History Characters / FTLFasterThanLight

* BoringButPractical: Their ships are described as looking like boxy pieces of junk, yet highly efficient in suiting their needs.

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

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* BonusBoss: [[spoiler:A second Rebel Flagship that's under construction]] can be encountered in the Rebel Stronghold. [[spoiler:It has the same layout as the normal Flagship on Hard difficulty phase 3, but without the benefit of its [[LimitBreak power surge]]. Defeating it delays Rebel encroachment for two turns and rewards you with a lot of resources, along with the Federation cruiser if it has not been unlocked yet.]]

* FinalBoss: The Rebel Flagship. [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in that it's the only "proper" boss in the game. There are [[BonusBoss lesser bosses]] in the game, but none of them are necessary to complete the game. Most of them provide UnlockableContent when beaten.
* FinalBossPreview: [[spoiler:[[BonusBoss A second Rebel Flagship shows up in the Rebel Stronghold sector]]. It is in very unfinished condition when you find it, missing many systems, weapons and crew.]]

** Killing all of the crew members on the Flagship causes an AI to take over, which provides a default crewman manning bonus to every system, and slowly repairs any damaged systems.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: They enact their rebellion through violent and brutal warfare against all non-human races, as well as humans sympathetic to TheFederation.

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!Human

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!Engi

!Mantis

!Rockmen

!Zoltan

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!Slug

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!Lanius

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[[/folder]]

The Federation makes use of the refitted Kestrel Cruisers (The Kestrel, Red-Tail,[[note]]Kestrel B[[/note]] and The Swallow[[note]]Kestrel C[[/note]]), the advanced Federation Cruisers (The Osprey, [[note]]Federation A[[/note]] Nisos,[[note]]Federation B[[/note]] and The Fregatidae[[note]] Federation C [[/note]]) and the Engi-built prototype Stealth Cruisers (The Nesasio,[[note]]Stealth A[[/note]] DA-SR 12, [[note]]Stealth B[[/note]] and Simo-H[[note]]Stealth C[[/note]]). Smaller Federation Scouts and Federation Bombers are also occasionally seen as non-player ships, usually commandeered by pirates in the wake of the Federation's fall. Federation ships in service have a simple white paint scheme with orange stripes, although most of the playable ships have varied color schemes with only the type A Kestrel and Osprey featuring default Federation livery.

Engi are masters of drone design and utilization, with the Engi Cruisers (The Torus, [[note]]Engi A[[/note]] The Vortex,[[note]]Engi B[[/note]] and Tetragon[[note]]Engi C[[/note]]) all starting with Drone Control systems and at least one drone schematic, and all of them have an extra drone slot at the cost of having one less weapon slot. Non-player Engi Scouts and Engi Bombers, sometimes encountered as enemies, also invariably field several drones. In addition, the Engi also have a penchant for ion weapons, which can disable shields to pave the way for drone, laser and beam attacks. And finally, in ''Advanced Edition'', they've taken up hacking. Engi ships are aesthetically utilitarian and boxy, but are also very compact and feature concise ring-shaped layouts.\\\

Mantises are an aggressive and violent warrior race. They follow a MightMakesRight and DefeatMeansFriendship mentality. While some are indeed members of the Federation, most of them are independent pirate crews, or parts of warbands, seeking profit and glory in combat. Their ships focus on boarding tactics and taking enemy ships intact by crew elimination for greater rewards, a set up that takes advantage of the Mantis' melee combat prowess. The vast majority of enemy Mantis ships will have teleporters and will try to send boarding parties, and all three of the playable Mantis Cruisers (The Gila Monster, [[note]]Mantis A[[/note]] The Basilisk,[[note]]Mantis B[[/note]] and The Theseus[[note]]Mantis C[[/note]]) expect you to act similarly. The Basilisk and The Theseus start with no anti-ship weaponry at all, but feature double-size teleporters capable of sending four crew members per wave into enemy ships to wreak havoc. Aesthetically, Mantis ships are symmetric, with hulls painted blood-red and layouts often featuring many large, square rooms.

Pirate crew and their slaves come in most races, and pilot all kinds of ships; a pirate Rebel Fighter, for example, will often have non-human crew, whereas non-pirated Rebel ships only have human crew.

The Federation makes use of the refitted Kestrel Cruisers (The Kestrel, Red-Tail[[note]]Kestrel B[[/note]], and The Swallow[[note]]Kestrel C[[/note]]), the advanced Federation Cruisers (The Osprey [[note]]Federation A[[/note]], Nisos[[note]]Federation B[[/note]], and The Fregatidae[[note]] Federation C [[/note]]) and the Engi-built prototype Stealth Cruisers (The Nesasio[[note]]Stealth A[[/note]], DA-SR 12 [[note]]Stealth B[[/note]], and Simo-H[[note]]Stealth C[[/note]]). Smaller Federation Scouts and Federation Bombers are also occasionally seen as non-player ships, usually commandeered by pirates in the wake of the Federation's fall. Federation ships in service have a simple white paint scheme with orange stripes, although most of the playable ships have varied color schemes with only the type A Kestrel and Osprey featuring default Federation livery.

* FinalBossPreview: [[spoiler: [[BonusBoss A second Rebel Flagship shows up in the Rebel Stronghold sector]]. It is in very unfinished condition when you find it, missing many systems, weapons and crew.]]

* MacrossMissileMassacre: The Flagship can fire ''three'' missiles per volley, unlike almost any other NPC ship in the game.[[note]]Player ships can pick up Swarm Missiles with the Advanced Edition enabled, which ''can'' fire up to three weak missiles; and Pegasus Missiles regardless of AE, which fires two strong missiles. [[spoiler: The other NPC ship that can do so is the aforementioned second Flagship.]][[/note]]

* EqualOpportunityEvil: Pirates can consist of any mix of the standard races.[[spoiler: However, you won't find [[SecretCharacter Crystal]] pirates outside of their own sector.)]]

* HumansAreDiplomats: Averted. Other species have multiple events where they convince others or use their powers to defuse a situation, but until ''Advanced Edition'', humans had none. Now they have one. Only one. [[spoiler: You can use a human to calm down a confused Mantis who believes he is human.]]

Engi are masters of drone design and utilization, with the Engi Cruisers (The Torus [[note]]Engi A[[/note]], The Vortex[[note]]Engi B[[/note]], and Tetragon[[note]]Engi C[[/note]]) all starting with Drone Control systems and at least one drone schematic, and all of them have an extra drone slot at the cost of having one less weapon slot. Non-player Engi Scouts and Engi Bombers, sometimes encountered as enemies, also invariably field several drones. In addition, the Engi also have a penchant for ion weapons, which can disable shields to pave the way for drone, laser and beam attacks. And finally, in ''Advanced Edition'', they've taken up hacking. Engi ships are aesthetically utilitarian and boxy, but are also very compact and feature concise ring-shaped layouts.\\\

Mantises are an aggressive and violent warrior race. They follow a MightMakesRight and DefeatMeansFriendship mentality. While some are indeed members of the Federation, most of them are independent pirate crews, or parts of warbands, seeking profit and glory in combat. Their ships focus on boarding tactics and taking enemy ships intact by crew elimination for greater rewards, a set up that takes advantage of the Mantis' melee combat prowess. The vast majority of enemy Mantis ships will have teleporters and will try to send boarding parties, and all three of the playable Mantis Cruisers (The Gila Monster [[note]]Mantis A[[/note]], The Basilisk[[note]]Mantis B[[/note]], and The Theseus[[note]]Mantis C[[/note]]) expect you to act similarly. The Basilisk and The Theseus start with no anti-ship weaponry at all, but feature double-size teleporters capable of sending four crew members per wave into enemy ships to wreak havoc. Aesthetically, Mantis ships are symmetric, with hulls painted blood-red and layouts often featuring many large, square rooms.

* 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]].

Zoltan are a highly technologically advanced species and their ships, both playable and NPC, possess a special augment called the Zoltan Shield, or supershield. This augment forms a non-regenerating green energy barrier every time the ship jumps that encases the ship, consumes no power, and blocks everything until its hitpoints get worn away. By everything, this means it blocks drones, hacking, mind control, teleporters, bombs, and missiles, all of which pass through normal shields. The supershields aren't very tough though, and take double damage from ion weapons, but the advantage they provide is notable nonetheless. The playable Zoltan ships (The Adjudicator [[note]]Zoltan A[[/note]], Noether[[note]]Zoltan B[[/note]], and Cerenkov[[note]]Zoltan C[[/note]]) are built around using powerful weaponry and their supershield to fight quick, decisive ship-to-ship battles, with main shields not needing to be powered until the supershield falls. Zoltan prefer beam weaponry, frequently using beams together with lasers, ions, missiles and drones. Because of their supershield, Zoltan enemies can be punishing to players who are using unarmed or weakly-armed boarding ships, although ''Advanced Edition'' introduced an augment that allows key boarding strategy components - crew teleporters, bombs, and mind control - to bypass the barrier. Aesthetically, Zoltan ships are rounded and asymmetrical, with green hulls and round orange external lights/portholes.\\\

* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Any Lanius ship that attacks the player is explicitly said to have gone rogue and is no longer part of the mainline Lanius group. If the player has a Lanius on the crew, they can admonish the rogue captain for breaking the laws, which can either make the hostile ship stand down or double down.

* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Any Lanius ship that attacks the player is explicitly said to have gone rogue and no longer part of the mainline Lanius group. If the player has a Lanius on the crew, they can admonish the rogue captain for breaking the laws, which can either make the hostile ship stand down or double down.

* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Any Lanius ship that attacks the player is explicitly said to have gone rogue and not part of the mainline Lanius group. If the player has a Lanius on the crew, they can admonish the rogue captain for breaking the laws.

* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Any Lanius ship that attacks the player is explicitly said to have gone rogue and not part of the mainline Lanius geoup. If the player has a Lanius on the crew, they can admonish the rogue captain for breaking the laws.

* ProudScholarRaceGuy: A race that prides itself on focusing on racial diplomacy and scientific research, rather than warfare (hence their specializations focusing on additional power and improved shields, rather than directly improving combat capabilities)

* EnergyBeing: The Zoltan are composed, apparently, of pure energy, enough to power ship systems.

* BoardingParty: The Mantis B mandates this approach, possessing a crew teleporter and boarding drone but no weapons. A fully leveled-up boarding team of four Mantis will rapidly turn the enemy ship into a space coffin.

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Mantises are an aggressive and violent warrior race. They follow a MightMakesRight and DefeatMeansFriendship mentality. While some are indeed members of the Federation, most of them are independent pirate crews, or parts of warbands, seeking profit and glory in combat. Their ships focus on boarding tactics and taking enemy ships intact by crew elimination for greater rewards, a set up that takes advantage of the Mantis' melee combat prowess. The vast majority of enemy Mantis ships will have teleporters and will try to send boarding parties, and all three of the playable Mantis Cruisers (The Gila Monster [[note]]Mantis A[[/note]], The Basilisk[[note]]Mantis B[[/note]], and The Theseus[[note]]Mantis C[[/note]]) expect you to act similarly. The Basilisk and The Theseus start with no anti-ship weaponry at all, but feature double-size teleporters capable of sending four crew members per wave into enemy ships to wreak havoc. Aesthetically, Mantis ships are symmetric, with hulls painted blood-red and layouts often featuring many large, square rooms.\\\

* [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Race and Ship]]: The Crystals are excellent boarders, due to taking less suffocation damage and their CrystalPrison ability (which locks down a room, barring exit or entry until it wears off). The Crystal Ship starts with weapons that can pierce a single shield, which is all the shielding most enemy ships have in the first few sectors.

* {{Precursors}}: To the Rockmen.

* HordeOfAlienLocusts: They sustain themselves by absorbing minerals left in the wake of interstellar combat. Some have theorized that the reason there's little evidence of ancient civilizations is the Lanius absorbing them without a trace.

* NoSell: Rockmen are immune to fires. Do note, however, that fires eventually drain oxygen from a room if not put out, and Rockmen are ''not'' suffocation-resistant.

** The DA-SR 12, sacrificing engine power and fast-charge weapons for a stronger cloak and powerful Glaive Beam. Once again, it has no shields, relying on its cloaking and the OneHitKill power of its Glaive Beam to carry it through early sectors, until a shield system can be installed.

The Rebels are a large, technologically advanced, organized faction of militaristic human-supremacists. It is implied that a large section of the Federation's former human populace became what is now the Rebellion, which seeks to overthrow the Federation and establish dominion over all known alien species. The Rebel fleet has already destroyed most of the Federation, and relentlessly hunts down the player throughout the game. Should the Rebel fleet overtake a beacon, the standard event located at that beacon will be replaced by a fight against a powerful Rebel Elite Fighter, with practically no rewards for victory. The fleet thus serves as an AdvancingWallOfDoom, forcing the player to move on to the next sector and continue with their mission, and limiting the time available in which to explore each sector.\\\

* AbsoluteXenophobe: They will not rest until every non-human species is wiped off the galactic map, or crushed underneath an iron rule.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Very much so. As a group, they [[PropagandaMachine have a LOT of rhetoric]] about how the various alien races are [[TheSocialDarwinist intrinsically inferior to humans]] and [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans how their efforts to kill them all will improve the galaxy.]]

* FantasticRacism: They are extremely human-supremacist.

* HumanityIsAdvanced: Mildly. The Rebels possess every form of system and technology known in the game, including a supershield on the flagship which is significantly stronger than anything the Zoltan ever created. Their automation and drone technology is advanced even beyond that of the Engi.

* MasterRace: Humans. [[{{Irony}} The reality is]], HumansAreAverage.

* ScaryDogmaticAliens: To all non-human races.

TheFederation is a formerly-great alliance of alien species, now fractured and on the brink of destruction at the hands of the Rebels. What few ships and bases that remain are under siege by both Rebels and pirates, but they will help you if they can. The player's goal is to reach and defend the Federation base in Sector 8, The Last Stand.

The most common Federation member species are the humans, followed by the Engi, Zoltan, Rockmen, Mantis, and a few Slugs. All of these alien races however have sizable populations outside of the Federation, with the Rock and Zoltan homeworlds being self-governing, the Mantis being split among various warcamps, and the Engi living in nomadic bands. As of ''Advanced Edition'', some members of the newly-reawakened Lanius species have also aligned themselves with the Federation.

Tropes relating to the Federation and its ships include:

The Rebels are a large, technologically advanced, organized faction of militaristic human-supremacists. It is implied that a large section of the Federation's former human populace became what is now the Rebellion, which seeks to overthrow the Federation and establish dominion over all known alien species. The Rebel fleet has already destroyed most of the Federation, and relentlessly hunts down the player throughout the game. Should the Rebel fleet overtake a beacon, the standard event located at that beacon will be replaced by a fight against a powerful Rebel Elite Fighter, with practically no rewards for victory. The fleet thus serves as an AdvancingWallOfDoom, forcing the player to move on to the next sector and continue with their mission, and limiting the time available in which to explore each sector.

As the Rebels are a human faction, their crews are composed entirely of humans. Rebels make use of diverse and advanced technology, with their Riggers utilizing drone technology on par with the Engi, and Fighters possessing heavy weaponry of all known types, as well as teleporters for boarding actions. The Rebels also field a large fleet of fully automated ships which serve as scouts for their main fleet (the Auto-Scouts), but are sometimes armed well enough to be legitimate fighters on their own (Auto-Assaults). These automated ships possess no life support, since they have no crew, and can thus only be defeated by destroying their hulls. As of Advanced Edition, Rebel ships now utilize Clone Bays, Hacking and Mind-Control, as well as dangerous Flak weaponry and the Vulcan laser.

Tropes relating to the Rebels, including their ships and flagship, include:

* ScaryDogmaticAliens: To everyone else.

%%* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized

Pirates have little involvement in the war between the Federation and the Rebels, and instead make a living for themselves by hijacking ships and plundering other ships for spoils.

Pirate crew and their slaves come in most races [[spoiler:(you won't find Crystal pirates outside of their own sector)]], and pilot all kinds of ships; a pirate Rebel Fighter, for example, will often have non-human crew, whereas non-pirated Rebel ships only have human crew.

Tropes relating to pirates and the ships they use include:

* EqualOpportunityEvil: Pirates can consist of any mix of the standard races.

Humans feature the following tropes:

The Engi are a vaguely mechanical, semi-humanoid species whose bodies are composed of swarms of nanobots that collectively use a sort of aerobic metabolism. In gameplay, Engi have unparalleled repairing ability, fixing systems twice as quickly as a human could, but are awful combatants, doing half the damage that a human would (or a third of what a Mantis could do).

Engi are masters of drone design and utilization, with the Engi Cruisers (The Torus [[note]]Engi A[[/note]], The Vortex[[note]]Engi B[[/note]], and Tetragon[[note]]Engi C[[/note]]) all starting with Drone Control systems and at least one drone schematic, and all of them have an extra drone slot at the cost of having one less weapon slot. Non-player Engi Scouts and Engi Bombers, sometimes encountered as enemies, also invariably field several drones. In addition, the Engi also have a penchant for ion weapons, which can disable shields to pave the way for drone, laser and beam attacks. And finally, in ''Advanced Edition'', they've taken up hacking. Engi ships are aesthetically utilitarian and boxy, but are also very compact and feature concise ring-shaped layouts.

Engi and their ships feature the following tropes:

The Mantis are an alien species of, well, human-sized praying mantises. Mantis do an 50% extra damage and move 20% faster relative to a human, making them excellent in melee combat and for boarding. However, their repair rate is only half that of a human, making them less effective at holding ships together.

Mantises are an aggressive and violent warrior race. They follow a MightMakesRight and DefeatMeansFriendship mentality. While some are indeed members of the Federation, most of them are independent pirate crews, or parts of warbands, seeking profit and glory in combat. Their ships focus on boarding tactics and taking enemy ships intact by crew elimination for greater rewards, a set up that takes advantage of the Mantis' melee combat prowess. The vast majority of enemy Mantis ships will have teleporters and will try to send boarding parties, and all three of the playable Mantis Cruisers (The Gila Monster [[note]]Mantis A[[/note]], The Basilisk[[note]]Mantis B[[/note]], and The Theseus[[note]]Mantis C[[/note]]) expect you to act similarly. The Basilisk and The Theseus start with no anti-ship weaponry at all, but feature double-size teleporters capable of sending four crew members per wave into enemy ships to wreak havoc. Aesthetically, Mantis ships are symmetric, with hulls painted blood-red and layouts often featuring many large, square rooms.

The Mantis and their ships feature the following tropes:

The Rockmen are a race of large, tough humanoid beings akin to rock golems. Vrachos IV and the Rock Homeworld sector is not their actual place of origin; their ancestors hailed originally from a distant sector of space which, at some point long ago, got cut off from the rest of the known galaxy.

Rockmen move at half the speed of a human but have 50% extra health, making them tough to kill. Furthermore, they are immune to fire thanks to their rocky composition. In-game, Rock controlled sectors tend to be heavy in asteroid fields and red giant stars.

Rock ships, both playable and enemy, have a special rock plating augment that has a 15% chance of negating incoming hull damage, and a preference towards missile weapons. Rock Cruiser type A (The Bulwark) and type C (Tektite) both field missile launchers at the start of the game, with the former relying solely on missiles to deal damage until a teleporter or energy weapons can be acquired. The Rock Cruiser type B, the Shivan, meanwhile, is built around the Rocks' immunity to fire. With no airlocks, it relies on them to put fires out, but, conversely, possesses a fire bomb launcher which can be combined with Rock boarding parties to devastating effect. Aesthetically, most Rock ships feature bulky, segmented sandstone-brown armor, with black hulls beneath.

Rockmen and their ships feature the following tropes:

The Zoltan are a race of green glowing humanoids who have aspects of being EnergyBeings. Gameplay-wise, they possess the special ability of providing one unit of power to the ship system whose room they occupy, at the drawback of having 30% lower HP than a human, and otherwise act just like humans. While their fragility makes them weak in direct hand-to-hand combat, the ''Advanced Edition'' gave them the special feature of exploding upon death to damage all enemies in a room. When combined with a clone bay, Zoltan can thus become moderately effective, if suicidal, combatants.

Zoltan are a highly technologically advanced species and their ships, both playable and NPC, possess a special augment called the Zoltan Shield, or supershield. This augment forms a non-regenerating green energy barrier every time the ship jumps that encases the ship, consumes no power, and blocks everything until its hitpoints get worn away. By everything, this means it blocks drones, hacking, mind control, teleporters, bombs, and missiles, all of which pass through normal shields. The supershields aren't very tough though, and take double damage from ion weapons, but the advantage they provide is notable nonetheless. The playable Zoltan ships (The Adjudicator [[note]]Zoltan A[[/note]], Noether[[note]]Zoltan B[[/note]], and Cerenkov[[note]]Zoltan C[[/note]]) are built around using powerful weaponry and their supershield to fight quick, decisive ship-to-ship battles, with main shields not needing to be powered until the supershield falls. Zoltan prefer beam weaponry, frequently using beams together with lasers, ions, missiles and drones. Because of their supershield, Zoltan enemies can be punishing to players who are using unarmed or weakly-armed boarding ships, although ''Advanced Edition'' introduced an augment that allows key boarding strategy components - crew teleporters, bombs, and mind control - to bypass the barrier. Aesthetically, Zoltan ships are rounded and asymmetrical, with green hulls and round orange external lights/portholes.

Zoltan and their ships feature the following tropes:

%%* MartialPacifist

%%* ProudScholarRaceGuy

The Slugs are an alien race of human-sized... slugs. They're telepathic, and are in lore able to sense the thoughts and intentions of other sentient beings. In terms of gameplay, in the vanilla game Slugs are able to see into adjacent rooms and are able to sense lifeforms on your ships and enemy ships as red dots, and in ''Advanced Edition'' their telepathic sensor power was improved so they can now identify the species of the lifeforms and sense their actions (movement, fighting, repairing, etc.). Having a Slug crewman can often make upgrading sensors unnecessary and make nebula sectors easier by compensating for the fact that sensors don't work in nebulae. Additionally, thanks to their telepathy, Slugs are uniquely immune to mind control.

Of course, the place where the vast majority of Slugs reside is within nebulae. The Slugs, despite being telepathic, are not very empathic, and will use their abilities to manipulate, deceive and steal from other beings whenever possible, resulting in them being shunned within the Federation. They are also hedonistic, and their goals are essentially to acquire wealth (typically by deceit) and spend it on pleasureful activities. While Slugs are unexceptional fighters (being equivalent to humans in hand-to-hand combat), they are pragmatists. They will try to take ships with intact hulls to maximize profit - eliminating the crew not by boarding and fighting, but by using indirect methods such as hacking, mind control and fire weapons. This trait can be seen in their playable ships, with the type A "Man of War" featuring an Anti-Bio Beam to snipe enemy crew members and the type C "Ariolimax" featuring both a hacking module and mind control. The type B "Stormwalker" is a singular exception, as it passes up manipulation for conventional boarding backed up by Healing Bombs (which heals allied crews in the affected room).

Most Slug ships feature smooth, curved hulls painted a metallic light purple, and possess a repair gel augment to automatically seal hull breaches. Slugs typically use all forms of weaponry, and sometimes use cloaking.

Slugs and their ships feature the following tropes:

A new race added in ''FTL: Advanced Edition'', the Lanius are a species of metallic scavengers with a bizarre anaerobic metabolism that allows them to survive in the vacuum of space, drain oxygen from their environment, and manipulate metal. Gameplay-wise, they move slowly, at 80% the speed of a human, slowly drain oxygen from their surroundings, and uniquely, take no damage from being in a vacuum.

The Lanius spend decades in dormancy, hiding away undetected from the other races, and awaken in the aftermath of a galactic war or the end of a civilization to feed upon the leftovers as scavengers. It is surmised that they are the reason why there is so little evidence of ancient civilizations in universe, for the Lanius have absorbed it all. Now, in the aftermath of the Federation-Rebel war, they are awakening once again. Lanius appear in Abandoned Sectors, areas of Federation space that were hit the hardest from the war and are now abandoned, from where they scavenge metal. While often misunderstood, they have established diplomatic relations with the Federation, and unlocking 4 ships will convince the Lanius to join the Federation cause and unlock their cruiser. The playable Lanius Cruisers, the type A "Kruos" and type B, "The Shrike", are the only Lanius ships which possess a life support system in order to accommodate non-Lanius crew; their NPC ships have no oxygen and are crewed entirely by Lanius, making boarding operations against them rather difficult unless the player has Lanius crewmen themselves.

Lanius and their ships feature the following tropes:

Crystal beings are the ancient ancestors of the Rockmen, hailing from a distant sector of space beyond the areas known to the Federation. They traveled to the region now known as the Rock Homeworlds long ago via a long-range portal, but the portal closed at some point for unknown reasons, and the two populations were left isolated to evolve on their own.

Crystals are the secret race and very difficult to obtain, accessible only as part of a tricky sidequest. They possess high HP (125% of the Human default), take half damage from oxygen deprivation, move slightly slower (80% of default), and possess a unique "Lockdown" ability that lets them seal off the room they are in with a crystalline barrier, equivalent in strength to high-level blast doors.

Unless you have unlocked the Crystal ships already, or unlocked the Rock Cruiser type C in ''Advanced Edition'', the only way to acquire a Crystal crew member outside of their space is to acquire a 'damaged stasis pod' from a random event involving searching an asteroid field, then having the Crystal contained within the pod revived by Zoltan scientists. Having a Crystal crew member is necessary in order to reactivate the portal in Rock Homeworlds to take you to the Hidden Crystal Sector.

The Crystal people are peaceful and inquisitive, but once exposed to the outside world again after their long isolation, they have a hard time, as the massive, nigh-unstoppable Rebel Fleet following the player arrives in their sector. Thus, they may not be entirely friendly, as they blame the player for leading the Rebels to their space, but the player's Crystal crewman, in thanks for taking him home, will grant the Federation the services of the massive, powerful Crystal Cruisers, the type A "Bravais" and type B "Carnelian". As of ''Advanced Edition'', the Crystals have established diplomatic relations with the Federation, and their off-shoots, the Rockmen, and the type C Rock Cruiser, "Tektite", is the resultant hybridization of Crystal and Rock technology.

Crystals and their ships feature the following tropes:

%%* SecretCharacter

[[folder: Factions]]

[[folder: Common Races]]

!The Crystal

** 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. [[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.]]

** In a sense, the Nesasio. It can do a surprising amount of damage if you know how to manipulate the Mini Beam's path to maximize the number of rooms hit. [[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.]]

* GlassCannon: The DA-SR 12, sacrificing engine power and fast-charge weapons for a stronger cloak and powerful Glaive Beam. Once again, it has no shields, relying on its cloaking and the OneHitKill power of its Glaive Beam to carry it through early sectors, until a shield system can be installed.

** They can't penetrate Zoltan Shields in any way, forcing them to abandon the battle entirely.

* ObliviouslyEvil[=/=]NotEvilJustMisunderstood: Some of the Lanius don't seem to realize that eating people's ships is a rather dangerous thing for them to do. Others appear to have a rule against devouring the property of sentient beings, not that that stops people from seeing them as terrifying monsters.