GENERAL
Always expect to die. Always. No matter if it's your first run, or your 30th after having completed the game several times on Normal, expect that you'll die and you'll have a better time. Make it a challenge of "how long can I last" rather than getting frustrated when you die. Dying is part of the experience of a roguelike; if you can accept that, you're set. Of course, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't plan ahead, especially for the boss fight.
NAVIGATION
Delay jumping to the next sector as much as you can. Each one is progressively harder, so by squeezing everything you can out of each sector, you'll become better and better prepared to face each subsequent one. Some tips regarding that:
- Try to stay as close to the Rebel fleet edge as you can.
- If you have long-range scanners or have otherwise scouted the sector, priorize ships. You're guaranteed to get an event and in most cases, a ship fight (as opposed to risking having nothing at all and losing one turn and one fuel).
- Then, priorize distress beacons; same rationale as above, you get a guaranteed event.
- After that, priorize beacons with lots of connections. This is essential if you have long-range scanner, as it maximizes the number of beacons you will scan for ships, but also even if you don't, as you'll still be able to see shops and distress calls.
- Via any scouting method, you should consider carefuly if you want to jump into any of the hazards (asteroids/solar flares/ion storms). You're always guaranteed an event; in the case of asteroids, it seems to be a guaranteed ship fight (however, flares and ion storms sometimes have boarders, netting you little aside from melee experience). It may be worth your while if the hazard is something you're prepared to deal with (ex. if your shields are above what's expected for this sector, the asteroid field may even work in your favor).
- Lastly, priorize nebulae, since the fleet advances less there (but you might get no event at all, therefore priorize them last).
- Avoid shops if you don't have any scrap nor anything you can sell. Again, it's a waste of a turn and fuel. Otherwise, use your best judgement and planning; if you're looking for a specific, non-system piece of equipment, you need to visit more of them; however, if you're saving for something, skip them.
It is absolutely imperative that you turn on the "Show Beacon Paths on Hover" option. This will let you see all beacons connected to any one beacon in the map, not just the one you're currently on. This is essential for even the most basic planning of your route.
Your planned route should include alternate paths in case the fleet advances faster/slower than you estimated (i.e. if two possible main routes exist, take the one that has the most surrounding beacons you can jump to, especially if they're all interconnected like a web). This will also eliminate the chance of getting stranded in a dead end and having to backtrack through the Rebel fleet, losing fuel in the best case and hull/crew/dying in the worst (remember that fleet fights give no rewards).
EVENTS
In general, it is in your best interest to avoid away missions (alien spiders, disease outbreaks and such) unless you have an equipment/crew that gives you a blue option. For the regular, white "I'll go" choices, the "bad" result is usually crippling and can bring down an entire run. You might want to experiment at first to learn the possible outcomes of each (and, well, to sate your curiosity).
Events in general give a good idea of what you can lose if you gamble with them; sending someone to put out fires may get them killed, cruising through an asteroid field may damage your hull, etc. You should consider the deadlier ones only if you're so far ahead that you can afford to lose a crew member or hull (and remember it can be ANY crew member, even that master pilot you've had from the start), or so desperate that you will probably die anyway if you don't get a lucky shot; this is pretty rare.
UPGRADING
If you're new to the game, you might be wondering how does one cloak, board the enemy ship, or use drones. The answer is that most ships have to find and buy those specific systems in shops. A few of the unlockable ships start with one of those upgrades, to the detriment of something else (ex. both variants of the Stealth Cruiser, as the name might imply, have cloaking, but they don't have shields; others lack sensors, or door control systems). For the ships that are missing systems, you can always buy them at shops at varying prices (shields are 150 scrap, for example, while sensors are only 40). The single exception (that I know of), is the Federation Cruiser, who cannot equip the cloaking system, in exchange for the artillery gun it comes equipped with (admittedly, using both at once would be a game breaker).
Do not make the mistake of excessively priorizing offense to the detraction of defense. Particularly, try to get the engines up to five at least, i.e. the point of diminishing returns (where each additional upgrade gives you less than 5% dodge). This will save you when you're up against ships with shield-bypassing weapons like missiles and bombs, or simply overwhelming your shields; it will also speed up your FTL charging speed, which can save your life when you find yourself into an encounter you really want to get out of.
Upgrading systems is usually less of a waste than it seems. They not only provide enhanced performance (which you might live without in systems like O2 generation or the medbay), but additional DURABILITY. A level 2 O2 system can take one point of damage without risking suffocating your entire crew (or forcing you to go repair it in the heat of battle).
WEAPONS
The first thing you need to know is that there are several types of weapons types (damage delivery), and also several types of damage they can inflict. These appear in different combinations, some being more frequent than others; in fact, some combinations don't actually exist.
Weapon types
- Lasers - These typically shoot in salvos. They are stopped by shields, but "stun" one level of the shield for a second or two per shot (independent of individual shot base damage), allowing coordinated attacks to eventually penetrate the shield. Each shot can be individually dodged.
- Beams - These are targetted in a special way, letting you draw a line that crosses several rooms; the beam will then trace that line, dealing its damage to every room it passes (even if it only touched a pixel of it; good use of this can let you hit four rooms even with the mini beam). These are stopped by normal shields and do NO damage to them, being useless except if the base bean damage is superior to the current shield level (which is rare), in which case they'll deal the difference in damage to each room. This makes them the last weapon you want to use in a salvo, when the shields are down. They CANNOT be dodged, making them really good against ships with high engines/evade (you might want to attack the cockpit or engines with these, in fact).
- Missiles - These consume one missile each time you fire them (even if they actually fire several missiles per activation). Missiles bypass normal shields, making them mostly used to target shield rooms and take them down. The can be dodged and also shot down by defensive drones. As will be mentioned later on, you should avoid abusing those, especially early in the game.
- Bombs - These also consume one missile per use, and can also be dodged (the bomb will harmlessly teleport into space). Bombs are teleported into the enemy ship, which is the source of their two main differences with missiles: they cannot be shot down by any defensive drones, and they don't cause hull damage. Like with missiles, avoid abuse; more below.
Weapon damage types:
- Normal - Normal damage usually damages the hull, the system in the room, and personnel if present. Exceptions may apply depending on the delivery system; for example, all bombs do no hull damage.
- Ion - Ion damage works very differently to all other forms of damage. Ion damage is not permament; instead, the system affected will be ionized and act as if was normally damaged. Ion damage wears off one point at a time, meaning a more powerful ion weapon will partially disable systems for longer. The other remarkable characteristic of ion damage is that, if it's stopped by normal shields, it will do its damage directly to the shield system, making it a great way to take down shields. Also, ionized systems can't have power redirected to/from them, and, unlike normal damage, unused power is NOT returned to the system, which depending on the situation can be pretty crippling.
- Hull - Hull damaging weapons do double damage to rooms that don't have any systems on them. They can still be used to damage systems and will do normal damage to them.
- Breach - Breach damage has a very high chance (usually 100%) of causing a hull breach, which leaks oxygen from the room until it is repaired. It typically does severe damage as well to hull, systems and personnel.
- Fire - Fire damage usually does no damage at all to hull, systems or personnel, but has a high chance (usually 100%) of igniting fires in the affected rooms.
- Anti-biological - Anti-bio damage does no damage to anything but personnel. It is very useful to kill all the crew of a ship without destroying it.
The one thing to understand is that these are not "hard" categories (for example, many weapons have a smaller chance to cause fires and breaches), and exceptions/nuances abound. Always check carefully all your weapons' properties, detailed in its tooltip.
SHIP TO SHIP COMBAT
Avoid using missiles (and bombs) unless absolutely necessary (or in the boss battle). If you find yourself using more than one missile on average per fight, you're actually in bad shape and in a downward spiral. This might be unavoidable if you've had bad luck (or started with one of the more challenging ships), but typically you should not fire a missile until well into sector 5 or so. Rather...
Try to develop strategies to pierce shields without using missiles; the most important thing is that you should always, ALWAYS, fire your weapons in coordinated salvos. It does no good to shoot a laser burst, bringing down the shields, then having them regenerate by the time the next weapon is ready. In the most basic case this means waiting for them all to charge, then pausing and firing them, but remember that some weapons (like ion guns)'s shots travel more slowly. If you fire an ion gun at the same time as a laser gun, the laser shots will hit the shield first. This is usually (although not always) the opposite of what you want!
The optimal order and timing in which to fire is not always obvious; for example, you might actually want to fire the ion gun last if you know the other weapons will bring down the shield and you want to ionize a system rather than damage it. Beams should obviously be fired last of all (as they suffer the most from shields and do no damage to them); weapons that pierce one level of shields would typically be fired next to last (probably at the shields if you have a beam). Hitting a shield with a heavy laser is usually a waste, as it'll cause the same effect as a normal laser blast.
Zoltan super shields change all that; you want to bring them down as quickly as possible and timing has no effect, so you might as well queue autofire on all weapons. Remember that even beam weapons DO damage the Zoltan shield (twice their base damage, i.e. as if two rooms were hit), and heavy lasers do full damage to them as well.
If you're outmatched, JUMP AWAY! It's easy to forget this is an option in the heat of battle, but a retreat may be less costly than a bloody victory (to say nothing of a defeat!). If you're badly damaged, priorize repairing the cockpit and the engines so you can keep charging the FTL.
You can set a weapon to do the opposite of what the current autofire setting is (i.e. to fire one shot if it's on, or to autofire if it's off) by holding a specific key when clicking its target. This key is configurable. I recommend having autofire off at all times, and use this key when you want to autofire particular weapons (at the begining when you might only have one weapon, when dealing with Zoltan shields, when the enemy has no shields, etc.). For me it's much less confusing than switching between both modes, then having to remember which mode are you in to use reverse logic for the shift key.
REWARDS
There's three victory outcomes when fighting a ship: they surrender (and you accept it), the ship is destroyed, or the enemy crew dies. They typically yield increasing rewards in that order; particularly, killing the crew via fire/boarding/etc. is always by far the most rewarding outcome. Keep in mind that boarding is also very risky if you're not very careful (don't destroy the ship or let it FTL with your crew inside!).
Generally, destroying tends to yield more scrap, and surrender yields more fuel/missiles/drones, but usually destroying is the better deal unless they offer a piece of equipment as well. With some experience, you should be able to tell when you're being shortchanged by a surrender offer depending on the sector/difficulty you're playing.
There are exceptions to this, though; slaver ships usually yield a slave on surrender (which you then free and joins your crew), which may be much better than any reward from destroying them (which kills everyone) depending on your situation. However, killing the crew sometimes leads to you freeing all slaves and choosing one of them to join your crew (so as usual, it's the best outcome).
FIRE
Venting air into space is by far the most efficient way to deal with fires. Turning off O2 generation will speed up this process considerably, so always do so.
Reinforced doors (system level 2) will prevent fire from spreading to adjacent rooms. If the room on fire does not house any system and is not in a heavy transit zone, you can simply let the fire consume all the oxygen in the room, which will in turn eventually extinguish it. Again, turning off O2 will speed this up. Remember, however, that a damaged door control will make doors revert to level 1, allowing fire to propagate again!
Remember that a system completely destroyed by fire will deduct one hull point.
Only try to extinguish them manually if you have no choice (like if the door control is busted), and even then, put all the crew you can into the room to extinguish it as soon as possible before it spreads or damages your crew. Extinguishing a fire with a lone crew member is usually suicide unless it just started in a 2x1 room. Obviously rock crew are ideal for suffocating fires.
BEING BOARDED
Depending on where they land and whether you have reinforced doors, venting air can be a very good way to deal with enemy boarders too. If nothing else, it can weaken them enough to be picked off by your crew. Again, turn off oxygen generation.
Having a couple mantises around the center of the ship can make for a great security team; rocks are good as well, but they move much more slowly, which is usually a hindrance when moving from the boarders to the medbay, etc.
Boarders will always try to flee a room if it has no oxygen, and will always head for the closest room that has oxygen (the computer seems to cheat a bit there and always know where that is, even if the enemy has no sensor vision of your ship). You can actually use this to your advantage, venting air from all rooms except for the one you want them to go to (unless of course you need those rooms manned because a ship battle is ongoing).
However, opening all those doors will make boarders be able to travel your ship more easily, which can be dangerous, even outside ship-to-ship combat, as they can stupidly destroy the O2 generator or the door controls, and also every system they destroy will deduct a hull point.
Obviously, always try to herd enemy boarders to your medbay, as the healing provided is a huge advantage (you basically can't lose there unless you're severely outnumber and/or facing mantises). If you're in a hurry, to kill the boarders, you can even vent the air from the medbay; your team will take damage from both oxygen deprivation and the fight, but even level 1 medbay healing will make them survive for quite a bit, while the enemy boarders drop like flies.
You can split enemy boarding parties by remotely opening a door, then closing it when one of them crosses it. You can then send crew to fight each half of the boarding party before they break open the door and reunite.
BOARDING THE ENEMY
A common beginner mistake is not knowing how to recall your boarding crew. You have to click the "teleport back" button on your cloaking system, then click the room in the enemy ship where they are currently in (NOT where you want them to teleport; they will always come back to the teleport room). This means that you must have all your crew in a single room to teleport them all back. A nice feature, however, is that if you have four crew in a large room, you can recall them back all at once; they will be ported back to adjacent rooms to your teleporter.
This might be obvious, but Sensors Level 2 are a must if using boarding as a strategy. It is imperative to know at all times the enemy crew's numbers, locations and race composition.
Boarding ships with a medbay can be a dangerous proposition; try disabling it first. Almost NEVER board an automated ship, they have no air and the base teleporter cooldown won't be up in the time your crew takes to suffocate. You CAN board them with Rockmen and an upgraded teleporter, though, but use caution.
In general, the biggest challenge when boarding ships is to keep their systems disabled (particularly, weapons and the medbay) without eventually destroying the ship. Ion guns can go a very long way towards that goal. Lacking those, the best boarding opportunities would be targetting ships with neither a medbay nor weapons that can get past through your defenses (this usually means missiles/bombs).
Fire weapons make a great combo with boarding. In fact, fire weapons can take out the enemy crew by themselves if they don't have a medbay; just keep setting rooms on fire, they'll keep losing health putting them out with no chance to recover it. Even if they do have one, sometimes they won't be able to keep the fire from destroying it. As a side note, the fire beam lights on fire each square it hits, meaning that unlike other beams, you want to have it run across as many squares, not rooms, as possible.
However, be aware that, like yours, enemy ships lose a hull point when a system is completely destroyed, including by fire; this CAN result in the ship's destruction if it has very few hull points left, potentially with your boarding crew inside! Similarly, working towards killing the enemy crew by fire (and possibly taking several shots from them when you could have finished them early) only to see the ship literally go down in flames can be pretty frustrating.
DRONES
An integral part of drone strategy is knowing when the drone part used to build a drone will be recovered, and when it won't.
Drones for use within your ship (repair, antipersonnel) will stay with you even after you depower them or jump, making them extremelly cheap to use. The only case when you'll lose the drone is when it is physically destroyed by boarders or otherwise. Further, if the Drone Bay is powering any drones, it will slowly repair all drones stationed in it, even if they're not the ones being powered.
Drones for space use (anti-ship, beam, defense) will be lost when you jump away. An exception to this is when you have the Drone Recovery Arm augment, which will return the drone part to you when you jump, making them essentially free unless they're hit by enemy fire (uncommon, but can happen with both offensive and defenive drones), so you should definitely make a priority to get this augment if you already have these kinds of drones.
Drones for use within the enemy ship (boarding) will be lost after jumping, no matter what. Also, boarding drones can be shot out of the air (if the enemy has a defense drone, or, uncommonly, by simultaneous enemy fire, just like other weapons shots), AND will do nothing (and be lost) against a Zoltan shield.
CLOAKING
Cloaking is very useful if used right, because aside from the huge evade bonus, the enemy ship can't charge their weapons when you're using it. You can use it right at the start of a battle for a huge tactical advantage, as you'll fire your weapons while theirs are at zero charge. Alternatively (or complementarily), you can time it to use just as the enemy launches a barrage at you, to make most if not all shots miss.
Upgrade the cloak as much as you can, ideally to level 3. A 5 seconds cloak won't do a lot in a battle aside from evading occasional barrages; a 15 seconds cloak is almost a game-breaker. Remember that cloak cooldown is the same no matter what level it is. However, also remember that the cloaking system is ionized during cooldown, meaning you can't use whatever power you allocate to it in the meantime.
Firing your own weapons when cloaked will deplete its timer very quickly, usually taking you out of cloak, so again, fire in salvos when all weapons are ready. It can also be extremely useful to deal with things like fires, boarders, etc. in relative peace. Using your beam weapons do NOT reduce cloak timer, however: thanks to BKT from the FTL official boards for this tip.
There is, however, an augment, Cloaking Weapons, which makes it so that you can use ANY weapon and not detract from the cloak timer, letting you fire at will from cloak. Needless to say, this augment is really useful for ships that have cloaking, especially if the cloak is fully upgraded and/or your weapons have short charges.
Remember that the enemy can repair, etc. when you're cloaked, so if you've damaged them and all your weapons are ready, there's no reason to wait for the cloak to wear off.
POWER
A good player will do things like turning off O2 generation during a fight to squeeze some more power for the other systems; you can always depower the engines a bit in between enemy salvos to power the O2 generation back. You can also depower shields to power engines when fighting a missile-equipped ship, or viceversa when they have only laser/ion/beam weaponry.
GAME ENHANCEMENTS
See here.
LAST SECTOR
See here.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the people at both
the NeoGAF forums and
the official FTL forums.
