FTL Ship Analysis: Slug Cruisers
Slug Cruiser A: Man Of War
1
2
x8
3
2
2
1
1
16
15
0
Anti-Bio Beam+Breach Bomb I+Dual Lasers
Maximum of 4 different weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Slug Repair Gel Augment.
1
2
x8
3
2
2
1
1
16
15
0
Anti-Bio Beam+Breach Bomb I+Dual Lasers
Maximum of 4 different weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Slug Repair Gel Augment.
Room total: 15
This is a surprisingly good ship!
It does notably lack Sensors, but the Slug crew nicely handles many of the relevant duties so it's not missed as badly as you might expect. The main thing they don't cover you have to watch out for is fires getting started in problematic corners -you don't have to worry about breaches due to Slug Repair Gel handling them passively. You can partially mitigate fire concerns by simply keeping both external door rooms vented so they, at least, will put out fires automatically, but there's not a lot you can do about the other empty rooms with your starting tools.
Fortunately, this is one of the better ship layouts. The external doors could be better, as so much of the ship is far from them, but Oxygen and the Medical Bay being adjacent to each other means you can bounce back from some disasters that would doom most other ships. Furthermore, only Shields isn't reasonably accessible to every other System or Subsystem room, so once you have adequate crew you can quickly repair and/or protect essential Systems with minimal delay. The main concern is that the Slug Cruiser A is poorly-equipped to handle boarders, particularly boarding events, as you start with only two crew, they're not advantaged at crew combat, and the layout makes even running to the Medical Bay while venting the rest of the ship impractical. If the Door Control gets smashed, for example, you can't do anything to prevent them from running right through the Medical Bay to smash Oxygen, which is less than optimal. You're quite likely to suffer a depressing amount of Hull damage from boarders if you're not very lucky.
Note that you shouldn't be using the Breach Bomb I in the early game if you can avoid it. Against ships with 1 Shield bubble, you should be using the Dual Lasers to pop it, preferably targeting Shields; damaged Shields not only means you can Anti-Bio Beam freely, but also often causes ships with larger crew to clump up in their rush to get the Shields back online, making it a lot faster to get a crewkill, and often letting the Dual Lasers directly contribute to killing crew! Even against ships with 2 Shield bubbles, you can often get away with not lobbing bombs if the enemy ship is ineffective at getting through your own Shields, though if they can do damage through your Shields you probably should drop a bomb on their Shields so you can more reliably open the way for an Anti-Bio Beam shot.
Reminder: while crewkilling is very powerful, it's only somewhat useful against the Rebel Flagship, and in fact going for a full crewkill is actively counterproductive. You'll need to acquire Hull-depleting weaponry before the end of the game if you want to actually win -more than just the Dual Lasers you start with, I mean.
Fortunately, this transition is rarely horribly difficult, since the Slug Cruiser A has Weapons 3 built in, and a Breach Bomb I is an acceptable support to Hull-smashing options due to being a way to damage the Shields System, one that has no risk of being intercepted by a Defense Drone or accidentally stopped by enemy fire, while Dual Lasers are a solid option to be part of your volley. You can potentially get by with just one other solid option like a Flak I, though this isn't to suggest you should settle for such as the Flagship will probably kill you if your firepower is barely able to do damage through its Shield bubbles; your goal should be to completely overwhelm the Rebel Flagship's defenses, after all. But the point is you can grab a couple of weapons and just swap out the Anti-Bio Beam when you're about to fight the Rebel Flagship.
Anyway, overall the Slug Cruiser A is one of the better ships of the game. Moderately dependent on good strategic luck to actually beat the game, and with some potential to be screwed over by running into too many Autoships (Cloning Bay-equipped ships shouldn't be an issue: simply Breach Bomb I their Cloning Bay), but overall very reliable at getting to the end of the game. This is especially nice since its fighting strategy is one of the more unique ones, so picking it so you can win isn't sacrificing fun for practicality the way it is with some of the other ships.
We're In Position!
Have vision on every room in an enemy ship, while your Sensors are not functioning.
This is a slightly annoying achievement since it absolutely demands a Crew Teleporter -there are other ways to have vision on enemy rooms, such as Hacking a room, but it's not like there's an enemy ship that has exactly two rooms so you can Hack one and Mind Control someone in the other. And the Slug Cruiser A doesn't start with a Crew Teleporter and the Anti-Bio Beam covers the biggest benefit of boarding (crewkills), so it's often suboptimal to grab a Crew Teleporter.
It's a cute achievement for helping a player more explicitly realize that Slugs provide vision on rooms adjacent to the room they're in, though, and doesn't necessarily take that long to pull off. Even with just your starting two Slugs, it's actually possible to get it done on some of the smaller enemy ships. So this is an okay Achievement.
Home Sweet Home
Jump to 30 nebula beacons in a single run.
This is one of the better achievements of the game: it's not actually automatic, but you're basically guaranteed to get it if you make an effort to play smart for your ship class, and in turn it helps teach you what's smart for this ship class, where with most other ships you should generally avoid nebula like the plague.
I quite like it as a result.
Note that it specifically means 'beacon with the nebula effect'. Not 'beacons in nebula Sectors'. You can make progress without hitting nebula Sectors, and though it's unlikely it's possible to hit a nebula Sector and yet completely fail to make progress on this. I've had Nebula Sectors generate where there's a straight shot from the entrance to the exit with no Nebula beacons; it's rare is all.
Disintegration Ray
Have a single sweep of the Anti-Bio Beam kill at least 3 enemy crew. (Drones count)
This is moderately luck-based, since enemy ships don't even necessarily have three or more crew, and larger ships with larger crews will generally have them spread out enough that catching three with one sweep is difficult. Nonetheless, you're liable to achieve it as a natural part of playing the Slug Cruiser A at some point, simply because you want to maximize targets hit with the Anti-Bio Beam anyway.
And to be clear, 'one sweep' means their deaths all occurred within one firing of the Anti-Bio Beam. Hitting three crew twice with the Anti-Bio Beam, with the second sweep killing them, is perfectly valid, you don't need to do anything like delay firing the Beam while softening up your victims with other weapons.
Anyway, all three Slug Cruiser achievements are moderately luck-based, but not horribly so. Since the Slug Cruiser A is reasonably fun to play in its own right, it's not actually a chore to unlock...
Slug Cruiser B: The Stormwalker
1
2
x7
2
2
2
1
1
16
25
0
Healing Burst+Artemis
Maximum of 4 different weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Slug Repair Gel Augment.
This is a surprisingly good ship!
It does notably lack Sensors, but the Slug crew nicely handles many of the relevant duties so it's not missed as badly as you might expect. The main thing they don't cover you have to watch out for is fires getting started in problematic corners -you don't have to worry about breaches due to Slug Repair Gel handling them passively. You can partially mitigate fire concerns by simply keeping both external door rooms vented so they, at least, will put out fires automatically, but there's not a lot you can do about the other empty rooms with your starting tools.
Fortunately, this is one of the better ship layouts. The external doors could be better, as so much of the ship is far from them, but Oxygen and the Medical Bay being adjacent to each other means you can bounce back from some disasters that would doom most other ships. Furthermore, only Shields isn't reasonably accessible to every other System or Subsystem room, so once you have adequate crew you can quickly repair and/or protect essential Systems with minimal delay. The main concern is that the Slug Cruiser A is poorly-equipped to handle boarders, particularly boarding events, as you start with only two crew, they're not advantaged at crew combat, and the layout makes even running to the Medical Bay while venting the rest of the ship impractical. If the Door Control gets smashed, for example, you can't do anything to prevent them from running right through the Medical Bay to smash Oxygen, which is less than optimal. You're quite likely to suffer a depressing amount of Hull damage from boarders if you're not very lucky.
The Door Control Subsystem being unavoidably in the path from one of your two external venting points is also actually pretty inconvenient, as it means trying to use venting to fend off boarders or put out fires in the 'northern' part of the ship can easily result in your Door Control trapped in a vacuum state because you tried to vent and then it got smashed. That this is also the natural path to the Medical Bay and Oxygen means it's really easy to unthinkingly go for venting in situations that, for other ships, tends to work out well, and in short order have trapped yourself in a horrible, likely unwinnable situation, if you don't have a Repair Drone or a Lanius crewmember to safely get started on repairs in a vacuum. So do be careful about venting in the 'north' of the ship.
Anyway, the big reason the Slug Cruiser A is such a solid ship is its offensive strategy, being a ship centered on killing crew without risking your own crew. Wiping crew gets you a bigger payoff than just blowing up a ship, with a particularly notable example being that crew-killing a slaver ship will sometimes result in both free crew and normal crew-kill loot rewards, where doing Hull damage until they try to bribe you forces you to choose between getting free crew or getting Scrap and whatnot. All these crewkill benefits mean in the long haul the Slug Cruiser A tends to have more to work with than other ships... particularly because it's not actually helpless when faced with Autoships and Lanius ships, unlike most boarding-based ships and so doesn't have to give up their loot. Autoships are a bit of a struggle and if you have the option of avoiding a fight with them you should check their weapons before picking a fight, but overall you just flatly have more resources than with literally any other ship.
This means that even though the Slug Cruiser A's initial kit starts seriously struggling once ships with 3 Shield bubbles become normal, the Slug Cruiser A usually handles that transition just fine by virtue of having bought a weapon or Drone Control or Hacking to overcome heavy Shielding, having Scrap to spare. The primary caveat here is the potential to have literally no Store offer what you need at any point. (I've had this happen...) But usually things will work out fairly smoothly.
A subtle benefit to going for crew-kills is that enemy ships can elect to start up their Jump timer in an attempt to run when things turn against them... but the check for this is based purely on Hull damage. Pure crew-killing will never have to worry about almost winning, only for the ship to freak out, escape, and thus provide no rewards. (I'd say 'outside of Autoships' since they can't be crew-killed, but they never try to flee at low Hull, so...)
Anyway, the big reason the Slug Cruiser A is such a solid ship is its offensive strategy, being a ship centered on killing crew without risking your own crew. Wiping crew gets you a bigger payoff than just blowing up a ship, with a particularly notable example being that crew-killing a slaver ship will sometimes result in both free crew and normal crew-kill loot rewards, where doing Hull damage until they try to bribe you forces you to choose between getting free crew or getting Scrap and whatnot. All these crewkill benefits mean in the long haul the Slug Cruiser A tends to have more to work with than other ships... particularly because it's not actually helpless when faced with Autoships and Lanius ships, unlike most boarding-based ships and so doesn't have to give up their loot. Autoships are a bit of a struggle and if you have the option of avoiding a fight with them you should check their weapons before picking a fight, but overall you just flatly have more resources than with literally any other ship.
This means that even though the Slug Cruiser A's initial kit starts seriously struggling once ships with 3 Shield bubbles become normal, the Slug Cruiser A usually handles that transition just fine by virtue of having bought a weapon or Drone Control or Hacking to overcome heavy Shielding, having Scrap to spare. The primary caveat here is the potential to have literally no Store offer what you need at any point. (I've had this happen...) But usually things will work out fairly smoothly.
A subtle benefit to going for crew-kills is that enemy ships can elect to start up their Jump timer in an attempt to run when things turn against them... but the check for this is based purely on Hull damage. Pure crew-killing will never have to worry about almost winning, only for the ship to freak out, escape, and thus provide no rewards. (I'd say 'outside of Autoships' since they can't be crew-killed, but they never try to flee at low Hull, so...)
Note that you shouldn't be using the Breach Bomb I in the early game if you can avoid it. Against ships with 1 Shield bubble, you should be using the Dual Lasers to pop it, preferably targeting Shields; damaged Shields not only means you can Anti-Bio Beam freely, but also often causes ships with larger crew to clump up in their rush to get the Shields back online, making it a lot faster to get a crewkill, and often letting the Dual Lasers directly contribute to killing crew! Even against ships with 2 Shield bubbles, you can often get away with not lobbing bombs if the enemy ship is ineffective at getting through your own Shields, though if they can do damage through your Shields you probably should drop a bomb on their Shields so you can more reliably open the way for an Anti-Bio Beam shot.
Reminder: while crewkilling is very powerful, it's only somewhat useful against the Rebel Flagship, and in fact going for a full crewkill is actively counterproductive. You'll need to acquire Hull-depleting weaponry before the end of the game if you want to actually win -more than just the Dual Lasers you start with, I mean.
Fortunately, this transition is rarely horribly difficult, since the Slug Cruiser A has Weapons 3 built in, and a Breach Bomb I is an acceptable support to Hull-smashing options due to being a way to damage the Shields System, one that has no risk of being intercepted by a Defense Drone or accidentally stopped by enemy fire, while Dual Lasers are a solid option to be part of your volley. You can potentially get by with just one other solid option like a Flak I, though this isn't to suggest you should settle for such as the Flagship will probably kill you if your firepower is barely able to do damage through its Shield bubbles; your goal should be to completely overwhelm the Rebel Flagship's defenses, after all. But the point is you can grab a couple of weapons and just swap out the Anti-Bio Beam when you're about to fight the Rebel Flagship.
Anyway, overall the Slug Cruiser A is one of the better ships of the game. Moderately dependent on good strategic luck to actually beat the game, and with some potential to be screwed over by running into too many Autoships (Cloning Bay-equipped ships shouldn't be an issue: simply Breach Bomb I their Cloning Bay), but overall very reliable at getting to the end of the game. This is especially nice since its fighting strategy is one of the more unique ones, so picking it so you can win isn't sacrificing fun for practicality the way it is with some of the other ships.
We're In Position!
Have vision on every room in an enemy ship, while your Sensors are not functioning.
This is a slightly annoying achievement since it absolutely demands a Crew Teleporter -there are other ways to have vision on enemy rooms, such as Hacking a room, but it's not like there's an enemy ship that has exactly two rooms so you can Hack one and Mind Control someone in the other. And the Slug Cruiser A doesn't start with a Crew Teleporter and the Anti-Bio Beam covers the biggest benefit of boarding (crewkills), so it's often suboptimal to grab a Crew Teleporter.
It's a cute achievement for helping a player more explicitly realize that Slugs provide vision on rooms adjacent to the room they're in, though, and doesn't necessarily take that long to pull off. Even with just your starting two Slugs, it's actually possible to get it done on some of the smaller enemy ships. So this is an okay Achievement.
Home Sweet Home
Jump to 30 nebula beacons in a single run.
This is one of the better achievements of the game: it's not actually automatic, but you're basically guaranteed to get it if you make an effort to play smart for your ship class, and in turn it helps teach you what's smart for this ship class, where with most other ships you should generally avoid nebula like the plague.
I quite like it as a result.
Note that it specifically means 'beacon with the nebula effect'. Not 'beacons in nebula Sectors'. You can make progress without hitting nebula Sectors, and though it's unlikely it's possible to hit a nebula Sector and yet completely fail to make progress on this. I've had Nebula Sectors generate where there's a straight shot from the entrance to the exit with no Nebula beacons; it's rare is all.
Disintegration Ray
Have a single sweep of the Anti-Bio Beam kill at least 3 enemy crew. (Drones count)
This is moderately luck-based, since enemy ships don't even necessarily have three or more crew, and larger ships with larger crews will generally have them spread out enough that catching three with one sweep is difficult. Nonetheless, you're liable to achieve it as a natural part of playing the Slug Cruiser A at some point, simply because you want to maximize targets hit with the Anti-Bio Beam anyway.
And to be clear, 'one sweep' means their deaths all occurred within one firing of the Anti-Bio Beam. Hitting three crew twice with the Anti-Bio Beam, with the second sweep killing them, is perfectly valid, you don't need to do anything like delay firing the Beam while softening up your victims with other weapons.
Anyway, all three Slug Cruiser achievements are moderately luck-based, but not horribly so. Since the Slug Cruiser A is reasonably fun to play in its own right, it's not actually a chore to unlock...
Slug Cruiser B: The Stormwalker
12x72221
116250
Healing Burst+Artemis
Maximum of 4 different weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Slug Repair Gel Augment.
Room total: 19
This is a bizarre gimmick ship, based around boarding and using Healing Bursts to keep your crew topped off in combat. The basic idea of the gimmick is reasonable enough, but it's intensely confusing that it's on a Slug Cruiser. Shouldn't this be a Mantis or especially a Rock gimmick? A Slug crew is only marginally advantaged at boarding strategies, and that advantage is primarily being slightly advantaged at judging the answer to 'should I even try to board?'
This is a bizarre gimmick ship, based around boarding and using Healing Bursts to keep your crew topped off in combat. The basic idea of the gimmick is reasonable enough, but it's intensely confusing that it's on a Slug Cruiser. Shouldn't this be a Mantis or especially a Rock gimmick? A Slug crew is only marginally advantaged at boarding strategies, and that advantage is primarily being slightly advantaged at judging the answer to 'should I even try to board?'
When the Slug Cruiser B doesn't actually get a choice as to whether it should board!
Extending the gimmick is that the ship has no Medical Bay. Nor a Clone Bay, since that's advanced edition content. You're 100% reliant on Healing Bursts to keep your crew topped off. This makes the Slug Cruiser B alarmingly susceptible to tactical randomness: the Healing Burst can miss when targeting into an enemy ship, and since it charges about as fast as it takes for non-Mantis combatants to put your crew into critical HP they're going to die or be forced to pull out if said miss happens. Fires being started is unusually costly, because if you have to send someone to fight the fires, taking damage in the process, you're going to have to burn a Healing Burst on them at some point; most times you should fight fires purely by venting atmosphere, but if Oxygen gets knocked out and set on fire you're going to eat crew damage no matter what, whether from the fire or from venting atmosphere and taking damage from the lack of oxygen, and in turn need to spend missile ammo on healing them. If your Crew Teleporter and Weapons get knocked out in combat through moderate bad luck -such as an Artemis Missile hitting Weapons while a Burst Laser I penetrates Shields and hits the Crew Teleporter- you honestly probably should just restart outright if nothing significantly positive has happened so far, because very likely your boarders are doomed and even if you manage to win the fight at that point (Unlikely) it will have been so costly the run is almost certainly doomed regardless.
Strategic RNG can also very easily ruin a run. The Slug Cruiser B isn't completely helpless against Autoships, unlike some dedicated boarding ships out there, but you can't handle them without burning an alarming amount of missile ammunition. You can maybe get away with doing that once early on, but if you run into three or more Autoships in the first Sector your run is in serious trouble. Similarly, boarding events are actually alarmingly likely to get crew killed, even with the Door Control being level 2 meaning they can't run completely rampant (For one thing, if you get unlucky and they spawn in the Door Control, you're just screwed), and an enemy ship with Mantis boarders is also concerning. Really, any ship with Mantis crew is concerning, since they kill your crew faster than the Healing Burst can charge and run so fast that trying to stall for time by trying to run around the enemy ship is an ineffectual defense. And forget fighting Lanius ships: unless you've lucked into some alternate tools already, Abandoned Sectors should be avoided like the plague.
The frustrating thing is that even when you're not fighting one of these serious uphill battles, the Slug Cruiser B isn't very good anyway! Slugs have only a very small edge as boarders -that you can see the enemy crew's types and positions before teleporting even in a nebula or otherwise with non-functional Sensors- and the Healing Burst is less of an edge in boarding than you might expect. Against enemy ships that lack a Medical Bay, having a Medical Bay and an upgraded Crew Teleporter is often plenty to let you pop in, mangle crew, retreat for healing, and then pop back to finish them off, even if the enemy crew includes Manti. If the enemy ship is poorly equipped to get damage on your own ship... the fact that a Healing Burst doesn't involve that break for healing isn't necessarily an advantage at all.
This isn't even getting into the issue of limited player attention. The dependence on Healing Burst to keep your crew alive means it's a lot easier to get distracted by something else and then lose crew you technically could've saved, whether because you forgot to actually fire the bomb, or because it fired but you didn't notice that it had missed, or Weapons got hit and before you remembered to check on your boarders they'd already died... yes, a Medical Bay-reliant boarding ship can also lose crew to the player not paying adequate attention, but there's fewer points of failure, and furthermore the 'crew are near death' sound is something that will usually prevent you from losing crew when relying on teleporting them back for healing. With a Healing Burst, you ideally launch the Bomb before that announcement, and so learn to ignore it happening as 'yeah yeah, I've got that handled', which of course will go horribly wrong if you don't have it handled.
Slug Cruiser B's layout is also incredibly awkward and frustratingly large given you don't have Sensors and your crew is intended to be mostly off in the enemy's ship. It's very easy for a fire to get started somewhere and you not notice until it's started wreaking havoc in essential Systems, with the Door Control being particularly poorly-placed. It's entirely possible to have a fire start in the room between the Door Control and Oxygen, not notice until it spreads to one or the other, panic and try to vent atmosphere from both of them to protect them from the fire, and whoops either or both of them burn down and now you have to repair them while your crew is suffocating. Having access to Healing Burst makes it a little more possible to handle such an emergency, but on the other hand you're having to burn a limited, essential resource on topping off your crew in response to such, where a ship with a Medical Bay could heal them for free between repair dives. It's also pretty unpleasant that protecting Engines forces you to vent atmosphere through your Crew Teleporter, given the ship is centered on boarding: a fire starts in Engines or in that closet behind Engines, and then you end up having to pull your boarders back before they're killed on the enemy ship... whoops, you might've gotten them killed by suffocation instead!
Extending the gimmick is that the ship has no Medical Bay. Nor a Clone Bay, since that's advanced edition content. You're 100% reliant on Healing Bursts to keep your crew topped off. This makes the Slug Cruiser B alarmingly susceptible to tactical randomness: the Healing Burst can miss when targeting into an enemy ship, and since it charges about as fast as it takes for non-Mantis combatants to put your crew into critical HP they're going to die or be forced to pull out if said miss happens. Fires being started is unusually costly, because if you have to send someone to fight the fires, taking damage in the process, you're going to have to burn a Healing Burst on them at some point; most times you should fight fires purely by venting atmosphere, but if Oxygen gets knocked out and set on fire you're going to eat crew damage no matter what, whether from the fire or from venting atmosphere and taking damage from the lack of oxygen, and in turn need to spend missile ammo on healing them. If your Crew Teleporter and Weapons get knocked out in combat through moderate bad luck -such as an Artemis Missile hitting Weapons while a Burst Laser I penetrates Shields and hits the Crew Teleporter- you honestly probably should just restart outright if nothing significantly positive has happened so far, because very likely your boarders are doomed and even if you manage to win the fight at that point (Unlikely) it will have been so costly the run is almost certainly doomed regardless.
Strategic RNG can also very easily ruin a run. The Slug Cruiser B isn't completely helpless against Autoships, unlike some dedicated boarding ships out there, but you can't handle them without burning an alarming amount of missile ammunition. You can maybe get away with doing that once early on, but if you run into three or more Autoships in the first Sector your run is in serious trouble. Similarly, boarding events are actually alarmingly likely to get crew killed, even with the Door Control being level 2 meaning they can't run completely rampant (For one thing, if you get unlucky and they spawn in the Door Control, you're just screwed), and an enemy ship with Mantis boarders is also concerning. Really, any ship with Mantis crew is concerning, since they kill your crew faster than the Healing Burst can charge and run so fast that trying to stall for time by trying to run around the enemy ship is an ineffectual defense. And forget fighting Lanius ships: unless you've lucked into some alternate tools already, Abandoned Sectors should be avoided like the plague.
The frustrating thing is that even when you're not fighting one of these serious uphill battles, the Slug Cruiser B isn't very good anyway! Slugs have only a very small edge as boarders -that you can see the enemy crew's types and positions before teleporting even in a nebula or otherwise with non-functional Sensors- and the Healing Burst is less of an edge in boarding than you might expect. Against enemy ships that lack a Medical Bay, having a Medical Bay and an upgraded Crew Teleporter is often plenty to let you pop in, mangle crew, retreat for healing, and then pop back to finish them off, even if the enemy crew includes Manti. If the enemy ship is poorly equipped to get damage on your own ship... the fact that a Healing Burst doesn't involve that break for healing isn't necessarily an advantage at all.
This isn't even getting into the issue of limited player attention. The dependence on Healing Burst to keep your crew alive means it's a lot easier to get distracted by something else and then lose crew you technically could've saved, whether because you forgot to actually fire the bomb, or because it fired but you didn't notice that it had missed, or Weapons got hit and before you remembered to check on your boarders they'd already died... yes, a Medical Bay-reliant boarding ship can also lose crew to the player not paying adequate attention, but there's fewer points of failure, and furthermore the 'crew are near death' sound is something that will usually prevent you from losing crew when relying on teleporting them back for healing. With a Healing Burst, you ideally launch the Bomb before that announcement, and so learn to ignore it happening as 'yeah yeah, I've got that handled', which of course will go horribly wrong if you don't have it handled.
Slug Cruiser B's layout is also incredibly awkward and frustratingly large given you don't have Sensors and your crew is intended to be mostly off in the enemy's ship. It's very easy for a fire to get started somewhere and you not notice until it's started wreaking havoc in essential Systems, with the Door Control being particularly poorly-placed. It's entirely possible to have a fire start in the room between the Door Control and Oxygen, not notice until it spreads to one or the other, panic and try to vent atmosphere from both of them to protect them from the fire, and whoops either or both of them burn down and now you have to repair them while your crew is suffocating. Having access to Healing Burst makes it a little more possible to handle such an emergency, but on the other hand you're having to burn a limited, essential resource on topping off your crew in response to such, where a ship with a Medical Bay could heal them for free between repair dives. It's also pretty unpleasant that protecting Engines forces you to vent atmosphere through your Crew Teleporter, given the ship is centered on boarding: a fire starts in Engines or in that closet behind Engines, and then you end up having to pull your boarders back before they're killed on the enemy ship... whoops, you might've gotten them killed by suffocation instead!
It's not the worst layout by any stretch of the imagination, with a few positive qualities like having its external doors spread out decently, but the problems it has are very serious problems.
The one significant advantage the Slug Cruiser B has as a boarding ship is that enemy Medical Bays aren't a huge hurdle the way they are for other boarding-focused ships, since you can hit them with an Artemis Missile. Since you've got Slugs to track the enemy no matter what, you can even reliably time the hit for when enemies arrive at the Medical Bay. This advantage fades substantially in the late game, though, as enemy evasion gets too high to count on the hit and Medical Bays become increasingly prone to taking multiple missiles to actually knock out of commission. But it's pretty nice in the first half-ish of a run.
The Slug Cruiser B does also benefit from not being as heavily committed to boarding as some boarding-focused ships. Starting with 2 Weapon ranks and an actual attacking weapon means it's actually realistic for it to eg luck into a Burst Laser II or Flak I or something and make the switch from a pure boarding strategy to a more conventional combat ship that retains boarding as an option. This can't be counted on in the early game, but where some boarding ships can easily loot a great weapon and then die before they ever get close to being able to use it, the Slug Cruiser B will usually actually derive some benefit from such a lucky break.
Overall, though, while the Slug Cruiser B is far from being the worst ship in the game, it's definitely one of the worse ships, and honestly unfun to play to boot. If you're trying to unlock the Slug Cruiser C, you're liable to require dozens of attempts, many of which will end in failure before you've even left Sector 1, as the Slug Cruiser B really is that bad and sensitive to assorted elements of randomness.
Slug Cruiser C: Ariolomax
1
2
x9
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
16
1
15
Chain Burst Laser
Maximum of 4 different weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Slug Repair Gel Augment.
The one significant advantage the Slug Cruiser B has as a boarding ship is that enemy Medical Bays aren't a huge hurdle the way they are for other boarding-focused ships, since you can hit them with an Artemis Missile. Since you've got Slugs to track the enemy no matter what, you can even reliably time the hit for when enemies arrive at the Medical Bay. This advantage fades substantially in the late game, though, as enemy evasion gets too high to count on the hit and Medical Bays become increasingly prone to taking multiple missiles to actually knock out of commission. But it's pretty nice in the first half-ish of a run.
The Slug Cruiser B does also benefit from not being as heavily committed to boarding as some boarding-focused ships. Starting with 2 Weapon ranks and an actual attacking weapon means it's actually realistic for it to eg luck into a Burst Laser II or Flak I or something and make the switch from a pure boarding strategy to a more conventional combat ship that retains boarding as an option. This can't be counted on in the early game, but where some boarding ships can easily loot a great weapon and then die before they ever get close to being able to use it, the Slug Cruiser B will usually actually derive some benefit from such a lucky break.
Overall, though, while the Slug Cruiser B is far from being the worst ship in the game, it's definitely one of the worse ships, and honestly unfun to play to boot. If you're trying to unlock the Slug Cruiser C, you're liable to require dozens of attempts, many of which will end in failure before you've even left Sector 1, as the Slug Cruiser B really is that bad and sensitive to assorted elements of randomness.
Slug Cruiser C: Ariolomax
12x92221
1
1
116115
Chain Burst Laser
Maximum of 4 different weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Slug Repair Gel Augment.
Room total: 16
After the titanic crusade to unlock the Slug Cruiser C...
... it's honestly pretty disappointing.
Starting with a Chain Burst Laser is terrible. The Chain Burst Laser is only competitive with the Burst Laser I in longer battles. Early in the game, enemies have little Hull and low evasion; in the time it takes for the Chain Burst Laser to ramp up, a Burst Laser I could easily have decided the fight already, especially since the initial fire rate disadvantage translates to greater difficulty capitalizing on smashing the enemy Shields, further worsening its damage rate in real terms. Furthermore, the Chain Burst Laser is very sensitive to tactical RNG: late in a run, you can hide it deep under other weapons so it requires catastrophic Weapons damage to knock it out and reset its winding-up, but at the beginning of the game you're just stuck hoping random missiles and bombs don't land on your Weapons System or else you're screwed.
Sure, you have Hacking right out the gate and so can, for example, Hack the enemy Shields for your initial volley, or Hack enemy Weapons to delay their own shots, but this is cold comfort. Spending a Drone Part on every fight isn't practical, and even if it were the Chain Burst Laser isn't particularly synergistic with Hacking. Something like Hacking+Hull Beam would've been a much stronger payoff, even if it would've been burdened by the need to spend Drone Parts in basically every fight.
The combination of Hacking and Mind Control is also an odd choice. Mind Control is a natural combination with Slugs, of course, since Slugs let you see and Mind Control enemies even in a nebula, but neither of them goes particularly well with Hacking. If the enemy ship has a Medical Bay you can potentially use the combo to finagle a crewkill that would otherwise be impractical to achieve, but not many enemy ships have a Medical Bay, and the Slug Cruiser C isn't initially equipped for crewkilling.
And of course Mind Control doesn't actually go all that well with the Chain Burst Laser, which is oriented toward straightforwardly trying to blow up enemy ships, not mess with their crew.
After the titanic crusade to unlock the Slug Cruiser C...
... it's honestly pretty disappointing.
Starting with a Chain Burst Laser is terrible. The Chain Burst Laser is only competitive with the Burst Laser I in longer battles. Early in the game, enemies have little Hull and low evasion; in the time it takes for the Chain Burst Laser to ramp up, a Burst Laser I could easily have decided the fight already, especially since the initial fire rate disadvantage translates to greater difficulty capitalizing on smashing the enemy Shields, further worsening its damage rate in real terms. Furthermore, the Chain Burst Laser is very sensitive to tactical RNG: late in a run, you can hide it deep under other weapons so it requires catastrophic Weapons damage to knock it out and reset its winding-up, but at the beginning of the game you're just stuck hoping random missiles and bombs don't land on your Weapons System or else you're screwed.
Sure, you have Hacking right out the gate and so can, for example, Hack the enemy Shields for your initial volley, or Hack enemy Weapons to delay their own shots, but this is cold comfort. Spending a Drone Part on every fight isn't practical, and even if it were the Chain Burst Laser isn't particularly synergistic with Hacking. Something like Hacking+Hull Beam would've been a much stronger payoff, even if it would've been burdened by the need to spend Drone Parts in basically every fight.
The combination of Hacking and Mind Control is also an odd choice. Mind Control is a natural combination with Slugs, of course, since Slugs let you see and Mind Control enemies even in a nebula, but neither of them goes particularly well with Hacking. If the enemy ship has a Medical Bay you can potentially use the combo to finagle a crewkill that would otherwise be impractical to achieve, but not many enemy ships have a Medical Bay, and the Slug Cruiser C isn't initially equipped for crewkilling.
And of course Mind Control doesn't actually go all that well with the Chain Burst Laser, which is oriented toward straightforwardly trying to blow up enemy ships, not mess with their crew.
As an additional issue, the all-Slug-crew-with-no-Sensors point the Slug Cruiser C shares with its peers encourages going to Nebula Sectors, where you'll regularly face all-Slug ships that Mind Control is worthless against.
The net result is that while the Slug Cruiser C isn't blatantly awful the way, say, the Slug Cruiser B is, it's nonetheless a consistent underperformer. It's particularly frustrating how much it struggles at the very beginning of the game, because what it really needs to do is get to the midgame so it can buy a Crew Teleporter, or stockpile some missile ammunition and acquire crew-killing bombs, or otherwise really leverage its not-quite-there inherent potential for killing enemy crew, and it's a huge struggle to get far enough to have any chance of doing so.
There's also the disappointing sub-point here that the Slug Cruiser C is, at first glance, the first Slug Cruiser to not be oriented toward killing enemy crew, but in practice that's really what its best off trying to do anyway. It's just it's not got the tools right out the gate to properly do so like the other Slug Cruisers can, and so it doesn't immediately reap the benefits from killing crew, and indeed may never do so if a run fails to luck into any of the necessary elements.
It's also another ship with an awkward layout that makes it difficult to vent several Systems you really want to be able to readily vent without interfering with other Systems. It's not the worst example, but it's pretty guilty of it. Weapons being separated from the rest of the ship also exacerbates the issue of Chain Lasers being sensitive to Weapons being hit; even if you quickly upgrade Weapons to make single random hits not instantly set the Chain Laser back, you're still very vulnerable to eg a lone laser shot hitting and starting a fire, since you can't quickly shunt crew or vent the area to handle the issue.
Again, it's not blatantly terrible like some ships. I can actually understand, for the most part, how the Slug Cruiser C ended up not-great.
But it's still the case that it's a lackluster reward for such a strenuous effort.
Also? It's boring. Most bad ships are bad in part due to unusual, interesting qualities that aren't properly tuned. The Slug Cruiser C is frustratingly close to being a generic shooting ship like the Kestrel Cruiser A, just... worse.
Just play the Slug Cruiser A, honestly.
-------------------------------------
The net result is that while the Slug Cruiser C isn't blatantly awful the way, say, the Slug Cruiser B is, it's nonetheless a consistent underperformer. It's particularly frustrating how much it struggles at the very beginning of the game, because what it really needs to do is get to the midgame so it can buy a Crew Teleporter, or stockpile some missile ammunition and acquire crew-killing bombs, or otherwise really leverage its not-quite-there inherent potential for killing enemy crew, and it's a huge struggle to get far enough to have any chance of doing so.
There's also the disappointing sub-point here that the Slug Cruiser C is, at first glance, the first Slug Cruiser to not be oriented toward killing enemy crew, but in practice that's really what its best off trying to do anyway. It's just it's not got the tools right out the gate to properly do so like the other Slug Cruisers can, and so it doesn't immediately reap the benefits from killing crew, and indeed may never do so if a run fails to luck into any of the necessary elements.
It's also another ship with an awkward layout that makes it difficult to vent several Systems you really want to be able to readily vent without interfering with other Systems. It's not the worst example, but it's pretty guilty of it. Weapons being separated from the rest of the ship also exacerbates the issue of Chain Lasers being sensitive to Weapons being hit; even if you quickly upgrade Weapons to make single random hits not instantly set the Chain Laser back, you're still very vulnerable to eg a lone laser shot hitting and starting a fire, since you can't quickly shunt crew or vent the area to handle the issue.
Again, it's not blatantly terrible like some ships. I can actually understand, for the most part, how the Slug Cruiser C ended up not-great.
But it's still the case that it's a lackluster reward for such a strenuous effort.
Also? It's boring. Most bad ships are bad in part due to unusual, interesting qualities that aren't properly tuned. The Slug Cruiser C is frustratingly close to being a generic shooting ship like the Kestrel Cruiser A, just... worse.
Just play the Slug Cruiser A, honestly.
-------------------------------------
It's worth pointing out that the Slug Cruisers are particularly glaring about all the writing issues I previously covered, as all three of them are loaded purely with Slug crew, and between that and them universally lacking Sensors they're all noticeably incentivized to go into Nebula Sectors, meaning Slug Sectors... and if a player actually does this, they will inevitably have a moment where their Ambiguous Captain From Among The Actual Crew will be openly bigoted against Slugs while having no possibility of being a non-Slug.
It's a blatant bit of dissonance that doesn't even require objecting to the writing being racist to notice there's A Problem here.
Anyway...
--------------------------------------
Next time, we cover the Rock Cruisers as the next link in the chain of unlocks.
See you then.
Next time, we cover the Rock Cruisers as the next link in the chain of unlocks.
See you then.
Comments
Post a Comment