Let's Play FTL: Faster Than Light!

Fantastic game and a fantastic LP. Loved it.

Thank you! I know I dropped the ball on the continuation of this LP in the midst of a new job, a new apartment, and so forth. But if people are still interested, I would definitely give a shot at the Secret Mission or failing at Normal or something, now that my life's calmed down a bit.

Yes, do all of this. Please.

Yes please!

Por favor.

But maybe that's not how it happened.

Some say the federation's last hope was a Rock ship, the Bulwark. The ship was participating in an exchange program - when the rebels struck, the Bulwark's crew consisted of a human pilot and a team of highly-trained Rock warriors.

They had managed to evade the rebels for some time, gradually drawing closer to the federation fleet, when they detected a distress signal coming from a nearby asteroid field.



A human ship would have been risking severe damage, but the rock ship was tough enough to respond without any danger.





The unfamiliar technology demanded further study, but they had to make a snap decision.







So, yes. I'm back - with a new mission. This time isn't about showing off the regular workings of the game. I'm trying to get the game's most frustrating achievement, which requires a series of random chances to work out correctly over the course of the run. I've reset a couple times, and I'm overtly screwing with probability here - only to make sure the quest-specific events work out, of course, not to gain an advantage in the game.

(And, yeah, that took longer than I had hoped. Sorry about that. :< But I won't waste your time with such babble, let's just get back into it... )


The first step is to get this weird stasis pod. It requires finding this event, that occurs at random in distress beacon nodes in certain sectors. Then, you need to luck out and actually get the pod - normal ships might get hit by asteroids instead. The rock ship, however, has a special augment, the Rock Plating, which gives a small chance of negating hull damage when hit, as well as granting automatic success in this quest. There's a reason for that... but I'll go into that in a moment.

So let's skip ahead a bit - I didn't take screen shots up until this next event, because I was probably going to have to reset yet again. But then:



Now we're talking. Luckily I hit the right sort of sector, then found this zoltan facility. Let's see what they can do!







Well! So we've found a mysterious alien life form - more alien and mysterious than usual.

I guess it's as good a time as any to check out our ship!



Here's our crew - Breckon, Magne, and Rafn are our rockmans, each with 150 health, immunity to fire, and a plodding gait. CY Heng is our human, pigeonholed into piloting the ship while the other three teleport out to murder folks.

Hutz is the newcomer - a member of a crystalline race, apparently the ancient ancestors of the rockmans. In terms of health and movement speed, he's partway between a human and a rockman. Instead of fire immunity, he gets resistance to suffocation. And he's also got... "lockdown power"?



Yep. Crystal folk have an activated ability triggered from the crew sidebar. It encrusts whatever room they're in with crystals that prevent anyone, enemy or ally, from entering or exiting the room. They're basically walking super-doors, which we can surmise from our earlier exploration means they're really powerful.

There are tons of great uses for this power. You can use it to isolate weak enemy crewmembers and prevent them from running to the medbay, lock out defenders so your crew can smash a key system (like a medbay, or weapons) uninterrupted, (I think?) stop the spread of fire on your ship while your rockmen put it out, or buy your boarders some breathing room while your teleporter recharges for evac. I'm looking forward to trying it out!

The Bulwark is equipped with a pair of missiles, which work okay for the first few sectors, but you really want to get something else that doesn't use ammo before too long. Luckily I've picked up a teleporter, so our rockmans have been doing most of the killing manually. I also grabbed a fire bomb, which works really well with rockman boarders: it doesn't do any damage to hull or systems directly, but it starts a fire in a specific room. Enemy aliens will take damage, it'll break systems, it'll spread, and it'll prevent them from repairing things while it's burning - and our rockmans don't mind it at all. I don't want to use it too much (still uses ammo), but it's a good thing to have on hand.





I've got more things to do, but along the way I pick up a Burst Laser III and trade in those missiles.





For some reason we don't detect many life signs in this sector.



A bud gives us another fire bomb! That'll be mean / useful.

Now:



So, the next step in our quest is to find the Rock Homeworld. There can only be one per game, and they show up at sector 4 or later. So we might not be able to finish the quest at all! In the meanwhile, we just have to guess - the lower path gives us better odds, so that's the reasonable place to go.
I'm taking the upper path.

See, under normal circumstances I wouldn't do this - and you shouldn't either, if you're trying to find the Rock Homeworld.

But I'm a time and space transcending wizard, so I know it isn't any of those sectors - if it's anywhere, it's past the Slug Nebula. If you want to know how I know this (don't click if you freak out when you learn cheats): The save file for this game is just sitting around in some folder. If you copy the file and rename it, you can later put it back, name it continue.sav, and pick up the game where you left off. I played all the way to sector 7 along the lower path, didn't find the right sector, then reloaded back to this point. Normally I don't do this, for obvious reasons, but this one achievement is just unfair, so I think this is a legit way to save us all a lot of heartache.

One highlight from my mystical spirit adventure:



Woah. That's messed up. (I didn't bomb the innocent settlers, because I expected a greater profit from murdering the pirates and then extorting tribute from the settlers.)

Anyway:



Along the way I pick up a slug for the engine room and a zoltan to run the shields.



Hutz is a big help - here he locks out the defenders while my boarders smash the weapon system.



Yadda yadda, let's skip ahead to:







So! In the current version of the game, there are a bunch of updates I haven't grabbed yet. One of them is that the next step in our quest is marked on the map! Which would be nice. As it stands, I've got to search through this sector until we hit the magic spot. Let's get started!



... Oh. Okay!

So our crystal crew member can reactivate it:







And here we are!



Spooky! SECTOR ? isn't anywhere on the sector map, and I have no idea what's going on. Let's find out!

... Next time!

(And yes, I've got the heavy lifting on the next part done, so the next wait won't be quite so long...)

I've gotten the Crystal crewmember a few times, but I never made it this far. Looking forward to seeing the conclusion of this quest.

Do you still get the Rebel pursuit in this sector?

Ooh, exciting!

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

I recommend cheating!

Oddly enough, yes. I guess they followed us? So that's what the Crystal Folk get for trusting us, I suppose. Well, we'll free them along with everyone else!

Yeah... about that...

...it's going to get exciting soon! Unfortunately for me...

Now, where were we.



Ah, yes.

SECTOR ?: HIDDEN CRYSTAL WORLDS


Well, this mystery isn't going to investigate itself!





Hah, repair?! Useless.

But hey, I do have a bunch of scrap rattling around...



Let's shore up that engine.

The Bulwark got pretty nice defenses at this point, as well as a pair of fire bombs and a five-shot burst laser - serviceable, if not spectacular. Probably we'd be fine without any extra equipment, but I'd like to pick something up.





This sector's not so great!

But I know what'll cheer me up...







Solid.





Now we're talking! Crystal research facilities, and they're friendly!

Of course I'll let them run tests on us, I'd have to be an idiot not to let these previously-undiscovered aliens perform undefined procedures on my crew. And since the Rockmans are descended from the crystalfolk, they're probably the most interesting to study.



All right, that didn't suck. But it's time to move on.



Bwahahaha! Yes! Freaky alien shop!

(And, yep, the rebels are still hot on our tail.)





This is a fascinating discovery (that'll arm us with bizarre alien weapons that those damn rebels can't defend against!). Let's check out what they're offering.

They've got the usual fuel, missiles, drones, and repair service, as well as a few drone schematics. I'll grab that nice Defense II drone.

Then there's these Crystal Weapons.







So, these are pretty neat. They're largely similar to lasers, and we've got three different kinds here: 2 1-damage shots, 1 2-damage shot, and 1 4-damage shot. They all also ignore a single level of shields! Basically that means we treat enemy ships as having one level of shields less than they do - so hitting a three-shield ship with two shots from the crystal burst will take it down to one shield, and the two heavy crystal weapons will pass right through that and hit systems.

They're also incredibly cheap, so we might as well buy all of them and try them out!



Luckily, they accept our "currency" and their tech is 100% compatible with our ship.



Yeah, lookin' good.

Woah! Guess we have no choice but to murder them and salvage their cool alien tech.



They've only got a single layer of shields, so our new weapons will do a real number on them. Meanwhile, they've got only one crystal weapon, so we're safe from that, but those bombs could be trouble.



Oh! I guess they're not. The bombs are crystal lockdown bombs, basically replicating the crystal alien lockdown power. Neat, but pretty much useless in their hands.





They fold faster than superman on laundry day. Now that they're out of the way, we get to see their cool-looking ship:



Not bad! Which reminds me - we're not just sightseeing here. We want to get our hands on one of these. So lets keep our eyes on that one quest node...







Hey, might as well round out our crew with another shanghai'd alien!



Meet Chris Malott, everyone!

That leaves us with a nice selection of crew - a human as a pilot, energon elemental running the shields, a psychic slug handling the engines, plus three rocks and two crystals as boarders. I'll rotate those last five so they all get plenty of experience, I'll want to use them all. The rockmans will be great for fighting alongside those fire bombs, and the crystalfolk will be able to use their powers in succession to keep things locked down for ages.





... I can respect that.



But it looks like they're a little rusty, we have the clear advantage.



Again, they're using crystal lockdown bombs that don't really accomplish anything.





Cool ship, but we still can't take it.





That's unfortunate. Luckily, our defenses are still good enough to deal with this.

PCHEWW





Time for more mandatory killing!





Another cakewalk. Let's keep going.





Huzzah! We've got the crystal ship!

It starts with a couple of crystal weapons systems, as well as a special "Crystal Vengeance" augment - when the ship takes damage, it has a 10% chance to fire off a shield-piercing crystal shard that deals one damage to a random room.

Not particularly relevant, unfortunately (you don't want to be taking damage in the first place) and a potential liability (it can hit your boarders!).

In any case, let's press on. We still have to take out that mothership.















Multiple lockdowns! Yeah! These guys aren't escaping.



Yeah, great, real useful.





Next, we're headed into a pirate controlled sector! We've still got to finish our mission, and... well, it's going to get a lot more interesting than I'd hope.

Stay tuned!

Time to roll up our sleeves and close this thing out.

We've emerged from SECTOR ? directly into a pirate-controlled sector 6. We've only got two more sectors before we face the mothership, but we're in a pretty good place, and nothing can - or will! - go wrong.





Let's take a jaunt into this space cloud.



Why would we ever want to stay hidden? We want to share this newly-discovered alien technology with the rebels.



Looks like I accidentally hit the Lockdown power for the wrong crystalfolk. This was probably intentional and is in no way either 1) indicative of me being rusty at FTL after the long break I took after the LP, or 2) portentous in any way.





Randy Walker wants to join our crew, but we just don't have the room. Maybe I could chuck out my pilot and train Randy up as a replacement? But, man, what a hassle. Out the airlock with you, Randy.

(It's a robot or something, it'll understand I'm just being efficient.)













Exciting space battle! I finally get hit with something, and the Bulwark absorbs the hit with its sweet rock plating.









Damn rebels. Luckily I have a team of highly trained minerals to murder them.





NOPE.





Well, great.





We're taking some hits from the sun, but I think it's well enough under control that I can hubristically reject their offer.



Then immediately kill them.



We'll have to do repairs later, but luckily nothing I've actually been using was hit.

Oh! Another one of these.





But this time we'll take the weapon, we can't get any use out of another crystal stasis chamber.



Ok, some sweet missiles we're not going to use.



Lots of scrap rattling around here. New upgrades are pretty expensive and generally not especially crucial at this point, but it's still worthwhile grabbing extra value. For now we'll pump up those weapons systems.







Heroics!



Crystal weapons work fine on zoltan shields, and we've got enough of them that we get aboard pretty quickly.



Yeouch, they're a bit troublesome. Gotta wrap this up quickly.





And hey, we're rewarded for our heroics with yet another reminder that we're ultimately invincible!







Incidentally, I probably shouldn't have fired that warning shot - it seems that it just gives you a chance to scare them away, which isn't any good unless you're losing resources in a fight.



Which I'm not! Even though I'm a little rusty, we're taking these jerks down without much of a fight.



Yup, these brand-new weapons are helping out nicely as well.



Aaaand... here's where I really screw up.







... whoops.



Uhh... great...



And now, in the quiet, we can survey the desolation.

My powerful new weapons brought the enemy ship down to one hull. The pirates repaired their O2 system, and of course my (loyal, strong, astoundingly brave) boarding team started smashing it, following standard protocol to the letter.

Then, it broke. When a system gets smashed, it deals one hull damage.

That destroyed the ship.

Taking all four of my boarders with it.

...

Don't do this.

BUT! All is not lost! This is what life as a space captain is all about - I need to bravely carry on despite the gruesome death of half my crew due to my own incompetence. It's what they would have wanted.

(If they hadn't died horribly due to my incompetence.)

First order of business is to boost our weapon system up to max. Looks like I'm going to have to actually use my weapons to destroy enemy ships, deliberately. We're through the looking glass here people.





... I can't risk it.





Ooh!





This was lucky! Let's grab some replacement crew - both of these guys could be useful, I can sell some spare Pegasus missiles to get them. Plus, I'm liking the look of that defense drone.





Here's what we've got - we can toss that new Engi, Valeriya, onto the weapons systems, and we've got a two-rock boarding team we can work with. It's a pretty good rebound from the Disaster, but I'm still concerned about the flagship...











Not taking the chance here either!







We get our first look at the inter-sector map since jumping to SECTOR ?, looks like we just arbitrarily jumped to a random sector in the next bunch. Weird seeing that discontinuity...

Anyway, I'm feeling like another pirate sector right now. One more sector before the boss!









Sorry about all these boring nodes where I just get free stuff...





That's more like it! Time to kill some stuff.





Going to be more careful with my crew this time around... I'm not used to doing this kind of damage with weapons!

Safe and sound.





Boo. I don't see what you guys expect to accomplish here...





Let's keep moving.











Hecks yeah I'm a hero.







Heroes seriously consider bribes, but eventually reject them.





I did the Right Thing! (By which I mean, I earned more scrap by rejecting the bribe.)







Let's chuck some weapons out...



And buy some sweet new crew members! Let's pick up a third boarder and a new batteryfolk.



And tune up the engines a bit.





Ok.





Here we go! We're properly suited up to give this guy a bad day.

PCKHWWW





CHAKOWWW









AH NEED A HEEROOO







Ah, the spoils of science.









And it's smooth sailing all the way to sector 8.





Time to steel ourselves for the final confrontation, once again.



First let's grab an extra layer of shields. We'll put them through their paces sure enough.



The flagship's over in the northwest corner. Let's just jump right in!





Boarders add a wrinkle, but we're pretty safe here.



NICE AIMING THERE, NERDS.





No need to drag this out - we can just crush these guys rather than killing the crew one by one.



We haven't needed that Defense II Drone yet, but it'll be handy in the final battle.



Our boarders aren't highly-trained... but I think they can pull this out.

Nothing else going on here...



Next jump, the flagship'll be right in that adjacent node. If we jump there now we might hit some rebels, but...



... We just wait here for a cycle, and we won't have to bother with them.

BUT FIRST!



Time to get our loadout in order. We don't need much in the way of direct firepower at this point - those firebombs and our fireproof boarders are all we'll need to make that ship a sitting duck.



Let's... do it to it!





For the moment, all our defenses are maxed out, with the rest of our energy in our firebombs. We mostly want to weather the initial assault so we can get into the "fire and murder" phase of the battle.



First, one set of boarders and twp firebombs aimed at three of those weapons...





And we've got those dealt with!

At this point, all they can hit us with is the triple laser, so we don't need those drones anymore - we can focus on killing the crew.

First, we toss a firebomb at the shields and the medbay, and send in our rock crew. Fighting in a medbay isn't pleasant, but that fire'll start sapping it and hurting the crew while our boarders keep them busy (and therefore not putting out fires, and therefore not repairing the medbay).





We have to retreat, but hopefully that fire will keep them busy while we recharge.



Unfortunately, it didn't - they've got those systems repaired. Let's take a different tack - we'll pull the same deal on that damn cloaking device. It'll be easier to smash that, then our boarders can hang out there and keep them from putting it out.



BAM! Like that! They've all retreated - we've got a strong foothold on their ship. Those doors are strong, though, so the fire won't spread.







Until we break into the door system and fix that.



From here we can just let the fire take over the whole ship! The danger's that the O2 system might break (and kill their last gunner, letting the AI take over).



So let's seal the deal.

Fuck Nick Breckon

Those last couple of crew fold pretty quickly... but we've got to move fast.







Stay alive, little human!









YEAH!



Let's grab that extra point of sensors... that might have been helpful before.

No change in loadout for now.







Look familiar?

Same plan as before, but with the bonus of some horrible drones harrying us (ones we can't disable).



But it'll help if we smash their normal drones, at least.





(And their defenses. I don't want to hang out with these drones any longer than I absolutely have to - they can actually get a few hits in if they get lucky.)



Now we just unload both barrels!







I probably shoulda swapped out those fire bombs...





Now, we want to get that shield down and take out the missiles. This part is just straightforward blasting!

We'll be able to handle the super-laser-blast once those missiles are down...



Now it's just a matter of taking down the shields and launching exotic crystals at them 'til they crumble.















Huzzah!

The Bulwark is triumphant! And we're taking home a sweet trophy in that crystal cruiser!



Thanks to our valiant crew! What's left of them, at least.

Here, let's check out the spoils of our efforts:





The Bravais is our new prize. As I mentioned earlier, it starts with a special augment that launches crystal shards at the enemy when it's damaged.

It has a pretty standard array of systems, including some of those neat crystal weapons, plus a pretty good start on a crew - two humans (good filler to start with) plus two crystalfolk (whose value we're familiar with).

We can unlock the alternate version by getting two achievements under our belts: destroy a ship with the crystal shard augmentation, lock four enemies in a single room, and/or destroy 15 rock ships in one run (probably those last two are the ones to go for...

Aaaand that's it! Sorry for all the delays on this one... but I'm glad to have gotten through it!

In the meanwhile, the game's updated with all sorts of new stuff - new events, aliens, weapons, systems... I'm excited to try it all out! Has anyone jumped in yet?

Sweet.

Thanks for this.

Yep. It's full of fun things that seriously livened up the game, but they didn't change up the flagship in any way that is remotely helpful (it's actually harder now due to the addition of new systems) and rather than renaming the existing difficulties to things that make sense, they added hard mode.

I still prefer it to normal FTL.

I've been playing the enhanced or advanced edition, whatever they call it, I don't know what of my encounters are new or not. Except of course the ones involving the new race. Normal seems easier than the old normal. Lots of resources to go around it seems...

I especially like how ships can be unlocked by beating the game, much happier not being at the whim of the RNG for unlocking them.

Hey kids!

Let's play FTL: Faster Than Light!



Okaydokay, right off the bat, we got a ship to choose, and... hang on.



So yeah. Since this LP last updated, FTL released an expansion, Advanced Edition. This expansion addressed many issues that players had with the base game (crew deaths being too powerful, certain augmentations being useless, et cetera), a few issues that game balance had (the first level of Doors now costs a bit more), things that were never an issue to begin with (rather than decreasing difficulty they added Hard Mode), and so forth. The most immediately relevant thing, of course...



Enough new content to make your head spin. We're talking new systems, new encounters, even an entirely new alien species! And what better way to demo it than by hijacking willcoon's completed and excellent FTL LP, Mantis boarder style?

If you aren't familiar with FTL's nonsense as is, go back and read his LP. If you are, then I'm going to start by opening up votes for what ship to take through advanced edition. Of note: I am probably going to play on Normal for the most part, because if I play on Easy, I'll only get one or two runs done before I win (I am fairly good at this game). If it becomes rapidly evident that Normal won't showcase enough because I keep dying, I'll switch to Easy. But enough about technical nonsense, let's have gameplay-relevant technical nonsense!

All ships in FTL have the following systems:



Most ships have the following systems, but a few don't:



The rest of the systems are rare, and if you have one to start it's usually the reason you chose that ship:



Okay I think that's all. Now then, specific ships. There are 10 ship types in FTL, one new one added in AE. Additionally, every ship type has both A and B layouts, and for eight of the ten ship types, AE added a C layout that does WEIRD STUFF. I'll be grouping these in more spoilerboxes, because guys I love spoilerboxes SO MUCH

Kestrel Cruiser



Engi Cruiser



Federation Cruiser



Zoltan Cruiser



Stealth Cruiser



Rock Cruiser



Slug Cruiser



Mantis Cruiser



Lanius Cruiser



Crystal Cruiser



So yeah. Vote for stuff. Then we're going to space.

Next Time: OHH MY GOD OHMYGOD OMIGOD IM IN

Nice to see you reviving this.

I vote for Zoltan B. It's great but not perfect, and I want to see how you can handle it through Normal.

Feel free to name a crewmember after me as well.

Engi B!

I'm terrible at this game. I think I won on Easy once. Looking forward to another guided tour!

Zoltan B because it was just her birthday and it was bugging me trying to figure out why I recognized her name.

Rock B, because if you can pull it off, then I need to see how.

I have mastered the Easy game, but I have yet to encounter any success on Normal.