FTL

I tend to not rename, but did install a mod that (supposedly) adds "thousands" of new names to the database.

I've got three crew members named "Charlie", so we'll see how well that worked out...

So, I just had a mystery death.

Won a fight in a nebula, and while doing post-fight cleanup, suddenly noticed that my oxygen levels were way down. Sent a guy into the O2 room, but nothing needed fixing -the system was fine. But my oxygen levels were still going down. No airlock doors were open.

What gives?

Were you in one of the nebulas where your power levels are decreased also? Plasma storm, I think it is.

That usually shuts off your Oxygen/Medbay stuff, in favor of fighting. Then you have to toggle them back on with power settings after.

After 22.5 hours of mixed easy/normal play I finally won! On easy. Such a good feeling Now to try it on Normal...

I tried a new strategy and had a very easy time. I used to focus on boarding, but this time I used the Engi ship and went heavy on drones. Wow do they shoot fast. And backed up by the engi ship's ion gun they seldom had to worry about shields. I finished most fights with no damage taken on my side.

Spoiler:

My two attack drones tore the final boss to ribbons in all 3 stages. I ported over to destroy the weapon rooms, but otherwise left the work to the drones. With that ion gun on auto-fire their shield was lost. Cake walk. I was happily surprised!

Now that you can set individual weapons to auto-fire, I'm having such a blast with the Engi A ship and it's default Ion mkII.

Jonman wrote:

So, I just had a mystery death.

Won a fight in a nebula, and while doing post-fight cleanup, suddenly noticed that my oxygen levels were way down. Sent a guy into the O2 room, but nothing needed fixing -the system was fine. But my oxygen levels were still going down. No airlock doors were open.

What gives?

This happened to me as well, however I know the reason. A few jumps prior I ran into an enemy and the whole description was something in the line of " a rebel/pirate ship appeared out of no where and they have saboutaged your oxygen and weapon supply. Prepare for battle".
I thought that message was odd since my O2 room and my weapons room was healthy with full power. I sent crew there in case the enemy meant that they still want to target it. I finished off the enemy and I noticed that my levels were dropping fast.
I jumped twice hoping something would give but slowly my crew suffocated and there was nothing I could do. I was in an Engi ship and there was even a repair drone. and I had 2 shield levels.
I'm guessing it was just a bad luck roll.

Events that cause power to drop from systems like an ion storm don't automatically put them back when the event is over.

But my power was full in those rooms?

Hmm... maybe a glitch introduced by the latest patch?

I'll leave it to my imagination that the enemy did a really good job with a poison soaked blade

Jonman wrote:

Weird thing is that structurally, it really reminds me of one of my favorite games of the 8-bit era, The Wild Bunch on my beloved ZX Spectrum.

If you're really interested, you can grab a Speccy emulator and the game and have a go yourself!

ha. I believe my Brother and I probably only completed that game about once in all the years we tried it.

In the most recent podcast, Corey Banks says that "FTL has added a new race in the latest patch."

I see no evidence of this. Does anyone know what he is talking about.

If he is talking about the Crystal race, they have been around since launch, I think.

Demiurge talks a lot of crazy sh*t.

Does it have anything to do with that damaged stasis pod I can never seem to get open??

Eleima wrote:

Does it have anything to do with that damaged stasis pod I can never seem to get open??

That's the start of the Crystal ship quest. (I can't link you straight to it, but scroll down to the Crystal Ship section: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Ships)

McIrishJihad wrote:

(I can't link you straight to it, but scroll down to the Crystal Ship section: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Ships)

Direct link to the Crystal ship section: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Ships#Crys...

Beantown Tom wrote:

In the most recent podcast, Corey Banks says that "FTL has added a new race in the latest patch."

I see no evidence of this. Does anyone know what he is talking about.

If he is talking about the Crystal race, they have been around since launch, I think.

He doesn't know what he is talking about

The latest patch was mostly some UI changes and additional keyboard shortcuts.

sorry, double post

MeatMan wrote:
McIrishJihad wrote:

(I can't link you straight to it, but scroll down to the Crystal Ship section: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Ships)

Direct link to the Crystal ship section: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Ships#Crys...

Ah-ha! I knew it was the start of the crystal ship quest (I think I'd read about it here), but I never actually looked up what to do with it. Looks like I'm going back to FTL to try and unlock it... Pile be damned, I'm done for! Just when I thought I was out, it pulls me back in... When's the iPad version coming out?

Got my first victory with the Engi ship. The key was the anti bio gun. Lots of scrap and sent the crew on the boss ship running. In about 20 hours I'd never noticed that gun before. Also, "easy" mode.

It is a cool game

Cool but mildly evil.

I've watched enough Let's Plays of this game to know a thing or two. Since I received this as a gift during the Steam sale (thanks BTW) I've played a few times on easy, got to sector 8 a couple times and got blown away by the boss. A couple other times I didn't make it past sector 1 or 2 before a bad draw murdered me. The board game aspect is strong in this one.

While you can certainly improve decision making and improve your play in a lot of ways there is an element of cold uncaring randomness that heavily affects your chances. To win you need not only knowledge and skill but a universe that bends your way for once. Assuming I manage to get good enough to get some of the unlocks I could see myself dropping 100 hours into this!

MeatMan wrote:
McIrishJihad wrote:

(I can't link you straight to it, but scroll down to the Crystal Ship section: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Ships)

Direct link to the Crystal ship section: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Ships#Crys...

Thanks! I spent some time looking through the markup trying to find linkable anchor tags, but must need to clean my eyes or something.

I finally unlocked the Crystal ship (and B, ooh!).

There may have been some save scumming, but I'd say my save scumming to get the sectors in the right order was only equal to the scumminess of the random generator that decides what sectors you get.

Yeah, even with savescumming I wasn't able to get it yet.

Ok, so what the hell is savescumming?

I'm going to spoiler this because maybe some people don't even want to know. It can break the game if you use it for the wrong reasons.

Savescumming:

Spoiler:

Traditional saves, in a permadeath game. That's why it's scummy.

If you hit 'Save & Quit' there'll be a continue.sav in My Documents\My Games\fasterthanlight that usually gets wiped when you lose.

So just 'Save & Quit' when you're at a bit where you want to save, back up the continue.sav to your desktop, and then load up the game. If you lose then just straight up 'Quit' - replace the continue.sav to the fasterthanlight folder and you'll get another shot.

Again, you really really shouldn't do this beyond maybe helping yourself game the system to get the Crystal ship to clean up your unlocks at the end because that can just turn in to a massively frustrating (for me, but ymmv) grind for the right sector generation luck.

Ah! Clever. Deviously clever. I can see how that would be useful.

So, I bought this game a while back, based on what I'd read about it and what I'd heard on the GWJ podcast.

I've played about 17 hours, and I have reached the end once. My experience there was pretty well described by the "B-Team" guys on last week's podcast.

Spoiler:

I actually did fairly well on the first boss encounter, and thought I was close to victory. Then I got a case of the stupids, and chased it down after it warped away, without bothering to hit a station or anything. In the second boss encounter, my ship was quickly taken apart because I was so completely unprepared.

I was actually angry after that, and put the game away for a while to go back to Crusader Kings II. I'll be back to FTL soon enough, though.

Yeah, the flagship fight is a nasty surprise if you aren't expecting a three-stage boss. Also, I personally think that the second stage is the most difficult of the three.