This was actually one of the hardest encounters of the entire run! I eventually won after several long and tense minutes, taking 5 hull damage in return for 12 scrap. It had a beam drone flying around (making a shield bubble mandatory) but also a missile launcher, and I could only power shields + Chain Laser, leaving nothing for engines or oxygen or hacking! The first missile even hit my shield unit and knocked it offline, so I responded by Hacking the enemy Drone Control, killing their beam drone and buying me some time. It was one of those ion storm events with limited reactor power, and I had all of four bars to use against the enemy auto scout. On this particular run, I had a nasty little battle at the second beacon. At least you can sell the mostly useless Emergency Respirators for 25 scrap at the first store to help out! This balances things out a bit, although the early levels in stuff like engines are pretty cheap. The Lanius A also starts with fairly minimal upgrades to the ship overall, with level 3 weapons and level 2 shields, but everything else at the default level 1. The downside is that they can't share rooms with non-Lanius crewmembers without actively damaging them, and they can't be intentionally killed off by opening up the hatches (which you might want to do with a cloning bay). They're also handy at putting out fires (because they suck the air out of whatever room they're standing inside) and they can patch hull breaches without taking any damage from oxygen loss. These two guys are great at suffocating enemy boarders. The Lanius A starts with two of them along with a Human pilot. This new race added in the Advanced Edition doesn't breathe oxygen, and in fact actively drains it from rooms. The other defining feature of this ship is the Lanius crewmembers. (I would rate this around the 60-70th percentile roughly, above average while still quite a bit short of top tier.) Beginning the game with a Hacking system is enough to raise this ship above average all on its own. Done correctly, you can stop those pesky missiles from ever getting off a shot. On the Lanius A, it's particularly useful to target hacking on enemy weapons while the Chain Laser is slowly charging up. Hack piloting or engines to remove the ability to dodge, Hack shields to drain them away, Hack weapons to delay enemy shots from firing, Hack medbays and cloning bays to stop them from functioning, and so on. Hacking is good at just about everything, and arguably an overpowered addition to the game. More significant is the presence of Hacking, the shining star of the expansion content. Good for the early game, something that will probably get replaced later. You can fire it while the Chain Laser is still charging, knock out one shield layer, and effectively trade one enemy shield bubble for one weapons power. The main advantage of the Ion Stunner is its power usage, only requiring one reactor bar to operate. ![]() It's matched here with the Ion Stunner, a weapon that does one point of ion damage and stuns any enemy crew in the room fired upon (10 second cooldown). ![]() Although I would prefer a simple Burst Laser over this thing in nearly any situation, all laser weapons are pretty good in FTL. The starting cooldown is 16 seconds, and it goes down to 7 seconds after three shots (the cooldown dropping by 3 seconds upon each use). ![]() The Chain Laser is the more useful of the pair, a two-shot laser that starts with a long chargeup time and gets faster after each firing. This layout has the Chain Laser and the Ion Stunner for weapons, both of them new things that were added in the expansion. The default "A" version is actually the weaker of the two, but it has a number of powerful tools at its disposal, even if the ship is not quite as amazing as its overpowered Lanius B cousin. The two Lanius ships were added in the Advanced Edition (the free expansion) of FTL, and both of them are strong designs. Livestream Link (for those who would rather watch first before reading)
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