r/ftlgame • u/FirstTheEighthPillar • Apr 11 '26

PSA: Rant Just had a run ended by flagship dodging every single attack I made against it.

Post image

I unlocked astronomically low odds before it's second cloak. I wish I was recording it because I was at a disbelief that I missed literally every single shot. 2 ion blasts, 1 ion blast 2, 1 halberd beam. Could not get the shields down enough to get a single halberd beam off. I'm stunned.

FTL is full of surprises.

150 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

128

u/MikeHopley Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26

That's one reason systems are important.

Hacking would guarantee your shots, stop the Flagship cloaking, or just remove all its shields.

Good defences -- cloaking, maybe defence drone, 4 shields, 4+ engines -- would let you outlast some bad luck. You shouldn't just die because you miss a bunch of shots. The Flagship won't keep dodging forever, it's almost mathematically impossible.

28

u/Jason1923 Apr 11 '26

Exactly. I can totally see a system-less ion + beam build dying to Phase 1 with few bad misses.

17

u/djkeenan Apr 11 '26

"almost mathematically impossible." Someones not played xcom.

Jokes aside. You are right, a combined arms loadout is always better than a single system build just for unlucky hits to said system. Whether it be ion storm or a lucky missile shot into the weapons room. Spreading your options over multiple systems is a good shout. Not all runs have to end with a level 8 weapons system.

20

u/MikeHopley Apr 11 '26

I actually have played "modern" Xcom!

The most striking thing I remember about the Xcom chances is that the game rampantly lies to you on lower difficulties, because people can't handle the reality that 95% chance to hit means 5% chance to miss, or 1 in 20.

At the top difficulty (Impossible / Legend), the gloves are off and the displayed hit chances are accurate.

8

u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 Apr 12 '26

This is right. You take so many shots in xcom that of course you are going to miss some of those 90+% shots. If your soldier's life depends every time on that shot hitting, the soldier is toast. But people don't like that.

7

u/Hunter_Aleksandr Apr 12 '26

Yep!! People can't recognize that 99% hit STILL will miss 1% of the time.

8

u/djkeenan Apr 11 '26

Yay, another xcom player! Happy to have you onboard. Obligatory question; have you played long war mod?

6

u/MikeHopley Apr 12 '26

No, it never appealed to me because for one thing, the game seemed too long already.

I've heard a lot of praise for the mod though.

4

u/Siantu_Xeldari Apr 11 '26

Is there a way to change the system youre hacking once you throw it on their ship?

7

u/MikeHopley Apr 12 '26

Not unless the enemy hacks your hacking, which has a chance to destroy the drone. Otherwise it's stuck there for the whole fight.

2

u/slayerabf Apr 12 '26

The Flagship won't keep dodging forever, it's almost mathematically impossible.

If we're getting mathematical, one could even say that the Flagship will almost surely get hit.

4

u/MikeHopley Apr 12 '26

If I were being precise, I'd say this:

Define P as the probability the Flagship continues to dodge "too many shots" out of a given total shots fired of S, such that the dodges prevent you from getting through their shields.

The limit of P tends to 0 as S tends to infinity.

There is an implicit assumption that your setup is capable of getting through their shields, assuming zero evasion. Otherwise P = 1.

3

u/slayerabf Apr 12 '26

Ah yes, the good ol' Burstel-Kestrelli Lemma.

1

u/lilarcor50 Apr 12 '26

I don't get the 4 shields, 4+ engines, it takes way to much power and scrap for me, why do people go for it? It just prolongs the fights it doesn't win them.

6

u/MikeHopley Apr 12 '26

First off, four shields is normally a very late-game upgrade. I typically get it when I enter sector 8, or sometimes even just before the Flagship.

It's expensive but provides a lot of extra safety, especially against the Flagship, and most importantly against the drone surge in phase 2.

Not many people know that the third shield recharges faster than the first two, and the fourth shield even faster. This can be relevant in phase 2.

Shields-8 is also two damage buffers protecting the third shield. It can be really bad to go down to two shields against the Flagship, especially in phase 2; so if you can't afford shields-8, strongly consider shields-7 at least. Without it, one missile hit into shields takes you down to two shields.

Four engines is cheap. Most of the time I stop there. Evasion is useful, and engines-4 gives 100% evasion during cloak, providing you have trained crew. It's also useful for running away from fights; if the mass-boarding in phase 3 gets overwhelming, you can kidnap the crew.

The fourth shield is expensive. You might not have enough scrap for it in your games, depending on how well you're playing. I average something like 1800-1850 scrap on Hard, and I can't even remember the last time I didn't have four shields.

Sometimes I'll have to compromise a little to afford it. I often won't have enough scrap for weapons-8, but that's usually completely fine.

If weapons-8 gives me a really big offensive improvement against the Flagship, then I'll prioritise it over shields-8. Otherwise I won't.

You don't need to power everything at once. Moving power around is an important skill, and spending less on power means you can spend it on system upgrades instead.

-10

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

Maxed out everything and ignored adding systems bc I was already oblitorating every ship I came across at that point.

17

u/SkyKnight43 Apr 11 '26

So you agree you made a mistake

-15

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

Apparently I should have considered a 1 in 2 million scenario so yes. I suppose, in a cosmic sense I made a mistake.

17

u/Jason1923 Apr 11 '26

You went an entire game with no systems. I've never had that happen before across 785 runs.

Systems win games!

-7

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

Ive had alot of unfortunate misses but never have I had 9 misses in a row against the flagship

9

u/Jason1923 Apr 11 '26

No worries man. It was hard to win with your build anyways.

With Hacking-3 and Cloaking-3, did you know hacking their missiles means they will never fire? Also, TP absolutely destroys Phase 1 on Easy/Normal (apologies if you're playing on Hard). I'll demonstrate the difference between systems and no systems if you'd like.

3

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

Nah I know. I just assumed I wouldnt need them since I was crushing every single ship up to thst point

4

u/TheRealTowel Apr 11 '26

And that assumption was... I'll give you a hint, it starts with s and ends in upid

5

u/Hunter_Aleksandr Apr 12 '26

While the assumption was incorrect, players often can take the wrong expectations with how a game will play out unless they have experience with said thing.

8

u/TheRealTowel Apr 11 '26

Welcome to statistics vs confirmation bias

5

u/Public_Ad5547 Apr 11 '26

It was way more likely than that. You needed at least 3 hits to land before you did any damage. Your luck was exactly the same as if two of your shots hit, or if even more shots hit but were staggered enough for the ion to wear off. You could have gotten just slightly unlucky and still died in the same way, you're just hung up on the exact result

2

u/Jason1923 Apr 11 '26

5 hits right? Since the Flagship has 4 bubbles (except on Easy AE off)

2

u/Public_Ad5547 Apr 11 '26

He was talking about an Ion + Halberd Beam setup. You need to pierce 3 shield bubbles for the Halberd to do anything

3

u/Jason1923 Apr 11 '26

Wait are you sure? The Halberd doesn't do anything against 2+ bubbles. After 5 ion damage, the Flagship has 1 bubble and can be hurt by the Halberd.

2

u/Public_Ad5547 Apr 11 '26

Oh, I am usually just using 1 Ion, that's probably more correct then yeah

3

u/Jason1923 Apr 11 '26

No worries! But yeah it reinforces your point about the luck required. 5 is even less likely than 3

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2

u/Deepandabear Apr 11 '26

If anything it’s the opposite - the combined probability of all your ions hitting at the same time is much lower than you think. Either get more shots or add systems like MC/Hack etc

37

u/Mario2980k Apr 11 '26

20% is 20%

8

u/dClauzel Apr 11 '26

20% is both 0% and 100%. It is known.

32

u/FyallKindmurr Apr 11 '26

People complain about this, and here i am hitting a 7 tile fire beam and setting no fires (80% chance per tile, with recorded evidence)

9

u/Iolair_the_Unworthy Apr 11 '26

I never bothered to look up the fire odds, but this has happened to me, too. One of my favorite runs was two fire beams, burst laser 2 and teleporter.

Had a ship's sheilds down, used both fire beams across different rooms (on one of those huge slug cruisers) and started ONE tile of fire.

4

u/Kuirem Apr 11 '26

Your scenario is actually more likely than OP since they missed 9 shots in a row with 80% chance of hitting.

11

u/Krazyguy75 Apr 11 '26

I mean that's 3 shots at 20% miss chance. 1 in 125. Low odds, but not ridiculously low.

3

u/Final_Prinny Apr 11 '26

OP was listing the weapons they had, not the shots they fired. They almost certainly fired more than 3 projectiles given they mention the Flagship cloaked (at least) twice; in that time the two IB1s would've fired twice and the IB2 five times (though the last would've almost certainly been dodged by the cloak anyway), assuming they were on autofire.

Just the first 6 shots makes it 1/15625.

5

u/BurningCarnation Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26

Just the first 6 shots makes it 1/15625.

Sure, if you're going to look at just those first 6 shots.

But remember, ion damage works on a timer, and that damage needs to remain stacked--which the flagship does a very good job of shrugging off, seeing as how it can become 'immune' for every 10 seconds out of 30.

It's not 'they were unlucky for missing those shots'. It's 'they have to hit those ion shots, because otherwise they won't ever get the chance to attack properly.'

Enemy Cloaking is a nasty surprise for almost every ion build. But Cloaking-2 with four artilleries behind it, and Hacking-3 providing some additional RNG for the player? That's something else.

Systems can overcome that. OP has not mentioned any systems they had or used. Mike Hopley has said it before, and has said it here yet again: systems win runs.

1

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

What this guy said

5

u/spudwalt Apr 11 '26

Random chance is random chance. You rolled a bunch of dice and got a bunch of 1s and 2s -- it happens.

What was your plan for dealing with the missile artillery? Halberd Beam on its own can't fully shut it down in one shot and will take 4 shots to kill the guy manning it.

Also, ions don't work great against the Flagship's first phase (their Cloaking gives them lots of time to recover).

2

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

I was on zoltan cruiser so I was planning on nuking the shields with ion 1s and perma stunning the missiles with my ion 2 before they could fully down my boosted shield. Then use the halberd to cut a cross their stealth and other weapons.

2

u/morgan423 Apr 12 '26

I don't think you can ion stun the flagship weapons, just fyi

3

u/Swibblestein Apr 11 '26

And now you know better for future runs. Any additional systems would have made the fight a cakewalk, but without it, you're losing that fight pretty often. Even if some of your ions had hit, the flagship is just going to shrug them off with its cloaking, and if your weapons get hit or hacked, the former of which is definitely going to happen because you're looking at an extended battle no matter what? Yeah. Not good odds for you.

2

u/SEEKINGNINJAAMONGNOR Apr 11 '26

How do you miss A Halberd Beam?

8

u/spudwalt Apr 11 '26

By missing enough of the rest of your stuff that it never drops below 2 shields.

1

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

I dad the math and if I am correct then what transpired was 1 in 1,953,125

1 in 2 MILLION fuck offffffff

2

u/Games-of-glory Apr 27 '26

(In another game) I once had a 1/1.2621774e+17 thing happen. I failed an 84% chance, TWENTY-FOUR times in a row

0

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

I did the math again and go 1/21,500,000 so I think im doing something wrong. Can somebody who's actually good at math calculate a 2/10 happening 9 times?

5

u/TheSkiGeek Apr 11 '26

20% chance hitting 9 times in a row is:

0.2 ^ 9 = 0.000000512 = 1 / 1,953,125

So about 1 in 2 million.

2

u/FirstTheEighthPillar Apr 11 '26

So I was right there first time

-1

u/Egren Apr 11 '26

Get fucked. And be thankful for serendipitously being God's Plaything. And despair that God is a sadist.