6.2 hours in the game. Completely lost

[Coca Cola Cowboy]

I've been doing runs on easy getting here and there. Every once in a while I get to the final sector but I honestly have no idea what I should be doing differently. Why is it difficulty "easy" and you can't ever get anywhere or beat anything? I can beat the flagship max 1 time.
I usually have all system power on weapons maxed out. Differs of course but usually I have a turbolaser rocket and a beam. I focus on evasion upgrades first nowadays but that just means I get to the final sector and then die.
I mean you can smirk and say "git gud" all you want but I'm not here to be good at the game. I am here to have fun.

[Spicy pineapple]

I'm not sure what you're asking for here. You said you don't know what you supposed to do differently and also said you're not here to be good at the game so what can we say besides advice on how to get good? All I can say is if you're not having fun and don't wanna get good then this game isn't for you. Maybe some mods can make it easier but if you're already not having fun then modding is probably out of the question.

[Empiro]

It's hard to tell what you're doing wrong based on your post.

Yes, part of the journey to getting better at the game is to figure out what you're doing wrong. You beat the flagship once, and it's only been 6 hours. That's not bad at all. I'm not going to tell you to "git gud", but I will say to get patient.

I think it took me 30+ hours before I first beat the game on normal. It takes some people less time, and some people more.

Even on hard, I almost never max out my weapon power. Good weapon synergy is more important compared to just having a lot of weapons. You'll need to learn how weapons work together.

You can also watch other folks play. Plenty of videos on YT with players of all sorts of skill levels.

[Mailer]

What got me to a victory on normal difficulty was taking the time to visit as many nodes as possible every sector before I proceed to the next. Basically limited by my fuel, as I only proceed directly to the exit at <10 ruel remaining. If you get a hold of a scrap recovery arm augment, this makes the run very winnable indeed, and when an enemy surrenders a lot of fuel to you.

That maximizes your scrap yield among other things which is important to be ahead of the curve on, since the game only throws tougher enemies at you over the course of the run. Also, the final exit node should entered with as little fuel as possible, as you get free fuel and repairs at the Last Stand consistently. If you can leave with the fleet right behind you, you likely made good use of that sector.

Another thing I over time learned to weigh in on was Engine upgrades versus Shields. Dodge can do a lot of complementary good for a shield that isn't quite up there yet, especially when you have three out of four layers, and I often find that lasers don't hit my ship as much as missiles do in terms of raw damage. You may want to assess which is causing you the most problems when you do your own runs ofc.

Altogether, I want to say that maximizing weapons can be quite expensive on your scrap, and it may be tempting to go full offense in that regard, with a trained weaponeer to drop the cooldown on weapons further, but I've found that alternating weapons, shield (two at a time) and engine upgrades yields the most consistent results. Of course, in the moment of each run and type of ship, this will vary, and there is no definitive answer.

Originally posted by Coca Cola Cowboy:

I mean you can smirk and say "git gud" all you want but I'm not here to be good at the game.

Absolutely not. This is a tough game even on easy difficulty when first starting out; I watched a few playthroughs on it prior to playing it myself, and even then I had trouble to even win an Easy run, or refused to back down from Normal as I kept losing. Plus a lot of things are just chalked up to a learning experience, like which random events are dangerous depending on the choice.

[phenir]

Originally posted by Coca Cola Cowboy:

I mean you can smirk and say "git gud" all you want but I'm not here to be good at the game. I am here to have fun.

That's where the fun comes from. Overcoming the challenge by mastering the game (imo this should be true for all games). If that's not your definition of fun, this isn't the game for you.

[Mike]

Originally posted by Mailer:

Basically limited by my fuel, as I only proceed directly to the exit at <10 ruel remaining.

This is excessively cautious.

It's good to buy plenty of fuel; my "default" at a store is to have 15 fuel before I jump away. But you don't need to panic just because you're at 10 fuel.

Most fights have a 2/3 chance to drop 1-3 fuel, so on average fights are a net positive for fuel.

If you get a hold of a scrap recovery arm augment ... That maximizes your scrap yield among other things which is important to be ahead of the curve on

SRA is a bad purchase. It's terrible on Hard, less egregiously awful on Normal, and kinda "whatever" on Easy where you get so much scrap anyway. It takes so long to pay for itself.

The worst time to buy one is early, because the opportunity cost is so high. Scrap in the early game is precious, and you're spending 50 on a glorified paperweight. You could spend that scrap on making your ship better instead, which will save you scrap from repair bills.

[Menkerot]

that's normal

[Empiro]

Originally posted by Mike:

SRA is a bad purchase. It's terrible on Hard, less egregiously awful on Normal, and kinda "whatever" on Easy where you get so much scrap anyway. It takes so long to pay for itself.

The worst time to buy one is early, because the opportunity cost is so high. Scrap in the early game is precious, and you're spending 50 on a glorified paperweight. You could spend that scrap on making your ship better instead, which will save you scrap from repair bills.

This is only true for experienced players. For beginners, it's absolutely a worthwhile purchase that will increase your chances of victory. Even though it makes you more likely to lose in the short run, a newer player is probably going to mis-spend that 50 scrap and go on to lose anyway. The long term benefit helps players who are playing sub-optimally keep up with the difficulty curve.

It helped me to a number of victories until I started figuring out exactly what I needed by which sector, and I realized that I didn't need it any more.

[Mike]

Originally posted by Empiro:

This is only true for experienced players. For beginners, it's absolutely a worthwhile purchase that will increase your chances of victory.

I can see the logic but I don't agree.

Most beginners' wins are haphazard regardless, but I still think they're more likely to win if they spend their scrap better, rather than worse.

Of course it doesn't really matter much, as the impact of SRA or not will be minor compared to the random variation between runs. And that's often what gets players attributing their success to garbage like SRA.

[New Moon On Monday]

Originally posted by Coca Cola Cowboy:

I usually have all system power on weapons maxed out. Differs of course but usually I have a turbolaser rocket and a beam. I focus on evasion upgrades first nowadays but that just means I get to the final sector and then die.

You only get +5% evasion per level in Engines. The upgrade to level 3 is cheap at 15 scrap, but after that you are not getting good value for the scrap you spend, at least not in the early game.

There is a big difference between level 2 Shields (1 layer) and level 4 Shields (2 layers). It's a good way to spend your first 50 scrap in Sector 1, because roughly half the enemies you face won't have weapons that can penetrate 2 layers of Shields. (And when you face an enemy that can't hurt you, that's a good time to get free Piloting and Engines training for your crew, which comes with a nice Evasion bonus.)

Further upgrades to Shields is good, but you won't get as dramatic of an impact up as the upgrade to level 4, while the upgrades have gotten a lot more expensive. At this point, further Engines and Shields upgrades are not as important as getting better weapons and adding systems.

Stores are random and unreliable, not guaranteed to have what you need, so you need some scrap available to take advantage of a store when it actually does have something you can use. In particular with weapons, it's not wise to be too picky. Buying a mediocre weapon now is better than getting caught with insufficient firepower later.

Kestrel A starts with two of the game's best weapons. You can't use those weapons as a comparison point when considering what to buy from a store. Most weapons aren't as good as the Burst Laser II and Artemis Missile Launcher- but they can nevertheless help you win.

Often, your best defense is not Engines and Shields, but it is damaging enemy weapons before they can fire.

Eventually you can get back to upgrading Engines and Shields, and the higher scrap you get in Sectors 5 and beyond make it easier despite the progressively higher cost.

[Doom Sayer]

I have 26 hours and havent improved from when i started by much at all. The game is just one of those games made too difficult to be fun like Sekiro. For example core upgrades are ones i have almost never seen like shields etc. It takes too much resources 1 to get any new systems or upgrade power to accommodate them the games economics dont work.

[phenir]

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

I have 26 hours and havent improved from when i started by much at all. The game is just one of those games made too difficult to be fun like Sekiro. For example core upgrades are ones i have almost never seen like shields etc. It takes too much resources 1 to get any new systems or upgrade power to accommodate them the games economics dont work.

Easy swamps you with resources. You're either spending wastefully (like buying augments, or weapons you can't use immediately, or upgrading sub systems, or swapping medbay/clonebay) or you aren't trying to get as much scrap as possible correctly.
Every sector you should try to arrive at the exit just before the fleet. If the exit beacon is early (to the left more than normal) or it is a nebula, consider taking extra jumps and diving for the exit. Nebula exits that get taken over by the fleet are ion storms instead of asb, much more manageable.
Plan your route through sectors so you are adjacent to as many beacons as possible so you can find stores easily. However, don't go to the store unless you have things to sell or enough scrap to buy something important like systems or a weapon if you need one. Cloaking and hacking can help immensely with avoiding damage so they are worth the investment. If you get hacking, get hacking 2 asap. Hacking 1 only removes on shield bubble, hacking 2 can remove 3.
Target enemy weapons first so you spend less scrap on repairs. Fast weapons > slow weapons. Vulcan, burst 3, glaive, and flak 2 are traps. Sell them to get something faster. Get 2 shields early as that makes most enemies incapable of damaging you for the first few sectors. Don't upgrade sub systems outside needing it for events you know are coming up (doors is ok if you expect to be boarded but don't forget manning doors is also +1 level).
Maximizing scrap from events is a knowledge check so that just comes with time, or checking the wiki.

[Mike]

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

I have 26 hours and havent improved from when i started by much at all. The game is just one of those games made too difficult to be fun

Are you playing on Easy?

The most common cause of this is playing on Normal, which is way too hard for most people as a starting difficulty.

You're actually kinda right, in that the developers love nail-hard games and originally didn't even intend FTL for a commercial release. So they made it super difficult because that's what they personally enjoy.

Very late on in the development process, they realised that the difficulty was too high and was catering only to the hardcore pre-release backers.

Until that point there was only one difficulty, now known as Normal. Then they added Easy as a concession to make it accessible to a wider audience.

Easy is still not easy, but it's a lot more approachable than Normal.

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by Mike:

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

I have 26 hours and havent improved from when i started by much at all. The game is just one of those games made too difficult to be fun

Are you playing on Easy?

The most common cause of this is playing on Normal, which is way too hard for most people as a starting difficulty.

You're actually kinda right, in that the developers love nail-hard games and originally didn't even intend FTL for a commercial release. So they made it super difficult because that's what they personally enjoy.

Very late on in the development process, they realised that the difficulty was too high and was catering only to the hardcore pre-release backers.

Until that point there was only one difficulty, now known as Normal. Then they added Easy as a concession to make it accessible to a wider audience.

Easy is still not easy, but it's a lot more approachable than Normal.

Normal is basically unbeatable like how my last loss was 4 people boarding early game and killing everyone. RNG basically needed to be heavily reduced. Like on my restart just now i instantly had meteor and missile take out pilot control and medroom as the shield was briefly down. Its just bad design. If you can start game instantly realize you have had bad rng you just restart since no incentive to continue. This is the most basic level bad design.

[Doom Sayer]

Another happened ion storm instant loss. Only way to fire is disable everything except weapons. Half systems damaged before anyone even died from lack of air.

[Mike]

Why are you still playing on Normal if you feel it's "basically unbeatable"? Why don't you play Easy?

It's not bad design, you're just not yet good enough. You haven't even learned basic techniques yet, like how to manage boarders.

I play on Hard and literally haven't lost a single game in over 6.5 years now.