Bought two Halberd Beams in stores, then got a third one for free after a battle...

Started playing FTL again cuz the power went out last night and began a run to unlock the B layout of the Federation Cruiser. The achievement I was going for was to get to sector 5 without upgrading weapons. It was pretty simple doing that, just boosted shields and engines and then blitzed the artillery beam. When I reached sector 5 I decided to just see how far I could get cuz I was having a good bit of fun with my run. I had mind control, the basic burst laser and max artillery beam.

And everything started coming together. I bought the 3 ion charge weapon and got an automated reloader augmentation sometime in sectors 4-6 (don’t recall). Then I found a Hermes missile launcher, which I decided to slot in to deal with shields and open the way for the default burst laser. Ran out of fuel in sector 6 but a random encounter with a federation ship gave me enough fuel to barely escape the rebels (if I had one more turn of no fuel I would’ve been overrun). In sector 7 I bought another automated reloader and a backup battery to temporarily charge my ion weapon and level four shields.

I barely scraped together a ship that could handle the rebel flagship. Got some last minute upgrades to doors and cams, and then went to the base. The first round went well, only took like 5 damage even though the mind control I intended to use to take out the missile launcher was hacked. Thankfully a repair base was next door and I got it repaired (I decided against saving it for later in case the rebels took it). Round two was okay, I got a bit overwhelmed with the micro and my missile launcher was bunk because of the drones, but the artillery beam and backup battery really saved me from the drone swarm and being able to get through the shields to hammer away at the flagship. I lost about a quarter of my health here. Round three was a MESS. The flagship mind control and some really unfortunate hits by the missiles led to me losing piloting, and weakening the mind control and artillery beam. Took longer then I wanted to take down the super shield, and the energy bursts wrecked my ship. By the end of it the back half of my ship was on fire or deoxygenated, health was super low for my crew, the health bar was in the red. But while I was getting hammered, after the super shield was broken I was able to pour fire with the Hermes and laser onto shields and the missile launcher while the artillery beam fired occasionally.

It was a horrible attritional fight between my ship and the flagship. One more energy surge would’ve ended my run at the cusp of victory. But at the last moment the artillery beam fired a vertical shot and destroyed the flagship, probably no more than 10 seconds before my death. And I was incredibly happy and relieved lol. I didn’t expect a run focused on the artillery beam to be able to go the distance but through a shit ton of luck it was. Made me laugh how many runs I’ve done with the intention of taking down the flagship and losing, and this one off achievement run that felt handicapped was able to pull it off first try

I‘ve been wanting to pull this off for a couple months now and now at last got lucky in sector 7 by finding both a second Glaive beam and the pre-igniter (hard mode).

After the shields are taken down with hacking the two Glaive beams rip the flagship apart in a single volley. That was incredible to see..

Of course for the third phase it needed the initial beam attack to take down the super shield. Luckily both the missiles and laser power surge did not cause hull damage..

This was definitely the fastest end battle I ever had, almost seemed to easy, hahaa.

I had it in the bag. No sweat. /s

first jump btw

I haven't beaten the game yet, haven't even got to the flagship

Auto-ship in an asteroid field with a beam drone and heavy laser 1. Lucky to be alive.

I won this run (2nd screenshot) (I messed up the fight and probably should have won with closer to 8 hull remaining. I also came into phase 1 with ~20 hull because I had a forced dive in sector 8 before the flagship womp womp) and IIRC Tach died to a small bomb into weapons against another damn auto-ship that had already taken my clonebay offline with a breach via its Leto (bad micro, I could've saved them womp womp)

Earlier this week I had a "first fight" (it was the second jump, not the first) auto-assault, in an asteroid field, with small bomb + combat drone, as Kestrel A, first bomb went into weapons, Artemis missed, second bomb went into shields. I had no streak going that time however so I just restarted lol

Important to note that i did win the game around 2 times before on easy, but after that i took a long break from the game, i only returned last month and decided to go head on and start playing on normal. After 40 tries i've finally reached my destination and i couldn't feel better about it.

EDIT: Spelling mistakes

And of course, advanced FTL navigation was available at the shop I just left (now covered by fleet)

This run was a disaster which is why I was still stuck on Glaive Beam with only 2 systems, but the power of the Vulcan extends my win streak to 35.

Glaive might also be winning here but the Vulcan just wipes out so much of the Flagship crew in phase 1 due to fires and dealing 15 crew damage per second once it’s spun up. I didn’t want to have to handle mass boarders with only 3 humans+3 engi.

I maintain that the Vulcan is quite strong against the flagship for a 3 slot ship as long as you have basic weapons to support it.

No words… the game knew what I was doing istg.

I had just enough scrap after selling the leto and zoltan shield to get a pre-igniter, also got a bl2 gifted from rescuing a ship. Between it and the haldberd, that initial volley is going to save me a lot more hits than the zoltan shield would and it definitely scales way better in the late game as an augment. Honestly crazy I had enough scrap for it and the ugrades that I did, this is on hard with AE.