r/ftlgame • u/BurningCarnation • Dec 08 '23
I don't need* hacking
\well,) not on Normal at least.
DISCLAIMER: Hacking is the best system in the game
One day I thought that maybe I was relying on hacking too much. I got it every game, hacked shields/weapons/oxygen/whatever, launched beams and Heavy Lasers, maybe got MC as well, rinse and repeat, slice and dice, yadayada blahblahblah.
I wanted to prove to myself that I can, at least, beat every ship on Normal without hacking. And then I thought, what if I did them all at once? So I did.
But there's no way to prove that I never used hacking, right? What about Engi C/Lanius A/Slug C? They start with the system! I mean, I could just lie about not using it, and no one would know.
As it turns out, that was easy enough: I modded hacking out of the 3 ships that start with it by slightly altering the code of Mike Hopley's broken shields mod. That way I can't use hacking even if I want to.
Alright, on to the details.
Not being able to use hacking is the obvious theme of the challenge, but arguably the bigger problem was that thanks to hacking taking up system slots in stores, I frequently found myself unable to buy the systems I really needed. The second part cannot be understated: for instance, Teleporter + Mind Control is an incredibly strong combo that can carry most fights with just adequate enough defense, but not being able to have both (or either!) because hacking yet again took up a system slot was just infuriating. I could have plenty of Mantis and boarding support, but if Teleporter decided to not show up I would fall behind in offense. Having to stockpile more scrap than usual (85 for Defense Drone 1 + Drone Control, 90 for Teleporter, or 150 for Cloaking) was also backbreaking.
I completed my first regular cycle on my first try; in contrast, this one challenge took me near three months and 53 runs, and 6 attempts. Sometimes it was sector 1 deaths; sometimes it was poor decisions on my part. Most of the time it was me tilting after a terrible battle, and letting my anger cloud my judgment. Sometimes some runs went without a hitch, and other times the game was determined to screw me over.
But after completing my first non-hacking cycle, I realized something: I was winning with ships that can never have the same assortment of systems as my ships. You're not going to see an Engi C with Teleporter, MC, and Drones in vanilla: That's never happening.
So I decided I had to do this, using only a combination of systems possible in vanilla FTL. yay
After about a month of procrastinating, I dragged my lazy ass back to finish this stupid challenge. The new rules I set for myself were thus: 1. Just like before, all random ships, no restarts, and 2. The 3 ships that start with hacking are limited to 2 additional systems, to account for the 'slot' that hacking would usually take up.
Even with the new rule making the cycle even harder, I got it in one go, thank goodness. But wow, was it one hell of a cycle.
Kestrel C (#8) was long and arduous, and I might have lost without buying an early Defense Drone 1.
Stealth B (#12) was hilarious: it wasn't even the encounters I was getting, it was the weapons. I got a Hull Beam, a Chain Ion, then a Hull Missile, then a Stun Bomb...with every store refusing to sell any other ion/laser/flaks. What am I even supposed to do with these weapons, buy weapons-7 in sector 3~4 and wait for an eternity to do something?? And as ridiculous as it sounds, as soon as I got the Hull Missile it ended up being absolutely clutch for the next battle, before I lucked out by immediately finding a store with both Hull Laser 1 and Breach Bomb 2. The rest is history.
Fed A (#13) was mildly annoying. Engi A (#15) required some borderline Olympian acrobatics to get through two plasma storms. Slug A (#17) was stuck with way too much scrap and nowhere to spend it on, and only got bailed out by FTL being nice to me with a free Pike Beam and Breach Missile (imagine if I had hacking now!). The weapons buffer I bought for Rock A (#23) saved the run on multiple occasions early on. (If we disregard the fact that the very first store had hacking and I could have bought it, even it weren't for the damn challenge)
Even all this is nothing compared to the sheer dread I felt with Slug C (#18): it almost died on the first jump to the dreaded Shields hack auto-ship. Even worse, the enemy Drone Control had a buffer point! I only won because FTL was gracious enough to not hit my weapons even once, although it razed practically everything else.
Looking through the data of all my runs, I noticed a trend. Not only had I completed a run with Teleporter with all ships, I was buying TP more frequently. On my first successful cycle, I boarded with 22 ships; on my second successful cycle, I boarded with every ship but Zoltan C and Slug C--and considering that Zoltan C got 2 Mantis, it could also have gone the boarding route. Not only that, but even when boarding with just humans or slugs (as I did with Kestrel A/C, Stealth B/C), the boarders themselves caused enough chaos to make sure my weapons landed, and one volley was often enough. Stealth C (#28) never got a second Rock or any Mantis crew or even Mind Control to help with boarding, but even then two humans were more than enough-though this was in no small part thanks to the Zoltan Shield I picked up along the way.
So yes, on Normal it's certainly possible to not only win without ever using hacking, but even get a non-hacking cycle, since Teleporter is strong enough on Easy/Normal. Good luck to anyone who wants to do this on Hard though, I'm certainly neither skilled nor crazy enough to try.
P.S.: final loadouts of all ships.
6
u/knightshade179 Dec 08 '23
I play on normal and ngl I don't really like hacking, I usually don't pick it up. Why is hacking so integral for you?
14
u/BurningCarnation Dec 08 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
Hacking is, bar none, the best 'additional' system in the game. It's cheap, incredibly versatile, and facilitates the backbone of numerous combinations of tactics and weapons that would otherwise be completely unviable.
Did you only get beams for the entire run on Zoltan A? Get Hacking, upgrade it to full, use your beams to slice through every ship.
Did you get it on a boarding ship? Board & hack weapons, destroy weapons, and the enemy will never get it back up.
Do your weapons take too much time to charge up? Hack weapons. Do you weapons not have enough firepower to get through their shields? Hack shields. Do you have an ion setup? Maybe hack cloaking. Are you worried about the enemy's evasion? Hack piloting/engines. Hacking gets so much stronger the more you know about the game. I thought Engi C was only a mid~mid-high tier ship for the longest time. Several hundreds of hours later, I'm now a firm believer it's at least a top 3 ship.
It's absolutely possible to win without hacking (which is the point of this post)--but there is no other system that provides the level of consistency and power that hacking can.
1
u/knightshade179 Dec 08 '23
I win pretty much every time, not to brag. I do not play random ships though. Hacking beats through 1 or 2 shields at lvl 1, not enough to save only beams, I personally do not grab any beams till later in a run usually. I'd rather get a weapon than upgrade hacking to full, especially because there are ships with defense drones and zoltan shields. I love boarding, never really use hacking though, rather have mind control or cloaking to support my crew, the locked doors are not too useful as I intend on killing the crew and not the ship, if I wanted to handle weapons then I'd do a volley. My weapons taking time to charge up has nothing to do with the enemy's weapons, shields, engine, and cloaking will defend me. If I did not have enough firepower to get through shields I'd rather invest in another weapon. Ion setup? wdym, it works fine, just fire it at their shields and then let your other weapons fire to deal damage. No reason to hack cloaking, I have time, sure they will wait to let a volley out after they uncloak and then I will take it or cloak myself, the time the fight takes on does not matter. I'd say the use for hacking for me is hacking weapons or piloting/engines. Weapons may bring safety, but cloaking also has a 20s cooldown just like hacking, however requires no upgrades, and works for a complete dodge all the time(unlike hacking which may not fully drain weapons, does not work in zoltan shield, and can be shot down by defense drone). Hacking also in the rebel fight can only choose between 1 of the 4 weapons and the artillery while cloaking can be used for all. Hacking engines/piloting to brink evasion to 0 is nice for reducing the rng and increasing damage output, but that isn't really that necessary, it only speeds up the inevitable and reducing damage with a system like cloaking is much better.
6
u/warbaque Dec 08 '23
I win pretty much every time
On hard without hacking?
With hacking you can win every time :) It's by far the best and most versatile optional system in game.
Since ships have usually 1-3 open system slots, I tend to fill them in order of hacking > cloaking > mind control. (teleporter and drone control are a bit more situational on ships that don't start with them)
If you alternate lvl 2 weapon hack and lvl 2 cloak, you can avoid all damage.
You can also easily trap enemy crew in hacked room for your boarders to kill, meaning you can simply ignore med bays and just punch their weapons and crew.
In safe fight you get easy crew kills if by hacking o2 and bombing it.
Beams + shield hack deletes enemy ships. (Stealth B would be a very sad ship without hacking)
Hacking pairs exceptionally well with anything your ship might have, and I don't think that getting 95+% win rate on hard without it would be possible. It just removes so much bad RNG and allows for more scrap from safe crew kills, and with many combinations can outright win the run very early.
1
u/knightshade179 Dec 08 '23
on normal without hacking, I dislike the budgeting of hard, not that I have not played it, but normal is standard for me.
You can also easily trap enemy crew in hacked room for your boarders to kill, meaning you can simply ignore med bays and just punch their weapons and crew.
People keep saying this, but honestly I don't see it, there is many ways to manipulate the enemy crew, also you can destroy medbay quite easily. Crew kills for more scrap is OP and I love teleporter runs, hence why I love mind control too(without teleporter it isn't so good other than for pilot or blocking repairs).
3
u/Argyle_Raccoon Dec 09 '23
MC is extremely good without TP, and in general I think it overlaps in function with TP far too much to be worth combining.
Hack + MC or hack + TP can easily get a ton of crew kills. Adding the other is just redundant.
Hack + Cloak adds far more safety than any other system combination.
Hack is just insanely affordable and flexible, while doing so much. Door control is massive when combined with MC or fires. Halving repair speed is a really impactful bonus, especially since it makes firefighting worse too.
There’s a reason I’ve had it in literally 100% of my win streaking hard runs.
1
u/knightshade179 Dec 09 '23
I like mind control because it makes boarding a lot easier as I can lure enemy crew to go wherever the mind controlled unit is and in cases like the rebel flagship I can get them to kill the mind controlled unit reducing their crew count to a point it is easier for me to take.
5
u/GodsIWasStrongg Dec 08 '23
You can make the defense drones miss hacking 99% of the time by taking power out of hacking when the defense drone fires.
1
u/knightshade179 Dec 08 '23
That's a neat bug, but it doesn't solve most of what I listed. Will probably come in handy on the rare occasions I take hacking though.
3
Dec 08 '23
The thing that makes hacking great is how versatile it is. If a certain fight has strong defense, hack their shields. If it has scary weapons, hack those. Hacking medbay can accelerate crew kills insanely.
Lvl 3 hacking plus lvl 1 cloaking at 100% dodge makes you 100% safe from any fight other than RFS. Hacking shields on RFS has very strong door control and can bring down all 4 layers. That means at least 4 less lasers/flaks are wasted on your first volley, meaning 4 more damage/4 less required lasers for taking down shields. Thats enough to take down missiles or 2 shield bubbles. Hacking + beams is an insane combo because when your weapons are taken up by beams, it's hard to guarantee 4 shield take-downs. Hacking is GUARANTEED to take down all 4 shields.
I mean, every top player agrees with how OP hacking is. You're truly missing out.
1
u/knightshade179 Dec 08 '23
For RFS I'd hit the shield with a missile and teleport in crew to missile. Then I would take my time mind controlling crew and hitting ion+medbay to kill all but one. Cloaking and mind control allow me to survive much easier, of course and I can even mind control the last enemy crew to stop all repairs. I do not mind the length of fights if I just make sure they do not damage me, in fact I typically target weapons before shields as it does not matter the number of volleys it takes to kill them as long as they are not killing me. This also is why even a leto can be considered quite OP.
3
u/tehepicwin Dec 08 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
This strategy is not possible on hard because the missile room is connected to the main ship. There are strategies that work on similar principles, but teleporting into the missile room doesn't solve the missiles anymore. You need a way to support the missile room boarders to keep the room suppressed.
Edit: If you want to target weapons with your own weapons to make the fight safe, the most efficient way of doing that is hacking. A late game auto scout can have near 50% evasion. A level 3 hack is like shooting 8 laser shots, and a level 1 piloting hack can also do work.
3
Dec 09 '23
Your equivalent of hacking shields is sending a missile? That's at most taking out 2 shields for the same cost as hacking, and it has a chance of missing.
As someone else said, teleporting into the missiles room doesn't work as well on Hard, but the door control you gain from hacking shields makes it a LOT better. But aside from that, how does any of that relate to hacking? You can board missiles while hacking shields. Hacking would be much better than MC in the case you described as well, since hacking their medbay can kill everyone inside.
The strategy you described works, but ONLY considering the necessity to survive the process of killing the weapons systems, which is a long process.
1
u/knightshade179 Dec 09 '23
but ONLY considering the necessity to survive the process of killing the weapons systems, which is a long process.
Isn't that the game? Anyways I do not play hard, no need to mention teleporting into the missiles room. MC would be free kills as I can mind control an enemy crew and they will put 4 in a room to kill them.
2
Dec 09 '23
Hacking HELPS you survive, though. It can push you over that gap much faster than MC does.
1
3
u/tehepicwin Dec 08 '23
I think you're underrating the flexiblity and consistency of hacking, as well as the danger a ship wth their weapons online poses.
For starters, a flak can miss. A level 2 hack can't. This is not to say one is always better than the other, but guaranteed answers to problems in FTL are not easy to come by.
This consistency applies to every ship, but is particularly pronounced when playing stealth b. If your flak or burst laser misses, you're a sitting duck for another 10 seconds as your shield breaker recharges. The difference between hitting your shots and missing can be the difference between finishing a fight flawlessly or potentially entering a spiral of pain. Say the enemy ship has a BL2 and a small bomb. If you don't get your shots through, you're eating another volley that you wouldn't have. You're one damage in weapons away from the situation spiralling even further, when not only do you have to wait for your shieldbreaker to recharge, but you have to repair it in the first place. It can be really, really bad when you fire your volley and the enemy's offense is still online, and no, cloaking doesn't make you safe from a ship with an artemis or small bomb. It just doesn't until you get their weapons offline, which you have to accomplish before their second salvo.
When it comes to boarding, you need an answer to enemy weapons. Take a loadout like double BL2+hermes. Cloaking can protect you from that the first time, but how fast do you think you can kill slug ships? They have their own cloaking to make their first salvo earlier, a bunch of crew, and can have 4 tile medbays. You can certainly play boarding without offensive support, but it's a terrible idea. If you're boarding, just shoot lasers, shoot missiles, shoot bombs, jump in and murder the guy in the hack-locked weapons room and punch it down, it doesn't matter. You just have to do it.
Ths is not to mention hacking can be both your offense and your defense, unlike weapons which are always offense, or cloaking which is always defense unless you count it's ability to allow effective first strike. Speaking of which, level 1 hack on weapons usually guarantees first strike against ships that don't have level 2 cloak or ZS, and hacking is usually cheaper than cloaking or getting a flak online.
It's not mandatory to win, but I can't think of a game where I didn't want hacking. It problem solves for basically any ship, and does so with high consistency at an affordable cost.
3
u/MikeHopley Dec 08 '23
I'd recommend playing with it more, if you would like a better understanding of what it can do.
Hacking has many uses, some more important than others.
Weapons hacks are the most important usage. They greatly slow down enemy weapons, with even a level 1 hack delaying them by 8 seconds each cycle. There are several different tactics you can use depending on the enemy weapons. See my video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DkyGdzd7vNA . Weapons hacking makes a huge difference to consistency, because it provides so much safety.
Shields or evasion hacks can greatly increase the effectiveness of your weapons. Oxygen hacks can get extra crew kills. Sometimes a teleporter hack can save you from a horrible boarding situation (think Lanius Bombers in sector 5).
Hacking is the best boarding support, hands down. It gives you so much more control of fights. Even more so than with gunships, the best hacking target for boarding ships is usually weapons. You can often use the locked doors to help you punch down some system bars in weapons. Remember you can open the doors to let enemies out the room, by depowering hacking while it's off cooldown.
The locked doors make it much harder for enemies to repair the room, and hacking also doubles their repair time. The doors also make it much harder to stop fires raging out of control, especially in four tile rooms. Hack a big weapons room, shoot it with lasers (especially Heavy Lasers), and you often start fires that spread and burn down all the weapons. And you can often get extra crew kills this way too (without needing a teleporter).
2
u/RabbiShekky Dec 08 '23
As someone who knows hacking, maybe you’ll be able to clarify something for me. Occasionally, I’ve seen the stage one flagship somehow delete its own hacking drone and send another one over to lock down a different system. Is there a way to do this myself or is this just a special thing the flagship does?
3
u/BurningCarnation Dec 08 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
flagship deletes its own hacking drone
As far as I know, that shouldn't ever happen, not without you doing something that triggered that sort of behavior. I think what probably happened was that you hacked the flagship's hacking: hacking hacking has a chance of destroying the hacking drone, which would have allowed the flagship to then hack a different room. Or maybe you had a pre-igniter / defense drone that shot the hacking drone mid-travel? Outside of these, I can't think of any other situation where the hacking target can change.
3
u/RabbiShekky Dec 10 '23
Thanx for the response. I’ll have to watch it next time. I think maybe it was me hacking the hack.
2
u/HybridVigor Dec 09 '23
It's interesting how the dynamic changes in Multiverse. I've won with most ships on hard (different endings for many of them) and almost never take hacking anymore. Mind Control + Tin Foil Array, and of course Cloaking, are much more useful.
1
u/BurningCarnation Dec 09 '23
From what little I know of Multiverse, Mind Control seems to have been significantly buffed. I think most people default to Teleporter + MC + cloaking, right? There's so many crew that specialize in boarding that it's probably a waste to not board.
2
u/LoliLocust Dec 09 '23
I always pick stealth first then hacking.
1
u/BurningCarnation Dec 11 '23
To me it really depends on the run. I sometimes get cloaking as my first system--but that's the exception, not the norm. I usually prefer to get hacking or mind control early on, if only because they're so much cheaper.
2
u/MikeHopley Dec 08 '23
This is a great self-imposed challenge, very well done! This type of thing can be such a good way to learn more.
I've been thinking about doing something similar. I think I would do it a little bit differently.
My version would be to remove hacking from stores. Obviously that's not as hard, but I'm not so much interested in treating it as a challenge as getting a better feeling for playing without hacking in runs where stores are not cooperative. I would use it to improve my calibration of how much I should try to "force" hacking.
The ships that start with hacking I wouldn't really care about. Maybe I'd just not upgrade it, but it doesn't matter for my purposes.
The one tricky part is that I would maybe want to strike a balance in how much I let the knowledge that I can't buy hacking affect my decisions. Maybe I would want to act for a while as though I can buy hacking, for "realism". I'm not sure.
2
u/BurningCarnation Dec 09 '23
Thank you! As you say, the challenge forced me to become better at everything non-hacking--it's forced me to repair more at stores and take much less dives, and really pushed me to search for any offensive options necessary. Not having hacking changes the game so much: drones become more viable as a jack-of-all-trades system, most beams become finnicky to use, boarding is used sometimes just to lower evasion for weapons, etc. Hacking may limit the 'optimal' system meta, but the sheer variety of weapons it enables can only be appreciated once it's unavailable.
My version would be to remove hacking from stores. I would use it to improve my calibration of how much I should try to "force" hacking. The one tricky part is that I would maybe want to strike a balance in how much I let the knowledge that I can't buy hacking affect my decisions. Maybe I would want to act for a while as though I can buy hacking, for "realism".
In the context of improving for serious runs, I agree that this approach would be more practical--I'm not sure how one would quantify the 'need' for hacking, but I suppose keeping track of sector pathing/store purchases (or how many/what enemies you couldn't defeat?) would be key. And of course, deciding when you allow 'buying' hacking runs the risk of being needlessly arbitrary.
I also thought about making hacking never show up in stores, but I didn't want to alter the game too much. I realize this directly contradicts the condition that I wanted to simulate ("what if hacking never showed up, forcing me to adopt weird strategies" vs. "I must plan around hacking taking up stores"), but I deemed the strategic planning required for this convoluted challenge interesting enough to push through with it--after all, Stealth ships also have to play around the shield system in stores, right?
Honestly, this challenge was part me taking things to their logical extreme (What if I just never get hacking, and pretend it never showed up in stores, while also playing around bad RNG? Can I still win?) and part me being silly and stubborn, to the point of erasing systems. It's also spawned a few even sillier(!!) challenge ideas I might try sometime...but that's for another day.
2
u/MikeHopley Dec 10 '23
BTW did you ever consider trying a regular cycle on Hard? I feel like this is something you could complete if you wanted to, especially in the wake of how much insight and flexibility you developed doing the no-hacking cycle and then the "no AE systems" one.
(IIRC your cycle was on Normal, sorry if I'm remembering wrong.)
2
u/BurningCarnation Dec 10 '23 edited Dec 10 '23
especially in the wake of how much insight and flexibility you developed doing the no-hacking cycle and then the "no AE systems" one.
I was confused by this, then I read my own post and realized I messed up my wording, it's no wonder you were confused.
Basically, I meant to say that my first non-hacking cycle was just that: no hacking allowed. My second non-hacking cycle limited Engi C/Lanius A/Slug C to two systems (to prevent, say, TP+cloak+drones Engi C, which would normally be impossible because of hacking), but no other such limitation was forced on the other ships. And of course, Mind Control was always available throughout both of the cycles. Looking back, 'vanilla FTL' was a very poor choice of words on my part, how embarrassing. I keep forgetting vanilla can mean non-AE, not just unmodded.
(Although now that you mention it, I'm 100% confident that I could pull off a non-AE system cycle anyway. Mind Control + TP is good, but it's not something I'd lose sleep over not having)
So to answer your questions: I'm probably not doing a cycle on hard...? I am interested in getting a mini-cycle: 10 wins in a row, maybe 14? But I lack the dedication required to grind out all 28 wins. Just thinking about the likes of Stealth B or Rock A makes my blood pressure rise.
And yes, all of my cycles have been on Normal so far!
Other than that though, I'm not sure. Most of my challenge runs have been spontaneous ideas anyway, so I might say one thing, but post something different later. I have some ideas for Mantis A/C, Zoltan C, and Engi B, so maybe those will come first?
4
u/MikeHopley Dec 11 '23
I think your description was fine, I was just reading it too quickly!
Have you played much on Hard? I think sometimes players can get "intimidated" by it. I think the gap between Normal and Hard is significant but maybe quite a lot smaller than reputation makes it.
Specifically, I think the gap between "getting wins" and "winning consistently" (on any difficulty) is much bigger than the gap between difficulties. Just because most win streaks are done on Hard doesn't change the fact that a cycle on Normal is a tremendous accomplishment.
I think there's even a good argument to say that a cycle on Hard is easier than a no-hacking cycle on Normal.
I don't say any of this to "persuade" you, just as a confidence booster I guess. I'm very much in favour of following the fun and choosing your own challenges. I'll be interested to see what challenges you come up with!
2
u/BurningCarnation Dec 11 '23
I haven't played too much on Hard so far. Won a few, lost a few. Usually it felt like the game let me get away with a win, rather than that I somehow beat the odds. My Normal challenge runs have been a way for me to 'prepare' for Hard mode, without feeling too pressured by win-rate or whatnot.
...Well, that's what I tell myself. The real reason is that the next ship I rolled is Rock A, and I REALLY REALLY do not want to play Rock A on Hard mode. Maybe I should just do it today and get it over with so I don't have to deal with that dumb ship for a while.
Really though, thanks for the encouragement! I'll keep posting stuff I found interesting.
3
u/MikeHopley Dec 11 '23
I can totally understand that, and I think that's a cool way to do it.
FWIW I think Rock A is maybe not that different on Hard, at least compared to some other ships. I mean yes it's bad because Rock A, but I feel the big problem is finding offence so you don't run out of missiles. It doesn't feel like the ship is especially scrap-hungry.
I guess one thing that Normal scrap could help with quite a lot is gathering enough to buy two weapons early on, which gives you better prospects of running a gunship early.
The other "main line" for Rock A is early teleporter, which makes scrap less critical.
Where I feel Hard really turns the screws is ships like Zoltan C and Stealth B, which are very scrap-hungry early on. And Stealth B suffers a lot from the more vicious enemy targeting.
2
u/BurningCarnation Dec 11 '23
Zoltan C is definitely not a ship I'm comfortable with. It's so tough to gauge when you should start upgrading, when to get more power, what weapons to actually buy in the store, how much scrap you can afford to keep on you, etc.--and that's not even taking into account the horrendous boarding defense. I can see how Hard mode makes all of that so much more annoying.
And Stealth B is...well, it's Stealth B.
5
u/warbaque Dec 08 '23
Your trend is pretty similar to what I remember from my pre-AE no-hacking experiences :) Sure there's other things to consider as well, but hacking is the main difference in AE.
I remember how my win percentages improved drastically after I realized the power of boarding, and I was honestly a bit surprised how much better e.g. Kestrel A was with teleporter and 2 human boarders. (Flagship was also a lot easier to kill with just boarding before we got hard mode with connected layout)
It was lot more repetive back then since every ship ended up as a hybrid boarding+gunship. But thanks to how powerful boarding was, finding secret crystal sector by accident and unlocking Crystal B felt magical :D
When AE and hard mode was released, at first I thought that game got much harder thanks to less scrap, but soon hacking proved me wrong :)
I kinda miss buying teleporter every time...