FTL: Limited Information (Federation Victory!)

For completed/abandoned Mish Mash Games.
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #692 (isolation #200) » Sun May 05, 2019 11:08 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 94


Here we are: the Federation High Command. It doesn't look nearly as intact as it should do, though. The Rebels got here first, and although the Federation's made a fair job at fighting them off, it wasn't a complete job, and the Federation fleet in this area was almost wiped out. Most notably, the Rebels already focused fire on all the military hangars in the area; we have nowhere to repair and there's nothing to resupply with.

Of course, we give them our information about the Rebel flagship: that's what we were sent to deliver, and it could well be very important now. More importantly, it opens up a potential plan for the future: this area is pretty much surrounded by Rebels, so we're going to have to fight no matter what, but at least it strongly suggests the choice of targets.

The Federation military has, of course, been trying to destroy the Flagship anyway; even without knowing how crucial it is, it was something that obviously needed destroying. with the additional information, it makes sense to direct all their available resources into focusing on it; once it's destroyed, the rest of the Rebellion will have less of a reason to exist, and can likely be easily wiped out. Of course, even
getting
to it isn't particularly easy; it has a large retinue of elite Rebel fighters that help to protect it, and Federation cruisers have so far had issues just getting within weapons range without getting stuck in a dogfight. The Federation is going to keep trying, though.

We also get some intelligence on the Flagship itself. As expected for a ship this large and important, it has a number of features that will make it hard to destroy, but they also identified some potential weaknesses:
  • Four shield generators, as if that wasn't obvious. Luckily, they're all in the same place, so we may be able to focus-fire on it.
  • A cloaking device, making it hard for us to get weapon locks.
  • Instead of being centralised, the weapon power relays are split up all over the ship; we can't just aim at the weapons generally, any shot of ours is only going to be able to affect one of them (OK, we might be able to hit two with a beam). This means that any "target the weapons" request must specify
    which
    weapon.

  • Speaking of the weapons, it has four of them: a burst laser; a burst missile launcher; a burst ionizer; and a large beam which can pierce one shield layer.
  • The ship has a very large number of crew (the Federation hasn't been able to produce an accurate count, but it's at least 10), and full life support facilities, including high-turnover medical facilities and fast, reinforced oxygen pumps.
  • The ship's navigational controls for impulse and for FTL jumps are separate. The FTL controls are too well-shielded to aim for, but the impulse controls are a bit of a weak point; although shielded against many attacks, there isn't so much shielding that it's implausible to break through the shielding and destroy the controls beyond it. With so many crew, though, it's often quickly repaired.
  • The ship has a highly advanced internal security system, involving heavy blast doors which automatically seal off any area with intruders, and prevent fire and oxygen leaks from spreading. Previous Federation attacks have caused the only real victory over the Flagship; after some attacks with an experimental weapon, the doors to the beam and ionizer rooms somehow managed to end up welded completely shut, meaning that if we kill the crew in those rooms, the ship will have no way to replace them.
  • The ship has a highly advanced hacking device, that's been known to cause the equipment on ships attacking it to shut down or even start working against its own ship. Stories abound of things like the oxygen pumps running backwards and completely draining the attacking Federation ship of oxygen.
Most worrying, though, is the ship's apparent ability to self-repair. It seems pretty clear from the observations that the Rebel Flagship has somehow been repairing itself while in hyperspace between jumps, which is of course completely impossible. Maybe some time in the future we'll be able to capture and study whatever technological marvel allows that, but for the time being, we just have to work out a way to deal with it. The only plausible way to prevent the Flagship simply jumping away and repairing whenever it's damaged seems to be to hold it too close to the beacons; what remains of the Federation military engineers division has therefore been working on the beacons in the area to make them "draggier" and harder to jump away from. Even so, we're likely going to have to fight this thing multiple times before it's destroyed. Maybe we can at least do some permanent damage to it.

Anyway, we get an interesting report on what remains of the Command's hyperspatial scanners: the Flagship is jumping to a nearby beacon, that's just being reinforced, and we can arrive on the same jumpcycle if we wish. It's a rare opportunity to attack the Flagship, and we're pretty much the only ship in position to take advantage of it. So our orders, at least for the moment, are clear; whether we're fighting for glory or merely trying to survive, we know where to go next.

Plans, everyone? You will likely need to collaborate with each other in order to make sure your various attacks and defences aren't stepping on each others' toes.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #695 (isolation #201) » Sun May 05, 2019 11:26 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I've actually been backing up previous save files in case something goes wrong (e.g. I misinterpret a request and end up killing the ship, or get overconfident when making an "obvious decision"). It might rather mess with the continuity of the game, though :-D
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #698 (isolation #202) » Mon May 06, 2019 12:00 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Their engines are apparently too advanced to realistically be able to disable.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #714 (isolation #203) » Tue May 07, 2019 3:08 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 95


Let's go. We jump, and catch the Rebel Flagship just as it arrives at a beacon. There's no time to pay attention to the surroundings; we have to pour all our attention into this battle.

The Flagship starts its battle by cloaking immediately; we can't do anything to it until it becomes visible again, so all we can do for now is deploy a Defence Drone. The Flagship launches a hacking drone, and unfortunately, our Defence Drone misses it; it locks onto our secondary weapons and starts scrambling their attempts to get weapon locks. At least it didn't hit the Artillery.

Our shields block the enemy lasers, so the first damage of the battle comes from the enemy missile launcher; it sprays three missiles at us, and the Defence Drone only has time to shoot down one of them. One hits an empty room, and one takes out the Infirmary. Only Elizabeth and Iconeum have nothing to do, and Iconeum's been locked in the weapons room by the enemy hacking drone, so Elizabeth goes over to the life support department to try to fix it.

Meanwhile, we get some of the first damage in against the Rebel ship. We start off with some system damage against their ionizer, with our hacking drone making it impossible for it to dodge our Pulse Bomb; however, it doesn't go down immediately, and disrupts one of our shield barriers while we're hitting it. The first damage to the Rebel ship's structure comes at long range from a Federation cruiser, which is having trouble getting near the fight but which can at least use remote-combat weapons; it can hardly aim at that distance, but does at least manage to hit an empty room on the Flagship.

The Hacking Drone can't fire very often, so our second Pulse Bomb has to aim without its help, and misses. However, nothing can stop the Artillery Beam, which cuts right across the enemy ship, damaging its shields, engines, and particularly its life support. Then we have to wait a while – it cloaks again, and simultaneously sends a hacking pulse at our weapons, so we'll have to wait before we can once again attack. At least we completely dodged the second missile barrage, thanks to some skilled piloting via Gammagooey, and Varsoon turning off the oxygen pumps for a second or so to squeeze extra power into the engines.

By the time our aimable weapons come back online, the Rebel crew have fixed all the system damage to their ship. However, the next volley gives us a huge opportunity; the covering fire from the Federation hits the enemy Shields system. Even better, the Rebel weapons don't bother us much; we temporarily lose a shield generator to ion disruption, and the worst spends 10 seconds frantically getting it back online, but that doesn't damage our ship's structure, and the defence drone manages to shoot down two of the three missiles it fired, with Gammagooey dodging the third. We take advantage of the gap in the shields by firing everything we have at the enemy Shield system (apart from the Pike Beam, which we can't power and wouldn't have charged by now anyway); a quick hack lets us take control of the Flagship's steering for a vital few seconds, and move the shield generators right into the path of our Pulse Bomb and Burst Laser. We get a second Pulse Bomb to hit the shield generators, taking them all out, right before the enemy cloaks; it responds with a laser volley that forms a gap in the shields with the first two lasers, but fortunately, misses our temporarily unprotected ship with the third.

It'd be nice to finish off the Flagship by shooting at it – its shields are down and we would have a perfect opportunity to destroy it – but it responds by taking control of our weapons and firing three of its own weapon systems at once. Luckily, our shields hold, and all we have to deal with is a fire amidships. Elizabeth knows what to do about that, though; it's an inessential room that we don't have to walk through, so she opens an airlock and an internal door to drain the oxygen sustaining it out to space.

The next laser burst from the enemy misses entirely, although it couldn't have gotten through our shields anyway. Meanwhile, our Pulse Bomb is the first weapon to come back up – we use it to create another breach in the enemy Shields room, making it hard for the enemy to repair it. Then our Burst Laser is up, and we know that as long as all shots connect, we'll destroy the Flagship; and our hacking drone is up, too, so we can take control of its impulse engines and prevent it from dodging. It fires one last burst of missiles at us while our lasers are en route, then realises what amount of trouble it's in, and immediately fires up its independent FTL system and jumps out of there.

…It was still too close to the beacon. It tried to jump away when it really shouldn't, and large bits of it got left behind; in particular, its cloaking device just broke off, as did its ionizer, its hacking drone control unit, and all the circuitry controlling its internal security. It might be able to repair in hyperspace, but it surely isn't going to be able to repair
that
.

As the enemy missiles are still on the way, but we know that nothing
else
is going to be fired at us this batle, we take power out of the shields (which are useless against missiles) in order to get the engines at full speed. It mostly works, and we take only minimal damage.

It's completely unclear how to take advantage of most of the components and weaponry that came off the Rebel flagship; they're too large to fit on pretty much any Federation ship, let alone ours. We can, however, treat some of it as scrap metal; ⛯19 isn't a whole lot, and we might have nowhere to spend it, but there's no reason
not
to loot it, right? More usefully, there are some explosives among the debris, so we quickly craft a bit of Pulse Bomb ammunition.

After the battle, we stop to take stock of our surroundings. The area's more or less completely unrecognisable from battle damage, but one thing we do find is a Federation hyper-relay satellite; it's unclear what its intended purpose is, but right now, we can use it to gain updates about the situation. We get in contact with some Federation scout ships that have hyperspatial scanners; they've detected the Flagship in hyperspace and know where it's going to jump next. We are, unsurprisingly, in range of that too; the Flagship might be highly advanced, but at least its jump range for emergency jumps doesn't seem to be any better than the range we can make when under less time pressure. More worryingly, the Rebel's remaining autoships are converging on the same location; the Federation scramble their own warships to hold them off, but they suspect that some of them might be able to get through; we'll likely have to be dealing with attacks on multiple fronts on the second round of the battle.

Still, there's nothing we can do until the beacon pull, so may as well talk strategy for round 2 of the fight. I'll post additional information in people's PTs.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #723 (isolation #204) » Wed May 08, 2019 4:43 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 96


We take care to move
well
away from the beacon; the rigged beacon has already done serious damage to the Flagship, and we don't want the same thing to happen to us. Then we jump after it, and observe that it's missing its entire port wing.

The Federation navy is busy holding off many of the other ships in the area, so we have a clear shot for the Flagship. However, it seems that many of the auto-scouts around here have been donating drones to the effort; the Flagship doesn't have a drone fabricator, but it
does
apparently have a drone control system, so we're going to have to be dealing with that as well as with the Flagship's remaining weapons.

We start off by deploying our own drones, though: a Defence Drone to defend against missiles, and a Hacking Drone aimed, as before, at the Flagship's navigation controls. The flagship has its own Defence Drone, but by modulating the power going into our Hacking Drone, we manage to make it slow down and speed up in such a way that the enemy Defence Drone misses it. We don't have any other attacks that it can shoot down, so we've neutralised it for the duration of the fight.

That's not the only drone we have to deal with, though. A Combat Drone flies around making small gaps in the outer shield layer; that won't be a problem when it's on its own, but it may be when combined with other weapons. A Beam Drone lies in wait; it can't do anything right now, but it's surely going to take advantage if our shields ever go down. There's also a fleet of Boarding Drones heading for our ship; our Defence Drone shoots down one, but it's unlikely to be able to keep up forever.

We land a couple of Pulse Bombs on the enemy missile launcher; this doesn't take it out, but does slow it down, and the resulting hull breaches will make it hard to repair. Diverting power from life support to engines allows us to dodge the first burst of lasers, too. The Flagship retaliates by landing a Boarding Drone among our drone control units, breaching through the hull; Varsoon and Elizabeth go over to try to do a bit of combat disassembly on it, Elizabeth taking care to leave the doors to the room open to buy a bit more time before all the oxygen drains.

With our third Pulse Bomb, the enemy missiles are down (and one of the crewmembers fixing them, nearly dead, has to make an emergency run to the Flagship's Infirmary). Our Artillery Beam also fires, scoring an impressively precise hit right down the heart of the enemy ship. Then a huge number of things happen at once: the Federation cruisers land a hit on the flagship (sadly, to an empty room), and the Rebel autoships retaliate with a huge horde of drones, just as Varsoon and Elizabeth finish off the enemy boarding drone. Our shields go down almost immediately, giving the enemy beam drones a chance to connect, and they take the Hacking Drone's control unit and the oxygen pumps offline. Varsoon and Elizabeth quickly leave the room, Elizabeth closing the doors behind her – that whole part of the ship is going to lose oxygen very soon. the worst brings the shields back up and goes to repair the broken drone control unit. Iconeum takes advantage of the damage to the enemy shields, landing another Pulse Bomb on them.

At least the horde of drones aiming for us doesn't stay in range for long; slowing down in space is just as hard as speeding up, and having aimed for our ship at incredible speed, they overshoot. They'll be back, but we have some breathing space while they try to turn round. Varsoon takes advantage of the lull by heading to the infirmary, having taken the brunt of the boarding drone's attacks. Elizabeth, as the only available crew member, goes to repair the oxygen pumps. Meanwhile, the worst and Iconeum are able to synch up their actions perfectly; the worst gets the hacking drone back online just as Iconeum gets the Burst Laser and Pulse Bomb locked on, and we fire everything at the enemy shield generators. In fact, the Artillery Beam's rudimentary targeting software is having a great day too, and picks the same target at the same moment, damaging the enemy oxygen pumps on the way. The result: three enemy shield generators down, one ionized, two breaches and a vacuum in the surrounding area, and two dead Rebels.

The next Boarding Drone gets shot down by our Defence Drone, and Gammagooey dodges enough of the following laser volley that it fails to pierce our shields, so it's peaceful on board our ship for a while. That gives Elizabeth time to finish the repairs to our oxygen pumps; we've lost a lot of air, but still have enough to breathe. It also gives Iconeum enough time to lock the Burst Laser back onto its target – the enemy shields are still down, and will be until the Rebels can repair the breaches in their shield room, so it's a perfect situation for deploying it. Our hacking drone is latched onto the enemy ship for the purpose of disrupting its navigation controls, but its effective range is just slightly longer than that, so when the Rebels decide to rotate out their pilot, the worst takes advantage by controlling the door to the bridge and locking the replacement pilot out. That makes it pretty bad at dodging, so Iconeum manages to hit with all three of the Burst Laser shots, taking the enemy missiles back down even though they'd only just repaired them.

Turns out it's not just us who took advantage of the destruction of the enemy defences. A few moments later, a Federation cruiser that has won its battle with the autoship it was trying to hold off looks for a new target, notices that the Flagship is moving predictably and its shields are down, and launches a volley into its drone control unit. The whole right wing of the Flagship breaks off, and it looks like the ship's going to break up too. However, apparently the reduction in its weight made it harder for the beacon to hold it in place; realising that it's now at safe jumping range, it jumps away.

For a moment, we saw into the heart of the Flagship, and we didn't like what we saw; a huge power surge was coming out of its exposed core, powerful enough that we could feel it through the vacuum of space.

What do we get from the fight? Well, the Federation fleet is here, and managed to clean up some of the more critical of the remaining autoships, leaving the Rebel drones uncontrolled; they just fly off into space. In general, the debris in the area is moving very quickly, and our impulse engines are far from top-of-the-line; they can't catch up with it. We do manage to snag one drone part, though, together with a small amount of ammunition and scrap (⛯21).

We also note that the Flagship has, apparently, jumped in the wrong direction. That's interesting; it's capable of FTL jumping when its impulse controls are down, but apparently it listens to them when they're apparently working? At any rate, it seems quite plausible that our hacking drone may be responsible for it picking the wrong beacon. It would have been nice if we could have aimed it away from beacons altogether, leaving it stranded in time, but apparently it had a failsafe to prevent that. Oh, well; at least this way, there'll be no risk of someone building a new beacon in the far future and accidentally reviving the Rebellion. Anyway, it's probably going to come back through here if we wait for it. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't chase it if we want to.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Wed May 08, 2019 4:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #724 (isolation #205) » Wed May 08, 2019 4:54 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Although the fight is over, we still have a few repairs to make aboard the ship. It was too hectic to spend much time in the Infirmary during the fight – Varsoon had his worst wounds healed, but is still somewhat injured, and Elizabeth is looking mildly asphyxiated – so the first thing we need to do is to take a trip there to make sure that everyone's properly fit for fighting. The next problem is as to how we're going to repair the breach in the drone control room; it turns out that even opening all the interior doors on the ship doesn't allow the collective power of the ship's oxygen pumps to outpace the oxygen leak from it. So all that we can do is to send crew in to make progress on repairing it with their breath held, and then send them back to the infirmary for supplemental oxygen. At least nothing goes wrong when we're doing that; there's still fighting going on in the area but it's moved well away from the beacon by now (given that both the Federation and Rebellion know that the beacons have been rigged, that's not surprising!), and is unlikely to come back to our location until at least the next jumpcycle (we're at a likely location for the arrival of FTL jumps).

As expected, we have no real way to do any sort of precision engineering here, nor anyone we can buy equipment from. So if we're going to be doing anything with our scrap, it'll have to be by just bolting scrap to things in order to help insulate them against damage. (The prices for this will be the same as at the previous beacon.)
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #734 (isolation #206) » Thu May 09, 2019 3:02 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 97


The final battle with the Flagship is coming up, and we want to make sure we're prepared. This is no time to save resources, so while we're getting a safe distance from the beacon (and then a bit more, just to be sure), we deploy our Hull Repair drone to make sure that the ship's completely spotless.

When we arrive after the jump, we discover that the Rebel Flagship is sitting within an Energy Shield. Iconeum's fully focused on getting through it, because until we do, we aren't going to be able to do anything to the Flagship. All we can do at our side of things is to deploy another Defence Drone, and hope to survive the Rebels' early attacks. Their first move is to mind-control Elizabeth (and give her a bit of a power boost at the same time), so the worst goes next door to the door control room to distract her. That said, he can't stay there long; two Rebels immediately teleport over, one joining Elizabeth in sabotaging the door controls, one perhaps unwisely attacking Varsoon. The door controls are probably a lost cause at this point – Iconeum's too slow to go over to save them, the worst is too weak, Varsoon can't fight one versus three, and we can't exactly send Gammagooey the pilot over – so we have to abandon them and focus on protecting the rest of the ship.

As the door controls fall, the Flagship launches its first weapon barrages. (So do we, but all we can do is chip away at the Energy Shield.) The lasers can't get through our shields, and unlike in previous rounds, they have nothing to follow the laser barrage up with. The missiles, however, can, and a drone power relay comes loose. the worst isn't busy, and thus runs over there to repair it, but it might take a while. Meanwhile, the invading Rebels, together with the mind-controlled Elizabeth, go to the shield room. We were somewhat prepared for this possibility, and drained half the oxygen from the room in advance, so that turning the oxygen pumps off will force people out of that room before it affects the rest of the ship.

The Rebel teleporter activates again, and now there are four people attacking the shield generators. Varsoon holds them off as long as possible, but it's only a few seconds. We badly need more crew at the back of the ship, so Iconeum programs some simple rules into the weapon systems and starts making the long trek over; he'll take over from the worst in repairing the drone power relays (the room's been breached and is out of oxygen, and Iconeum's more resilient against that). the worst goes to the now-empty door control room; we're badly going to need working doors if the Rebels are going to send still more crew.

Our oxygen micromanagement pays off, though, forcing the invading Rebels out of the shields room with only one shield generator down. That's a good thing too, as the core of the Rebel ship lights up, firing a huge number of laser shots at us all at once. It's a testament to Gamagooey's piloting that only two of them get through the shields. Unfortunately, one of them hit the oxygen pumps; we're going to have to repair those as soon as we get the opportunity, but there's nobody around to repair them but the injured Varsoon, who wouldn't get the repairs done nearly quickly enough. Far better to let him heal up so that he can fight off the Rebel infantry once Elizabeth comes to.

Luckily, Elizabeth snaps to her senses almost immediately. All four Rebels attacking our ship are in the engine room; one of them was badly damaged by Varsoon earlier, and Elizabeth finishes him as soon as she's aware of what she's doing. 3 healthy Rebels versus our 2 injured Federation combatants is still insurmountable odds, but the worst has just managed to fix the door controls, so we quickly reconfigure the doors to force the Rebels into the infirmary. Elizabeth goes over to the oxygen pumps and starts to fix them.

The good news is that our weapons have finally worn down the enemy Energy Shield. The bad news is that the Rebels have had yet more time; they teleport over one additional crew member to try to stop our Artillery Beam, and their weapons set our own weapons room on fire, in addition to taking out a second shield generator. Luckily, we not only make use of the gap in the Energy Shield to send over a Hacking Drone, but it manages to land while the Rebel pilot temporarily went over to their Shields room to fix Artillery Beam damage; we've locked them out from their own navigation controls.

Varsoon was fighting 1 versus 3 in the Infirmary. That's a losing battle even with help from injections of adrenaline and similar basic combat drugs – we don't have anything advanced in there to help out more. However, it's not losing all that fast, and although Varsoon is badly damaged, Elizabeth finishes repairing the Oxygen pumps before he dies, and goes over to help just as he finishes off one of the Rebels. 2 versus 2 is a much better fight. The Rebels respond to that by mind-controlling the worst and sending him to join the fight on their side; they also use their missiles to take out our door controls (again), and the last shield generator.

The oxygen has returned to the shields room, so we can send Elizabeth over to help get the shields back up. It rather feels like it's too late, though; the secondary weapons have burned out, so we have no way to shut down anything on the Flagship, much of the ship is breached or on fire, all the crew are busy with essential jobs, and another Rebel has just teleported on top of Gammagooey, making navigation hard. It feels like there's nothing we can do; not even the hack on the enemy navigation is helpful when we have nothing to attack the enemy with.

Luckily, Gammagooey, despite being in the middle of a shoot-out, is still conscious. We were hoping to end this here and now, but if we can at least survive this fight, we may have a chance to beat the Flagship later; and it only takes one finger to hit the FTL Jump button. The beacon we just jumped from is still under Federation control, and it'll be much easier to kill the remaining Rebels and repair the damage to the ship when we aren't being shot at. Running away from your goal is always a sad moment, but what else can you do?
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #736 (isolation #207) » Thu May 09, 2019 3:21 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 98


The Flagship doesn't follow us. We realise in retrospect how risky it was to jump away from a potentially rigged beacon, but it was our lucky day; the jump deals no damage to our ship, and the Flagship was too afraid to follow.

Much of the ship is short of oxygen or on fire or broken or some combination of that, but we've managed to kidnap most of the Flagship's crew in the process of the jump. Even better, many jobs which were absolutely essential during combat are kind-of pointless in a more peaceful area like this. Iconeum can safely leave the weapons to burn, and goes to Gammagooey's defence in the navigation room (a pilot untrained at combat won't beat a Rebel infantryman who is). Elizabeth no longer needs to take the shields online in a hurry, and goes to fix the doors; we'll need them to help put out the fires. the worst is out of range of the Flagship's mind control device, and can start repairing things. Varsoon is still badly injured, but takes out another Rebel immediately as we arrive from the jump, and is almost certain to win the remaining 1v1 fight given the help of the Infirmary.

The Rebels realise that being split up aboard a hostile ship is probably not the best of ideas, so they decide to band together in the oxygen generation unit; perhaps they've realised they can't survive and are hoping to take us with them. That means that Iconeum can go back to trying to put out the fire in the weapons room; he's not that fast at it, but he's not that bothered by it either, his rocky body being immune to heat. Varsoon's still too injured to take the Rebels 2 versus 1, so Elizabeth goes over to them to help out in the fight, leaving the worst to fix the doors. A moment later, and Varsoon has killed one of the remaining Rebels with a projectile attack, and decapitated the other with his sword-arms.

We still don't have the ship completely under control yet. Iconeum's put out the fire in the weapons, but there was a second fire burning amidships, and it's spread to the bridge; we didn't have any chance to extinguish it earlier with everyone busy and the door controls broken. That said, the worst has just fixed them, so we vent that whole area of the ship, running Gammagooey over to the weapons room so that he has somewhere to breathe (and to help speed up the repairs while he's at it). The lack of atmosphere extinguishes the fire
just
before it reaches any critical parts of the ship's structure, so no damage there. We're finally at a stage where we could survive for a while doing nothing; there are plenty of problems still on the ship, but at least now none of them are threatening to become worse.

We still face an interesting problem trying to get everything fixed, though. Our ship is full of holes, and Iconeum is too badly damaged from Rebel weapons fire to make it to the Infirmary alive through the parts of the ship that are missing oxygen. Instead, we have to send the worst to fix them, one by one, holding his breath in the process, and running back to the Infirmary in between. Varsoon and Elizabeth are now fully recovered, so they spend their time trying to fix the broken structures at the back of the ship; they may as well get some repair experience, after all, and they're no longer critically needed for any jobs immediately.

The whole internal security and repair job took a very long time, but the ship's finally back into ship-shape, and we've repaired everything we can inside the ship. With many of the Rebels dead, the next attempt at the Flagship is likely to be easier. Even so, given what a disaster the previous attempt was, we might want to change our strategy somewhat. The Flagship still has to come this way, so we may as well talk tactics while waiting for it to arrive.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #754 (isolation #208) » Fri May 10, 2019 5:02 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 99


The Flagship has to come this way to continue its attack on the Federation. We can ambush it simply by waiting out the jumpcycle; we get into a good position to observe the beacon's pull radius, and sit down to wait. It's been tens of jumpcycles since we last had a break, but this one takes a while, so we catch a small amount of sleep while the beacon prepares itself.

Of course, we make sure to wake up well in time. Everyone's feeling refreshed and alert when the Flagship drops in from hyperspace. Our sensor scans immediately indicate that there are only two crew left aboard it. It's showing no damage apart from the two missing wings, but we hardly did any damage to it last battle anyway.

As usual, we're restricted in what we can do until we get past its Energy Shield, so all we can do in the short term is deploy a defence drone and wait for the weapons to wear down the shield. Unfortunately, the Rebels have learned from their previous experience and aim their mind control device at Varsoon. There isn't really anything anyone else can do to stop him, so we don't; the Rebels decide to send him to attack the hacking drone control unit, and one of the Rebels teleports over to join him, so we're probably just going to have to let it be destroyed. We still need someone to maintain the engines, so Elizabeth goes over to that station; the worst takes control of the doors.

Outside the ships, the first volleys of weapons go well for us. The enemy lasers can't get through our shields yet; ours couldn't get through their regular shields, but their Energy Shield is outside them, and we hit with all three shots. Their missile launchers can get through our shields, but between the Defence Drone and Gammagooey's piloting, only one gets through, and it doesn't hit anything important. The second volley goes fairly well too; we hit with one laser shot and the Pike and Artillery Beams both connect, knocking it down to about ⅓ of its normal integrity. Unfortunately, the enemy gets two missiles through the second time; one of them slows our Artillery Beam, another sets an airlock on fire. That said, "airlock on fire" is not a major problem when emptying out the oxygen is part of its design.

Inside the ship, Varsoon, being very familiar with the doors and hopped up from the mind control unit, is effectively unstoppable; the Rebel who teleported over is much less familiar, and we manage to temporarily separate them by slamming the door in between. Varsoon goes back to the engines and starts trying to destroy them, and Elizabeth puts in some decent damage while the Rebel is trying to break down the door. When the Rebel gets through – and Varsoon breaks one of the power relays going to the engines – we have the opportunity for the worst and Elizabeth to go back in and repair the hacking drones, which the Rebels consider a better target, and thus lure the attackers away from destroying the engines. That lets us try to get some quick repairs in.

Unfortunately, the Rebel's superweapon has loaded; it fires a huge burst of lasers that instantly disrupt all three shield layers and do heavy damage to the front of the ship. The navigation controls are knocked out, and so is Gammagooey; he's not dead, but he's not conscious either. We also lose the Burst Laser, so we switch to beams and bombs, On the other hand, Varsoon finally shakes free of the mind control, and the Rebel previously fighting alongside him is now trapped in a room with him. Unsurprisingly, that doesn't go well for the Rebel, and a few swipes later, Varsoon is ready to return to his post managing the engines. Elizabeth is badly injured and needs to heal (but with one of our most power-intensive weapons down, we have no problem finding the reactor power for that); the worst runs to the front of the ship to help with the repairs there, because much of it is broken. We've already taken two missile hits due to being unable to dodge, what with no working navigation.

As it happens, Gammagooey gets the navigation controls back into a workable state by himself before the worst has a chance to get there and help – we're on a pretty large ship, it takes a while to walk from one end to the other. the worst doesn't have a chance to repair the weapons either, getting mind controlled first. On the other hand, we're finally through the Energy Shield, so we can send a Pulse Bomb to damage the enemy mind control system, and a Hacking Drone to lock the lone surviving Rebel out from the bridge when he goes to repair it. The Rebels fire their superweapon again, but our navigation, engines, and shields are all at full capacity; between dodges, shields, and the Defence Drone getting in the way of one of the enemy shots, only one of them gets through. It breaks the aft airlock, causing its outer door to no longer be airtight; that doesn't seem like relevant damage at this particular moment, so we got off lightly.

Unfortunately, with the Defence Drone broken, we can't do much about the next missile barrage – the next Defence Drone hasn't finished fabricating by the time it hits, and it starts fires all over the ship. Luckily, they're all in locations which are fairly easy to fight. We've already landed two Pulse Bombs on the enemy mind control unit, weakening it to the stage that the worst can break free; we engage the hacking drone, just to make sure, and use a third to take it out for good.

The next enemy attack is more of a problem, though: the regular lasers and the superlasers from the Flagship's core fire at once. We're unable to survive unscathed from that much laser fire; the only systems damaged are the oxygen pumps (which accidentally allow the oxygen to leak out from the weapons room, delaying our attempts to fix that), but the ship's structure is in severe trouble. We deploy the Hull Repair Drone for some combat repairs; we'll juggle power between it and the Defence Drone depending on whether there are missiles heading for us or not.

We now discover that we have something of a problem in damaging the Flagship: we don't have enough Pulse Bomb ammo left to bring the shields entirely down. In other words, if we want to damage the enemy ship faster than the Artillery Beam does it, we'll need to use the Burst Laser to bring down the ships for the Pike Beam, and we're nowhere near being able to repair it. Luckily, it seems that the Federation fleet are coming to help; it must have been fired from truly extreme range, as we can't see the ship that fired it, but a cannon shot hits and destroys the Flagship's oxygen pumps. That means we can make the Flagship's systems difficult or impossible to repair by breaching the rooms they're in, so we launch one of our last two Pulse Bombs to make a hole by the flagship's burst missile launcher. We don't take it down, but it'll be firing more slowly, and maybe the beams will permanently take it down later.

The Flagship has its own ideas about defending itself, though; it brings its Energy Shield back up. That's maybe not a bad thing; if it's gathering power to do that, it means it wasn't spending it on anything else. That said, we're not exactly going to get through the shield quickly with only the beams, so the worst and Iconeum both work together on trying to bring our weapons back up. Even better, the Federation cruisers are nearer, and take the missile launcher out altogether as the shield is loading; it's a good thing we made it irreperable earlier, because now we're unlikely to have to worry about missiles for the rest of the battle.

Hiding behind the Energy Shield, the remaining Rebel attempts to fix up the regular shield generators, but we've broken enough holes in the room that that's very difficult; the Rebel is quickly on the point of asphyxiation, and has to run out to his Infirmary. That's great – it means no repairs were made to the regular shields, so we'll only have two of them to deal with once we manage to take the Energy Shield down. The Rebels try a blast from their superlaser, but our systems are pretty much back to full strength now; only one shot gets through, and it breaks the oxygen pumps again, but neither the worst or Elizabeth are busy so they won't take long to fix. The ship's structure is also out of the danger zone, too; we've used all the reinforced plating we have on making combat repairs to it, but the repairs seem to be holding.

With our ship and the Federation ship both pounding the enemy, we finally get our opportunity. The Energy Shield is going to be able to take only one more hit. The Rebels have only two shield barriers working. We've hacked their navigation controls, they aren't going to be able to dodge. 1 + 2 is 3; three burst laser hits break the Energy Shield and disrupt both regular shields. The Pike Beam is up; this is the first opportunity we've had to connect against the Flagship with it, and it will also be the last. We cut right through the Flagship's core. It doesn't jump; most likely, it can't. Rather, it breaks in half.

We need to make sure that the Rebellion is completely destroyed. The Federation fleet are coming this way; it seems they've beaten the nearby parts of the Rebel ship and are hoping to help us clear up. We don't want the Flagship's AI to ever resurrect, so the Federation as a whole – both us, and the other Federation ships – attack the Flagship's computers over and over with everything we have left, until they're reduced to a small pile of melted silicon.
Zephyr (n)
. A new Federation warship hastily pressed into service after the destruction of the rest of its Federation base by Rebels. Carrying a vital message for the Federation High Command, it made its way to the heart of the Rebel assault, and destroyed the Rebels' flagship, throwing their fleet into chaos and ensuring a Federation victory.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Tue May 21, 2019 4:06 am, edited 4 times in total.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #755 (isolation #209) » Fri May 10, 2019 5:04 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Statistics, as given by the game:

Ships defeated: 36
Beacons explored: 96 (not 99: the discrepancy is partly because I think I miscounted jumps at some point, and partly because there were a few repeated beacons while fighting the Flagship)
Scrap collected; 1344
Crew hired: 5

Final score: 4536
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #756 (isolation #210) » Fri May 10, 2019 5:22 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Sadly, I mistimed the end-of-game screenshot slightly. I was hoping to show the damage aboard the Flagship, but it wasn't to be. Here's what it looked like just
after
the final shot:

Image

From memory: the lone crewmember on the Flagship was in the infirmary, having just finished fixing the breaches in the Shields room (which was down to 4hp = two shield barriers). There were breaches in the Oxygen room (broken), and Burst Missile room (broken, breached twice). The Shields room, together with all the breached rooms, had no oxygen. The Rebel crewmember had been locked out from piloting by the Hacking Drone (with the Shields room on the other side of the door, and no air, breaking through would have been difficult); Piloting was on 1 hp (meaning that the Rebels had no way to dodge, as you need 2hp or more in piloting to dodge without a pilot present). That's one of the main reasons we did so well on our second attempt; the Federation cruisers normally miss the Flagship stage 3 (which has very high evasion), but with the Rebels having no ability to pilot the ship, they were hitting every time.

The reason we still had ammo left over is that the Energy Shield got refreshed before I had a chance to fire the final Pulse Bomb shot. I would have used it if I had a chance to, per Iconeum's instructions, most likely on the shield generator.

I accidentally forgot to enact one of the requests made via PT, but it turned out not to matter. The screenshot has been image-edited to how it
should
have looked :-D (There were a few other moments at which I missed a request, or forgot to ask about something I really should have asked for, or accidentally gave a ridiculous/suicidal command to a crewmember due to microing failure; in each of those cases, I reset to a previous save file, so this isn't quite a "pure" win. The major cause of this was Jump 65, where I kept getting bored trying to follow PvtUrist's instructions, decided "let's see if I can reach the same end result a faster way so I don't have to wait for hours attempting to follow this plan, I can always reload a save if it doesn't work", screwed up, and reloaded the save, continuously.)

It may take a while for me to total up the secondary victory conditions. The main issue is trying to establish how many kills Varsoon had; we may never know, because Varsoon was on full experience from mind-controlled system destruction (meaning there was no observable evidence of a kill), and we at one point accepted a surrender when he was on the point of killing an enemy Engi; I don't know whether he got the kill in before the surrender or not.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri May 10, 2019 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #758 (isolation #211) » Fri May 10, 2019 6:02 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Victory conditions:

Secondary victory conditions were balanced around 300 being a typical score for someone who aimed heavily towards the victory condition, with unlikely "perfect" scores in the 350-400 range (although Enter's/Gammagooey's had a much wider low end and high end, I still aimed for 300 as typical).

the worst
(PT)

Primary
: visit High Command → destroy Flagship: complete
Secondary
:
100×1 = 100 for pre-installed systems
20×2 = 40 for two purchased systems (Hacking, Drone Control)
20×1 = 20 for one augment (Shield Charge Booster)
15×3 = 45 for three sellable weapons (Burst Laser II, Pulse Bomb I, Pike Beam)
15×2 = 30 for two drone schematics (Defence I, Hull Repair Drone)
Total: 235

I hadn't intended to count the Artillery Beam or Hacking Drone as a weapon and a drone controller respectively. However, you can interpret the wording of the victory condition like that; if you do, that increases the total score to 265.

In general, this ship was pretty technology-heavy; the worst worked towards the secondary victory condition fairly well. We had plenty of room in our cargo hold, but not really anywhere else, and FTL's often won with many fewer gadgets than this. The main place the worst fell down on it was in a lack of augments; also, there was a hostile sector map for the victory condition (going through green sectors definitely helps this one, but hardly any generated). So the worst ended up with a fairly typical score in the mid-200s.

PvtUrist/Iconeum
(PT 1, PT 2)

Primary
: visit Sector 1 Long Range beacon → visit High Command → save High Command from Flagship: complete
Secondary
:
180×7 = 1260 for 7 long-range jumps
−10×96 = 960 for 96 beacons visited
Total: 300

PvtUrist didn't really aim for his secondary victory condition at all, leaving Iconeum somewhat locked out. However, Enter and later Gammagooey seemed to be aiming to achieve the victory condition on their behalves; we took a surprisingly direct route for a game of FTL (e.g. we went straight towards the Flagship at the end, and we left a sector early on at least one occasion). 96 is on the low side for beacon visits already, and it could have been still lower if we didn't go through so many nebulas. There was also a bit of luck, in that many of the Long-Range Beacons were a long way from the right-hand side of the screen; normally that's an invitation to go Rebel-diving, but our ship was never really in a fit state to do that, so we had to leave sectors early because of that.

PvtUrist and Iconeum had separate PTs because they had different levels of FTL experience, so I needed to explain things in different ways.

Enter/Gammagooey
(PT)

Primary
: survive to High Command → survive Flagship battle: complete
Secondary
:
1×30 = 30 for unspent scrap
Total: 30

Our ship was struggling through much of the game, and that rather hurt Enter's and Gammagooey's secondary victory condition. Gammagooey got into the swing of things towards the end, but to do well at this victory condition, you really need the ship to be on top of its game and have more scrap than it knows what to do with (because that makes it much easier to embezzle it). It's possible to have something like 1000 unspent scrap at this point of the game if everything goes perfectly, and 300-400 on a more normal run, so the victory condition was based on an assumption that Enter and the worst would be fighting over it (the worst to buy junk, Enter to hoard it). We had 67, most of which was being hoarded by Iconeum for reasons I don't fully understand (maybe an intentionally attempt to hurt other people's secondary victory conditions?)

It would probably have been a good idea to upgrade the engines much earlier, in order to save on expenditure on repairs.

Varsoon
(PT)

Primary
: destroy flagship: complete
Secondary
:
36×5 = 180 for defeated ships
7 or 8 ×4 = 28 or 32 for killed enemies (the exact amount is unknown; there's one potential kill I couldn't confirm)
Total: 208 or 212

We generally avoided red sectors, where most of the fighting is (we went through an Abandoned Sector early on, but that's about it). We never bought a teleporter. We didn't visit all that many beacons. That combination made Varsoon's bloodthirst pretty hard to satisfy, and we ended up with a low ship defeat count and a low killed enemy count.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #759 (isolation #212) » Fri May 10, 2019 6:06 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Above, I linked everyone's PTs, so you (and any spectators) can all see what everyone else was doing.

You weren't the only people with PTs, though; I kept my own PT as well, in which I posted what I thought everyone
ought
to be doing. Bear in mind that I may well have been wrong in my assessments (I'm not a perfect FTL player, after all). But it was amusing to see just how different my plans often ended up to yours.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #760 (isolation #213) » Fri May 10, 2019 6:11 am

Post by callforjudgement »

In retrospect, I'm really surprised by the lack of crewmember turnover this game. Nobody died, and hardly anyone was hired (hi Elizabeth!). That works out quite well for an interactive playthough like this one, I guess.

I probably won't run this myself again; although it was a lot of fun, it was also a surprising amount of work to mod, and (because FTL can't really handle multiple active games at once) I haven't been able to play any FTL for myself over the last couple of months. There's also the issue that (at least in the mod I use) most ships are heavy on micromanagement in one way or another, and have a fairly set strategy, which isn't ideal for this type of game; Kestrel A and Federation A are the exceptions, and those have both been run now. I have no objection if someone else wants to take up the mantle, though.

At least the mod seems to work. I'd like to clean it up some time so that it works on other people's computers; if I do, I'll post here about it.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #763 (isolation #214) » Fri May 10, 2019 11:49 am

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 42, Varsoon wrote:I've played a ton of FTL. I know that a similarly skilled Mantis can take down a Rock or two humans.
Incidentally, you don't know how much effort these simple-looking sentences caused me. One Mantis versus 2 Humans is, in a fair 1v2 battle, a win for the humans in FTL (both vanilla, and with the mod). So this made me assume there was some super-advanced microing technique I was missing.

It turns out that with huge levels of micro, this is actually possible – but only when aboard the enemy ship (it depends on an AI exploit), and the timing is
really
difficult. So I ended up spending a couple of hours practising while waiting for the game to start. I never actually managed to pull it off, but got close at one point.

Anyway, I was worried based on that comment that people were going to pull other requests for near-impossible micromanagement on me that I'd have to spend hours learning :-) Luckily, there was nothing worse than some finicky messing around with oxygen levels (which I actually screwed up at one point and cheated Varsoon out of 4 points on his secondary objective, but it wasn't enough to change the results).
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #765 (isolation #215) » Fri May 10, 2019 12:10 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Hacking shields is completely overpowered in vanilla FTL, especially when the hacking system gets up to higher levels. The basic reason is that vanilla FTL has a wide range of weapons which are totally overpowered if you can let them hit an unshielded ship (the mod has fewer, but still quite a few, and some of the weapons it does still have were modified to make them better for that purpose); a large part of the game's combat tactics is working out how to drop the shields so that you can hit the ship beneath them. That's the main reason the balance mod has a ridiculously high 90 → 190 progression for its upgrades – most hacks work just fine at lower levels, but shield hacks really benefit from the extra time.

For the Flagship battle, the basic issue is that even with a perfect shot, Iconeum could only get through three shield barriers without help from the Pulse Bomb or Artillery Beam (both of which we relied on pretty heavily towards the end of the game); the Flagship has four. A level 1 hack knocks that down to two layers for a couple of seconds, which is low enough that it's better than 50:50 to drop them with the Burst Laser II against a ship with any reasonable amount of evasion, and the Pike Beam can do massive damage to an unshielded enemy ship. So "shields 4, hack to shields 2, burst shields down, hit with Pike Beam" would have been a decent strategy, comparable in DPS to the Artillery Beam and better at taking out specific targets (once you've hit with it once, now the Flagship only has three shield barriers, so it becomes easier and easier to hit with as time goes on). The other reason that would work well against the Flagship – which is hard to notice in the Limited Information version of things, because I didn't show anyone a map of the Flagship's layout – is that one of the major benefits from the Piloting hack is that you can lock the Rebels out from the room when they leave it, and you do that by locking the door between Piloting and Shields – but you can do that just as well with a Shields hack as with a Piloting hack. This realisation has actually inspired me to consider moving the Flagship's Shields room somewhere else in the mod (it's currently in the same spot as in vanilla).
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #769 (isolation #216) » Fri May 10, 2019 12:28 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Oh yes, max-experience Mantis against two inexperienced humans seems much more plausible. I'll have to test that some time.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #772 (isolation #217) » Fri Jun 28, 2019 10:32 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I've finally got the mod used in this interactive playthrough cleaned up and ready for public consumption (together with adding a few more fixes). If anyone wants to play it themself, they can read about it / download it here.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
Locked

Return to “Sens-O-Tape Archive”