There are times I usually don't get to spend because I'm busy taking vacations outside my resident town. My main PC is slumbering somewhere, without my touch. Sometimes I get bored, nothing to do, so with my petite laptop, I play games like these.
I'll be honest, I missed a lot of games like this in the early days. Most pro
bably because those were the actual terrible days I've gone through in life. Forced to study, and try to figure out my aim in life. Then I realized that because of my illness, the game is rigged and all I could do was play games to get through life. Something I don't condone, mind you.
Kind of beating myself up for not playing this one even, there's a reason why it was called the best Space Sim Rougelike. It does many brilliant things, amazing loops, new discoveries, lots of challenging areas, plus my brain feels bigger now.
Time Is Everything
I will put one thing the best possible way, learning how to play this requires punishment. I've come across multiple obstacles, some that are downright unfair, and others maybe because I put my hand too far into the cookie jar. In this case, spending fuel too much.
FTL is about managing your crew, picking up space flight, and flying to coordinates in order to fly towards the next sector. Each point of a sector has numerous events happening. How I react with the choices I have some consequences too.
Numerous things happen like scanning a ship to gather resources or landing on a planet, involves some gamble where you could face an encounter with enemy forces or worse, an infestation that turned my own crew against me. This just happens after a text box of choices, what follows up is quite fascinating to watch and hassle to go through.
Think of it like different kinds of Kobayashi Maru simulations. Literally, starting a new game, I'm facing an unknown threat and my crew is already close to dying. If only I spent point on creating a subsystem to seal doors shut from being opened.
Each playthrough, you earn currency to do many things. From buying modules, hire new crews from stores to spending points on the ship to buff up shields, that sealed door thing, more weapons energy, and so on. Do note, this all goes away if I die.
Don't get me started on fuel, missile charges, and robot parts. I mean, I've come across all situations to get these filled up, but the longer I go, harder things get. Reaching the end destination requires me to go through all these sectors with Nebula fogs, bandits and pirates, different alien civilizations, civilians getting attacked, do I help them or help their aggressor? Help one, the other will start hating you.
But I want to beef up my ship, grow my crew, and it takes a while getting there. Then there's attacking enemies. Enemies will do the same thing I will, starting parts of the ship like engine, crew station, weapons, shields, etc. Strategizing to survive.
It's surviving, and trying to win by outlasting them. In my first playthrough with this simple ship, I've put 2 more guns. But never getting around increasing shield capacity, and just not placing the crew right, it cost me quite a lot. Constant attention to detail in the ensuing chaos is mandatory, I can pause to take time, but my cerebral cortex isn't always up to it.
Through the trial and error, it gets even better every run. Look am even trying to get out of a meteor shower, and my FTL charge isn't even close. It's teeth grinding anxiety. The mistake I made here was not letting the pilot man the ship.
Battlestations Now
So, after learning all I could, I put it all to the test. Putting each crew member on each part of the ship provides benefits. Like faster shield charging, increased chances of dodging, so on, and each crew gains expertise on specific parts of the ship.
Like I've worked on every encounter I could, minimizing damage on my ship, spending missile units only when really needed. Weapon variety comes from lasers, blasters, launchers, and drones. But, further on, even more options are introduced.
Oh look, me fighting a raider with a solar radiation going on. Now imagine an enemy ship being able to hijack mine, sending 4–6 people in it? Luckily this isn't one of those considering difficulty scales on how far I've gone in the sectors. But it's an RNG factor, I could be encountering ships that would be the end of me even.
Again, understanding how everything works, and doing the best of managing the crew's wellbeing, as well as the ship is essential to surviving. I'll have to take chances with surveying planets, desolate ships, help out citizens, or you know, make bad choices.
The key to winning is also being able to diagnose the enemy ship, and take out their systems, they have crew members as well, of which I can see if I send one of my crew into the sensors room, reading life signs, and where the enemy crews in their ship. Believe me, the best captain knows how to create havoc in the ship controls the tide of battle.
Damaging parts of the ship, like the shield, does lower it or disable it till their crew repairs the area, same with the guns. Sometimes internal damages can also affect the crews in both sides, killing them too. Which also does the same to me.
God forbid some fights take place in Nebula storm sectors, where I lose component strength, where my weapon power or shield power is nerfed in some ways. Visual information is obfuscated too, and worse, crazy hijackers.
I've died, I believe, around 5–6 times so far, and yet I keep coming back for more. There are so many approaches to dealing with situations. The freedom to explore, yet the crazy challenges of overcoming things, as well as newfound discoveries made. I've died to bandits, aliens, I've lost fuel and was adrift, saved by SOS beacon, and the horrors I've seen.
FTL is a boundless game, filled to the brim with stuff to do. I've gotten better at dogfighting, exploiting certain situations to get the best off, and who knew, turns out helping others do turn out to have benefits. Ones I will really need.
There are multiple ships to unlock, all I have to do is meet the achievements required and boom, now I am driving one reliant on deploying drones to attack enemies. With an Ion Blaster to EMP blast specific parts of the ship. This ship also seems easier to navigate.
Thanks to the design. Yet, it's better to have both more crew members and many drones deployed as possible. Which is asking for a lot with the limited resources I get. Even then, there's the reactor energy to worry about as well. Sometimes I turn off the oxygen, engine block or health bays. I already lost a crew here, with 75% hull capacity.
This latest run was in an easier difficult and yet as far as I got, this one ship, out of the blue, managed to destroy me. I wanted to escape with the FTL, and was 2 seconds late before The Torus got blasted to smithereens. Over an hour run, and this is how it ended.
Maybe it was overreliance on winning battles that cost me this journey. I wanted to answer a distress call, and died. Maybe I could have spent my resources better, did I learn my lessons? After 8hrs, maybe. I should back and try again, not like I'll throw my laptop out.
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