[FTL] Oregon Trail and Star Trek had a baby

[Nessus]

FTL (Faster Than Light)

FTL is a real-time space ship simulator where the player controls the actions of the crew and the ship, trying to survive various encounters and the chasing Rebel Fleet. Basically, you get a few crew members you can assign to different stations and react to events inside the ship, and as you meet mean alien vessels you can do battle in a variety of ways. The website is http://www.ftlgame.com/ and the game is available on Steam!

Now, it may behoove you, dear reader, to know that the game describes itself as a "roguelike", or a roguelike derivative. Effectively this means two major things: each game's content is generated randomly, and death is permanent. Think Iron Man Diablo.

Death is permanent, and you cannot revert back to an earlier save without meta-gaming (this is cheating).

Game mechanics are slick, controlling the various moving bits is easy and you can always pause with the space bar to assign orders and react to events as they unfold.

The combat is detailed and there are several viable strategies. As the player encounters friendly merchants, or loots defeated foes, new ship systems are obtained, and by completing certain feats/quests the player may unlock new ships with different races, lay-outs and starting systems and weapons. You've got your "beam me aboard, Scotty" systems, your cloaking device, you build up your ship's offence and defence by upgrading, and you can rescue and hire new crew members.

The run of the game resembles the early bits of Battlestar Galactica: The player jumps to a new system which may or may not have an encounter, and after the encounter is resolved (or your ship gets blown up) you jump to a new system. This means you can play the game whenever you have five mins to blow, or you can be engaged for hours with it (I personally tend to want to try again immediately after a promising ship gets blown up; next turn syndrome?), and as the game is indie it is cheap.

My personal experience so far, not having played that much, is that this game lives up to its claim of roguelikeness, it is balls to the wall hard. The massive variety of viable combat strategies and figuring things out both micro and macro are engaging and fun, however, and the game is far less frustrating IMO than the likes of Super Meat Boy.


Here's a random screen shot I found through Google; the player's ship is bigger on the left, the enemy on the right. You can target individual enemy rooms and systems, you can see your own ship has fires in some rooms, and so forth.

Through the magic of Steam, I know several other posters here have the game, so let's have it with the tips and strategies you lug-nuts

[Steely Glint]

- Shoot their shield room with a missile, then target their weapons room with whatever other weapons you have.
- If you can get a second blaster, that is good because they knock down shields rapidly.
- I haven't experimented with bordering, but it appears to be practically necessary to defeat the final boss.
- If you get boarded, go and stand in the hospital room, at least with the default ship and layout. Can see it being less effective in the ship in the screen shot.

[Wraith]

It turns out you have to fight the last boss at least twice.

I won the first battle for the first time with a decked-out stealth ship. Boarding worked great to take out the weapons. I could drop two of them in a weapon room, and they'd take out the crewman there and destroy the system. Once the weapons were gone, it was just a matter of time, and I was no longer under threat. Unfortunately, I thought that was the last battle of the game, and I started getting cocky and threw them into the shield room after the weapons were down. It turns out, you can't teleport them back out while the flagship is cloaked. They died. And then I lost my weapons officer when I got into a fight with a ship that fired boarding drones on my way to round 2. The drone salvos, combined with not having enough crew to board, did me in during round two.

[Khendraja'aro]

You have to fight him thrice, actually. And stealth helps quite a bit - in the second and third wave, just activate stealth when the enemy uses its special attack.

You might also consider killing the crew - although the enemy ship goes on autopilot, it will help with any boarding maneuver you're doing (and will lengthen repair times).

Another thing: The weapons are not balanced, energy- and reload-times-wise. Which means that, save for stuff like the glaive beam, you're better off with smaller weapons. Good combo would be rockets/ion/bombs to knock out the shields and then small lasers/beams to knock out everything else.

You might also consider taking out the bridge - gets rid of missing shots because the enemy dodges.

[Ominous Gamer]

If anyone is still interested, FTL is half off on Steam and the official site (drm free copy).

$5.

[coinich]

Either I'm unlucky, or this game is almost obnoxiously difficult. I haven't managed to unlock more than 1 ship, and thats just the one you get from get from reaching sector 5.

[Ominous Gamer]

If you still haven't bought the game, Amazon has it on sale as a way to promote its new Indie Store.

$5, plus you get 3 free indie games I've never of; Huntsman: The Orphanage, Dynasty of Dusk, and The Curse of Nordic Cove

[Ominous Gamer]

I think this will pretty much do it. GOG is selling FTL for $2.50, DRM free. Which the developers site is price matching, with a Steam key.

Only other way I see this getting any better is if it ends up in a Humble Bundle.