Sounds like intruders are a major problem for you! Maybe make that door upgrade a priority, with that intruders should nearly never be a problem. Why were all systems down? That should have been avoided.

Just check out that twitch channel, this game does not require luck.

So none of your systems had power? Not the engines, shields, weapons, or oxygen? There should be a little power you can reroute if you get hit by an ion storm in a nebula so that you can allocate 1 unit of power into the medbay while venting the ship; hell, if the only power you have is in the oxygen system, have the gang turtle up in the medbay with the oxygen off and the medbay on for a few seconds, then switch off the medbay and power on the oxygen after you have been hurting the invaders for a few seconds to keep the crew from suffocating.


The first thing you do when arriving at a sun is to vent the ship. If invaders are attacking the oxygen, vent that room as well and send in a crewmate to distract the invaders from attacking the oxygen system until the room is deprived of oxygen; after that, move your crewman out and watch as the invaders run for their lives. If possible, make sure the crewmate you use for this while under attack by a ship is not manning the engines or the helm, as dodging in combat is critical.

Missile launchers aren't very reliable, and you shouldn't keep them if you need to sell something. They are useful only to the extent you have ammo, and the moment someone rocks out of the shadows with a defense drone, you are hosed. Ideally, you want to hold on to your initial laser and either sell the missile launcher if needed or keep it in the weapons bay for special situations.

you know whats frustrating?

when you have a fully upgraded engine and the #@%! game decides, during the boss battle, to just #@%! you in the #@%!

i probably earned the astronomically low odds achievement 3 TIMES IN A ROW
almost every single of its missiles hit me with my 55% chance to dodge

boss fired 3 missiles? 3 HIT MOFO
every single time
and when you eventually beat its second phase with only 3 hull left, 3rd phase fight begins and guess what

FIRST MISSILE BARRAGE FULL HIT
BAM! DENIED YOU YOUR NEXT SHIP AND DESERVED VICTORY DUE TO UTTER BULLSH*T

if you fire 4 missiles and 2 hit you are very lucky
if the enemy fires 4 missiles and 3 hit, you have been VERY lucky to have dodged one

THAT is frustrating

It's obvious that their pilot has 75% dodge skills alone. Not mentioning the engine guy. They're flying the biggest ship in game's world, their abilities have to be impressive! :) It's logical, you have to admit :>

Our pilots are trained through couple of sectors, their - in officer schools etc ;-)

i was actually referring to default ships with that dodge chance of 2 out of 4
i didn't even attempt normal weapons on the flagship that time, let the artillery beam do all the work

The only problem here is that you seek the fault at the game instead of yourself. How can you improve if you don't identify your mistakes?

You should get some other missile defense besides evasion ASAP, either a cloak or defense drones mark I (not mark II).
Why did you engage the third boss with 3 hull? should have repaired before that. And if that was not possible, you have to make sure that it is possible the next time by engaging the first phases earlier.

I can absolutely agree with this thread! FTL - Advanced Edition is too damn hard and only F R U S T R A T I N G!!!

Why do I have the the choice of different difficulties? In FTL (non AE), it was no problem for me to beat the rebel ship and I managed it to beat the game in normal mode twice.

Now: No chance. I've beaten the rebel ship only ONE time with the "Osprey" and that's only because I've unlocked it previously.

That's really bad, because FTL was a cool and hard game and now, it's too much luck and frustrating fights against enemies, that now have awful more options to destroy you.

Why???

After beating the game with the "Osprey" it tries it 15x times with different ships, but was unsuccesful.

For me, the Advanced Edition is no more a choice. And that's REALLY bad because there are so many new cool features...

I can't understand why to be so damn stupid to break this game...

Over a year later and there are still people who are dead certain that the game is about unmasterable luck. Mind you, I haven't beaten it on normal yet but at least I recognise that there are real counters to every situation the game springs upon you. It's about risk assessment, not luck. A plan that reads "Hopefully I will get some good gear" is not a plan at all. A rough outline that changes every few jumps depending on what you find along the way is a plan however.

In my opinion, there IS luck. Luck to get the right weapons, triggering the right events and so on. Not the only thing, that matters, but I encountered "luck events". Hope to master the game like I mastered the "normal" version...

Oh there definitely is luck, but the point is, that it is not required. The best player can always win despite the worst of luck.

A lot of great tips here. I'd like to add one - Learn when to accept a surrender.
This has improved my game a lot recently. I used to just decline every surrender (unless they were offering a weapon) because there is almost always a better scrap reward for destroying the ship.
Really think about their offer. Consider the value of it. If you are relying on bombs and missiles, take their offer of 8 missiles - that is worth 48 scrap at a store. Same goes for drones, or if you are low on fuel and no store is in sight.

Also, learn to surrender when continuing the fight would be dangerous. If, say, you are at a sun and getting low on hull, you want to leave before another flare hits you with fires that destroy your systems and drain the last of your hull.

And for what reason is there a easy level of difficulty?

Easy should be for players to learn and gain experience, but also to mastered.

Yesterday, I killed the boss (YES!!!) with Red-Tail, no big problems. But no chance with Fregatidae, Zoltan Cruiser or Stealth Cruiser.

Can't understand why the developers pushed the difficulty to insane on normal or hard. Easy = hard, normal = too hard, hard = insane...

Probably there are players out there beating this game on every single difficulty easily, but for the most players, I think it was no good idea to make the game even harder, while there a now 3 difficulty settings...

Worst problem: I have friends that waited for the Advanced Edition and now are so frustrated with the game, that they no longer wanted to play it. I told them, you learn to master the game, but the "normal edition" is more easy to master than the advanced edition. But that's not the point to introduce new features to a new audience.

Call me a lamer, but I love FTL and don't want to be frustrated every time I reach the rebel ship.

You can disable options introduced in AE and try to master original edition first.

The expand makes the game easier in a way, because it introduces more offensive tools to hammer the final boss (flak guns, multi-charge guns, hacking), more selection in many stores to find what you are looking for, plus I find the final boss takes more time before it's game
over at the final sector.

Also, the clone bay is a boon to save on crew in the long term.

The only thing I really dislike about the expan are the lackluster C layouts I have found so far, the systems with ion blast (can screw up even a winning combo if you are unlucky) and the vulcan cannon which I find underwelming to say the least (yes, it can eventually chew through anything, but it takes forever to do so).

The Zoltan Cruiser is arguably the easiest ship I find, because the buffer shielding buys you more time in early battle to hammer them before they hammer you. You just need to prioritize finding good weapons ASAP to drive your early battle advantage home. Also, you need to get good doors ASAP and master asphyxiation.

The type A stealth ship is more of a gamble (you have to either find shields or really good weapons in the first 3 sectors), but if you upgrade the cloack early to give your beam weapon more time to recharge (that's the main catch), model B is very playable. Just make sure to stay the hell away from asteroid fields until you have a shield.