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Comment by faeriechangling | Hacker News Reader

Quite a well designed rougelite especially for its time. You are able to win the vast majority of games and yet the game usually FEELS challenging the majority of the time. If you minmax it there's a few too many situations where stalling for extended periods of time is the optimal strategy, but even this can be remedied in quite a few cases using cheat engine to speed things up when you achieve a "known win" scenario. Once you master hard, playing hard without pause can extend the replay value further.

The best part of the game is the soundtrack. On twitch the FTL soundtrack has to be getting more playtime on broadcasts of other games than on broadcasts of FTL itself. It's great atmospheric space themed music.

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I still haven't mastered hard. I can win on hard with crystals, but not with any other ship (though I've come close with the 4 square teleporter mantis ship).

Any non boarding strategy seems non tenable right now for me

It is a matter of luck(and patience). And the right augments, you cannot plan for, but rather have to adopt when you find them. For example a drone recovery arm will make me buy it, even if I do not have a drone control system yet. Hull repair is also a must buy(if you can save up drones), and so is weapon preigniter.

With them, it becomes managable, even on hard - with luck. If I don't have any luck, I can also die on easy.

On easy, I have to get really bad luck to die; there is just so much scrap, I can buy whatever I want whenever I want.

"I have to get really bad luck to die"

Or a moment of not paying attention and then suddenly your shields are all down and destroyed and before you know it that was it. But I haven't played easy in a while ..

> It is a matter of luck

but also valuation of spending and damage. Apparently, good players can win about 70% or so of the time on hard, because the game is designed such that the amount of leeway/mistakes you're allowed to make is near zero (but not zero).

Speaking of the soundtrack, Ben Prunty has done a lot of fantastic work!

https://twitter.com/benprunty

I haven't played FTL in years. What do you mean by "stalling" exactly? Do you mean visiting as many nodes in each region as possible and leaving just before the rebels catch you?

Or waiting for the opposing crew to run out of oxygen?

One strategy I remember was that if you got the right build against some foes you were literally invincible and could have low enough damage that you wouldn't destroy the enemy.

So you could use that to level up your crew to all locations, which was a pretty big gain, especially early on and before / without clone bay (with a clone bay your dupes are expendable and lose skill, so getting them to level 2 is less valuable).

Ah right, I do remember that actually. IIRC you could leave the game running in an asteroid field to level up evasion/shields until they patched it.

Another tactic that comes to mind...

My Shrike minmaxing strategy typically involves o2 depletion to whack enemy ships out and get maximum rewards. But it does frequently require a lot of waiting.

Bording is more fun and faster with the mantis/crystal.

Or burning them out (optional with rock bording party)

No criticism intended. But genuinely: What makes FTL a roguelike game?

I used the term rougelite instead of rougelike. This is explicitly to distinguish it from games like rouge and nethack. FTL has some elements of these games, procedurally generated levels, permadeath, exploration, PvE, RPG elements, crushing difficulty, but not others. Thus rougelite.

Anyways trying to define what qualifies what a "rougelike" is has started countless semantic slapfights (which is why I tried to use the cop-out word rougelite). Please consult a rougelike alignment chart to know where you stand in the great holy war over the definition of the word "rougelike" [1]. Nowadays most gamers think of indie games like dead cells, hades, enter the dungeon, darkest dungeon, crypt of the necrodancer, and ftl when they think "rougelike" and those games are all tagged with "rougelike" on steam and twitch.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/ZLDp5rU.png

I have never thought of KSP as a roguelike/lite, but now that I see it on the chart it actually makes a little sense. I started with Binding of Isaac so I guess I have a fairly loose definition.

Rogue, not rouge.

As a fan of everything along the Roguelike spectrum, I’m happy enough with the “compromise” labels.

Traditional Roguelike for full-on Berlin Interpretation Roguelikes, like Nethack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Roguelite for Slay the Spire, FTL, and similar. Much easier to say than Roguelikelikes or Games with Roguelike Elements.

And the word Roguelike? The battle was lost a long time ago, and most people will understand it to encompass both categories above. (Even though I personally have a tough time taking it to include the three great games in the mechanics radical column of the chart).

Perma-death, with a procedurally generated world, combined with a clear destination / goal (to get to the next system). One can beeline straight for the goal or risk more time exploring for the prospect of a greater reward. It matches the "2010s Indie" definition of a roguelike.

Procedurally generated content and permadeath are two core concepts of roguelikes. Games that use these concepts are also called roguelites (with a 't'). Binding of Isaac and Spelunky are two other examples of roguelites.

The two may be jeg ingredients. But there must be something missing. It can't only be death as in death and procedurally generated worlds.

Well, that's not my definition, but certainly one that's widely used. I have seen quite a few heated discussions about what should be called a roguelike though. :)

People now use the term 'roguelike' to mean more than turn-based, grid-based, permadeath, procedural games.

Usually any game that has procedural elements & permadeath now becomes labelled "roguelike" or "roguelite" by the community, depending.

I'm still a snob about it, to me roguelikes are nethack, ADOM, even newer games like Cogmind and Caves of Qud are roguelikes, but to me, FTL is not.

- navigate a collection of randomly generated 2D maps - pause the combat system to think about your next move - often don't know what's around the next corner - balance decisions about what items/upgrades to buy in shops using a few common resources you pick up from battles and exploration - when you die, your game ends

to each their own but like, it's _pretty_ close!

I'm an absolute purist, to be honest it's just pedantry and not really worth debating, I love FTL, and the entire "roguelike" genre, whether they adhere to my standards or not. The golden age of games is really upon us

I have the same feeling about the Fez OST. Fez was good. The soundtrack was great.

I listen to the soundtrack while working. It's truly amazing.

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