Multiverse is too hard

[Timbermaw]

I'm a pretty mlg vanilla FTL player however multiverse is giving me trouble. I've started 2 (TWO!) MV games however the rebels wreck me by around sector 5, even with 3 shields they bombard me with missiles and ♥♥♥♥. I can't upgrade both shields and dodging with the increased scrap cost on ship upgrades! The other one was lost due to a zoltan transport on a distress signal that went rogue while I was protecting them, it was just way stronger than anything at that time.

Please advise.

Also activatable abilities are stupid, too micromanagey

[nash]

2 runs in and still in trouble ^^ just kidding, sry.

Multiverse runs are obviously different, I got no idea what an mlg vanilla player is, but multiverse must be learned from "scratch". The whole pacing of the game is different, the weapons are obviously of much larger variety etc.

The game is balanced around normal difficulty and normal challenge level. You can obviously challenge yourself by going higher, but it will be noticeable harder the more you activitate.

First thing you need to do is study this empty beacon menu. There are a ton of useful subsystem which will help you. You probably also noted the task section, which will help you gather fuel and some scrap each sector. If you get a mine launcher you can use missiles to delay the fleet, which will get you more jumps and scrap and you can buy needed upgrades much sooner.

Further of notice in the onboard upgrades:

- Defense scrambler and Weapons reduce cooldown.
With defense scrambler your hacking can allways hit their weapon system, helping a great deal avoiding damage. Same thing with weapon cooldown, if you weapons hit first you probably take less damage.

- Medbay dispersal for ship wide healing helps immensely with enemy boarders, just as additional crew, which is much more important compared to vanilla.

However around sector 5 missiles should usually be no big deal. You should probably have 2 of either hacking, cloaking and drone defense by then. Some ships are extrem and obviously the boarding is actually troublesome compared to the basegame, where it is mostly just a minor distraction.

Generally the mod is, just as the basegame, pretty much balanced around getting cloaking. Without it enemies will get tiny bits of you every jump and you will just waste repair costs. You can delay coaking by investing in hacking and/or defense drones + shields , but without cloaking it is really the thing whether or not you can blow ships up before they can touch you aka I got 4 flak 1 or something similar.

[Timbermaw]

Right, I managed to get cloaking with the artillery ship (second) and got to the third fight with the flagship. HOWEVER, while phase 1 and phase two were very manageable, the third phase was much stronger compared to those. Cloaking didn't help here since it was doing power surges every 15 seconds, while also recharging his green shield which cockblocked my artillery weapon

kinda annoying tbqh

So it seems like cloaking and flak are a necessity

[TheTripleAce3]

cloaking is great to have but nothing is really a requirement aside from decent weapons in general. the frost weapons, if you can get them, are probably my favorites since they tend to have high projectile counts.

[Timbermaw]

And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this stealth ship is even worse than vanilla. First sector is a ship with two drones raping me

[Amble]

Multiverse isn't harder than vanilla, it's just different. In many ways it offers you a lot more agency over your runs than vanilla does with the higher weapon availability early on and more ways of repairing hull damage.

I'm sure you didn't learn the vanilla game in 2 runs, learning Multiverse won't take as long but you do have to readjust and learn it all the same. Most importantly learning which of the new events are good and which are bad, and which ones lead to powerful unique weapons or crew.

Btw on phase 3 of the flagship, hack the cloaking. Unless you have a weapon setup that cannot get past the shields at all the cloaking hack will bring more value than the standard shield hack.

[Timbermaw]

Originally posted by Amble:

Btw on phase 3 of the flagship, hack the cloaking. Unless you have a weapon setup that cannot get past the shields at all the cloaking hack will bring more value than the standard shield hack.

Duly noted for next time, although I rarely ever take hacking. Does hacking the cloaking add to the cooldown? Or just disables it after it gets activated?

[Amble]

Originally posted by Timbermaw:

Originally posted by Amble:

Btw on phase 3 of the flagship, hack the cloaking. Unless you have a weapon setup that cannot get past the shields at all the cloaking hack will bring more value than the standard shield hack.

Duly noted for next time, although I rarely ever take hacking. Does hacking the cloaking add to the cooldown? Or just disables it after it gets activated?

It simply cancels the cloak, you obviously can't hack the first cloak but ideally you break the zoltan shield and cancel the second cloak, which should give you some time to get the weapon system or the missile launcher offline, which are unlikely to be repaired if you killed a lot of the crew in phase 1. The weapons are generally more dangerous than the missile launcher, and if you can beam the weapons and the laser on the left both at once then that's even better.

The reason a shield hack is bad in phase 3 is because waiting for the hack on shields is too slow and it will cloak again while you wait to shoot, wasting the hack entirely and giving it more time to charge another zoltan shield.

You should aim to grab Hacking almost every run, because it's just as OP as it is in vanilla. Then you should try to grab either Cloaking, or Drone Control with defense/guard drones for added defense from missiles.

Don't overlook combat augments either, for example Tracking Flares will trivialize the third phase by disabling cloaking completely. Missile weapons are also better than ever, so don't neglect the chance to shoot a particle missile into their shields to do 7 damage to it immediately.

[Timbermaw]

Yay winrar! Got him with the stealth cruiser. No hacking just a heavy ion to deplete all shields, some bombs and a piercing laser to deal the brunt of the damage. Focused on taking out the cloak and piloting systems first.
Very cool. Took 4 hours for this, a bit long. Too many battles and the extra slug royal sector.

Honestly though that extra sector is a bit overkill, you'll be a god by the time you get to the flagship with all the extra scrap.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607153782

[TheTripleAce3]

Also don't forget at empty beacons to get internal upgrades.

[ReadyMan]

thank you for all the tips!
(sorry for the necro post, but this is gold for the MV mod)

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Timbermaw:

Also activatable abilities are stupid, too micromanagey

You're playing an FTL variant and complaining about having to micromanage?

What game have you been playing? Grow a pair. Git gud.

[Timbermaw]

Gee, reading your own posts from 2 years ago feels like it was made by a different person. I think I had forgotten to take my meds that day...

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Timbermaw:

Gee, reading your own posts from 2 years ago feels like it was made by a different person. I think I had forgotten to take my meds that day...

Sorry for the necro. Also to be a little less trollish, I don't think it's that Multiverse is actually that much more difficult so much that the variance is through the roof. Like vanilla, you can have a total milk run where you can't lose despite blunder after blunder, but unlike vanilla, you can nearly always run into some insanely ridiculous ship that wrecks even a good build.