Enemy Ships

In FTL, there are many enemy ships you will encounter, below are different ships and how to fight them.

General information

Most races have three types of ships:

• Scout
• Assault
• Bomber

The Rebels are a notable difference, with their Riggers and Elite Fighters, as well as the Slug Interceptors and Light-Cruisers.

General Strategies

Often, you find that the best all-round weapon in FTL is a simple laser weapon, such as the Dual Lasers or the Burst Laser Mk. 2. This is because:

• Beams can be stopped very easily with only a layer or 2 of shields
• Missiles can be easily shot down by defence drones and can use up your missile storage quickly
• Bombs do no hull damage and use missiles as well.
• While e.g. the Crystal weapons are better than laser weapons, they can be very hard to obtain.

However, when combined with Laser weapons, Beam weapons are often extremely effective as they can't miss and can do mass damage easily with the enemy shields down.

Usual targets

Generally, you want to aim at these three locations in an enemy ship:

• Weapons
• Shields
• Cockpit

Sometimes, you can skip these if:

• (Weapons) You have good shields/evasion so the enemy can't/probably can't hit you
• (Shields) You have only missile/bomb weapons
• (Cockpit) You only use boarding

Engi Ships

Engi Ships are easily distinguishable with their trademark gray hull and squarish design (see below). A Drone system is always present on Engi ships, always accompanied with at least one active Defense Drone. If a MedBay is present in the ship, then the ship is guarenteed to have MedBot Dispersal, which allows the Engies to take extra beatings during an assault

Strategy: The best way to counter engi ships is with a crew teleporter (and a bomb weapon if the ship has a medbay). Bombing the medbay and sending in a boarding party (Engi ships rarely have anti-personnel drones) will guarentee victory.

Engi Bomber

Engi Bombers have very crammed rooms, making a pike beam devestating once shields are taken down.

An Engi Cruiser has:

• A Cockpit
• An Engine room
• A Weapons room
• A Shield room
• An O2 room
• A Drone control room

Federation ships

Note: Federation ships can only be fought against if they are pirates, and thus the colour scheme is not that of the real Federation ships. However, they can be met as friendly ships asking for help.

Mantis Ships

Mantis warships are coated (appropriately) in a red hull, and are very symmetrical in room layout. Mantis ships typically carry heavy weapons as well as a crew teleporter (even in pirated Mantis ships). Unlike other ships, Mantis ships are typically not homogenous, often carrying Engi slaves to make up for the Mantis' lack of repairing.

Strategy: Mantis boarding parties are very cumbersome? and damaging. Unless you have Mantis crew members or an anti-personnel drone, try suffocating the boarding party. It's also advisable to have a defense drone, as mantis ships? love to bring missile weapons to battle. Fire weapons devastate Mantis ships, provided they don't have alive and well Engi slaves to put out the fires.

Rebel Ships

The rebel ships utilise advanced technology, and are often better than the other ships at their stage.

Elite Rebel Ship

You will encounter this ship if the rebel fleet catches up with you, or at the last sector, the Last Stand, where you will commonly fight these at different beacons. It is recommended to stay away from the rebel fleet in the early stages until you manage to upgrade things like your shields, engines and such.

AI-Controlled Rebel Ships

There are several different automated ships. They are:

• Auto-Scout
• Auto-Assault

Auto-Scout

The Auto-Scout always has:

• A cockpit
• An engine room
• A weapons room

It usually has:

• Shields
• Cloaking (only in later sectors)

It usually only has basic weapons, like:

• Heavy Laser
• Basic Laser
• Dual Laser
• Small Beam
• Ion Blast
• Low level missile (Leto or Artemis)
• Small Bomb

Strategy: Auto-Scouts more than make up for their lack of defence and health with a deadly array of weapons, high-power engines, and cloaking. Take advantage of their fraility before they can do any real damage

Rock Ships

Rock ships often rely on their missile and beam weaponry. This can be easily negated though, by having a defense drone as it effectively renders missiles useless, whereas the beams practically won't even touch you if you have a good shield (Level 2 is often good, as it stops everything short of a Glaive Beam).

Zoltan Ships

All Zoltan ships (except ones in sector one on easy mode) carry a Zoltan Shield, which impedes ALL weapons, drones, and teleports. Although uncommon, it's not unusual to see Zoltan working with Engies in the same ship. Zoltan prefer to arm their ships with ion and beam weapons at every opportunity.

Strategy: Beam drones cut through the overshield in a jiffy, and don't miss at the same time. Once the Zoltan Shield is down, a boarding party will easily cut through the frail zoltan (provided the medbay on the enemy ship is down)

The Rebel Flagship

Main article: The Rebel Flagship

The Rebel Flagship is the final ship you can encounter in a play through of Faster Than Light. This ship is also most likely the hardest ship you will encounter in Faster Than Light. It has three forms, each one meant to be harder than the last. It has 4 layers of shields, high dodge rate, and an individual room for each type of weapon (ion, missile, burst laser and beam) which is separate from the other rooms and can be destroyed. However, there is a crew member in each of these and thus they will be repaired. In its first form, it can cloak itself (loses for 2nd stage), in the second form it has drones (loses these for 3rd stage), and finally in its third form it has a Zoltan shield, it uses its teleporter and shoots between 5 and 10 lasers from apparently nowhere. Upon winning a section from it, a bit of it will be broken off from the ship, starting from the left, then the right and finally the ship is destroyed and you win the game. If you kill all its crew, you will get a message that a powerful AI controls it now. That's bad news: it will now automatically repair systems.

The Final Boss 1st stage

Forms:

First stage

Special Attack: None

Special Defense: The rebel flagship has quite a longlasting cloak. This can make the fight difficult, because it allows him to repair, heal, recharge. It has quite a big crew too, so this can cause some problems getting through.

Strategy: It helps if you view this battle not just as a battle you must win at all cost; but as a preperation step for the next two battles. Although all systems will be repaired between fights, dead crew will remain dead. Be aware that it loses the turret and cloak on the left after the first fight and the turret on the right and drone control after the second fight. This is the only phase where it has each of the triple-turrets. You need 3 shield, at least 30% evasion (estimation) to not die quickly. Defense drones and cloak can help negate damage too.

Second stage

Second form of the Rebel Flagship

If you emerged victorious from your first battle, the section furthest to the left breaks off, taking away its ability to cloak, its ion weapon the door system, and up to three crew members.

Special Attack: The special attack of the second stage consist of a large squadron of anti-ship drones (around 8). This special attack is not as strong as those of the the other two stages.

Special Defense: The boss has a deefense drone deployed during this stage, rendering missiles practically useless.

Strategy: Despite the weaker special attack, this isn´t an easy stage, however. The defense drone and boarding drone can make life quite hard. Especially since killing the boarding drone, just makes him fire a new one almost immediately (probably causing a new breach too). There are three ways of dealing with the boarding drone:

• Shooting it down with a defense drone

• Having improved blast doors and ignore it until it enters an important room

• Damage the drone facility enough so that it stops moving

Third stage

Special Attack: The special attack of the third stage consists of a burst of laser-like attacks, about 8-9 shots that arrive almost simultaneously.

Special Defense: A zoltan shield that takes about 10 hits. Once in a while it suddenly has a new shield, although this doesn´t recharge quickly at all.

Strategy: The third stage, the attacks of the rebel ship are the strongest. Where the previous rounds a defensive strategy may have worked, the best way to deal with this stage is to deal as much damage as quickly as possible. The AI usually uses its teleporter to board you straight away, so be prepared to deal with that before you start the third stage fight.