FTL: Faster Than Light - Advanced Edition

[DwarvenFood]

Coming to Steam tomorrow! http://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/

 

[Fafnir]

Coming to Steam tomorrow! http://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/

 

[Jaedar]

Buying it from the creators gets you a steam key, a DRM free version and a way better price if you're a european.

 

[SuicideBunny]

other than the steam key, so does buying it from gog.

 

[J1M]

From what I can tell, cloak is required for beating the boss. (Use it when superweapon(TM) occurs.) Does anyone have an alternate strategy?

 

[Jaedar]

other than the steam key, so does buying it from gog.

Yes. But what about the Steam achievements?

 

[Turisas]

Yes. But what about the Steam achievements?

Only squares and faggots care about achievements.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Yes. But what about the Steam achievements?

edit: well, it's out now and the steam key you get from the dev direct purchase allows you to download and play on steam immediately, despite official steam release still being a few hours off...
now i just need to get out of work...

 

[Eyeball]

Got it. Fun idea, but not really my cup of tea. Woulda been a much better game without the rebel fleet on your tail, more exploration made possible.

It gets less fun later in the game for me - once ships have 4 dot shields + defensive drones, there's not really all that much to do against them unless you've got an ion cannon or teleporter, and just about all the ships in the late game seem to have that shit. How the crap do you beat the flagship anyway? I've come up across it twice now and have been unable to dent it using guns, missiles or ion cannons. Should I board them?

Should be a "generator" room too. Attack the enemy indirectly by taking away his power to fuel his shields and weapons.

 

[Ashery]

Man...First game.

Died to the second stage of the flagship.

God damnit.

...So many drones...

Oh, and my technique was to just spam my dual mk2 burst lasers to break down the shield. Not the most effective method, but my weapon choices were fairly limited (I had a couple opportunities to get a better missile launcher, but I elected to upgrade my ship instead).

 

[Jaedar]

I beat first stage of the flagship. Thought I would beat the game, but no. Instead I have to limp away at 2 hull points. Warp into a hostile frigate who destroys me with one missile.

Oh well. Wish I had unlocked some new ships though. Engi is getting boring, and kessel is too hard

 

[sser]

I don't know how to unlock other ships. I've gotten to the Flagship twice as the Engineer, but never have enough offensive power to get through all those shields.

My Kessels always turn into glass cannons that get shattered in the mid-late sectors.

Also, I avoid all the "send crewmember down to planet" shit. Redshirts everywhere...

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Just won my first game (On easy, dropped the difficulty to unlock shit. Though I ended up winning with the Kestrel, and even easy difficulty has some challenge to it) on this. My top 2 games (This and a normal one) involved getting a mantis/other guy and the transporter and boarding enemy ships and murdering everyone. That works for pretty much every encounter but the boss. The boss involved using a ton of missiles and popping cloak whenever he'd try doing a super attack. At that point I also had 3 block shields, crazy 50%-odd evasion engines, fully upgraded cloak, and fully upgraded reactor. Even with all that shit it was kind of a tight fight, had a tense moment when cloak was on cooldown during phase 3 of the boss.

 

[good little toastboy]

Got to sector 5 in my first game but accidentally killed my boarding party in what was, I believe, the event to get a ship (quest from the Engi homeworld, Stealth ship maybe?). Got to the boss with my Torus but I couldn't hurt him and without teleportes I couldn't take down his insane arsenal. I also got the event for the Rockmen ship but couldn't finish it because it was in the last system of the 7th sector.

Then switched to easy and died in a hilarious chain of events in the first fight. Restarted and now I'm in sector 4 or 5, already have unlocked the Zoltan ship, have all the subsystems, a multikult crew of seven that's only missing a slug and am swimming in cash. So much fun in four hours. Probably already my last game on easy, though, at least with the Kestrel.
The amount of events that can kill crew members, holy fuck! In FTL everyone's a redshirt.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Played it a bunch just now, lots of fun, but very random. Had to ragequit just now, playing as Zortan, I get invaded by 4 mantis, through my shield, and the ship itself is also attacking, with another 2 mantis and a rockman, and of course they also teleport over, while opening fire with their crazy powerful ship. This is in like, the 3rd sector. WTF game. It's bad enough when you get screwed by some bullshit asteroid knocking out your shield and starting a fire and hullbreach all at once while your 90% accurate shots hit nothing 5 times in a row, but this wasn't even a matter of bad dice, who the fuck designed this encounter?

Then theres the 50% chance I restart in the very first system because the game decides to randomly kill a crewmember, which probably won't be replaced ever.

 

[good little toastboy]

You indeed get way too much scrap on easy, had no problems at all with the boss. My ship got so powerful I didn't even have to repair it through the whole game.

On ship unlocks: You sometimes get events in the homeworlds of the different species. For the Zoltan ship you just have to succeed at rat rebel diplomacy. You also get one for winning the game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Best ship I've gotten so far is the alternate version of the default ship. Unlocking it was a pain in the ass, but it's defenitely worth it, it's significantly more powerful, with a much better layout and an additional crewmember.

 

[Jaedar]

Best ship I've gotten so far is the alternate version of the default ship. Unlocking it was a pain in the ass, but it's defenitely worth it, it's significantly more powerful, with a much better layout and an additional crewmember.

Yeah, it seems really strong. The basic lasers never really become useless as they're always good for sapping shields.

I think the default zoltan layout is pretty powerful too, extra shields and powerful beam weapon allows for fairly easy earlygame.

One thing I think is pretty annoying though is how you basically need a ship that can do everything to win. I don't really see how victory could be possible without a ship with cloak, teleporter and drone control. Can be tough when the RNG decides to screw you and never puts up any missile launchers for example.

Anyone have any tips for the mantis ship? I can't even seem to get out of sector 1 with it.

 

[Black]

Great game, so far this with Spelunky are the main contestants for goty 2012. A bit too random for my taste, it's very hard make a decent "build" because shops, at least from my experience, have those fucking drones too often.
Only managed to beat it on easy, with Engie's craft and having 3 attack drones (level 1, 1 and 2), heavy ion 2 and heavy laser 2. Hard as hell on normal but maybe I'll figure something out with the federation ship. That beam is amazing.

Edit, to elaborate a bit more on how hard it is to get a decent build: to go either fully lazor, fully missile or with a ship that disables other ship's systems and suffocates its crew, it's god damn hard to go for either of these since stores are fucking full-a-drones.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It seems to me the only decent way to get enough scrap and items to get by later on is to get a teleporter early and capture a lot of ships; netting you tons of free fuel, crew, and cargo. The teleporter also gives special options for like, half the encounters. Having one of each race seems pretty important too. Or at least, having an engi and a slugman, especially the engi. But I'm guessing the others have useful options they give too.

 

[fuzz]

It’s been an amazing few months of beta testing filled with hard work and lots of rebel-destroying fun, but now it’s time for the rest of the world experience FTL!

FTL has just gone on sale!

So, who's LARPing Nostromo in this already?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

It’s been an amazing few months of beta testing filled with hard work and lots of rebel-destroying fun, but now it’s time for the rest of the world experience FTL!

FTL has just gone on sale!

So, who's LARPing Nostromo in this already?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/thoughts-on-ftl.75327/

 

[Castanova]

Gotta say, not loving this very much. The combat feels extremely repetitive to me. For me, it sits in a bad place -- given how straightforward the combat is, it takes way too long to actually get through a fight. I'd like to see fights resolve faster OR I'd like to see more variety. I'm just not making any real choices during the fights. I actually feel disappointed when I jump to a new system and it's just another rebel ship waiting for me, which is what happens like 75% of the time.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, here is plan "Kill them all with lasers and ninja insects V" (Plans A through U not shown) :

I pretty much gave up on shields since everything seems to either go through them or destroy them instantly if it's a challenge. 2 is plenty. Also, I improved energy/engines a tad on the way to the boss, this was what I had entering secotr 8.

One other insect and an engi are green fighters, the last insect is a newbie though. Mantises fucking rock. Rockmen would be ok too. Also, got the no redshirts achievement here. Though there were a few close calls, I find almost all my crew deaths get caused by away missions or me accidentally autofiring on them.

No missiles used during the whole game here. Too easily countered with defense drones for my liking, not to mention the supply issue. Instead, mucho laser dakka. Tear the shields down, keep them down, and light everything on fire, punch holes in the walls, and kill the crew. No pussy ion shit. Though if I'd found the biggest beam weapon I might have given that a try. Also, hull repair drone is very nice in the last few zones for healing up without spending all your scrap or even having to find stores. I got the anti ship drone in sector 8 pretty much as an afterthought, I don't think it did much.

(Oddly enough my score with the A type cruiser is only 20 points lower despite not even damaging the boss.)

Now to unlock all those other ships. I keep bumping into stuff I suspect will unlock shit but nothing comes of it, so I must be picking the wrong choices or missing the right crew/gear. That cruiser should make it easier though, thing seems pretty OP.

 

[MetalCraze]

The problem with FTL is that it gets old fast.

Random encounters are essentially:
a) combat
b) find scrap
c) find/lose crew member

The combat is basically:

1. Attack shield room
2. Then if enemy weapons are too strong for your shield - attack weapons room
Optionally: if you get a message that the ship is trying to escape - shoot at its engines.

And that's it. Every combat encounter is about firing at a shield room most of the time.

For a roguelike it has not enough varied features and for a space game it doesn't feel like there's space around you.