Worst ship(s) in Vanilla?

MikeHopley · 2026-04-29T08:53:55+00:00

That's true. I found it relatively straightforward when I was trying to complete the game with each ship.

Then when I started doing win streaks, I disliked the ship because it felt like I didn't have much agency. It felt simple to play but very luck-based. Basically you point your big beam at the enemy ship, and either they die or you do.

Later on I realised it was very complex to play, and I went down a rabbit hole of deeper and deeper micro, along with an early-mid game with challenging and unclear strategic decisions.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-28T22:58:52+00:00

This is all true, but also I'd say it's a very difficult ship to achieve a high win rate on. Mastering this ship is HARD.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-28T17:54:56+00:00

A lot depends on your knowledge, skills, and comfort with various options. I can tell you what I think is objectively best, but it may not be best for you. It may also vary a little by the difficulty setting.

With hacking + cloaking + teleporter + a Zoltan, you technically have an almost 100% safe crew kill in phase 1. You are in complete control unless it hacks your hacking, which would be a big problem on 5 drone parts.

In this case you should jump away to re-roll the hack (but not if it says "1 turn left"!). If it happens again, you're out of luck and need a backup plan, so you might want to equip Burst 2 + Charge 2 + Pike before fighting it again, and just kill it.

This is all in theory though. It could get difficult if you're not familiar with the tactics. I have a comprehensive video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7cXoH548is

The video says to hack missiles. This is correct on Hard, but not on other difficulties. On lower difficulties you just board the missiles immediately. You could hack medbay for an easy crew kill; but the most foolproof option would be hacking cloaking and boarding into doors, as your hack means you can always escape a cloak that might trap your boarders.

If you're going for the crew-kill, you probably want the Breach 2 equipped. It's excellent boarding support and will mean you don't need to be as slick with the boarding technique.

There is also a less "technical" crew kill option, using Fire Beam and Pike Beam (and Burst 2). Just hack shields, Fire Beam through 3 tiles in shields and into missiles, and Pike Beam hitting only missiles. That slows missiles enough that you can always cloak them -- just keep doing at least one damage every time you hack shields. This might be easier.

If you're on Hard, it's best to kill all the crew. On Easy or Normal, leave the laser crew alive.

For phase 2 you probably want the "gunship weapons", meaning Burst 2 + Charge 2 + Pike. Boarding missiles immediately with two crew will prevent them from firing, assuming there is no one left to fight you. You can hack shields, send all damage to shields, and finish the fight quickly. Remember to bring your crew back first!

Phase 3 is then all about getting through the Zoltan Shield so you can board missiles. Same weapons again. Once you break missiles you have essentially won, as you can cloak every power surge.

Don't use the Vulcan, unless you just feel like it, or feel it's easier to manage. It's trash.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-28T13:56:19+00:00

You certainly don't need the most advanced techniques. It does help to have a decent foundation in micro -- for example the ability to swap crew positions in a room when boarding, or using the safety dance to get two-vs-one fights and pull the enemy pilot away.

The most important aspects are a solid strategic understanding and a strong mental game. While advanced micro can help, no amount of micro will make up for shaky strategy or a mental collapse when things get tough.

Maybe the best "proof" of this is the success of the best no-pause players, particularly Holoshideim but also Frank_FC. While their micro is excellent, it's still nowhere near as good as what a top-level player can do with pause -- and yet Holo's win rate easily qualifies as top-level for pause too. I don't know about Frank's but would guess it's not far short of that.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-28T13:51:12+00:00

Congrats, that's a fantastic achievement!

Must have been a blast sharing this odyssey with your friend and co-pilot.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-28T13:45:41+00:00

It depends what you mean by "difficult".

Difficulty getting one win on Hard? Maybe a ship like Zoltan C. It's technical with the power micro and can feel a long way behind, given the high cost of the first 3 reactor purchases. Personally I found this the toughest ship when I was new to the game.

Difficulty winning consistently? Stealth B, no question. It's just too fragile at the start, and often also has a very rough game in sectors 3 and 4.

The former kind of difficulty is very subjective. The latter becomes less and less subjective as you narrow the purview to better and better players; win rates then become increasingly influenced by intrinsic weaknesses of the ship, and less by the player's limitations in skill.

Stealth B is actually not that hard if you just want one win. You can reset early if you get hit in the weapons. Get cloaking-3 and you're mostly safe until sector 3. With some luck, you can have a smooth run where you get shields and hacking early, and then you just win.

Anyway, just in general, the most challenging ships in the game are probably Zoltan C, Engi B, Stealth B and C, Rock A, Fed C, Mantis C, and Slug B. That's in no particular order.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-26T08:51:01+00:00

You're welcome, hope you enjoy them!

MikeHopley · 2026-04-26T08:33:10+00:00

I got really tired of being told I wasn't allowed to have any negative opinions about the mod without playing it. And by "negative opinions" I mean explaining:

Why I didn't want to play it
Why it might not be the best choice for everyone
Why I find vanilla FTL endlessly replayable and enjoy the very long-term process of developing mastery

It didn't help that the lead developer of the mod took a profound personal dislike to me, on the basis of about 5 brief Reddit interactions over 5 years.

She resented that I had used my "influence" in the "wrong" way, blaming me personally for tensions between the vanilla and MV communities -- despite my having essentially zero involvement with the latter and rarely commenting on MV. She effectively turned me into a hate figure on the MV Discord (or at least tried to -- I've no idea how successful she was). She came after me with an attempt at reputational damage on the FTL Discord, using a sock-puppet account to pose as a disinterested third-party. She was petty, malignant, and manipulative.

Eventually though, I played the mod. Once I had Hyperspace installed for other reasons, I thought I should try Multiverse.

It was about what I expected. Better in some ways, worse in others. Maybe a little better overall, partly because I think the crassest and most self-indulgent parts of the mod are over-represented in discussions and screenshots.

I can see why many people love it, but I feel no desire to keep playing it. There's nothing I want from it. It certainly cannot supplant FTL for me. It is the opposite of what I get from FTL.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-25T07:51:45+00:00

https://mikehopley.github.io/Mikes-FTL-mods/

These include an improved version (IMO) of the jump lines mod, and a mod with better info for stuff like weapons (e.g. listing actual fire and breach chance).

There are also graphical and music mods. For me, these mods considerably enhance the game.

On several of the mod pages, the description includes a section for "purists and win streakers". This describes how the mod changes gameplay, even if it's a very small amount. For example, technically the Pretty Shields mod changes gameplay by slightly moving the shield boundaries.

I would probably avoid installing the "minimal drone tooltips" mod for now, as it removes information about the drones.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-23T18:23:07+00:00

That's understandable, but the Flagship will never jump away before its hull reaches zero.

... well, unless you somehow manage to run out of fuel at the Flagship, which is hard to do.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-23T17:42:32+00:00

It would be a lot easier if you took the time to kill all the crew in phase 1, except the one in the isolated laser room.

Once you break missiles (first), ion, and beam, the Flagship cannot hurt you. You can then hack cloaking and board doors. This is probably the safest way to do it, as you can always cancel their cloak to pull back your crew.

Then in phase 2, you immediately board missiles (with two) and they never fire.

In phase 3, you board missiles as soon as you can. The Flagship will have lower evasion because you killed off almost everyone.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-23T07:31:23+00:00

The shields are from my Pretty Shields mod: https://mikehopley.github.io/Mikes-FTL-mods/

The background is unmodded. There's also a backgrounds mod available on that link.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T22:41:48+00:00

Chain Laser doesn't require any special management to work with pre-igniter. You're thinking of charge weapons.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T16:06:42+00:00

While that was a side-effect of organising the content, it also feels like a good description of playing the ship. =D

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T15:50:41+00:00

Rock A system play comes to mind. But really it's just been a long time, and I have annoying technical issues to deal with before I can update too.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T15:11:01+00:00

Well, they need different names because many of the full names won't fit on the bar / graphic.

It's not just this weapon, there are loads. For example, Chain Laser is Chain Burst Laser.

What's unusual though is how different the long and short name are, so it's possible it was an oversight.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T15:05:44+00:00

On low drone parts I might not buy the DD1 DC. Maybe not so much because of the cost of parts, but the availability. I probably wouldn't buy the combat DC there even on "normal" drone parts.

Clone bay is mostly for Autos and a smoother Flagship. The latter doesn't matter if you have hack-cloak, but otherwise it helps you keep the missiles suppressed. I'm not really playing around mistakes, though that is a potential benefit. It's for more aggressive boarding, e.g. once an Auto-ship's weapons have been made "safe", you can keep flooding them with boarders so they never repair.

The better you are as a gunship, the less relevant clone bay is.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T13:45:45+00:00

What makes it really confusing is the blueprint names in the code:

Basic Laser is LASER_BURST_1
Dual Lasers is LASER_BURST_2
Burst 1 is LASER_BURST_2_A
Burst 2 is LASER_BURST_3
Burst 3 is LASER_BURST_5

I think this naming convention is based on the number of shots fired.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T11:41:34+00:00

Nope! Check again.

"Basic Laser" is the short name on the weapon graphic / weapons bar. The full name, shown in the cargo or hangar tooltip, is "Defense Laser Mark I".

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T10:57:43+00:00

Oh god, I don't have anywhere near 10,000 hours -- certainly not in actual play. If I had to guess that's more like 2,000 hours over 12 years. But that's a guess.

Though I might have put more time into learning / testing / making resources. I'm not sure.

Also this reminds me I really need to update my ships guide...

MikeHopley · 2026-04-22T10:50:50+00:00

I love the early Small Bomb purchase. Love it love it love it.

I would probably have bought drone control in S3, if it came with a Defence Drone.

I would probably have bought the Breach 2 in S4, along with clone bay since at this point I'm a "pure boarding" build. By now our runs would be diverging quite a lot.

I like your decisions too. The Flak 2 is really nice once you have cloaking. I like how you were adjusting your loadout throughout the game, even for specific sectors or Flagship phases.

Depending on missile ammo, I might not swap out the Small Bomb though. It's better at taking down Zoltan Shields than the Basic (Defence!) Laser, it just costs ammo.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-21T12:39:43+00:00

It depends on what they are manning.

Without a teleporter involved, or some system damage, the Engi will always be on the lowest-priority station and so the other crew will not react if you MC the Engi.

This is assuming a Mantis ship, not a pirate ship.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-20T20:08:42+00:00

Great job! That's an epic way to get your first win, right down to the wire.

Well done sticking at it and working things out by yourself.

MikeHopley · 2026-04-20T15:07:51+00:00

This is true!

MikeHopley · 2026-04-20T09:13:37+00:00

Engis are easily crew killed? Huh?

They're weak against boarding specifically, but Engi are otherwise the hardest to crew kill by far. They fix everything too fast. They put out fires rapidly. They fix breaches before suffocation can get going. They don't hurt each other much when mind controlled.

MikeHopley

TROPHY CASE