When both shields and weapons require no investment, that leaves a lot of scrap available to plow into these side systems. Drones could still hurt, but a pre-ignited shot to the drone system usually alleviated that threat too.Ī sector 3 store added Hacking to the mix, immediately upgraded to level two, and shortly later both cloaking and hacking to max level three. With the deadly accuracy of the mini-beam, and the Small Bomb able to aim for either shields or weapons as appropriate, I'd win most fights before the enemy ever fired. After the pre-ignited shot, cloak to charge up the second. So now with the pre-igniter, I would get two full weapon salvos before the enemy could fire at all. Shields are easy to find later, but pre-igniters don't come around every day. A glorious PRE-IGNITER in sector two! I cheekily jumped on the rare and spectacular treasure. (This is an important and overlooked detail of navigation: plan and know ahead of time what you want at a store so you can save up precisely for it.) I fought my way through them cleanly, accumulating 90 scrap, enough to afford Shields at the store after selling the Titanium Casing. This was a beautiful decision, revealing a chain of six straight fights leading up to a store. I will usually do this within the first few jumps of a sector, especially early in the game when you're not passing up much loot by not fighting the mercenary. On the first jump of sector 2, I bought a map. I happily upgraded weapons to 3 to use it, giving me that much extra chance at crippling enemy weapons before they could fire or FTL drives before they could flee. Great! Stealth A already starts with the two best 1-power weapons in the game, and the Small Bomb is right up there with them. Near the end of sector one, a Small Bomb dropped from a fight. Usually the top priority upgrade is a second shield bubble, but obviously the Stealth can't do that, so upgraded cloaking is the next best defensive measure available. The screenshot above is from the fourth fight, after the first two uneventful ones paid exactly 30 scrap to upgrade cloaking to level two. But as the pieces fell into place, I grabbed my opportunity for the accomplishment of a shieldless victory. I wasn't intending at the outset for any kind of variant play. I read about this tactic over on Reddit, went to try it out, and won five consecutive runs on Hard with a mix of Stealth ships.Īnyway, on to the run. With this tactic, the Stealth ships become immensely more survivable in the early game. But if the drone were pointed at something inconsequential like sensors or doors, the right move would be to let that shot hit and save the cloak for when it will also dodge an enemy weapon along with the drone. Here, my cloaking and weapons are both in the line of fire, so NOW is the right time to cloak. A drone always shoots at the exact center of its target room, so usually there are only a very few possibilities. Pause at the right moment and look at the drone's alignment to figure out its target. Watch the enemy drone and cloak only when it is about to shoot something important. This can be true, but actually quite rarely, not nearly as much as folks say. An early enemy drone can cut you to pieces before you ever get to fire your weapons or escape from the fight, in such a way that there's nothing possible to do to save yourself. The plight of the shieldless Stealth ships is often cited as the biggest random-number-based swing in FTL. Stealth A is the ship of the day, and I'll say a few words on that before getting into the shieldless run itself. Here's a report of a shieldless win on Hard difficulty in FTL. FTL Faster Than Light - Shieldless with Stealth A
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