FTL (Faster Than Light)

Alright, I played about 20 games before making a call. But this game is definitely reliant on a ton of luck. I can be kicking ass, and run into a ship that just simply trounces me. I just had a ship with 3 shield bars, 2 lasers, 1 missile launcher, one anti ship drone, and a auto healing ship upgrade that heals my guys if they get hurt. I rolled all they way to the second to last system. Then I hit a Rock fighter. 3 perfect shots knocked out my guns, shield, and O2. 3 Rock boarders easily killed my crew members, even with them being auto healed. All within about 10 seconds. BULLSHIT!!!!

There are some definite balance issues that need to be fixed. Oh, and this was on the EASY difficulty level.
 
Sums up everything very nicely:

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officer921 said:
Alright, I played about 20 games before making a call. But this game is definitely reliant on a ton of luck. I can be kicking ass, and run into a ship that just simply trounces me. I just had a ship with 3 shield bars, 2 lasers, 1 missile launcher, one anti ship drone, and a auto healing ship upgrade that heals my guys if they get hurt. I rolled all they way to the second to last system. Then I hit a Rock fighter. 3 perfect shots knocked out my guns, shield, and O2. 3 Rock boarders easily killed my crew members, even with them being auto healed. All within about 10 seconds. BULLSHIT!!!!

There are some definite balance issues that need to be fixed. Oh, and this was on the EASY difficulty level.
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Getting screwed for completely random and "unfair" reasons are hallmarks of the roguelike genre. Learn to enjoy the unexpected ways you get completely fucked over. :)
 
Agreed. Yes, this game has a very significant luck factor, but I've still made it to the final boss on a less-than-stellar ship. At first, there seems to be "nothing you can do" for many situations, but as you play you'll find ways to defeat most enemies.

And as much as you run into ships that clearly outclass you, you'll also run into ships that you clearly outclass; like rebels who only have a beam weapon (your shields block it completely, no danger) or pirates that disable useless systems (hacked your shields on the stealth ship, stealth ship has no shields to begin with).
 
I've easily made it to the rebel flagship a few times, but my ship doesn't stand a chance at that point. I never have enough fire power to do any damage.
 
There are some good general tips in this post: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=45775649&postcount=1191

I only have about a dozen hours in the game so far (just got it on sale), and although there is a lot of luck involved, there's a lot you can do to minimize/maximize the effects of it. The link I just posted had several little things I didn't even think of before.

If you're just starting the game, I really suggest beginning on easy. It's more like normal difficulty, and normal is hard.

Great game, though, really loving it. Haven't explored the mods yet besides the higher resolution background, but I will after I feel I've done everything in vanilla. Looks like there's a big, passionate fanbase and there will be a lot of great mods to look forward to.
 
Best tactic BY FAR for my was one I used tonight, you want to grab a teleporter early on, grab 2 insect team mates who do increase damage.

Teleport on board, kill the crew members, you take the ship alive and you get the maximum reward which is a LOT of scrap and quite often a weapon. Later it gets harder the crew will heal, you want to be teleporting some kind of missile inside the medbay if they have one, that solves that little problem.

I took an early upgrade path of increased shields and engines and simply weathered their attacks, remember that you dont need to blow the weapons rooms to stop the battle, merely kill all the crew.

It's the first run where I maxed all my crew mates (4 insect assault squad, 4 humans manning battlestations), due to the extended fights all 4 insets were max fighting strength (they go gold), all 4 humans were max level at doing their respective jobs (shield, dodge, pilot, weapons), I had basically every single upgrade for the ship possible.

I went into the last sector basically as maxed out as possible, I killed the last boss's crew in 1 attack, left with half helf, followed him and attacked again and final assault I died, he had a lucky salvo I was on about 1/3 health and lost it all in like 3 seconds which is extremely gay.

This was on easy, but yeah...the rewards for surrender tend to be the least, killing them is more but keeping the ship alive is like 2x the resources of killing them, if you get your teleporter crew together early and you learn to teleport them in and out of danger and heal constantly then you can ace the entire game, with the severe shortage of resourecs on "normal" mode I see this being one of the better strategies. Unfortunately it does take some luck to set up, if you can get it together in the 1st/2nd sector you've been lucky.
 
I've beat the game with several ships now. I only wish that there was more variety with the final encounter -- you need your ship to be a specific configuration to beat it, unless you pull some amazing stunts and are very lucky.

I'd like to see a Star Trek mod with all of the main ships (Klingon Bird of Prey, Romulan Warbird, Ferengi Cruiser, Cardassian warship, Federation Galaxy and Defiant class ships, etc.)
 
The farthest I ever made it on this game was the last map, though I never got to the final encounter as I kept missing my jumps (didn't realize the final ship moved as well :( ) But I made it there rocking dual lasers (basically the one you start with on the Kestrel, + another one and missiles).

No ship could keep their shields up long enough against me...I really wanted to test my mettle against the final ship but never got the chance.
 
just wait till you unlock more ships and get into mods, then the real fun begins. it's not that you really need a specific loadout to beat it, just be creative with manual targeting and boarding parties, there's many many ways to do it with all the different ship configs.

Serpico said:
Getting screwed for completely random and "unfair" reasons are hallmarks of the roguelike genre. Learn to enjoy the unexpected ways you get completely fucked over. :)
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it's called manual backup and reload savescumming, great for pansies like me who refuse to throw out hours of gameplay over chance rolls, but obviously not part of the game.

watch lethalfrag if you want to learn how to play legit, he is KING of FTL, currently running a 2 year livestream challenge (stream every single day for 2 years straight, without shaving. and yes, that beard is epic).
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Best tactic BY FAR for my was one I used tonight, you want to grab a teleporter early on, grab 2 insect team mates who do increase damage.
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My first boss kill I didn't use this method but now I use it all the time. I will open up and take out the shields or weapons to get the crew fixing one area, hit them again to get some damage on the crew, then beam my insects in to take them down. Only problem I have had with this method is forgetting to turn off auto fire and making sure not to damage the opposing ship to badly and loosing your boarding team due to fire/asteroid damaging the ship.
 
I've done that before. I was rather upset too because the 2 insect crew members were max level on combat too haha.

Oh, and honestly you should never use auto-fire, at least once you have more than one weapon anyway.
 
castun said:
Oh, and honestly you should never use auto-fire, at least once you have more than one weapon anyway.
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But if you have an Ion Blast Mark II, it recharges so fast auto-fire is the only way to go.
 
Seelenlos said:
My first boss kill I didn't use this method but now I use it all the time. I will open up and take out the shields or weapons to get the crew fixing one area, hit them again to get some damage on the crew, then beam my insects in to take them down. Only problem I have had with this method is forgetting to turn off auto fire and making sure not to damage the opposing ship to badly and loosing your boarding team due to fire/asteroid damaging the ship.
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Yeah 2 gold insectoid dudes wreak havock, they can take on a whole room of humans, as they're fighting you can have your teleporter on a 10 second cooldown, beam another 2 on board and it's all over, even for the boss fight.

Minor spoiler for the boss though, if you kill all the crew an evil AI takes over as to not cut the battle short, but you can basically rape the ship from the inside, it's a really devious nasty tactic, but you're right you need to be on the ball with beaming back crew before the ship blows not to be used in conjunction with autofire, when in an asteroid field or when the ship is on low health in general.

For all other smaller non-boss ships simply killing all the crew ends the fight, just pick up the advanced camera sub system and you'll be able to see enemy crew placements on their ship which helps you decide where to beam in and monitor their activity as they heal etc.

Having a 2nd boarding party of another 2 insects makes ship rape all that much easier, 4 of those things at max combat level scuttling around the enemy ship are not to be messed with :)
 
Having the Engi ship with the Ion cannons is fun, especially when you just ion their O2 system and let them suffocate. Another fun way to get max scrap out of battles.
 
castun said:
Having the Engi ship with the Ion cannons is fun, especially when you just ion their O2 system and let them suffocate. Another fun way to get max scrap out of battles.
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That's a good idea, although somewhat more lengthy battles? Can you speed it up with weapons which are more likely to pierce the hull?
 
PrincessFrosty said:
That's a good idea, although somewhat more lengthy battles? Can you speed it up with weapons which are more likely to pierce the hull?
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Firebomb medbay and Ion the O2/Weapons. If no medbay, firebomb O2/Weapons/Drones if they have attack drones. They are helpless.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
That's a good idea, although somewhat more lengthy battles? Can you speed it up with weapons which are more likely to pierce the hull?
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Asphyxiation takes a little extra time simply because the crew members don't start to suffocate until the O2 level drops to critical levels, then their HP slowly drops. You can speed it up by firebombing their medbay so they run in there trying to put out the fire and are busy repairing it, and if you disable their shields targeting the room with any other weapons while they are in there trying to repair helps too.
 
This is one of those games that when I look at the images I figure I won't like. I watched a video on it though and it sold me. I like this game, I suck at it though. It has taken me 60 hours to finally beat the boss and that was on easy.
I like all the different ships you unlock. Now that I have come here and seen there are mods for this it makes it even more fun.
 
castun said:
Asphyxiation takes a little extra time simply because the crew members don't start to suffocate until the O2 level drops to critical levels, then their HP slowly drops. You can speed it up by firebombing their medbay so they run in there trying to put out the fire and are busy repairing it, and if you disable their shields targeting the room with any other weapons while they are in there trying to repair helps too.
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Plus, an extra bonus, if they leave someone on weapons, your shield operator gains XP.
 
I wonder how this is to play on a windows tablet like the upcoming Surface Pro or some of the Clover Trail based tablets....
 
This is an excellent candidate for a tablet game, if/when it does that. Only problem may be 'drawing' the beam line perfectly so you get that last pixel in a room for maximum damage.
 
darrpara said:
I wonder how this is to play on a windows tablet like the upcoming Surface Pro or some of the Clover Trail based tablets....
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First thing I thought when I saw this game, I want it on my phone. Would be a really nice game to pull out when I need to kill of a half-hour to an hour of time.
 
I just bought this game on the Friday sale for $5 because 2 coworkers have been playing it.

Man, I spent probably 12-15 hours playing it over 3 days. That's a lot for me.
It was incredibly frustrating for the first 5-6 deaths because I hadn't read anything about the game and had to learn some strategies.

For the Rebel cruiser boss fight at the end on "easy" though I did the save-game file method because I knew I didn't want to waste 3-4 hours of playtime just to have some big ship that's vastly superior to me blow me up.

I died 3 times before I finally beat him. Though, after reading these strategies, it seems like there is no way I should have won.
I had 6 bars of shields, 1 anti-bio weapon and 3 laser class weapons. 1 anti-ship drone and 1-defense drone level 1.

I had autofire on, which is a mistake as I've now learned, which explains why I had a hard time damaging his ship. I tried multiple strategies, including using the anti-bio beam on his crew and attacking his shield room. The main problem I had is at stage 3 his drones were just pummeling me. Eventually I tried targetting his pilot station and when that went down, it greatly decreased his dodge chance and my lasers became a lot more effective.

I will try playing through a few more times with some different strategies and mods. This game is well worth $15 normal price. I'm going to install the high-res mods tonight. They look amazing!
 
Paid $2..49, got into the 2nd sector, lost 1 crew member along the way, got boarded by 4 rebels who went on to destroy my ship even though I opened all the airlocks. OxyGen (get it? Oxygen Generator!) got destroyed, crew croaked. Experience let me wondering WTF actually happened. Curious to try again.
 
A lot of that happens. This is actually one of the more challenging games I've played in years. I've been getting the itch again lately. It's a nice slow paced game that you can take your time with
 
Thuleman said:
Paid $2..49, got into the 2nd sector, lost 1 crew member along the way, got boarded by 4 rebels who went on to destroy my ship even though I opened all the airlocks. OxyGen (get it? Oxygen Generator!) got destroyed, crew croaked. Experience let me wondering WTF actually happened. Curious to try again.
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usually the best course here is to send your own guys to fight them, and take them out as fast as possible instead of letting them break more of your shit while they suffocate. lure them towards the medbay where you can fight at an advantage without worrying about losing any of your guys, so you can concentrate on blowing up their ship.
 
Finished the game on normal. Was worth the $2.49. Used the Torus (Engi ship) with Ion Blast II. Found a Hermes Laser (iirc) which does 2 damage to each compartment and can cross 3 compartments in most target ships. Anti-Ship Drone 1, and Hull Drone.

Use the Ion Blast to keep their shields done, the Anti-Ship Drone will do the rest. Once I found the Hermes (or Harmond, or some such) laser things got a lot easier. Keep shields down, zap weapon station, BOOM!

I upgraded to 2 shields and the best blast doors early. Having the best blast doors made suffocating intruders a lot easier since they are almost dead after they are through the first door.

I used Mantis for my "hand-to-hand" combat team as they are quick enough to get to where intruders are. I trained them early by flying to as many of the early system beacons as possible rather than advancing to the exit as fast as possible.

I cross-trained my Engi crew so that if one of them dies I don't lose the 2-star skill thing. Most Engi were able to put up 2 skills at 2-stars, one got 2 skills.

Good game, don't see myself playing it through on another ship though, the Ion+Drone combo cannot be beat.
 
Some of the ships are pretty brutal to get the achievements done with or kill the last ship.
 
FTL is pretty amazing for $2.50 on Steam today. I recommend installing the no fleet pursuit mod to make it even more amazing
 
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