Fucking shields!
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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I'm so invested in the cloaking/boarding party playstyle that I don't actually know how to play with Zoltan ships 
Same. Except with multiverse, they make it pretty viable to board ships with Zoltans. The duskbringers are a faction of Zoltans who suicide bomb the enemy ship.
I don't even know where to begin playing vanilla FTL anymore.
I never actually played modded FTL. I didn't know where to begin or how much of a pain it would be to start.
Just look up FTL multiverse. They have an install wizard now. Installing it before they launched the wizard was the absolute worst experience I have EVER had with modding. Even my computer programming bestie had issues with it.
I looked it up. I saw a veritable wall of options and patch builds here:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/ftl-multiverse
Is there a place that makes it easier and has it roughly all in one place?
https://subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35332#p122359
This is probably a better starting point.
Appreciated!
Course! Have fun 
Damn. The forum link comes up blank after that initial link looked promising.
https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=35332
Weird, idk what that's about. If you just look up subset games Multiverse you should be able to find it easily enough though.
My link works fine for me, did you try to copy paste and send it to yourself? I think it's missing the # onward
I'll try that.
I highly recommend it, there's like 18 pages of ships to unlock with most of them having A B and C variants like vanilla.
antidrone or sysrep is meh, two combat or one combat one defense are almost always better. And i think you need only one beam, i think pike is better synced to bl2 if i remember correctly?
I got the antidrone just for that one phase of the boss fight. I haven't tried it before.
And I just got enough system power this sector to turn on the pike + halberd combo and I'm absolutely rampaging with it.
Aren't there like 10 drones there and this thingy disables like 1
uhhhh.... 
Anti drone is never ever worth it. Especially at the cost of shield upgrades. Those 2 extra shields negate drone attacks way better than anti drones. Anti drones if gotten for free are best used against the flagship depowered and still sitting right in the path of oncoming missiles.
Also pick either the pike or halberd, you don't need both, it's a waste of power. It's better to have some empty power slots on weapons cause they act as damage buffers for systems, your unpowered extra bars get deactivated when your system is hit instead of one you're using so you keep the system online. It's good to upgrade everything to level 2 even if you never power it up to there for that reason. Then 02 takes 2 damage to disable instead of 1, piloting is the most crucial for this so you don't totally lose evasion if hit there. I'd ditch the combat drone later on if anything better comes up or you're lacking in system upgrades. You can't aim a combat drone and they aren't good shield busters cause it's hard to time volleys with them. If you don't have hacking, cloaking or mind control, I'd sell everything but a halberd, burst 2 and letos (I usually save my missiles to take out the shields om the flagship so I can focus my first volley on taking out their missiles). Upgrade shields to at least 3 and keep 150 scrap for cloaking or hacking.
You aren't going to be able to use two halberds so sell the one in your cargo, I forget what the leto does, it's been a few months since I played any FTL. I would say sell the system repair because you have a solid crew going on, replace it with the anti-drone and maybe swap out the leto with the breach because that will draw a lot of the AIs crew to repair rooms where you can lance them with your beam weapons. Other than that you look like you're in good shape but I would work on maxing out your shields for end game.
but why shouldn't I have two halberd beams? I have a burst laser 2. I have a hacking bay. I can always decide to power up the breach missile if they have 4 shield layers.
The defining moment of FTL for me was hacking the shields then one-shot killing the final boss with double halberds
Posted above but shields aren't immune to beams, the negate 1 beam damage per shield, so a halberd doing 2 damage per room hit can pierce a single shield for half damage.
Up to you I'm not necessarily the best FTL player.
Shields actually only negate 1 beam damage and the halberd does 2, if they only have one shield bubble you can still halberd through with one, and if your sweep includes the shield room first you could disable the last layer and get 2 dmage on subsequent rooms not to mention the second beam you follow with immediately.
What are your engines at? More engines is better for dodging incoming missiles and lasers rather than shield tanking the lasers and ion, plus the more you dodge the longer your Zoltan shield will last preventing boarding/hacking/mind control. You don't necessarily need the reactor power to run them all the time, you can drop o2, drone, or medbay power and put it in engines when taking fire
Relying on hacking shields will get you killed, especially if the enemy has cloaking. Get weapons that can knock down shields then use the beams. You don't even have to destroy the shield room just knock them down and time your beams to kill their weapons/drones/whatever system is threatening.
Hack weapons and trigger it right before they fire their biggest one, for the flagship I usually do 1 power hack into their teleporter to send them back, or full power into drones to stop their boarding drone, or full hack the missile room. If the flagship hacks you in a bad room jump away and try again. Hack piloting to guarantee hitting with your weapons.
. Also backup battery is really really useful if you can find it
FTL is one of my favorite games of all time. Let me know if you have any other specific questions about strategies and I can help you out.
you can get REALLY creative with mind control, teleporter, and hacking. One goofy thing you can do is kidnap enemies by mind controlling them and teleporting them onto your ship and make them stand in an airlock until they die
I'm buying a second BL2 and ditching missile weapons entirely in favor of the hacking. I'm gonna have 2 Halberds and 2 BL2 and I'm going to do 1-2 then 2-1 based on where their shields are or if they're defending against hacking. Passing up teleporter and mind control and going full on damage. Drone system is kinda useless right now but we'll see if I can get a pair of defense drones going in the last couple sectors
Nice that 2nd BL2 is gonna make things easy. Hack the flagship piloting or missile room, shoot your 2 BL2s then use the beams to hit piloting, shields, and missiles. hacking shields is a noob trap against the flagship
update: I got a cloak in sector 7
use it on either the missile volley, or the drone/power surge. sometimes they happen at the same time and you can dodge a ridiculous amount of damage. when you use the cloak you can take some reactor power out of engines, but keep enough to stay at 100% evasion
You're gonna sweep
2 bl2s, you could take out the missiles, auto fire on shields the rest of the time and probably still win with solid shields and evasion. Happiness is 2 warm bl2s and a warm flak 1, and they're warm.cause you've got a pre-ignitor. Fuck I love FTL. Easily my favorite video game.
Ditch the drones, you have 2 bl2s and 2 halberds, though I'd keep.the missiles to wreck the shields and then you can go ham on the single halber and dual bl2s. Mind control is useful at least to counter flagship mind control and hacking is amazing, I'd never pass up hacking for much other than a cloak
In the end I never came across any good drones (except the super shield one I sold for being redundant) so the only thing the system was good for was getting the "29 power in systems" achievement to unlock the B layout.
I won with 2 BLs and the Halberd with the first two stages going down like chumps and the third stage getting me about 1/2 HP because at one point it got too hectic with boarders and mind control, but no one died. 3 ships unlocked in 1 run!
Hacking or mind control would have fixed that third phase problem! However, i get it, when you get into a serious RNG blessing, the tendedny is to tske it as fsr as you can. Ive learned that being conservstive with offensive despite temptstion is usually best. With versatility and good volley techniques busting shields with and doing damafe with less firepower is easier, unpowered weapon slots are however going to safe your life some day if you embrace em. But a win is always a win in FTL! Sounds like a really fun run. What ships did you unlock?
I unlocked Mantis by winning with Zoltan, I got Zoltan B, and then I also got Lanus by getting my 4th unlocked ship
Mantis A? That's a really fun ship. If you haven't played around with boarding yet, you'll need to with it.
I've played the wheels off this game on easy mode and now for the last year or so I'm doing a fresh save on medium
If you really want to go nuts try the FTL Multiverse mod. It adds over 100 new ships, new alien races, different factions for aliens, unique crew members, about a million new weapons, events, quests, ship internal upgrades and more.
I've been playing it a lot lately and it's so good
For a mod that adds lots of new stuff that's closer to vanilla FTL check out Captain's Edition mod
You know if all that works with a mod manager that can preserve your saves between rulesets?
I'm not sure, but you could always do a 2nd install of the game to keep your vanilla game and save seperate or you could back up your vanilla save file and drop it back in when you want to revert to vanilla
I'd just skip straight to hard. Medium and hard aren't thaaaat different but the enemy AI is a lot less random in hard mode and will target systems strategically and stuff.
FTL is one of my favorite games of all time. Let me know if you have any other specific questions about strategies and I can help you out you can get REALLY creative
You should, if all goes well, be able to win. I'd look for a defense drone, I'd upgrade shields to at least 3 bubbles (I know you have the Zoltan shield, that helps, but still, for the flagship you're going to want more shields), and I'd maybe swap out a beam for a pew-pew if you can find a decent one. Or upgrade your hacking. That works too. And sell some stuff. I'd sell both the system repair and the anti-drone, but that's just because I find the anti-drone downright useless. Sell one of your missiles, probably the breach, and sell a beam, you absolutely don't need 3 of them. With that cash you can buy some upgrades, I would prioritize hacking and oxygen. A helm upgrade also wouldn't hurt, but only do that if you have the cash for it, I wouldn't make it a priority!
System repair is good to have if you already have drones. The helm upgrade actually should have been priority #1! It's not for the effect but the damage buffer. If helm is at level 2 your evasion doesn't immediately go to zero when helm takes 1 damage. The compound effect of piloting being knocked out can be absolutely devastating and I'd suggest it as the very first thing you spend scrap on. Strictly because it let's helm take an extra hit before being totally disabled. The same applies to a few systems though I'd make it less a priority. A level 2 med bay or o2 room doesn't ever need to be powered to level 2, but the empty power slot ensures the system will run after a hit, I'd especially consider doing this for weapons and if you have dome extra scrap near end game and are okay working with 3 shields, that power slot that doesn't amount to a full shield still means you keep your shield at full even if it's hit once instead of losing layer if one laser shot gets through.