FTL - Faster Than Light

[darrelljs]

Thanks T-Hawk...that post is enough to get my off my rear and try the expansion.

Darrell

[Sullla]

Thanks for posting some of those impressions of the expansion content. It's very interesting to see things from the perspective of everyone who was used to the non-expansion setup (which I never had the chance to use). Let me chime in on one point:

I bought Hacking in sector 3 to try out. I hadn't had that before and Sullla spoke well of it. Oh yeah, this thing is major dominant. Sullla talked about targeting shields, but I think my favorite target is the engines to null out enemy evade. Making your shots into guaranteed damage is a major boon. Instead of dealing 1 or 2 damage as half your salvo misses, killing the evade means you can punch a reliable 4-5 damage hole into either the weapon or shield systems.

Yep, using Hacking on piloting/engines is the way to go for any kind of gunship setup. You get to lock down the enemy ship in place and guarantee that every shot hits the target. This is particularly useful against the endgame auto scouts, which typically have 40-45% evade. You can also use Hacking to take out an enemy Medbay/Cloning Bay while using the Teleporter, or even target their Oxygen. I've heard that it's possible to kill a whole enemy ship that way with the right setup (Lanius boarders in particular). Hacking can also counter enemy Hacking if they hit something particularly bad, or counter Mind Control in the final flagship phase. Extremely versatile system.

Hacking shields is kind of the newcomer trap... except in certain circumstances, when it goes back to being insanely strong again. With Hacking ready for enemy shields, it's actually possible to run a full beam weapon setup, relying on the hacking drone to remove the shield layers. I stumbled into this almost by accident last night while using the Stealth B ship (the one that begins with a Glaive Beam, Cloaking, and no shields) and it would up being terrifyingly strong. I managed to finish the game with level 3 Hacking (needed to remove the maximum four layers of shields), Glaive Beam, Hull Beam, and a random Chain Laser. Hack the shields, wait for them to drain away, and then let the beams go to work. I was able to one-shot kill the flagship in the first two phases, taking zero damage in the process. That's never happened before, even with my best gunship setups. Phase three took slightly longer, if only to get through the Zoltan Shield. It was still the easiest flagship battle I've ever done. Don't underestimate Hacking + Beam weapons as a lethal combination.



The run also turned into my highest score to date, which was surprising since I didn't even have a Teleporter. Most of the highest scores normally come from the boarding gameplay due to the increased scrap reward. Having Long Range Scanners on the Stealth ship was the likely reason for the high score. More battles, more scrap, higher score.

I was also amused by T-Hawk's link to the FTL forums, with people complaining about the Anti-Ship Battery (ASB) on the rebel fleet. Yes, it's so "overpowered" and "unfair" that getting caught by the rebel fleet is a bad thing! If only there were a giant red line or something on the map screen telling you to avoid getting caught.

[Gustaran]

I'm not so sure I like the expansion content, though. It's massively micromanagey, even for me who likes micromanagement. The whole run took north of four hours. Enemy mind control is a particular headache, posing no real threat but you have to shuffle around crew to occupy the victim's spot and micromanage both their health totals. The backup battery is another; skip the micromanagement and just offer another couple reactor bars. Hacking takes a precise timing eye to work to full effectiveness, too.

I agree. It's obviously a design decision, but when you have to depower your oxygen system for 10 seconds to get that one extra power bar, it is a bit too much for me. I am also not a great fan of having to use the "pause" function every two seconds, I feel it takes away from the flow of the game. That is down to personal taste of course, but I sometimes wonder if the game would be even better with less micromanagement to allow for a more "real time" combat system

Not sure if I like Hard difficulty. Darrell's guess that Normal->Hard is about the same as Easy->Normal sounds about right. The balance feels honed razor sharp exactly where it should be. But playing this game is hard work to do everything so perfectly!

Yes, to me hard difficulty wouldn't be much fun, but I think it's great that it is in the game: If you want that extra challenge (with near impossible c-design ships) pick hard mode, otherwise use normal for a more forgiving experience.

I managed to finish the game with level 3 Hacking (needed to remove the maximum four layers of shields), Glaive Beam, Hull Beam, and a random Chain Laser. Hack the shields, wait for them to drain away, and then let the beams go to work. I was able to one-shot kill the flagship in the first two phases, taking zero damage in the process. eek That's never happened before, even with my best gunship setups. Phase three took slightly longer, if only to get through the Zoltan Shield. It was still the easiest flagship battle I've ever done. Don't underestimate Hacking + Beam weapons as a lethal combination.

But that would require the depower hacking drone trick/cheat, right? Because if you don't use that it seems to me the first enemy with a defensive drone would end your run?

Yes, it's so "overpowered" and "unfair" that getting caught by the rebel fleet is a bad thing!

I would even consider it a nice move by the dev that getting caught does not immediately end the game. If you want a good laugh check some comments on the appstore... ("terrible game, because a mysterious fleet is hunting me! i want to jump around in peace and improve my ship!")

[T-hawk]

I agree. It's obviously a design decision, but when you have to depower your oxygen system for 10 seconds to get that one extra power bar, it is a bit too much for me. I am also not a great fan of having to use the "pause" function every two seconds, I feel it takes away from the flow of the game. That is down to personal taste of course, but I sometimes wonder if the game would be even better with less micromanagement to allow for a more "real time" combat system

These comments are all about the original game, not specifically the expansion. That power micromanagement is entirely intended, of course. It's meant to replicate that Star Trek feel of desperately rerouting power around the ship while under fire.

I'm pointing out that much of the expansion content increases micromanagement to no real strategic payoff. It's throwing stuff in for the sake of throwing stuff in. I can add the Cloning Bay to that list of complaints now that I've played a game with one. I see where the desire came from: the game had too little crew death if played well, so cloning reintroduces death as a real occurrence. Except you have to micromanage the bay and crew and power even more than with a plain old medbay. And it gives rise to one rather dumb mechanic: when a crewman ends a fight at low health, go intentionally suffocate him to death so you can get a freshly healed clone.

Overall the expansion suffers from a syndrome that many game expansions do, throwing in splashy stuff to get attention at the cost of marginalizing the original mechanics. FTL's Hacking is the equivalent of Civ 4 BTS's Corporations. I'll still play it, but it's a shade short of the beautiful elegance of the original version.

As for pausing, if you think FTL is a real-time game, you're doing it wrong. It's turn based with turns incrementing as often as you want them to. I love how it hybridizes the genres, simulating real-time combat between the ships but without the real-world constraints of reaction speed and input actions per minute.

[Gustaran]

These comments are all about the original game, not specifically the expansion. That power micromanagement is entirely intended, of course. It's meant to replicate that Star Trek feel of desperately rerouting power around the ship while under fire.

I understand the idea, but I personally think it could have been restricted to shields/engines/weapons. I am not a Star Trek expert, but I don't think turning off the oxygen in every second battle is quite common there. It would also be nice to be able to power all your systems at one point in time, but even with unlimited scrap you run out of power bars. This is a little weird: Which battleship allows the installation of various systems without the capacity to power them?

I'm pointing out that much of the expansion content increases micromanagement to no real strategic payoff. It's throwing stuff in for the sake of throwing stuff in. I can add the Cloning Bay to that list of complaints now that I've played a game with one. I see where the desire came from: the game had too little crew death if played well, so cloning reintroduces death as a real occurrence. Except you have to micromanage the bay and crew and power even more than with a plain old medbay. And it gives rise to one rather dumb mechanic: when a crewman ends a fight at low health, go intentionally suffocate him to death so you can get a freshly healed clone.

Oh, I don't know about no strategic payoff. One example: If you complain about having to shuffle people around to deal with mind-controlled crew members, I could argue that this is a new strategic layer because especially with a small crew you would have to decide which crew member can leave his station at what point in time.

As for the clone bay, since every death costs experience killing off your own guys is a trade off (especially once you have an upgraded clone bay which increases the heal between jumps). I think the clone bay really shines when you are able to purchase the teleport heal augment so your boarders get fully healed when teleported to/from the enemy ship. Two fully upgraded mantis boarders can be brutal. At the same time I think the DNA bank upgrade should probably be an integrated mechanic, because one missile hit to your clone bay can cost you half your crew.

As for pausing, if you think FTL is a real-time game, you're doing it wrong. It's turn based with turns incrementing as often as you want them to. I love how it hybridizes the genres, simulating real-time combat between the ships but without the real-world constraints of reaction speed and input actions per minute.

Yes, you are probably correct about this one. I am just thinking that the game pace on lower levels seems to be much faster which I personally find more appealing than some 4 hour hard difficulty runs. But of course some people especially like this aspect.

[Dp101]

I stumbled into this almost by accident last night while using the Stealth B ship

Was this run on lifestream, and/or will there be a full report on your website?

[sunrise089]

I would even consider it a nice move by the dev that getting caught does not immediately end the game. If you want a good laugh check some comments on the appstore... ("terrible game, because a mysterious fleet is hunting me! i want to jump around in peace and improve my ship!")

It seems like it would be really easy for them to code in a 'no fleet' option similarly to how Sullla mentioned Always Peace was very easy to add to Civ4. I feel like that would be a nice addition to offer a sort of sandbox feel.

[Gustaran]

It seems like it would be really easy for them to code in a 'no fleet' option similarly to how Sullla mentioned Always Peace was very easy to add to Civ4. I feel like that would be a nice addition to offer a sort of sandbox feel.

I agree, I would have no problem if this was included as an extra option (maybe no scoring nad unlocks). There is actually a mod for PC available to achieve just that:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comments...d_edition/

However, I see a few differences to your Civ 4 example: FTL is clearly balanced around a limited number of jumps. Without the fleet, you would simply have an overpowered ship very early in the game. I also think that this option is not included on purpose, the same way permadeath is an integral part of FTL. It would certainly be easy to code a savegame option, but it is not available for a reason.

In Civ 4, an "always peace" game can be a viable condition still allowing for an interesting and competetive game. In any case, I would never have the idea to downvote Civ 4 "because it has stupid armies in it".

[Wyatan]

@Sulla
In your Zoltan B run, you said you didn't believe the Ion guns could scale up to the end game.

I pretty much beg to differ.
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=26307

[Gustaran]

I think this is the closest bossfight victory I've ever seen: I killed the boss and died 2 seconds later to a missile:



It did register as a win!