FTL: Faster Than Light has a new patch to fix some lingering issues

This is one of my favourite games. I've had it for years and years, and I _still_ play it now and again. And yes, I've beaten it on the normal difficulty and the standard ship. I've unlocked most of the others, but I've yet to beat the game with any of them.

Funnily enough I played a long session of FTL last night. And I was feeling very confident when I reached the final boss. My ship had Burst Laser III (5 shots), Flak Gun II (7 shots), Basic Laser (1 shot) and Automated Reloader and Weapon Pre-Igniter augmentation. Level 3 shield, 51% evasion. Plus other good stuff. Unfortunately no Small Bomb or Breach Bomb as a 4th spare weapon. (I would have bought that given the chance.)

Literally, all those weapons fire off immediately - and were aimed on the Boss shields to take them down as quickly as possible.

What does the Boss do?... He only randomly / flukily sends a Hack-Bot to attack my weapon systems. Absolute b**tard! It powers down my weapons regularly, and I find myself unable to take down his shield. Literally this was the only thing that could have saved him. Still, it was a good run. Love this game.

I contacted the FTL developers some months ago about how much I liked the game, and also an improvement suggestion. FTL looks fine on a 1920x1080p monitor in windowed-mode. But, it does not look fine on 4K (3840x2160p) in windowed-mode. You need to run it full screen else it is much too small. My suggestion was to have pixel resizing as a Setting option, e.g. 2x resolution or 3x resolution (or dynamically resizing by grabbing the window border with the mouse). They responded, but I think they indicated it would be unlikely to happen (old game and all that). I guess this hasn't gone into the game patches, but I'll have a look when I get home.

Probably played 250+ hours of FTL (and still haven't unlocked everything yet).

I don't know why I am so addicted to this game. I have beaten it with every ship on hard difficulty. This is not so much bragging as it is a confession, because it takes quite a few runs on hard to get 'lucky' with the drops and stuff. 1185 hours lol.

Still no translation. With the number of copy sold, they may have pay/develop a dude to do a script to translate it, at least into latin-based-alphabet languages (and, even, with most current libraries, "latin" is not an excuse). They even refuse the help from the community...bullshit! They can touch them I will buy their next game and I hope that the mass will do as me.

Very native English-speaker inability to understand 95% of the world ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers))

Crap, now I have to get back to this one again. Like I wasn't drowning in backlogged games already. :D

I think this was the first game I purchased on Steam for Linux.

FTL had so much potential, but really it's an exercise in masochism. It should be called "RNG: Count the Ways it will F*#$ You."

It does not matter how many times I've attempted to complete a run, some new BS event would take place. One you simply could not overcome, or would have to deal with at the worst possible time.

I was blown away at the sheer creativity put into the number of ways the game can ruin your run. I don't remember if the RNG (ie. so-called "luck" ) ever really worked in my favor. Another one of those games with a solid foundation but turned into a cultural fad in itself as a game that's stupidly hard for the sake of being hard.

So until they add a mode that has less RNG events (much much less), or one that balances the number of bad RNG events with good ones (if there even are any), I doubt I'll ever install or play again. This game sits in my "Garbage" steam category out of principle. My patience (and free time I have to sink into any game) has reached its limit with FTL, which, in this case, appears to be 5 hours of playtime.

You should try Massive Chalice :)

Actually, where I really really like FTL (including its balanced game mechanics. Yes, the RNG too), I'm not at all keen on the mechanics of Darkest Dungeon. FTL - you start a completely fresh game each time (or load back to the point you had reached). The game lasts no more than 3 hours start to finish. You choose your starting ship and you have difficulty options (Easy, Normal, Hard ~ and then Mods as well.)

With Darkest Dungeon, you are trying to build up a team of characters and every step along the way, they're getting increasingly insane and diseased. So, you finish a dungeon, your best characters are ruined, and you're hoping to take on harder and harder dungeons. Basically, you make mistakes in your DD play, and you might as well wipe hours and hours of punishing work that you put into the game to get to that point.

The RNG in FTL is a lot more balanced than you'd think. Watch some game play videos on Youtube, and see the techniques people employ. Use the Pause button a lot! Fire off the weapons by hand so that they all work together. A lot of the fun in FTL is choosing options based on your current status. Do you need to buy another weapon, do you need to repair the ship, do you need to reinforce the doors. When RNG favours you with an item - Do you use that item or do you stick with your existing weapon, augmentation, crew member. Lots of strategy involved.


Last edited by g000h on 16 Jan 2018 at 5:47 pm UTC

Me again. Great News - I'm not sure when it happened, but finally FTL supports windowed-mode resizing (on Linux at least).

I'm on a 4K screen, I load up FTL and change from full-screen mode to windowed-mode in the Options, and I get a too-small play-window. Then, I select the corner of the window with the mouse, and resize it to be the window size I want, and the game is nicely handling the game-window resizing.

Whoop! Very happy about this.


Last edited by g000h on 16 Jan 2018 at 6:44 pm UTC

Might have to revisit this one, but I have to admit, I really do not like it. I love it at first, but the RNG is so random and can make a match swing so widely that it doesn't really make and sense to me. One match will be easy, the next 10 will be impossible, and then every once in a while they will be nicely balanced. Not worth the time investment!

I have to admit that the first time I won FTL was by save scumming it, which involved manually moving and backing up the save files using my file manager from outside the game. Then a few attempts later I was able to win the game with no trickery using the same strategies I had used previously. Part of the problem I think is that the game itself actually does a remarkably poor job in teaching you how to defeat the flagship.

I also credit watching Kikoskia's incredibly fortunate Let's Play with helping me get there:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2wyBHX_6fA&list=PLTvwKQHVid4bzdxY1nJYqFUrfPGGBwLpa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2wyBHX_6fA&list=PLTvwKQHVid4bzdxY1nJYqFUrfPGGBwLpa)

Sometimes you just need to know that the game is in fact winnable. :|


Last edited by Hamish on 16 Jan 2018 at 7:57 pm UTC

This game is a happy memory for me. I played intensively for a few days and then on a lunch break at work I play for 15 min with a friend who recommended it to me a few days before and had MANY hours logged without ever beating the final boss himself. And then I did :> A combination of draw-a-line-laser and fire beams or something I think, and lots of evasion.

I have fond thoughts/memories of FTL, not only because it's a great game in itself, but for me it was also one of the early Steam for Linux games. Great to see it still supported in some way.

I just came here to comment that this game is one of the best games I have ever played, and I'm 35 years old and been playing since BBC micro era (ie original elite, then 286 and onwards).

It is hugely RNG which goes against the idea of user ability to affect outcomes, but its just too damn satisfying when you do win.

I originally hated it also, but then invested time in it, unlocked every ship on hard and every variant (including the crazy hard to get crystal ship). over 600hrs gameplay, cant believe there are others like me on here with more hours in this than things like path of exile!

I even thanked the developer

Not sure if you guys have noticed, but right now FTL is 78% off on [Humble Store](https://www.humblebundle.com/store/ftl-faster-than-light) and not only do you get the Steam key, but DRM-free download from Humble and browser-play from Humble and iOS version too.


Last edited by g000h on 16 Jan 2018 at 11:05 pm UTC

Like most rogue-likes, I don't play FTL to beat it, I play it to see how many hilarious ways I can lose. One of my most memorable games was when my first jump took me next to a sun with an enemy nearby. I took massive damage from the sun and my opponent, but I eventually defeated him; of course, I had to warp out of there before I could repair or the sun would have destroyed my ship, but then my next jump brought me face to face with another foe who destroyed me in two shots. I thought it was hilarious.

Not sure if you guys have noticed, but right now FTL is 78% off on [Humble Store](https://www.humblebundle.com/store/ftl-faster-than-light) and not only do you get the Steam key, but DRM-free download from Humble and browser-play from Humble and iOS version too.

But the version they sell (as DRM-free) is still from 06/02/2014 :(

Strange, since the GOG.com release got the update.

Wow, a surprise update to one of my favorite games six years after it came out? (359 hours and counting) Nice!

While I can understand having difficulty on the normal or hard levels, I've got around a 90% win rate on easy and I don't think it's particularly difficult to achieve. Just remember that pause is your friend, carefully timing the firing of your weapons can boost your damage output considerably, and that the game's all about adapting to what you get and going with the flow rather than trying to force a particular loadout; all types of weapons have their uses and getting to know them all can give you a real advantage. Also boarding is overpowered; if you can consistently capture an enemy ship without destroying it you'll gain a small but noticeable boost in resources.

Also, use the doors Luke! :D
View video on youtube.com

Me again. Great News - I'm not sure when it happened, but finally FTL supports windowed-mode resizing (on Linux at least).

I'm on a 4K screen, I load up FTL and change from full-screen mode to windowed-mode in the Options, and I get a too-small play-window. Then, I select the corner of the window with the mouse, and resize it to be the window size I want, and the game is nicely handling the game-window resizing.

Whoop! Very happy about this.

This is great. I play it often on a 14" 1920x1080 laptop and the window is a little bit too small for my taste. Now i can resize it like i want.

Well, what do you know, first time playing the game in months and I win easily on my first attempt. ^_^

Treasure your Pike Beams folks.

By the way, are you the Hamish who calls in to Talk Heathen show on youtube?

Nah, I am just one of many Hamishes. ;)

FTL forums on Steam are full of people complaining that the game doesn't work for them any more after the patch. It's funny how those things work.

The updated version from GOG.com works brilliantly for me at least. Are these Linux users having issues or just FTL players in general?