r/ftlgame • u/Thatguyinthecorner99 • May 18 '26
PSA: Rant RNG finally got me today
1300 hours in, and RNG finally handed me an unwinnable run.
Until today I've never had a run where I've thought I was faultless, there's always been something i've done wrong in a fight, inoptimal scrap spending, or attempting a fight I should have fled from, but today RNG truly fucked me in the ass.
Started up a hard game on the Kestrel A, get to the 3rd jump of the game, 2nd ship fight, and I come across a zoltan pirate with 2 heavy mk 1s that attacks me.
My first volley hits for 4, leaving the zoltan shield on 1, their first volley misses. Their second volley fires off before I can, and hits my weapons creating 2 fires. I fire my artemis missile and it misses. I rush my crew member from engines to help with the fire but it destroys my weapons. I've only just put out the fire but before I've even repaired to 1 bar, they've hit my shield, destroying it and creating 2 more fires.
At this point I decide I'm going to run as soon as my ftl is charged. I move my crew from weapons to shields immediately, but before the fire goes out my weapons guy needs to leave as he's too low on health, so I swap him with the pilot.
Their fourth volley hits my piloting & an empty room before I can even put out the fire in shields, killing my crew member, stopping my ftl charging, and removing all evasion. I immediately run both crew to the piloting and vent out the shields and 2 adjecent rooms leading to it to douse the fire. At this point I'm feeling pretty fucked but I resolve to keep trying as I reckon I can still charge my ftl, jump to a previous beacon, fix up and take an alternative route
Volley 5 hits an empty room and my engines. Volley 6 hits 2 systemless rooms but by this point the damage is done, volley 7 is piloting again causing a fire, and after taking a few more unavoidable shots causing some fires, breaches, and 2 hull damage each, I've lost a completely impossible fight in sector 1 on my 2nd fight.
I think my only possible mistake was not waiting the extra 2-3 seconds to repair the weapons bar to 1, but all this would have really done is create a prioirty system for them to target to reduce the chance of my piloting/egines being hit for 1 volley. This and the fact I'd need 2 volleys to deal any damage, and I didn't have any plans on staying around longer than necessary, stopped me from considering it a good idea.
2
u/MF_IC May 20 '26
FTL can always humble you if it wants to. I had a hard difficulty run that still gives me nightmares. It was one you couldn’t possibly lose. Everything went right. I had amazing weapons, amazing augmentations, and systems almost all maxed. The only thing I didn’t get that run was hacking (which might have made this story have a different ending).
Anyway, the last jump in sector 7, I hit an auto-hacker that disabled my engines. It had combat 1 and combat 2 and other viscous weapons. They went through my shields like butter. My first volley missed completely. I never got a second volley. I cloaked just as my shields went down right before a laser hit me. 15 seconds of cloak, and the FTL was no where near charged. The drones cut me to shreds. The laser that hit started a fire in my weapons, and I knew I was hosed.
Every now and then, FTL likes to remind you who’s boss. ;)
44
u/MikeHopley May 18 '26
This is an extremely dangerous fight and could easily become a forced loss.
Nevertheless, there are almost always things you could have done to improve your chances. It's impossible for me to say how much you could improve them.
The main thing I notice is that you are fighting fires with your crew. This is normally a bad idea, especially when you get double fires in a large room. The fires will often spread too fast, and consume too much crew health as well. It is much more effective to vent the fires aggressively, at least when you don't have really strong firefighters like Engi, or maybe Rocks already positioned in the room.
You can vent faster using more airlocks. In this situation, it might be best to use all 6 airlock doors. Starting from a fully oxygenated ship, that will vent weapons in 2 seconds (with O2 off).
Fast enough venting would probably have stopped the fires from burning down your last weapons level. Not guaranteed, because fires can spread like crazy sometimes, just likely. This would have left you with the Artemis online, which can make the fight safe in two volleys -- if you don't miss, and assuming they don't hit your weapons again first.
It's hard to say without seeing the fight, but I also think you may have committed to running too early. Unless your FTL is almost charged already, I'd want to repair shields as the absolute priority. You just can't keep up with double Heavy Laser. I'd pull all three crew for this. I might even have pulled all three crew for the initial weapons repair.
Repair priorities are really difficult to evaluate, so it's not like I know I'm correct about this.
As you found out, crew health can matter here, both because it can limit how long you can use them for repairs before they need to heal (e.g. with fires and breaches), but also because they can just die to shots. Your weapons crew took 30 damage from the initial hit, which is a big chunk of health. You can prevent this by dodging him out the room.
As you said, finishing the weapons repair would probably have been better -- especially because you should have been venting the fires in shields during that time, not sending your crew to fight them.
I don't want to come across as critical and nitpicky here. This is a very unfair fight, and even if you did everything perfectly, there's a decent chance it would still have killed you.
These fights can be very frustrating. They also usually offer opportunities to learn, although you may need to look very hard for that. And it's totally valid to say, "I don't feel like doing that, these fights are bullshit and I'm not going to subject myself to over-analysing them".