FTL: Faster Than Light

[Ed.]

Been hooked on this for a while.

So hooked me and a friend have started modding the game to add more ships.

[Jopoho]

Been hooked on this for a while.

So hooked me and a friend have started modding the game to add more ships.

If you ever are looking for an idea for a ship to create, I would personally recommend a Desert Bus ship. Modding is one of those things I know just enough about to know how poor I'd be at it. More power to you and the people who can though!

[Ed.]

May attempt a desert bus though what would be layout B? the main bottleneck is lack of art, even a colouring person would speed things up. Once we have the art it's a case of planning a room layout then punching in numbers and coordinates. FTL isn't that complex in how it works.

[Keab42]

Fffffffffff!

I finally made it all the way through to the end boss with decent weapons, max shields and a fighting chance. Normally when I get to the boss encounter I don't last beyond his second volley.

After a brutal battle I finally hammered off his last sliver of health, and the bastard jumped.

Catching back up to him he deployed about 10 drones. At this point I only had one missile left. I couldn't damage him and I couldn't repair my ship fast enough. Why did nobody tell me that the boss fight was multi-staged?

[Volafortis]

Fffffffffff!

I finally made it all the way through to the end boss with decent weapons, max shields and a fighting chance. Normally when I get to the boss encounter I don't last beyond his second volley.

After a brutal battle I finally hammered off his last sliver of health, and the bastard jumped.

Catching back up to him he deployed about 10 drones. At this point I only had one missile left. I couldn't damage him and I couldn't repair my ship fast enough. Why did nobody tell me that the boss fight was multi-staged?

3 stages. Getting a level 2 or higher cloaking device helps a lot (just hide through the drones) Also, if you have level 2 sensors, kill most (but not all!) of the crew as well. Stage 3 is boarding, and the crew carries over from stage to stage, but if you kill the whole crew, it becomes an AI ship that self repairs, and that's a bitch to deal with.

[ecocd]

I found this game a few weeks ago and it took me at least a dozen tries on easy to get through the whole thing learning one little nugget of information each time through, particularly learning about the multi-stage boss battle the hard way just like Keab. >_<

With regard to the boss, you don't have to have a transporter, just make sure you keep the triple-missile weapon down in each of the incarnations. Nothing else he throws at you should hurt you too much, especially if you have a defense drone Mark 2 (best drone in the game, imo).

My biggest tip, by far, is to never use autofire. It took me ages to realize that firing your weapons in salvos does substantially more damage than autofire. My favorite combo is missile/bomb to Shield Generator -> Ion Cannon -> Energy weapon; make sure they each hit in succession rather than at once and you can take out every shield generator aside from the final boss in the first 15 seconds of every battle.

The best part was learning how to use the weapons I acquired each time through. Sometimes I would find a cloak, other times I would get beam weapons and sometimes I would get anti-personnel weapons early and save up for a transporter to become a boarding party ship. One time I just found drone after drone and built up my defenses. That was pretty fun.

I haven't bothered to try it on normal given how difficult it was to beat it on easy, but it was money very well spent.

[empath]

I echo ecocd's sentiments!

Timing is very, very critical in combat.

Discovering things about the game is great! (still have no clue about most of the 'secret ships' )

[Ptangmatik]

As far as I can tell: For secret ships, go to homeworlds instead of X controlled sectors and hope you strike it lucky with quests

[empath]

Yeah, I figured out what to do/who to help to get the 'Rock' ship, for example...heh, I just have to DO it now.

[Mara Kalat]

I too have sunk quite a few hours into this little gem.
Only managed to beat it while cheating horribly though, man this game gets punishing towards the end.

My favourite way of winning a fight so far has been to take out their O2 and trigger a hull breach, it was a bit sadistic to just sit back and watch things go worse and worse for them but it's good that the game allows for it.

Would love to see a game like this with a more open-ended setup though, so exploration instead of flight (as in fleeing), but that's just me wanting longer play sessions and slowly working up to great builds
Same way I'd love to have some more carry-over benefits, just simple things like 'For every 10 attempts you get 1 extra starting scrap'. This way I'd feel like a failed attempt still had some impact.

Mara.

[Ptangmatik]

Spoiler: these are the strategies I used to complete the game:
I managed to squeeze through on easy a few times with 1 missile/bomb, 1 drone and everything else on lasers or beams. Focus on the shield room then switch to pilot's room. Last time I got won, I had a fire bomb which slowed their repairs perfectly and an attack drone II. Don't use autofire at all, use the space bar a lot, it's definitely better to fire everything off at once. Don't use more than one missile/bomb and 1 drone system (In my opinion) or you'll have run out of ammo by the 3rd iteration. If you have beam weapons, time them perfectly with the shields and hit as many rooms as possible, even if they're empty.

Level up and power your engines so that you dodge as much as possible, level up all systems even if you don't power them so they have more hitpoints, cloak is bloody useful if you can spare the power (maybe get a few Zoltans), cloak to dodge missiles. Have 2 crew members in shield, engine and weapons, 1 pilot so that if any of those systems go down, they'll be repaired FAST.
That'll probably see you right.