@@veryspicywater The hack can be considered "free" because it comes from the event. If the enemy ship has hacking, they could even hack your weapons while your shields are permanently disabled. The event "hack" is not really a hack at all of course, it's a totally different mechanic.
This is all great stuff. Possible constructive comment: It's a little difficult for someone who is not used to pausing every tenth of a second to follow what's happening. You are explaining it, but because during the lengthy sections where there is pause spam, I'm more having to picture it in my head, rather than seeing it in real time. And I'm not very good at picturing things in my head (see: aphantasia) What would really help someone like me, or others who need the visual, is if you can do a version of it at full speed, with possibly a pause afterward to explain what just happened, with text on the screen for hearing impaired people and folks like me who really like to read. The bottom line is I am very much a visual learner, or I learn by doing. When people are verbally explaining stuff I cannot see, it doesn't click for me. And I know it's not uncommon for folks like me to exist. Would be helpful on the presentation side. I've watched many of your videos and you are very much a master at this game. I'm just a student of your work and I feel like I'm flunking the course due to how I learn as opposed to something else. Thanks for listening to this feedback, you don't have to change a thing to be great. I'll muddle through.
What a great comment. Thanks for taking the time to explain that. I'll at least try to keep it in mind. There are some practical issues that I think will limit how much I can cater for specific learning styles or accessibility needs. One issue is time. I used to make paid-for video content and even there, I had to prioritise my work quite heavily. I even made my own website and I was very keen on accessibility, and trying to do things "the right way" to avoid excluding people. A good example is video captions. With my paid-for content, I wanted to add captions for all the videos. It was an unbelievable amount of work just to caption one video. You have to painstakingly make a text file with timestamps for everything you say. Nowadays I think I could do that stuff with less work, at least on CZcams. CZcams generates captions automatically, and I think you can then edit them to correct the errors. For a paid-for video I would probably do that. The problem is that all of this takes TIME. And given I make zero money from this channel and have no help, the time I can spend on it is very limited. And in reality it's not just a time constraint, it's an enthusiasm constraint. The more difficult I make content creation, the less enthusiasm I have for actually making it. Editing additional text into videos -- like putting actual text graphics in the video -- is even more time-consuming. I've used that on occasion but I need a compelling reason. You mentioned doing stuff at full speed and then pausing afterwards. In many cases I won't be able to do this, because I don't have the skill. I'm not skilled at pauseless FTL, and many of the tactics I'm demonstrating are impossible (or at least extremely difficult) without pausing. Additionally I think many people will find it hard to follow what's going on if I don't pause and explain step-by-step. In general, I'm unwilling to put significant work into improving the production values of my videos. That sounds like I don't care, but I do; it's just that I have to be pragmatic, and work within the severe constraints of my time, ability, and enthusiasm. There are much, much better produced videos available on CZcams. A good example from roguelike gaming would be @aldenpotamus . Unfortunately, given this is a minor hobby and not a job, I don't think I can manage that level of quality. As I said at the start though, I will try to keep this in mind. Maybe I will see some practical ways to improve it.
I've been a big fan of ions + damage (particularly heavy lasers) even prior to AE. When you hit enough of a critical mass where your starting few projectiles are good, you can temporarily lower or disable evasion, you can follow up with a big damaging weapon to permanently lower or disable evasion, and from there your build just snowballs and crushes the enemy - you can decide whether to keep hitting shields with ions or start ionizing their weapons/artillery. Obviously Zoltan shields + cloaking make it a lot more practical to get that off the ground, but even just e.g. conventional shields and a Defense Drone 1 can be pretty good for that. Charge Ion, Ion Bomb and Heavy Laser are just super good weapons for this kind of build, very power efficient and very powerful! That money saved on upgrading weapons can then go into getting the defenses up faster to make the whole thing more reliable. Maybe an early shields-bubble-3 etc.
thank you for making content like this. it's thanks to your ship guides that I've been able to claw out few hard mode wins! Lanius A, Slug A, Zoltan A, Crystal B, Stealth A, and aaaalmost Rock C have all beaten the flagship under my semi-competent command (Crystal B is a cakewalk in any difficulty though haha). and it's always just extremely cool to watch someone play a video game this well. was having an exhausting morning but your shieldless Kestrel A video cheered me up and got me excited for the day again. genuinely inspiring stuff, I appreciate it a lot!
Thanks so much, I really appreciate that! Such a kind comment, really makes my day. Though I would commend you to see those Hard wins as down to your own skill. Guides can definitely help a lot, but ultimately every game is different and it's the captain who makes the decisions.
Had a recent run on Zoltan B with some similarities... ended up keeping the Ion Blasts and Pike to the end, adding a Flak along the way. I was kinda expecting the run to get put out of its misery, but never had a truly terrible battle (worst by far was the infamous ZS double-Heavy 1 in s1), and just kept plodding along, knock down one shield with the blast, the rest with the Flak, do a bit of damage to weapons, ion a weapon if possible, and Pike to work them down overall. Hacking shields or weapons kept the meager build going s4+. Also had a Hull Laser 1 in the middle there. Ended up floating 300 scrap end of s6 (looking for Cloaking, found s7, MC too), yet scored just under 5k (39 ships, 100 beacons, 1501 scrap). Nothing crazy in terms of "high strategy" plays or whatever; selling Scanners to get Hacking was the most "sacrificial" move.
Well done! I like the play of using ion to take down a weapon, a lot of people don't think about that. 1500 scrap is quite low, sounds like you made good use of the scrap you had.
Great video! One thing that wasn't very clear to me was targeting the pike beam when they cloaked. Did you have to fire it immediately after the cloak, or is it enough to 'start' the targeting beforehand, and then you're locked on for the entire cloak?
Thanks, and good question! I definitely didn't make it as clear as I could have done. What's happening here is that the Pike Beam charges shortly before they can repair cloaking, but we don't know exactly when. So ideally we wait until they cloak, and then use it to cancel their cloaking. The only way to do that here is having it "half targeted", meaning you click on the first room but don't click again until they cloak. This is necessary because you lose "vision" of their ship when they cloak, and cannot target it. If you have boarders on their ship, you will keep vision during cloak and can target any weapons anyway.
![Pixel Inferno [FTL: Faster Than Light]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sGhVeqntLOI/mqdefault.jpg)
Good analysis between the ion stacking and heavy laser DPS. Now we just need to figure out how to survive Sector 1 free shield hack events...
One of the most dangerous events for sure. Most of the time it's still okay, but occasionally there's no way out.
Why do people call it “free shield hack”. I always see Rand using the term free, I assumed it was just him. Is this a more common term?
@@veryspicywater The hack can be considered "free" because it comes from the event. If the enemy ship has hacking, they could even hack your weapons while your shields are permanently disabled. The event "hack" is not really a hack at all of course, it's a totally different mechanic.
This is all great stuff. Possible constructive comment: It's a little difficult for someone who is not used to pausing every tenth of a second to follow what's happening. You are explaining it, but because during the lengthy sections where there is pause spam, I'm more having to picture it in my head, rather than seeing it in real time. And I'm not very good at picturing things in my head (see: aphantasia)
What would really help someone like me, or others who need the visual, is if you can do a version of it at full speed, with possibly a pause afterward to explain what just happened, with text on the screen for hearing impaired people and folks like me who really like to read.
The bottom line is I am very much a visual learner, or I learn by doing. When people are verbally explaining stuff I cannot see, it doesn't click for me. And I know it's not uncommon for folks like me to exist. Would be helpful on the presentation side.
I've watched many of your videos and you are very much a master at this game. I'm just a student of your work and I feel like I'm flunking the course due to how I learn as opposed to something else.
Thanks for listening to this feedback, you don't have to change a thing to be great. I'll muddle through.
What a great comment. Thanks for taking the time to explain that. I'll at least try to keep it in mind.
There are some practical issues that I think will limit how much I can cater for specific learning styles or accessibility needs.
One issue is time. I used to make paid-for video content and even there, I had to prioritise my work quite heavily. I even made my own website and I was very keen on accessibility, and trying to do things "the right way" to avoid excluding people.
A good example is video captions. With my paid-for content, I wanted to add captions for all the videos. It was an unbelievable amount of work just to caption one video. You have to painstakingly make a text file with timestamps for everything you say.
Nowadays I think I could do that stuff with less work, at least on CZcams. CZcams generates captions automatically, and I think you can then edit them to correct the errors. For a paid-for video I would probably do that.
The problem is that all of this takes TIME. And given I make zero money from this channel and have no help, the time I can spend on it is very limited. And in reality it's not just a time constraint, it's an enthusiasm constraint. The more difficult I make content creation, the less enthusiasm I have for actually making it.
Editing additional text into videos -- like putting actual text graphics in the video -- is even more time-consuming. I've used that on occasion but I need a compelling reason.
You mentioned doing stuff at full speed and then pausing afterwards. In many cases I won't be able to do this, because I don't have the skill. I'm not skilled at pauseless FTL, and many of the tactics I'm demonstrating are impossible (or at least extremely difficult) without pausing.
Additionally I think many people will find it hard to follow what's going on if I don't pause and explain step-by-step.
In general, I'm unwilling to put significant work into improving the production values of my videos. That sounds like I don't care, but I do; it's just that I have to be pragmatic, and work within the severe constraints of my time, ability, and enthusiasm.
There are much, much better produced videos available on CZcams. A good example from roguelike gaming would be @aldenpotamus . Unfortunately, given this is a minor hobby and not a job, I don't think I can manage that level of quality.
As I said at the start though, I will try to keep this in mind. Maybe I will see some practical ways to improve it.
I've been a big fan of ions + damage (particularly heavy lasers) even prior to AE. When you hit enough of a critical mass where your starting few projectiles are good, you can temporarily lower or disable evasion, you can follow up with a big damaging weapon to permanently lower or disable evasion, and from there your build just snowballs and crushes the enemy - you can decide whether to keep hitting shields with ions or start ionizing their weapons/artillery.
Obviously Zoltan shields + cloaking make it a lot more practical to get that off the ground, but even just e.g. conventional shields and a Defense Drone 1 can be pretty good for that.
Charge Ion, Ion Bomb and Heavy Laser are just super good weapons for this kind of build, very power efficient and very powerful! That money saved on upgrading weapons can then go into getting the defenses up faster to make the whole thing more reliable. Maybe an early shields-bubble-3 etc.
Exactly. I learned the strength of this particular variety from reactorless runs, where power-efficiency is essential.
thank you for making content like this. it's thanks to your ship guides that I've been able to claw out few hard mode wins! Lanius A, Slug A, Zoltan A, Crystal B, Stealth A, and aaaalmost Rock C have all beaten the flagship under my semi-competent command (Crystal B is a cakewalk in any difficulty though haha). and it's always just extremely cool to watch someone play a video game this well. was having an exhausting morning but your shieldless Kestrel A video cheered me up and got me excited for the day again. genuinely inspiring stuff, I appreciate it a lot!
Thanks so much, I really appreciate that! Such a kind comment, really makes my day. Though I would commend you to see those Hard wins as down to your own skill. Guides can definitely help a lot, but ultimately every game is different and it's the captain who makes the decisions.
God damn those heavy laser timings were sexy. Great vid
Thanks! That was the new thing that made me want to make the video.
👏😊
excellent. well played
Had a recent run on Zoltan B with some similarities... ended up keeping the Ion Blasts and Pike to the end, adding a Flak along the way. I was kinda expecting the run to get put out of its misery, but never had a truly terrible battle (worst by far was the infamous ZS double-Heavy 1 in s1), and just kept plodding along, knock down one shield with the blast, the rest with the Flak, do a bit of damage to weapons, ion a weapon if possible, and Pike to work them down overall. Hacking shields or weapons kept the meager build going s4+. Also had a Hull Laser 1 in the middle there. Ended up floating 300 scrap end of s6 (looking for Cloaking, found s7, MC too), yet scored just under 5k (39 ships, 100 beacons, 1501 scrap). Nothing crazy in terms of "high strategy" plays or whatever; selling Scanners to get Hacking was the most "sacrificial" move.
Well done! I like the play of using ion to take down a weapon, a lot of people don't think about that. 1500 scrap is quite low, sounds like you made good use of the scrap you had.
Love these videos of yours, excellently made!
Thank you!
Great video! One thing that wasn't very clear to me was targeting the pike beam when they cloaked. Did you have to fire it immediately after the cloak, or is it enough to 'start' the targeting beforehand, and then you're locked on for the entire cloak?
Thanks, and good question! I definitely didn't make it as clear as I could have done. What's happening here is that the Pike Beam charges shortly before they can repair cloaking, but we don't know exactly when. So ideally we wait until they cloak, and then use it to cancel their cloaking. The only way to do that here is having it "half targeted", meaning you click on the first room but don't click again until they cloak. This is necessary because you lose "vision" of their ship when they cloak, and cannot target it. If you have boarders on their ship, you will keep vision during cloak and can target any weapons anyway.
Do you just have fast fingers, or do you use a mod or tool for those fast unpause/pauses? If so, which one?
Press the space bar and the middle mouse button together, instead of double-tapping space.
I don't know... Ion build for zoltan c?
Yeah who would do that? Only aesthetes and hipsters, right?
Is that timer a mod?
I'm also interested in that timer
It's Znix's testing tool: gitlab.com/znixian/FTL-test-tool