Targets that are about to run can be stopped dead with hits to the engine room or cockpit. That means it stops them fighting back.īut there are exceptions: if you're facing a heavily shielded ship with a battery of laser, for instance, taking down the shields is worthwhile. As a general rule, the best approach is to hit the enemy weapons room with everything you've got. You can aim most weapons at specific parts of the target ship. The Kestrel's burst laser alone is enough to get it through the first few sectors, so it's wise to save the missiles for emergencies and build up a stockpile of ammunition for the harder fights later in the game. Ammunition is limited, and defence drones - which can't touch lasers - can shoot them down. Since shields are the central plank of most ships' defences, that makes them very powerful. Hull lasers are very powerful used in concert with other weapons That way, the first few bolts eat through the shields but all the rest get through to damage the target. This means that if you've got more than one laser, it's a good idea to wait until they're all charged and fire them together. Each of these shots can be stopped by a shield, though the shot will nullify the shield for a short time. Laser weapons fire between one and five shots.

They should be the mainstay of most offensive setups. These two classes of weapons are very effective when used together.

There are a lot of weapon types in FTL: Faster Than Light, which you pair off against defences in a sort of complex and futuristic version of rock-paper-scissors.īut if you're using the default starting ship - The Kestrel - you'll begin the game with a burst laser and a missile launcher. They excel at nothing in particular, so can fill any role. Humans are okay at everything, by the way. By doing so, you can take advantage of its incredibly useful telepathic abilities. If you're lucky enough to find a Slug crew member, then you should keep it on board, too. All three of these races are well suited to combat roles, then. And Lanius possess the anti-social ability of draining oxygen out of rooms. Rockmen, however, have phenomenal health. Mantis, on the other hand, dish out extra pain in combat. Both are rubbish at combat, though, so they're prime candidates for keeping on board, manning (or alien-ing) essential systems. Zoltan, meanwhile, give the system they're crewing a handy extra power bar. The different races in the game excel at different tasks.Įngi are particularly good at repairs, for example. You're best off saving the final two crew members for freelancing repair or combat roles. There are two more stations on the ship that benefit from crew, doors, and sensors, so that's where your next two go.

Only the four key systems mentioned above have experience bars - that's where you first four crew members should go.

Many of the things you'll want them to do - manning the weapons, shields, engine, and piloting systems repair work combat - result in them gaining experience and improving in that ability.īut it's a slow process, so it's best to acquire crew members early, assign specialisations to them, and keep them alive. Your ship can hold up to eight crew members. So, the only way to find out what it skips over is to tackle the game's vertiginous learning curve head-on. In truth, there's just too much essential detail concerning the mechanics and brutal difficulty level left out in the introduction. It might boast a friendly-seeming tutorial, sure, but you'll soon discover it's a wicked sham, designed to fill you with a false sense of hope before the rebellion blows you out of the galaxy and goes laughing all the way back to its flagship. Roguelike games are traditionally fairly daunting prospects for the uninitiated.įTL: Faster Than Light for iPad is no exception.

Ftl ship strategy