FTL - Faster than light

[EvilBoris]

Firstly, I don't play these kind of games so I'm in very uncharted territory. Second, can you pause it to open all the airlocks to put out fires and give your crew orders? Thirdly, I panic because I ran out of fuel and rockets and don't know how to best use the money I have.

In short, I panic because I'm shit.

Yeah, you can command your men, target weapons, disable/enable systems all while paused. If you use the buttons to open doors this will open/close all doors. If you double click them it will also open/close airlocks.

[SMD]

Yes, you can pause and open any doors and issue orders at your leisure. If you want to play it cautious, always buy fuel whenever you get to a store, prioritise shields and engine power over systems and beam weapons means you don't need to worry about ammo or drones.

If you're using the standard ship, I recommend picking these three augmentations:

• Long range scanners
  
• Scrap recovery arm
  
• weapon recharge thingy
  

Though, protip: if you find a stasis chamber, hang onto it. Don't sell it either.

[Naysonymous]

Weapon pre igniter is probably the best augmentation in the game (certainly that I have discovered so far) because it means you get a free shot to hit the other guy with everything you have. It's expensive to buy and as rare as rocking horse shit, obviously.

[SMD]

Yup, you can seriously fuck up people's shit. The random nature of the game cuts both ways, because you never know what the next jump holds, it's exciting but it means you can never tell how you can really beef up your ship.

[mechamonkey]

So happy to see loads of people finally getting this in the steam sale.

[Wizcat]

This game would be perfect for tablet computers. pretty much loving it so far

[Yewone]

Its 20 to 4 in the fucking morning and Ive only just managed to drag myself off this... its a tad addictive!. Got to the enemy flagship in the final sector and got my arse handed to me!

[robdood]

Well I've not managed to play it much at all yet, but managed a sneaky 40 mins on my phone via remote desktop in bed last night - so awesome! Things got a bit hairy when I jumped to a sector that was too close to a massive star, and an unmanned rebel scout ship decided to engage me in battle... I took him out fairly easily, but made the mistake of trying to put out the flames manually before jumping.. one of the crew got surrounded by flames at the rear of the ship, I chose to suffocate him and the flames in the end before things got out of control

Oh, the music is also brilliant

[robdood]

ah man, I just boarded my first ship what a game!

[Vulgar Monkey]

I just beat the boss with the stealth ship....dual mk2 lasers and the starting minibeam, not even that much ordinance tbh.

Easiest boss fight yet though, although I'm confused as to how cloaking through the special green laser spam attack didnt pop the ship cheev for dodging 9 damage.

Still, I popped the other two and unlocked the ds-r-12, and fittingly got my 1000th kill with the glaive. Like a knife through butter.

[Tunisia]

This game would be perfect for tablet computers. pretty much loving it so far

There are vague rumours of 'We intend to bring it to iOS and possibly android' but nothing concrete. I actually emailed them about a couple of changes they could make to it to make playing it on W8 tablets possible- it's basically just putting a pause button on the screen so you don't need the space bar.

[robdood]

Yeah I'm not sure why there isn't an onscreen pause button. Its the only thing that makes playing it on my phone (via splashtop remote desktop) difficult.

[Pupponvesh 2]

I picked this up in the sale, it's great.

I've had friends warn me not to get it as it's sucked hours of their lives away and now I can totally understand why they've said that. I played it for 6 hours last night (inbetween games of AC3, Grrrrr!).

The one thing I'd like would be a a more "Quest-like" version which doesn't end, and is a bit more forgiven with saves and that. Basically I want FTL battling mixed with the free-roamy-ness of Elite or something. It would be amazing.

[Sledge]

I hope they patch in an option for it not to automatically pause when it loses focus when windowed -- it's the perfect sort of game to have running while you're doing something else.

[One Ste Left]

That's in the options. "Window Focus Auto-pause".

[Sledge]

Haha I looked in the options and it must've bounced right off my brain! I'd enjoy this more if it doled out the creds a bit more generously - right now it feels a lot like you have to choose the hideous area of weakness that will eventually kill you rather than ever having much of a chance. S'good, though, innit.

[LaParka]

Just bought this

First game, jumped to a new section and was blown to pieces

[El Spatula]

Yeah my first game I got boarded and didn't have a clue how to stop it. I see died horribly.

[robdood]

Finished my first game earlier, made it to sector five or six but got destroyed out of nowhere. I've unlocked the engi ship and am using it on my second game - drones are amazing!! My Ion gun is not cutting it any more though, despite getting through most encounters with little hull damage I want to be able to kill things quicker! I've picked up a heavy laser, it's just a matter of saving up the scrap to increase my weapon energy output..

Saw a Zoltan for hire in the last store too - wtf at their 'ability'!! Gutted I couldn't afford to hire him!! It's such a neat little game, full of awesome ideas and cool touches. I'm loving the events and stuff too, I wonder how soon it'll be before I've seen them all though.. Heh.

Anyway - FOR THE FEDERATION. I'm currently at sector 4 on my second game, it's a hostile Mantis one I'm SCARED. This time I have anti personnel drones though.

[SqueakyG]

Ha! Just had my first game. I thought I was doing quite well. I was in charge. I was on top of things. I had called my ship the "USS Invincible". I reached sector 3. Got boarded by mantis people. Game over in 30 seconds.

Lesson learned: buy the better doors before going to sector 3.

[Tunisia]

You don't even need the better doors, just vent all rooms except the medbay, stick your crew in there (and a neighbouring room if necessary) and let the boarders come at you, bro. Had a very successful run with the Fed Cruiser, got a pre-igniter and shield charge booster, and for some reason also had loads of scrap so could max everything out. 3-shot laser, 3-shot hull laser and a halberd beam took the rebel flagship apart in no time.

One of these days I'll have to try it on 'normal'

[BeeJay]

I just lost against the end boss by a whisker in our first conflict. I would have won if I hadn't have missed that I had run out of missiles and was firing blanks. I had a nice laser in waiting but by the time I fired it up he had replenished his shield. I was one missile from victory.

[LaParka]

God I hate this game.

Just have a quick go, hour passes, then another...

Had a look at the achievement section, haven't even unlocked one of them. Section 3 was my highest.

I was upgrading my ship haphazardly. Not upgrading the reactor for more power, and not upgrading the weapons slots to take advantage of the guns I purchased

Is there any difference when you die of restarting or going to the hangar? Do you only restart if you've changed your starting ship etc and want to keep it?

Damn game.

[robdood]

Going back to hangar lets you change you starting load out. Restart presumably just restarts you with your previous load out. You essentially start from scratch every time though

[SqueakyG]

Who ever thought that space adventure could be so perilous! I'm seriously bad at this It tends to be scenarios where bad things snowball out of control.

For example: boarded by enemies in a system where you're next to a sun. Deal with the boarders by flushing most rooms. While I was taking care of the boarders, a solar flare took out my O2 component, so that must be fixed first so that my ship can be oxygenated and my crew can move around to fix other things. But every minute a solar flare knocks out a component or starts a fire! But oh yes, the boarders broke my scanner, so I can't see that most of the rooms are on fire, and they also broke my engine, so the FTL hasn't even started spooling. Solar flare iminent...

In any other game this would be horrible, but it's actually putting a smile on my face.

Part of me wants a save file system -- or at least a "rewind to previous jump" feature -- to redo the jumps that snowball into an utter shitstorm. But I also know that would break the game.

[footle]

Whoa, this is a good use of £3. Or whatever it was.

I'm actually quite glad it's not on iOS, it'd eat my life.

[robdood]

Ah ffs, I had to quit out in the middle of a battle earlier (i.e. real life called). You can't save and quit during a battle, so I just chose to quit - "Unsaved progress will be lost" - OK I thought, no probs. Except now my savegame has completely wiped? Rubbish. Lesson learnt I guess, but a bit annoying.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Ah ffs, I had to quit out in the middle of a battle earlier (i.e. real life called). You can't save and quit during a battle, so I just chose to quit - "Unsaved progress will be lost" - OK I thought, no probs. Except now my savegame has completely wiped? Rubbish. Lesson learnt I guess, but a bit annoying.

Welcome to the genre:

Roguelikes traditionally implement permadeath. Once a character dies, the player must begin a new game. A "save game" feature will only provide suspension of gameplay and not a limitlessly recoverable state; the stored session is deleted upon resumption or character death. Players can circumvent this by backing up stored game data ("save scumming"), an act that is usually considered cheating.

Before you complain, just imagine how much tension would be lost if you could simply reload an earlier save. Either leave it running and alt-tab out or quickly finish the battle, but in the end this game is all about retrying over and over again anyway so you didn't lose any progress at all.

[SMD]

The game itself is really short, if you could cheat then you'd get bored of it quickly.

[robdood]

Welcome to the genre:

Before you complain, just imagine how much tension would be lost if you could simply reload an earlier save. Either leave it running and alt-tab out or quickly finish the battle, but in the end this game is all about retrying over and over again anyway so you didn't lose any progress at all.

Ahem, its not my first roguelike. I just didn't expect it to trash my save. I completely understand that save scumming spoils the idea, but sheesh. Real life takes priority sometimes, I don't understand why I can't just save and quit whenever I want! A shame.