FTL: Faster Than Light

[morgs]

I suppose it's a little late to be making a thread on this game, but judging by my friends list it seems a few of you are still playing quite a bit.

I thought this would be a good place to share strategies and tips, especially for normal mode which seems especially brutal. I've managed to get to the final battle once and got absolutely creamed, mainly because in order to survive all 7 zones I had missed a lot of beacons and therefore missed out on a lot of upgrades.

Have any of you managed to finish it? what ship did you use?

 

[Lobster]

I reached the boss on my first Easy run, but since then I have been exploding on Normal around Zone 5-6 because I keep trying to explore as many beacons as possible along the way.

The most enjoyable setup I've had so far was a 2x Mantis boarding party with a Crew Teleporter. It was hugely satisfying to capture the enemy ships rather than destroying them, and it was working really well for a long time until I tried it around a beacon with Solar Flares. They hopped to the other ship and managed to secure it, but fires broke out on my own ship which disabled the teleporter. In the subsequent panic to get things under control I lost my own ship, leaving my Mantis team stranded on the burning wreck of the other.

I like to think they survived and opened a cantina somewhere.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Whoops. Just lost in the final sector by letting the rebel boss find our base. Thought he actually had to get to the base beacon but I guess he can just be in range and win.

Game's pretty nuts, gets it's hooks into you really quickly even though it's punishing as all christ. Had a few great runs that were ruined by running into one ship who was equipped in just such a way to **** me over (the video below expresses my feelings on this nicely). Still, it feels more like the game is stressing preparedness than being outright cheap most of the time. On my last run I had a great crew going with every species except rockman (so very close to that achievement). Had some powerful beam weapons, nice shields and a teleporter to beam my mantis across. Then I forgot they were there one fight and blew them up along with the enemy. Oooops. Then I thought it would be a great idea to go to the mantis home sector and they slowly obliterated most of the rest of my crew with their own boarding parties. Oooops. Lesson learned: mantis are bad. ass.

Edit: Second lesson learned: Never teleport to a drone ship. There is no oxygen there. ****, probably never going to be lucky enough to have a mantis boarding party on the engi ship by sector 2 again.