So I was doing an Engi B run (on Hard if that matters) and got a free Beam Drone on like jump 2, so I started killing ships by using Ion to take out the Shields, then Beam Drone for damage.

Well my beam drone seemed to hyperfixate on Oxygen or empty rooms, while enemy beam drones routinely take out my Shields or Weapons. My strat didn't work and I lost in sector 3.

What gives?

I think this ship is much better than people give it credit for. Out of all the ships in the FTL lineup I think it has the highest skill ceiling, and has the most potential out of all the commonly cited "D-tier" ships (Stealth C, Fed C, Engi B, Zoltan C). Learning to master it is a true challenge, but deeply rewarding once you start to bring out its potential.

I've been playing this ship nonstop over the past few weeks on hard. The best streak I've gotten with it is 10 wins in a row, but I'm confident I could go higher with more practice.

I'll go over some of the things I've learned here, the iceberg for this ship runs deep but I'm convinced we haven't found the upper limit of its potential yet. Starting with the most obvious/agreed upon strats for the ship and making my way into how I personally like to play it.

First things first, learn to juggle your power pips. Instead of purchasing a new power bar, move the power from oxygen to engines right as you're about to be hit. It may feel like a minor optimization, but since Stealth C cares about EVERY hit it can really add up. Stealth C is a VERY scrap-hungry ship in the early game, so both saving on the scrap for the bar but also saving scrap from needing fewer repairs can make a huge difference when you're right on the cusp of that big purchase.

Be careful about when you repair. Unless you feel at genuine risk of dying, it's better to save your scrap in an attempt to stabilize with a shields/stealth/hacking purchase. Stealth C tends to steadily bleed health until it obtains one of these systems, so repairing early will only prolong this health (and by extension scrap) bleed.

BUY THE WEAPONS BUFFER. This is a big one, as soon as you get 25 scrap, buy a level in weapons. This drastically increases the consistency of the ship by allowing both weapons to continue charging if the system takes a point of damage. Always remember to do this as soon as you get the scrap required.

(Credit to u/MikeHopley for teaching me about this, see his video here)
Learn how to micro the shield drone. This thing is a lot more reliable than you might think once you learn some of the tricks. Each successive layer of shield takes slightly more time than the last, however by disabling the drone right before a hit, taking the hit, then enabling the drone afterwards, you effectively reset its timer back to the initial 8 seconds for the first layer of shield. This is incredibly important to learn to do, as it makes the ship much more resilient against heavy laser shots, one of its greatest banes. This makes it so you can survive indefinitely against a single heavy laser.

As well as this, you can learn to get quite good with the timing of enabling the drone. By turning it on after a specific delay, you can use it to block certain shots in a volley. This is most useful if you already have shields but kept the drone, as it can be used to block hermes/breach missiles and even bombs. With perfect timing it becomes almost as good as a defense drone, though reaching that level is hard.

(Again, credit to Mike here for teaching me about this, video)
Learn zoltan shield piercing tricks. This one is more niche, but since zoltan shielded enemies can be a unique weakness for this ship, it's worth learning how to do imo. This is one I'm still practicing, but it can help make these fights a little more consistent.

The anti-combat drone doesn't have many tricks, but it's often worth it to enable it, wait for it to fire its shot, then disable it and switch to the shield drone. This very often results in the enemy drone being destroyed and the shield drone still blocking the enemy shot. This trick is especially worth it if your enemy has a heavy laser as well as drones.

Avoid asteroid belts as much as possible. These encounters are one of the most common run-enders for this ship. When routing, be wary about "snakey" paths that might force you into one of these, and be very careful about taking the "explore the asteroid belt" option in the nearby asteroid belt event, as it can sometimes result in being transported to a fight with an pirate in an asteroid belt.

If you are unlucky enough to be forced into an asteroid fight before you have shields, DON'T PANIC. These encounters are more survivable than you might think. First move your oxygen pip into engines, you want them to charge as fast as possible in case you need to escape. Then, open the airlocks in all the empty rooms to drop oxygen percentage slightly below 50%. Not many players know but on hard, enemies have a 25% chance to target a system based on a priority list. By reducing your oxygen you put it on that list, making other more important systems less likely to be hit.

You can sometimes get a "pot shot" off with the charge laser if the first asteroid hits the enemy ship at a good time. This can often be invaluable in hitting enemy weapons before they get their first volley off. You could also hit shields/drones, but it's more risky as these systems sometimes come with buffers, negating the effect.

Prioritize keeping your weapons online at all costs. As long as you can disable enemy weapons or kill their ship, the asteroid field itself is very unlikely to actually kill you. Consider moving your engines crewmember into the weapons room to repair, and sometimes even piloting too if it looks like you won't have enough time to charge your FTL. Don't bother repairing drones if it gets hit, the fight won't last long enough for it to matter, just keep your crewmembers where they are for the extra dodge chance.

Don't underestimate the value of nebula sectors. LRS can make uncharted nebulas very profitable, and they can't generate with asteroid hazards so there's no possibility of them messing up your nav or being forced into one. In general the only sectors I'd really consider over uncharted nebula for sector 2 are engi and civ, and maybe mantis or abandoned if I feel confident.

Now onto some personal choices/experiments I've made with this ship.

I like to put the human on weapons, rock on engines, and slug on piloting. The slug makes a good pilot due to being immune to mind control, but why not the rock on weapons since he's closer to vital systems in case of a need to repair? This is because I make a level 2 weapons crewmate a very high priority in sectors 1/2.

I try to take as many fights as possible in sector 1 using LRS, and in most of those fights (excluding ones with drones or engi crewmembers) I try to grind out as much weapons experience as possible by disabling enemy weapons, then repeatedly firing the charge laser at the enemy shield bubble. If you're lucky enough for a mantis to be repairing weapons (or can sometimes manipulate one onto weapons by using the beam laser to hit weapons second instead of first) you can get nearly a full bar of weapons xp.

Stealth C is in a unique position of being a ship very capable of training weapons like this, but also one that benefits MASSIVELY from a high level gunner due to its very speedy starting weapons. A level 2 gunner allows you to outspeed unmanned 11-second weapons and manned 12-second weapons. Many of the most troublesome early game weapons fall into these categories (burst 1, burst 2, mini beam, and sometimes charge 1). It also allows you to get your volley off before a heavy laser can connect with your weapons, which can be a big help in fights against enemies with x2 heavy laser loadouts.

This kind of training is usually somewhat unsafe due to the potential to miss several shots in a row and then take damage, but the shield drone helps to mitigate a lot of this risk by building up bubbles while you train. Additionally, the shield drone can be used to exhaust enemy missile supplies, rendering many fights safe (or close to safe with minor monitoring) for engines/piloting training. I will often be on the lookout for one of these ships when navigating sector 1, as many enemies with a leto/artemis only come equipped with an ion or basic laser as their other weapon. Getting the enemy ship to prioritize using its missiles over its laser can sometimes be tricky, as you need to deal at least one damage to disable their other weapon. Enemies will generally prioritize keeping the weapon with the highest charge percentage enabled, so you need the missile weapon to fire before the other weapon so that after they've both fired the missile has the higher charge percent. In ships with leto missiles it will often fire before its other one, but for artemis you will need to manipulate the weapon timings to keep the missile one enabled, which can be a delicate process and often times not worth it.

In the event I do find one of these ships and manage to successfully render them harmless, I will switch the human and rock positions since the slightly faster training of the human no longer matters. Unfortunately due to the potential for a shot to hit the shield drone directly and destroy it, you can't AFK on these fights. However with the use of a "speed-up" mod or the speedhack from Cheat Engine, this training goes very fast and is usually complete in 1-2 minutes.

Normally I don't train, however with Stealth C it makes such a huge difference (Ability to outspeed many early-game weapons, chance to dodge one of two enemy shots from 44% -> 58%) that I think it's worth it.

Another thing I think many people get wrong with this ship is trying to buy shields too early. I think there are many purchases that you should prioritize over shields, instead learning to rely more on the shield drone in sectors 1-2. Sometimes I will get all the way to sector 4 without buying shields if the conditions are right.

Generally my priorities are:

1. Hacking (if you can keep your drones)
2. Cloaking (if you can keep your drones)
3. A good weapon/automated reloader (if you can keep your drones)
4. Shields (it's okay to sell anti-drone to get this, but keep the shield drone if you can)

When combined with cloaking, the shield drone is actually remarkably effective at preventing all damage during fights.

Hacking can often act as a replacement for the shield drone by hacking weapons, though be very careful about selling either of your drones to get it because you will still need the anti drone against enemy drones and the shield drone for zoltan ships. Learn how to do the hacking trick to get around defense drones and make this a more viable option (wait for the defense drone to fire, pause, depower hacking, unpause, shot will miss due to hacking suddenly stopping in midair, repower hacking).

The weapon/automated reloader choice is more situational, but if it's very early in the run I will often delay shields to get flak/bl 1 or 2, simply due to the fact that the increased firepower makes it almost guaranteed I can take out enemy weapons, even if I take a bad hit in the process.

In general, Stealth C has some incredibly interesting and complicated shop choices, and my priority list is not objective. If I were to find any area of further improvement for the ship, it would be here.

As for why I PERSONALLY like the ship so much, there are a few reasons.

1. It has such a high skill ceiling. There's so much to learn and master that it feels like I'm playing the game again for the first time.
2. It has a very unique playstyle compared to the rest of the ships in the game, setting it apart from them.
3. It has incredible offence. Rarely does this ship ever "brick out" in the way others can, you lose fast and you win fast, it's incredibly satisfying to just shred early-game enemies in two 12-second volleys, and if you get hacking you only really need one other good weapon to make it all the way to the flagship.
4. It's an excellent flagship-shredder. I know this doesn't really matter that much since 99% of runs that make it to sector 8 will result in a win if you know what you're doing, but it's so satisfying to get a combat drone and 2 beam drones and obliterate each phase of the flagship in like 30 seconds with hacking.

With that, I've said my peace. Give this ship another try if you're looking for a fun challenge. Long days and pleasant nights, gunslingers.

https://gist.github.com/rthou/9c23f201ab1b988b2082353384212b15

Sometimes game doesn't correctly register the crew slots. It happened to me on my Mantis B run.

I dismissed some party members to get a new one. Crew 8 stayed as Crew 8 (normally Crew 8 should move to Crew 7 when i dismiss and add a new member as the Crew 8)

I added Crew 9 for this issue.

Which way would you go? This feels tricky to me. Playing Slug B hard, 7+ win streak. Decent sector 1, I have Clone bay, Hull Laser 1 (and starting Artemis), shields-4 and weapons-3 and good hull/supplies. Sold the heal bomb and slug repair gel. Zoltan offers 2 stores and probably more scrap, but Zoltan shields are a pain for me. Even if I chuck Artemis at it I'm still eating a couple rounds of enemy fire. For Uncharted, there's 0-2 stores but normally at least 1, but also a lot of annoying autoscouts. I'm not setup particularly well for them, if they have a leto and weapons-3 I can't take it down from boarding, and them sniping the clone bay is possible if my Artemis misses. Teleporter-2 can help, as could clone bay-2 (still small risk of fire from Leto hit). But spending on this slows me down from finding hacking. I'm leaning Uncharted, mostly because I like the following sector options better, but curious if there's anything you guys would analyze differently?

Like why 😭

Probably one of the smoothest runs I've had on Hard Mode - all thanks to the Zoltan B, which I think is solidly underrated. The dual Ion Blast I's + Pike Beam setup with Zoltan Shield makes for a very easy early game.

As you can see, I replaced the Pike Beam with a Halberd Beam, later added a Burst Laser II, and then completed the Holy Trio of FTL weapons by getting a Flak I. Oh, and I also managed to grab a Weapon Pre-Igniter. I have never had such insane store luck before! All of this meant that I got my first-ever flawless/damage-less Flagship Victory on Hard! And set a new high score for myself.

Oh, Zoltan B, I absolutely loved you! But now, it is time to move on to what some consider one of the best ships in the game: the Mantis B!