New Cities

Each player can only have 26 cities so you need to choose you new cities location carefully. Cities with 6 farmlands might be useful at the beginning but you probably already realized that the quickly become obsolete since a 15c produces 150% more food than a 6c and there are plenty of farms to plunder for resources. 9c (9 farmland) are a good tradeoff between a 6c and 15c, they can hold a a medium sized army and have decent resources output, once they are built the way you want they can be use to feed resources to your 15c. 15 farmland cities (15c) are the best choice for supporting a large army.  Make sure that you pick a spot where you can get 2 oases for it. It may be tempting to build cities close to your existing cities and/or outside the cluster in the middle of the map, but without oases they will not be very productive. When selecting the spot for your new city make sure that both it and the oases you want are not being farmed by other players. Since you most likely will be unable to take 2 oases right after building your city, make sure that you plunder often the cities with the oases to show that they are your farms.

City Tutorial

Lobbyist vs. Pioneers

To build a new city, there is 2 options. Lobbyists will allow you to get a city with buildings already built but they are expensive and slow to use. Pioneers are cheap and easy to use, but you must build the city from scratch. Both methods require demolishers (unless you go with an unoccupied spot). For the Lobbyist  you need to demolish the annex and be sure you are not trying to lobby the main.

One of the advantage to use pioneers for your new cities, is that since you rebuild the city from scratch your city will have the layout you are use too. If you prefer a certain buildings placement in your cities pioneers might be the way to go. With the lobbyist you will end up with your opponent layout which is probably a layout that you are not used so it might be annoying. Use the View Cities menu to manage your cities and it uses the construction date of the city to determine its place in the list, with the newest being at the bottom. when you lobby it, it might have been built long before your other cities and be placed anywhere in the list. Once the location is picked out, send your demos/rams to take out everything in the sub-city, destroying it and creating an empty space for your pioneers. If you do not have demos, ask your league leader for help.

Check out my previous article about lobbyist and pioneers :

Using Lobbyist for attack

Tip and Tactic when using Lobbyist

Lobbyist Train

Shields Holding

Destroy a ship before it gets through the Zoltan Shield.

This is probably one of the easiest achievement to achieve, you can easily get it vs early ship and cut them through with the halberd beam of layout A or if you manage to have trouble with this achievement, get the Weapon Pre-Igniter, it will makes this achievement incredibly easy.

Givin’ her all she’s got, Captain!

With the Zoltan Cruiser, have 29 power in systems at the same time.

This achievement is probably the hardest of the three Zoltan achievement. To unlock it you need four Zoltan and you reactor maxed at 25. Note that it’s actually easier in the advance edition since the backup battery count toward this achievement, so you can use the power of you battery to get to 29.

Note that power in the subsystem doesn’t count.

Manpower

Get to sector 5 without upgrading your reactor in the Zoltan Cruiser.

This achievement is quick simple, you might have it rough in sector 4-5 but most your ship should be strong enough to make it through with the Zoltan crew giving you extra power. Note that the backup battery don’t count so you can use the power from the battery without risking not getting the achievement.

The technique to achieve this is to redirect all power from shield, med bay to the system you need. Cloaking with a Zoltan in the room then leaving the room wills enable you to benefit from the power in 2 system and still be cloak. See previous post on the Zoltan ship for more info about that technique. Cloaking is a great add for getting that achievement.

Another side note on the Advanced Edition also features events that can extend your generator capacity which will not prevent you from getting the achievement, like at a beacon where a ship requests fuel.

Just a bunch of management game I wanted to talk about and never had the time to do so. With most Facebook game (read Zynga and EA ) closing I was wondering what out there so here a few title that grabbed my attention, not all are good but I though I could have a few word about them.

Pocket Stables (ios/Android)

This game is probably one of the more interesting of the 4. You start off as a ranch owner and need to work breeding the fastest horses in the country and winning every championship race that exist.

The game is simple, has the owner of the ranch you train and breed horses so they can take place in race. Depending how you rank in the race you gain money.  You can assign each horse a training and a trainer. You can hire jockeys and trainers, expand your ranch to build more training facility or bigger stable.

It’s a pretty fun game and doesn’t depend on you doing stuff then having to come back 10 minutes later like the farmvilles of this world.

Related : Pokect Stable

1849 (PC/Steam)

1849 let you build a city in the wild west, it’s kind of Simcity in the gold rush.

From Indies Retro News :

“You decide to head out west, to seek fame and wealth in the approaching Gold Rush. Will you strike gold and become an overnight mining magnate? Or will you build your fortune bit by bit by supplying 49ers with pickaxes and blue jeans? 1849 is a city management game where your task is to build towns, populate them with workers, and make sure that they are housed, fed, and entertained.”

1849 seem a nice game but it’s simply a city builder likes Sim City, don’t expect much more. I can be quite enjoyable and the setting might makes you forget about Sim City but it’s none the less very similar. It fun to revisit a good old concept in a new setting but note that there isn’t that much to do after a while.

Related: 1849 step back in time and enjoy

New Rock City (Facebook)

New Rock City is Sim City Social meet The Flintstones. You need to repair road, build shop and collect tax to build the perfect bedrock city. The game mechanics are pretty much the same has Sim City Social, you have the energy to build stuff, you need to collect stuff after a certain time and you are blast with a zillion thing on the screen that flashes and move which can be pretty annoying. If you like Sim City Social, give it a try you’ll probably like it for the rest of you there better thing to do around here.

Related : Build your own prehistoric city in New Rock City

Play it : https://www.facebook.com/PlayNRC

Evil Genius Online (Facebook)

Despicable me meet Sim Social. Build your evil lair, recruit minions and start doing evil mission. Basically you lair is like your house, where you can expand it and buy furniture. The object you buy either have a purpose (locker give more minion, Money laundering machine give cash) or are purely aesthetical. You can do mission in your command center and that pretty much has far I managed to go. The ideas of the game are great but the formula seems reheated from the similar passed title (Sim Social, The Ville) with a new theme. Again give it a try if you like these kind of game, the premise of the game is great but the format (Facebook management game) not so much.

Related: Evil Genius Online: Build new floor for your evil lair.

Play it: Evil Genius Online

We are doing a series of posts on FTL and  we hope you like them. If you want us to do more of this let us know in the comment or by mail at jack at onlinesgamestips.com

The Zoltan and their ships are really particular in that it’s less power hungry than other ship, due to the fact that the Zoltan provide a free energy power and that the Zoltan Shield allow to redirect the normal shield power to other system. The Zoltan energy can be use to remove energy from recharging system like cloaking, boarding system, hacking and mind control simply by walking in and out of the room. Because of this it make the main reactor less a priority than usual and you can focus more on buying a system upgrade versus extra power in the main reactor.  It can be good idea to upgrade a system evens if it cannot be powered continuously. This gives you more room to juggle power distribution and meet particular demands. Another tactic that you can do with the Zoltan is to use them has bomb when boarding with a clone bay (see Layout C of the Federation Cruiser for more details on that technique).

Another side note once you get a non Zoltan crew member, move him or her into the pilot’s chair so your former pilot’s Zoltan energy can power one of the systems. Zoltan energy don’t power up sub-system like doors, piloting, camera and backup battery.

Layout A:

Unlock

Complete the Unarmed Zoltan Transport random event.
Or defeat The Rebel Flagship with the Federation Cruiser.

• Default name: The Adjudicator
• Starting Crew: 3 Zoltan
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Zoltan Shield
• Starting Weapons:
  • Halberd Beam
  • Leto Missiles
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 12 Missiles
  • 2 Drone parts
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

This ship has one of my favorite weapon, the Halberd Beam will cut through most ship you encounter in the first few sector and it will still be useful even late game. This Weapon usually stay the whole game. Beam weapon can be somewhat tricky but if you maximize the number of rooms it you can take out most of the early ship in one beam. Remember this beam deal 2 dmg so even against 1 shield enemy you can still use it but it will only do 1 dmg instead of 2. Once you start encountering enemies with two or more shield levels, you may want to use missiles to take out their shields or use an ion weapon. It is best to time your beam shots precisely when the enemy shield is hit, rather than putting your beam weapon on auto-fire.

This ship could really use the Weapons Pre-Igniter giving you the ability to take down most ship without your Zoltan Shield going down.

 Layout B:

Unlock

Earning two of the three Zoltan Cruiser achievements will unlock Layout B.

• Default Name: Noether
• Starting Crew: 3 Zoltan
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Zoltan Shield
• Starting Weapons:
  • Ion Blast (x2)
  • Pike Beam
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 0 Missiles
  • 2 Drone parts
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

The Noether (Zoltan Cruiser Layout B) starts with only one bar of power in the shield system, requiring 100 scrap to upgrade once and get to Level 1 Shields.

You have to rely on your Zoltan shield until you upgrade the shield for 100 scrap, speed is your friend here so you need to quickly disable the shield to be able to blast the enemies ship with the Pike Beam. Like the previous layout the Weapons Pre-Igniter can be a nice addition and later be useful when you get even better weapon. Cloaking is a nice addition too since it give your Zoltan shield extra time. Without shield asteroid field will be a problem, you might want to avoid those. Another other issue with the Zoltan in general is their lack of hp, which make them venerable to boarding (except if you have a clone bay).

Layout C:

Unlock

Getting to Sector 8 with the The Zoltan Cruiser Type B with Advanced Edition Content enabled will unlock Layout C.

• Default name: Cerenkov
• Starting Crew: 4 Zoltan
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Zoltan Shield
• Starting Weapons:
  • Ion Charger
• Starting Drones:
  • Anti-Ship Beam Drone I
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 2 Missiles
  • 15 Drone parts
• Clone Bay
• Backup Battery
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone

Starts with two bars of reactor power, requiring 30 scrap to upgrading the first 3 points.

The reactor is super low but 4 Zoltan and a level 2 Backup Battery should cover your need pretty early on. The starting combo of this ship is to use the Ion Charger to disable shields and then activate your drone with the backup battery.

Side note: the lack of need for the reactor of this ship makes Ion storms, weapons and pulsar little threat and even help you against enemies.

If you haven’t read it go check out the last post about Gold.

Sometime some league mate ask me what to do with the extra gold left gold or if they don’t have enough for the metal alchemy scroll there always other option. Here my top 4 and a bonus if you want more food.

1-Garrison

This is probably the single most efficient use of gold now. For about $15 (400g), you will get 120k f/h of storage space. Even just 44g will get you 30k f/h of storage space. It is easier and cheaper to increase your food output through the use of Garrison versus the Capital Outpost. If you are ever thinking of using some gold, this is the first place I recommend you spend some of it on.

2-Capital Outpost

This is another good way to increase your food output, since it gives you a second city that can have resource fields above level 10. Keep your eye out for events that reward you with Jade Globes for every gold that you spend since these are the best way to get Jade Globes. It doesn’t matter what you spend your gold on, you just need to spend it during the event. Using the gold to increase your Garrison capacity during one of these events is a good way to give you a double boost to your food output.

3-Emperor’s Order

(50g/3 days, 99g/7 days, 399g/30 days) – This is a useful item for several reasons beyond the bonus to resource production. The Auto Transport functions allows you to set repeatable transport orders for your caravans as well as giving them a 100% movement speed increase. This is useful for getting resources to your other cities from those that do the plundering. The Auto Build function is nice if you have a lot of building that you need to get done. You can queue up to 20 buildings and as long as you have the resources, they will be built. All of the other features of an Emperor’s Order are nice, but it is these 2 that I find the most useful now.   

4-Recalling your fled Hero’s Summit epics

This is something you shouldn’t use your gold on now since we get so many free Callback orders from the events. The 100g can be put to better use elsewhere. I’ve talk about it in the last post, some heroes you can live without it might be a good idea to recall them but if you are overflowing with food because you lost everything wait until you have no choice.

Other honorable mention for extra food production

Token of Rain (7 days) (26g)

Increase the Food output by 25% for 7 days, not available for State and County Capital.

Probably the cheapest non permanent way to increase your food output. 26 gold for 7 days is probably the best you can get, the Emperor order is 50 for 3 days (double the price for half the time…) and the Treasure Bowl is about the same price (29 gold) but only last 3 days.

Treasure Bowl (3 Days) 29g

increase all output by 25%

Another way to increase your food, it’s increase other resources output has well. Way shorter than the Token of Rain so if you just want the food bonus go with the token of rain.

I don’t think the token of rain and the Treasure Bowl bonus stack, if you know if they do let me know. The same go for the Emperor order with those two.

Rotation Order, Level 1 (3 days) (199g)

Reduce food consumption of your army by 5%, last for 3 days.   

The Rotation Order is way over price but it has a nice thing to it, it stack with other bonus since it’s not a food bonus but a reduction of your food consumption. But keep it mind you are paying 8 times the Token of rain price for 5 times less result.

We are doing a series of posts on FTL and  we hope you like them. If you want us to do more of this let us know in the comment or by mail at jack at onlinesgamestips.com

Master of Patience – Use only the Artillery Beam to destroy an enemy ship while taking no hull damage.

This achievement is the easiest to get of the three. Just upgrade your shield to level 2 and when you fight a ship not using missile just wait for the artillery beam to do is job. You can even go grab a coffee if you want while your ship finish the enemies ship with the artillery beam

Diplomatic Immunity – While using the Federation Cruiser, use your crew in four special blue events by sector 5.

Honestly this achievement is so hard to get. I’ll be brief and link to you a table in the wiki that show you all the event per alien species which will allow you to try to plan for this event.

The description of this achievement is rather vague, it is important that only blue event choices that arise as a result of having particular alien crew members aboard count towards this achievement – thus other blue event choices (for having specific system upgrades, augments, or weapons) do not count. Note that even if the event says “by sector 5” it’s actually, before entering sector 6, so the very last place you could conceivably get your final blue option in is the exit beacon for sector 5.

To increase your chance of receiving this achievement you get a Long-Ranged Scanners augment has soon has you can. Why ? Because the majority of blue event options for crew will be found within normal or distress beacons it will save you time to choose a beacon more likely to have a event. Another important point, it’s really important to diversify your crew, the layout A is probably the best for that part since its start with 4 different race. Zoltan are mostly found in Zoltan controlled world , Lanius can be a nice find to in the abandon sector and slug can be hired in their home nebula. You can get new members from slaver ship or by boarding and killing all the crew, you might find survivor that will join you in that case.

Has for the event per say here are the link to the list of all possible event per race: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Diplomatic_Immunity

Artillery Mastery – Get to sector 5 with the Federation Cruiser without upgrading your weapons system.

This achievement is actually not to hard to get. Upgrade a the artillery beam, shield, engine and try to supplement your ship with cloaking, hacking or Drone control with a defense drone. The last three is to dodge those nasty missiles. Just wait for your Artillery beam to take care of the rest. The layout  A can be a good ship to get that achievement since the Burst laser II can really help. You can’t upgrade your weapon but nothing prevent you from buying weapon either. Some bomb can be very useful to blast an annoying system (shield then switch to burst laser or blast the pilot or engine so they won’t be able to run away)

The Cave of Atman

The Cave of Atman is a puzzle with a RPG twist on it. Each class attack differently and they level up by killing the aura of the defeated enemies.

The game play is quite simple and the puzzle are really easy at the beginning, but it’s get harder has you progress. But fear not new class join your quest with new attack and range. Classes like the mage or archer can execute ranged attacks, while fighters are only able to strike at adversaries that are adjacent to them. Note that they all of them can only move and strike once per level. If you’ve made a mistake, you can click on the last action and it will reset it, in some case you need to use the retry button and reset the room for another try.

Play The Cave of Atman

Related:

Browser Pick : The Cave of Atman (IndiesGames.com)

Crystal story II

Crystal Story II is the sequel of Crystal Story and you can play both on Kongregates. While you might think that the mechanic are somewhat déjà vu, it will definitely bring you back the memory of you good NES and SNES RPG. It was design and code by Emmanuel Salva Cruz and he had a team of artists and musicians for the graphic and music.

Play Crystal story II

Related news:

Crystal story II  (indiegames.com)

Hypnotic Owl’s The Wizard

In The Wizard, the player takes on the role of a wizard who is on a quest to retrieve his face from the thief that just stole it.  Unlike the The Cave of Atman the RPG element is more omnipresent. Fear not each level are carefully design to make you think and everything is turn base.

Play The Wizard

Related news:

Browser Pick: Hypnotic Owl’s The Wizard now available (indiesgames.com)

We are doing a series of posts on FTL and  we hope you like them. If you want us to do more of this let us know in the comment or by mail at jack at onlinesgamestips.com

The Federation Cruisers are the only ships with the Artillery Beam.

The Artillery Beam’s path follows a specific algorithm. It finds the centers of two rooms and forms a path between them, with no limit on the length between them. It bypasses all shields and does one damage to each room hit.

Layout A

Unlock

Defeat the Flagship Construction in the Rebel Stronghold sector to unlock this ship.

Alternatively defeat The Rebel Flagship with the Engi Cruiser

• Default name: The Osprey
• Starting Crew: 1 Human, 1 Mantis, 1Rockman, 1 Engi
• Starting Weapons:
  • Burst Laser II
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 5 Missiles
  • 2 Drone parts
• Unique Ability: Artillery Beam
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

The main advantage that the federation ship has its  the Artillery Beam. This system is a weapon of is own that ignores shields and does a lot of damage. One build for this ship is to focus on beefing up the defenses (shields/engines) and let the beam it do the work. This needs patience, but is worth the wait. If possible, destroy the enemy’s missiles promptly (or get defense drones), as they bypass shields and pose a threat to the hull, cloaking can be an option too if you are playing the advance edition.  Hacking could be a good system too, hit the weapon system and wait for your artillery beam to take out the ship.

This layout start with a decent weapon, the Burst Laser II, so you don’t necessarily have to go the upgrade only the Artillery Beam route. You can work it with a teleporter since the starting crew (mantis + rockman) is good for boarding. Just be careful not letting the Artillery Beam kill your crew or destroy the ship whiles they are on it.

Bomb can goes well with the Artillery Beam, your Burst Laser II can take care of Zoltan shield, the bomb neutralizes system that might cause problem likes weapon if they have missile, piloting if they are trying to escape right away or hacking it they hack your shield, pilot, engine or artillery beam.

Layout B

Unlock

Earning two of the three Federation Cruiser achievements will unlock layout B.

• Default name: Nisos
• Starting Crew: 1 Human, 1 Slug, 1Zoltan
• Starting Weapons:
  • Dual Lasers
  • Leto Missiles
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 9 Missiles
  • 0 Drone parts
• Unique Ability: Artillery Beam
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

Layout B is very similar to layout A, they have the same module, 50 scrap more upgrade on the layout B and a smaller crew. The Dual lasers are less power full than the Burst Laser II but are very power efficient. The leto missile is useful but 1 damage is pretty low for a missile weapon, you might use them in the first few sector but you should try to either rely on the artillery beam instead like we explained for the layout A

Crew members of the layout B aren’t very useful for boarding so you might want to wither skip the teleport upgrade or hire better boarder along the way.

Layout C

Unlock

Reaching Sector 8 with The Federation Cruiser B and Advanced Edition content enabled will unlock Layout C.

• Default name: The Fregatidae
• Starting Crew: 1 Human , 2 Zoltan , 1Mantis
• Starting Weapons: None!
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 5 Missiles
  • 0 Drone parts
• Unique Ability: Flak Artillery
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Emergency Respirators

Layout C is quite different from the 2 other layout,  It has an Artillery Flak Gun instead of an Artillery Beam, which unfortunately don’t go through shield like Artillery Beam and can be dodge, but is very useful to shred a Zoltan super shield then teleport your crew on the enemies ship.

This ship is a boarding ship and the synergy of the Zoltan with the clone bay can have amazing effect. Warp zoltan on the other ship make them explode, your clone bay will bring your Zoltan back to life, send the mantis with a resurrected Zoltan to finish the job. You might want to upgrade the  Cloning Bay and the teleporter to Level 3, to maximize the effect of this tactic.

What can be annoying with this ship is other rebel ship that are charging their FTL drive right when the fight start. Since the only thing you got to attack is your boarding team and the artillery flask gun that take forever to charge, there always a good risk that they might run away with your crew on it and increase the rebel fleet progressing by on jump.

Note , that the Artillery Flak Gun lacks the shield-piercing capacities of the Artillery beam, meaning that it’s essentially a slower-cooldown or more power-hungry version of the Flak Gun II. This make this layout not viable to rely purely on Artillery, unlike Layouts A and B.