FTL: Faster Than Light – Every Super Weapons

A quick guide on FTL: Faster Than Light’s superweapons as well as an honorable mention or two!

Einführung

In our opinion, there are three superweapons in the base game, as well as a few advanced edition ones and an honorable mention or two.

To clarify a superweapon is normally a legendarily rare weapon in the game. You can go through multiple playthroughs without ever seeing one, even on an enemy, let alone in a shop to buy! Aber, this doesn’t mean you can’t just straight up find one floating in space either! Most superweapons are easily classified by noticing that they require 4 power to operate. (The highest possible in the game).

Superweapons are usually huge weapons with the highest power drains in the game! But a few could be considered „Super“ because of their unusual qualities or strength for how little power they use. In general super weapons require 4 power to offset their huge damage and often include a long warmup/cooldown time. The base game had 3 superweapons, but after the advanced edition was released several more weapons that could be considered „super“ were added. And a few that are more super because of how good they are! Im Allgemeinen, super weapons are found exceptionally rarely in shops, or even rarer in random drops!

This guide short will show you which of these rare weapons to keep a look out for, and in general their abilities and how to use them effectively. Though getting a super weapon doesn’t mean it’s always the best choice! Often it’s situational if you should get one or not. Sometimes they could save a run! Or potentially ruin it if you’re not careful.

To further clarify, I call these weapons „Super weapons“ Because of their huge power draw and fun nature! They’re often rare to find too, so it’s fun to take them if you see them sometimes.

Vulcan Minigun (Chain Vulcan)

The first is also probably the most famous! The VULCAN MINIGUN (or Chain Vulcan).
The whole reason I’m writing this is that I wish you could start with one! (Though with mods you probably can if you want.)

Zunächst einmal, this is easily the most powerful „Superweapon“ im Spiel! This is offset by its HUGE power requirements and massive spin-up time. it requires a whopping 4 Power as a result! But once it finally finishes warming up, it can easily shred any ship in the game! It can strip 4 shields And do damage to the boot if unhindered!

It’s highly recommended to keep this to the far left of your weapon array! It is also recommended you keep this weapon on AUTOFIRE. As Micro-managing it will be extremely difficult once charged. (You can actually set specific weapons to autofire by holding ctrl when placing the targets)

This gives it the highest power priority in the event that the weapon system gets damaged and loses the ability to route all available power. It will start disabling weapons on the right side of the array before those on the left if the system doesn’t have enough power to fully power all active weapons. Moving more important or higher power draw weapons to the left on the array will prevent them from shutting down if the Weapon’s system is damaged.

Zum Beispiel, if you have a weapon system with 6 power and you have 2 Waffen, one being the Vulcan (4 power required) and the Flak MK1 (2 power required), and the Weapon system is fully powered with the Vulcan on the right and the Flak on the left, if the system were to get damaged by 1 Schaden, the Vulcan would shut down and the Flak would remain active! Alle 4 bars of reactor power would be returned to the reactor on the left! If they were reversed, the flak would go down instead and the Vulcan would continue charging.

Glaive Beam

Widely regarded as the best beam weapon, this laser is absolutely MASSIVE and does crazy damage! It takes a whopping 4 power as well and has a massive 25 second charge time, but it does a massive 3 damage per room! This means it can pierce up to two layers of shields and still do 1 damage to all rooms hit! (oder 2 per room if the enemy has 1 shield up)

It’s balanced by a long recharge time and short beam distance. So making sure to hit as many rooms as possible with it is important, as well as pairing it with good anti-shield weapons, such as Flak.

This is also the real only superweapon to come equipped on any ship! being equipped by default on the Stealth Cruiser Type B. Because the beam is such high damage, it’s may be easier to earn the „bird of prey“ achievement early on using it with, sagen, weapon pre-igniter if you can get it.

Burst Laser MK3

The most common Super weapon!

As with the other super weapons, es erfordert 4 Leistung. But it can rapidly fire a volley of 5 Schüsse! The most shots for a single laser gun. It’s somewhat common in shops compared to the others, so it’s often a good choice with flak weapons to rapidly take down shields. Due to its rapid-fire, es ist möglich, but unlikely to breach up to 4 shields and do a single point of damage to the targeted room, sagen, the shield generator room itself.

Some people consider this one bad because of its large power draw for how long it charges and fires, considering the Burst Laser MK2 to be superior as it is more efficient overall providing 3 shots for 2 Leistung, Jedoch, this can give you more space for other smaller weapons, especially if your ship is one of the few that can only have 3 weapons instead of 4. However this was also nerfed to be unable to start fires, so in that aspect, it is also slightly worse.

However it is cheaper to buy one MK3 than two MK2’s, and if you get a weapon pre-igniter, you could cripple an enemy’s shield system almost instantly. The Autoloader/reloader augmentation also helps by cutting down recharge time allowing it to fire faster.

Advanced Edition

Swarm Missile Launcher

In lore, this weapon is basically a prototype weapon for the final boss. It’s guaranteed to be obtained by beating the prototype rebel flagship in the rebel sector! But it can also be found in shops exceptionally rarely, just like most super-weapons.

Its special ability is to function like charge lasers, allowing you to fire up to 3 missiles for the cost of 1! And all while using only 2 Leistung! In conjunction with the augment „Explosive Replicator“ you could possible use this weapon as your main battery!

Just like all missiles, the missiles fired from this can pierce all shields, though it can still be shot down by drone defenses. Another slight balance to the weapon is that they also have a small Inaccuracy, appearing as a red circle like Flak targeting reticles do.

Advanced Flak – Honorable mention

While not technically a „Superwaffe“, its unusual characteristics make it an amazing weapon that only gets stronger the longer you fly with it! Because it only uses a measly 1 Leistung, yet shoots 3 Projektile, it can more easily overwhelm shields allowing for even heavier weapons to hit your enemy immediately after.

This paired with its short cooldown allows it to fire often and relentlessly, and if paired with more Flak cannons such as two flak MK2 cannons, can shred even the strongest ship’s shields in the game!
Including The final boss!

Jedoch, it is relatively weak alone. Aus diesem Grund, it’s most „Super“ when paired with weapons that deal more damage when the enemy has less active/charged shields, such as lasers.

Jedoch, this Flak is unobtainable in normal playthroughs, as it’s only available on the secret Lanius cruiser in advanced mode!

This is our personal favorite weapon behind the Vulcan, as we actually have beaten the game using nothing but this and two MK2 flak cannons! (I believe we also had a swarm we used at the start to disable the boss’s missiles).