Hm but what did you do when the enemy comes with anti ship drones which immediatly shoot at you, or has that super shield like zoltan energy bombers have, then you take alot of damage until you can take them out,and if something vital is hit,like the weapon, its game over.
Should you go for shields or extra weapons first? Because when the enemy has 2 shields or even three, the glaive becomes useless, this is already in sector 2! But without shield you;re screwed against drones!

It has 4 weapon slots, awesome free HP/protection from the Zoltan shields that gets you the starting advantage and free energy from the crew.

What's not to like?

Sucking at fighting is not new to that race. By the time you play them, I'm sure you'll have devised a couple of tactics to deal with an overwhelming boarding crew (oxygen starve them, force them to fight in med bay).

In a way, you get a leg up at the start, because they need to take down your Zoltan shield before they can board.

Take out the transporters at the beginning if their crew is that intimidating.

Manthis Cruiser is strong because boarding is an awesome strategy against the relatively inept AI (a human player would be a lot better at dealing with your boarding crew).

You don't need to penetrate the shields, just beam up the crew at the right spot and take out a system for free right there.

Even better, most fights will end once you takeout the crew so you have a fast way to victory there as well.

Also, the last boss has his main weapons isolated in closed rooms, so you just need to send 2 crew members over to each gun and take it out for the remainder of the battle pretty painlessly.

I'm aware of the tactics. I did defeat the final boss's first 2 incarnations with a stealth ship.

There are a couple of issues.

1) If you do not kill or disable the enemy ship in 1 shot, you have to deal with return fire because stealth recharge is slow.

2) Like you said, at the beginning, you're in a rush to get shields. That diverts resources away from getting killer weapons which this ship badly needs because it's starting weapons are pretty much useless against shield 3 and above.

Also, the fact that it has 3 weapon slots means that you need to find level 3 weapons to get the killing firepower you need to take on the final boss.

And unlike the manthis ship, you're not a natural boarder (which is an alternate way to quickly get at their weapons or their shields).

And finally, you can't wait at your leisure to cloak when the enemy ship has drones.

You sure it can't?

I tend to get stealth relatively early on for most ships and it seems like something I would have noticed if the Federation Cruiser couldn't have gotten any stealth.

You combine drones with stealth and it does fine.

Also, you can backup your drones with weapons (the drones were not meant to do all the work by themselves).

well since you have an additional subsystem on the federation cruiser, you cannot have them all and i am 100% sure i was never able to get stealth on the fed cruiser.


drones cant do anything alone. as long a you got more shields then enemy attack drones then all you need to do is evade the enemy laser and missle.

you cant really complain about the starting weapons of the stealth cruiser. ofc they wont be enough in the second half of the game. and the glaive beam is a strong end game weapon. though beams arent that great at killing the flagship.


and yes, shields cost 150 scrap...but so does the stealth on every other ship! and shields are useless against missles.
it think its a fair trade. the stealth cruiser is harder to use and a bit luck depended.



as for the zoltans...they cant even win a fight in the medbay. and with the layout you have to vent half of your ship to get rid of boarding troops and then your crew may have to go though the vented rooms to get to the medbay because the most useful airlocks are in a bottleneck.

Right, so skip the transporters or drones.


Right, but they complement other systems well.

You can get 2 defense drone, a cloaking device, level 4 shields and have quite the defensive setup.

Or you can get offensive drones and supplement your weapons.

That's the point, most other ships have some way of dealing with a level 3 shield (boarding, explosive weaponry or just better laser weaponry). The stealth ship doesn't.

For the glaive beam, that does sound better, though I'll have to unlock layout B to get that (one kill shots with the starting weaponry of layout A is not easy).

Yeah, but cloaking is less urgent.

You can get it in early or mid-game depending on what else you find and have more leverage to get better weapons.

With the stealth ship, you really ought to get yourself a shield by mid-game and might have to skip early opportunities for good weapons.

It is more of a challenge.



If you match their numbers, you always win a fight in med bay, because they can't bring your health bar down.

The healing rate matches or surpasses their damage.

You're effectively invincible.

Give me a screenshot of a fed cruiser with a cloaking device pls. Because i never saw a shop selling a cloaking device to me when i used the fed cruiser. I dont think the game lets you skip drones or transporter in favor of stealth.


Even an anti ship drone mkII for 4!!! energy bars cannot even penetrate a single shield point (of the flagship). The utility drones are just far more useful.

find an auto scout with 5 hitpoints/0 shields and then pray your laser shots hit. i think thats the only way to do it.

Yes it works as long as you arent being boarded while fighting a ship. And they will probably go for a different subsystem then your medbay.
It is especially bad when they board your engine room. The medbay is on the other side of the ship and to vent the engine room you to leave weapons and shields unmanned.
Its just a really silly layout.

Maybe you got some strategy to get more out of the zoltan shields. But i dont see how this is ony of they easier ships.

Yeah,but I just don't see how you can get so much scrap in sector 1 and 2 to afford shields, engine upgrades (otherwise you only have 75% evasion under cloak,meaning you get hit), energy upgrades, and for safety you also need an extra 50 for weapons upgrade, so the hits won't disrupt your glaive recharge. Not to forget all the repairs because during the ages your glaive charges you always take hits. Thats like 300 scrap, and even if you somehow manage that by sector 2, ships with 3 shields will soon appear rendering the glaive totally useless.
This is all presuming that you encounter no ship with super shield or attack drones, which can happen right from the start.

sorry but sector 2 is the first quarter of the game, what dififfculty are you playing on to get ships with 3 shields?
i dont see why you need engine and weapon upgrades that early. and it's entirly possible to get 150 scrap in one sector. get your priorities right.

Had a sad run the other day. Found the strange device, but as I generally can't use it, that time I ditched it for weaponery and scrap. Next zone, I get the Engi research team. Next zone, I get the Rock homeworld. I'm unhappy.

Whatever. At least I get the "rock cruiser" encounter. They challenge me to an endurence duel in front of a sun. I weaken their ship, and fend off their boarding crew, and remember at the last minute that I'm not supposed to blow them up, so I switch all my weapons off. I forget the artillery beam. The rock ship blows up.

You know what. I was pissed. Seriously. I'm not proud to say it, but I decided that this stupid crew had had enough oxygen like that, and I just cut it. As the saying goes : "i'm not saying it is not unfair, I'm saying it makes me feel better".

I'm a terrible captain.

I said if you manage it by S2, you will SOON encounter three shield ships,meaning S3 and S4. I explained why you need engine and weapon upgrades, the cloak does not grant invulnerability, it only adds 60 evasion, meaning you can get hit. Weapon upgrades you need for safety, or otherwise one hit will disrupt the glaive charge.
I would very much like to get my priorities right with this ship, so please help me.

ships with 3 shields in sector 3 must be the rebel fleet catching up with you. destroying those only gives you fuel, so dont let that happen or just jump away.

So, here's a question: one of the achievements to unlock the Rock Cruiser Type B is to "have your crew kill a burning enemy on their ship". I'm not 100% clear on what this means... does it mean that I have to cause an enemy crewmember to burn to death? Or that I need to teleport my crew over and punch them in the face while they're standing in fire? (And do they need to be standing directly on the fire, or just in the same room as it?) Can anyone clarify?

i didnt unlock the rock cruiser yet (because the rock homwolrd seems to escape me more often then not)

but i suspect the later in both cases. have your boarding party kill enemy crew members in a room on fire. the location of the fire tile does not seem to matter.

Well, I tried that, and it didn't work... now I'm wondering if the "their' in "their ship" refers to "your crew"... thus making it your ship? Bad FTL! Bad ambiguous sentence construction!

In the official forum a guy wrote that doing this works well in the endboss fight with those guys who are locked in the weapon rooms.Set it on fire and send in the rocks.

Edit: Just tried it, works.