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[LoSboccacc]

sounds easy enough but I had camera disabled 'by magic'

just like when they say whoops your medbay is rad oh noes trick you get boarded.

developers: pls put a 50/50 chance of medbay actually xplode when used next and a 50/50 chance of the party being legit. now put a menu choice and let consequences unfold.

[lemon10]

Having the camera disabled isn't that big of a deal, and they DO give a explanation for it (it was hacked), its kind of silly, but at least they have one. With the doors (I can't stress the doors enough, without them any boarding party can present a real and immediate danger, with them they are slowed by at least 10 seconds and you can take half of their health out by exposing them to the air), you can figure out what rooms they are in by them hitting on the doors or what subsystems are taking damage.
IF you don't have doors, and IF you have a weak crew without spare members then boarder events can be big problems, but otherwise they are fine.
Its like complaining that you are taking tons of damage from enemy lasers when you have shields still on 1, if you don't have a counter to a common problem, then you have yourself to blame.

[Micro102]

Is there a beta or something? Not available on steam.

[Anvilfolk]

I agree it is a little bit overly random. For instance, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup does a better job at not throwing you into impossible situations you can't avoid. For me, it's a little to common for the game to either put me against a ship that destroys me in seconds or to NEVER give me useful items.

For instance, the Engi ship should get a very high probability of getting the drone recovery arm within the first 4 or 5 zones. I've only found it once!

I guess the main point here is that items here play a much more important role than they do in a traditional roguelike. In a roguelike items can be found aplenty and make small, incremental changes in your ability to survive. If you play your cards right, you'll be able to balance using items for survival and improving your equipment. In FTL, finding one item means you survive. Not finding it means you'll die in this zone.



That said, you can reduce the variance, as in most roguelikes. You'll learn little tricks (ALWAYS GET THE LONG-RANGE SCANNER), and by accumulating these little tricks, you'll improve your chances of survival. Until the RNG commits a hate crime and murders you outright or takes a passive-aggressive stance by not letting you have anything of use

But seriously, it IS a nice game

[lemon10]

I agree it is a little bit overly random. For instance, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup does a better job at not throwing you into impossible situations you can't avoid. For me, it's a little to common for the game to either put me against a ship that destroys me in seconds or to NEVER give me useful items.

For instance, the Engi ship should get a very high probability of getting the drone recovery arm within the first 4 or 5 zones. I've only found it once!

I guess the main point here is that items here play a much more important role than they do in a traditional roguelike. In a roguelike items can be found aplenty and make small, incremental changes in your ability to survive. If you play your cards right, you'll be able to balance using items for survival and improving your equipment. In FTL, finding one item means you survive. Not finding it means you'll die in this zone.



That said, you can reduce the variance, as in most roguelikes. You'll learn little tricks (ALWAYS GET THE LONG-RANGE SCANNER), and by accumulating these little tricks, you'll improve your chances of survival. Until the RNG commits a hate crime and murders you outright or takes a passive-aggressive stance by not letting you have anything of use

But seriously, it IS a nice game

As the engi ship I have never gotten to the final zone and not found it, visit every store you can until you have it, and try to keep at least 50 scrap with you when you go to a store so you can buy it if you find it).
In fact I don't think I have ever completely run out of drones (although I have gotten pretty close a few times), if you use only 1 drone a battle you probably won't run out till endgame (and by then you should have the arm without bad luck)

But yeah, the equipment loadout can be a bit too random, but that is a large part of what gives the game its replayability, if you were guaranteed to get a weapon/subsystem on every playthrough, then the game would be much simpler and each game would be far more similar.

DCSS does do a good job of that, but at the same time it IS one of the more kind rougelikes out there, many rouglikes are cruel and unless you read the wiki crazy good, will screw you over and kill you for the tiniest mistake. For example nethack, if you don't know that prayer doesn't work in ghenna (or whatever that place is called), then you will die if you need it to save you the first time (as happened to me when I needed it to cure stoning). Or you can accidentally walk in lava and die due to a key mispress.
Or TOME 4, you can walk around a corner and get 1 shotted fairly easily as some classes with bad luck, or run into a rare that kills you before you can do anything (eg. solipsist rare with bad luck).

[AlStar]

Is there a beta or something? Not available on steam.

This was answered last page, but to repeat - There's a beta, which has been open to the higher-level Kickstarter pledges for a while now, and became available to all pledges $10+ (basically anyone who would get the full game) for about a week now.

Full game comes out on the 14th, Steam included. (The beta's actually on Steam too, but it doesn't show up if you search for it.)

[lemon10]

So, FINALLY beat the game (after 18 hours).
I used the Zoltan ship and ended up using/having:
Weapons: Halberd Beam (the damage 2 beam), The Burst MK II (Which is three single damage laser shots), and the Ion cannon.
Drones: Hull repair, Anti-ship MK I
Subsystems: Automated weapon re-loader (+15% reload speed), Shield recharger (+15% recharge speed), Zoltan supersheild, level two boarding system

Pretty clearly my most powerful ship yet. It had some trouble breaking through 4 shields, but not very much, a concentrated burst had a pretty good chance of allowing the laser to get through and do 4 damage per shot, when concentrated on over a few shots it dealt pretty significant damage even through a 4 shield (I had a bit more trouble vs the boss due to his high dodge chance).

Thoughts: Clocking isn't very useful, yeah, it adds a few seconds of avoidance, but for the cost you can get both boarding and drones, or power a shield up from two to three (including the power cost).
Against the boss boarding is super useful, the only other option really is teleporter bombs (ideally breach II), if you don't have either you are almost guaranteed to lose (short of having 4 shield+3 cloaking+sheild recharger+defense drone+hull repair drone, even that would actually be worse then simply having a single teleporter bomb).

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah, I beat the game because with the Kestrel, which starts with a Mk2 Burst Laser with 3 shots, I found a Mk1 Burst Laser with 2 shots, and mid-game another Mk2 Burst Laser. That's basically 6 shots... takes down any shield. And then I still had a Hull Beam and the early missile thing.

It became kinda hard not to get through any shields on the first barrage, though it DID need some micromanagement!

[AlStar]

So, FINALLY beat the game (after 18 hours).
...
Thoughts: Clocking isn't very useful, yeah, it adds a few seconds of avoidance, but for the cost you can get both boarding and drones, or power a shield up from two to three (including the power cost).
Against the boss boarding is super useful, the only other option really is teleporter bombs (ideally breach II), if you don't have either you are almost guaranteed to lose (short of having 4 shield+3 cloaking+sheild recharger+defense drone+hull repair drone, even that would actually be worse then simply having a single teleporter bomb).

Good work!

Cloaking really needs the "fire while cloaked" system to really shine. It's not so much about damage avoidence - it's about firing at something while they can't fire back. By itself, I totally agree - not worth as much as drones/teleporter.

[ragnar119]

I would much more like if this game was more of a sandbox like freelancer or something. The heave randomization is killing my fun with the game.

[BigD145]

I would much more like if this game was more of a sandbox like freelancer or something. The heave randomization is killing my fun with the game.

It sounds like you don't like roguelikes or roguelike-likes.

[forsaken1111]

I would much more like if this game was more of a sandbox like freelancer or something. The heave randomization is killing my fun with the game.

The game as it is right now wouldn't work at all in a sandbox setting, would require a complete redesign and rebalance.

In short, the game you want isn't this game.

[Tilla]

I would much more like if this game was more of a sandbox like freelancer or something. The heave randomization is killing my fun with the game.

For you I recommend Starfarer; FTL made it clear from the start what the game was going to be - they even had a playable demo during the kickstarter campaign.

[ragnar119]

I would much more like if this game was more of a sandbox like freelancer or something. The heave randomization is killing my fun with the game.

For you I recommend Starfarer; FTL made it clear from the start what the game was going to be - they even had a playable demo during the kickstarter campaign.

I know, waiting for that game also, but I love the unique combat and feel of FTL. The only problem is the other part that I dont like, hope they will support mods later.

[LoSboccacc]

I won using a helluvalot of drones, now I'm trying out the stealth cruiser.

The boarding drone is lot of fun, and when you get a ship intact you gain much more scrap it seems.

Also, ions on weapons and o2 is brutal.