David Sanders
David SandersI originally purchased Subset Games’ FTL: Faster Than Light in early 2013, soon after its release in September 2012. Since then, it has easily earned its place on my list of my favorite “chill” indie games. By that, I mean FTL is a game which I feel allows me to put on some music or a podcast to listen to in the background while I just go with whatever “flow” the game randomly generates for me.
I don’t mean to say FTL is “chill” enough to where its gameplay never gets hectic or I never find myself worrying about my progress, however. That kind of thing happens quite frequently in my experience. That’s part of the reason I decided to review it. I feel that its gameplay strikes a perfect balance between enjoyable, yet potentially catastrophically hectic gameplay. Let me attempt to explain why.
As I mentioned earlier, the entirety of the content you experience throughout every run of FTL’s gameplay is randomly generated. That means if the game’s random generation system decides it wants to put you on an emotional roller coaster during any particular run through its content, it will most assuredly do so. Before I get into that, allow me to backtrack a bit. I’ll begin by providing you with what little plot information you’re given at the start of each run.
Essentially, your spaceship and its crew are part of a presumably governmental organization known simply as “The Federation,” which asks that you carry data vital to the remainder of the Federation’s fleet. You must safely escort whatever data you carry to its destination before the rebels (who oppose the Federation) are able to catch up to you and forcibly prevent you from accomplishing your goal.
To do this, you’ll need to travel through several various randomly-generated sectors of space using your ship’s FTL drive. When in a sector of any type, your main goal is to eventually reach a beacon marked “EXIT,” which will allow you to leave your current sector and jump to a new one. However, I say “eventually” because it’s usually somewhat inadvisable to simply make a beeline for the exit beacon in order to leave each sector more quickly.
Although it isn’t necessarily wise to remain in a given sector for very long either; because of the rebels in hot pursuit of you, especially near the sector’s entry point. You’re encouraged to take as much time as you can before the rebels get uncomfortably close to explore your surroundings before leaving a sector.
There are various reasons you might want to do this. To name two of many examples, sectors might contain such things as distress beacons or beacons identifying themselves as stores. Allow me to elaborate a bit on both of these aforementioned examples.
You can visit distress beacons in an attempt to provide various forms of aid to whomever is broadcasting a given distress beacon. For example, you might need to destroy a pirate ship that’s trying to raid a refueling station controlled by one of the game’s various nonhuman space-faring races.
Distress beacons will typically reward you somehow for your actions, such as by providing you with fuel, currency, or possibly even a new crew member or two. That is assuming, of course, that whomever is broadcasting a distress beacon actually needs help and isn’t just orchestrating a trap.
Pirates and rebel ships pull this trick relatively often. Distress beacons can be a bit of a gamble because of things like that, but visiting them is often still worthwhile if you’re adequately prepared for a fight.
Stores, on the other hand, are usually much less of a gamble. Visiting them is often quite worthwhile provided you have enough currency (known as “scrap”) to make any purchases. Most stores have some quantities of useful items for sale, such as fuel or missiles if you happen to have weapons that use them.
In addition to these supplies, stores typically offer either new weapons, drones, or crew members for your ship. Most, if not all stores will also repair your ship’s hull for a price.
Outside of navigating through various sectors and visiting distress beacons or stores, you’ll likely spend a significant portion of your time in combat with rebels, pirates, or anyone else who thinks they can challenge you. Your starting ship is initially equipped with a burst laser weapon and a missile launcher of some description.
As I alluded to earlier, you can swap one or both of these out (or add a few more weapons to your ship’s arsenal) at any store which sells weapons. Until you’ve accumulated the scrap for a purchase like that, however, these weapons should serve you well enough provided you don’t run out of missiles at an inopportune time.
When initiating combat, you must first charge your weapons before they can fire. The speed at which this takes place, as far as I can tell, is mostly based on the weapon type and whether or not the weapon control room on your ship is both in full working order and manned by a crew member.
I consider it crucial to recruit at least two or three new crew members in addition to your starting crew as soon as the opportunity arises. That way, you can keep as many system rooms on your ship manned as possible. It seems most beneficial to have a crew member stationed in at least the rooms aboard your ship which control vital combat systems such as weapons, engines, shields, and the helm of the ship itself.
When all these rooms are manned, you’ll receive several combat benefits. Namely, your weapons and shields will charge faster, you’ll have an increased chance to evade enemy attacks, and if necessary, you can jump away from a fight via your ship’s FTL drive provided you survive until it finishes charging.
A moment ago, I alluded to the fact that your ship’s weapon control room needs to be in full working order during combat. To elaborate, systems aboard can be damaged by enemy attacks. This means any damaged system is in need of repair before it can function at anywhere near its normal levels.
Thankfully, any member of your crew can repair any system given enough time, though time may not be on your side during a particularly intense firefight. This is another reason I highly recommend having a few extra crew members aboard your ship. Even if they’re not manning an important room on the ship, they can serve as extra pairs of hands to repair damaged systems, patch up hull breaches, or extinguish fires.
Although systems aboard your ship can be damaged and taken offline by enemy attacks, it’s important to keep in mind that you can also damage and/or disable systems on enemy ships. While you usually can’t see the crew inside an enemy ship, you can see which systems their ship has, where each system’s control room is located, and the level of damage a system has sustained.
Thus, you can aim your attacks to disable your enemy’s important systems and decrease their ability to fight back. For example, even slightly damaging an enemy’s shields or weapon systems essentially leaves them incapable of returning fire or avoiding your attacks until their crew can repair the damage.
This gives you time to coordinate your attacks on vital systems the enemy is less likely to have well-protected, such as their oxygen generator. Taking out an enemy’s oxygen generator is, in my opinion, an underhanded yet exceptionally useful strategy.
Some crews in FTL lose the will to fight rather quickly if their ship isn’t constantly generating oxygen or is otherwise heavily damaged. Because of this, some enemies will offer you a deal in which they give you some portion of their supplies or crew in exchange for you allowing them to live.
You have the ability to reject any surrender offer and finish off the enemy ship if you so desire; however, some enemies make very generous offers in this context. That’s why I think it’s important to at least momentarily consider taking whatever the enemy might be offering you.
I’d like to elaborate further upon what I refer to as my “love/hate” relationship with FTL’s random generation system. As I’ve mentioned throughout this review, the vast majority of content you can experience within FTL is randomly-generated.
There’s quite a bit more of this content if you’ve got the Advanced Edition content enabled. I stated earlier that the random aspects of FTL have no qualms about putting you on an emotional roller coaster seemingly at will, and I most assuredly meant that.
To attempt to illustrate what I’m talking about, I’ll begin by saying it’s entirely possible that you’ll have an outstanding run through FTL if the RNG system wills it. Suppose for the sake of argument that you manage to beat the rebels to your destination, crush every enemy in your way, outfit your starting ship with a new arsenal, and maybe even unlock a new playable ship or two along the way.
A run like this, I assume, provokes an intense feeling of elation and confidence in your skill as a Federation pilot. I say I assume that happens after a successful run because I’ve never experienced anything like that over the course of the cumulative twenty-two hours I’ve spent playing FTL.
Granted, I have had great runs starting out, only for RNG to eventually decide it had grown tired of my complacency and put me through a rather hectic fight or two just to keep things interesting. Although runs like these are annoying and potentially disheartening if you lose, the game attempts to assure players that “losing is part of the fun.”
While that advice may be perceived as a bit tongue-in-cheek, and might sting a little after a particularly unfortunate run, I actually agree with that sentiment. Losing can truly be part of the fun because it allows you to start new runs with at least some degree of optimism in the idea that the next run will be better.
That’s how FTL can prove addicting for some players: you know it’s possible to beat the RNG system at its own game, and you strive to keep playing and keep improving because of that.
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🔥1.1 KFTL: Faster Than Light
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Pros
- Random Generation Creates Constant New Experiences
- Gameplay Isn't Too Demanding
- Gameplay Can Be Addicting in a Positive Way
Cons
- Random Generation Can Prove Frustrating
