Thread 2097499

This ship is a blackhole of fun, I no longer want to play ftl because of this dogshit.

>>2097499 (OP)
have you tried not playing that ship?

skill issue

>>2097506
NO IT@S FUCKING NOT I CAN WIN ON HARD WITH EVERY OTHER SHIP BUT THIS FUCKING PIECE OF CRAP RNGFEISTA> EVEN THE ENGI B IS BETTER THAN THIS GARBAGE

Yeah, I'm thinking skill issue

>>2097499 (OP)
Stealth B is the challenge you need to beat to get the most fun ship in the game - Stealth C

>>2097668
stealth C is honestly the worst ship in the game.
Infact, all ships that work with some version of supershields are worthless.

If Supershields allowed you to skip some events, they'd be better, but functionnally they barely ever matter in difficulties above easy.

>>2097682
I genuinely love it. Minibeam charges fast and can deal up to 3 damage for 1 power. Already starts with a slug (best pilot) and 3-slot drone system installed. And the drones it starts with are useful all game long. Get shields online and you become a powerhouse.

I went on a mission to win on hard with every ship and people trashed Stealth C os much I left it for last. In the end it was a super fun ship and it took me like 4 attempts to win

>>2097499 (OP)
this but that mantis loadout that can only board ships

>>2097682
Zoltan B ride or die nigga

>>2099891
Pure bait, Mantis B was quite rightfully the 2nd best ship before Lanius B and even now you could say it's still 2nd best.
>>2097682
Stealth C belongs with ships like Rock A or Slug B, massively overhated. Stealth is C is a solid ship: slug and rock crew, decent weapons, super-shields is manageable, and it has long-ranged scanners. It takes some skill and a little luck but way less rng dependent than some other ships.

>>2101786
so what would you say is the worst ship?

>>2101848
Probably Fed C although Engi B and Stealth B are both trash. Even if you do everything right the game can still screw you over. Usually with any other ship you can mitigate any bullshit RNG, it what makes you a skilled player. Some ships have more advantages than others but these ships are fucked and you are at the mercy of the game.

>>2101874
wew

>>2101786
Agree with you on everything but one thing. Slug B doesn't have enough hate. Utter turd miles worse than Engi B. All my runs were miserable with that ship until I found a pair of flaks early

>>2097499 (OP)
Still better than Rock A

>>2097682
Supershield is the best augment, bar none. 5 buffer health that stops missiles, bombs, and boarding in every fight is absurd.
Zoltan A is one of the best ships in the game, top 3 or top 5. Zoltan B is really good too.

>>2101786
Mantis B is good and I love it to death, but has too many glaring weaknesses to call it the best.

>>2102978
What "glaring weaknesses" are you talking about? It's only weaknesses is starting with 2 crew and having no weapons. At a stretch you could say the layout with the O2 and doors being set on fire is inconvenient and it only has one spare subsystem so you have to choose between hacking and cloaking. It's advantages are: Level 2 shields, a defense drone, a 4-pad teleporter, a boarding drone and pheromones to sell for scrap, and a lot of reactor power. Pheromones and the boarding drone cover the cost of upgrading your weapon system, your first few fights can cover your needed weapon unless store RNG screws you. Mantis B has no glaring weakness and it what makes it top tier.

>>2101882
Slug B is underrated, never had a truly bad run with it. Just micro boarders well and you'll never have a problem.

>>2102978
Supershield should allow you to skip all those damn events where "Somehow, they bypassed the supershield!!!", Just giving you the reward associated instead. Im not buying that every moron bandit from sector 1-8 has a super shield bypass and yet we don't.

>>2103806
>What "glaring weaknesses" are you talking about?
>immediately lists a bunch of glaring weaknesses
kek

Mantis B's starting crew is fucking awful, second worst in the game after Engi B. 2 mantis are so fucking bad at repairing damage and fighting fires, and it means you can't leverage your mighty 4-tile teleporter at the start at all.
And you WILL take damage; 2 shields and a defense drone aren't half as good as they look with 0 evasion, especially on hard, And you're not damaging their weapons at all, so you'll be sitting there eating their guns full-force for the whole fight. That's not to mention that your shields and drones are both in the defense drone dead zone, so you can't really count on it to keep them safe.
Mantis B needs guns, obviously, but more urgently it needs ANY gun to get through zoltan shields and to help with scouts. And that's not cheap. B's got plenty of power, so that's fine, but even a basic bitch BL1 and the system to fit it costs 90 scrap. Food for thought, that's just as much as level 2 shields+2 power on other ships, except that doesn't need any RNG. And no, the boarding drone and pheromones don't cover that. 90+>60.
A fire in Mantis B's starboard wing isn't an "inconvenience," it's red alert emergency that you need to immediately drop everything to fix. That shit WILL kill you if you don't handle it properly, and sometimes even when you do. Remember, mantis can't fight fires or repair for shit.

Mantis B starts out with a laundry list of stuff it NEEDS really, really urgently. It needs a gun, it needs more crew, it needs a level 2 teleporter for scouts, it needs better engines so you can run from bad fights...you need a lot of scrap and a lot of cooperative RNG and you need right fucking now. And again, that tank build is way more fragile than it looks. Once you can just teleport 4 mantis over you win, but it takes a lot to get there.

>>2103806
>It's only weaknesses is starting with 2 crew and having no weapons
Those are some pretty big weaknesses. Especially when the 2 crew members are mantis meaning that repairs are abysmally slow.
>At a stretch you could say the layout with the O2 and doors being set on fire is inconvenient
Worse than inconvenient when all you have are mantis to deal with it.

That said, it's fun to use and once you get some extra crew and some guns online it's a solid ship.

>>2097499 (OP)
the only achievement i have left is to find the crystal sector with the rock cruiser and it's such rng bullshit

>>2104406
>but more urgently it needs ANY gun to get through zoltan shields
not really a common issue early on but scouts can be
i agree that the mantis b has a lot of early issues but it's a solid ship

>>2104406
>2-3 weakness is a bunch now

Mantis B's shields and defense drone more than makes up for no weapons; it pretty much makes you immune to the shitty mini-beam/beam drone & laser combos that happen in the first couple sectors. DF drone sucking occasionally is bad but it usually works and you should have killed them before the second missile. For auto-ships you can use the boarding drone; yeah it takes a long time but it works even if you have to micromanage your DF drone too. One of the best guns for Mantis B to pick is a small bomb if you have to buy something sector 1 or 2 and that doesn't need a weapons upgrade. It's also one of the only ships were I think it's perfectly justifiable to buy crew, just one more mantis makes killing enemies quicker and lets you repair the wings by cycling your repairmen out, an engi is even better.

This is one of the least reliant ships on good rng, even on hard mode it's like playing on easy mode. Easily a top 5 ship.

>>2104680
Just recruit a crystal crewmember and rename him Ruwen. You skipped 80% of the quest

>>2105014
Recruiting a crystal IS the quest. You mean start with Rock C, name your crystal guy Ruwen, and look for rock homeworlds.
The downside to this is having to play Rock C.

>>2104685
You'd be surprised. And oh yeah, it's solid and good. It just has a lot of weaknesses that shouldn't be ignored.

>>2104969
>2-3 weakness is a bunch now
Save the semantics.
>Mantis B's shields and defense drone more than makes up for no weapons
Highly debatable. It makes you immune to some ships out the gate, but the ships you're NOT immune are practically guaranteed damage due to 0% evasion. And those ships aren't rare at all.
> DF drone sucking occasionally is bad but it usually works and you should have killed them before the second missile.
Yeah, it usually works. And when it doesn't, it sucks REALLY hard, because you have a much harder time recovering due to mantis repair.
Two mantis and a boarding drone don't kill a crew faster than a leto or artemis can reload. They'll get two off. And that's under ideal conditions, where it's not a drone, they don't have a med, clone bay, AP drone, etc. In those conditions they'll get off a lot more, and there's basically nothing you can do about it with your starting setup.
>One of the best guns for Mantis B to pick is a small bomb if you have to buy something sector 1 or 2 and that doesn't need a weapons upgrade.
Small bomb is great, no shit, but getting one is RNG. You can't rely on it at all. And it's a horrible weapon for zoltan shields, and it barely makes scouts any easier on it's own. You still need real guns quickly.
>just one more mantis makes killing enemies quicker and lets you repair the wings by cycling your repairmen out, an engi is even better.
No argument here.

>>2105059
>Save the semantics.
That's literally the entire argument. You're saying it has a lot of problems and I'm saying it has a few, retard. It needs 1 more crew and or a shitty weapon to solve its 2 actual problems. Both of these a very achievable in sector 1.

>>2102957
Rock A is bad but it's not that bad. The main RNG thing is finding a gun that doesn't use missiles ASAP, after that you have a normal run. But for Stealth B there's so many hoops to jump through, you need a weapon (or two), you need shields, you need power, etc. There's a reason why streakers fear Stealth B more than any other ship.

>>2097499 (OP)
Stealth B was originally one of my favorite ships but that completely evaporated when I stopped restarting from early losses. It doesn't help that Hard changes the enemy AI to target the weapons subsystem more often which really fucks over the stealth ships.

The ship has so many flaws, even if you manage to get Cloaking III ASAP you still have to contend with drone ships being able to hit you, Zoltan pirates, or just being forced into a sun/asteroid belt. And then even after that, if you don't get Hacking II or more/different weapons, you can't even reliably kill two shielded ships. It's not even got the Engi B's advantage of at least having a bunch of junk you can sell at the first shop to upgrade the rest of your equipment.

What I really hate the most is that you only have 80% evade while cloaked early on anyway so you can literally cloak as soon as a shot is about to hit your weapons and there's a 1/5th chance you'll get hit anyway. And the ship is so pigeon holed into getting hacking early that there's not even any real variety in how to play it, you just max cloaking and drain enemy shields right before you hit them with the Glaive Beam to hopefully one shot them.

>>2101874
A lot of people hate the Fed C, but I like it more than I originally thought. It's got good early boarding and a clone bay so even automated ships which are normally annoying for boarding ships at least can't stop you from breaking all their weapons, plus you get a lot of extra scrap and items for crew kills.

That Flak Cannon is really deceptive. On its face, it looks like a Flak II with a 50 to 20 second charge time and a power cost, but it's far better than the Flak II. It fires seven very small radius flak rounds at random rooms so it pretty frequently hits them even if it doesn't hit any specific room, so it breaches any layer of shields on its own and damages several systems at once, pulling the pilot out of his room and decrewing pretty much everything. And you can pair it with basic weapons like Heavy Lasers for followup shots unlike the Artillery Beam

The only drawback is the ship is sort of bipolar, the Flak can be used to good effect with guns but you already have such strong boarding capability that you usually would rather upgrade defenses and focus on that. Sometimes I just get Mind Control and teleport enemy crew to my own ship to get around their med bays.

>>2104969
Mantis B has a higher incidence of defense drone sucking because of the bug that makes rooms too far forward unable to have missiles intercepted. It's especially bad because your drone bay is included in those rooms and Mantis repair speed is abysmal, so you could take an early Artemis missile to it and then just eat followup missiles until you get it back online. Made even worse by the fact the enemy AI targets rooms that have multiple crew making repairs in them at a higher rate than other rooms.

The Federation cruiser ships have that real bad too since they're so long, which sucks because it's a ship you'd want to pile on defenses with and let your artillery subsystem do its work.

>>2097499 (OP)
Repeat after me...

Speaking of Mantis, why is the A so under-tuned?
>awful, sprawling layout
>no sensors
>level 1 weapons
>only 6 power
It's still a good ship, but there's no need for any of this.

>>2106357
It's okay, was better when boarding gave more scrap. I'm fine with it because I like boarding. Speaking of which I think boarding has got easier with AE,the new weapons and systems offer more options whilst in the original I remember that taking down a medbay required more trickery.

The Fed A and B are probably some of my least favourite. They're not bad but I find them boring to play, I don't think I ever try them after getting my tick saying I beat the flagship on hard with them.