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
