Faster Than Light

[frogbeastegg]

No thread for this? Doesn't look like it.

What is it? It's a ... well, you control a space ship and have to race through a randomly generated galaxy full of randomly generated events and strategic battles, staying one step ahead of the gigantic rebel fleet which is chasing you. When you die, you die. Game over. The game's short and designed to be replayed. Each game can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 90, with 90 being a game where you reach the end. There are loads of different ship types to unlock. It's perfect for the time-pressed gamer.

Battles place you in control of your ship's systems, and you need to manage energy levels and priorities, targeting orders, crew members, and boarding parties. It's fully pausable so there's no need for super-reflexes. You can target individual enemy sub-systems and they will target yours. If a system is critically damaged then it will shut down until it's repaired.

Away from battles, you need to manage resources, including fuel (1 unit per jump), missiles, and scrap (spend it to upgrade and repair your ship). Crew members gain experience at tasks when they perform them, and levelling them up will provide healthy boosts to your ship's performance. Your ship is also subject to a light RPG system. You cannot upgrade everything so you must pick and choose the areas which suit your play style. Want stronger shields? Or more drones? The ability to power more weapons at once? Stealth cloak? Stronger ancillary systems like a better med bay or fire-proof bulk heads?

It's available now on steam, GOG.com, and directly from the developer.



Early in my first run I ended up with my entire ship on fire thanks to a solar flare. As the ship filled with the scent of delicious flame-roast Mantis-engineer, I packed my 3 surviving crew members into the med bay and watched as they frantically beat out fires which kept springing up under their feet. Doomed! Then I recalled a post about vacuum putting out fires so I opened the whole ship aside from the med bay up. Saved! The door control was the fire's last casualty. Doomed! I sat there for several minutes waiting for them to die from eventual O2 starvation. Via accidental clickage, I realised that crew members could manually open/close doors. I sent one brave crewman out to fix the door control. He managed it, and crawled back into the med bay with his last shred of health. Doors closed! Saved! Still no oxygen supply. O2 in the med bay was now less than 15%. Doomed! I swarmed 2 crew members through the ship to the O2 machine. They fixed it just before they would have died. Saved!

I spent the next 30 minutes hopping around the galaxy with a hull made up of holes tied together with bits of string, frantically searching for somewhere to repair, before some inconsiderate type stuffed a missile up my tail pipe. In-between those two events I ran out of fuel twice, survived most of the encounters by pumping my shield stat to provide 3 shield bubbles so that nothing could damage the 1 HP I had left, ran out of no missiles, had to run away screaming from at least three encounters, got trapped in the rebel fleet once, discovered a derelict space station, freed slaves, got attacked by killer robots, nearly got smushed by asteroids, got lost in an entire system filled with nebula, got set on fire a second time, got boarded by rock-beings, and rescued a lone survivor from a space wreck.

In my second game I managed to set an enemy's weapons room on fire. My upgraded sensors permitted me to watch as all three AI crew members entered the room, knelt in the flames, and burned to a crisp trying to fix it. [evil laughter]

Most fun I've had all week. Especially the fire. Pyromaniacs may be right - everything may indeed be better with flames. Need to test the hypothesis more before I can provide a scientific conclusion.

[CountArach]

I was hoping someone here would review it... I may just be getting this after that read-through. Great to see that they are relatively short play-throughs, because that is what I really want.

[Monk]

Basically it's like Oregon Trail.

In space.

With real time tactical battles.

If that doesn't make you want to play it then god help you, for I don't know what will.

I've only had a chance to play it a few times but what I did was absolutely fantastic. It's one of those games where perma-death isn't only a risk, it's expected. The tutorial is quick, dirty and fantastic, but grasping the subtle nuances takes a few plays. I learned the hard way that this game is incredibly punishing and you're always wrestling with choices: juggling the need to survive the advancing rebels with finding scrap to upgrade your ship, missles to fire at the enemy and fuel so you don't get stranded.

My last game ended rather unceremoniously. I sped through the fourth sector quite easily and was feeling pretty good about myself, so instead of going to the fifth sector I decided to explore sector 4 a bit more. The rebels were WAY behind me so I had the time. Encountered an alien space station overrun with alien spiders so I tried to help out - lost my main engineer. Well.. no problem, I still had 3 crew. So when we came across a space station suffering from a fire and needing evacuation, naturally we jumped in to help. Weapon's specialist sacrificed himself to save the ship. Well.. crap.

I tried to backtrack to a store to get some fuel and encountered a pirate patrol in the middle of a huge ion storm. Reactor and sensors down to half, took two direct hits to the O2 scrubbers and was forced to try to run for it. Just as I was about to jump away: engines took a hit and went down...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That was the end of my little space adventure.

[Voigtkampf]

Lady frog, how about a real review with screenies and all?

[Fragony]

Sounds good

[Beskar]

I got last night based on Froggy's review and I like it. I have already had three play-through's where funnily enough, my first play-through of the game was actually the best, score-wise.

First attempt I was on a Kestrel called Scrubette. We went sector to sector, early on, Andres died to an count-arachnid attack on another ship leaving Secura and Froggy left to pilot the ship. Came by some really nice weapons which allowed them to deal really good damage and save the day, picking up crew members and supplies along the way. This started to go wrong when I tried to experiment with some alternative weapon layouts, causing the glass cannon ship simply to be the glass pea-shooter. Regardless, the ship managed to get up to round 1 with the Big-Bad(tm) making it fly off, but took serious damage and losing a couple of crew members. Patched up the ship and decided to airvent a couple of rooms to minimise risks. On the second attempt on Big-Bad(tm) they simply mass boarded me and my crew couldn't handle it and they fell, one by one, last person being Secura in the medbay before a rocket blew her up.

Through this attempt, I managed to unlock an Engi ship (I don't know how). So second play-through, I decided to play this, with the almighty crew of Tiaexz, Data and Number Six. With a brand new ship, it came with drones! (oh yes, I was a scrub and never used them on play-through one, got an achievement for it too) and an Ion cannon. Anyway the brand adventurers went off into the depths of space, killing a pirate ship and getting combat-drones mk. 2! So I went through a very simplistic system of firing ion cannon at their ship generators whilst my drone just rips them apart and this happened quickly and easily through a couple of sectors till I ended up fighting a pirate ship in a nebula, a super dangerous one too it appears. Anyway, I thought of it as a simple task, my ion cannon + drone so far has been opposed in combat, but then everything started to go wrong. The nebula severely crammed down all my systems, making the ship run on minimum, plus I think there was a solar flare affecting thing in the background dealing damage and setting fire to parts of my ship. "Alright, this battle will be heated..." the pirates boarded my ship so I had to send a couple of people to fight them off. Whilst distracted and unable to see in other rooms, the pirates single targeted my oxygen system. Now all my crew is in trouble. Unfortunately, I had no rock men but in short, my entire ship was on fire and it blew up.

After naming a character after me and failing terribly, I decided to go with pre-made names and blast off. I came across a defence drone early on and anti-personal drone. My weapons was 2 lots of ion cannons. This one went very smooth with Big-Bad(tm) ending with a torpedo up his jacksy, but it unlocked a new ship type for me, the Federation Cruiser which I will play with.

[Xiahou]

Yeah, I saw this over at GOG. After reading the description and looking at the screenshots, I bought it on a whim.... for $10, why not?

If you've ever wanted to play a game that would give you reason to say "Divert power to the shields!", this is it. It's such a simple game, but as you can tell by the stories above, it really plays on the imagination and is totally addicting.

Most fun I've had all week. Especially the fire. Pyromaniacs may be right - everything may indeed be better with flames. Need to test the hypothesis more before I can provide a scientific conclusion.

There's nothing so satisfying as setting an enemy ship alight- the time it buys you to act while their crew is distracting fighting the blaze.

Unfortunately, most of my experiences with fires seem to be on the receiving end. There's little more horrifying than fighting for your life against Mantis boarders only to have your engines catch fire and then have that fire spread to your life support system. Do you keep fighting and hope you can defeat the boarders before you run out of air? Do you risk pulling crew off the fight? You could open the airlocks, but then your crew will have to repair life support in a room with no oxygen- will they live long enough to finish the job? Crewmembers aren't easy to come by either... Meanwhile, I'm still fighting for my life in ship to ship combat with the Mantis pirates and having crew away from stations battling blazes and boarders leaves me at a distinct disadvantage...

[Ja'chyra]

So I gave in and bought it last night, 2 hours later the dog is cross legged and cross-eyed, sorry puppy.

Great game, very simple, basic graphics and very simple controls, GUI etc. On my first go I got to level (stage?) 5 where I died but did unlock the Engi ship, unfortunately I've never been able to get past this so some questions if that's ok?

- Do you explore sectors or just go stright for the exit?
- I'm finding it hard to get scrap and mods, this may well be tied into the above point.
- How fast do the enemy catch up when they enter the same sector?
- If you make it to the end can you start the next game with the same crew and ship fitting?

Please feel free to post any tips, I think this is definately a game for the laptop when I'm working away, does anyone know if it would work well on a tablet i.e. ipad or kindle tablet thingy?

[Beskar]

- Do you explore sectors or just go stright for the exit?

Random events occur randomly, which can give good boosts. I unlocked a secret crystal-man alien, then was set a task of finding a wormhole at the Rock homeworlds, I presume this was to unlock that mega ship. Unfortunately I never found it and the rebels caught up.

That was... "Save Damaged Statis Pod" "Help Zolton Scientists - Fix Pod for Reward" then quest to find wormhole so far.

- I'm finding it hard to get scrap and mods, this may well be tied into the above point.

Scrap you can get quite easy with a few kills under your belt, for everything else, it is really luck of the draw.

- If you make it to the end can you start the next game with the same crew and ship fitting?

Unfortunately there is no "New Game+" option.

[Chaotix]

Soooooo difficult.

Been playing since yesterday and I can't even get close to beating it. At one point I rushed to sector 6 but the random enemies completely outclassed my ship. I'm trying the "grind each sector until you have to leave" method now... usually I do fine until I hit an asteroid belt or a rebel ship with triple shields and drones. Sometimes just an unlucky hull breach or boarding party is all it takes to sink a ship.

EDIT: what do you all find the best strategies/items to be? Usually I go straight for blast-shield doors and double shields at the beginning, but I've also got a random-dropped heavy laser to complement my burst laser and that worked wonders. If you're lucky enough to get them, Mantis/Rock crew members + Crew Teleporter is devastating... just don't use it on an automated ship! They are also good in general for fighting off boarding parties, and Rocks are nearly essential if you want to reliably put out fires mid-battle without venting the airlock. Haven't found a reliable way to upgrade in a balanced way without becoming too weak to defend or fight back successfully... it really seems like you need to pick one or the other.

[Monk]

EDIT: what do you all find the best strategies/items to be?

Ion cannons targeting enemy weapons is essentially a free ride for the first 4 sectors of the game. Yeah, they do no hull damage, but that's what attack drones are for! While your drones pick at the enemy, they are frozen with useless weapons thanks to your continued ion assault.

In the first 4 levels the game is highly unlikely to throw something at you that you cannot simply Ion into nothing... but by sector 5 you better watch out. Enemy shield levels are now powerful enough to completely block your ions (assuming you only have one cannon) so you better have built up the rest of your weapons systems!

[Xiahou]

Soooooo difficult.

You know, I've thought about playing it on easy to see if I could play thru to the end... But after thinking about it, I decided it's the journey that makes this game fun- not the destination. Some of my most memorable moments from the game have been during battles that I ultimately lost.

I'm sure my strategies aren't the best, but when flying the Kestrel, I usually go for the sensor upgrade first then following up with upgrading to another shield bubble. I usually get the blast doors upgrade as well. From there, I kind of play it as my circumstances dictate. Personally, I don't care for missile weapons- the fact that you can run out of them and have to use precious scrap to get more is a real turn off for me. On my current playthru I got a lucky quest reward- a Hull Beam. They're just devastating to ships if you knock their shields down prior to firing it. I use my blasters to knock down the shields and follow immediately by raking the beam across their ship. I can usually hit 3 rooms with it, allowing me to damage 3 separate systems, or if I target empty compartments, the beam does double damage.

Rock crew members are great for fire suppression and their extra life makes them useful for combat. Engi repair twice as fast and take half combat damage. But it's the fragile Zoltan that really intrigue me- they add a power bar to any system they man. Last night I unlocked the playable Zoltan cruiser- the Adjudicator. I look forward to trying it out on one of my next play thrus. The Zoltan Shield augmentation should be very helpful.

[Greyblades]

I think I'm in love with the engies, thier quick repair makes them a dream team when it comes to hull breaches and low oxygen situations, and by lord do they level up quick.

[Chaotix]

Got all the way to Sector 8 last night.

I had a crew member of every race except Slug, triple shields and a Halberd Beam in addition to the starting weapons. Avoid up to like 40% due to engine upgrades. No drones though. Basically my ship was indestructible if I played it right, and I could just outlast the other ship. Even got the Rock Armor upgrade (and the Rock Ship in my hangar).

The problem? Couldn't put a dent in the Rebel Flagship. That thing is tough, and powerful weapons are absolutely necessary if you want to win. It couldn't kill me either, but I ran out of time trying to scrounge up enough scrap to buy something strong enough to take it down.

[Ja'chyra]

Just won a game, had 7 crew at the end, 2 lasers, 1 breach missile and 2 drones with one of those a class 2 anti ship drone. I upgraded the shields to max as well as the doors, sensors and drone control. Once I got to that state the rest was simple, the trick:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Explore as much as possible without getting caught, especially the first few levels.

[naut]

It's so hard. So, unforgiving. I managed to get to the final stage once. I was destroyed by a horde of drones. =(

Love the drone focused Engi ship. Ion blast everything and let the let the little buggers do the job for you.

[CountArach]

This game is just incredible.

In my first game (on easy) I got up to the Rebel Flagship but I didn't have anywhere near the weapons I needed to even touch the thing and my only hope was to teleport a character on board to try to take down their oxygen. That failed and so it was just a matter of waiting while my systems went offline and my ship was destroyed.

[CountArach]

Okay so just had to share this moment...

I encountered some border patrol agents in a Zoltan sector and things escalated to a fight, which would normally be okay except that they landed three crew members onto my ship. I only had three at the time and 2 of them were Engi with their 50% combat penalty. They landed in my air lock and in the room next to it so I had the bright idea of openning my air lock and trying to destroy them through a lack of oxygen. I openned up a few doors and followed their path, which as it happened took them to my oxygen supply centre. They destroyed that then came after my shields, where I had all three of my crew ready to fight them. The lack of oxygen had brought them all down to about 60% health and thanks to the fact that the Engi ship comes equipped with auto-healing in all rooms my guys won. The problem was now that I was down to about 30% oxygen on ship, and had to move through some 0% oxygen rooms to get to my oxygen supply so that I could repair it. I also didn't have time to heal because then my guys would have died. I sent one out to fix it but he was too injured from the fight so he didn't get very far before he was down to about 10% health, so I moved him into a 'safe' room that still had some oxygen. Then I rushed both my human and my Engi to the oxygen room. The Engi one died and only my human pilot survived with about 10% health remaining. The oxygen was so low that it was hurting them, but the system came online just in time to help give them enough air to survive.

So basically from now on I'm going to consider getting air lock doors, which would have made my plan work much better. I also bought a system repair droid son afterwards.

[naut]

Okay so just had to share this moment...

I encountered some border patrol agents in a Zoltan sector and things escalated to a fight, which would normally be okay except that they landed three crew members onto my ship. I only had three at the time and 2 of them were Engi with their 50% combat penalty. They landed in my air lock and in the room next to it so I had the bright idea of openning my air lock and trying to destroy them through a lack of oxygen. I openned up a few doors and followed their path, which as it happened took them to my oxygen supply centre. They destroyed that then came after my shields, where I had all three of my crew ready to fight them. The lack of oxygen had brought them all down to about 60% health and thanks to the fact that the Engi ship comes equipped with auto-healing in all rooms my guys won. The problem was now that I was down to about 30% oxygen on ship, and had to move through some 0% oxygen rooms to get to my oxygen supply so that I could repair it. I also didn't have time to heal because then my guys would have died. I sent one out to fix it but he was too injured from the fight so he didn't get very far before he was down to about 10% health, so I moved him into a 'safe' room that still had some oxygen. Then I rushed both my human and my Engi to the oxygen room. The Engi one died and only my human pilot survived with about 10% health remaining. The oxygen was so low that it was hurting them, but the system came online just in time to help give them enough air to survive.

So basically from now on I'm going to consider getting air lock doors, which would have made my plan work much better. I also bought a system repair droid son afterwards.

There's an achievement for doing the same to an enemy, beat them via suffocation.

[Voigtkampf]

Review by our fair Lady Froggy.

[Sir Moody]

Well I was in on the Kickstarter for this game so I have been playing for a while - even then I have only beaten it twice...

If you want to beat the Flagship you basically have 2 main avenues:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Teleporters and Missiles/Bombs - or better still both!

The Flagship is a dangerous opponent due to its shields and missile weapon - if you don't have any missiles/bombs or a teleporter to bypass the shields and destroy its missile launcher you will be demolished very quickly - since the weapons are self contained once they are out and the crew inside dead the fights get a lot easier

Stage one is the easiest stage if you have enough Missiles/Bombs - simply ignore the shields and target their weapons.

Stage two is the toughest - if you have a cloaking device make sure you use it when the flagship activates its power-surge since you will be quickly flooded by drones - as before you need to get the missile weapon down fast - and the Ion cannon should also be a high priority or beam drones will eat you alive...

Stage three is slightly harder than the first but by now you should have killed most the crew and since it only has 2 weapons left it is a lot easier to "tank" the damage output - simply target the weapons and then you only have to tank the occasional "super weapon" attack

surviving the encounter requires at least 3 shields and a strong crew

while I have heard you can do it without missiles but I really don't see how - you really need at least one launcher to take out the weapons fast or bad things happen very fast... during stage 2 you really need at least one mantis or rock (or have the Engi healing subsystem) as well since a boarding drone is generally one of the flagships weapons of choice... of course level 3 doors can help with that

my favourite ship for the fight is the Federation Cruiser... unfortunately to unlock it you need to first beat the flagship

I am still trying to unlock the Slug Cruiser, Mantis cruiser and Crystal cruiser - they are so difficult to unlock