วีดีโอ

That sounds like my PC when failed to boot the BIOS.

... I have never considered it was possible to do crew kiddnaping on that ship without mind control... Really clever strategy of yours! Is there a video like this for the Hard version of the Flagship?

I've never seen / heard anyone talk about this (correct me if I'm wrong), but if you're about to go through nebula beacons it is a good idea to have an odd number of power bars in the reactor. Since ion storms cut your power in half, rounding it up to the next integer, you would have the same power with an odd number of bars as the next even number. Say you enter an ion storm with 9 power bars. You'll still get the same 5 as you would if you had 10. Any thoughts on this?

"I don't want to spoil your first experience of fighting the boss" - Translation: I want you to experience the sensation of every atom of hope you've ever had be instantly blinked out of existence without any chance of emotionally preparing yourself

6:00 Pulls them out of cloak - is that a bug?

just won my first game after like 80 hours by just... taking the first sectors slow and watching this video for the flagship. crazy how easy this game is with basic micro and patience

Where are you?

i love and hate this game xd

I've never been able to amass enough scrap to do any of this.

Now I remember why I stopped playing this game lol

Thank you for your tipps. Although I try to follow your advice, I always, always die, even on easy. 😞😖 I just don't have enough scrap to repair my ship and upgrade anything.

Hitting their o2 usually gets them to stop repairing other systems. Most times they prioritize things as o2, weapons, then shields. So slap the o2 any time you can to slow their returning to the fight.

Great video Mike. I've been playing this game at a relatively high level for about 8 years, but it wasn't until seeing your ion stacking in practice here that it became clear why you and other players are always advocating for these types of builds. Once the ions are stacked, it takes the full cooldown time for even a single shield bubble to reappear. It seems so obvious now - after all, it's why pulsars are so scary

my main issue when i play is bad rng when it comes to stores... i get an ass load of scraps every game but i very rarely get weapons in my stores, its always crew, ship modules and if i get weapons its usually ion, i dont get it

WOWWWW awsome techniques! I love this game xd hi from mexico!

"I twiddle my Zoltan around" is one of my new favourite Sentences from now on

Whoaaaa🎉

Amazing guide. Came back to FTL after a few years and these tips got me to the flagship for the first time ever. Whenever I engage an enemy ship I hear your voice telling me to "shoot them, in the weapons". Whenever I pillage vaccinations for a local plague, I think back to your advice about not being the good guys.

huh? where is your shields? is this a mod?

I remember finally having a few games under my belt... I was rocking in a Mantis boarding ship. Excellent game. One of my best. Everything going my way. Perfect crew. Ship is in great shape. Got scrap to spare. And yeah... I killed all the crew on the flagship... Thinking that would be that. Best ending right? Heh. Proceded to get WRECKED by that flagship AI. Nothing I could do. I didnt have much in the way of weaponry. I had a bio laser and a burst 1 i think. Thats all i needed for my boarders. I had 4 mantis! I Didnt need guns... Oh FTL you cruel mistress. Never made that mistake again.

Reddit taught me not to undervalue engines but here you are, with your impressive win streak telling me to. I don't know what to do lol

Great video, sent it to my newbie friends! My only criticism of this video is saying not to upgrade engines. Now you shouldn't upgrade too early, or past lvl 5 because it gives diminishing returns, but if you have lvl 5 engines and someone manning it, not only do you have around a 45% chance to dodge which is insanely powerful, but going invisible makes you have 100% evasion. This is how I managed to win my first runs, not having that evasion can be deadly when facing the flagship.

I have 100 hrs in ftl and have won easy 4 times now. I still cant beat normal 😭

I did this with a Glaive Beam on engi ship. Glaive beam with pre ignite is so OP.

I feel foolish because I just realized that manning only affects the "system power level, S" for Doors and Sensors, not for Piloting. Piloting is also a "subsystem" so my brain just latched onto the notion that it behaves like Doors and Sensors, but the level doesn't get increased by manning, you get a manning bonus. I've been in the habit of walking my pilot away from the console just before the pulsar hits, thinking I was sparing myself from a possible extra ion damage 🤦‍♂ I don't think I've ever made that decision while receiving incoming fire, so I don't think it's actually cost me anything other than time/attention to execute moving them away and then moving them back. I'll continue to consider doing this for Sensors and Doors, but will stop needlessly doing this for Piloting 🥲

What mod are you using that gives you all that scrap and missiles and stuff?

Mike Hopley why do defense 2 drones miss their shots often?

God I can’t believe I never thought about teleporting boarders onto weapon system rooms, and the class B mantis ship is my favorite one !

The referenced video is 9n7Q2KvVNkQ at about 12:05

This helped me A LOT to get my first Mantis B win! TYSM!!

How does this setup fair during the run though, not against the flagship? My immediate gut reaction is that it seems too resource hungry to be sustainable. In later sectors you are very dependent on the Ion bomb hitting, since if it misses you're punished with a ~20 second wait before being able to try to do damage again, so it seems like you'd end up hacking piloting every time. So now you're spending a missile and a drone part each fight, maybe even a couple of missiles. Meanwhile, my instinct is that you're going to struggle to back up the ion attack with physical damage, because you'll need to get up to 5 power to run any other weapons, so against late game enemies against whom you need to put like 4 damage into their weapon system to keep them neutralized, I feel like you'd really struggle.

Probably the best way to use this tactic over multiple volleys is starting O2 at 100% and just leaving it off. That gives you a timer for every volley. You can use the "arbitrary time" option at ftl-timing.mikehopley.org/ . The formula for volley N would be (8.1 * N) - 0.9, i.e. 7.2 seconds for the first volley, 15.3 for the second, etc. This will also work with different venting patterns as described in the app documentation. Without the shields buffer against this specific enemy, I now would NOT use the tactic, because blocking the Heavy Laser just opens you up to the Mini Beam hitting shields instead. If the Mini Beam is removed, I would use the tactic.

Mod available here: www.dropbox.com/s/fd91ymv42dr0eqi/Double%20TP.ftl?dl=0

I forgot -- Kazaaak is also an all-Mantis crew. Thanks Ray. Also I just remembered that "interfere and help the Zoltan ship" is all-Mantis too. - EDIT - There are five events in total with all-Mantis crew, see here: ftl.fandom.com/wiki/Mantis_Ships

I missed a few things for this video, see the additions in part 2: th-cam.com/video/55k5WmtR3V4/w-d-xo.html

Turns out you don't need to keep the drone "warm", you just need to let it fully recharge before depowering (a second or more). If you do that, it will store its charge until you turn it on. This makes the micro very clean. Thanks to mekloz for that.

7:09 crazy coincidence today I was also playing an engi B with triple defense drone build, it was two defense II for me

Scrap recovery arm is overrated. It's proven that it's unefficient if it was bought in mid sectors and risky in early sectors. Also it does take 1 augment slot, so don't buy it.

i've spent weeks and 30 hours playing FTL with no succesful runs - i watched your video last night and my first attempt the next day i beat it for the first time thanks to your advice. great video man

You reloaded the save? how? what am i missing here?

Nice thanks :-)

watched this video while farming engine and pilot exp, thank you!

>easy mode

It's a perfect introduction video!

great videos man. quick question: would you ever analyze multiverse?

9:52 honestly kinda wish the sheild drone did this instead; where it would surround the enemy ship and on it's intervals duplicate up to 5 times to reduce the chances of an enemy shot going off. also for it's design just if the 8 + 2 second formula wasn't so bad and just be like 8 seconds consistently or maybe just start at 6 seconds before ramping so you don't need to be frame perect againt heavy lasers with the stealth c. the design is so bad makes long battles easier but requires stalling with both cloaking and hacking to get full use a tool only useful duing in fight repairs. might as well just be an augment Phase Shift when cloak ends you have 2 super shield layers

And only one bar in cloning. That must have been sooooo fun.

I think the shield thing needs an asterisk: Upgrade shields early IF you don't have zoltan shields. Zoltan always goes first, and engine with zoltan can make it so you don't need the shields at all.

thanks to a rabbit-hole of research (and significant help + brainpower from kajelad), I can (annoyingly, maybe) point out that 29:56 to 30:04 (deleting 2 crew by ending the phase when they are sitting in Cloaking and Doors, and then the clarification that this doesn't work on hard) needs a small qualifier: on hard mode, any crew in Cloaking (or in the empty room between Cloaking and Hacking) at the end of P1 will survive, and will be deposited into the empty room between shields and lasers (empty room between Cloaking and Hacking will go to the empty room between shields and missiles) at the beginning of P2 any crew in the doors room at the end of P1 (even on Hard) will be deleted (or will die, whatever) in P2, the Drone Control room and the empty room between drones and the rest of the ship are "safe" -> they will be transported to the extra rooms flanking shields. the vertical empty room next to drone control (the one that is the mirror of Doors from P1) is "unsafe" -> any crew here at the end of P2 will die

I was just curious what your tips would be, and I never knew you could auto-fire a specific weapon. I can think of countless weapons that would work well on