The goal of the game is to travel through beacon nodes until one reaches an exit node. Once at the exit node, the player has a choice of one two new sectors before repeating this process until they get to the final sector .
Even though this loop is fairly simple it is wrought with many dangers and events that are selected at random which makes no two playthroughs exactly the same.
To help achieve this, the player starts with a fairly basic ship with a base crew of 3. The ship armaments are modest but have the necessary tools to learn the basics of ship combat.
When starting out, your crew starts at preassigned positions having some skill in their specialised role which provides a bonus based off their veterancy level. Veterancy is a system that increases their skill and efficiency with different rates based on the system a crew member gains experience in and is represented through three tiers:
- Baseline at 0 which provides a base bonus of between 5% to 10% from manned to none
- Veteran at 1 and sees between a 2% up to a 10% improvement over base manned bonus
- Elite at 2 sees the bonus between 5% and 20% bonus improvement over base manned bonus
- Engines provides an evasion bonus
- Piloting provides an evasion bonus as well
- Weapons shortens the reload and refire rate
- Shields shortens shield recharge rate
- Repair increases repair rate
- Combat increases combat damage per second
Most ship systems require reactor power and forms a core of one's upgrade priority as it has an effect on providing power in relation to your ship's primary systems investment of:
- Engines which deals with evasion and in conjunction with piloting charges the FTL drive
- Weapons determines how many weapons one can mount and fire
- Shields require spending in pairs to unlock a full shield bar
- Oxygen is often overlooked but can quickly lead to death if not properly looked after
- Medical Systems either via medical facilities to that allows one to keep their crew topped up and healthy at no penalty or cloning technology to make a copy of the crew that died at a slight experience penalty
These systems are universially installed on most ships as a baseline with one having options to install, or depending on type of ship have installed, specialised systems such as
- Drone control which covers defence, offence and boarding drone technologies
- Stealth systems provides a system that increases evasion rate and interrupts enemy weapon and system targeting
- Mind control provides the ability to allow one to temporary control an enemy with increased levels improving the damage they deal while under the effect
- Hacking drone, on success, locks a room's doors and provides a system relevant detrimental effect when activated.
- Teleportation systems allows one to send boarding parties to attack and attempt to eliminate the enemy crew, allows one to call back crew in a room as well when charged
The non-reactor systems are considered subsystem upgrades that provide a specialised passive benefit so long as the relevant subsystem controlling it is operational and although not strictly necessary, do make things markedly easier if one invests in it and it covers aspects of
- Pilot systems upgrades and strengthens its systems and adds an auto-pilot function
- Door systems upgrades allows stronger defence against invaders by being able lock them into rooms for longer and slows down the effects of fires spreading
- Sensors suite upgrades allows for a player to have better information on their enemies and at the higher levels allows to see enemy movement and system progress to which a one can plan around
- Backup battery which is a system that one usually purchases that allows for a temporary boost to the reactor systems which opens system options in a pinch.
Ship combat takes place by providing an overlay of the enemy ship on the right with your ship still in main view. There is two layers of basic defence a player should be aware of namely shields and engine power. Shields can be layered up to 4 times and each layer is able to stop one projectile every couple of seconds and provides near full immunity to continuous laser based weaponry, however shields unless supercharged cannot stop missles, bombs and transportation methods employed by the enemy. The engine is a evasion based on the amount of power a player delegates to the engine and how skilled the pilot and engine crew members are and maxes out at a 55% natural evasion rate and allows the ship to evade projectiles and missiles but not continuous laser based weaponry or boarding crews.
The combat plays out by letting your powered weapons gain charge and selecting a enemy location on their ship. It takes place in real time but does allow the player to pause to allow one to better assess a situation or to provide a player time to line up their systems and crew to better handle an incoming threat.
A lot of the game's depth lies in its combat as targeting specific parts of a ship causes different effects that both the player and enemies can use to gain an advantage in combat. The most basic combat tactic is to destroy a ship's weapon system and then target their cockpit or engine to prevent an escape.
However to reliably cause damage to a ship's system one must destroy the shields to allow one to target systems with impunity which one has the choice to try overwhelm a shield with superior fire rate, EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) weaponry to temporary weaken or disable shields or make use of shield bypassing weapons such as missles or bombs.
Sometimes during combat, there can be a transmission of surrender with an associated reward to spare them, that is up to the player to decide with mixed results although there special instances where a successful dialogue can be advantageous.
As one travels between sectors one should always note what the type it is as it can help identify what enemy ships and cultures one will expect to run into. This becomes more important when one diversifies their ship crew with various races as one can usually receive benefits from a specific crew member's racial trait. There is also times where it will result in a negative outcome and cause more trouble but overall the chance to run into a benefit does outweigh the potential trouble a crew member might bring. Another benefit of having a diverse alien crew is that some random events can be resolved without difficulty and with some of the best rewards linked to the use of a species specific option.
Besides enemies, one could warp into one of the many scenarios where one has to take into consideration the environment as well and these can be neutral events with a hostile ship or enemies which can occur in nodes with things like a solar flare, an asteroid field or neutron flare causing intermittent effects or could result in having a planet's defence artillery in range, either decided by area or reputation, providing support or helping to target your ship.
In the event that you do intersect with any part of this search then one must go up against a high level Rebel ship that has dangerous fleet artillery support with the options being to buy time for the FTL engines to start up and warp out to the next node or to defeat the ship in short order and make your escape in the chaos.
This cat and mouse gameplay, added with resource pressure to maintain your ship upgrades can create tense moments and the relief of finding a shop that sells the right upgrades or provides the right supplies can make or break a run as each sector ups its difficulty with stronger weapons, shields and combination of systems. This escalating pressure does serve a purpose as it is prepares the player for the final fight in the last sector, which is best experienced first hand to get an idea at the scale at which the player is required to prepare.
Needless to say the last fight is the game's ultimate test and it acts as a means to see if one has built their crew and ship with the right answer to solve the problem of the wide variety of systems it will throw at player. It is difficult fight, but it does have notable weaknesses that the player can exploit and if one can survive the onslaught it can be worn down until it provides the player the opportunity to get the better of it and overcome this final challenge.
Besides the main story loop of saving the Federation, there is other aspects that encourage repeated playthroughs through the system of unlocking new ship types with each having its own alternative loadouts.
The way in which one unlocks ships is when the player completes a mission run and defeats the final boss with starter ship and then uses the next unlocked one to do the same and to repeat this process with every ship one unlocks or they complete a story mission or event chain that unlocks a ship by successfully completing it in a specific way.
The loadout unlocks are more ship specific and either ask the the player play in a specific way or try and find a specific story mission to complete. It is akin to side grades and provide another look at the same ship with different weapons, systems and room arrangement. It allows one to play with similar ships in a different way and can be helpful when one is looking to unlock a specific achievement or complete the ship specific unlocks with a style that might be better suited to the player.
FTL Faster than Light presents itself as point-to-point ship exploration and combat experience, but underneath its simple appearance hides a complex game of risk and reward that is finely tuned to provide challenge which is admittedly quite difficult on newcomers and it is advised to look at a wiki for those that find trouble with aspects one does not fully understand - the wiki choice between fandom and breeze are linked appropriately for those that are looking for one.
Once one comes to grips with how it works one can find it does cater to a wide range of players where each level of difficulty requires something different from a player's determination, skill and even a bit of luck to get an opportunity that opens up one's options.
It asks the player to learn and provides a means to offer challenge equivalent to what the player is willing to put up with as all the content can be unlocked at any difficulty setting and it falls on the player to decide how hard they wish to be challenged or how they wish to have their achievements displayed.
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