I finally made it through FTL! Once. On "easy" mode. But let's not dwell on details, shall we? :) Spoilers ahead!
The winning build was, at the time of the Big Fight:
Redtail Kestrel layout
6 power in shields (3 dots)
6 power in engines
3 power in cloaking
4 power in drone control
Anti-Ship Drone II
Burst Laser I
Basic Laser
Basic Laser
Small Bomb
7 crew members
Sensors, Doors, Oxygen, Medbay weren't really relevant, but for the record Medbay and Sensors were each upgraded by one point.
I think the two biggest pieces here were the Cloaking and the Small Bomb, both of which were *critical* to the second round of the boss fight. Without cloaking you will have a hard time surviving the Power Surge, and without the small bomb you will have a hard time getting past enough defenses to start damaging anything. (4 shields make it hard to do anything with lasers, and the defense drone makes it hard to get missiles in for a hit). The third most important piece was the anti-ship drone; once I got shields down enough to start hitting things the anti-ship drone kept a lot of pressure on and alternated between keeping shields low and actually ripping up some hull damage.
For my next steps, I'm going to bop around on easy for a bit longer and maybe unlock a few more ships, then I'll shift gears into normal mode and see what the differences are.
The winning build was, at the time of the Big Fight:
Redtail Kestrel layout
6 power in shields (3 dots)
6 power in engines
3 power in cloaking
4 power in drone control
Anti-Ship Drone II
Burst Laser I
Basic Laser
Basic Laser
Small Bomb
7 crew members
Sensors, Doors, Oxygen, Medbay weren't really relevant, but for the record Medbay and Sensors were each upgraded by one point.
I think the two biggest pieces here were the Cloaking and the Small Bomb, both of which were *critical* to the second round of the boss fight. Without cloaking you will have a hard time surviving the Power Surge, and without the small bomb you will have a hard time getting past enough defenses to start damaging anything. (4 shields make it hard to do anything with lasers, and the defense drone makes it hard to get missiles in for a hit). The third most important piece was the anti-ship drone; once I got shields down enough to start hitting things the anti-ship drone kept a lot of pressure on and alternated between keeping shields low and actually ripping up some hull damage.
For my next steps, I'm going to bop around on easy for a bit longer and maybe unlock a few more ships, then I'll shift gears into normal mode and see what the differences are.
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This is awesome, thanks for sharing this.
I am thinking that doors and O2 upgrades might not be as useful as I think. I haven't nabbed a cloak yet, but since the cloak comes standard with the Kestral Layout 2 I think I need to work on getting that upgrade. I can live without the missile by default and frankly don't use it that much as is.
Actually, the cloak is not standard with Kestrel's Plan B Layout - I had to pick that up somewhere on the way.
Oh. Ok that makes sense, thanks!
Got my wife playing FTL as of this evening. On her third-ever jump she wound up in front of a too-close sun with her Oxygen and Doors on fire. We switched to my machine and paired for a sector after that, then she fired up her own game again. This game is brutal, I tell ya. :)
It really is. Not as brutal as some Roguelikes i've played though. Like I said in an earlier review of FTL, it dares to be fun.