Have anyone tried the Captain’s Edition or any other mod?
https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15663
I tried it, it’s quite good but makes FTL into a VERY different game.
Does it make into more of a campaign game? Because I think I’d prefer that to the short nature of the game that exists due to soft timer and travel direction limit.
Nope, it’s still “short”. Each playthru is slightly longer compared to plain FTL (Advanced or non-Advance) but you won’t feel that it’s a non-roguelike.
Edit: From what I recall (it’s been some time), it adds a number of weapons and events and changes the costs and power progression. The mechanics was tweaked if I remember correctly but at it’s core, gameplay is the same.
Edit2: If I remember correctly, the ships and the systems becomes different. So it departs very much from the set of initial challenges in the original.
Man, I had forgotten how infuriating is the boss capital ship of this game. Max Shields + max weapons (4 of them) + max hacking module + playing on Easy = still not enough to beat it, I couldn’t do anything against it in the second phase.
Play the 1st Phase with the 2nd Phase in mind. If you can kill of some of the crew in the 1st phase (leave 1 crew in weapons system alive to avoid the super robotic control), do it.
Also time your (level 1) stealth to coincide with the 2nd phase drone mode to avoid damage from the burst drone attack.
Oh yeah, that’s why I never finished this one.
I’ve played this game more than any other in the past 10 years and just love it – main keys are you need to ensure you have these things:
- something to take shields down: ideal are flak guns and double lasers. The more expensive lasers and ion weapons are not worth it – fast is best (10-11 second recharge time). The fast ion is good though, but not as good.
- cloaking or drones to be able to survive the 2nd flagship stage - ideally cloaking. Hacking is essentially instant win, but on ships with drone defences (like that stage) you have to either cheese it (you can avoid drones by pausing on route) or something else. Mind control is fun. teleport is great but you need to plan around it and recognize its weaknesses (drones etc.) . Ideal winning ship is Hacking/cloaking/mind control or drones or boarding, but any 2 is sufficient to win.
- getting more resources early is very helpful, so boarding or otherwise killing all the enemies on board is worthwhile but not if you sacrifice damage. The arm that gives you more resources is very useful if you can get it before mid-way.
- you don’t need more than 3 shield levels, unless you don’t have cloaking or drones by the final stage
- never let the fleet catch you - it is never worth it.
- otherwise visit as many systems as you can.
- avoiding damage is always top priority - don’t be afraid to bail if you have a bad setup for your opponent.
- don’t think you have to do every event if you don’t have “blue options” (which are always worthwhile). Later in the run, they are not worth the risk generally. That said, in the first sector (or 2), they are worth doing since you can restart if you really get burned by a random result.
- the weapon pre-ignitor is expensive, but if you can get it and a couple of flak cannons, the game is over.
- always take out weapon systems first.
- an early point or two should go to your engines to improve your evasion - not getting hit by missiles is extremely important. For that reason, you should also add both points to your pilot eventually, but don’t have to worry until mid-run on the first point. One of the only ways you can lose with a well equipped ship is to lose piloting system and have no autopilot so you get pummeled by missiles.
Anything that requires even half this many bullet points to win is something I’m really perfectly OK with not completing.
It’s cool so many loved it, I enjoyed it as well, I just feel no strong desire to beat it.
I am however fully convinced their new game is right up my alley and it’s one I look forward to immensely.
ITB, but mainly all the tips found here, made me jump back into FTL (which works incredibly well on an antique iPad 2).
I gathered that a lot of tips and talk around here are about mechanics found in the Advanced Edition. Would you recommend it to someone which played quite a bunch of the game, but never won it?
Also, is there any reason to send your crew hunting alien spiders? I have met that event in most of my runs, and never have managed to not lose a crew member. Is there a specific race that should be sent?
Advanced Edition adds some new stuff, some new events. I think it’s worth playing once you’ve already seen most of the base game content.
In particular it adds the cloning bay (as a medbay replacement). As you might expect, this will replace any dead crew members (at a small cost to their XP). This makes the alien spiders event well worth doing as the downside is so much lower.
There are a few blue options for that event. Spoiled in case people don’t want to know.
Blue options appear if you have a boarding drone, anti-personnel drone or Bio beam equipped. Not all the options are equivalent in terms of rewards, but they are all positive.
The Adanced Edition is basically an expanded version. I’ll just start with it as there is no value in starting with the vanilla.
Advanced edition is not “advanced” in that it’s difficulty is changed. Basically it adds more unlickables and content to the vanilla version.
I made the mistake of launching this from the comfort of my bed, yesterday night at 9PM. I won’t do that again, because I closed it up before the big fight, at 1:30AM.
I do not know if it is the advanced edition, or finally saying “no!” to spiders— they showed up 2 or 3 times during this run!, but I have a full crew for the first time.
I found the vanilla version unlickable as it is :-|
Haha, I considered editing the spelling. But then again, if vanilla was unlickable, adding more toppings will not make it any more lickable, as you have pointed out. =)
Priority should be a second shield bubble first though. Go straight to the second tier and route power away from engines if you have to. Versus a ship with a dual laser just turn off engines completely and have the shields soak up all the hits.
Two shield bubbles makes you practically invincible in the first few sectors and you end up saving tons of scrap not having to make any hull repairs.
Spiders are no joke!
LOLOL
I’ve finally completed one of my personal FTL challenges. Defeat the game on Hard mode with all ships and types. The Stealth C was a nightmare to complete (which I just did this evening, go-go mantis boarding parties!).
I have two achievements to unlock (find the crystal sector with a rock ship, and kill 15 rock ships with the crystal ship) but those will be a lot easier than a hard victory with Stealth C.
