Let's Play FTL: Faster Than Light!

I'm excited about sweet alien technology, yo.

Also, we've kinda run out of reasonable Hitchchikers names for humans, but Dirk might suffice.

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Clearly we haven't run out until someone is named Slartibartfast (wow my phone auto-completed that, what an age we live in).

Great LP so far!

I'm with dtsund on this one. Ion bombs are freaking amazing. They cost a missile but they go through all shields and defense drones and deal a whopping four ion damage for the low price of one energy bar.

four ion damage is enough to oneshot the advanced zoltan shields that willcoon will inevitably run in to

ZOLTAN

Ahem. Sorry. I got excited.

Yes yes Zoltan is the way to go obviously, get some energy dudes in this ship yo

Thanks!

Yes indeed. The only problem with attack drones is you're rarely in a situation where you'll want to just indiscriminately smash stuff AND you actually have attack drones. But when the stars align? It's a blast.

Yeah, it has quite some character. The Engi ships -



- are just hacked-together piles of whatever, without any regard for (human) aesthetics or aerodynamics. And of course, that's because they're built by space robots who don't care about those things, because it's a space ship.

Awesome! Glad to hear they're still active. Though it looks like the first two steps and the overall sector-layout gamble involved in getting theCrystal Ship are going to be just as arbitrary as ever. Ah well!

Okay, okay, you got me. I was kinda fibbing. I imagined I wouldn't have to use it for a while, but I fully expect to have fun with it before too long. And I imagine it'll be extremely useful in the final sector.

I haven't gotten one in a long time, but I know they're serious business. the thing is, we've wound up with a pretty powerful laser array, so I can already cripple early-game ships pretty easily, and blast through zoltan shields in half the time. But I hear you, I'll put it to some use!

Maybe I'll suffocate a ship with it once I've upgraded basic defensive systems a bit.

Man, energy dudes are the best. Probably going to kick out some crewmembers.

I likely won't be able to update for a few days, so here's a consolation prize:

Haha yes, thank you. Zoltan the Space Emperor (and punter on the side)!

After sitting on the fence when FTL first came out, this LP convinced me to play it. It's a lot easier to understand the gameplay.

Also another vote for the Zoltan homeworld.

Intermission:

So, I'm afraid I forgot to pack my save file with me when I left for a bit of a journey. I should be back sometime next week, and able to continue our quest.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd link to some stuff about the game's sweet, award-adjacent soundtrack by Ben Prunty!

Normally, you've got sector-specific music that comes in two flavors: "Explore" and "Battle" (self explanatory). There are also some sweet bonus tracks, such as "BONUS Federation", a (surprise) theme song for the federation that shares some DNA with the MilkyWay tracks.

Mr. Benm'n has also provided a glimpse at his workstation if you're into audio stuff, but I can't really comment on in intelligently.

So listen to some sweet tunes, and I'll get this back up and running as soon as I've got my save file once more!

also here is some fanfiction to tide you over

SECTOR 4 - ZOLTAN HOMEWORLDS

Hey folks, I'm back! Sorry for the delay and lame stalling attempts. Time to traverse the homelands of the mysterious Zoltan, beings of pure energy with remarkable football ability.

Glad to hear it!

Before we continue, I've added for convenience a table of contents to the first post of the thread, as well as sector headings on the appropriate posts.

Anyway: onward!





- Zoltan (Explore) -

I'm eager to meet some of these strange creatures, and possibly enslave hire a few of them to power our engines serve as valued, equal members of the crew.





- Zoltan (Battle) -

Well, that's unfortunate.



Our fearless crew isn't intimidated by these mantis, and get right down to punching / acid-spitting them to death. We outclass them completely.

But wait - my shields and engines are pretty sucky for this point in the game. Their burst laser and missile could do some serious damage. Sure, my lasers will take out their weapon system pretty soon, but they're sure to get off a volley of shots before that, which could end up in an unfortunate place. Sure, I could activate my defense drone, but it'll cost a drone part (of which I have only a few) and won't do anything about the lasers. What to do?



Bam.

The cloaking device (powered, for now, by deactivating life support) bumps our evasion up to 80% for a few crucial seconds. As long as we can take out an enemy weapon system with one volley, we won't have to worry about our defenses for quite some time. As an added bonus, it prevents their weapons from charging while we're cloaked.



Arthur and Trillian kill the borg who's recently been promoted from first mate to captain of the mantis ship, while we blast the weapons system.



"There are no more life-signs remaining on the ship." Any space captain's favorite phrase.



There's a pair of stores by that nebula beacon, but I should probably screw around a bit more before hitting them.



Oh, those sassy rebels.



Same plan as usual - Arthur and Trillian kill the crew while I pick off the weapon system with lasers. That giant beam weapon they have makes me a bit nervous, but it'll charge slowly and I can delay it a bit more with the cloak, so hopefully it won't have a chance to fire.



It doesn't!



Matt jumps over to help out the boarding team. Things aren't going well for the rebels! Though I shouldn't stick around in the burning weapons room for too long.



Almost done, but I don't want Arthur or Trillian biting the dust while the teleporter's still cooling down. So:

When you tell a crewmember to enter a room, they target a specific spot in that room - in front of the console if it's on your ship and the room has an uncrewed system, otherwise top left, filling in the rest of the room as necessary if occupied. This positioning ignores enemies entirely - they don't block you, and can occupy the same position as your own crewmembers. If a crewmember and an enemy are on the same position in the room, they will only attack each other. If someone is on a space unoccupied by opponents, they'll attack each enemy in the room in turn. Crew don't do much unless they've reached their target spot in the room - they won't attack or be targeted by the teleporter, though they can still be attacked.

For an example of how this can be used - suppose, as often happens, you have two crewmembers attacking a single enemy crew, who will be replaced by backup after they die. One of your crew will be taking all the attacks, assuming you're in a two-person room. If they get low on health, you can tell them both to leave, then tell them to enter the room again, the healthy one first. This will make them switch positions (they won't actually have to go anywhere). This sort of micromanagement isn't crucial, usually, but it's useful to keep in mind.

Point is, my plan is to switch folks around so Matt can take some hits for the others.



But, as it turns out, I'm facing two extremely-wounded enemies, positioned in such a way that I can't protect both Arthur and Trillian. It's not an issue, though, because Matt can kill them on his own.



They smash the engine to entertain themselves while he's executing the rebels, and Trillian levels up her murder skill. Huzzah!





Sweet, free stuff! This is a nice cache. We even get a free augment - Stealth Weapons. Normally, firing your weapons while cloaked makes you uncloaked, but this augment lets you stay invisible. This isn't a big deal, but it's nice, particularly if we upgrade the cloak (an upgraded cloak lasts longer but recharges at the same rate after it deactivates).

There IS the possibility that this augment could be a problem - if you want to disable the cloak early. The cooldown for the cloak stays the same, so deactivating it right after it blocks a volley of shots lets you reactivate it faster, especially if it's upgraded. Again, this isn't going to come up much, and you can just put more or less energy into the system to control how long it lasts.

Enough talk, let's go shopping!





Whoops. Looks like this store was so boring I didn't even get a screenshot of it.







I got this one, but it's just as dull. Some weapons and drones we don't need, costing scrap I have better uses for. I could sell the stealth weapons augment, but I decide arbitrarily to hold on to it for now.

Huh, an AI ship hiding in the nebula. These seem to have a tendency towards somewhat unusual setups - high evasion, extra or no shields, plenty of weapons, that sort of thing. This one doesn't seem to have much to worry about if my cloak + destroy weapons plan works out. Unfortunately, as an AI ship, it doesn't have air, so my boarding team will have to sit this one out.



hold their breath.



Here's a fun fact I may have mentioned - the cooldown for a level 2 teleporter is shorter than the length of time it takes average-health (100 hit point) species to die in a vacuum.



By a very small margin.

Sometimes, this is a very handy technique, allowing you to disable multiple systems on the AI ship more quickly than can be done with weapons alone. It isn't all that useful in this fight, but the team doesn't mind braving a little vacuum to demonstrate the idea.



Did you miss these ship-destruction shots? We're not going to be getting many, due to the new murder-first policy we have in place.



Okay, time to quit hoarding all that scrap and bump up our defenses a bit.



I buy another layer of shields, another 5% evasion, and enough reactor energy to power that, the cloak, AND the air supply simultaneously.





Still no Zoltan here. The Rockmans give me an excuse to kill them and take the nicest parts of their ship.



There are a few wrinkles in the kill-em-all plan here. First, it's a Rock ship. Rock people are giant, lumbering behemoths, as good at murdering as mantis, in their own way. They deal normal damage and walk slowly, but have 150 hp and are immune to fire. Also, these particular guys have a medbay. Wounded enemies will retreat there to heal, and I don't even want to think about fighting in one.



There one goes now. So...





We'll blast it once we know it's full of wounded. Space is cruel.

Oh, also they're trying to surrender. That's just like calling us cowards!



The remaining crew member doesn't even bother trying to retreat to the disabled medbay, and we get a much better reward for killing him.





These guys are pretty twitchy. Oh well, keep moving.





Intriguing! What do you think - should we attack the "peace envoy" or not?

Of course, just like kidnapping ponies, it's a bad idea to attack the peace envoy. This is, like, a star trek episode or something. Let's hear them out.



HEYYY!!



Okay, so we've been characterized as unphilosophical brutes, but at least we got a quest beacon out of it.



Hm, the beacon's a little far afield, but we should be able to jump to the one above it and make our way to the exit before the rebels reach us. Okay, let's go get some undeserved rewards!



Damn! It was a trap!

All this senseless violence, it makes me sick.

I'm going to try to talk to them, instead of sending over the goons to jettison their intestines from the nearest airlock.



Let's give peace a chance.

WHAT?! A TRICK?!



As a reward for trying to make peace with the rebels, we get scrap to upgrade our murdership and a big ol' laser to slaughter rebels with. Thanks, space-Ghandi!

If I hadn't already unlocked it, this is when we would unlock the Zoltan Cruiser for our hangar. It's really quite neat, but more on that later.

As an aside, if we tell the rebels they're causing millions of deaths and dividing the galaxy, they say:

A little bombastic, but it's a rare moment of revelation about the policy differences between the federation and rebels.

So anyway, now that we've tricked those high-and-mighty peaceniks into helping us slaughter anyone who stands in our way - WHO'S CRUDE AND INEFFECTIVE NOW?! - it's time to head for the exit beacon before the rebel fleet catches up.



Uh.

Uh oh.

Okay, I misjudged this, and it looks like we'll have to head back the way we came.

Nothing happens at a beacon we've already cleared, so...



Heck. If we go north, they'll catch us immediately. We might be able to squeak by if we head east instead, but it doesn't look like it. Hold on tight, everyone.



This beacon looks pleasant enough, though. And we always have time to help out with science!



"Small cakes made from stiff dough"! Those Zoltan are lovely.

Also, we just received cakes for participating in experiments. Make of that what you will.



Back to the matter at hand. We're going to run into the fleet.

Let's take a moment before diving in:



We have plenty of scrap, so I buy another layer of shields and reactor energy to power them.

Here they are.



And battle is joined. When the rebels catch up to you, beacon events are replaced with fights against out-of-depth opponents.



My away team is going to stick around on the ship to deal with the lone boarder they've sent over. Note that you can see my medi-bot dispersal system healing the crew as they fight!

I'm not planning to kill the enemy crew on this one. I don't want to screw around with a ship with burst lasers and multiple missiles as well as a medbay. Besides, the rewards for this battle are set, whether or not I kill the crew or blast the ship.



We're sticking with the cloak / laser strategy for now, and we'll see where we stand after the first volley.



Okay, this is good! They're down to just the burst laser, and that isn't enough to get through our newly-upgraded shields.



We just need to keep up the pressure, gradually whittling them down while preventing them from repairing the weapon system.



Once it goes down completely, I refocus on the shield system to improve my damage output.



Soon enough...





YESSS!!



As I mentioned earlier, the rewards are set - we only get enough fuel for a single jump. This prevents a particularly powerful ship from hopping around an occupied sector and farming the rebel fleet.

Anyhoo, let's get out of here. The exit beacon is just a jump away!



Oh. Right.

Okay, I goofed! Earlier, I should have jumped into the rebel-occupied nebula beacon, which would have hopefully delayed them long enough that I'd only have to fight them once. As it is, they'll reach the exit beacon before me.

Nothing for it but to keep going.



This battle looks pretty similar, if a bit tamer. Same tactics apply.

You rebels don't scare me. Bring it on.













PCHWWW BOOOM PHARGHR







Okay, time to get out of here!

We have two options: we could head for a Rebel Controlled Sector, or the Slug Home Nebula.

The Rebel Controlled Sector isn't as dire as you might expect, but it is full of hostile encounters with rebel ships. The Slug Home Nebula is a dark, mysterious nebula populated by a mercenary race of psychic slugs.

Which way should we go?

Hey look it's everyone's favorite hedonistic backstabbers! Set a course for the Slug home nebula!

Also unless they patched it AGAIN the Ion Blast II is/was the best ion gun in the game which does 1 ion damage for basically no charge time at all. It used to be the engi ship's starting gun besides its missile launcher till it got nerfed.

We can see rebels later, let's go visit the Slug home nebula.

Slugs!

Slugs since you get two options for sector 6 instead of one.

Slugs! Hopefully you'll at least get a new crewmember there, since no energy beins came aboard

Slugs!

#1 rule of FTL: go to the homeworld sector.

Slug!

I wonder if we can persuade a psychic slug to join us on our career of exploration, plunder and total imperial domination. Yup, that possibility is definitely worth a shot.

Slugs it is!

SECTOR 5 - SLUG HOME NEBULA

Unfortunately, last sector we didn't run into much cool energy-being stuff. Don't worry, though, I've got a feeling there's plenty going on in the Slug Nebula.

So let's leave the rebel fleet to their own devices for now, and depart into the darkest, cloudiest sector there is.







- Deepspace (Explore) -

The vogons slugs are a race of telepathic, mercenary hedonists, known for shady dealings, sneak attacks, and skulking around in nebulas. They're also the only race that is strictly superior to humans. They have some useful capabilities that we're bound to see before long. They also have some creepy, desolate music in their sector.



I think there are a few possible events here that will reward us for having an upgraded medbay, and there aren't any other critical upgrades we need quite yet, so why not. The upgraded medbay is pretty straightforward: it heals crew at a swifter rate. I don't think it affects the medi-bots we have dispersed through the rest of the ship, unfortunately.



As you might expect, there's tons of nebula here. It will slow the rebels down, but not as much as nebula in regular sectors.

Remember, nebula blocks our sensors, so we can't see unoccupied rooms in our own ship (upgraded sensors that allow us to see rooms in enemy ships will also be deactivated). Slugs are telepathic, so they often don't even bother with sensor systems in the first place, and ostensibly have an advantage in this terrain.



- Deepspace (Battle) -

So of course we run into a mantis ship, what else.



We get down to business. Oddly enough, the crew seems to consist of an engi and a zoltan. Engi do half damage, and zoltan have only 70 hp, so they don't pose much of a threat.



They do have a medbay, though, so I'll activate our defense drone so we don't have to worry about their weapons and can focus fire on the wounded trying to heal themselves.



They want to surrender, but I could probably just buy the extra fuel they're offering with the scrap I'll get from killing them. The invisible hand of the market demands that they die. Don't blame me, blame yourself or Adam Smith.







Odd. For some reason, we're still in a nebula.





A test of our alertness! Were you paying attention? There isn't any way to go back to the previous text box, so if you weren't then you'll have to guess.

Okay, that's actually a lie. There are two possible correct answers - seven or eleven - and there's a small difference in the text depending on what the right answer is. If it says "As you drift closer, you're contacted...", the answer is seven. If it says "As you drift closer you're contacted...", the answer is eleven. Once again, the clever tricks of the other races of the galaxy are no match for human cheating!



Our reward for a correct answer is - CY Heng the slug! That's all eight crew slots filled. Slugs are basically exactly like humans, with a few bonuses. The first of these we can see right away:



Normally, a crewmember grants vision into whatever room they're in, regardless of your sensors. A slug, however, grants vision into that room and all adjacent rooms. Not bad, when you're stuck in a nebula. We'll see the other major telepathic power they have pretty soon.





Nothing, oh well.

To be honest, that wasn't much as clever ruses go.



They have an interesting array of weapons - a basic beam and two ion guns, one of which is, well:

Basically it's an ion gun that fires every 4 seconds. Not bad! So their plan is to disable our shields and sweep that beam across our vulnerables. Not on my watch.

The real thing to look at here is CY Heng's other power - we can now see where enemies are on their ship (as red dots). This is pretty useful - it'll give us a rough estimate of their strength immediately, and let us see what they're repairing or if they're healing or whatever. Some of that we could figure out by watching doors opening and closing, but this is much more convenient. It's particularly useful for targeting weapons at enemy crew.







Iiiiinteresting. I know I've been down on accepting surrender, but this could be profitable. We'll let them live and see if they have something interesting.



OHOHO. I've got a difficult decision to make now! We could seize the experimental slug weapon, or hold out for more...

The anti-bio beam is very cool. It works like any other beam weapon - you target a line across the enemy ship, it can't miss, and is blocked by any shields - but it only deals damage to crew. Two hits will kill most species. As I've stressed, killing crew is very useful. Getting an anti-bio beam early on can provide an alternative to the old-fashioned method of beaming rabid space bugs onto enemy ships.

However, I'm going to go with option number two.



Because this way we can find a new prototype cruiser.

We can't do anything about it until next sector, apparently, so forget about that for now.





Yet another mantis ship! It's about time for me to make another bad decision, so let's try something different for this fight.



They have a heavy laser, a strong missile, and a teleporter. I redirect power to the defense drone, the medbay, and our ion bomb. They're going to send some boarders over, but our battle-hardened away team can stay here and sort them out with the aid of our medi-bot dispersal system. Meanwhile, our defenses are pretty solid, so we can take our time with step two.





And the ion bomb is charged! A quick refresher - bombs teleport onto enemy ships directly, bypassing shields and defense drones but not evasion. The ion bomb deals four ion damage to whatever system you target, taking it offline or greatly weakening it for a long time.



Naturally, I target life support.

You can't repair ion damage, you just have to wait it out. So now their oxygen percentage is ticking down gradually towards zero.

I have better options available to me, and ones that won't waste missiles and drone parts, but what's the fun in that? Besides, I have plenty of missiles.



This is taking a while, though. I ion the shields and blast the O2 system with the lasers to help out.



But the ion bomb misses, which lets them recharge their oxygen, and one of their missile slips through my defenses. Screw it, let's go back to the stone age.





Sorry guys, maybe another time. But don't worry, we'll put that ion bomb to proper use sooner or later.







...Hmm. Besides the usual stuff, we've got some neat drones and a few potential new recruits. All I'm really interested in is that Zoltan, Tomas. But we've only got room for eight crew members on the Heart of Gold...



So I shove Matt out the airlock. Sorry, Matt.



Tomas is a more than worthy replacement for that loser!



I put him on the shields, freeing up Zaphod. Don't worry, though, Zaphod, you're not quite as disposable as Matt was. You've just been "promoted" to the secondary away team, what are you complaining about?

Here's the skinny on Zoltans. They're like humans in most ways, but with only 70 hp instead of 100. However, they also grant one free energy to the system in whatever room they're standing in! Eventually we'll run out of reactor power, so these guys are very useful for helping us keep things running. They're good on engines or shields, which you'll almost always want to have on at some level, but you can also just cram them in if you don't need them actually crewing anything - just standing around in the room is enough to power stuff.

So you can see why I chucked that other guy off the ship.

Frustrated at not having enough cash on hand, our valiant crew lashes out at the weapons dealer.



They've got an even more impressive array of lasers than we do! Those look like Burst Laser Mark IIIs, which shoot 5-laser bursts. I'm almost jealous.



But in the end, they can't touch this.





More mantis?!



Arthur levels up! He's pretty much unstoppable at this point. Both Arthur and Trillian have maxed out their fighting skill and are now doing +20% damage.



Another foe disposed of.

We're very strong at this point, and we're only going to get more formidable.





This slug ship volunteers to demonstrate one of the trademarks of the slugs - disabling key ship systems before attacking. Some just go ahead and do it, this one is polite enough to offer us a choice and a chance to bribe them.

I go with oxygen. The crew can suck it up. I'll turn on the med bay if things get hairy.







Their clever ploy doesn't end up inconveniencing us much. Our two away teams take care of their crew, and oxygen comes back on.







More drones, and a pair of augments. The Re-Loader decreases weapon recharge time, which isn't bad. The drone recovery arm, however, gives us back one drone part for every drone of ours that survives a fight. That's really handy, and basically makes that defense drone of ours free. So I'll buy that, and we've suddenly got an even more robust persistent defense.



I sell off the stealth weapon augment to free up some space, in case we come across any other augments as we go.





Okay. Well, while we're doing nothing, why not spend some of that loose scrap we've got hanging around?



Level 3 teleporters have an even shorter cooldown time, letting us get our backup team onto enemy ships faster or pull out teams that have got themselves into hot water.

Ooh, another slug gimmick. Here, they're planning to burn / suffocate us with fire-starting beams and O2-disabling viruses.



"You're going to suffocate" is a bit alarmist, though - I don't think they could get through our shields even if they lasted long enough to try.





Of course we'll chase them. There's absolutely no possible downside, we're going to murder them and strip the ship for scrap, it'll be great.



... or that could happen.

But how bad could it really be?



Oh.

Okay, looks like we're heading for the exit immediately!





...



I'm going to have to be a little cruel here, but odds are we'll leave this beacon much stronger than when we entered it.

First things first - our teleporter gives us a special option to start this fight with.





Markel the rockman joins us! Again, rockmen have a slow walking speed, 150 hp, and immunity to fire, which makes them great boarders, especially if you have a reliable method of starting fires.

However, we're going to have to kick someone else out the airlock. Trillian can stay, because she's got 120% damage. Ford has almost maxed out his weapons training, so he's good too. Zaphod... doesn't really have much to offer. Sorry, man.



Where were we? Oh, yes! Another neat feature of Zoltan space that we're only finding now in Slug space - the Zoltan Shield. That's what that green shield / energy bar the enemy ship has, and it can be an issue! Here's the deal: first of all, it blocks teleportation entirely. So that sucks. It has 5 "hp" of its own, and is damaged by pretty much whatever weapon you throw at it - beams hit twice, and ion weapons do double damage too. Once it's gone, it's gone for the rest of the fight. We should be okay, but you can imagine it's a powerful advantage. The Zoltan Cruiser starts with such a shield packaged as an augment, which makes the first several sectors much less threatening!



So we faff about a bit, Markel makes his way towards his new position as point man of the away team, and our first volley misses a bunch so their shields are still up.



We use our cloak to dodge their first attack, and take down the shield with our second volley.



That opens the floodgates. Our deadly team makes short work of them. Notice the improved visibility we have over there due to CY Heng! Unfortunately they did get a hit in on us, but that just serves to show how infrequently we've been taking damage recently.



Since we took the ship without destroying it, we didn't kill the slaves! We get our pick of three different kinds of aliens. We don't need any more engis, so it's between rockmen and mantis. I go with a rockm'n, so we can send a full teleporter-load in case of a burning target ship.





Ooh. Tough decision. Most of our guys either have a bunch of training in a specific system or useful intrinsic abilities. When it comes down to it, I think we can do without CY. He's been great, but I've shown off his basic abilities and he doesn't have any useful training, so out the window he goes.



Our new guys need combat experience, so I put them on the first away team.



We're done with the sector, so I think I'll drop some cash on upgrades why not. Two more levels of engines gives us a faster charge and +10% evasion, plus I grab enough reactor capacity to power that and the defense drone simultaneously.



They're hot on our tail, so let's get out of here.



Only a few sectors left! Here's your next choice: do we go to the Engi Controlled Sector, which will be relatively calm, or the Slug Controlled Nebula, which will have more space-clouds and tricky slug hackers? The former will let us choose between a civilian sector and a nebula sector for the penultimate jump, whereas the latter lets us choose between a nebula sector and a hostile sector.

Note to self: buy upgraded sensors before completing the quest in the next sector!

Slug Nebula.

I'll pour out a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster for Zaphod.