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Haha, yeah. I think Engi-based sectors are either buffed or bugged to give you shitloads of items, I once found four "a free weapon and some scrap" drops in a row in an Engi-Controlled sector, and similar stuff in other Engi sectors. It's why I always roll into the Engi areas.
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Apr 22, 2014 22:46
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Engi's got nothing to do with it. All green sectors can do that. There are a lot more random events than ship combat nodes in those. It's good to hit those up instead of that nebula or red sector if you had a rough time in the latest sector.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:07
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Good to know! Is there any way to really easily deal with boarders? Just upgrade doors to max and fight them in the medbay when possible?
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Apr 22, 2014 23:36
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Even level two doors can make boarders a hell of a lot easier. Instead of directly fighting them, drain the air out of the room they're in, and they'll slowly suffocate to death while trying to bash down the door. When they finally get to the next room, vent that one too. Repeat until they're all dead, or their health is low enough that you feel safe taking them in an "honest" fight.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:45
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Er yeah, meant to say "upgrade doors and vent rooms", not just the first part. 
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Apr 22, 2014 23:52
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Captain Invictus posted:Good to know!
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Apr 22, 2014 23:53
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Captain Invictus posted:Good to know! Upgrade doors and/or station someone in doors, and asphyxiate them by removing air from the rooms they're in. When they break into a new room, the door they broke stays locked open for awhile, causing the air to rapidly drain from that room too, so pretty soon they'll be trying to break down another door in a desperate search for breathable air. With two levels of door upgrade (or one plus someone manning the station) you can easily kill boarders without actually getting into a fight. If you do fight, outnumber them as much as possible. Fighting in a medbay is also helpful if only because the enemy ship might always land a missile in the room where all the fighting is occurring. Winning the melee and then losing your crew because their health is marginal sucks. But honestly in most cases you should be able to deal with boarders without having to get your hands dirty.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:54
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:But honestly in most cases you should be able to deal with boarders without having to get your hands dirty. Additional useful boarding tip. If they do get into a room with a critical system, and you either can't vent it, or don't have the time, you can stall for time by moving a crew member into and out of the room rapidly. Timed right, they won't actually attack the system, and will take potshots at the crewmember, but he/she will be taking way less damage than if they were actually fighting. Pause frequently for best results (you're doing this anyways, right?) This is also useful to stall a mind controlled team-mate without killing them if you don't have another option to cancel the mind control etc. For general boarding, this can also buy you the time you need to vent the right set of rooms, which is relevant on some ships with weird or inconvenient airlock placement. I don't remember off the top of my head if you can trick boarder to staying in an airless room this way. animatorZed fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 00:02
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Of course, all this goes out the window if the boarders are Lanius. In that scenario you do the exact opposite: open ALL interior doors and just bumrush them.
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Apr 23, 2014 00:21
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Mind control + Asphyxiation is one of my favourite boarder counters. For beginners my advice goes like this - operate on a case basis. Either you have a medbay or a clonebay. If you have a medbay, run everyone there, vent the rest of your ship - deal with this first. If you have a clonebay, who gives a gently caress! If you want to get more advanced you can start to look at techniques like animatorZed's distraction. You can also really game the AI by choosing specific rooms to vent. They can only "see" to the next room over so you can bait them into trap rooms full of oxygen, flanked by vacuum rooms that you open up. Cut your oxygen supply to get the room to vacuum rapidly. Let the boarders in and out of rooms by opening and closing doors for them so they don't break and hold them open. A great finisher is to vent an unmanned station, mind control one of the last two boarders and watch them saunter into the empty vacuum of space willingly.
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Apr 23, 2014 00:50
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The boarding heavy ships like the Mantis B are really, really gimped now. With the reduced scrap payouts for boarding, and the fact that stores are still fairly random, you can definitely get into a situation where you have a 4-man boarding team that is running from every 3rd encounter and can't make ends meet.
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Apr 23, 2014 00:52
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bobfather posted:The boarding heavy ships like the Mantis B are really, really gimped now. With the reduced scrap payouts for boarding, and the fact that stores are still fairly random, you can definitely get into a situation where you have a 4-man boarding team that is running from every 3rd encounter and can't make ends meet. The key to Mantis B is to make the first 80 scrap you earn dedicated to buying the first hacking system you see.
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Apr 23, 2014 00:53
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:Even level two doors can make boarders a hell of a lot easier. Instead of directly fighting them, drain the air out of the room they're in, and they'll slowly suffocate to death while trying to bash down the door. When they finally get to the next room, vent that one too. Repeat until they're all dead, or their health is low enough that you feel safe taking them in an "honest" fight. I've been watching Northernlion play FTL AE on YouTube, and he does this, but in the stupidest way possible. It's infuriating. He'll vent almost his entire ship, even letting boarders destroy medbay, O2, and doors, rather than actually fighting them. Even when the boarders actually start in the medbay and it would be the easiest thing in the world to run a guy over and kill them before they destroy half his ship. So here are some helpful tips: * If you have upgraded doors and the boarders start near an outside door, by all means suffocate them. Turn oxygen off to let rooms vent even faster. * If you don't have upgraded doors, or if the doors are weak and the boarders strong, or if they are in an important room, or if they are miles away from an outside door, FIGHT THE GODDAMN BOARDERS. If you're being manhandled, run to a medbay once halfway through and that will in most cases be more than enough. * One good trick, if you don't have upgraded doors and your mans are weak, is to strategically vent rooms so that boarders are driven to your medbay. Boarders prefer not to suffocate and they will try to go into oxygenated rooms when O2 runs out where they are. So vent everything around them except for a nice path to the medbay, and then you can have a great party in there. Learning to actually fight invaders - or do invasions yourself - is a useful skill and a major part of the game, don't shy away from it. You might need it when, say, a boarding drone invades in flagship phase 3. (Unless it appears in your sensors room, in that case feel free to completely ignore it.)
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Apr 23, 2014 01:00
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Working on one of my last achievements. Any advice for getting "Clash of the titans"? I'm getting sick of crystal A.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:04
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"Drive your enemy towards the medbay with venting" is generally my favourite strategy too. Once they're in the medbay almost any crew should be able to defeat them in combat.OAquinas posted:Of course, all this goes out the window if the boarders are Lanius. In that scenario you do the exact opposite: open ALL interior doors and just bumrush them. Something more along the lines of "just keep them distracted and gradually whittle away their health by rotating your crew in and out of the room" seems like the only reasonable option to me. So basically what you do with the Boarding Drone if it hits something important and you don't have level 2 oxygen.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:06
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bobfather posted:The boarding heavy ships like the Mantis B are really, really gimped now. With the reduced scrap payouts for boarding, and the fact that stores are still fairly random, you can definitely get into a situation where you have a 4-man boarding team that is running from every 3rd encounter and can't make ends meet.  
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Apr 23, 2014 01:08
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uXs posted:I've been watching Northernlion play FTL AE on YouTube, and he does this, but in the stupidest way possible. It's infuriating. He'll vent almost his entire ship, even letting boarders destroy medbay, O2, and doors, rather than actually fighting them. Even when the boarders actually start in the medbay and it would be the easiest thing in the world to run a guy over and kill them before they destroy half his ship. I used to watch Northernlion, but he is very much a jack of all trades and master of none when it comes to basically everything he LPs (even the really massive things like BoI). He'll commonly mention other streamers or LPers as being much better than him at a given game, and it's those guys you wanna watch if you want to see competent gameplay. Watching somebody who is worse than me at a given game is one of my least favorite things. NL's first look videos are pretty great though. Anyways, boarding has a much higher chance to net you equipment/crew now, which I think more than makes up for less scrap. Though I think it would be a lot cooler if the equipment was maybe chosen from weapons/drones/augments? that the ship has when applicable. Also, boarding can be a hell of a lot easier on a lot of ships now, given Zoltan shield bypass and emergency respirators, that completely opens up fighting Zoltan ships and Automated ships. And whats more, I think that boarding ships with cloning bays is generally much easier than ships with medbays, because unless the ship has a LOT of melee competent crew, then you can usually bust the system before they can all revive (or just shoot it, which is what you almost have to do with medbays). It's also gloriously easy with Lanius if you just park them in the clone bay, because the rest of the crew will fight you down to 10% of their health, then run to another room, leaving you to destroy the bay before you go and finish them off. AndroidHub fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 01:18
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AndroidHub posted:I used to watch Northernlion, but he is very much a jack of all trades and master of none when it comes to basically everything he LPs (even the really massive things like BoI). He'll commonly mention other streamers or LPers as being much better than him at a given game, and it's those guys you wanna watch if you want to see competent gameplay. Watching somebody who is worse than me at a given game is one of my least favorite things. NL's first look videos are pretty great though. Eh, I'm watching it as much for his commentary as for the gameplay. Maybe I'm easily amused. But it still annoys me to see him skipping over the teleporter in shops like it's not even there, when I feel it's pretty much the single most powerful upgrade in the game.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:25
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Irony Be My Shield posted:"Drive your enemy towards the medbay with venting" is generally my favourite strategy too. Once they're in the medbay almost any crew should be able to defeat them in combat. Its actually a great idea. In the Lanius A I vent literally every room except the pilots and upgrade the doors. By the time they get to the pilot, they're dead.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:27
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Opening up a door and then slamming it shut again after half the boarders walk through makes a pretty huge difference all the time. You fight 4 on 2 and only have two people banging on the door so it takes longer for them to open it.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:03
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Welp, not bad for a 2nd time playing the game. Abandoned the first run because I was doing so poorly, got to Sector 7 before forgetting poo poo was on fire and having it take out my last hull point. Easy mode of course. I had a good run going, full crew, vulcan and a really nice laser, etc etc. I just needed to manage my resources better. The game is super engaging and it really forces you to pay attention to what's going on at all times. I think watching LethalFrag has helped me understand the game better as well.
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Apr 23, 2014 07:12
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Irony Be My Shield posted:This doesn't seem like a great idea unless you can deal with them very quickly or you have an excellent oxygen system. Lanius are basically walking hull breaches and you're likely to bring your oxygen levels dangerously low by doing this. Oxygen will try to equalize between connected rooms, so by opening all doors it makes it so they're draining the entire ship instead of just one room. Well, it won't be totally equal and that room will eventually run out of oxygen but it'll slow the drain and without it Lanius are about as threatening as a human or slug.
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Apr 23, 2014 07:32
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Welp, had a really promising run until I misjudged the final boss's health and it FTL'd away with my boarding party. Was downhill from there. :\
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Apr 23, 2014 07:53
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If you have a cloning bay, it counts as the flagship getting destroyed, not actually jumping away. In my last run, after some trouble with the final four crewmembers, I lured them all into the cloaking room, blew up the ship and recovered my boarders.
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Apr 23, 2014 08:01
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Woo! Unlocked both the stealth cruiser and the Lannius ship. Just have Rock, Slug and Crystal to go. Still only one victory under my belt though.
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Apr 23, 2014 09:23
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I did not get the achievement for making it to sector 8 with less than 20% O2 on the Lanius ship, despite carefully managing my O2 levels the entire time. Could there be a bug with quitting and continuing that prevents this? I really don't want to do that again, I hate running with such minimal crew.
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Apr 23, 2014 09:27
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DrGreatJob posted:I did not get the achievement for making it to sector 8 with less than 20% O2 on the Lanius ship, despite carefully managing my O2 levels the entire time. Minimal crew? I did this one with a full 8. 5 lanius, 1 human, 1 engi, 1 mantis. The Mantis and Engi sat off in the sensors room the whole time but they survived. Well, until the flagship blew up my ship because I'm a bad.
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Apr 23, 2014 12:21
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I believe on Lanius A you can have piloting, shields, weapons, and engines sealed and oxygenated and still be at 19%. You need to be extra observant of hacking drones that are headed for your door system though, and to toggle oxygen off if you see them about to attach to the system.
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Apr 23, 2014 12:31
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Getting that Lanius achievement is really hard, usually hacking drones gently caress it all up. Honestly the best way would be to just replace your non-Lanius crew as soon as possible and run a vacuum ship. Saves you an energy point for oxygen too.
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Apr 23, 2014 12:35
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Kuros posted:Welp, not bad for a 2nd time playing the game. Abandoned the first run because I was doing so poorly, got to Sector 7 before forgetting poo poo was on fire and having it take out my last hull point. Easy mode of course. For as frustrating as a lovely run can be, I think it can be more rewarding if you can make it far with one. Honestly I feel like this game should track low score victories as well as high score victories. It's more rewarding to win the game with a bio laser, burst laser II and hacking rather than two Vulcans, flack cannon, and a full mantis boarding crew.
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Apr 23, 2014 12:35
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Started a Stealth Ship run with the intent to unlock the B variant since I've hardly touched it (it was the first non-engie ship I unlocked when I was still learning how to play and so I kept getting owned and shelved it until now) and the game gave me a Flak II at the exit beacon in sector 1. 
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Apr 23, 2014 13:02
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Almost got my Slug A run last night. Ended up finding a charge ion that let me plow through most shields, which let me play defensively and use the bio beam up until sector 7. The problem was I only had a late find flak 1 and that charge laser that shoots two shots and decreases charge time as it levels. I went into the flagship with two charge ions, that charge laser and flak. No drones an only two decent boarders. By syncing up my volleys I was able to bust through shields and keep the flagship from really doing a lot through phases 1 and 2. The boarders were basically dedicated to taking out the missile room, and my cloak managed to keep me safe from the drone swarm. Unfortunately, the third phase got all three missiles from its first volley through my 48% evasion and they crippled my o2, weapons and cloak. After that I couldn't get back online fast enough to break their super shield, they mind controlled my pilot, missiled my engines and the super weapon destroyed me. SO CLOSE. If I had found a single better weapon than one of those charge ions or the charge laser, I probably would have been set.
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Apr 23, 2014 13:17
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I only been playing a few weeks, so I haven't turned on the advanced content yet. I started a few Stealth B runs last night and managed to get a pre-igniter midway through the first sector from a surrendering ship. The lack of shields is totally trivial when you instantly one-shot every ship in the first three sectors with the Glaive beam. Hopefully I'll get an ion bomb or something soon to supplement it.
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Apr 23, 2014 13:33
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If you've gotten as far as messing around with the Stealth B, you should probably turn the advanced content on. It makes the game a little harder, but a lot more interesting. I wonder if there could be alternative game modes implemented sometime. Like a free-roaming mode where you have to try to liberate as many rebel-controlled beacons as possible, or something like that.
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Apr 23, 2014 13:44
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I bought this game the day it came out, only ever playing on Normal, and until this week I'd only beaten the game once, with Crystal B. But suddenly something clicked and I've gotten five wins this week with a bunch of different ships. It's so weird, and the best part is that it doesn't feel like luck, it feels like I'm actually getting the hang of it. Now I'm just starting to feel bad that it took so long. Here's the first, with the Slug C: Interestingly, three of my wins have had a Breach II. That thing kicks rear end.
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Apr 23, 2014 13:56
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Choking out the enemy is fun as poo poo. Hack o2 room, board with lanius 2man team. Destroy 02 and have your crew run around the ship without stopping to fight. Retreat to o2 room as needed.
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Apr 23, 2014 15:10
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Tried an Engi C run just now. Due to a variety of events, ended up with an Ion Intruder Drone, a Boarding Drone and a Fire Drone. Not very practical, but a wonder to behold when it worked. Of course in the end due to picking up a teleporter and Glaive Beam late game I ended up not using any of those for the flagship, which rather defeats the point of an Engi ship, but a win is a win.
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Apr 23, 2014 15:48
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Shibawanko posted:Getting that Lanius achievement is really hard, usually hacking drones gently caress it all up. Honestly the best way would be to just replace your non-Lanius crew as soon as possible and run a vacuum ship. Saves you an energy point for oxygen too. Yeah, even the 600 scrap in storage one is less of a pain. Then again I might have been particularly lucky that run.  
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Apr 23, 2014 16:16
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3 Rock C runs in a row without a Rock homeworld!  I always plan my routes to catch as many red sectors as possible too.
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Apr 23, 2014 16:30
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FrickenMoron posted:3 Rock C runs in a row without a Rock homeworld! You have no idea how many runs I've had get a Crystal crewmember only for the Rock Homeworlds to not show up. In fact, does anyone know when the "type" of each sector is decided? Could I savescum to re-determine what the next red sector is?
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Apr 23, 2014 16:56
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