How can I beat the final boss in Faster Than Light?

Question

How can I beat the final boss in faster than light? I can beat the first form, but the second form just obliterates me regardless what I try.

I have tried using nothing but missiles, a combination of every single weapon I can find, and stealth. I have not tried using drones because of the amount of scrap and luck of the draw it takes to get them up and running on the stock ship. I have also been playing on easy.

Answer 1

I have beaten him 5 or 6 times now, all on easy. General strategy is:

1. 4 points in shields, duh.

2. a dodge around 40%. This takes 4 power to engines and having both the engine crew and pilot crew be maxed out in their skills (actually, that's about 37-39% I think?).

3. Some good, old fashioned luck.

4. Plenty of spare crew. You'll need the usual party of Rogers and Hammerstien men to run around and punch intruders and also provide back up repairing. Don't underestimate that last part. Racing to get systems back to health ASAP can really help.

There's nothing fancy about how you attack. You throw every single thing you have at him, try to overwhelm the shields, and then do damage. My preferred strategy is beam heavy, but I will use launchers depending on what I find along the way. Since he's got excellent dodge and 4 shields, you've got to alpha strike every time you hit him (that is, fire everything or nearly everything). Once you damage his shields enough that you can get to critical systems easily, you still need to periodically attack the shields because they'll get repaired.

Another good trick I learned is do not fire your weapons as soon as it comes up. Wait till you can fire all your weapons at once for the first barrage. This will help overwhelm the shields helping you bring them down and damage them. Once the shields are down feel free to fire at will.

Now, ideally I would have something like Blaster mark III (5 shots, 1 damage each, 4 power), blaster mark 2 (3x1, 2 power) and maybe a heavy laser (2x2, 2 power). Or a small bomb launcher (underrated, it does 2 system damage). But really any number of things can work. I think I just beat him with the Kestrel using a Blaster Mk II, Heavy Laser, Halberd Beam, and Small Bomb Launcher. Obviously a crew member with maxed weapons skill is really important. Barring an accident, you should have that no problem. If you have less than 6 points of active weapons, you are probably going to have a rougher time of it. I prefer to have 7 or 8.

I will say this, I believe I have observed that e.g. the Heavy Laster (shoots twice, 2 damage each) will only eat 2 shield points up if it hits both times. I always like to have a blaster in my arsenal, but fate won't always help there.

There are two augments that, other things equal, really help in this fight:

1. The "decrease weapon recharge time" augment. Nuff said. This is always the augment I hope to get first unless I'm going early cloaking.

2. The "when you warp in all weapons are charged". You might think this one won't matter as much but do not under-estimate it. It's a free volley to open the fight!

With the first augment and a great gunner you'll be attacking every 13-14s at most I think. From there, it's back to luck. If he rolls exceptionally well on dodges (and you don't), it can go south and there's nothing you can do about it. I've lost to him with a number of promising ships for this reason. Tip your cap and go have a drink.

Cloaking is really powerful for ships who can get it, e.g. the kestrel. My poor federation cruiser is no longer cloaking eligible, but I have beaten the last guy several times with cloaking + cloak weapons. For form 1, the weapon on the inner-right side of the boss ship (actually, this one is always there but see below) is a freaking Gatling missile launcher. It shoots 3 missiles and it's super scary. I prefer to cloak when this is fired (and hopefully he'll be shooting other stuff too). Ditto for form 2. Form 3 will be something you have to discover on your own. Obviously if you run cloaking stealth weapons is a huge priority. But the 100% dodge you get from cloaking is really useful in the fight, so not having stealth weapons is not the end of the world. If I have cloaking I always try to get it to 3 points, but I consider 2 the minimum. That can buy you a lot of time to repair systems or deal with borders.

Doors 3 is really useful starting on form 2 of this fight (and really useful in the last few sectors!). I usually save that upgrade for late though.

Andrzej Doyle is absolutely right that boarders can be really useful in this fight. It's important to keep in mind that there is no one path to victory. After the beta update that took away cloaking Fed cruisers, I managed a few more wins. Mostly beam-heavy stuff but I made great use of bombs in two cases (I love small bombs because they only eat up 1 power but do 2 damage). I had a mixed-arms game (using some boarders) go really well until I ran out of places to repair and then lost in the second form.

Targeting priorities: Shields are first priority, obviously.

• Form 1 I like to go after the Gatling launcher next. Then it depends. Weapons or engines.
• Form 2 I go for the drone bay before the Gatling launcher usually. The ship will throw a lot of drones at you. This helps alleviate that.
• Form 3 Back to targeting weapons.

Lastly, it takes more luck. Sometimes you'll prepare to do this series of fights and have repair nodes/stores near by that you can use to stay fresh. Sometimes you won't. I have lost promising ships that way too - a node got swallowed while fighting the first or second form and I was too beat up to finish him. Them's the breaks.

It took me a number of tries to beat him, and it can get frustrating. Stick with it. You'll break through eventually.

Answer 2

In addition to peacedog's excellent write-up above, I find boarding parties can make things much easier. Each of the boss' weapon systems is in a standalone room, manned by a single human - which means two of anything should be able to beat him in combat, then destroy the weapon.

It does reduce the crew you have available for repairs and boarder-repelling, but it's also a "free" destruction of a weapons system every 45-60 seconds or so. This can make the incoming damage much easier to take, especially if you take out the most troublesome system first (Gatling missiles, I would say!). If you have a full complement, it shouldn't be too hard to keep things under control with 6 people back on your ship.

(Or of course, a single Mantis, Rock, or combat-trained human/slug should be able to take the gunner out, so in reality you could manage this with seven back on your own ship - if you don't mind the destruction of the weapon taking a few seconds longer.)

Answer 3

What makes a good boss? A boss fight should be representative of the rest of the game, only harder. The FTL boss is a great boss fight. So like the rest of the game, there are many strategies.

However, I think boarding gives us a real edge over the flagship. I've yet to beat the boss with firepower alone.

Boarding

Each of the flagship's four weapon bays are isolated, making them easy targets for teleporter away teams. I like to destroy the missile launcher first.

Killing the crew in the main section of the ship is much harder because of their number and the deluxe medbay. Still, if you have the opportunity (while the flagship's weapons are disabled) it's worthwhile to decimate the rebel crew to put them at a disadvantage in the next engagement.

Caveat lector: Do not exterminate the flagship crew, else the dangerously competent AI takes control, quickly repairing the ship.

Cloaking

Cloaking is really useful to evade the flagship's "power surge" attacks. A 1 power cloak is sufficient—if you're smart you can cloak in sync with the power surges.

Defence

The flagship's triple missiles are deadly. I've found that two defence mark I drones protect better than a single mark II drone, because the mark II drones are distracted by lasers, sometimes letting missiles pass.

Prep

The boss is much tougher than the rest of the game. If you limped through the penultimate sector with a skeleton crew, you're already finished. You need to arrive at the admiralty with a 30 power, 8 crew, star destroyer. How to do that is a question for another post. You'll need to collect a lot of scrap.

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Edit: Beat the boss on normal for the first time! This was in the Mantis ship with the size 4 teleporter bay. I used the strategies above.

Answer 4

If you really want to do the fight with weapons only, I recommend a hull laser and two Burst Laser Mk.III's. Go for the drone control first because the drones have been my bane on that fight many times.Then autofire at least one on the teleporter.Then you have two options; either focus on the weapons of the shields.I usually go for the shields.

Answer 5

It's easier than it seems. Just disable its shields as fast as you can (having ion bombs helps here), then go for his weapons: If you have a lot of evasion, disable his lasers first. Or, if you have maxed shields then disable his missiles first.

To disable the weapons, send a boarding team to one and attack another while you keep a weapon at the shields so they don't come up. Once it has a couple weapons disabled he shouldn't pose much risk and have just a few life left.

Answer 6

To supplement other answers: If you can get one, running a Defense drone -- even a simple Mark 1 will do -- will give you a significant edge:

1. It will stop some incoming missiles. (Taking out the enemy ship's capability of firing missiles at you should be a top priority, but the defense drone will help until you can get that accomplished.)
2. It will destroy (most) incoming Boarding drones before they can breach your hull and board your ship. (This is a very useful "undocumented feature" of the Defense drone!)

Answer 7

I've just completed my first run on easy. No teleporter, no cloaking, no fancy stuff. 6 crew members (3 humans, 3 engi), 3 shields.

Pretty crappy ship, huh?

Luckily I had gotten two anti-ship I droids which helped bring down the shields, along with 4 weapons (Artemis, Blaster I, Blaster II and Hull Blaster I). At the end of Form 3 I was nearly dead with all the boarders and breaches popping up in my ship, but I kept on whacking the shields with everything I had and it went down at last.

Answer 8

I actually beat it with the kestrel and 3 crew members with no teleporter. basically, i had max lvl cloak, hermes, artemis and burst laser. i spammed shield system on all 3 fights