FTL: Faster Than Light

[Itamarcu]

http://www.ftlgame.com

I bought this game 3 days ago. It is a brilliant game, really worth the mere 9$ it costs. I already spent 18 hours on it.
It is a roguelike spaceship simulator. You aren't just firing at the enemy and avoiding his shots - you need to route your limited power to certain parts of your ship, use airlocks to suffocate enemies or handle flames, etc.

Did anybody else try it?

[Donzaffi]

It sounds really interesting, is there a demo ?

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I've been playing the shit out of it since Friday night ;)

The combat and ship management are really well done, but the linearity of the campaign definitely leaves something to be desired. Yes, it's "rogue-like" in its perma-death, but not really in much else.

Anyways, regardless, it's a great game. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with this in the future, as having this kind of ship management tied into a free-form space trading game would be excellent.

[RezDev]

Oh, cool.

I remember reading an article on this game in one of my brother's PC Gamer mags when I was visiting last month. It seemed like a pretty good game from the review.

With endorsements from this forum, I'll have to check it out now. :)

[SgtChuckle]

It's like the Star Trek game I always wanted, but better. I haven't gotten past the third sector yet, but a great thing it has in its favor is that deaths feel partly your fault, but also there's that element of luck- "Dammit, I did all I could, but that slaver was way stronger than me! Maybe I'll fare better next time!" Also, the combat schemes with the different races and ships are quite different, which is nice.

[Sarudak]

Yeah, I've been playing the shit out of it since Friday night ;)

The combat and ship management are really well done, but the linearity of the campaign definitely leaves something to be desired. Yes, it's "rogue-like" in its perma-death, but not really in much else.

Anyways, regardless, it's a great game. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with this in the future, as having this kind of ship management tied into a free-form space trading game would be excellent.

Oh man are you a space trader game fan too? Did you ever play starflight? What about sundog frozen legacy? Those are some of my favorite old games...

[FlowerChild]

Oh man are you a space trader game fan too? Did you ever play starflight? What about sundog frozen legacy? Those are some of my favorite old games...

I'm not fanatical about them anymore, but yeah, I've enjoyed them going all the way back to Elite (which I spent waaaaaay too much of my youth playing to death).

Starflight sounds familiar but I can't place it. Don't think I ever played Sundog.

But yeah, FTL is kinda screaming for it. There's actually a number of aspects that I've said "man, I really wish this game had 'foo'" which is generally a good sign when I'm playing a game as it means the design has a lot of untapped potential. But the linearity of the campaign in particular feels rather unnatural for the design. Yes, you get random events and such, but really you're on a fixed path with only one destination. It's kinda like "rogue-like on rails".

It honestly feels to me like they fully developed ship management, and released this game to get a revenue stream going to help fund future games using the same underlying concepts. If not, then the developers are fools, as I think they have a real winner here if they keep at it. A few more features like the ability to design and customize your own ship layouts (and there's a LOT of potential strategy in that given the oxygen system and boarding actions), and a full-fledged non-linear campaign, and this game would be total crack.

Anyways, I'm definitely enjoying FTL, but I'm REALLY looking forward to FTL 2 :)

[DaveYanakov]

I was also expecting a more open ended trade and explore style game in the vein of Escape Velocity. What we got feels more like a scenario for that game rather than a full game. That's fine for what I paid for it but I can't help wanting more when there's just so much good in the engine and background of the universe.

Here's hoping for a sequel that expands on the gameplay rather than giving us this game over again

[abzu93]

Starflight sounds familiar but I can't place it.

It was more or less one of the children of Elite with slightly more colors and shaded in polygons. Otherwise, pretty much the same game. Even when I'm playing the X(n) series and landing a ship on a station, I still hear the Blue Danube in the back of my head.

FTL is a great little game and I've lost way too many hours on it. It reminds me of what would be a Starfleet Battles "light edition". Fun schtuff!

[FlowerChild]

Even when I'm playing the X(n) series and landing a ship on a station, I still hear the Blue Danube in the back of my head.

...

FTL is a great little game and I've lost way too many hours on it. It reminds me of what would be a Starfleet Battles "light edition". Fun schtuff!

Whoa dude. You be old school. I caught both of those references bang-on, but I doubt many others would :)

For my Starfleet Battles fix I used to *love* the Starfleet Command series of games. It's rather sad that series kinda died off.

For those of you who are a little younger than "geezer", the Blue Danube was the song playing in the background in Elite every time you were attempting to dock with a space station. That in turn was actually a reference to this scene:



and here's the game version:



Totally archaic 3D games for the win :)

[DaveYanakov]

I never did find anyone willing to learn the SFB rules. I spent a small fortune to fill a box with rulebooks and supplements and I never did manage to play more than one game with someone who walked into a point blank R torpedo with his #1 shield down. Now I feel like I want to try and find a new set since the box got hit pretty heavily by water damage ten years back.

[Horizon]

Does the fact that I played Traveller matter in this discussion?

[FlowerChild]

I haven't gotten past the third sector yet, but a great thing it has in its favor is that deaths feel partly your fault, but also there's that element of luck- "Dammit, I did all I could, but that slaver was way stronger than me! Maybe I'll fare better next time!"

You know, after sinking a decent number of hours into it (I think around 20), I don't think I'm a fan of how big a factor luck is.

This is going to sound weird coming from me, but I think I actually have more fun playing the game on easy. The difficulty is so high on normal, that you're basically forced to take chances as you absolutely need every single piece of scrap you collect along the way if you're going to have any chance at finishing the game. The problem is, those risks (like traveling through nebulas) will also likely get you killed on a random chance that you happen to run into a particularly powerful enemy while in an electrical storm.

I finished the game on easy last night and it still took me a good 5 tries or so, so it's definitely not exceedingly easy to do. I went back to playing on normal today (I had sunk a number of hours into normal initially before giving easy a try), and after a series of deaths that I felt I just couldn't do anything about, I'm realizing I'm just not having as much fun.

[Detritus]

I've watched NerdCubed play it for a while, (haven't watched them all yet, internet difficulties currently) and it looks really awesome.

[Donzaffi]

Oh Elite how long is this ago, a good old times ^^

Its a possibilty to play it today ?

[Bevanz]

Yeah, I got this game on Friday... it is really tough. I pretty much can only reach the third sector every time I play on Normal. A friend of mine says he is getting to Sector 5 or so on Normal, although he's a much bigger fan of roguelikes than I've been in the past.

I think I might follow in FC's footsteps and try to win it on Easy, then go back to playing on Normal.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I got this game on Friday... it is really tough. I pretty much can only reach the third sector every time I play on Normal. A friend of mine says he is getting to Sector 5 or so on Normal, although he's a much bigger fan of roguelikes than I've been in the past.

I think I might follow in FC's footsteps and try to win it on Easy, then go back to playing on Normal.

Yeah, I think I tend to average somewhere between sectors 4 and 6 when I play on normal. I've been playing on easy with different ship types ever since I posted the above, and having much more fun with it.

There's just too much luck involved with normal for me to find it enjoyable over the long run. While I definitely appreciate challenge in a game, repeatedly dying and not being able to learn anything from the experience just isn't fun IMO. I'm a big proponent of the player always having some means of defense, and being able to learn something from each death which will help them avoid it the next time. Like, I think Dwarf Fortress walks that line very well. While it can be incredibly challenging at times, I've always felt like there was something I could have done differently to prevent my destruction. Not so with FTL, where my deaths have often resulted more in thoughts of "man, I wish the random number generator had provided me with that key piece of equipment earlier in the game".

[DaveYanakov]

While it wa fun what it really ended up making me do is reinstall Space Pirates and Zombies to try and finish a game.

FTL is great for a lunchbreak type of game where you pick it up and shoot through a playthrough to try and get a new ship unlock. What it is not is a game where you sit down and play it all night for a week.

[FlowerChild]

While it wa fun what it really ended up making me do is reinstall Space Pirates and Zombies to try and finish a game.

FTL is great for a lunchbreak type of game where you pick it up and shoot through a playthrough to try and get a new ship unlock. What it is not is a game where you sit down and play it all night for a week.

Yup, I hear you. I played the shit out of SPAZ a few months ago, although I found the end game to be kinda "meh". That's another game I thought could have benefited from a little less linearity in the campaign.

Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I think FTL will be brilliant once they add a more free-form campaign to it, possibly a ship-design system, and *if* they take a more reasonable approach to how large a factor randomness should be in difficulty.

The core system is totally awesome, which is why I keep going back to it.

[Six]

I got the feeling that the linearity of the campaign and limited 'stuff they could also add which would be awesome' was largely a matter of them scoping the features down to something they could manage to make an release in a reasonable amount of time. Now that they have had such good sales, I look forward to what they can afford to do now. So many awesome additions that could be made, I would die for FLT with 'open world exploration', cargo bays and trading (less Star Trek, more Firefly).

As to the randomness of the game, I certainly have gotten better after a lot of play, but I feel a big part of that has been forcing my playstyle to taking advantage of the weak AI (disable weapons if they can get through shield, keep their lasers and beam weapons out of synch etc.). I've also found the randomness can be reduced by upgrading enough to survive, then saving up while making jumps which will reveal the greatest number of 'unseen' points to look for shops. Most of the time I have been able to beat it on easy, and I've gotten a good number of normal runs too. Now I've been playing more of the metagame of playing on easy and trying to get the unlocks / achievements.