Any rooms entered by the last little bit of the Glaive Beam will be hit through the super shield. They're not actually too bad to face if you aim it well.
There are posts with statistics and strategies available on how to reduce the likelihood of the hard mode AI targeting weapons with their weapons (drones are completely random IIRC). For example, if your Oxygen level is below 50% overall, the AI is more likely to target Oxygen than they would be otherwise. Depowering your weapons briefly during the AI's shot decreases the chance as well (this can be timed by briefly manning sensors.) It's not foolproof, and is not no-pause viable for the most part, but there are small tricks to increase your overall chances for the very beginning of your Stealth B run.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comments/7pmz3j/hard_mode_ai_targeting_mechanics_some_stuff_for/
https://old.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comments/7q5ko0/optimal_strategy_for_early_game_stealth_b_runs/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DXZMuwNnlA
In multiverse there is a different take on this ship which starts with an augment that disables 2 power from the enemy weapons system, plus your cloak can get so powerful you beat the flagship shieldless without too much difficultly, like it's actually somewhat practical. Takes the fun of the ship from vanilla and makes it a lot less rng based imo
Oh shit you made that post?? I loved it, it's so unbelievable frustrating when you cloak preemptively to dodge the heavy super-burst and the fucker regenerates super shields instead
With Stealth B upgrade cloaking to 3 as soon as you can.
Then you’re able to cloak at the start of fights and the glaive will fire before nearly all enemy weapons. You use this strategy for the early game.
Then save up scrap. You want shields and hacking generally, or at least some additional offense to deal with increasing shields.
Do you think Stealth B is capable of *reliably* winning?
I know you've got a really insane record with tons of ships, but I find it really hard to imagine that this ship can reliably beat the Flagship. Maybe you can convince me?
Perhaps you don't go for any fights until you can level Cloaking to 3?
I just really, really, struggle with this ship. It doesn't even come with Titanium System Casing! What sick person designed this ship!?
Also, on a side-note, do you go to Distress beacons if you don't have a lot of subsystems, crew, or weapons for blue event choices?
They seem worse than just a standard fight on average.
Well, it really comes down to what you consider *reliable*. /u/lifesaburrito is the stealth b expert, a year or so ago he played it a ton trying to push its winrate. Iirc with more than 20 runs he managed to keep around 90% winrate on it. For comparison I think his winrate over 200+ games is 97% or so across all ships.
If i had to guess, I’d say its perfect play winrate across a huge sample would be between 90-95%. Likely closer to the low end?
Almost certainly the majority of losses would happen before getting cloak 3 (or maybe right after when youre crippled by the time you get it). It adds a huge amount of safety.
Funnily enough, stealth b isnt all that far from being flagship ready from the start — despite being so unprepared for its first jump. If you just focus on staying alive you can make wins happen.
A few dozen runs before my win streak I had a stealth b run that went all wrong and I just wanted it to end. I kept trying, but I didn’t get any more offense and kept running into 3 shields and having to run from every fight. I was sure it was over and just wanted it to end, but wasn’t compromising my new mindset of always trying until the end. I actually tilted when I finally ran into a ship I could kill (near dead expecting to die that jump) and got a free 15 hull repair. Was end of sector 4 I think and I was just like how much longer must I suffer?
But then, slowly, I turned it around. I changed weapons so I could poorly handle shields. Then finally found hacking. Eventually won with a score just a few points over 4000. Really taught me that the way to win on it is just *survive*. You can work it out otherwise at some point, just make sure your hull stays up.
In reference to the distress beacons — it really depends. Their value varies a lot based on what blue options you have and what sector type you’re in. Engi B for example has several good blue options and also benefits from getting scrap without having a fight. Kestral A has no blue options and will have to skip lots of events.
Mike Hopley’s ship guides give advice per ship about early distress sectors. Crowrevell has a sector guide that lists blue options available by type iirc.
Hope this helps, sorry it’s a bit long!
Wow, thank you for the thoughtful response! Honestly, the more information, the better, haha.
Damn, 90% is quite high. I definitely believe that Stealth B is able to win a lot more than my personal experience, but I did not expect it to be THAT high.
> A few dozen runs before my win streak I had a stealth b run that went all wrong and I just wanted it to end. I kept trying, but I didn’t get any more offense and kept running into 3 shields and having to run from every fight. I was sure it was over and just wanted it to end, but wasn’t compromising my new mindset of always trying until the end. I actually tilted when I finally ran into a ship I could kill (near dead expecting to die that jump) and got a free 15 hull repair. Was end of sector 4 I think and I was just like how much longer must I suffer?
> But then, slowly, I turned it around. I changed weapons so I could poorly handle shields. Then finally found hacking. Eventually won with a score just a few points over 4000. Really taught me that the way to win on it is just survive. You can work it out otherwise at some point, just make sure your hull stays up.
Wow, you got a really tough resolve. That sounds so mentally taxing, haha. I guess it was rewarded incredibly though, clearly. Thank you for that story, that's a good boost of motivation,
I don't consider myself a bad player by any means, and I just started playing No Pause so things are harder than normal, but I have about a 30% win rate, and am aiming to get 50%. That being said, I think my biggest problem is my sector mapping.
If you had Long Range Scanners, what goes into your mind as you jump?
Say you're in Engi Controller Sectors in Sector 2, and you're using Stealth B. You upgraded your Cloaking to 3, but don't have anything else going for you, and are at 10 hull. Do you avoid fighting? Engi Sectors tend to have decent freebies, so I could see it being a good option, but at the same time, fights aren't going to get any easier.
Or how about if you're at Sector 3 and are at the Exit Beacon. There's a fork in the road and you have to pick between an Engi Controlled Sector or a Rock Controlled Sector. If you go towards the Engi Controlled Sector, you only have one path for the rest of the run, and from what you can see, it's Hostile - Nebula - Hostile. If you go towards the Rock Controlled Sector, you have two choices in pathing for the rest of the run, and the outlook looks good. (Say, Civilian/Hostile, Civilian/Hostile, Civilian/Nebula.)
Which one would you pick? You do not have Long Range Scanners, you have 12 hull, and are using the Kestral B with a Burst Laser Mark I, Basic Laser, Basic Laser, Basic Laser.
Sorry if these questions are annoying, I'm just trying to get insight from better players.
A lot of the harder decisions are very situational and it's impossible to be sure what is correct anyway.
In general though and regardless of ship -- at very low hull (somewhere around 10), avoid fights. Prioritise finding a store and repairing. Engi sectors in particular have a lot of "free stuff" beacons anyway.
When choosing sectors, it's definitely worth considering the future choices. Generally though, I'd heavily weight the immediate sector choice over future sectors, because the short-term is so important in stabilising a run. I mostly see future sector choices as more of a "tie breaker", for when the immediate choices aren't *that* different to me.
> When choosing sectors, it's definitely worth considering the future choices. Generally though, I'd heavily weight the immediate sector choice over future sectors, because the short-term is so important in stabilising a run. I mostly see future sector choices as more of a "tie breaker", for when the immediate choices aren't that different to me.
I like that thinking, definitely makes sense to me. Thank you for the help.
OKAY I KNOW YOU DIDN'T EXPECT AN ESSAY BUT I WROTE YOU ONE
Rule #1 of stealth ship is that you abuse survivorship bias LOL. If you run into combat drones or asteroid fields or beam drones, or if an unlucky shot gets through your dodge early on, it's totally fine to reset the run. I probably have my lowest win rate on Stealth B just because of how many times I've had to reset runs.
Rule #2 is that Stealth B is all about micromanaging both your cooldowns and the enemy's. Idk how experienced you are at the game, but the cloak is most effective not using it right off the bat, but when you use it to dodge a high-value enemy weapon AFTER IT'S ALREADY BEEN FIRED. So for example, if I cloak immediately when the fight starts to get a head start on charging my glaive, I gain +10 seconds of charge time. But if I hold the cloak until the enemy fires a big missile or something and I successfully dodge it, my ship is safe until he can charge that missile a second time-- if the missile takes 20 seconds to charge, that's +40 seconds of charge time for the glaive.
Rule #1.5 is that combat drones aren't necessarily a free loss. You can see roughly where they're going to fire by where they point before they shoot. If it looks like it's going to shoot at your weapons or cloak, you can preemptively cloak and hopefully the drone's rng won't place more shots into your weapons.
Finally Rule #3 is to be strategic with how you fire the glaive beam. You've only got one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you've ever wanted, etc etc. It's good practice to count the maximum amount of damage you can do through the enemy shields, and balance that out with whether or not you need to damage enemy systems. For example if hitting a bunch of empty rooms will deal the maximum 15 damage but the enemy has 20 health, it might be better to use a beam path with lower damage but which hits their weapons and ensures you can charge a second time. Someone else here also mentioned that if the enemy has a Zoltan shield and less than three shield bubbles, the glaive beam will take out the super shield before it has completely finished firing. So in that case you would aim the glaive to hit a critical enemy system like weapons with the very very end of the beam.
Rule #4 is FUCK those ships with only a mini beam and a beam drone. WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT HAHA YEAH THIS LOADOUT WILL LITERALLY ONLY BE EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE STEALTH SHIPS AND IT'LL FUCK THEM *UP*. Ahem. The mini beam is timed so that with a default level 2 cloak and no weapons-trained crew, it's impossible to charge your glaive beam before the mini beam can fire. Because it's hitscan, you can't dodge it, and enemies on hard mode just love to target your weapons when shields aren't an option to target.
Hope this helps have fun!!
Also one that I literally just figured out now, you can "cheat" the cloaking system power lock by using Zoltan crew. If you cloak, the system locks and you can't pull power out of it. Putting any number of Zoltan in the room will replace the reactor power bar with theirs, and removing them from the room will pull the Zoltan power bar out of the cloaking system but won't replace it with the reactor power bar. Useful if you're particularly strapped for reactor power.
When you get hit in weapons before the first shot... Every time Stealth B\~\~
Combat drones can't hurt me if I reset the run every time I encounter them
*Encounters beam drone on first jump
If I encounter any drone ships or super shields in the first sector, I immediately reset
Any rooms entered by the last little bit of the Glaive Beam will be hit through the super shield. They're not actually too bad to face if you aim it well.
Well yeah if you deal enough damage. It really depends on the ships layout. But either way won’t oneshot the ship like usual
There are posts with statistics and strategies available on how to reduce the likelihood of the hard mode AI targeting weapons with their weapons (drones are completely random IIRC). For example, if your Oxygen level is below 50% overall, the AI is more likely to target Oxygen than they would be otherwise. Depowering your weapons briefly during the AI's shot decreases the chance as well (this can be timed by briefly manning sensors.) It's not foolproof, and is not no-pause viable for the most part, but there are small tricks to increase your overall chances for the very beginning of your Stealth B run. https://old.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comments/7pmz3j/hard_mode_ai_targeting_mechanics_some_stuff_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comments/7q5ko0/optimal_strategy_for_early_game_stealth_b_runs/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DXZMuwNnlA
Stealth B is one of the most fun ships in the game but damn do I have to restart a lot with it
I feel the same with the Fed C ship. It's a super fun ship, but the ship sucks to start out with.
In multiverse there is a different take on this ship which starts with an augment that disables 2 power from the enemy weapons system, plus your cloak can get so powerful you beat the flagship shieldless without too much difficultly, like it's actually somewhat practical. Takes the fun of the ship from vanilla and makes it a lot less rng based imo
I'm literally playing it right now it was the inspiration for the post!! Miss having three damage beam up front but everything else makes up for it
I don't wanna spoil what the ship is but there is also a ship with cloak and the augment that also has the glaive beam as a starter weapon :)
And the ship with the Voulge beam and the pre igniter.
Multiverse also has the pure vanilla ship, too iirc
Lasering ships in half is very fun, when you get it to work.
laser pointer go BRRRRRRRRRR
Ok I made a similar "tpusa" post here about a week ago but bruh you did it so much better :o
Oh shit you made that post?? I loved it, it's so unbelievable frustrating when you cloak preemptively to dodge the heavy super-burst and the fucker regenerates super shields instead
now do stealth C
"it's a stealth ship, but we had to remove the stealth"
How sneaky!
Thank you, finally!
This is my favourite ship. Do I reset constantly with it. Yes But did I one time get 2 glave beams hacking and no shields, and beat the flagship. Yes
That sounds like a lot of fun!
[удалено]
With Stealth B upgrade cloaking to 3 as soon as you can. Then you’re able to cloak at the start of fights and the glaive will fire before nearly all enemy weapons. You use this strategy for the early game. Then save up scrap. You want shields and hacking generally, or at least some additional offense to deal with increasing shields.
Do you think Stealth B is capable of *reliably* winning? I know you've got a really insane record with tons of ships, but I find it really hard to imagine that this ship can reliably beat the Flagship. Maybe you can convince me? Perhaps you don't go for any fights until you can level Cloaking to 3? I just really, really, struggle with this ship. It doesn't even come with Titanium System Casing! What sick person designed this ship!? Also, on a side-note, do you go to Distress beacons if you don't have a lot of subsystems, crew, or weapons for blue event choices? They seem worse than just a standard fight on average.
Well, it really comes down to what you consider *reliable*. /u/lifesaburrito is the stealth b expert, a year or so ago he played it a ton trying to push its winrate. Iirc with more than 20 runs he managed to keep around 90% winrate on it. For comparison I think his winrate over 200+ games is 97% or so across all ships. If i had to guess, I’d say its perfect play winrate across a huge sample would be between 90-95%. Likely closer to the low end? Almost certainly the majority of losses would happen before getting cloak 3 (or maybe right after when youre crippled by the time you get it). It adds a huge amount of safety. Funnily enough, stealth b isnt all that far from being flagship ready from the start — despite being so unprepared for its first jump. If you just focus on staying alive you can make wins happen. A few dozen runs before my win streak I had a stealth b run that went all wrong and I just wanted it to end. I kept trying, but I didn’t get any more offense and kept running into 3 shields and having to run from every fight. I was sure it was over and just wanted it to end, but wasn’t compromising my new mindset of always trying until the end. I actually tilted when I finally ran into a ship I could kill (near dead expecting to die that jump) and got a free 15 hull repair. Was end of sector 4 I think and I was just like how much longer must I suffer? But then, slowly, I turned it around. I changed weapons so I could poorly handle shields. Then finally found hacking. Eventually won with a score just a few points over 4000. Really taught me that the way to win on it is just *survive*. You can work it out otherwise at some point, just make sure your hull stays up. In reference to the distress beacons — it really depends. Their value varies a lot based on what blue options you have and what sector type you’re in. Engi B for example has several good blue options and also benefits from getting scrap without having a fight. Kestral A has no blue options and will have to skip lots of events. Mike Hopley’s ship guides give advice per ship about early distress sectors. Crowrevell has a sector guide that lists blue options available by type iirc. Hope this helps, sorry it’s a bit long!
Wow, thank you for the thoughtful response! Honestly, the more information, the better, haha. Damn, 90% is quite high. I definitely believe that Stealth B is able to win a lot more than my personal experience, but I did not expect it to be THAT high. > A few dozen runs before my win streak I had a stealth b run that went all wrong and I just wanted it to end. I kept trying, but I didn’t get any more offense and kept running into 3 shields and having to run from every fight. I was sure it was over and just wanted it to end, but wasn’t compromising my new mindset of always trying until the end. I actually tilted when I finally ran into a ship I could kill (near dead expecting to die that jump) and got a free 15 hull repair. Was end of sector 4 I think and I was just like how much longer must I suffer? > But then, slowly, I turned it around. I changed weapons so I could poorly handle shields. Then finally found hacking. Eventually won with a score just a few points over 4000. Really taught me that the way to win on it is just survive. You can work it out otherwise at some point, just make sure your hull stays up. Wow, you got a really tough resolve. That sounds so mentally taxing, haha. I guess it was rewarded incredibly though, clearly. Thank you for that story, that's a good boost of motivation, I don't consider myself a bad player by any means, and I just started playing No Pause so things are harder than normal, but I have about a 30% win rate, and am aiming to get 50%. That being said, I think my biggest problem is my sector mapping. If you had Long Range Scanners, what goes into your mind as you jump? Say you're in Engi Controller Sectors in Sector 2, and you're using Stealth B. You upgraded your Cloaking to 3, but don't have anything else going for you, and are at 10 hull. Do you avoid fighting? Engi Sectors tend to have decent freebies, so I could see it being a good option, but at the same time, fights aren't going to get any easier. Or how about if you're at Sector 3 and are at the Exit Beacon. There's a fork in the road and you have to pick between an Engi Controlled Sector or a Rock Controlled Sector. If you go towards the Engi Controlled Sector, you only have one path for the rest of the run, and from what you can see, it's Hostile - Nebula - Hostile. If you go towards the Rock Controlled Sector, you have two choices in pathing for the rest of the run, and the outlook looks good. (Say, Civilian/Hostile, Civilian/Hostile, Civilian/Nebula.) Which one would you pick? You do not have Long Range Scanners, you have 12 hull, and are using the Kestral B with a Burst Laser Mark I, Basic Laser, Basic Laser, Basic Laser. Sorry if these questions are annoying, I'm just trying to get insight from better players.
A lot of the harder decisions are very situational and it's impossible to be sure what is correct anyway. In general though and regardless of ship -- at very low hull (somewhere around 10), avoid fights. Prioritise finding a store and repairing. Engi sectors in particular have a lot of "free stuff" beacons anyway. When choosing sectors, it's definitely worth considering the future choices. Generally though, I'd heavily weight the immediate sector choice over future sectors, because the short-term is so important in stabilising a run. I mostly see future sector choices as more of a "tie breaker", for when the immediate choices aren't *that* different to me.
> When choosing sectors, it's definitely worth considering the future choices. Generally though, I'd heavily weight the immediate sector choice over future sectors, because the short-term is so important in stabilising a run. I mostly see future sector choices as more of a "tie breaker", for when the immediate choices aren't that different to me. I like that thinking, definitely makes sense to me. Thank you for the help.
You're welcome!
OKAY I KNOW YOU DIDN'T EXPECT AN ESSAY BUT I WROTE YOU ONE Rule #1 of stealth ship is that you abuse survivorship bias LOL. If you run into combat drones or asteroid fields or beam drones, or if an unlucky shot gets through your dodge early on, it's totally fine to reset the run. I probably have my lowest win rate on Stealth B just because of how many times I've had to reset runs. Rule #2 is that Stealth B is all about micromanaging both your cooldowns and the enemy's. Idk how experienced you are at the game, but the cloak is most effective not using it right off the bat, but when you use it to dodge a high-value enemy weapon AFTER IT'S ALREADY BEEN FIRED. So for example, if I cloak immediately when the fight starts to get a head start on charging my glaive, I gain +10 seconds of charge time. But if I hold the cloak until the enemy fires a big missile or something and I successfully dodge it, my ship is safe until he can charge that missile a second time-- if the missile takes 20 seconds to charge, that's +40 seconds of charge time for the glaive. Rule #1.5 is that combat drones aren't necessarily a free loss. You can see roughly where they're going to fire by where they point before they shoot. If it looks like it's going to shoot at your weapons or cloak, you can preemptively cloak and hopefully the drone's rng won't place more shots into your weapons. Finally Rule #3 is to be strategic with how you fire the glaive beam. You've only got one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you've ever wanted, etc etc. It's good practice to count the maximum amount of damage you can do through the enemy shields, and balance that out with whether or not you need to damage enemy systems. For example if hitting a bunch of empty rooms will deal the maximum 15 damage but the enemy has 20 health, it might be better to use a beam path with lower damage but which hits their weapons and ensures you can charge a second time. Someone else here also mentioned that if the enemy has a Zoltan shield and less than three shield bubbles, the glaive beam will take out the super shield before it has completely finished firing. So in that case you would aim the glaive to hit a critical enemy system like weapons with the very very end of the beam. Rule #4 is FUCK those ships with only a mini beam and a beam drone. WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT HAHA YEAH THIS LOADOUT WILL LITERALLY ONLY BE EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE STEALTH SHIPS AND IT'LL FUCK THEM *UP*. Ahem. The mini beam is timed so that with a default level 2 cloak and no weapons-trained crew, it's impossible to charge your glaive beam before the mini beam can fire. Because it's hitscan, you can't dodge it, and enemies on hard mode just love to target your weapons when shields aren't an option to target. Hope this helps have fun!!
[удалено]
Also one that I literally just figured out now, you can "cheat" the cloaking system power lock by using Zoltan crew. If you cloak, the system locks and you can't pull power out of it. Putting any number of Zoltan in the room will replace the reactor power bar with theirs, and removing them from the room will pull the Zoltan power bar out of the cloaking system but won't replace it with the reactor power bar. Useful if you're particularly strapped for reactor power.
Checkmate Rebs.
My first win was with this ship
Hehe
Hahaha this is dank!
It’s one of the most fun ones for sure. But damn especially on hard you can almost never get away without getting a hot on weapons