FTL: Fun at first...

[Craig234]

It definitely took me.... I don't know, 5-6 tries at least? Maybe more like 10-15 before I beat the game.

It was 139.

I counted.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I really don't understand why people lose to the boss. The only times I lose games is when I get screwed early or get pissed at something dumb I did later and ragequit (blowing up enemy ship with away team on it or such). I've never lost to the boss on easy or normal.

Did we play the same game?

I finally made it to the boss last night. It was only something like the fourth or fifth game I had started, and I finally made it to the boss. Got totally walloped without even giving him a scratch. I don't know how you're even supposed to beat it; it seems completely impossible to me. I had 4 layers of shielding but that didn't seem to matter since it just fired a bunch of missiles at me, all of which hit every time. I managed to pick up the 5-shot burst laser along the way but that was useless and most of the shots just plain missed.

Anyway I think I'm starting to understand why people get sick of this game, and why the title of the thread is "Fun at first..." It is fun at first, lots of fun. You're exploring, learning the game, figuring out what works... and then you arrive at the boss and unless you have built up your ship perfectly, you're guaranteed to lose. I'm told that once you destroy the boss once, there are three more forms you have to get through? I just don't understand how it can be done.

FTL is now giving me the same vibe as a tower defense game I got a while back called Revenge of the Titans. You can get by okay in the early game, and at some point you hit a difficulty wall where it's impossible to progress without restarting your game and using a guide to min-max everything.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Did we play the same game?

I finally made it to the boss last night. It was only something like the fourth or fifth game I had started, and I finally made it to the boss. Got totally walloped without even giving him a scratch. I don't know how you're even supposed to beat it; it seems completely impossible to me. I had 4 layers of shielding but that didn't seem to matter since it just fired a bunch of missiles at me, all of which hit every time. I managed to pick up the 5-shot burst laser along the way but that was useless and most of the shots just plain missed.

Anyway I think I'm starting to understand why people get sick of this game, and why the title of the thread is "Fun at first..." It is fun at first, lots of fun. You're exploring, learning the game, figuring out what works... and then you arrive at the boss and unless you have built up your ship perfectly, you're guaranteed to lose. I'm told that once you destroy the boss once, there are three more forms you have to get through? I just don't understand how it can be done.

FTL is now giving me the same vibe as a tower defense game I got a while back called Revenge of the Titans. You can get by okay in the early game, and at some point you hit a difficulty wall where it's impossible to progress without restarting your game and using a guide to min-max everything.

Are your engines upgraded/men leveled up? You should have 40-50% chance to evade. Then if you have cloak you can use that to evade missiles more. I don't like burst lasers. Especially if you don't have the weapon preigniter they just take too long to charge. I prefer massing low level stuff (dual lasers/ion blast/etc) and preferably get something like breach bomb II to smash shields. Boarding drones are pretty amazing at wrecking face on enemy ships. Can't always get what you want though : (

Key to beating the boss is teleport into missile room first thing to bring it down quick and use bombs/missiles to take down shields. Also want to take out medroom so you can wipe out the main crew. Second phase you want to take out the drone control room fast to stop the damn boarding drones. Leaving the laser gunner alive through the whole thing is useful since it stops the ship from being automated although I've beat it fine letting it automate.

 

[BladeVenom]

Or just use level 1 cloak to dodge the missile volley, while your boarders take it out.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Or just use level 1 cloak to dodge the missile volley, while your boarders take it out.

^ This ^

The first few times I played, I didn't see the value of the teleporter and never bought one. It is probably the single most valuable weapon in the game, especially if you manage to find a Heal Bomb along the way. Get some Rockmen, or Mantis trained up in fighting (it is hard to say which is better, while the Mantis do have the 1.2x attack bonus, the 1.5x health bonus + immune fire make the Rockmen a much better choice for boarding since you can send them into a room that your weapons set on fire to attack the crew that are trying to put out the fire, getting the bonus damage from the fire. You also have more time to get a heal bomb on them when needed, especially useful on the final boss when it manages to cloak on you even though you disabled/destroyed the cloaking device...). If you have one, deploy a defender II drone.

You also need to remember to refit your ship between the battles against the final boss. It is useless to have missiles during the second form since it will have at least 1 if not 2 defense drones up, which will shoot down anything you send at it. A cloaking device really comes in handy for this fight since you can use it to buy time for your defenders to kill the assault drone(s), as well as avoid the overload attacks. Four multi-shot weapons are really your only hope to do damage. You should have also spent the time in the first battle to take out as much crew as you could, since they do not re-spawn between the fights. This will allow you to send over a crew to take out the missile launcher as well as the drone control unit. Once those two things are down, the fight is easy.

The final fight will be much like the last one. Send your crew over to take out the missiles right away. You can then send them to take out the shields and just pummel the ship. Use your cloak to dodge the multi-shot burst that occurs on occasion, and it is done.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Maybe I've just gotten unlucky, but I have never had an opportunity to get a Rockman or Mantis in my crew. I've gotten Zoltan, Engi, and humans, and that's it.

I did buy a teleporter one time but the level of micromanagement necessary to get my boarders to do what I wanted them to do, without dying, and without accidentally killing them, while also keeping track of what was going on on my own ship... it was kind of overwhelming, even with the ability to pause.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

Maybe I've just gotten unlucky, but I have never had an opportunity to get a Rockman or Mantis in my crew. I've gotten Zoltan, Engi, and humans, and that's it.

I did buy a teleporter one time but the level of micromanagement necessary to get my boarders to do what I wanted them to do, without dying, and without accidentally killing them, while also keeping track of what was going on on my own ship... it was kind of overwhelming, even with the ability to pause.

"The ability to pause".... no. It should be more like "the ability to let the game progress for a few seconds in between pauses." Keep your left thumb on the spacebar, it should stay there the entire game. (It is the pause button.) Keep your left hand fingers on the 1, 2, (3, 4) keys to control your weapons. (Also 'T' to teleport away, 'R' to teleport back).

Other note on teleporting: It is very dangerous to teleport when there are good fighters on the other ship (mantis, stone) or when they have a first aid room on the ship. In these instances, either keep your dudes on your own ship, or just use them as distractions running around the ship until you can teleport them back. Also keep them out of large rooms (3 or 4 person rooms); 2 vs. 3 or 4 very quickly becomes a massacre. Which, BTW, you should take full advantage of on your own ship; when boarded, bring 4 crew into your first aid room, and open all the doors to allow the enemy boarders to make their way to the first aid room. Your crew will be constantly healed and make quick work of the boarders.

Other note on battling in general (regarding the use of pausing): If you have more than one beam weapon, and they are slightly out of sync (say 12 seconds and 14 seconds recharge) then do not put them on auto-fire. It is far better to manually sync them and have them shoot simultaneously, the shields will be down and more damage will be taken. Use your pause as soon as the slower weapon charges up, and shoot them both at the same time.

 

[lupi]

One of my min problems is that I never seemed to gather enough crew to effectively repel, along with repairing damage.

 

[DigDog]

pfft. permadeath.

Angband laughs in the face of permadeath.

 

[rivethead]

you should take full advantage of on your own ship; when boarded, bring 4 crew into your first aid room, and open all the doors to allow the enemy boarders to make their way to the first aid room. Your crew will be constantly healed and make quick work of the boarders

Wouldn't you then be sacrificing all of your systems? Seems like everytime I've been boarded, the boarders go after the systems as a priority, not the crew.

 

[Fallen Kell]

One of my min problems is that I never seemed to gather enough crew to effectively repel, along with repairing damage.

Yeah, 8 crew is needed to really do anything. You can get by with 6 or 7, but that really isn't enough when you add teleporting into the mix. Also, there is nothing that prevents you from sending another set of 2 people over to the enemy ship after you sent 2 previously (just the coldown). Use it to your advantage.

Usually when I use the teleporter to attack, I only do 1 or 2 volleys from my weapons, attacking a location such as their weapons and/or med bay with the first volley, and hit it again once my weapons recharged and while they had crew in there attempting to repair (doing some nice damage to that/those crewmember(s)), and then teleport my crew right on top of their injured men with sometimes having a fire in the room from the damage I did. This is why I like the rockmen so much.

As for not finding additional crew, you must simply be doing it wrong. There are plenty of opportunities for gaining crew. About 1/2 the stores offer to sell them, and every slave ship you run into will give you the chance to either buy and free a slave, get one for free by letting their ship live (after attacking it), or possibly get multiple crew if you kill their crew via combination of teleporter/biobeam/fire/weapons damage while still keeping the ship intact.




Personally I am trying to unlock other ships at this time in the game. I just managed to get the Zoltan cruiser last night. I am pissed about the crystal ship, as I have had what you needed now about 7 or 8 times, but either didn't have the right sectors in my path or failed with the random number generator.... arggggg....

 

[slashbinslashbash]

Wouldn't you then be sacrificing all of your systems? Seems like everytime I've been boarded, the boarders go after the systems as a priority, not the crew.

Yes, this can be an issue, but most of the time (assuming you've got the upgraded doors) you can get them fairly close. I guess it just depends on the ship layout, I'm used to paying with the Osprey. They're rarely more than 2 system rooms away from the medbay, and it forms a kind of choke point from the front of the ship to the rear.

Of course, if they are stubbornly attacking your systems, it is also easy enough to send crew members back and forth from the medbay to the attack scene, and swap out when they start running low on health.

It all sort of depends on circumstances. If it's just a boarding party of 2, it doesn't really matter, assuming that you have more than 2 crew. If it's one of the larger boarding parties (that can happen sometimes from planets or other random events) then a final stand in the medbay is sometimes your only option. You can repair your systems after they're all dead.

Of course, opening doors to vent to vacuum is always an effective strategy for defeating boarders, assuming they're relatively close to an airlock, and that it won't affect your own crewmembers. This can be dangerous though if they happen to be attacking your O2 system.....

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Wouldn't you then be sacrificing all of your systems? Seems like everytime I've been boarded, the boarders go after the systems as a priority, not the crew.

open rooms to space and they'll leave them alone. Also, if you want to train repair, let them get all but one bar destroyed before opening the room. Only the last bar will cause hull damage when it's done by enemy boarders.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I finally beat the Boss, did anyone else find the credits absurdly long? There couldn't have been that many people working on this game. I assume friends and family are listed too.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I must really suck at this game or have really bad luck because I've NEVER made it to the boss at all....

 

[Fanatical Meat]

It took me 1 year to get there. You have to pause (spacebar) the game frequently to make sure everyone and everything is ok. Also you need a ton of missiles and some general good luck thru the whole game for the final battle.

 

[JTsyo]

I've played this a bunch but haven't gotten any of the random ships. I can beat it on easy pretty consistently but normal is too hard. Wish there was a setting in the middle.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

Credits include Kickstarter contributors.

Agreed that a difficulty between "Easy" and "Normal" would be nice.

One part of getting to the boss is to realize that you have to maximize your resources. The intro to the game is kind of like "get far far away from the rebels!" but if you simply speed to the exit point in each sector then you will never have enough encounters/resources to build up your ship. You should time it so that you maximize every sector and escape just in the nick of time, and maybe even get caught by the rebels sometimes (not optimal since you can't earn any resources when you defeat them, but it happens sometimes when sectors don't connect like you think they should, and you have to backtrack to get to the exit point, or some event lets the rebels move faster than they normally do).

 

[lupi]

There's a boss?

 

[Fallen Kell]

I've played this a bunch but haven't gotten any of the random ships. I can beat it on easy pretty consistently but normal is too hard. Wish there was a setting in the middle.

I think I am missing only the crystal ship, and maybe the mantis ship (though I think I just unlocked it the last time I played, just didn't use it yet). If you really just want to start working on unlocking ships, I highly suggest using the mod that removes the rebel fleet from chasing you, which lets you then explore each sector entirely (assuming you have enough fuel and are not getting blown up). I also suggest reading up on how you unlock the ships so you don't miss out on the opportunities when they present themselves (because they are not always easy to figure out... I had the bite the bullet and finally read up on the crystal ship even though I still have yet to unlock it, I at least know how to do so).

 

[JEDI]

hm.. there's a Faster Than Light Advanced Edition now.

 

[DigDog]

2 year necro YAY

 

[Fanatical Meat]

hm.. there's a Faster Than Light Advanced Edition now.

Its a free upgrade to the original now let it rest for two years

 

[JTsyo]

I was never able to unlock many of ships in this. Maybe I should give it another shot

 

[Red Storm]

I really enjoyed FTL, but just like the title says, it was "fun at first..." then it just became frustrating. At least on PC I could go and mod it to keep the rebels back, so I could take my time and enjoy exploring the game's universe. I am one of those that never beat the boss either. Reading some of the posts in this thread, it seems I was supposed to take my ship down a certain loadout/path, but then what's the point of having options?

I also have the game on my iPad, but without mods it's just not fun. Certain games I enjoy the challenge and don't mind grinding over and over until beating it, but with FTL I didn't want that, especially on my mobile device. I wanted to play it more casual but for some reason the devs didn't think of this and offer the option.