FTL - Faster than light

[hoot]

Jonster, you definitely want to stay as long as possible in each sector, making sure you don't run out of fuel or get caught, however it's worth noting, neither event is necessarily game over. The scrap recovery arm mod for 50 credits (I think) is definitely worth picking up if you manage to come across it. I would also say easy = normal and normal = hard, likewise you can unlock all the ships on an easy playthrough.

[SMD]

Yeah, that's essentially the game there. Do you linger and risk taking one more battle in with you into the next sector or do you speed through and get less scrap to play with?

[hoot]

Just noticed the game has been updated, you can now assign hot keys for just about everything and you can now set only certain weapons to autofire which is a big improvement.

[Naysonymous]

I have been playing this game quite a lot over the last week or so. I think it's great.

I love the whole "I wonder what would have happened had I done X instead of Y" thing the game has going on, yes there is an element of randomness which keeps things out of the players control somewhat but I have never gone into a game feeling that I didnt learn from the mistakes I made on my previous life. I still havent beaten the Rebel Flagship yet (it's a bastard, isnt it?) but I have unlocked a few ships and havent tried them all yet. I can see myself putting quite a bit more time in...

Just reading over the last couple of pages about dealing with boarders and venting air locks, I realised after getting smashed to bits by boarders a few times and having huge fires go out of control when my scanners are down that I might as well just remove all the oxygen from any rooms without systems or any rooms I dont have occupied at the start of the game and leave them that way until I need somebody in there. It means fires are hardly ever a problem and it has fucked boarders over on more than one occasion.

[Vulgar Monkey]

Depends on the layout of that ship. Side compartments yeah, maybe, but you'd still want a safe corridor to transfer crew back and forth between. Otherwise you have to send them out into vacuum, which doesn't do them much good

[Naysonymous]

You just shut the doors before you move anybody. It doesnt kill them.

[Tunisia]

I was using the Federation Cruiser in my last run, had a very turtley build dependent on the artillery beam to kill anything (because why not ). Unfortunately I didn't find a cloaking device to buy anywhere along the route, but I had maxed shields and engines, a defence drone or two, and breach bombs to take out enemy weapon systems. I got through the first phase of the flagship in record time and with something like 26 health remaining, but

the power surge drones in phase 2 completely cleaned me out, nothing I could do. Targetting their drone controls didn't seem to help because there was a lot of redundant power to begin with, and then when the power surge comes, it doesn't really matter because it's cheating its way to those drones anyway. It seems like you can't have enough shield and engine (and expertise in both) to survive long against that onslaught; cloaking through it is the only way I managed to survive last time. I guess the alternative would be to have an away team just sit in their drone room and try to keep the numbers manageable?

I keep having really frustrating moments where I have a lot of crew; solid training in the important rooms, a couple of mantis and/or rockmen as an away team or defence, and some floating engis, then I do something fucking retarded like vent a couple of rooms to chase some boarders into the right place, and then accidentally leave a door open which kills much of my crew. Or forget to repower the oxygen, or leave them fighting in an unpowered medbay or something. Or forget that the artillery beam fires on its own, and so not bring an away team back in time. I went from 8 to 3 crew members in my last run

[Rudi von Starnberg]

You can't install a cloaking device on the federation cruiser. The artillery beam takes the system slot that would otherwise be a cloaking device.

[Tunisia]

Another frustrating run with the federation cruiser- had a really good boarding setup, with a mantis alpha team and rock beta team. Set up with 2 small bombs, 1 fire bomb, and a healing burst. Of course, I had to just jump away from automated ships because there was nothing I could do to them, but I was doing well until stage 3 of the flagship, when I realised there was nothing I could do to a zoltan shield, and had run out of missiles for the bombs! For phase 2, I had my fully-levelled mantis team slugging away at the drone controls for the whole time the ship was there, and didn't manage to take them out

[Vulgar Monkey]

I always opt for lasers/beams/ion for exactly that reason, although I've had a lot of success lately just firebeaming guys and sitting back while I watch their little men panic. Not sure if you actually get more scrap for leaving ships intact though.

As for the cruiser, I always seem to find myself just focusing everything on its shield subsystems. In the absence of cloak, the best defense may be just to kill the fucker outright before it can drone you too often.

[Vulgar Monkey]

Right, just did it with the cruiser, using a mk2 burst laser, mk3 burst laser, and maxed arty beam. Had also maxed everything else by then.

Just focused on enemy shields to start with using all guns, then once it was weakened enough that the mk2 could keep it down by itself started shifting mk3 fire to priority targets. O2 always draws priority repairs so distracts enemy crew from other jobs, helm or engine damage makes them an easier target. I roundly ignored the enemy weapons tbh.

Only thing is that there isnt enough power to run fully maxed systems, so I had full shields, weps, and engines, and divvied power between engines and arty beam briefly when I had to evade. Medbay was offline unless I needed it.

Ended up with over half health left.

[Naysonymous]

This game can really kick you in the balls repeatedly sometimes, cant it? Just unlocked the second loadout of the Zoltan Cruiser. On paper it looks like an absolute monster, you start with two ion cannons and a beam weapon, and while you dont have ridiculous burst damage you can just shut down enemy ships completely while your beam charges. I'd imagine it is ridiculously overpowered if you find a pre igniter in a store somewhere.

The Achilles heel is that you only start with a Zoltan shield, one that doesnt recharge unless you jump. You need 100 scrap just to unlock your normal shield. Should prove too difficult to get I thought except mid way through sector one I get put into a fight in an asteroid field. I won the fight but my shield had gone and it wouldnt recharge unless I jumped. The asteroids then took out my engines and my pilot's equipment, starting fires in both. Zoltan's arent strong enough to put out a fire in one go it seems so I had to vent the rooms while they retreated to the medibay. Asteroids then took out my scanners and my O2. I couldnt jump, I was running out of air and I could hear I was on fire but couldnt see where I was on fire. RIP Noether, we hardly knew ye.

[SMD]

Protip: if your scanners are fucked and there are fires on board, look at your indicators at the bottom, it'll show you if a room has a fire in it - just not how many. When you're on fire, though, it doesn't matter

[Andy_Why]

Where is the cheapest/best place to pick this up at the minute?

[poppa_f]

This game can really kick you in the balls repeatedly sometimes, cant it? Just unlocked the second loadout of the Zoltan Cruiser. On paper it looks like an absolute monster, you start with two ion cannons and a beam weapon, and while you dont have ridiculous burst damage you can just shut down enemy ships completely while your beam charges. I'd imagine it is ridiculously overpowered if you find a pre igniter in a store somewhere.

The Achilles heel is that you only start with a Zoltan shield, one that doesnt recharge unless you jump. You need 100 scrap just to unlock your normal shield. Should prove too difficult to get I thought except mid way through sector one I get put into a fight in an asteroid field. I won the fight but my shield had gone and it wouldnt recharge unless I jumped. The asteroids then took out my engines and my pilot's equipment, starting fires in both. Zoltan's arent strong enough to put out a fire in one go it seems so I had to vent the rooms while they retreated to the medibay. Asteroids then took out my scanners and my O2. I couldnt jump, I was running out of air and I could hear I was on fire but couldnt see where I was on fire. RIP Noether, we hardly knew ye.

Love stories like this. Amazing how quickly you go from a perfect run, where you're already composing your victory speech, to your dreams being shattered in a million flaming pieces

[Vulgar Monkey]

Currently a fiver on steam.

Anyway, still not getting any opportunities to get that stealth ship. The one time the relevant quest did occur the other day I managed to get the decoy ship, but let the other one slip away due to my slow-charging guns.

Talking of slow guns, though, I managed to procure TWO mk3 burst lasers today for free....used cheap and quick stuff for most guys, and switched out the power hungry beasts for the big guy. Never stood a chance. D

I did just fluke unlocking the zoltan ship though. Interested to see how handy those shields are. Also comes with a halberd as standard.

[Naysonymous]

The shield is great. It stops people boarding you during battles (though you will still get random events where you do get boarded, which is all explained with a light hearted cover story)

It's now £3.49 on Steam. If you were on the fence about this game before then you have no excuse at this price.

[Andy_Why]

Ended up grabbing it on their website yesterday. Its great! Now, how the hell do I deal with boarders?

[Vulgar Monkey]

Open up compartments to vacuum.

Initial door subsystems open to anyone immediately, so they'll just move on until you stop them with manpower.....best do that in the medbay to skew the odds in your favour. Just be careful your door subsystem doesnt get shot up, though, or they'll be stuck open til you repair it. And if the room housing that subsystem happens to be in vacuum, that's an easy way to lose a man.

Upgrades let the doors lock intruders in certain compartments til they shoot their way through, which helps a lot depending on the ship layout.

Protip....even if you dont have the power to fully supply a system, it can be worth upgrading it anyway just so it can take more damage before failure.

edit

Oh, I unlocked the stealth ship and zoltan type b on the same run last night. Both look pretty beefy, but the type b stealth is next on my list for its glaive beam. Oof.

[papalazarou]

after seeing the love for this game on here - decided to grab it myself - after 2 hours... were has this game been all my life so addictive!!

[johnj]

Man I'm up to 103 hours now after thinking I was done at 96...unlocking all the achievements. The door upgrade is relatively cheap and makes dealing with borders a lot, lot easier. I've only recently started doing it routinely though

[Vulgar Monkey]

Depends on my crew and ship layout, but tbh I don't usually find much need til the mid-late game. I'm usually more concerned with guns and engines to evade missiles.

Also, just did a run with the stealth ship using burst laser and dual beams. Fuck me, that thing carved them to bits. Talking multiple single shot kills.

[moosegrinder]

This game makes me panic.

[daveodeth]

But you can pause at any time? :S

[U2031]

If you ever panic, then hit space to pause!

[robdood]

Oh man this is great. Not had a chance to do much more than the tutorial yet, but omgz the potential for stories.

[SMD]

It'd be great if at the end of each game, it recounted your story like a rogue game.

[johnj]

I played it through without completition about 15 times before I realised you could pause

[Tunisia]

Meticulously plotting the path of your beam weapons gets a lot harder if you're not paused! Much easier to handle crew movements and deal with boarders while paused, too. Love the feeling of boarders dropping in, pausing, planning the defence, then unpausing and watching all of my crew and doors etc. hop to it!

[moosegrinder]

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.