They're learning!

Thank you! I think you have a pretty good chance with two Mantis. It's just quite tight. I haven't tested this enough to know how reliable it is.

No cloaking or drones might make it rough. Good luck and have fun!

@@mikehopley Almost had it today, but lost due to a few small mistakes in the third stage. Let my mind controlled crew damage the artillery and lost the engine guy. By the time I took out the weapon rooms, I only had 3 hull left. With max engines and trained crew you can usually take the power surges with (mostly) no damage, but alas the RNG was not with me. Chronic lack of mantisses during the run didn't help either. :)

@@mikehopley I beat the challenge on hard thanks to a shop I could visit after phase 1! Both phase 1 and 3 brought me to 30% hull. I wonder how much phase 1 can be optimized. I went for Ion first, skipped the Laser, then teleported the rest of my boarding crew into the main part before extracting the Ion weapon boarders. But I was messing around instead of having a plan to take out the Missiles asap and let my boarders get a lot of unnessecary damage. This has convinced me that no-weapons is the optimal play for Fed-C because unless I died or got crippled in sector 1, I always easily reached the flagship with scrap to spare.

@@CardboardArm Congrats on completing the challenge! I can't agree that "no weapons" is the optimal play though. If it were optimal, you wouldn't take 10 months to beat the Flagship.

Thanks! This one was a bit of pain, glad I've done it and glad I don't need to do it again. ;)

I think there's two reasons I see this as worth my time. One is that it's interesting and some of the techniques can be applied elsewhere. The other is that I like being over prepared and having an extensive catalogue of techniques in my back pocket. You never know what FTL might do to you one day...

You're welcome! Did you lose your Crystal crew on that run?

@@mikehopley no i didnt i used the lockdown abilities to kill the missiles but they kept repairing and i kept splitting my guys between shields and missiles i’m not rly sure what went wrong tbh other than i didn’t take out the lasers and beams

@@mikehopley i was also careful not to kill all the crew which maybe i should’ve just done i just started playing in hard and on normal killing all the crew was like the worst thing so i think i should just not be scared of the ai next time

@@mikehopley i had also had a pretty gnarly fight right before the flagship so went into it with like half health which i think also kind of screwed me

Wow, that's some filthy luck! That's one reason I like having stuff like this in my back pocket. Never expect to need it, but who knows what BS FTL might decide to pull one day...

@@mikehopley I'll have to tell the story now 🤣 Mantic C was the only ship I'd never had a winning hard run with, could never get a good tactic running aswell as bad RNG. Finally I got a winning run with fantastic luck EXCEPT no offensive weapons, not one in any store, no even a beam drone. Final load out: s.bomb, ion blast, &ion blast2 Defence drone, shield charger, Zoltan sheild + 2 auto reloaders Max hacking, 4 shields and full engines So in hindsight doable, but I had no idea if I would lose crew (and how many i could afford to lose) after the 1st boss phase. And a cloak would have been preferable to drones but I was trying to increase the chances of an offensive weapon! Made long and hard work of it but won with 5HP left. Look forward to being shown how to do it properly!

@@jaymkay7211 Sweet, congrats on pulling off that win! Those weird runs can be stressful but so satisfying! =)

@@mikehopley Thank you. Definitely my weirdest, most stressful, and most satisfying run all in one!

@@jaymkay7211 Those are the best runs. Amazing how FTL can still give you those moments even when you've played a lot and know the game very well!

Glad you enjoyed it! That's always good to hear, especially when it's a super-niche topic like this one. Makes it feel worth making. =)

Thanks Ray! Yeah the micro is bad enough, then trying to do it at the same time as making the video gets a bit much.