
You might only get one or two hits in per volley, but each hit should hopefully give them one less shield for your next volley, allowing you to overlap their defenses. It's also a good tactic to focus-fire enemy shields at the beginning once they start being a real problem. You may want to equip a missile weapon for these situations but I personally find with this ship that it's better to stick as many multiple-shot energy weapons as possible because you don't lose any power when up against a ship with defense drones. This will circumvent the problem of enemy shield regeneration between shots. The best way to counter this is to turn off auto-fire and only fire your weapons when they are all charged, at the same time. You'll need to find something better to replace your lasers with, and once you do, your weapons will start to fire out of sync. You can usually completely knock out an enemy shield or weapon system in one or two volleys (at the start of the game).Īs your enemies start appearing with more shields, this ship loses its bite. This is a powerful ship early-game, particularly if you focus-fire down critical systems of your enemy, such as the weapons system if they have a missile weapon, or the shields when the enemy's weapon loadout can't touch you.

The beauty of having four weapons of the same type is that you can get hands-off synchronized attacks simply by setting them to auto-fire and forgetting about them while you manage your crew. This variation of the Kestrel is a good, strong starter ship on account of having four lasers.
#Ftl kestrel guide full
Once you're down to 1 HP, reactivate your shields and wait until you can jump, then visit the store and click the full re pair option. Once you do, disable your shields until your health gets low, then enable however many shields you need to en sure that only one laser can penetrate at a time. Once you've located the store, visit the nodes linked to it to try and f ind an en counter against an enemy with only laser weapons and no missile weapons. For "Tough Little Ship", the easiest way to get it is to gather a decent amount of scrap and then find a store on your map. If you have a good run with lots of scrap, you only need to buy the Drone, Cloaking, and Teleporter systems and you'll unlock the achievement. For "Full Arse nal ", just play as normal. I'd recommend going for "Full Arsenal" and "Tough Little Shi p". Unlock two of the three Kestrel achievements.A cloaking system is also quite useful, although I'd probably prioritize defense drones myself unless you have scrap to burn and/or aren't finding any defense drones. Mid-to-late game, you'll probably want to get a drone system and a defense drone to help you against enemy ships armed with missiles. Once you get some more non-missile weapons, this ship starts to shine. In general, you only want to use your missile launcher if the enemy has too many shields for your lasers to handle, or if the enemy themselves has a missile launcher or a couple of anti-ship drones and you want to take them out as a priority to prevent excess damage to yourself. Preserve your missiles in as many encounters as possible, particularly when up against enemies with only a single shield.

The beauty of the starting loadout is that you can tackle most enemies for a decent amount of time.
#Ftl kestrel guide upgrade
Try not to spend scrap when you're doing well in battles because you might need it for the perfect upgrade when you find a store. If you find no weapons or just another missile launcher, then you might want to pump shields. If you get any kind of multiple-shot laser early on, you want to prioritize weapons. However, you will find yourself outclassed before too long unless you acquire another weapon as early as possible.įor this ship, try to balance out shields with weapon power, but prioritize one based on the kind of loot you're finding. This will allow you to tackle almost any early-game threat without too much to worry about.

The Burst Laser MKII that you begin the game with fires three shots for only two power, which is a very decent shots / power ratio, and the weak albeit fast-charging Artemis missile allows you to take out critical systems early without shields getting in the way. It has a pretty standard design and starting loadout. The starting ship is, unsurprisingly, the least exotic.
