I've been playing it a lot the past two days. It's... Nifty, I'll give it that, it's very nifty. It's just also a pain in the ass, how shard it is to get so much as one new ship! Not only is it all randomly-generated, so the correct unlock conditions might not even appear in any given game, a lot of it is very Guide Dang It! in nature, and the rebel fleet encroaches, preventing you from making damn sure you've done everything possible.

And in true rogue-like fashion, Dying Is Fun ™.

This game is so good for a low price from Indie Devs who asked for a little to finish it in a Kickstarter and got a lot. Do yourself a favour if you play it, name your crew after friends, its like XCOM that way. There are so many little nuances that I suspect that anyone who says this is too hard is just kinda bad at games, sorry - luck has a lot less to do with if you win or lose than might first be apparent.

Like take a look at this sometime http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/ftl-preview-2/

In it, he does a brilliant space captain thing and ... well, I don't want to spoil it for you if you don't want it, but it didn't even occur to me until I read it and its absolutely a fantastic gamble on his part

Just about every time I lost at this game, in the end I realized that each of those losses were my own damn fault. And that was wonderful. It generates harrowing tales of mistakes, recovery, victory, and loss that we can share with each other.

And you don't want to know what happened to Cpt CanRay *shudders* LOL

Now I have to...

A: Pick this up
B: Hear what happened to Capt. CanRay.

I can feel the love. No, really, I can.

No, wait, that's heart burn.

I'm going to hope it involved tentacled aliens...

It...

Actually, it might have. It's not impossible that Captain CanRay kicked the can in hand-to-hand combat with a Slug.

You know, with my game budget as tight as it is (Along with the REST of my budget), you guys shouldn't be encouraging me like this.

A psychic Slug.

How can something so hard be so fun? I made it 5 sectors today before losing my last two crew members to fire,I was trying to vent the fires but forgot to open the doors to two rooms and that cost me the game.

I picked it up yesterday and did three playthroughs. The final one actually got to the battle with the rogue dreadnought. I lost. But still, whoo! It was on easy though.

I've played through three times myself in the last couple of hours. Managed to unlock 2 ships and made it to the final battle... couldn't get to the damn dreadnaught though. I've unlocked the Engi ship and the Stealth ship (sucks, no shields)

Got it, amazingly easy to die, but so addictive!

Damn, I'm up to 4 ships and 1 plan B layout (for the Kestrel). This game is damned addicting. Word of advice for the boss - bombs. Especially phase 2 where it goes drone crazy (and has a defense drone 2) your missiles won't get past to do any damage until you take out the defense drone.

Edit - 2 plan Bs. I have the plan B for the ship you get after beating the boss.

FTL is indeed addicting

But .... apparently I suck royally at it. I can hardly get to The Last Stand, I have only two ships - the starter Kestrel and the Engi ship - I have no B versions (only got 1/3 on the Engi because it's stupid easy).

*sigh*

What am I doing wrong??

There are all sorts of little tips and tricks really. It mostly boils down to luck, but one way you can stack the odds is if you end up in combat with an enemy that cannot penetrate your shields - let the battle drag on for a bit. Your crew manning the pilot and engine get xp every time they dodge a shot and the shield operator can only get xp when the shields are struck anyway. There are also certain systems that you wouldn't normally think about upgrading that have a massive effect. Doors are a big one. At level 2 they stop boarders for a bit and in the mean time - you can vent all their air away. Honestly, the Kestrel (both A and B) are really strong ships and the Torus (Engi A) has a ton of potential - in fact, I beat the game with it first.

I do know about upgrading the doors. Also, if I can spare the scrap, I like to upgrade the Cameras once.

I can usually get to The Last Stand. But then, there's absolutely NO WAY I can survive combat. Even non-flagship Rebels at that point, absolutely murder me. I go from pristine ship, to drifting debris, in about the time it takes to say "my ship is now an expanding debris field" out loud.

To beat the final boss I found that the following are ridiculously useful.

#1 - Cloaking field
#2 - Teleporter + 2 crewmen for boarding actions (preferably rockmen/mantis though humans are decent)
#3 - Fast firing Ion Weapon (helps with keeping the shields suppressed)
#4 - x2 3 shot or 5 shot weapons (for tearing through shields)
#5 - Repair drone (for repairing your hull)

#1 - The cloaking field is best used when you see the ship launch a lot of weapons at once. There's usually a warning message just before this happens.
#2 - Since it's not an automated ship, systems require crew to repair and the weapon systems are isolated from the bulk of the crew space. Teleport your two crewmen over to each of the weapon systems (starting with 3rd from the left) to have them kill the crewman manning it and destroy the weapon system. The 3rd from the left is the missile launcher. That means you only need to deal with drones and whatever special attack the ship uses.
#3 - Self explanatory, but best to have it auto-attack and target the shield system.
#4 - Self explanatory, auto-attack is your friend. I prefer targeting the O2 system with the higher attack count weapon and use my lower attack count weapon on their medbay. If your ion cannon is keeps the shields fairly well suppressed, this is the best way to kill off the enemy crew. I managed to kill off 2 or 3 of the crew (on easy) using that tactic in the first fight.
#5 - Self explanatory. Repair drones repair 3-5 of your own hull.

Other tips, if you think you can afford to do so, jump away from the battle when the flagship's crew teleports over. That traps them on your ship so you can deal with them at your leisure and bring all your systems back online.

I have 5 ships unlocked now.
Kestral A, Engi A, Zoltan A&B, and Federation Cruiser A.

Ooooooooooooo, "No Redshirts" Achievement!

I almost had that once, except for the fact that I wasn't paying close enough attention to one of my boarding actions.... forgot I had a weapon firing at the ship. Killed my two Rockmen I was using for boarding. SOBs had maxed out combat skill too.

.... good lord, how do you ever get enough Scrap to afford all that ...?!? O_O

on #5 I both agree and disagree. I smoked the boss earlier today with the Zoltan A using 2 halberds, am Ion 2 (the one that fires every 4 secs, like on Engi A) and an ion bomb, along with an Anti-ship drone I and II. Bomb the shields first, while keeping the ion auto firing. As soon as the ship has 1 (or even 0 shields) nail the cockpit and shields with the halberds. Knocking out the cockpit sets dodge to 0 on them.

Another note about the final boss - one time I managed to kill all the on board crew... it simply became automated at that point.

Kept enough scrap around so that I could buy all the fuel at every store I came across and bounced out of each system just before the rebel invasion overtook the exit. I also kept an even blend of hostile vs civilian sectors that was I got into a lot of combat to get scrap while making sure stores were plentiful enough for fuel. I basically made around 10 jumps, I think, in each sector.

Yea now that i've learned not to race out of a system as fast as possible I find i can get some pretty good stuff going. It's also important learning what to buy and when. I mean sure some of the stuff is obvious, but a level 2 med-bay for instance helps a lot with that infected station occurance without having a rock or engi crew member. A teleporter also seems to be a must have for acquiring more crew.

The beacon scanner augment that lets you see where ships/events are is fantastic.

One frustrating thing for me, i like taking ships intact, i loose more boarding parties though to computer cheats or firing mishaps then i'd like to think about, really sets you back.

Unless you're starting with a ship that has a teleporter the enemies quickly have level 1 and 2 melee skill, making even your mantises at risk in melee. Also make sure your teleporter is at least level 2 so you can jump them back and run to a med bay.

Who wants to pilot the Serenity???

http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2525

Word of caution and advice.

DD NOT, I repeat DO NOT kill the entire crew of the final boss. It makes the fight harder because an AI takes control and all systems start self repairing.

.... which actually isn't bad if, like last night for me, you're running a ship with two Fire Bomb weapons. FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!! hehehehe

Assuming there's Oxygen for the fires to burn. Sure.

Even better if you board with rock men, who are immune to fire...

It sure is lot of fun to play(even if Borderlands 2 and Torchlight 2 are taking most of my gaming time now), especially now that i cheated a little and got all the ships to play around with.
Pretty much all of them have such a different base play styles.

I do have 8 ships unlocked now.

Kestral A/B, Engi A/B, Zoltan A/B, and Federation Cruiser A/B. I just can't get lucky with unlocking any of the other ships.

Some of them are just a bitch to unlock (especially the hidden ship, slug ship, and mantis ship).

After playing with it more, I'm really liking the B plan stealth ship. It's a very high risk, high reward style. (Starts with a Glaive beam only, 25 second charge time and cloak only lasts 10 seconds until you upgrade to 3) but one shot will usually win a fight or at least seriously cripple your foe.

Overall my favorite is the Kestrel B (Red-Tail). I still need the Rock, Slug, and hidden ship, not getting any joy with them, although I did mod the files to lower the pursuit speed. For a real challenge - try playing without pausing.

I only have the two ships unlocked.

The Kestal A, of course, is unlocked by default.
The Federation Cruiser A is the "easiest" to unlock in the sense that it's a 100% reward if you can beat the final boss. Most of the remaining ships require you to have either a crewman of the race or a specific upgrade and upgrade level as well as requiring you to find a special encounter in a homeworld zone (not <race> controlled) and then manage to still outpace the federation.

Actually, the Engi ship "Torus" is the easiest to unlock as it becomes available as soon as you hit Sector 5.

Woops, I was thinking it had a requirement.

I'll admit ... I found a trainer. I'm going to unlock all the blasted ships. Then I'll go back to legit play.

I got the Engi Torus A legit. I've since gotten the Cruiser and the Mantis ship, and the Kestrel B.

Finally beat the game yesterday, then put the lessons learned into play and beat it again pretty much thereafter.

General Tips:

Always buy fuel and explore as much as you can.
Get a teleporter as there are a lot of crew recruitment events it helps with and crew is vital. Taking ships intact is also good, rocks make bout the best boarders, their slow speed isn't really a hindrance as you should be softening ships up selectively and then beaming them directly onto their target (usually med bay, weapons, or helm) and then holding there. Before boarding a ship be sure and knock out it's medbay unless your using mantis boarders.
Get into a slap fight situation with someone (that is a ship that can't get past your shields) and then let you guys train up shields, helm, and engineering, this seems to make all the difference in the world. You'll have to leave the game running while you do something productive but once you've maxed help and engineering alone your adding more then 10% to your evasion just from that. A fully trained shield man seems to get the shields up about a fourth factor which can mea the difference between a shield hit and a hull hit. Weapons can also be trained up in this manner if you've got ions.

I strongly suggest using the mod that disables the rebel fleet pursuit. Being able to just take your time and thoroughly clear each sector helps immensely.


I also recommend cheating at the game start, to give yourself fuel and scrap (and maybe missiles and drones.) I even wrote a guide to doing so.

IMO, cheating like that makes playing the game pretty pointless.

Did I ask for your opinion on the matter?



I'm getting bloody annoyed at people peanut-gallerying and preaching about how it's not "playing the game right" to cheat. That's like people who insist you must always "eat your food as it is presented to you," and never season to taste.

I had a stupid discussion the other day with a friend who insists that modding a retail game's bugs out (ToEE, Dragon Age, etc) was cheating.

People just have a wide range of stances on it, but yea, as long as it's not a online game against real people, it's kinda to each his own kinda thing.

Considering the point of a message board is to express opinions, how about you dial back the smarm, hmm?

I think cheating is perfectly justified if it helps you experience more of the game. And FTL is pretty hard with the random events. Some cheats to take off some of the pressure would make it feel like it was my skill that got me through, not a lucky RNG outcome. Where can I find that mod that halts the Rebel pursuit, ShadowDragon8685?

You can actually just mod the data file, truth be told. But check out the forums at ftlgame.com

Is this a messageboard or what?

Used that Cheat Engine thing that ShadowDragon8685 linked, finally making some progress. I may be going against the point of the game here, but unless the point is to watch yourself get blown up over and over (and I rather suspect it might be), I'm finally able to see more of the world of FTL. One of my favourite tactics so far is using a Fire Beam to set the enemy's shields on fire, then beam over Rocks to occupy their repair crews while I hide behind my cloak and take potshots with an Anti-Ship drone. :3

1st game, normal mode: ROFLstomped in the second sector.
2nd game, normal mode: Third sector, accidentally blew up my boarders and had the captain/pilot left. Spaced him.
3rd game, easy mode: Heeey! Made it to sector six before a crew of Rockman boarders slaughtered my crew.
4th game, easy mode: Sector 8! Wooo! Huge crew! Fully upgrade Kestrel A! What do you mean I let the flag ship get too close to the base? KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHN!

LOVING this game. So far, my favorite loadout has been Kestrel's starting laser, the 4sec charge ion thingie 2, and fire beam. Drop their shields, work their weapons, and light 'em up. Bonus points for beaming over Rockmen once I finally got some for my crew. Note to self: Just because a sector is red doesn't mean it's a bad place to go.