VanBurenPhilips on 5/1/2013 at 21:30

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Sorry for the double post...

(http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010040011F1357419555719583) http://s02.imageupper.com/1_t/4/F1357419555719583_1.jpg

This was my favourite ship so far! Great fun to play, and I unlocked type B which I haven't had a look at yet. Once I had everything set up, this thing could take out everything before the flagship without taking a hit, don't think I've had a ship this effective on normal before. The only thing you can't see in that shot is a sys repair drone which I only used once - kinda redundant with 2 Engi in the crew. Speaking of which, the one glaring weakness was the wussy crew, I used the lvl2 doors to repeatedly trap intruders in vacuum to minimise combat. A couple of mantises could've torn these guys to bits in no time. I took a few digs (that damage is for the whole battle without repair) - I'd say 45% evasion is about the minimum I'd want going into the final sector. 3 shields would've been a bad idea, so you probably want to max one or the other. Defense II drone was amazing for most of the game, but bloody useless against flagship phase 2 - I highly recommend defense I there instead, it's far better.

EDIT: Oh yeah, one thing I noticed about the Zoltan shields: if you've got your shields manned, hits to the zoltan shield don't count towards the operator's skill. It only starts going up when you start taking hits on the 'normal' shield, so it'll progress quite slowly. My guy had only just got to the green mastery level by sector 8, everyone else had been gold for ages.

Al_B on 6/1/2013 at 07:44

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It would be better if you thought of it as a strategy game where you develop and hone your techniques from situations rather than expecting a game where every single jump will involve lots of new content. There is a lot, but there's also quite a bit of repetition. However, no two games that I've played have been the same simply because my way of dealing with events has changed as I've learned what works and what's not worth taking the risk on. I thought the number of systems were a little limited at first - particularly as I tended to rush as quickly as possible to the next system (usually with terrible results) rather than exploring and building up my ship in the earlier stages.

As far as gametime, I've played it around 20 hours and I see quite a few others on my steam friends list who have played 20-30 hours each and I've still not defeated the final boss and only unlocked three of the nine ships. I can see me getting about 30-40 hours worth of time out of the game as it stands which stacks up pretty well against a lot of my other games.


The game costs less than $10 and has been in the recent steam sale at least once. It's hugely re-playable and if the concept appeals then it's definitely worth getting at the current price.

Kethoth on 6/1/2013 at 12:28

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Nice! Sounds good enough.

Kuuso on 6/1/2013 at 14:50

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Echoing Dethtoll here and it's not just the modern indie games. I played the fuck out of 90's shareware games that were often better than commercial games. The same still stands and FTL is a shining example of that. Steam says I've played 66 hours of it thus far and I'm not stopping soon. I've unlocked a major portion of stuff, but still missing Rock/Mantis ships at least and some B-types. The game still throws curveballs at you every game with events that you have never seen (or haven't had right equipment or crew to deal with). The gameplay is engaging and fairly well balanced. The systems/crew don't need to be more complicated than it is at the moment, because the gameplay shines (especially when shit starts hitting the fan).

Not only that, but they're working on additional content and there's already a vibrant modding community (for example a mod that makes it a non-ending game with a much much longer "endgame").

VanBurenPhilips on 8/1/2013 at 20:22

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Congrats, first win is pretty satisfying eh? Looks like you had an aggressive setup there, did you have the whole flagship on fire? :)

Been playing some more & reading various discussions... this one's a great source of tips and ideas: (http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ftl-faster-than-light). Here's one I never would have thought of: avoid ion blasters knocking your shields out by switching shields off completely just as the ion weapon is about to strike! :D You run the risk of some other vital system being temporarily disabled, but you'll be able to put your full shields back up (as long as the ion doesn't hit the shield room!) I haven't tried it yet, but I've seen the AI shoot ion blasts into empty rooms, so as long as they're not firing lasers/beams at the same time I think it's worth a shot.

It just occurred to me that level 1 cloak + 1 power is a fair bit cheaper to buy than level 4 shields + 2 power, and cheaper to run, obviously. I've found that if you've got high evasion (engines 6+ and decent crew) and a good attack plan, then 3 shields will get you through the flagship battle on normal. The real danger will be the special 'power surge' attacks in phases 2 and 3. Level 4 shields certainly help here, but level 1 cloak would guarantee that you dodge the lot, and cools down quick enough to use every time. Might be worth trying if you're near the end and and only have enough scrap for one or the other, but already have good evasion & offense. The saving in scrap is around 70-75, enough to buy a weapon or upgrade a couple of subsystems.

Well I've done a run with the bizarre Slug ship type B (start with a teleporter but no medbay, you have to use a healbomb to mend your guys after each rumble). Ended up with two mantises, a rockman and a slug boarding & killing, and a total of seven shots of laser fire & a pegasus missile - probably one of the strangest & most aggressive builds I've had so far. Good fun, but I preferred type A's bio beam. Won once with Stealth ship A on easy, but have been absolutely obliterated with A and B every time on normal, got a headache & gave up for now. I also finished a Torus run on normal, I wished for two attack drones (like Ulukai) and two ion weapons but got neither, actually ended up with a very defensive setup, an unremarkable game and very low score, but was glad to break my losing streak with that ship. Not keen on the type B. But the Rock cruiser type B is pretty badass:

(http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010100011R1357673396726175) http://s02.imageupper.com/1_t/10/R1357673396726175_1.jpg

This was a fun game. The Rock ship's definitely a favourite along with Zoltan & Slug type A. New high score too!

I bought a scrap recovery arm early, and got gifted a second one in an encounter. Reaped the rewards, then sold them both at a store in sector 7. This is the first time (on normal) I've been able to max out every system & subsystem (not including cloak & drones, which I didn't buy), and still had a couple of hundred scrap left. Usually not even close. It was also the first time I dismissed a well-trained crewman more than halfway through the game - I ditched my mid-skilled human gunner when a second Zoltan offered to join, and to my amazement the new gunner got up to full skill before the end. I unlocked the Mantis ship on this run, so my second mantis dude there is the character from that encounter. As well as two away teams (2 rockmen, 2 mantises, all with max combat skill), I had a couple of weapons in reserve and so used a different set in the first two phases: pulse laser 1, pierce laser, breach bomb 2 and firebomb. So for example in phase 1, I started by sending the mantises into the missile pod, breach bombed the shields, firebomb & lasers on the cloak, then sent the rockmen to the cloak to stop repairs. Similar from then on, but I went for rapid hull smashing rather than fire in the last phase. I highly recommend killing all the crew (except the guy in the triple-laser pod) in phase 1, it makes life so much easier. Just don't break their O2 ;)