According to my stats, I beat the flagship every 3-4 runs. Love the game and am actually quite good at it :P. I play only hard difficulty as well.
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Not to downplay skill, but it only gets you so far. Luck plays a significant factor
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Played it at my friend's house and beat it on my 3rd try with the federation cruiser, that artillery beam helps a lot.
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Boarding crew and bombs are the best way to take out the flagship TBH. Take out the 3 mean guns (missles, ion, then beam), leaving just the laser alone and its crewmember (so AI doesn't take over and the ship starts self repairing etc) once you have it down to just the laser, each round becomes trivial and you can pretty much pick it apart at your leisure.
Killing all of the crew except the guy manning the lasers during round 1 will save you from the mass boarding crews in rounds 2 and 3 (minus the boarding drone in round 2).
AE adds in the damned hacking module, and that can be a real pain if it hits something of yours that is vital. Its kind of a crapshoot on if that end sup being a factor though.
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I just tried AE for the first time... with the Stealth Cruiser... probably not a great idea. That ship is so "meh." With the cloak cooldown, I didn't think it was enough protection so I bought shields. So now I'm low on scrap with a system I don't really need yet. Maybe I'm playing wrong with that ship but it certainly doesn't fit my style.
Anyway, I very much dislike this new AE stuff. I was only just getting the hang of everything in the original version. That hacking really screwed me up when the flagship disabled my cloaking system and then fired it's volley of missiles.
There were a couple other things that I noticed about my playthrough with the AE content. First, resources (fuel, missiles, drones, scrap) get picked up in much lower quantities or else I had an uncharacteristically unlucky playthrough (but usually an unlucky playthrough for me is not finding free weapons or crew). Second, oxygen loss becomes a much more common issue. But those observations are just from my initial playthrough with AE turned on.
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I played the game a ton before AE was released. I'll admit, I had your reaction the first time I tried a run after the update. But now, it's the only way to play.
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I'll have to force myself to play it then. I have a burning desire to play normal without it.
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There's only a 4 sec cooldown on that Ion Blast, plus an automated re-loader, and a gold crew member on weapons. Yeah, I'm definitely using autofire. For short cooldowns like that, or with a weapon like the Vulcan, there's really no other way.
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I prefer pausing and readjusting targets but I can see the case for autofire with such low cooldowns.
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Oh there's certainly still a lot of pausing and switching targets, it's just one less thing to click.
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I beat it like after 72 hours of trying, though it was when the game had just came out and nobody knew what to do + I didnt looked up any strategies or anything nor videos.
But damn isn't it a good game, I should check it again to see if there is anything new, I kind of just stop playing after accomplishing the feat as I got a bit sick after so many tries XD.
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The Advanced Edition update added lots of new stuff!
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I beat it on 3rd or 4th attempt. I haven't played FTL for a while but my recipe was always to go for the gun rooms first as they don't have doors, so the crew in there is easy to take out. Use bombs that penetrate shields or simply time your shots with space bar. Once uncapable of firing the ship is harmless. On second run just cloak whenever it fires its superweapon. Done.
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That triple Leto missile launcher is always top priority. I have the most success with the teleporting bomb or a boarding crew.
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This thread makes me want to play FTL again but I've got to be careful, it's so addicting. :D
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After about 9 attempts, I finally beat the flagship on "easy" but it feels like it took longer. The Zoltan Cruiser was my victorious ship. For those still trying, I found this wikia article invaluable. Now onto "normal" difficulty or Advanced Edition content. The poll options go to 50+ for the real unfortunate/determined/masochistic players.
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