@tim, let’s list the things we liked about FTL. We can enumerate attributes and potentially track down more reference material:
The idea for FTL was inspired by tabletop board games, such as Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game ,[8] and non-strategic video games, such as Star Wars: X-Wing , where the player would have to route power to available systems to best manage the situation.[7] Davis also stated that some of the influences for the game from TV shows and movies included Star Trek, Firefly, and Star Wars.[9] Unlike most space combat simulation games, “the initial concept was as simple as wanting to put the player in the commander’s chair instead of the pilot’s”, according to Davis,[10] and to make “the player feel like they were Captain Picard yelling at engineers to get the shields back online”, as stated by Ma.[6]
repelling boarders / fixing ship by telling crew to go to specific room
not being able to move ship in battle. (minor)
re: repairing ship… I love idea of seeing a list of damaged systems and I prioritize what gets worked on. I don’t want to tell each crew member where to go though. I’m not a micro-manager!
It feels like a really big part of it, but moving around characters was not fun for me, either. Except in the same sense of “moving resources”, ie “oh no, our $SYSTEM is on fire, send folks to fix!”
That said…
A couple ships are made for boarding (special fed ship layout 3, Mantis ship), and it’s neat to see this whole other game play emerge. Most of the time I’m all about having as many airlocks open as possible, because fuck boarders and fire!
Yeah… but it’s kinda abscratced out pretty nicely, ne? I mean, they are moving, just not from your exact direction. It’s like playing a dogfight with cards.
Well, I’m all about dropping crew-level character control!
yo i LOVED FTL. it is the only game i have ever reviewed on steam. Faster Than Light
i had a different experience than both of you because i loved moving the little crew members around! it was so exciting! and some of them got to level up and become better at their jobs!!! and engis are better at repairing things and rock guys don’t need oxygen to breathe and mantis are better fighters? i loved sending the right crew to the right situation like if there was a hull breach or if there was a fire or if there were boarders.
the first and last thing i ever streamed on twitch.tv was my first-ever playthrough of FTL for my friend jeremie to watch. it was also the farthest i’ve ever gotten in FTL. i guess it was sometime in 2012.
i loved FTL so much that i bought the soundracks on vinyl when the albums came out. there were two different albums. the vinyl itself was different colors in like a splash galaxy pattern. it was really cool. i gave all my vinyl away to my friend peterson a few years ago because i don’t own a record player.
i have no idea!!! i guess i only played FTL: Faster Than Light in 2012! I did play like one hour of whatever game is in my Steam library last month. Which is… what?
That banner image says it’s Advanced Edition, I guess! I didn’t really know there was a difference.
Okay, I guess I noticed a few changes had happened in the game since 2012, but I thought those were just patches. Which I guess is what Advanced Edition is? The only changes I registered were:
it seems to have lost my progress from 2012, which makes sense; i don’t THINK this steam app uses a cloud save, and even if it did, i don’t really expect it to keep my progress and unlocks from 2012. and i’m definitely not using the same computer that i did to play it in 2012.
the way you unlock the ships appears to be different.
there are steam achievements now
I still don’t really know the difference, but from where I stand, it seems like AE replaced FTL? In the way that “expansions” or “patches” “replace” the vanilla game?
Huh, was that how it worked? I wonder if I played D2:LoD… I can’t recall.
Here’s the thing about that though: pretty sure because of box releases one could buy Diablo 2, expansion-free. I don’t think FTL: Faster Than Light is available any longer. I’m interested in communicating this in a database: just play this one, the other one doesn’t exist on it’s own. And also tracking it, because as archivists we ought to be aware of how marketing changes a game.
yeah, i bought it as “FTL: Faster Than Light” when it came out in 2012, and when i looked again this year, it is now the advanced edition in my steam library. so i’d say your characterization works.
