Let's Play FTL: Faster Than Light!

Oh well. Their Flak Gun is disabled now, and they're not bothering to crew the helm, so let's just demolish 'em.



BOOM



Oh boy sector data! Let's see what it says!



Two ships, one in a hazardous location, an exit beacon, and too many Rebel beacons to count! Very useful data, this.



Getting a headstart on upgrading shields, because with all the flak guns we're facing we apparently need it.



Here's a fun encounter if you like being an asshole. Although these colonists are almost certainly human, they are loyal to the Rebels and civilians besides, so we could just leave them be. This is, of course, the morally right thing to do: even if they're our enemies in the war, they are doing nothing that poses a threat to us right now, and attacking them will just spread misery for no good reason.



It also means I get to loot scrap. From a mechanical standpoint, you can always fight the Rebels for loot and it's usually a good idea, and stealing from the civilians tends to give good results but might not always.



Firebomb missed, but oh well, we're Rock, we'll just hit their piloting and pilot respectively.



We didn't really even need the firebomb, but it's good practice, I think.



Our boarders are so hardy that we can fight a third human without needing to beam back over!



Again, stealing the supplies can be positive or negative, but I don't really like doing much more damage to them than is necessary.



But yeah. The mechanically best choice and the ethically best one are at complete opposite spectrums, which is always really interesting to see in games. Other things that can happen here: a colonist contacts you and tells you that their son was on the ship you fought and was the only reason the Rebels cared to help, you steal their medical supplies for a local plague which prove totally worthless to you, and so on.



But hey, the Rebel fleet is gonna be there soon, I'm sure they'll be fine. Anyway: more abandoned nonsense (no) or the Engi Homeworlds (yes)?

Next Time: Secret Missions

PLUNGE HEADFIRST INTO LANIUS TERRITORY

The DARK SURFERS shall prevail!

The Engi have gone maverick. It's clobbering time!

Punch Puny Engi Face.

You doomed those colonists. I AM DISSAPPOINT.

Abandoned Sector again! We need Lanius friends!

but there's a whole horde of rebel ships right there man

Remember the bit about "what little supplies they can spare"?

WE TOOK THE SPARE.

I'm tired of Lanius, so go for the Engi.

It's my policy to never pass up a home world.

I'm glad you guys actually voted for this. I'd hate to have to veto.



Anyway, the plan here is to sweep the sector for distress beacons. I thought at the time that the quest unique to this area originated from a distress beacon. Turns out no, it doesn't, which isn't actually all that unhelpful since distress beacons are so uncommon anyway.



Not a distress beacon.



Oooh, there's one.

Really though, I basically always hit distress beacons, because the game doesn't really give you much info on what jumps do anyway.



That is a terrifying array of shields and weapons for Sector 4.



Good thing it was severely understaffed.



Maybe I'll tune up my shields to match, eh?



Okay sure, I'll take a free defense drone! Maybe we'll actually buy a drone control next shop we find.



Oh hey, new AE event.



So, the best possible outcome you can get for this is to have a human crewmember, making this one of the few events that rewards you for having humans on hand. Talking to him with another Mantis freaks him right the hell out and provokes him into attacking, which doesn't cost you anything but does get you some scrap from the Engi when you're forced to kill him. Mind Control can also mollify him long enough to explain the situation further.



Us being AWESOME, we talk to him and calm him down for the best possible result anyway. Not that this was without risk, we could've lost a crewmember or gotten nothing.



Y'know what, sure, come aboard buddy!



Robert Smith starts with a level in shields operation, so I shuffle my crew around a bit, sending King to weapons and having Bass and Blues become fulltime boarders.



As is, I just don't have the heart to rename him to a Mega Man theme.



Maybe this will be an acceptable consolation prize.



Their ship has doors, but no medbay, so the second they send their Mantis to weapons they're quickly swarmed and taken out.



I follow this up with the ol' firebomb-and-teleport.



Even with the damage Bass took from the initial boarder, the fire puts the fight in his favor, if only just barely.



To make matters better, the crew flees from the burning room, leaving our crew to make their way to the oxygen system.



As soon as we break the door down, they try running through the inferno. The Engi dies outright, and the Mantis gets there just in time to be struck down.



I am totally okay with free stuff.



I do have a lot of scrap, but if I wasn't under the assumption that the quest is at a distress beacon, I'd ignore this shop for a couple more jumps.



But I am, so I don't. Again, Hacking would normally be a smarter idea than Drone Control, especially for my playstyle, but eh, I have a Defense Drone schematic already.



In the other part of the store is some less useful drone schematics and two identically skilled Engi mechanics. There is also a master-level Engi martial artist, if you like wasting scrap.



But yeah, two drones installed now! I also sell the Stun Bomb...

And buy up some hull repairs. Not breaking the bank for it, just getting to slightly more comfortable levels.



MUST FIND DISTRESS BEACONS



That's not a distress beacon.



They have a flak gun and we're near a pulsar. I'm hitting weapons instantly.



Blues increased his combat skills during the Mantis fight, so he's starting to outpace Bass in damage ever so slightly. Don't worry, they'll both be combat experts soon.



Fortunately, my shields catch the flak before the ion pulse hits, giving us a bit more leeway. But what I think I really need here is



FIREBOMBING MY OWN CREW BECAUSE THAT IS SLIGHTLY FASTER



Shivan is AWESOME, guys. That said, my never-ending quest for a distress beacon has more rapidly depleted my options, to my detriment.



Ooh, more crew? Don't mind if I do.



Rush starts with maxed-out repairs skills, making him a good intermediate between the combat-incapable Engi and the rest of my crew.



I could leave safely now, but I want more exploring! MOAR



FIGHT ME LOSERS, I HAVE FIRE BOMBS



BREACH MISSILE TO THE MEDBAY. YOU DON'T GET A MEDBAY.

Their boarder went right for our teleporter and died instantly.



I don't want to risk the Zoltan deathsplosion killing off Blues, so I warp them both back to the ship to take a breather. The heavy laser can't do anything to us unless their ion bomb hits our shields system dead-on, and we'll heal up way before then.



Meanwhile, Gumpo the Zoltan explodes before they get in place to repel us. Having a breached room makes for a good defense!



Right, let's dance, Rebel nerds.



No crew teleporter, that's nice.



They have a full suite of deadly weapons, though. Good thing our defenses are ludicrously good for where we are in the game!



Their small bomb hits our teleporter, which hurts the boarders but otherwise does nothing dangerous.



The Anti-Ship Battery scores a direct hit, though, so we still take some hull damage.



Again, I have to make a judgment call as to where to escape to, and again, I choose the Mantis sector, this time on the assumption that hey, it's the homeworlds, you ALWAYS go to the homeworlds.



I like how the danger they indicate here is the hull plating, rather than the shipboard security. You'll take WAY more hull damage in a Rock sector, there's asteroids and missiles and flak EVERYWHERE.

But yeah, Mantis Homeworlds. Maybe this time, we'll find a ship unlock quest. Here's hoping!

Next Time: The Hunt for the Legendary Thief

Get thee some doors, son!

Buying a doors subsystem wouldn't magically grant you external doors, would it?

And can you teleport within your ship? It's never occurred to me to try, but slow Rockmans would benefit from it on occasion.

Buying doors will let you lock in squishy bugmen with the two best things, which are Rockmen and FIRE.

Get equipped!

Just as a note in the previous update when you got the scrap recovery arm I audibly gasped because you already get so much scrap from murdering via boarding that I suspect almost the entire rest of this run is in the bag now. Flagship notwithstanding.

This LP is great. It got me to try FTL again. Though FTL itself annoys the hell out of me since I seem to get hit by its wild swings of RNG.

dooooooooooooors

you can afford them for sure now

So, Mantis Homeworlds. The hope here is to find the Mantis ship unlock quest, which is not only guaranteed to generate somewhere here, but that we actually have all the requirements to clear perfectly.

One interesting thing about the Mantis is despite them being FTL's own Hostile Invading Space Bugs, they DON'T have a hive mind. A disregard for individual lives, yes, and a desire to propagate their species as far as possible, sure, but individual Mantis tastes may differ, and differ sharply.



That said, most of the encounters here are Mantis raiders. These sectors aren't very flashy, just dangerous.



Okay, we got an ion stunner, a dumbass Mantis boarder, a basic laser, and the HEAVY DEATH MISSILE OF EXPLOSIONS. Good to know.



They also have a clone bay, so I firebomb it on principle. The missiles shouldn't be too bad with my defense drone up and running.



Enemy ships with clone bays are either better or worse than ships with medbays, but personally I find dealing with ships equipped with medbays worse. With a clone bay, yeah, crew comes back, but if you can easily kill them once (we can) you can easily kill them a second time. To wit: the nerd running back to the teleporter already died once AND I CAN KILL HIM AGAIN.



Having some non-Rock crew back at homebase makes for good protection.



I don't expect to get any more windfalls like that last civilian ship we rescued, unfortunately.



Only after checking the map again do I realize the massive dick move the RNG has pointed at us.

See that row of beacons on the bottom? We can't reach them. Like, we can technically jump to them, but to do so, we have to make several jumps to the right so we can cross the chasm, and by the time we actually get there, the Rebel Fleet will have swallowed the first beacon and will be moving onto the next.

GEE IT SURE WOULD BE TERRIBLE IF ONE OF THOSE WAS THE QUEST BEACON



Not a quest beacon, just a bunch of chumps.



Unfortunately, they get the jump on us, and my crew has a hard time repelling them on account of Bass and Blues' slow movement speed.



So we show them exactly why we don't NEED doors on this ship.



Yes, you can target your own ship with bombs of any type. No, most ships don't have any reason to do this. Yes, it is hilarious.



Yes, we are still at risk of solar flares. No, it didn't cause hull damage.



Hey cool we have every single possible blue choice for this event! The best choice is for the advanced medbay, but...



In order to really get the most of it, you need the Engi Medibot Dispersal, which generates slow regen shipwide as long as the medbay is powered on at all. Doing so makes this reward even better.

The reward here is still good, just not as good as it COULD be.



The quest for the Mantis cruiser isn't at a distress beacon, I know this now, but I just can't not hit distress beacons, y'know?



Scrap Recovery Arm event you say.



OKAY SURE



Teleporter and Medbay fully upgraded!



Lore stuff. It's very common practice for Mantis to take Engi as slaves, which is only fitting given how they help get around a key weakness of their people.



Distress beacon. Already lost two beacons across the Gulf of Dickwaving.



You might recall us handling this event as Noether. Or I might've mentally pretended we got that event. Anyway, there's a few ways to handle this. Ion weapons can disable it, cloaking can slip past long enough...



Or our Engi crewmember can just be AMAZING.



Yeah yeah whatever fight me losers.



Of course, a slight problem occurs with this plan.

Our firebomb misses TWICE, buying enough time for their weapons to sync up AND for their Mantis boarder to come back from the dead.



Look at all those crew orders. It's cute.



Two more firebombs later, we finally manage to actually do something to their ship.



They respond by syncing up their weapons again and aiming their Halberd Beam as expertly as a human player.



At least Blues has mastered his combat skills?



Oh and we got a new gunner, freeing King up to... go crew doors once we get the system, and failing that, to go hang out in drone control because why not.



So yeah. From that beacon two jumps south of us, we can reach the lower row. If we sped over here at the earliest convenience, we could've probably used some of those beacons, but we can't now.



Just for that, I'm gonna mess up these Rebels instead and pretend it's a store.



Their weapons system is surprisingly tame, but their shields are dangerous.



I want to be able to board this ship, but it has a medbay, so I target the medbay with a breach missile and their piloting with a fire bomb. If all goes well, I can hit the medbay just as they move crew from the boarding in to heal.



No plan survives contact with the RNG though.



And again, we miss. Great.



By the time we actually land a hit, I've wasted five missiles and they're ready to jump. Also I destroyed their medbay but not their piloting, so they get to escape.

Have I mentioned I hate how RNG-dependent FTL is?



Fine, let's keep looking for the Mantis ship unlock. Or a store, that would be great right about now.



Or we can do this, that works too.



So what I really want here is to tag their shielding with a missile. Once their shields drop, we're basically home free.



I would have a defense drone enabled, but y'know... hacked.



Oh boy I love when my Breach Missiles can never hit.



Theirs, of course, have no problem hitting.

I'm also trying to sync up my Heavy Pierce Laser to get through their shields when they get hit by an asteroid, but of course the laser can't hit either. Why would you ever assume that.



Yyyyyyep.



By the time we score one single hit, we've already lost 8 hull points.

Not even from a super-deadly weapon, either. I probably could devote a bit of shield power to drones were it not for the hacking system and them shooting it to high hell. Nope, that's all their Artemis missile plugging on ahead doggedly while our entire array misses repeatedly.



I hate this ship and I hate dice.



What I could've done differently, and what would've been probably smarter, is to forego the breach missiles and instead just power a combat drone and several lasers, and just wear them down at top speed. That I'll admit is a mistake of my own, and would even do something to alleviate my complaints of RNG, but it does not mitigate them completely.



Maybe next encounter will be better.



NOPE.

Okay, it's slightly better. No hacking system means we can actually use the defense drone, but I still insist on the Breach Missiles, and with that extra layer of shielding they have it's worth considering.



At this point I kinda just wanna stop playing and go find something else to play, though.



Thankfully, our own Defense Drone keeps their probably-capable-of-oneshotting-us missile system at bay long enough for us to hit their shields, letting us switch to lasers.



I FEEL ONLY HATE FOR YOU.



Bleh, another laser/Halberd Beam combo. But it's not an auto-ship in an asteroid field, so I can board it and kill it.



That said, I'm firebombing their weapons first.



Rock crew in a fire are very hard to kill, so I don't feel that at risk leaving the clone bay intact for now. But yeah, even if you kill all the crew, the clonebay on the ship needs to be destroyed too for the crewkill to register.



NOW YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE IN A FIRE AND I WON'T EVEN GIVE YOU ANY WITTY ONE LINERS, I AM IN THAT BAD A MOOD



As you can see, this works excellently. Even with the crew reviving, they can't continue boarding attempts, but have to stay and battle a growing fire.



I take advantage of the distraction to go to the clone bay and finish the job.



The more upgraded a clone bay, the more damage it can take. I mean, that's the same with all systems, but that's the really important part with a clone bay, the difference between your boarders living and dying because one lucky Leto missile got a hit on it. More seriously, powering it more speeds up clone generation.



It also wastes my time a little more, but eh.



Hm, I think we have a BIT too much scrap.



Let's pointlessly head to the end of this stupid sector that sucks and I hate it.



But first, scrap investment.



We don't really have the missiles to spare them, but we DO have a really good missile system we can use for you!



Spoken like someone who's never had to firebomb their own ship.

This sector has me so upset that I can't even be happy that I showed off the TRUE SHIVAN BOARDER REPELLING STRATS.



Ooooh.

So, the Pirate sector is standard stuff, it's got ships of random assortments and crew, they're pretty fun. The Rebel Stronghold is a Rebel Controlled Sector turned up to 11, and more hilariously, it has a bonus boss encounter. But either way, haha we have four hull despite our amazing ship because RNG!

Next Time: Tyranny and Villainy

I'm not sure I've seen Rebel Stronghold. Is it AE-only? (I think most of my plays at this point have been AE anyway, so probably I just never paid attention.)

Anyway, go there.

Make Jonny Reb pay!

Pirates, I say.

Eat rebels to gain strength.

Go pirate. At 4 hull points and the very real possiblity of no place to repair or fuel up, Rebel Stronghold is a death sentence. In ALL CAPS, IMPACT FONT.

PIRATES OR BUST BECAUSE THOSE REALLY ARE OUR CHOICES

Yeah, pirates. I don't want to be cynical or anything, but I doubt this ship makes it to The Last Stand. So we may as well save a Rebel Stronghold for another game.

It sounds like 4 hull wouldn't let us see what the rebel sector has to offer, lets go to the pirate sector instead.