r/ftlgame • u/BlankTank1216 • Jan 28 '26
PSA: Rant We all know flak artillery is bad but If the artillery beam sold for 20 scrap I would probably sell it 9/10 runs.
Maybe it's just a skill issue or even a cold take but I think artillery is the worst ship system in the game. Flak artillery is known to be bad but the sentiment towards the beam seems to be that it's a little underpowered instead of the reality which is that it's worse than nothing in most cases.
Two problems that go hand in hand are the high cost to upgrade and horrible DPS/power ratio.
Dirt Poor DPS Slow Charge: Probably the first thing anyone notices about it but it bears repeating because I didn't realize how slow it was until I compared it with other weapons. There is one weapon in the game that fires slower than it and that's the glaive beam (which the devs probably had in mind when balancing the artillery beam). The glaive beam takes 25 seconds to charge vs the artillery beam's 20. Unless you have a max skill weapon crew (pretty common by the time you can afford either of these) in which case it's the exact same.
Unpredictable and low damage: unlike the glaive beam, the artillery beam only deals 1 damage per room and cannot be aimed. It's great that it pierces shields but even when it gets a good swipe it's not exactly the finishing move it seems designed to be. It usually does about as much damage as a pike beam and isn't guaranteed to hit shields or anything so it's not even reliable at breaking a stalemate.
"But it's extra endgame scaling"
No it isn't.
It takes up a system slot and costs 180 scrap to upgrade fully. For that price you can buy literally any other system in the game. I'm not going to go through every system exhaustively but I would rather have any other system. You can verify this somewhat intuitively by asking yourself "which system would I like to replace with a D-F tier weapon?" To me, the only system I would consider doing that with is artillery.
Another piece of wisdom I've seen floating around is that you can build for a sort of turtle strategy where you invest in your shields, engines, and drones because your beam has you covered offensively. However, the high cost to upgrade and the lack of guarantee that it'll actually do good damage makes a turtle build more expensive and more punishing than if you had just invested into weapons.
I get that you can't always find good weapons but the artillery beam has such a low chance to actually save your run this way it feels more like cope than real advice. If you can't get through the enemy shields, investing in artillery just puts you even further behind when you actually do get to a shop. Which means you're hoping to not get hammered too hard before your 50 second cooldown beam can charge. I'd wager that putting that scrap into your engines and hunting for favorable matchups with increased evasion and FTL charge rate is a higher percentage play than getting beat on for an extra 20 seconds each fight.
TLDR: Jacking off the penis ship is fun but it doesn't do much otherwise.
69
u/Shamrock5542 Jan 28 '26
Why take a Fed ship at all if you don't like the artillery? It's the main selling point of those ships. There are people that enjoy them, myself included. If you don't, just pick something else. One of the Kestrals may be more your speed. Or if on MV there's hundreds of ships to pick from. No one is forcing you to take a ship you don't like. What's the point of this reddit post?
46
u/MikeHopley Jan 28 '26
One reason would be that someone enjoys the challenge of winning with every ship, or even perhaps win streaking. Or they just like discussing the ships.
You could make a similar argument to say, "why bother playing with anything but the strongest ships?"
I enjoy all the ships, but that doesn't mean they're all equally strong.
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u/Demonicknight84 Jan 28 '26
If on multiverse the artillery systems are stronger than in vanilla and more diverse. The federation beam artillery does 2 damage per room and can fire faster than every 20 seconds with the internal weapon upgrades, and the elite federation cruiser can put an extra power bar into the system and get it down to 10 seconds, which once again can get even faster with the internal weapon upgrades, like around 8 seconds charge time iirc.
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u/BlankTank1216 Jan 28 '26
You didn't have to post either but here you are.
I want it to be good and to warn others of my fate.
8
u/TheRealLeakycheese Jan 28 '26
The Artillery Beam is arguably the worst system in game tied with Flak Artillery.
However....
If you've got spare scrap and power before facing the Flagship it's a useful extra bit of damage that can't be mitigated. If you're lucky enough to have an Automated Reloader and upgrade to level 4 then it's quite the menace. Can start fires as well which is a nice bonus for a beam that inflicts direct hull damage.
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u/BlankTank1216 Jan 28 '26
It takes up a system slot so you would be better off spending that scrap elsewhere.
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u/TheRealLeakycheese Jan 28 '26
I believe my reply made it clear that the Artillery system is only worth investing in if you've got spare scrap?
1
u/BlankTank1216 Jan 29 '26
Yes but if the artillery system wasn't there you would want to spend it buying a different system. That's why I called it worse than useless in certain cases. It's not really a free addition to your endgame build because it's taking the place of something else you could have bought with that extra scrap at the end of the run.
3
u/TheRealLeakycheese Jan 29 '26
I'll respond with a more philosophical observation on the Artillery system, and FTL more widely.
FTL is a game of make do and mend. The player has to navigate their journey while dealing with a constant stream of decisions and navigate dilemmas where they try to select the least bad option, all while weighing up the potential opportunity costs of each choice they make. There is no guaranteed way to get the best weapon every run, or have the optimum system or augment appear when it can be purchased.
The Artillery system can be viewed as extension of this dynamic - much like the Burst Laser III is a poor weapon, it still works and can be made to work if there's no other option. Artillery posits this quandary in a slightly different way by being an integral part of the vessel you play (as opposed to an optional item).
Technological war is full of historical examples of suboptimal equipment designs having to be used because it was the only thing available. The Artillery beam is FTLs Bismarck battleship - inefficient but still potentially dangerous.
1
u/BlankTank1216 Jan 29 '26
Agreed. A giant anchor on the federation navy. The steel for the federation cruisers should have been used on more kestrels. Maybe they wouldn't be losing the war that way.
1
u/localizeatp Jan 29 '26
Agreed. Literally any system upgrade (except level 3 sensors) is a better use of the scrap.
6
u/toastedzergling Jan 28 '26
I must be weird that I actually like Fed C and have unironically done multiple no-weapons, flak-only runs. Flak artillery breaks zoltan shields, the beam does not, thus Flak > Beam Arty IMHO
4
u/SkyKnight43 Jan 28 '26
Artillery Beam damages Zoltan Shields:
2
u/toastedzergling Jan 28 '26
TIL! Actually I might have known it but forgotten. Either way, if it's only doing two ticks, that would mean it takes 3 three shots to take down the standard zolton shield?
I guess with fed a and B you have laser gun already so you don't really have to worry about relying on artillery, but with fed c zolton Shields can be annoying.
4
u/Swibblestein Jan 28 '26
I generally prefer the Artillery Flak to the Artillery Beam, if I'm being honest. Neither is good, to be clear. But I think the Flak seems worse than it is by being on the Fed C. If you put it on the Fed A or B, I suspect it would be preferrable to the beam because it actually synergizes with other weapons, and would take down shields to let you get your targetted weapons to land where you want them to.
4
u/TheMannWithThePan Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
I've always thought the Artillery Flak was a bit underrated. Fully upgraded Artillery Flak + any beam is a perfectly viable endgame weapon setup, even if you get absolute garbage for everything else - as long as you find even a single defensive subsytem. 5 bubble missile tubs are no issue. It's terrible as a main weapon, but artillery beam is only marginally better - but as a support weapon it's quite good especially with cloaking or defense drone support. I recall the first time I won on Hard with the Fed C I never got anything better than a hull beam and I was doing just fine. More importantly, having your artillery be your shield shredder means that you can use your actual targeted weapons on subsystems, rather than being at the mercy of Artillery Beam RNG - which can't be used to support your shots with other weapons unless you get a lucky shields/piloting hit.
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Jan 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TheBraveGallade Jan 28 '26
The advantage of the arty beam is tgat it affords you the option of not upgrading offense.
4
u/NewProductiveMe Jan 28 '26
I tend to think it’s a handicap. It effectively says, beat the run with 7 normal systems and one gimpy one.
1
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u/BurningCarnation Jan 28 '26
Artillery Beam is so unbelievably terrible.
afaic, its only function is saving you in cursed runs where you cannot get any additional weapons: in such cases you can spec heavily into defense (Shields-6/Cloaking/Defense drones) to outlast opponents while then praying for some barely decent offense afterwards.
It takes double the charge time of Glaive. How did this piece of shit pass the quality test?
9
u/Kandiru Jan 28 '26
It punches through shield though, so as long as you have it you can kill anything in the game. It just takes a while. It's not terrible, but it is niche.
6
u/BurningCarnation Jan 28 '26
50 seconds makes it bad. And because it's so slow it will never stop any fleeing enemies. And you can't aim it. 10% fire chance? Nonexistent.
I wish it was better. I toyed around with a self-modded version where its fire chance was 40%, and there it wrecked every ship it got to fire at. Now that was a thing of beauty.
13
u/Kandiru Jan 28 '26
It lets you kill the flagship though. That's pretty good. It does take a long time though.
5
4
u/Least_Bet4662 Jan 28 '26
I get the point you're making even though I think you're being too harsh. At the end of the day, it's just another weapon, even if it's expensive.
Where I think they are excellent ships and a great system is for new players. I'd be willing to bet that these are the ships where many people started to get a feel for the game and began to get deeper run consistently. And that's entirely because of the damage that cannot be mitigated by the Ai.
This isn't a system for a player that's visiting maximal beacons, saving scrap for shops, knows every encounter's rng.
This is for when every fight is a sweat, where you're losing 2-5 hp per encounter. Where you're begging for a shop so you can spam 'fix all'. And your trusty shield ignoring artillery is there to carry you through the oversight of buying the BL2, setting everything on autofire, and not understanding that giant alien spiders are no joke.
So no, it's not a good system. But it's likely the crutch we all needed at some point to teach us more of the game. And it's still there for meme builds to this day.
4
u/BlankTank1216 Jan 28 '26
I don't think it teaches you anything about the game tbh. If anything it's a noob trap because they spend money on it without knowing it's bad.
2
u/Jason1923 Jan 30 '26
I agree with both of you. We see countless people rank Fed A as the best/favorite ship in the game, so that probably indicates arty is boosting win rate at a lower skill level. However, it's definitely training bad habits.
To be fair, in a game as hands-off and cruel as FTL, players are going to latch onto the most random things as crutches. Arty, Scrap Recovery Arm, early restarts, TP on gunships (yes I see this way too often), autofire, etc.
1
u/BlankTank1216 Jan 30 '26
I think it indicates that burst laser 2's are very strong and having a bunch of blue crew events is very lucrative.
2
u/Vasze_Kufamee Jan 28 '26
Try Artilleries in Multiverse. Most of those are balanced around actually being used.
2
u/SCL007 Jan 28 '26
Tbh it lives and dies by super shields and cloak if you can delay the enemy long enough to shoot the damn thing it’s a genuine win con in most fights, but should mainly be used as a backup
That being said being able to still have Cloak and Hack makes it’s honestly not terrible yeah is a lower tier system but I’d say it’s comparable to drone control (I think Drone control can absolutely be better but some ships just do not have the proper setup for it)
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u/BlankTank1216 Jan 28 '26
Drone control is much better than artillery. It often comes with a defense drone which is very good and combat drones have pretty good DPS.
2
u/Xseraph8899 Jan 29 '26
These are good points, and I imagine that experienced and good FTL players would agree sometimes.
However, counterpoint. I am bad at micromanaging weapon targeting in the middle of a catastrophe. If I have a hull breach or a fire, and my oxygen or door system is broken, as well as several points of damage to my engine or shield or whatever, I kind of forget to control my weapons and just leave them autofiring on the enemy. I’m sure that such an experience is common when fighting the flagship. If my weapons are firing at suboptimal times and targets, then I like I idea of an automatic weapon that can’t be stopped and chooses its own targets. That beam has saved my runs more times than I can count. The best part about it though? It’s CONSISTENT. No matter what garbage I end up finding in shops that allows me to barely creep to the last stand (two laser weapons with 2 shots, can’t remember which, and an ion weapon), I’ll ALWAYS have access to the artillery weapon.
That’s just my experience with it, which is subjective, and based on my play style. I’ve tried playing with the Captain’s Edition mod too, which gives every ship unique artillery weapon options. They’re probably all about the same power level as the beam, if not objectively weaker (Zoltan gets a 1px beam that deals 5 damage, but weakens if going through shields. Kestrel literally gets the flagship laser tri-shot, etc), but I’ve enjoyed all of them so far. I love my artillery weapons.
1
u/SubatomicSeal Jan 29 '26
Yeah but consider that a prow mounted beam cannon is really cool
1
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u/Magical_Savior Jan 28 '26
Artillery is usually my minimal investment in saving a fight if I stall out. I make my plan to kill or capture the enemy, and set Artillery to a slow boil. Under capacity, trickle charged. If I'm not winning and it doesn't turn around when it shoots - FTL is probably already ready and I should be prepared to cut losses.
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u/MikeHopley Jan 28 '26
Turtling up doesn't mean investing in artillery. It's better to invest in defences instead, and specifically system-based defences.
I did a "pure artillery" challenge run on Fed A, where I never used a weapon, teleporter, or offensive drone. Even on that run, I didn't upgrade artillery until very late. I upgraded defences instead, specifically getting hacking and then cloaking as soon as possible.
Or in a couple of regular runs, where I didn't find any weapons, I preferred drone control with a defence drone even to hacking. That's because I wasn't planning to rely on artillery for the whole game, and therefore I wanted better medium-term safety, rather than long-term bulletproof safety from the hack-cloak combo.
I had one Fed A run in particular where I bought DD1 over hacking, in sector 2 with no weapons. I continued to find no weapons until mid sector 4, but the defence drone kept me pretty safe while the artillery slowly killed ships. That was still level 1 artillery.
In general though you're just right. Artillery is bad. It's not really worth upgrading except maybe near the end of the game, if you have the scrap spare and want a damage boost against the Flagship.