History Characters / FTLFasterThanLight

* AdvancingBossOfDoom: Their fleet acts as this, forcing the player to keep moving or face being overwhelmed by unlimited numbers of powerful ships.
** In addition the flagship acts as this in the final level. If it reaches the Federation base you get a game over. ''Advanced Edition'' makes it so the Flagship has to be there for three turns, which makes this much less likely to happen. The base starts out further away, though, so they'll probably reach the base at least once, then retreat.

* SecretAIMoves: The AI drones and flagship don't need crew to survive, and some ships can have 5 shields whereas 4 is the usual limit.

** The flagship's conventional weapons are each in isolated rooms guarded by single humans (who don't respawn between phases), meaning even a weak boarding crew can make short work of defenders and take the weapon offline. Furthermore, if you can manage to kill the main crew despite their level 3 medbay (not easy since there's eight of them, not counting the weapon room crew), you can easily take out their shields and piloting system, making the fight a breeze.
*** Averted in Hard difficulty, where the two primary weapons are now connected to the rest of the ship, meaning the tried and true strategy of killing everyone but the guy on the plasma cannon isn't quite as viable as it once was. Now if you want to leave at least one guy alive, he'll be running around the ship fixing things (certainly better than the AI doing it, though). The FinalBossPreview version also has connected weapon rooms, but without a backup AI, killing the crew means you win.

* RockBeatsLaser: Most races uses lasers in melee combat. The exceptions (Rock, Mantis and [[spoiler:Crystal]]) are the [[IncrediblyLamePun only ones likely to beat a Rock in combat]].

* FailedState: At the start of the game, the Federation is all but defeated, with only the starting hangar, a few scattered bases and a single sector left under their control. Even in sectors that have yet to fully fall under rebel control, federal authority is weakened to the point of non-existence, with rebels and pirates running amok and harassing the locals largely unopposed.

* HealingShiv: The Stormwalker (Slug B) comes with a Healing Burst. You are meant to board enemy ships and heal your crew with it (and hope it doesn't miss).

* FailedState: At the start of the game, the Federation is all but defeated, with only the starting hangar, a few scattered bases and a single sector left under their control. Even in sectors that have yet to fully fall under rebel control, federal authority is weakened to the point of non-existence, with rebels and pirates running amok and harassing the locals largely unopposed.

* TheFederation: It's in the name.

* FinalBoss: The Rebel Flagship. [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in that it's the only "proper" boss in the game. There are lesser bosses in the game, [[OptionalBoss but none of them are necessary to complete the game]]; most of them provide UnlockableContent when beaten.

* MechanicallyUnusualClass: They don't need to breathe, so they have no life support systems. They also aren't concered about hull breaches and fires for the same reason (although they understand their squishy friends don't like having holes/exothermic chemical reactions in their ships and will fix them).

* MechanicallyUnusualClass: They don't need to breathe, so they have no life support systems. They also give zero fucks about hull breaches and fires for the same reason (although they understand their squishy friends don't like having holes/exothermic chemical reactions in their ships and will fix them).

** In a sense, the Nesasio. It can do a surprising amount of damage to early-game ships if you know how to manipulate the Mini Beam's path to maximize the number of rooms hit, and its weapons charge pretty quickly. [[FragileSpeedster But with no starting shields, it relies on combining a strong engine with a cloak to reduce its chances of getting hit, rather than blocking attacks entirely.]]

** Their passive doesn't augment combat in any direct fashion, instead repairing damage at a higher rate than other races, which can make or break a battle.