FTL: a review

 This game focuses heavily on scavenging parts off of defeated foes, just like Sai & Shin in Shippuuden. And as such it forces me to use strategies I don’t like. Normally I would focus on dexterity, being limber and agile, then attacking with high critical damage using some sort of cheese strategy. So that when I win I overkill, but I lose a lot as well.
That description kind of epitomises my gameplay in Dark Souls. Conversely my work with control charts for the NIR has taught be to be really conservative, never taking risks and only changing the bias by half the requested adjustment in case it suddenly swings back in the other direction. I suppose thinking about it Tsun Tsu is also very conservative, even to the extent of conserving his enemies forces, keeping them alive so that they may one day be allies.
Thus far my most effective strategy has been on the rock ship I renamed “Ion Boarder” because I use the 3 ion weapons to disable the enemy ships weapons and medbay (incidentally the shields as well) then sent two units over to reduce the ships crew. Thus the Drone ships with missiles were the greatest challenge. The flagship was actually a really easy (but long) battle, I boarded their weapon bays and disabled all its guns then eventually removed all the crew. After which I cycled through breaking all the bits except the oxygen supply. I haven’t been able to use the same strategy on any other ship because it requires too much luck in the shops. Also with the strategy of this ship it was a simple task to unlock the mantis ship.
I’d also advocate the use of a repair and anti boarding drone, because they persist between maps, and are thus a good investment for every ship.
All in all its been a decent game that has distracted me for a while and been worth writing this review of. It seems I’ve been on a definite masochistic bent lately with this, Dark Souls co-op with Josh and Rouge Legacy.

KK well since I wrote the above I have unlocked the mantis red cruiser. It’s not easy to progress with though. Seems every time I draw an automated ship battle I die, same with natural hazards. But when I win a ship battle I hardly get hit. If things go smoothly the ion missile disables their weapons and two mantis board their cockpit and remove all the crew. Other challenges are the Zoltan shield, rockmen, droids. But each of them I can usually prevail against (one at a time). It’s the AI ships that always kill me. The first bit of scrap goes to the teleporter and for extra energy, then one more personnel. After that I mostly save up for something interesting from the shops.
Rumour has it that the alternative mantis cruiser has a 4 person teleporter. I imagine that would make boarding ships much easier. Thus like Tomb Raider, once you have acquired the skill to do something particularly challenging then you get a buff that means your new skill is no longer required (Boarderlands2 has this as well).


Had a work call out and in the hour between batches I had a very good run. everything seemed to go well, including unlocking the stealth ship through a quest and gaining the Astronomically Low Odds achievement. I figured more dodge would be better than more shields.

With the 20 abandoned ships I left behind I had some pretty skilled operators, particularly Johnny.