam suite can do the job.



I also take a second to check the state of our repair station, only to find that OF COURSE the Rebels took it over as soon as we fought the flagship, why would you ever question this.

Naturally, we can't reach the other repair station without the flagship destroying the base. So WELP GUESS WE'RE NOT REPAIRING.



Oh well, spam it down.



Yaaaaaay piss-all for scrap rewards.



So yeah. One jump into a rebel area to start the 3-jump count down. One to the repair station. It would then take 3 jumps to get back there, at which point the Rebel flagship has eaten the Federation base and gone on to kill Elminster, Batman, and the entire cast of the Touhou series for kicks.



Drone phase drone phase drone phase.



Missiles down, easy peasy. Didn't get a single one off, so our defense drone can focus on shooting down their boarding drones.



Unfortunately, one gets through in the confusion.



Seconds later, the stars align and they get a power surge immediately after they fire their lasers, right after Robert Smith heads off to deal with the boarding drone. This is what we in the business might call "gg no re".



There's just no way in hell we're recovering from this. Maybe if I did the exploit to hack their system past the defense drone, or tried a firebomb on their drone control, we could've made a change to this.



I destroy their beam weapon, but by this point it's all over.



So yeah uh... I don't know what you wanted from me, FTL! Like, this was one of the better Shivan runs I've had in general, at least as far as our own personal advancement. It just goes to show, though, and it's a really harsh and painful lesson, that no matter how good your ship, the dice of FTL can just come up "no screw YOU" at almost every instance where it counts.



Wasn't a total loss, though.



The USS Thomas Light will go down in history on its first voyage without having a horrid mess of too many sequels!



So, next ship. Because you guys all love me so very, very much, the current contenders are the Fregatidae, a Federation cruiser with an Artillery Flak weapon, a teleporter, and an advanced cloning bay. They may as well call this ship FTL: Prepare to Die Edition.



Or if you prefer, we can run the Vortex, and try a ship that is staffed by one crewmember and a horde of robots. To compensate for this it has... like, nothing.

There is still a whole bunch of other ship choices if you guys want to show mercy or something. Just sayin'.

Next Time: In Space No One Can Hear You Rage

I can attest that Engi B is great if you can live long enough to upgrade it worth a damn, so do that.

In fairness, the layout for Engi B is pretty good.

But then, so is the Tektite layout.

Fregatidae! You've done it once!

Play one that you like, that's also different from the others you've played so far.

The tie between Vortex and Fregatidae was hard to decide on account of many factors, but ultimately I went Vortex because I didn't want to have to deal with Zoltan crewmembers causing power fluctuations any time they went anywhere. In the spirit of this antisocial attitude, I give you the adventures of Paranoia.



Paranoia was an ex-mercenary that specialized in smuggling runs and drone schematic design. As its name implies (nobody knows if it started with the name or designated itself with it later on), it really doesn't like working with people. So when the Federation offered Paranoia a job as an intel runner aboard a prototype Engi ship with literally no other crew, Paranoia leapt at the chance. Who cares if the scrap was terrible, who cares if the Federation was dead in the water. The time away from other backstabbing pirates and mercs was well worth it.



Bleeeeh early stores.



Oooh, sensor station.



The Vortex's armaments were not great, but they were passable. The Heavy Ion weapon packed a kick against shields, but the cooldown made it unreasonable for usage against stronger shields. The Heavy Laser, meanwhile, was useless against ships with any layer of shielding. For now, it would do, but Paranoia needed stronger weapons.



The autoship's shields were definitely weak enough to take down under the Vortex's current power.



This was the happiest Paranoia had been in years.



Okay, so this sector isn't too painful. We'll surf along as usual and see what happens.



One of the conditions of Paranoia's employment was to never let the Rebel fleet know of his position. This suited Paranoia just fine.



Yay missile dodging.



Boo ion dodging. It says a lot about our ship's usefulness when even a single dodge this early on can pose a significant setback.



THOOM.

By the sound of it, that was an Artemis missile hitting the ship. The Federation had skimped on installing a proper sensors system on the Vortex. Paranoia didn't really need one to locate the damaged system, though.



A monitor at its console blinked to life, showing the inside of a sterile room full of high-tech repair and power equipment. A drone control station. That monitor was the visual feed for one of the system repair drones. Good, reliable things, maybe a bit slow to move and on the fragile side, but diligent and unflinching in the face of danger. More than could be said of some of Paranoia's old crew.



Probably using the funds from the lack of sensors, the Federation had installed a top-end Drone Reactor Booster on the ship. Paranoia could see the effects easily, both from the readouts of the drone's data and the speed at which the camera moved from room to room. These drones should keep pace with most people now.



Unfortunately, back at the space battle, the Vortex's weapons were failing to do significant damage to the Rebel scout.



Paranoia employed every means at its disposal to take down the piloting. Even without sensors, it knew enough about ship design to guess where to aim, and the weapon system's autotargeting certainly helped.



But they could repair faster than it could fire, and they got away to warn of its position. There goes the one advantage Paranoia had: now the Rebels knew what to look for.



In the scuffle, another missile had gotten through and shot into the drone control room. Little warning lights blinked on the monitor, then faded away as the system repair drone fixed the room it was in, while the repair devices in the room in turn fixed up the drone. No complaints, just work.



Taking a break from my super-amateur writing, this isn't actually a huge deal as we're so early. If we were surfing full on when this happened we'd probably be up to our neck in Rebel fights from here until the end of the sector, which would suuuuuuck.



The offer was tempting, but the Federation hadn't given the Vortex any ammunition, much less a weapon to use it with. Paranoia simply switched off the comm and kept going.



Perhaps it could fix this, though.



A small dot of red flew out from the enemy ship and began hovering around the Vortex. Paranoia could see it as it approached from the viewports, and made out the distinct shape of an Anti-Ship Drone. One installed with a Fire Beam, curiously. An offbeat choice, but in the right hands, very deadly.



Bleeeeeh.



Their ship lacked the capabilities to damage his directly, but they could lower the shields enough to let the drone start some fires. Sure enough, twin readouts appeared from the shields system and the drone control before long.



The Vortex, thankfully, came with a second System Repair drone installed. Two of them working together could handle the fire long before it became a threat.

Much more preferable to working with a crew. No shouting, no melodrama, no pointed fingers, no accusations of mutiny... a problem happened, they just fixed it.



Right, so. Remember when I said the Vortex needed some really important things but didn't have anything going for it?

Well, that's still mostly true. But bad suspense writing aside, starting with a full suite of shipboard drones does almost make up for not having crew. If I had the layout of the Kestrel when the shield room caught fire, I'd either have to send in one or two crew from other parts of the ship or lose shields, and once they caught the fire and fixed the system, they'd then have to go to the medbay or risk dying unceremoniously to some Leto missile conga-lining them.

The Vortex's system repair drones don't have this problem. They got that fire under control before it did ANY system damage. That is RAW. Unfortunately, if multiple systems take damage, the system repair drones do have to complete their first task before moving to another one, limiting their versatility, but even so, that is a deceptively powerful thing.

It comes at a really heavy cost, though. I can no longer afford to play fast and loose with crewkilling events: if Paranoia dies, we lose. End of story. We also don't have crew in weapons, shielding, or engines, so our defenses and rate of fire will suffer until we get more crew. We also need better weapons but lack weapon slots to work with, we need autopilot so Paranoia can get off its ass and actually do things, we need doors so Mantis boarders don't just make mincemeat of our ship, we could probably use other drone types later (I dunno if boarding drones and ion intruders get the Drone Reactor Boost, but if so, we REALLY want some of them). And having a clone bay so Paranoia can afford to die once in a while would be really, really nice.

The Vortex just needs too many things to function properly outside of Sector 1. Thankfully, this chain laser is an EXCELLENT find for this early on, and will let us handle that niche very nicely.



The Federation gave Paranoia a very specific job.



They were also courteous enough to provide it with enough freedom to handle it as necessary.



Paranoia could make out the heavy plating and constant scanning movements of a Mk II Defense Drone. Very nice, impressive. Against the Vortex's initial weapons, the ship would be untouchable and Paranoia would simply be forced to retreat. The Chain Laser, though, changed things up.



The Defense Drone could stop one shot, but not three at once. And Mk II Defense Drones, although excellent, consumed a lot of power. With it disabled, Paranoia could dismantle the ship at leisure. The Chain Laser, of course, would warm up the more it fired, expediting the process.



Paranoia didn't really care about civilian supplies. Destroying the rebel ship should be enough to let them know that it would not be an easy target.



The complaints of the colonists went unanswered.



Yay we have autopilot. Now if something needs fixing or if Paranoia needs the medbay, we can do that without rendering the ship immobile.



The exit's a bit isolated, so we can't surf as hard as we want, but surf we can and will!



Paranoia wasn't completely familiar with this part of space. The other mercenary, in turn, didn't seem to recognize it or its ship.



What Paranoia did know is that the ship would happily sell out its position to the highest bidder, and the Vortex's scrap reserves were empty.



Not enough of a guarantee.



Much better.



I'm probably only gonna do this for this update. Writing is hard guys.



Ordinarily, Paranoia would've just left this fight to play itself out, but the ship still needed a lot to be at a level it was comfortable with.



And gratitude tends to be very lucrative indeed.



A harsh sizzling noise followed by the crashing of sparks and the tear of solid steel had Paranoia reflexively turning the system repair drones back on. It could get used to this.



The civilian ship sent a crew over to mend the hull, but before taking off, Paranoia went and turned over each and every bit of scrap plating they went over. They might've planted a trap, or worse, created even more work for it and its drones.



Just to be safe, Paranoia used the scrap from the ship to plate over the doors and tune up the security systems.



More sizzling, crashing, tearing. That sound meant a beam weapon. Not a very strong one, but still grating to the ears. More grating still was the depletion of power to the Chain Laser.



Paranoia quickly reconfigured weapons, maintaining what charge was left in the chain laser, and the drones got the system back up to full capacity in short order.



More frantic begging for their life. In fairness, Paranoia would probably do the same without hesitation or shame.



The remnants of their ship were still worth more.

OH MAN PARANOIA IS SUCH A DARK AND EDGY ANTI-HERO! GIVE ME A JOB DC COMICS!

Or is it Marvel that does the anti-hero thing more? I frankly don't follow comics at all and have no idea.



I'm all out of grit and wit anyway. Burp.



AND THEN PARANOIA GOT THE SHOOTYMAN LASERS AT THE PIRATE! THEY WERE ACTUALLY GONNA TRAP HIM ANYWAY



Oh snap, they have actually good weapons for the sector.



Too bad we're so AWESOME over here!



Look at how fast the system repair drones go. Lookitem!



That's a pretty nice offer, but we have plenty of fuel and enough missiles. I'm sure Paranoia has some kind of one-liner for their demise.



So, ship-building. Since the chain laser is the weapon we're going with, we're gonna build up our defenses. Much like artillery weapons, chain weapons work best with defensive ship types, where you can build up to full recharge time unimpeded. Since we don't have a gunner, this becomes doubly important.



OH MAN WHAT AN EXCITING SECTOR CHOICE

Next Time: im batman

nothing says grimdark antihero like shooting up a civilian sector