FTL: Faster Than Light

[Dog Pants]

Just try and explore all the systems you can, especially the early "easy" ones, as running to the next sector as soon as you can will see you fail.

Very this. There are various tactics for taking out the bad guy before you take too much damage, but at the early stages you should generally be able to take out the enemy just by targeting shields/weapons.

[shot2bits]

Just try and explore all the systems you can, especially the early "easy" ones, as running to the next sector as soon as you can will see you fail.

Very this. There are various tactics for taking out the bad guy before you take too much damage, but at the early stages you should generally be able to take out the enemy just by targeting shields/weapons.

I find that, depending on my weapons of course, going for shields and weapons/drones and then the engines/cockpit is pretty much always the best tactic as its the quickest way to neutralize most enemies unless your in an asteroid belt,ion storm or near a sun.

and yeah exploring as many systems as possible is a must, in most games i think i manage between 80-95 systems and unless something goes horribly wrong i almost always get to the last sector with a buttload of fancy items and upgrades, i try to plan my route as best as possible as soon as i arrive in a new sector to make sure i can pass as many systems as possible so i have a better chance of spotting distress signals and shops and make sure i have a clear route to the exit in the last 4 jumps

Almost equally important is to NOT upgrade your ships straight away, save up as much scrap for when you come across a shop and then upgrade your ship when you need to allow for new systems, generally getting through the first system is no trouble with the single shield layer, just make sure that the engines are fully powered as much as possible and preferably manned (when the game starts in the kestrel and most ships it has level 2 engines but only has 1 power as it automatically puts it into the medbay which doesnt need power untill the crew have been hurt) as they can actually be more helpfull than the shields, especially up against missiles as your shields are just useless then

Also pausing and timing are key, pausing and setting your orders all at once means your not getting blown up while you tell captain spangles to go repair the shields and also trying to open the airlocks to flood the o2 and get rid of fires. Its also incredibly important to plan out and time your weapon shots, dont just set them all to fire as soon as they are available, i.e if you have a laser that takes 8 seconds to charge and a beam weapon that takes 12 then wait untill the beams ready before shooting the laser otherwise your just going to take down their shields and then your beam will just bounce of their shield when it comes back online 2 seconds before the beam fires.

oh and keeping a close eye on the enemies weapons is a good idea, if you look at the weapons you will notice a little chamber filling up with red, once its full it is ready to fire. incredibly handy when your juggling power between alot of systems or trying to time the stealth cloak

It is still very much pot luck as to if you will end up finding any of the items you prefer, which is why its important to save your scrap for the shops and only upgrade when you have to. Your never going to know early on what your going to focus on and you dont wanna come across a shop with something usefull when youve just spend all your scrap upgrading for something your hoping to get but might not see for the entirety of that playthrough, the only system i almost always upgrade by the time i get to the second or third sector is the doors as thats almost a necessity to survive.

[Dog Pants]

I rarely upgrade doors. They can be handy for containing a fire if you really can't spare the crew to fight it, but by later game you should have some spare hanging around anyway. The option of venting that part of the ship is usually better. Similarly, with boarding parties I open all the doors bar the med bay and draw the fight into there. You're almost guaranteed to win because your guys are being healed, the payoff of course being that the systems aren't being manned. I also tend to go for weapons first - if you can penetrate their shields it's worth damaging weapons so that they can't use them all, thus are less likely to penetrate your own shields. Then you can switch about chipping away at their systems while their crew rushes about. Obviously missiles are handy for that, but I never rely on them as they seem inaccurate and ammo is in short supply. A valuable tip I picked up is to try to capture ships rather than destroy them (by killing the crew). It's a lot more difficult but will yield a lot more scrap. It isn't always possible unfortunately.

Ultimately, in my experience (and I've yet to complete the game on normal), it comes down in some part to luck that you get a winning combination of upgrades and nothing too powerful to hard counter it. Tactics will skew the odds in your favour, but like any Roguelike sometimes the dice will just be against you.

[shot2bits]

I rarely upgrade doors. They can be handy for containing a fire if you really can't spare the crew to fight it

I tried that but boarding partys always seemed to go for my door controll or o2 supply first and they can go through doors at will like your own crew, which means my ship is draining oxygen, i cant close the airlocks and all my crew die of suffocation trying to get to the o2 system. The level 2 doors mean that they have to break through doors first so usually when i then flood the oxygen they have to leave the rooms before the systems get damaged, i then use the same tactic and draw them into the medbay to finish them off.

ive managed to get to sector 5 or 6 without it but i always seem to get buggered by something along those lines shortly after.

[FatherJack]

I rarely upgrade doors. They can be handy for containing a fire if you really can't spare the crew to fight it

I tried that but boarding partys always seemed to go for my door controll or o2 supply first and they can go through doors at will like your own crew, which means my ship is draining oxygen, i cant close the airlocks and all my crew die of suffocation trying to get to the o2 system

They did that to me at first until I got wise to them, and now do effectively what DogPants says. As soon as a fight kicks off, pretty much every enemy with a teleporter seems to use it straight away.

So if I even see a teleporter on their ship, I pause the game, hit open all doors twice, close the ones around the medbay and order all the crew there, then unpause. Instead of having to wait while the boarding party trashes your ship, the suckers seem to make a beeline for you in the medbay where you can kill them while being healed. Then, um close the doors.

I doesn't work so well with a bigger crew, particularly on the Kestrel - on the Engy ship the command console room gives you another two isolated squares next to the medbay. But with a big crew, you can fight them off while cycling the crew though the medbay.

[HereComesPete]

I'm a fan of the engi ship for pretty much the layout reason alone, it allows you to put out fire and choke boarders very quickly. But like S2B I tend to buy the door upgrade, it's quite cheap and allows selective decompression whilst they try to get through the doors. This means I can keep the crew at station (normally I have an electro guy manning shields or weapons for the extra free energy) and still choke the dudes out. Plus the emp gun and drone combo is great for the first 2/3 sectors without upgrading much at all.

I've capped a ship with the bio beam and two drones timed to keep the shields down instead of damaging, took ages but it did net a large amount of stuff for me.

I've half killed the boss a few times but I run out of time or resources before I can get it done. Getting closer each time though.

[buzzmong]

60 hours in, and while trying to get one more achievement in the Stealth Ship to unlock Layout B, I finally beat the boss for the first time. On easy.

A fair bit of luck was involved and amusingly, it's not even my highest score to date on Easy. In fact, it's my not even my best score when using the Stealth Ship

[Dog Pants]

I was directed towards a mod the other day which makes the game a bit sandboxy and roguelike*. Instead of being chased by the rebel fleet you can just bimble about the sector then move on to the exit for the next randomly generated one. To make up for being able to scour a sector clean it ups the difficulty, and then to make up for upping the difficulty it gives you a freebie and more starting scrap. It's an interesting diversion at any rate.

http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3542



*Competition prize for the most gaming buzzwords in one sentence today goes to me

[mrbobbins]

Free upgrade coming soon too, Advanced Edition:

http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=598

New weapons, hacking, mind control etc, looks good for free!
Also coming soon. ipad version , uh oh.

[buzzmong]

Advanced Edition has just landed on Steam

[spoodie]

Definitely worth another look then.