FTL: Faster Than Light [ Page 3 ]

FTL Pairing Session 2: VICTORY!

Tonight CapnCurry and I beat FTL together in our pairing session. FTL pairing is where two people both make choices for how to play FTL together*. Since FTL is a turn based game its setup well for this. Since I was the less experienced player I controlled the game on my end and we used Google Hangout to share my screen and talk to figure out our strategy. The session lasted about 3 hours in total.

From the start things were going pretty well. One choice about mid way through the game, I believe helped us out considerably. We had our drone system built and two drone weapons on board. We made it to a space station and if we sold off our two drone weapons and our FTL... Read All Tonight CapnCurry and I beat FTL together in our pairing session. FTL pairing is where two people both make choices for how to play FTL together*. Since FTL is a turn based game its setup well for this. Since I was the less experienced player I controlled the game on my end and we used Google Hangout to share my screen and talk to figure out our strategy. The session lasted about 3 hours in total.

From the start things were going pretty well. One choice about mid way through the game, I believe helped us out considerably. We had our drone system built and two drone weapons on board. We made it to a space station and if we sold off our two drone weapons and our FTL jammer we could afford the cloak. We decided to take the cloak and that was a really good gamble. As it turned out we found more drone weapons later so the gamble really paid off.

Since I only unlocked the Kestrel thats the ship we went with and it proved to be good enough to beat the game with. I sort of figured that you needed to get the other ships to win, but the Kestrel held up like a champ.

I think a few items really sent us over the edge to survive the 3 end boss fights. The Cloak, The Pike Beam and the small bomb. Basically we would hit the boss with the bomb, then do a double salvo using our laser weapons. When the shields were down we raked as many rooms as we could with the Pike Beam and that was all she wrote for the boss.

I want to thank CapnCurry for pairing with me because he really showed me a bunch of useful strategies for FTL. I want to give him a lot of the credit for the win because his strategies were really effective. That said, I was controlling things and we did win so thats also rad.

That said, I had a blast and am looking forward to the next pair session. PS if you can and want to learn your way to a better life and FTL there is no substitute for pairing with the Captain.

We scheduled our pairing session with the new Cheerful Ghost event system. You should do the same.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/11

* I am fairly certain we invented FTL pairing too, so you know thats also awesome.

A Winning Build

I finally made it through FTL! Once. On "easy" mode. But let's not dwell on details, shall we? :) Spoilers ahead!

The winning build was, at the time of the Big Fight:

Redtail Kestrel layout
6 power in shields (3 dots)
6 power in engines
3 power in cloaking
4 power in drone control
Anti-Ship Drone II
Burst Laser I
Basic Laser
Basic Laser
Small Bomb
7 crew members

Sensors, Doors, Oxygen, Medbay weren't really relevant, but for the record Medbay and Sensors were each upgraded by one point.

I think the two biggest pieces here were the Cloaking and the Small Bomb, both of which were *critical* to the second round of the boss fight. Without cloaking you will have a hard time surviving... Read All

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/04/2013 at 07:07pm

This is awesome, thanks for sharing this.

I am thinking that doors and O2 upgrades might not be as useful as I think. I haven't nabbed a cloak yet, but since the cloak comes standard with the Kestral Layout 2 I think I need to work on getting that upgrade. I can live without the missile by default and frankly don't use it that much as is.

CapnCurry Supporter Post Author wrote on 04/04/2013 at 09:32pm

Actually, the cloak is not standard with Kestrel's Plan B Layout - I had to pick that up somewhere on the way.

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/05/2013 at 01:12am

Oh. Ok that makes sense, thanks!

CapnCurry Supporter Post Author wrote on 04/05/2013 at 07:36am

Got my wife playing FTL as of this evening. On her third-ever jump she wound up in front of a too-close sun with her Oxygen and Doors on fire. We switched to my machine and paired for a sector after that, then she fired up her own game again. This game is brutal, I tell ya. :)

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/05/2013 at 05:53pm

It really is. Not as brutal as some Roguelikes i've played though. Like I said in an earlier review of FTL, it dares to be fun.

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FTL Wins GDC Awards & More

FTL recently won the GDC Audience Award and Excellence in Design. Both awards are very well deserved and FTL is the game I am playing right now. Each one of my games lasts an hour or less. I have made it about 75% of the way to the end on Easy and am currently refining my strategy to go further but I heard there is a boss battle at the end that I am kind of nervous about. Ill have a party when I beat this one.

Gamasutra recently posted an Interview with the FTL devs about the games design.

“We started with a very vague idea for a concept and used that as a guiding light for the entire project,” said Davis. “By having one singular focus we were able to abandon... Read All

FTL: A Fun Roguelike in Space + Co-Op

So after asking everyone which game I should play next I installed Fallout: New Vegas and started the single player mission. Compared to Fallout: 3 the intro wasn't terribly interesting. I imagine the game picks up a ton later on, but I didn't click for me right away. I will come back to it at some point though.

A few days ago FTL went on sale through the Steam Spring Indie sale and is currently $5 stand alone or $7 with the score. I picked up FTL + the score(of course) and decided to try it out. After an un-countable amount of games I can say that FTL is a must buy if you love space sims. Its a interesting take on the Roguelike game genere that dares to be fun! I... Read All So after asking everyone which game I should play next I installed Fallout: New Vegas and started the single player mission. Compared to Fallout: 3 the intro wasn't terribly interesting. I imagine the game picks up a ton later on, but I didn't click for me right away. I will come back to it at some point though.

A few days ago FTL went on sale through the Steam Spring Indie sale and is currently $5 stand alone or $7 with the score. I picked up FTL + the score(of course) and decided to try it out. After an un-countable amount of games I can say that FTL is a must buy if you love space sims. Its a interesting take on the Roguelike game genere that dares to be fun! I guess I should qualify that a bit because I don't find many roguelikes fun. There are roguelikes I want to enjoy, but just can't get into. Its not that I don't like challenges or have a problem losing its just that certain games don't mix the "really hard" and "losing your ass off" to make it fun. But FTL does. In FTL in every game I lost my ass off and it was very fun. An epic adventure even. But realize here I play games for fun, not work, so if a game seems like work I just don't play it.

One evening of late I described FTL to a friend and recommended he give it a go. We were talking over Google Hangout and I decided to screen share the game with him. We spent nearly an hour making choices on how to play the game together and not only was it fun as hell I got further than I did on my own. I want to play FTL co-op again this way and hopefully we can do that. So yeah, if you have the ability to sit down and play with a friend, try FTL co-op. I guess you could call it "FTL Pairing" because thats a method I employ when I partner with someone on a project and we are at the same computer doing it together. Anyways, regardless of what you call it, it was fun as hell.

FTL is awesome and you really aught to try it, because, you know, space and all. You can even get unique and play it with your friends over Google Hangout too.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/

BR Supporter wrote on 03/22/2013 at 09:36pm

Trying FTL co-op by screen sharing sounds awesome. I'll have to try that with someone sometime.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 03/23/2013 at 12:35am

Yeah, it is. I want to do it again and do a Lets Play of it.

BR Supporter wrote on 03/23/2013 at 01:01am

Dude....I totally want to join you on that one.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 03/23/2013 at 01:05am

Ok so lets do that. Ill send you an email to setup the time.

beansmyname Supporter wrote on 03/23/2013 at 01:42am

Outstanding idea! When I first read the headline, I thought I just missed reading that it had co-op. Glad I read the full story to get the full scoop.

You must have a pretty serious rig to be able to screenshare via Hangout without dropping. I was considering doing something similar for Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I have some folks who would really like to see that one.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 03/23/2013 at 05:12am

I think one thing that helps is FTL looks like a 2D sprite game. Plus it doesn't have a ton of movement. Then again I think I did... Minecraft over hangout too. :D

CapnCurry Supporter wrote on 03/23/2013 at 06:38am

I can vouch for the awesomeness of FTL screensharing - Jon took me through a guided tour of the game, and I was surprised at how easy it was to follow along with what we were doing. I played through the tutorial on my own later, and I think I'd have had a disappointing first run if the tutorial were all I'd had to work with.

I've played through it a few times since then, and gotten *remarkably* close to (what I think is) the finish line. I'm hoping for a chance to play FTL in pair-mode again with a more experienced eye and see how that changes things.

If Google hangout can stay smooth, I'm wondering if this opens a new door on the "single-player strategy game as co-op" play I enjoyed as a teenager. Myst made a remarkably good two-player experience; I wonder what else is out there that's worth experimenting with.

Brandon_Waters wrote on 03/25/2013 at 10:03pm

I haven't screen shared, but that sounds awesome. FTL is another game for me that took a bit to get into but I've clocked some solid hours on it now. It's like Oregon Trail in space to me (with a bit more skill involved). Great game.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 03/26/2013 at 12:21am

Huh, good point on the Oregon Trail in space, I hadn't considered that before. Its the goto game in my rotation right now, so very cool.

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