FTL: Faster Than Light

[Dog Pants]

I've been on the FTL beta for a few weeks now, and I've held off putting down my opinion here because I wanted to get a proper grasp on the game. I've given up on that now, so here's my thoughts.

FTL is a roguelike at heart, set in space, where you upgrade your ship and manage your crew in order to progress across the galaxy while being chased by a rebel fleet. Thematically it's kind of like Star Trek, with crew filling positions and going on boarding parties, and power management between systems like shields and the various weapons. It doesn't feel as camp though, more the original Battlestar Galactica to me, for reasons I can't really place my finger on. That's mostly an aside though, as the meat of the game is in the gameplay mechanics, low-fi as it is visually. Before I digress to gameplay from the aesthetics though, I feel the need to state that the music is lovely. Atmospheric, ambient chip music which is tuneful without being intrusive.

The gameplay is a little abstract. There's no direct control over your ship, you control the crew within like an RTS, and you can manually change power levels and activate weapons. You'll never have enough power or capacity for everything, so you can either juggle weapons around depending on the situation, or be a little more creative like turning off your engines to boost weapon power, then briefly diverting power from your med-station and life support to power them whenever there's an incoming shot. Micromanagement seems fairly optional by my experience.

On the other end of the laser beam, you direct your weapons at the various rooms of the enemy ship, most of which will hold sub-systems to disable. Basic tactics are obvious, such as using shield penetrating missiles to disable the shield generator, then your lasers to fire on their weapons systems. More advanced weapons open up more tactical options, like setting fire to the rooms to burn out the crew, breaching their hull to suffocate the crew, or teleporting in a boarding party to murder the crew. There are also options that don't involve being mean to the enemy crew, like ion weapons which disable systems briefly and drones which can defend your ship or attack theirs.

Dead ships drop loot in the form of fuel, missiles, drones, ship upgrades, or scrap. This forms the compelling meta-game of upgrading your ship for the trials to come later, which scrap is currency for. Systems can be upgraded for greater capacity, and your reactor can be upgraded to produce more power to feed them, using scrap. It can also be used with traders to repair your ship, buy new weapons and modules, or replenish supplies of fuel and ammunition. Of course there's never enough, so budgeting is always a gamble. Since loot and sale items are random, your ship can develop along very different paths. I've had very successful ships which pounded the enemy with the brute horse of several powerful weapons, or which win through attrition using cloaking and heavy shields, or a powerful boarding party and teleporter. The fact that nobody on the official forums can agree on builds is a good sign.

Of course the random element which makes the game roguelike will inevitably be your downfall. It is possible to beat the game - people have done, and there's another ship to unlock if you do - but I've never managed it. Inevitably there'll be an enemy pops up which nullifies your win-button tactic and leaves you dead or as good as. This is where the game shines, telling the story of your demise. My brutal gunship? Boarded and the crew killed. My super-shielded tank? Missile spammed to death. My violent boarding tactic? Beaten at their own game by a vicious crew of insects. Make no mistake, this game is hard (although there is an easy mode).

My only criticism is that for a game you'll be replaying over and over, there's not enough variety or randomisation. The encounters are pulled from a reasonably large pool, but you learn what to expect from each - if you bring a stranded lunatic on board to join your crew he will always plant a bomb, so you learn to leave him stranded. A lot of the time this isn't too important as it's simply a pretence for putting you in combat, and the ships you fight are satisfyingly varied in configuration if not in hull (although there are probably a couple of dozen ship types). It would be nice if you had a similar variety to choose from, but as of yet I only have access to two of five, and the other three require some combination of rare encounters and tough challenge. There are empty spaces in the hangar though, so it's very likely more will come.

Weighing up the pros and cons I can only really count frustration among the latter, and in a game such as this frustration is par for the course. If you don't like losing, don't play roguelikes. Those of you who pledged on the Kickstarter won't be disappointed.

[buzzmong]

Yay.

As for content, I wouldn't be suprised if they keep adding more once they actually release it, especially if it's just fleshing it out content rather than mechanics.

[Dog Pants]

A mostly copy/paste of this on my blog, with a few screenshots: http://www.geekinpublic.com/?p=367

I beat the game on easy while playing a game for screenshots. With the setup I had it wasn't that hard actually, but there was a certain amount of luck in getting a pair of autoloaders that upped my rate of fire by 30%.

[shot2bits]

A mostly copy/paste of this on my blog, with a few screenshots: http://www.geekinpublic.com/?p=367

I beat the game on easy while playing a game for screenshots. With the setup I had it wasn't that hard actually, but there was a certain amount of luck in getting a pair of autoloaders that upped my rate of fire by 30%.

Another good read there pants, I finally got round to bookmarking your blog after that as the posts have all been interesting and well written.

The only things in FTL i think i will miss is a degree of crew customization as from what ive read and heard theres next to none and a higher level of ship customization, mainly the layout of rooms and such. But those are things the game was never aiming to achieve, although i would think they would add alot of longivity to the game in terms of replayability.

[Dog Pants]

There isn't crew customisation, but they do get experience, which is something. FTL might not have the level of depth you want, but I always see these emergent greats as springboards - if you've thought about it then other people will have, and one of them might make a game. Look at all the Minecraft-like projects around which really run with the idea.

[shot2bits]

There isn't crew customisation, but they do get experience, which is something. FTL might not have the level of depth you want, but I always see these emergent greats as springboards - if you've thought about it then other people will have, and one of them might make a game. Look at all the Minecraft-like projects around which really run with the idea.

Its actually the game ive wanted to make for a while now haha, and hopefully will do one day, when i have the time/attention to start learning programming for more than a week, everything else needed i know and should be able to handle already but obviously things like art and sound assets are completely useless without atleast the framework, or even a screen with a selectable entity for that matter

[Dog Pants]

They're opening up the beta to $10 backers soon as they're nearing release. Keep an eye on your emails.

[buzzmong]

I was just going to post about that. I can't wait to try it out.

[shot2bits]

September 14th release date, they are going to be distributing direct through their site, on GoG and steam, afaik if you purchase through them direct you get a key for steam and gog too which is nice.

Excite tiems!

[buzzmong]

Keys are out!

[buzzmong]

Wow, this game is fun! Hard but fun! I'm quite taken with it.

[Thompy]

TB playing. First footage I've watched of this and it does look rather good. Will buy in the first sale.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-SnIhpCm5w[/media]

[spoodie]

It's on sale now, a whole 70p off!

Played a few games and liking it a lot. It was a bit tricky to begin with but quickly got the hang of it.

[Shada]

this game is instant destruction of 90 minutes of my life every time I start it. so excellent.

[buzzmong]

this game is instant destruction of 90 minutes of my life every time I start it. so excellent.

Steam is saying I've sunk 44 hours into it already. That's more than the Witcher 2 and a whole host of other games!

Also, SHADA.

[FatherJack]

I am quite enjoying it but do wonder about longevity, the FAQ claims 25,000 lines of text in the events, which is rather at odds with the repetition I've seen - it feels like there are less than 100 events, though of course the branches for all the dialogue options would dramatically increase that number from a line-count perspective.

I usually find something new each go, but there's a lot of the same to click through. There are rare blue options when you have a special piece of kit or crewmember, such as the stranded lunatic not planting a bomb if you are able to cure him with a level 2 medbay.

I do like the music, agreeing that it isn't intrusive, but for precisely that reason I wouldn't listen to it on its own - I like my chiptunes to be intrusive.

I've gotten to the boss a couple of times: once limping across the final five zones with a single, desperate crewmember, the other with a fairly robust ship with a large crew and repair bots. On each occasion I got utterly slaughtered though.

It's been good though. I've escaped from being rather too casual when next to a sun with all my rooms getting set on fire, accidentally pressed the 'open all doors' button again instead of the 'close all doors' one, made desparate last stands in the medbay as boarding parties stormed through the ship and suffocated slowly to death as my crew were unable to leave the medbay for long enough to get the O2 generator repaired.

I'd like to see more events, but it sounds like it'll be a lot of work for them to put them in. I'd also like for them to be less 'random' if that makes sense - I once ended up with two damaged stasis chambers, which is supposed to be a unique quest item.

I'd like to see customisation of the ship and crew - I know this wasn't really meant to be part of the game, but simply choosing where you want each system to go, or at least each new system would open up some interesting tactical opportunities.

[Shada]

yesssssssss, beat the boss on normal. jesus christ that boss is so nervewracking. i've never had a victory fanfare fill me with so much joy before

[friznit]

I'm not sure I get this game. For me it appears to be sheer pot luck whether I survive to the next area or not. I never seem to have enough to upgrade as I'm spending all my cash on ship repairs.

[FatherJack]

I'm not sure I get this game. For me it appears to be sheer pot luck whether I survive to the next area or not. I never seem to have enough to upgrade as I'm spending all my cash on ship repairs.

It doesn't always, but I find it often helps to upgrade shields first, and also remember to actually put the power into the upgraded shields. I think you have to buy the shield updgrade twice to unlock 2 segments, then have 2 power bars spare on the left to switch them fully on. I then too mostly run out of money and rely on luck to get me new stuff and refuel, but I do want to try and get the teleporter and the cloak at some point as I've not used those yet.

[buzzmong]

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.