It’s been more than 8 years since the indie studio Subset Games released the game Faster Than Light, but I only recently got acquainted with it. I can assure you that it can entice a potential player for a long time. Although there are no plot spoilers in this blog (as well as the plot of the game itself), there may be spoilers regarding the conduct of the battle and the phases of the final boss. Personally, I am inclined to think that it is better to know about tactics in advance. Welcome everyone to my blog, where I will try to express my impressions and thoughts about FTL: Faster Than Light.
Act 1 – fun, but difficult
After spending a little time completing the tutorial, I started a new game. I chose normal mode and medium difficulty with the words: “I think I’ll figure it out quickly”. “No matter how it is,” the game answered me. After 5-6 attempts to reach the final level (one of which was successful), I had to reduce the difficulty. Just imagine that you come to the final boss for the second time, bombard him with almost all your resources in the hope of a triumphant end, and this, suddenly, is only the first stage. As a result, you have no missiles or drones left, and your ship with just 1 unit of damage will turn into a pile of scrap metal. On easy difficulty I was hoping to get a better understanding of the boss stages and game mechanics.
Let’s now talk about the game itself. You control the ship, and your task is to get to the federation base and fight the rebel flagship, because you are the last hope of the federation. In the hangar you can choose one of the provided ships. They differ in weapon systems, modules, guns, reactor power, crews and ship architecture. Installed systems largely determine the strategy of your battles. This is clearly evident in extended mode: due to the limited number of slots for systems, it becomes necessary to select. Systems can be upgraded throughout the game.
Most of the modules are more of a pleasant addition to effective combat, rather than something that predetermines strategy. Automatic fire extinguishing? Easily. Accelerating shield recovery? Easily. The guns are much more interesting. They are divided into several types: beam, fragmentation, ion, bombs, lasers and missiles. Each type of weapon has its own advantages and disadvantages. Bombs and missiles can ignore shields, ion ones disable systems for a while, beam ones can hit several targets in one shot. Similarly, there are different classes of drones. All this stuff is fed from the reactor, which imposes certain restrictions on the use of equipment. And, of course, the crew. There are a total of 8 races in the game with unique abilities. Angies repair systems faster, mantises fight better, Zoltans can power systems with their presence, and people… quickly gain experience. It accumulates through successful practice of managing the system, for example, shields or guns, and ultimately provides useful buffs in the form of accelerated recovery of shields or reloading of guns.
As you progress, random events may happen to you and you have the right to choose their development. Be it the discovery of an unknown capsule or the opportunity to refuel at the lowest prices in the galaxy. The game ends either with your victory – the destruction of the boss, or defeat – the death of the entire crew or the destruction of the ship. And now, after 10 games, the enemy’s flagship was destroyed on easy difficulty level. There was no end to happiness, but after this long-awaited victory I lost interest in the game. And it’s not clear why he abandoned it – either from a feeling of completion, or from fatigue. I left the game itself on the computer with the words: “Just think, it doesn’t even take 500 meters.”. Maybe one day I’ll want to play a little more.".
Act 2 – hmm, may open other ships?
It was with this thought https://b-betscasino.co.uk/ that one summer evening I went back to play FTL. I decided to enable the advanced mode to make it more fun, but I also played it on the easy difficulty level. As a result, I spent several more evenings at FTL. But what was it about her that attracted me so much?? Probably this is the presence of a strategic element in space battles. Let’s look at an example.
Here is one of the ship battles on medium difficulty. Let’s see what battle tactics there are, taking into account our resources and the enemy’s equipment.
1. Power anti-hull missiles, a fragmentation weapon and one simple laser. Hit the enemy medical bay with missiles first. Then send your troops to the medical bay and start a fight there. With the missiles reloaded, begin neutralizing enemy shields. To protect your own ship from enemy missiles, launch the ED-2 support drone. But there is a catch in the form of a 15 second cooldown of the teleport – during this time my boarding group can be neutralized (there were enough resources that the teleport did not upgrade?). The enemy is also armed with non-missile weapons that can penetrate my shields and damage the ship. This means that for the least damage you will have to do everything quickly. Well, you need to skillfully switch power from one system to another in order to be able to power all the guns.
2. A similar scheme to the first, but instead of ED-2, launch the attacking drone BD-1, turn off the teleport and concentrate primary fire on the shields, and then switch to guns and destroy the enemy. Problems – enemy cloaking system, giving them a 10 second head start, as well as enemy missiles that can penetrate my ship (yes, you can quickly switch between ED-2 and BD-1, but I don’t have many drones and spending 2 drones does not seem entirely reasonable). Let’s not forget about the maneuverability of the enemy ship. Who knows how many guns will hit an enemy ship on average?.
3. Try to escape as quickly as possible, using anti-hull missiles and the ED-2 support drone if necessary. The problem here is the waste of a precious drone. In addition, without destroying the enemy ship, we will not receive either scrap or supplies.
And now you have to think for several minutes which strategy is best suited for this or that battle. And also take into account randomness, because just as the enemy may miss your ship, you may also miss it. Perhaps an enemy missile will shoot down your attacking BD-1 drone, or at the end of the battle precious drones or fuel will not fall from the wreckage of the enemy ship.
Here I come to the reason why I decided to abandon FTL for the second time. Oddly enough, this is random. So I came up with the ideal combination of systems, crew and guns for my ship, but in the end I can’t implement the idea due to the lack of necessary components or a limited amount of scrap (I have no idea how to win at a high level of difficulty). The strategic element of battles depends not only on my crew and ship management skills, but also on random parameters. Is there a beam weapon “Axe” in the store’s assortment?? Unknown. With such sentiments the game was abandoned once again.
Act 3 – experimenting!
I returned to FTL again with the thoughts: “But in so many games I have never used the teleport, I wonder how it plays with it”. And again I was immersed in this game for several days and nights. During the third run I was able to understand the role and positive aspects of the randomness that I complained about. To put it simply, each game becomes unique and each time you have to use different tactics, systems and ships for one reason or another. So, against the final boss you can use a huge number of strategies: focus on the crew and teleportable guns, or buy a Vulcan machine gun, which, after warming up, will quickly neutralize enemy shields. There is a need to adapt to the environment and try to find the most effective strategies with the available equipment, which ultimately gives an interesting experience.
When I had played enough on easy difficulty, and the whole game, including the final boss, became very easy, it was decided to switch to medium difficulty. And then new difficulties began. We have to again modernize our tactics for a more serious enemy in the face of fewer resources. So far I have not been able to defeat the flagship. Personally, I think the difficulty levels are a little high. But initially there was no easy difficulty level.
What’s the bottom line?? I’ve played the game for over 60 hours and have yet to beat the Rebel flagship on Normal difficulty. I don’t even want to imagine what awaits me there on the hard difficulty level. The game left a lot of pleasant impressions. By the way, there are a huge number of mods for it that can extend your stay in the game and expand your experience. I didn’t dive into them myself, because first I would have to defeat the boss. Faster Than Light is definitely a good game for n number of free evenings. Perhaps one of these days you will want to return to your ship, equipped with the latest technology, assemble a motley crew and start fighting the rebels. Thank you for your attention and have a nice time on the Stop website…. Game…Eng.
