The four crew victory was like watching Beethoven play the piano - crazy strat. I think you’re safe bullying that corner so long as you have mantis? Because of the bonus movement speed, you can get two bonus mantis hits in that square room (where you got that crew kill). Seriously some scooby-doo level hijinks in that micro, well done.
Very interesting! Now I have to try the Fed C no-weapons, no-new-systems, no-new-augments challenge run again. I had given up on it, but these tactics with more mantisses and the clone bay changes things.
@@mikehopley Almost had it today, but lost due to a few small mistakes in the third stage. Let my mind controlled crew damage the artillery and lost the engine guy. By the time I took out the weapon rooms, I only had 3 hull left. With max engines and trained crew you can usually take the power surges with (mostly) no damage, but alas the RNG was not with me. Chronic lack of mantisses during the run didn't help either. :)
@@mikehopley I beat the challenge on hard thanks to a shop I could visit after phase 1! Both phase 1 and 3 brought me to 30% hull. I wonder how much phase 1 can be optimized. I went for Ion first, skipped the Laser, then teleported the rest of my boarding crew into the main part before extracting the Ion weapon boarders. But I was messing around instead of having a plan to take out the Missiles asap and let my boarders get a lot of unnessecary damage. This has convinced me that no-weapons is the optimal play for Fed-C because unless I died or got crippled in sector 1, I always easily reached the flagship with scrap to spare.
@@CardboardArm Congrats on completing the challenge! I can't agree that "no weapons" is the optimal play though. If it were optimal, you wouldn't take 10 months to beat the Flagship.
Great video as always :) Edits and thoughts as I watch: 19:30 this is possible no pause if you just cycle between any 4 tile room with them all stacked on eachother 54:20 Yeah thats the issue I feel with a lot of these extremely edge case micro strategies is that you only need them if you made bad decisions for the most part, and If you made bad decisions for the most part you won’t care about micro like this lmao. Even so, you see a lot of people get to the flagship with shit weapons and only a teleporter so the first two definitely have more merit.
I think there's two reasons I see this as worth my time. One is that it's interesting and some of the techniques can be applied elsewhere. The other is that I like being over prepared and having an extensive catalogue of techniques in my back pocket. You never know what FTL might do to you one day...
Looking forward to this. I found out on an accidental no offensive weapons run with the mantisC (worst RNG luck ever) that left behind boarders do get cloned between boss phases!
Wow, that's some filthy luck! That's one reason I like having stuff like this in my back pocket. Never expect to need it, but who knows what BS FTL might decide to pull one day...
@@mikehopley I'll have to tell the story now 🤣 Mantic C was the only ship I'd never had a winning hard run with, could never get a good tactic running aswell as bad RNG. Finally I got a winning run with fantastic luck EXCEPT no offensive weapons, not one in any store, no even a beam drone. Final load out: s.bomb, ion blast, &ion blast2 Defence drone, shield charger, Zoltan sheild + 2 auto reloaders Max hacking, 4 shields and full engines So in hindsight doable, but I had no idea if I would lose crew (and how many i could afford to lose) after the 1st boss phase. And a cloak would have been preferable to drones but I was trying to increase the chances of an offensive weapon! Made long and hard work of it but won with 5HP left. Look forward to being shown how to do it properly!
@@mikehopley no i didnt i used the lockdown abilities to kill the missiles but they kept repairing and i kept splitting my guys between shields and missiles i’m not rly sure what went wrong tbh other than i didn’t take out the lasers and beams
@@mikehopley i was also careful not to kill all the crew which maybe i should’ve just done i just started playing in hard and on normal killing all the crew was like the worst thing so i think i should just not be scared of the ai next time
@@mikehopley i had also had a pretty gnarly fight right before the flagship so went into it with like half health which i think also kind of screwed me
2 mantis brawlers fully upgraded, can catch some kills. I found dancing between rooms baiting rolls sometimes works too.I'd stay in 2 person rooms just to bait 2v1s and then stike. wish i watched this before i did so though. took hours. at least it was on easy. I didn't realise i could send more then 2 boarders on. And i normally leave my cloak and teleporters at level 1 x.x
"huh. guess i'll put fires in a hacked room." flagship watched my crew kill video.
They're learning!
randomly decided to watch the 4 crew boarding part again tonight. i love that this exists and love pushing the game to its limits. so sick
The four crew victory was like watching Beethoven play the piano - crazy strat. I think you’re safe bullying that corner so long as you have mantis? Because of the bonus movement speed, you can get two bonus mantis hits in that square room (where you got that crew kill). Seriously some scooby-doo level hijinks in that micro, well done.
Thank you! I think you have a pretty good chance with two Mantis. It's just quite tight. I haven't tested this enough to know how reliable it is.
Very interesting! Now I have to try the Fed C no-weapons, no-new-systems, no-new-augments challenge run again. I had given up on it, but these tactics with more mantisses and the clone bay changes things.
No cloaking or drones might make it rough. Good luck and have fun!
@@mikehopley Almost had it today, but lost due to a few small mistakes in the third stage. Let my mind controlled crew damage the artillery and lost the engine guy. By the time I took out the weapon rooms, I only had 3 hull left. With max engines and trained crew you can usually take the power surges with (mostly) no damage, but alas the RNG was not with me. Chronic lack of mantisses during the run didn't help either. :)
@@mikehopley I beat the challenge on hard thanks to a shop I could visit after phase 1! Both phase 1 and 3 brought me to 30% hull. I wonder how much phase 1 can be optimized. I went for Ion first, skipped the Laser, then teleported the rest of my boarding crew into the main part before extracting the Ion weapon boarders. But I was messing around instead of having a plan to take out the Missiles asap and let my boarders get a lot of unnessecary damage.
This has convinced me that no-weapons is the optimal play for Fed-C because unless I died or got crippled in sector 1, I always easily reached the flagship with scrap to spare.
@@CardboardArm Congrats on completing the challenge! I can't agree that "no weapons" is the optimal play though. If it were optimal, you wouldn't take 10 months to beat the Flagship.
Great video as always :)
Edits and thoughts as I watch:
19:30 this is possible no pause if you just cycle between any 4 tile room with them all stacked on eachother
54:20 Yeah thats the issue I feel with a lot of these extremely edge case micro strategies is that you only need them if you made bad decisions for the most part, and If you made bad decisions for the most part you won’t care about micro like this lmao. Even so, you see a lot of people get to the flagship with shit weapons and only a teleporter so the first two definitely have more merit.
Thanks! This one was a bit of pain, glad I've done it and glad I don't need to do it again. ;)
I think there's two reasons I see this as worth my time. One is that it's interesting and some of the techniques can be applied elsewhere. The other is that I like being over prepared and having an extensive catalogue of techniques in my back pocket. You never know what FTL might do to you one day...
Looking forward to this. I found out on an accidental no offensive weapons run with the mantisC (worst RNG luck ever) that left behind boarders do get cloned between boss phases!
Wow, that's some filthy luck! That's one reason I like having stuff like this in my back pocket. Never expect to need it, but who knows what BS FTL might decide to pull one day...
@@mikehopley I'll have to tell the story now 🤣
Mantic C was the only ship I'd never had a winning hard run with, could never get a good tactic running aswell as bad RNG. Finally I got a winning run with fantastic luck EXCEPT no offensive weapons, not one in any store, no even a beam drone.
Final load out: s.bomb, ion blast, &ion blast2
Defence drone, shield charger,
Zoltan sheild + 2 auto reloaders
Max hacking, 4 shields and full engines
So in hindsight doable, but I had no idea if I would lose crew (and how many i could afford to lose) after the 1st boss phase. And a cloak would have been preferable to drones but I was trying to increase the chances of an offensive weapon! Made long and hard work of it but won with 5HP left. Look forward to being shown how to do it properly!
@@jaymkay7211 Sweet, congrats on pulling off that win! Those weird runs can be stressful but so satisfying! =)
@@mikehopley Thank you. Definitely my weirdest, most stressful, and most satisfying run all in one!
@@jaymkay7211 Those are the best runs. Amazing how FTL can still give you those moments even when you've played a lot and know the game very well!
Good job, especially on the 4 crew only and on figuring these out. Long repetitive micro like that drives me nuts.
Thanks Ray! Yeah the micro is bad enough, then trying to do it at the same time as making the video gets a bit much.
holy shit thank you for this last night i lost an amazing run with crystal b (i know how is that even possible) in the flagship fight
You're welcome! Did you lose your Crystal crew on that run?
@@mikehopley no i didnt i used the lockdown abilities to kill the missiles but they kept repairing and i kept splitting my guys between shields and missiles i’m not rly sure what went wrong tbh other than i didn’t take out the lasers and beams
@@mikehopley i was also careful not to kill all the crew which maybe i should’ve just done i just started playing in hard and on normal killing all the crew was like the worst thing so i think i should just not be scared of the ai next time
@@mikehopley i had also had a pretty gnarly fight right before the flagship so went into it with like half health which i think also kind of screwed me
2 mantis brawlers fully upgraded, can catch some kills. I found dancing between rooms baiting rolls sometimes works too.I'd stay in 2 person rooms just to bait 2v1s and then stike. wish i watched this before i did so though. took hours. at least it was on easy. I didn't realise i could send more then 2 boarders on. And i normally leave my cloak and teleporters at level 1 x.x
I absolutely love this!
Glad you enjoyed it! That's always good to hear, especially when it's a super-niche topic like this one. Makes it feel worth making. =)