History VideOGame / FTLFasterThanLight

* SaveGameLimits: To the point of absurdity. The entire game has a ''single'' save file. This means you can only ever have one active game at a time - if you start a new game, the current one is erased. This means you can't have separate games for different ship types saved at the same time for example - once you start a game, you have to play it till you win, die or choose to restart and overwrite it.

* UnwinnableByMistake: The Backup DNA Bank augmentation prevents your crew from being lost if the Clone Bay is off or broken, allowing them to be brought back later once the Clone Bay is turned on or repaired. However, if all your crew die while the Clone Bay is broken, and you have no other way of repairing it, [[http://i.imgur.com/veVlfcu.jpg they will all just sit inside the bank forever]], and with no pilot to charge the FTL, you'll be stuck. You won't even get a GameOver screen, and must restart manually.

** A common encounter in Slug sectors. Many events involve suspiciously generous offers, most of which turn out to be ruses to sabotage your ship. On the other hand, choosing the exact same option in said situation in a different playthrough CAN give different outcomes. For instance, a Slug trader talks to you about a special deal for his wares for a while only to be revealed as distracting you from his mates looting your ship. The next time you meet him, choosing to talk to him instead have him appreciate your trust in him and give you some extra bonus. So the only way to know whether it's really a SchmuckBait or not is to take it.

** Also, there are several random events where you can choose to take a risk and either get a decent reward or induce accidents that lose resources and crewmembers. These events often have special responses, marked by blue text, that allow you to avoid the dangers of the event. If you choose a blue option, the following text always describes the dangerous result and how your choice protected you from it (even though half the time choosing the normal option wouldn't result in any danger) making it seem as if the blue option caused the danger to happen.

* ScratchDamage: Every shot that hits a room will do at least one hull damage, provided the weapon has some sort of base damage. Bombs, ion weapons, the fire beam, and the bio-beam are exceptions. Rock ships (specifically, their Rock Hull Plating augment) have a chance to negate hull damage every time they are attacked, although the systems hit are still damaged. The Type A Stealth cruiser (specifically, their Titanium System Casing) inverts that, having a chance at protecting the system but still suffering hull damage.

* ShortRangeShotgun: Shows up in ''Advanced Edition'' with Flak Weaponry. They shoot several projectiles with actual spread, with the expected accuracy and medium-to-long reloading times. They're often better than ion weapons at stripping shields, but their inaccuracy leaves them ill-suited for the precision needed for most battles.

* SingleGenderRace: The Engi. All races beside human lack an alternate gender graphic, for that matter. Averted with the Advanced Edition DLC, though, as now all races have a variety of slightly different sprites to denote genders and/or races.

* SkillScoresAndPerks: You improve your ship through a skill score system wherein each installed system can be incrementally improved by spending scrap. Systems that aren't pre-installed on your ship can be bought at some stores for a scrap cost, after which they can also be improved in the same manner. All systems are capped and higher-level upgrades are more expensive. Also, main systems like weapons, shields, engines, drones, and cloak have their upgrades manifest by simply increasing the amount of [[TimTaylorTechnology power you can pump into them]] and you need to upgrade your reactor to obtain more power, while passive subsystems like helm control, doors, and sensors don't consume power and are improved directly. Crew members, meanwhile, improve the performance of certain systems by manning them, and get better at in the process via StatGrinding.
* SlowLaser: Of both the "incremental bursts that are actually projectiles" and the "slice through a ship's armor like a knife" varieties.
* SnipingTheCockpit: It is possible to injure or even kill the crew of enemy ships by firing upon the section they are in. If all of the crew are killed, you win even more scrap, although trying to do this with conventional weapons is likely to destroy the ship via hull damage before the crew is dead. It's much more efficient to kill crew off with bombs, fire, boarding parties, or an Anti-Bio Beam, all of which deal negligible hull damage at most.

* SpaceClouds: Nebulas, which cover certain jump points. Within, sensors are useless, obscuring vision of your own and enemy ships, though Slug PsychicPowers still work. Certain nebula jump points also contain a plasma storm, which cuts reactor output in half for the player and any enemy ships. Some sectors are one giant nebula, generally inhabited by Slugs, and those sectors don't impede the Rebels quite as much.

* StandardHumanSpaceship: The Kestrel and other Federation ships play this straight, with their designs dominated by simple flat lines. The Rebel ships avert this, being moderately sleek and colorfully painted with no visible engines. Also, the Engi-built but Federation-run and human-crewed Stealth Cruisers avert this, being very sleek and glossy (for the Type A) or shiny (for the Type B), which is strange given that the ships the Engi build for their own use are extremely utilitarian and boxy.

* StealthInSpace: A cloaking device is one of the ship systems you can pick up. It boosts your Evasion by 60%, greatly boosting your evasion although not guaranteeing that enemy shots will miss unless your pre-cloak evasion is 40% or more. Normally, firing [[InvisibilityFlicker weakens the cloaking effect]], but an augment removes that limitation.

* StoneWall: The Mantis Cruiser Type B, at least early on. It has no weapons, level 2 shielding to start, a crew of two Mantises, and a four-person teleporter. Early combat tactics involve sending them both over to board enemy ships, leaving the shields to protect the ship since it has zero evasion in your absence. This is actually way more effective than it sounds, especially in the early levels. Plus, killing the crew instead of just blowing a ship up gives you a bigger Scrap reward, letting you buy more crewmates and/or upgrades.

** Engi and Zoltan. Engi do half damage in combat and Zoltan only have 70 health, making both inferior combatants (though with ''Advanced Edition'', Zoltan make good suicide bombers if you have a clone bay). However, Engi repair twice as fast while Zoltan provide one bar of power to whatever room they're in, making both ideal for ship support during a battle.

** As of ''Advanced Edition'', Zoltans explode when killed, damaging enemy crew.

* TeleportersAndTransporters: Used for boarding actions and bomb weapons. They are apparent common in universe as many merchants, space stations and other ships have access to them.

* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: Humans as crew members get a bad reputation for their MasterOfNone status and lack of blue events, so ''Advanced Edition'' added a few bonuses for keeping one around. For example, one event has some Engi ask for help dealing with "Robert Smith," a Mantis convinced he's a human. The blue option sending your Mantis to talk with Robert has him panicking and subsequently being put down, while the blue option sending your human allows you to recruit him or receive an engine upgrade.

* ThoseTwoGuys: Not in the game itself, but gameplay-wise, if you use two of the same crew for boarding, chances are you're going to be having them both selected together a lot as it's both safer and faster.

*** They will prioritize the protection/repair of shields and weapons, occasionally even forsaking defending other systems to repair them. The former system is the absolute highest priority, allowing you to draw them away from other systems by having your crew attack it or damaging it with weapons.

*** If the enemy ship has a teleporter, they will ''always'' use it. Even to send just one crew member, or to send in Engi[[note]]a poor choice because they do half the attack damage of most races[[/note]] or Zoltan[[note]]also a poor choice because they have only 70% of the health of most races, although ''Advanced Edition'' has them [[ActionBomb explode]] upon death, enabling suicide bomb strategies[[/note]] if no other choice of boarders are available, regardless of how much more effective it is to just keep the entire crew on board.
*** They only retreat from your ship at low health, even when faced with a battle they can't possibly win.

* UnexpectedGameplayChange: In the base game, The Last Stand suddenly has you move in from the right side of the map to intercept the Rebel Flagship. Justified because instead of the Rebel Fleet chasing you, you are now chasing the Rebel Flagship. Your roles have reversed, and so has the direction you have to move. This was removed with the ''Advanced Edition'' update, where direction is consistent with previous sectors. Another difference in both versions is that there is no advancing Rebel Fleet; instead, they take over nodes at random while you try to catch and defeat the boss.

** Similarly, there is an event where a space station's satellite defense system has a broken AI, and the repair crew ask if you can fix it. If you offer to help and destroy the satellites that were shooting at them, they won't be happy and you'll have to salvage the satellites in lieu of payment before leaving quickly.
* UnlockableContent: Only one ship, the Kestrel, is available for play at first. Eight other ships can be unlocked, either by playing through the game[[note]]Reaching sector five, and killing the final boss, unlocks the Engi and Federation cruisers respectively[[/note]] or by completing certain events. Each ship also has a 'Type B' variant which can be unlocked by earning ship-specific achievements. ''Advanced Edition'' adds a ninth ship and the ability to unlock new ships simply by beating the game with the previous one on the list. It also adds Type C ships which are unlocked by reaching the final sector using their corresponding Type B ship with Advanced Edition content turned on.

** The Pulsar environmental hazard introduced in Advanced Edition can result in your shields being dropped, letting the enemy have free reign to attack and destroy you (though it also often drops the enemy's shields, giving you free reign to attack them). The best advice for dealing with this hazard is to simply warp out as soon as possible unless you are certain you can take out their weapons.
* UnwinnableByDesign: Unless you can manage to upgrade your ship to keep up with the increasing difficulty of the ships the game throws at you, it's quite possible to find yourself in a situation where you're incapable of killing your opponent. Boarding-based ships like the Mantis B are especially liable to find themselves in such a situation, as Zoltan shields and automated ships present a significant problem without ways of compensating for their defenses. The flagship basically enforces getting a strong offense up, as its myriad tricks make it far more formidable than normal enemies. The third phase in particular will ''destroy'' you with its boarding parties and mind control unless you took out most of the crew in phases one and two and/or can break through the Zoltan Shield and shut down the Mind Control system lightning-fast.

* VariableMix: With the exception of Sector 8's special music, each music track has two versions: calm and spacey most of the time, and incorporating more rhythm and percussion when you're squaring off against a hostile vessel. One version automatically fades into the other as the situation changes.

** The most straightforward example of this is drone schematics, if you don't have and aren't planning on getting a drone system: they're useless except as store credit.

** Most augments are at least slightly useful, but few provide a large effect compared to getting money for them at a store. The most noteworthy examples are Advanced FTL Navigation (allows you to jump to any previously-visited beacon... which will usually be completely empty, thus spending a fuel and wasting a tick forward of the advancing fleet), and Repair Arm (which [[CastFromMoney takes a percentage of your money to heal you]] every time you get money, when you'd rather keep the money to upgrade your ship so you get hit less). While not entirely useless, these are often viewed as something to immediately sell at the next store.

** The Artillery Beam. It takes up its own module instead of being incorporated into your weapons, and bypasses all shields except Zoltan shields. It also cuts across multiple rooms like all beam weapons in the game, dealing 4-5 damage to most ships, and sometimes more. The Glaive Beam is available to all ships and is flat-out the strongest weapon in the game, able to do up to 12 damage in one sweep if it hits four rooms and no shields block it. Against certain ship layouts, it can hit more rooms and do even more damage.

** Ships that have a teleporter and a strong boarding team but no weapons tend to have trouble fighting off [[{{Mooks}} automated scouts]], which are usually cannon fodder for ships with even lackluster weaponry.
* WeaponizedTeleportation: Teleports pass through shields easily, which Bomb weapons exploit, teleporting an explosive device directly into the enemy ship. They can't be blocked by defense drones like missiles can, but they only damage systems and not the hull, unlike missiles. Like all non-beam weapons, they can miss if the enemy has high enough evasion.
** Any enemy under Mind Control is considered your crew for the duration. Which means you can teleport them to your ship. They are still AI-controlled, though, so most likely they will run off to man one of your systems. But send your elite soldiers to keep an eye on them, and once the Mind Control wears off.... This is the easiest and most efficient way to deal with Medbay-equipped ships, Lanius ships, or even the final boss (assuming you can stay alive long enough to slowly pick off its crew, one by one by one). About the only ship immune to this tactic is Clone Bay-equipped ships, as your kidnapping rate most likely won't be able to overcome their cloning rate.

** In general, engi ships are said to "look like a pile of junk loosely held together", but they are more capable than they look. {{Subverted}} by the Engi B with its starting crew of one and bad weapons, however.

** A few events will call you out if you choose not to help out. At least one is particularly nasty about it; if you opt not to help a ship struggling through an AsteroidThicket, sometimes they'll make it out alive without you and relay your location to the rebel fleet as revenge, speeding up the fleet for the next two jumps.

** ''Advanced Edition'' adds an event where you can steal supplies from a rebel colony. Assuming they don't booby-trap it, they'll cite you as an example of why the rebels have support.
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: The game doesn't have an explicit KarmaMeter, but many events will test your morality. Do you take the bribe of a pirate and let him go after some ship, or do you take him on? When a slaver offers gifts in exchange for [[VillainsWantMercy letting them live]], do you accept and let him live to continue his dirty work, or do you finish the job? Do you help when asked for it, even if it may cost you health, ammo, or crew? There's no one around who will judge you, only your conscience. Choose, skipper.

* HackYourEnemy: The hacking system in ''Advanced Edition'' fires a limpet drone onto an enemy system, allowing you to shut it down, or, in the case of the medbay, oxygen/life support, teleporter, mind control, weapons, and shields, reverse its effects for a few critical seconds.
* HardModePerks: Playing on Normal gives you a score multiplier. Playing on Hard in ''Advanced Edition'' gives you an even bigger one.

* ImmuneToFire: The rockmen have fire immunity as one of their strong points. While others put out fires with extinguishers, rockmen put them out by stomping on them. If you encounter a space station with out-of-control fire, you can send them to succesfully put out the fire without risking your crew or your ship. The drones too are immune to fire, which makes it useful to deploy a system-repair drone when over half your ship is on fire and you can't vent your oxygen (because your door system's broken and probably on fire too) without losing your crew.

* InsectoidAliens: The Mantis.
* InstantSedation: The worst outcome from accepting the Slug captain's drink is that you are quickly knocked out by the heavy anesthesia, and when you awake, you find out that the Slug stole your supplies.

* JackOfAllStats: Humans have no particular perks or penalties, which makes them good for manning stations. The ''Advanced Edition'' plays this up by giving them a 10% boost to skill gain. The Kestrel, the default ship, has average stats across the board, is crewed by three humans, and can make good use of almost any gear you find. The Type B version gets a more rounded-out crew (a Zoltan and a Mantis plus two humans).

* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: Missiles have drawbacks, true — most prominently being limited in quantity — but in the end, they ignore standard shields and can dish out some pretty good damage. Even laser and ion guns technically shoot projectiles.

** Advanced Edition adds a new augmentation that lets you board past enemy Zoltan shields. This ship augment also works for bomb weapons and the Mind Control system also added by Advanced Edition. This also allows Advanced Edition to avert this trope by saying that they must have had said ship augment.

* LawfulStupid: The Zoltan. They are members of the Federation your ship is on a mission to help save and are considered peaceful. They will also constantly harass you with legal requests and government business, up to and including attempting to arrest vital crew members or ''trying to kill you over customs disputes.''

* {{Leitmotif}}: The Mantis, Rockmen, Zoltan, and Engi (and Slugs and Lanius in ''Advanced Edition'') have their own themes that are played in their respective sectors. In addition, there are what the composer calls Space Cruise Chords, Milkyway Melody, and Conflict Theme, all of which turn up in multiple places in the soundtrack. Conflict Theme in particular is intended to represent the consequences of war, and shows up towards the end of the Mantis, Rockmen, and Last Stand tracks. [[http://benprunty.com/2013/07/11/a-guided-tour-through-the-ftl-soundtrack-analysis-of-themes/ See here for more information.]]
* LethalLavaLand: Being at a beacon too close to a class M star behaves like this: both combatant ships will have a room or two set on fire periodically, and may take some hull damage when this happens.

** In ''Advanced Edition'', nodes completely under Rebel control will be within range of their anti-ship batteries. At these nodes, you'll be periodically attacked by a projectile that, if it hits, tears through your hull, bypassing your shield, doing 3 damage[[note]]for reference, this damage-per-hit is only matched or surpassed by a select few weapons (including the Glaive Beam, Hermes, and Breach Missile)[[/note]], and always leaving a hull breach.
** ''AE'' also added the Backup Battery system, which provides extra reactor power (2 or 4, depending on whether it's been upgraded) for 30 seconds.

** Where weapons are concerned. In the later levels, higher enemy shield strength can render the starting sets of weapons unable to break through, while missiles will run out quickly if you're forced to fall back on them. Add on to that the larger weapon arrays, amounts of scrap necessary for upgrades and repairs, and other resource factors, and winning takes a bit of favor from the RandomNumberGod. And even if you've managed to scrabble together a decent ship, [[spoiler:that won't guarantee that you can do any major damage to the Rebel Flagship before your ship is crippled beyond hope of recovery by its Hacking module and quartet of [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus Two weapons]]]]. [[spoiler:And even if you beat the first stage of the Flagship, you may still get ripped apart by the second phase's army of drones, and overcoming that doesn't mean that your crew and systems are safe from being dismantled by the third phase's Mind Control and boarding parties.]] Normal and Hard are worse in this regard, since scrap is harder to come by. Easy, by comparison, often lets you build up a decent surplus, to the point where you can reliably max out several systems by sector 8.
** The sector map generation can screw you over if you see what should be a link of sectors to jump to the exit, only to find one link is broken, forcing a backtrack to the start... [[OhCrap most likely through several Rebel-Fleet-occupied nodes]]. Unless you are incredibly well-armed, you will die, or at the very least have your end-game wrecked. There is an in-game option that will allow you to hover your mouse over each sector to see where it links, but it starts disabled by default, and you can still easily run into a dead-end if you don't bother to actually examine your planned route ahead of time.
** Most ships can be unlocked simply by finding the relevant homeworld (Stealth, Mantis, Slug, Rock, Zoltan) or beating the game normally (Engi, Federation), though the Stealth and Zoltan ships are somewhat counter-intuitive. The secret ship, however, is much more complicated. First you have to find the Damaged Stasis Pod, an event which can only be found in specific sectors and even then doesn't always produce the pod (thankfully, it occurs at distress beacons, meaning that you can scout out which nodes may or may not have the pod, and you're guaranteed to get the pod if you have Rock Plating... [[ShmuckBait unless you take the weapon the event offers instead]]). Then you have to open the pod, which is also an event only possible in certain sectors — and this event is a normal beacon, so good luck actually finding it, even with the map scouted. [[note]]There are two sector types [[spoiler:(specifically Engi-controlled sectors and the Engi Homeworlds)]] that can contain both the pod acquisition event and the pod opening event. However, those are far from guaranteed to actually have both, and you obviously can't open the pod before you find it, so if you find the events in the wrong order, you're out of luck.[[/note]] ''Then'' you have to find the Rock Homeworlds, which may not even appear, while also not allowing the crew member gained from opening the pod to be killed. '''Then''' you have to find an event in the Rock Homeworlds that will allow you to enter [[SecretLevel the hidden sector]], where you then have to reach to a quest beacon to finally unlock the ship. Each attempt can take from 30 minutes to an hour. Perhaps in recognition of the feat, it is easily the best ship in the game. Mercifully, a patch caused the Rock Homeworlds crystal wormhole beacon to be marked as a quest on the map whenever you have the pod crewman, taking some of the edge off.
** ''Advanced Edition'' also added an alternate unlock method for most ships that only requires winning with the previous ship on the list, making it even easier. The secret ship can be unlocked "merely" by beating the game with all sixteen of the main A and B type ships.
** One achievement for the Federation ship requires you to use your crew in four blue events by sector five. Even with your diverse crew, you just have to hope you run into events which allow you to do so. Another achievement for the Kestrel is "Have six different alien races on your crew." Nearly impossible with Kestrel A (starts with Human crew only) and a little easier with Type B (starts with three of the six races: Human, Mantis, and Zoltan). And an achievement for the crystal cruiser requires destroying 15 rock ships in one run. That will likely require running into 2 rock controlled sectors, and fighting a lot of battles in them. You are much more likely to beat the game with the ship than you are to get this achievement.
** Yahtzee of ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' eloquently summed up the [[https://youtu.be/d7DT1Z5523s?t=209 experience]], "You could spend all your scrap on fuel and keeping your various bits together, until you're five sectors in facing [[DemonicSpiders triple-shielded dreadnoughts]] with nothing more than [[CherryTapping a bag of dried chickpeas]] and a dustbin lid."

** When fully charged, the Swarm Missile Launcher fires three missiles for the cost of one. Additionally, an augment named "Explosive Replicator" encourages this attitude by duplicating your missiles half the time, extending your ammo by 50%.
** The vanilla game's Pegasus Launcher is a lesser version, firing two missiles for the price of one. It actually has better damage output than the Swarm Launcher (2 missiles dealing 2 damage each versus 3 missiles dealing 1 damage each), but obviously, 2 missiles are easier for defense drones to stop than 3 missiles.

* MartialPacifist: The Zoltan at their best. At their worst, they're LawfulStupid. But not always. The quest to unlock their cruiser reveals this to be their ideal, which they hope that you also strive for.
* MasterOfAll: As of ''Advanced Edition'', the special crew members you can recruit fall into this trope. If you manage to nab them, you'll find that they're fully maxed in ''all'' categories. One event can also give an Engi crewmember maxed out stats if you can beat your opponent.

* MisappliedPhlebotinum: Averted with Bomb weapons. The devs must have read "The technology that allows your crew to travel from the Cool Starship to the planet and back without using a shuttle is the same technology that can park a live warhead in the enemy captain's lap without using a missile," and came up with Bomb weapons, which do exactly that. However, they do no hull damage, since they appear inside the ship rather than smash into it.

** Only one ship will ever attack at a time, even if the rebel fleet catches up, though in the latter case you "won't have time" to pick up any scrap, and the ships you do engage will be pretty strong, leading to a net loss of resources even if you defeat them.
** Partially averted with ''Advanced Edition''. While there are still no events where your ship simultaneously fights two or more other ships, if you jump to a node under Rebel control (white zone, not red zone), an environmental effect called "Anti-Ship Batteries" occasionally fires an unblockable and ''savagely devastating'' shot at your ship that can only be evaded. Occasionally, an event may invert this, with the ASB targeting your opponent instead.

** Possible in the vanilla game with enough laser weaponry, but taken UpToEleven with [[GatlingGood the Chain Vulcan]] introduced in ''Advanced Edition''. It takes four power to run and only fires one laser, but after you've fired it five times, it fires one bolt ''per second'', which is faster than shields can recharge.

** If you're lucky enough to find four Burst Laser Mark [=IIs=] (and crazy enough to equip them all and upgrade your ship enough to supply the eight bars of power they'll collectively need), you can launch precisely 1.5 times more dakka than the Rebel Flagship's [[LimitBreak Power Surge]] in a single AlphaStrike. Sadly, you cannot equip four Flak Mark [=IIs=] to launch 3.5 the Flagship's level of dakka, as you cannot upgrade your weapons system enough.

* MutuallyExclusivePowerups: You can't have a cloning bay and a med bay on the same ship. The clone bay imparts a per-jump HealingFactor and ResurrectiveImmortality, however, and you can still heal mid-battle with the Healing Burst weapon and/or Reconstructive Teleport augment.

** Heavy Lasers do more damage per shot and can more easily punch holes in the target's hull, but have a lower rate of fire, making them by themselves ineffective against shielded ships.

*** There are three ion weapons — the aforementioned Ion Blast II, the Chain Ion (when fully or almost-fully warmed-up), and the Ion Charger (only if manned by a max-skill crew member) — whose ion DPS exceeds the rate at which ion damage wears off, allowing them to singlehandedly lock down the enemy's shields indefinitely (or singlehandedly lock down another system if shields are already being held down by another weapon). However, if they miss, the locked-down system will have sufficient time to recover before the next shot.

** The Crystal Cruiser and Rock Cruiser C have special Crystal weapons which mostly behave like lasers and have most of the same advantages and disadvantages. However, Crystal weapons can bypass one layer of shielding (for comparison, missiles and bombs can bypass five layers of shielding, which is the most any ship (even a computer-cheating-bastard ship) can possibly have). Since they otherwise behave like lasers, Crystal weapons don't use ammo; however, unlike lasers, crystal weapons fire physical objects that a Mk. I Defense Drone can shoot down.

** In the ''Advanced Edition'' expansion, the new Hacking system can shoot out a drone that attaches to the enemy hull and affects a single system. This locks the doors to that room to enemy crew, allows friendly crew to freely pass through the doors, makes it unable to be manned by a crew member, and allows a disruption ability that makes the normal effect of the room inverted or disabled, and said disruption is reusable. However, each usage costs a single drone part, the drone cannot be moved unless it is destroyed through ion damage or hacking, and each use of the system takes as long to cool down as cloaking does. Much like boarding drones, it's also vulnerable to defense drones and anti-drones, though it doesn't have a cooldown period between launches.
** Flak weapons, also introduced in ''Advanced Edition'' always fire multiple projectiles at once, up to seven with the highest tier, making them great at taking down shields. However, they can be shot down by defense drones, and they deal damage in a wide circle, meaning some of the projectiles might not even hit the system you were aiming at.

** Or system use, rather. Certain events or environmental hazards negatively affect systems. A plasma storm halves your reactor output, drones may occasionally knock out a layer of shielding, Rebel ships disable engines every so often, and Slug vessels target your medbay or oxygen. If the system has enough power, it may only be limited instead of disabled.
** One event lets you do this to an enemy instead. If you are using one of the Rock cruisers, an event can allow you to {{ram|mingAlwaysWorks}} the enemy ship, which permanently disables the enemy ship's engines, leaving them unable to evade your attacks. Another event added in Advanced Edition lets you track down and disable a Rebel Ship's engines if your sensors are maxed out.
** And then there's Hacking in ''Advanced Edition'', which allows you to shut down or even reverse the effect of any one of the enemy's systems for a few seconds.
* NonActionGuy: Engies and Zoltan aren't very good fighters, on account of doing half damage and having 30% less health than average, respectively.
* NonDamagingStatusInflictionAttack: Mainly the Ion-type damage. It stops shields and systems from recharging some amount of energy for a time, but cause no real damage:
** Ion-focused weaponry.
** Stun bombs stun all crew inside a room for 15 seconds, and deals a single point of ion-type damage.
* NonEntityGeneral: There is no indication of who or where ''you'' are during the game, and it is entirely possible to lose your entire starting crew without any interruption to your mission provided you always have at least ''one'' crewmember left to man the helm. With the Clone Bay in ''Advanced Edition'', your ''entire crew'' can die, yet this won't stop you from fighting; heck, some games have come BackFromTheBrink in the most extreme way because that single System Repair Drone the enemy didn't think to destroy fixed up the Clone Bay, bringing the entire crew back to life!

* OverratedAndUnderleveled: The famous Mantis pirate [=KazaaakplethKilik=] shivers your timbers at the mere mention of his name. With the right preparation, you are able to [[DefeatMeansFriendship defeat him and have him join your crew]]. He starts with no extra skills, just like any other ordinary Mantis to join you. ''Advanced Edition'' remedies this: He now starts with all skills at maximum.

* PauseScumming: Absolutely critical as it allows you to synchronize all of your weapons into a single deadly AlphaStrike or micromanage crew positioning in hand-to-hand combat. Alongside using one of the [[JokeCharacter weaker ships]], deliberately choosing ''not'' to pause is one of the biggest [[SelfImposedChallenge self-imposed challenges]] you can give yourself.

* {{Permadeath}}: For [[AnyoneCanDie crew members]] and for [[GameOver the ship itself]]. You can only save if you exit the game. On the plus side, destroyed systems can always be repaired, and as long as you've got one hull point left, you can repair up to full. The Clone Bay system in the ''Advanced Edition'' will clone dead crewmembers after a short wait, based on how much power it has, but takes the place of the Medbay and cloned crewmembers take a hit to their skills. You can also still lose them if the clone bay stays offline for too long[[note]]by which we mean about three seconds[[/note]], unless you have the DNA Bank augment.

** An event added in ''Advanced Edition'' details how the Rebels are providing supplies to the current system's inhabitants, who have had it tough due to the war. If you choose to fight them, upon winning, it tells you that now the people will be left out to dry again, but hey, [[YouBastard eliminating a few Rebels matters more to you than the well-being of thousands of colonists.]]

** The Rockmen culture is full of [[TheSpartanWay warlike]] [[FantasticRacism racists]] that follow a [[CorruptChurch transparently corrupt]], [[ScamReligion state run religion]].

** Occasionally, battles will be triggered by you being unable to respond to a transmission from another ship, with your silence being mistaken for hostility. This usually happens with Engi ships, which generally don't attack you unless they've been hijacked by pirates or Mantises.

* PopQuiz: In a Slug nebula, there may be a distress beacon shown on the map, but when you go to it, you track the signal to a number of moons orbiting a planet. A Slug marooned on one of the moons tests you by asking how many there are, so if you weren't paying attention and skipped through the text, you can only guess. If you guess wrong, the Slug steals your supplies, while guessing right will get you a Slug crewman.

** Newbie players on Easy — and even experienced players on Normal — can suffer devastating defeats in the first sector if they get bad luck, especially if they pick a ship with a glaring weak point; [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous nothing says "fuck you"]] like having no missiles and no weapons that can function without missiles, encountering an Auto-Scout with no offensive capabilities other than boarding parties, or encountering an enemy with beam drones and beam weapons without any shields. The Captain's Edition GameMod makes it even harder.

* PsychicPowers: Slug crewmen use these, revealing enemy and ally crew positions even if your ship's sensors are damaged. They can also see into adjacent rooms. Essentially, they have life form-detecting PsychicRadar. In ''Advanced Edition'', their status as telepaths makes them immune to mind control.

** Slugs have the same exact statistics as humans, but with the extra benefit of having PsychicPowers.
** In fact, every other species had some advantage, though the Slugs were the only ones to have an advantage without a drawback to balance it out. Humans had to wait until Advanced Edition to get their special feature — the ability to learn faster.
* PurelyAestheticGender: Human crew can be male or female, giving them different sprites. The alien races all either don't have gender, or they just look the same, with {{Palette Swap}}s to tell them apart. Going by the various in-game texts, Engi and Zoltan seem to be the former, and Mantises, Slugs, and Rockmen (and the Rockmens' ancestors, the Crystals) are likely the latter. The Lanius are anyone's guess.

* RandomEvent: You get one at ''almost every'' jump beacon; they can result in everything from combat, to trading options, to situations that present you with an option to intervene or ignore it and keep moving. You can, however, get no activity at all, and [[spoiler:the FinalBoss is not a random event, for obvious reasons]].
** The outcomes are also randomized in each run. In one run, you might recruit a rebel defector who will join your crew if you let them aboard, while in another run with the exact same event, they're a FakeDefector who will sabotage your ship if you let him aboard.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: [[ANaziByAnyOtherName The Rebels are]] ''[[ANaziByAnyOtherName definitely]]'' [[ANaziByAnyOtherName the bad guys]]. Their dialogue tends to be filled with propaganda about how [[TheSocialDarwinist humans are superior to aliens, who deserve to be subjugated]], and they will happily [[RapePillageAndBurn destroy entire colonies, killing men, women, and children alike]], to MakeAnExampleOfThem. At the beginning of the game, [[DownerBeginning they've already defeated]] TheFederation. Now you're on a run through alien-controlled space to reach and regroup with whatever little Federation-loyal forces remain to mount a [[LastStand last-ditch counterattack]].

* RobotMaster: The Engi, possibly as a result of their partly-mechanical nature and their MachineEmpathy. They make heavy use of drone systems, and their ships coming pre-installed with drones and have 3 drone slots as opposed to the 2 of every other playable ship. The lone Engi who pilots the Type B Engi Cruiser fits this trope particularly well, as he commands a 'crew' composed entirely of robots.

** The power plant is not a physical object. Probably because one shot to it and you'd be totally screwed. Note that it can be interfered with (ion storms, and that's a 1/10 nebula-only condition) and upgraded, but is otherwise intangible and invulnerable. Presumably, Rule of Fun's why the whole ship isn't cheeseballed invincible the same way.

* RunawayFiance: The "Wife of The Grand Basilisk of Numa V" event in the Rock Homeworlds has one. You can escort her to her destination, at which point you can either hand her over in exchange for scrap and an augment ([[WhatTheHellPlayer "May your children erode to dust!"]]), or you can refuse, which draws the ire of the Basilisk's escorts but has the rebellious fiancé join your crew.

* DistressCall: One of the main things you'll be looking for on the star map are the distress beacons, at least when your ship is in good repair. On average, they provide better rewards than a regular beacon, and more trouble, too. If you run out of fuel, you can send one out for a better chance at rescue, though this can backfire into a more difficult battle.

* DroneDeployer: While all ships have the ability to send out drones, Engi ships are particularly focused on drone combat and come with more slots for drones (Engi ships can support three drones while most ships can only field two). Engi Cruiser Type B starts with ''three'' onboard drones and only one lonely crew member.

* EnemyScan: Sensors grant additional information about enemy ships when upgraded. Level 2 lets you see inside enemy ships, and fully upgrading lets you see the exact state of enemies' systems, along with their power distribution. ''Advanced Edition'' adds the ability to track the charge status of weapons at Level 3.
* EnergyBeings: The Zoltan. They give one bar of power to whatever system they're currently in, but are more fragile than the other races at 70 health instead of the usual 100. In ''Advanced Edition'', they explode on death, dealing 15 damage to everyone in the room.
* EnergyWeapons: Three main categories. First there are the "lasers", which fire one or more projectiles of energy that do hull and system damage, can be blocked by shields but weaken them, and like all projectiles, can be dodged. Then there are the "beams", which fire energy beams that cannot be dodged and do damage based on the number of rooms they hit, often requiring careful aiming of the beam path. Their damage is reduced by 1 for every layer of shields they have to pass through, however, and they don't have any weakening effect on the shields themselves. Then there are ion weapons, which fire blue projectiles of energy that can disable enemy systems on impact but do no hull damage. If they hit shields, it's as if they hit the ship's shielding system, and hence their disabling effect is applied to the shield generator. ''Advanced Edition'' adds an ion subset, stun, which has the same effect as ion weapons but also are guaranteed to cause anyone in the affected room to be stunned for a short period; the tradeoff is that the actual ion damage they deal is pitiful relative to their charge-up time.[[note]]The "guaranteed" in the previous sentence is there because regular (read: competent at actually disabling systems) ion weapons were also given the ability to stun crew members in the room they hit; however, unlike stun weapons, regular ion weapons are not guaranteed to stun crew (and in fact are likely to fail to do so), and when regular ion weapons ''do'' stun crew members, the stun tends to be shorter than that caused by a stun weapon. Essentially, ion weapons are for disabling systems and stun weapons are for disabling crew; each can do the other's job, but is very inefficient at doing so.[[/note]] The projectiles of stun weapons are yellow to differentiate them from normal blue ion shots.

* EscortMission: Some ships you encounter along the way will give you some payment if you agree to lead them to a certain area in space and usually fight someone for them when you get there. Luckily you don't have to actually take care of said spaceships and they don't mind if you agree to help and don't bother jumping to their destination.

* ExclusiveEnemyEquipment: Generally, anything the enemy uses, you can too, except for the Flagship's triple-barrelled guns. There are also some ships with five layers of shielding, although these are rare. Finally, there are some events that require enemies to board your ship, despite you having a Zoltan Supershield; your captain is unsure of how they do this. The latter is available as an Augment called the "Zoltan Shield Bypass Unit" in ''Advanced Edition''.

* ExpansionPack: ''Advanced Edition''.

* ExposedExtraterrestrials: Humans and Zoltan seem to be the only races that bother with clothes.

** The Rebels are very human-supremacist; on occasion, they'll let you go ''provided your crew is entirely human,'' and it's mentioned that the war has made things hard on the Engi.

** Even the generally affable Engi can become distrustful of aliens, at least when it comes to matters of highly sensitive technology.
** A special case for the Mantis, who view all other races as prey. Mantis individuals even specialize in hunting members of specific races.

* FinalBossPreview: In ''Advanced Edition'', you can come across an unfinished secondary Rebel Flagship in the Rebel Stronghold sector. It is roughly equivalent to the third phase of the FinalBoss, except the weapon rooms aren't isolated (unless you're playing on Hard, in which case this is irrelevant), it has no power surge ability, and there is no AI takeover if you kill the crew. It also only has five crew. You get a rather hefty reward for beating it, especially if you do so by killing the crew. The battle serves as the new unlock quest for the Federation cruiser.

* TheFundamentalist: Rock culture involves a lot of this. Zoltan government is a cross between fundamentalist preaching, a pacifistic culture, and red-tape bureaucracy, [[{{Irony}} the latter of which causes a lot of senseless violence]].

* GadgeteerGenius: The Engi, who are themselves ambiguously mechanical lifeforms.

* GatlingGood: The Chain Vulcan, whose cooldown time decreases each time it's fired, down to 1.1 seconds... which is faster than shields recharge, meaning you can destroy literally any ship using only this one gun. There are also lesser chaingun lasers, who act like Burst Lasers except they lose a second off their firing rate as they spool up, to a maximum of -3 seconds. Chain Ion Blasters fire ion blasts with the same mechanics, except they get increased ion damage instead of faster cooldown.
* GemstoneAssault: Crystal weapons. Crystalmen also throw crystal shards as a ranged attack.

** Also, there was a ''literal'' GhostShip event that was planned, but never finished, involving a ship crewed by ghosts. Sadly, the unfinished nature meant that "Ghost" characters were almost completely DummiedOut, nonexistent except for save-file editing and a single natural occurrence in the FinalBoss fight (an invincible and invisible Ghost provides the "Advanced AI" for the Flagship).
* GlassCannon: The Stealth Cruiser starts out with a cloaking device, strong sensors, and efficient (if somewhat weak) weapons, but no shields. Its Type B variant takes this UpToEleven, trading engine strength and a defensive augmentation for the devastating (but rather inefficient) [[InfinityPlusOneSword Glaive Beam]]. See CripplingOverspecialisation above.

** When your ship is invaded by more attackers than you even have crew, suddenly setting off a firebomb inside your own ship seems like a good alternative to, well, having your crew slaughtered and your ship crippled.

* GoodOldFisticuffs: When standing in the same tile as an enemy crewman, it looks like everyone fights barehanded. When standing on a different tile of the same room, they tend to fight with ray guns (which do the same damage), or by throwing rocks.
* GracefulLoser: Many of the enemy ships you encounter will surrender to you when low on health, offering scrap, missiles, drone parts, and/or fuel (and possibly even weapons, drone schematics, and/or augments) in exchange for letting them live. For some reason, however, they will never demand your surrender mid-battle (though they may offer you a chance to pay them to avoid a fight entirely), so if your ship is losing a fight, you will have to jump away or die fighting.

* GuideDangIt: Several of the ships have quite specific requirements to unlock, and the game gives sparse — if any — hints as to what those requirements are. The Crystal Cruiser is a particularly notorious example.

** One event has you hauling a stranded ship's goods to another jump beacon, for which the insufferably snide buyer offers you a paltry reward for your trouble. If your weapon systems are adequate, however, you get a blue option to power them up, which quickly makes the buyer rethink his position and gives you a ''much'' better reward. A MindControlDevice also works if you have it, and if you decide to take the drone parts and leave, there's a chance that the buyer will rethink his position.
** Another case happens with the Mantis slave trader event, where he offers you a crew member in exchange for Scrap. To be fair, his prices are better than most Stores... but you can still decide to fight him [[EveryoneHasStandards for being a slaver in the first place]]. Do sufficient damage to his ship and he'll offer you a crew member for free. (You May also get a crew member for free by slaughtering the crew of the slaver ship.)
* HackYourEnemy: The hacking suite in the Advanced Edition fires a limpet drone onto an enemy system, allowing you to shut it down, or, in the case of the medbay, oxygen/life support, teleporter, weapons, and shields, reverse its effects for a few critical seconds.

* HealingFactor: Medbays grant this to occupants, as long as they're powered on. A certain augment can grant this to your entire ship at a reduced rate. A different augment can take this UpToEleven in short bursts, by completely and instantaneously healing anyone who uses your teleporter.
* HealingShiv: There's a bomb that heals your crew, and another bomb that completely repairs a system (the latter was added in ''Advanced Edition'').

* HeroicSacrifice: Before ''[[ExpansionPack Advanced Edition]]'', if the rebel flagship and your ship were destroyed at the same time, you would still get a GameOver even though you won the war. This was changed in the ''Advanced Edition''; you now get the win if you destroy the flagship, even if your ship is destroyed as well (see AntiFrustrationFeatures above).

* HitPoints: Your ship's hull integrity. Individual crew have their own hit point totals as well.
* {{Hitscan}}: All beam weapons work this way, and as such, hit their targets instantaneously.
* HobbesWasRight: The fall of TheFederation brought with it a [[EvilPowerVacuum power vacuum]] that left the galaxy in a shambles. [[SpacePirate Pirates]] are everywhere, and all the surrounding powers are scrambling to either acquire more territory or keep would-be terrorizers ''out'' of their territory. The only way to end this mess is to bring back TheFederation and it's military.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Opening the airlocks to asphyxiate fires or boarders can easily turn into this. If you door control unit goes down, you can't close the airlocks, and if your oxygen gets shut off, you can't re-pressurize. And if both the oxygen ''and'' door control go down, [[YouAreAlreadyDead you might as well restart the game right there]].
* HoldTheLine: To unlock the Rock ship, you have to meet a specific ship at a node with a nearby sun so they can [[OnlyTheWorthyMayPass test your mettle]]. While solar flares are burning both of your ships, it will shoot at you while its jump drive charges. While this is going on, [[NintendoHard you must wait for it to jump away]] and then follow it to its base. Destroying it or killing the crew nets you [[strike:nothing]] standard rewards [[WhatTheHellPlayer and a guilt trip]]. You ''can'' shoot it to disable its weapons, so long as the ship itself survives.

* HonorBeforeReason: If you make a deal to spare somebody, you take only their bribe and leave them alone, even if they blow up after the fact, which would allow you to scavenge the ship otherwise. [[GoodBadBugs This can be circumvented]] by saving the game and taking a trip to the menu after the ship explodes: upon reloading the game, you ''do'' scavenge the ship.
* HopelessBossFight: Supposedly. In the early Alpha builds, there was a NighInvulnerable pirate ship that stopped players from advancing past Sector 2. [[LordBritishPostulate Not that this stopped player Ohmwrecker from defeating it and getting his name in the random crew names as a reward]].

** The Mantis are giant alien [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin mantises]] that are stated to be the most aggressive and antagonistic race in the game. However, they aren't [[HiveMind hive-minded]], nor are they concerned with consuming everything, and [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch have plenty of reasonable members you can recruit]].

** The Lanius, debuting in the ''Advanced Edition'', fit this mold better than the Mantises do. They regularly enter periods of hibernation and reawaken when large metal deposits make themselves available (such as a galactic war providing lots of tasty debris) then set about consuming it all. Apparently, they do have rules that forbid attacking the ships of living sapients. However, this is not the most popular policy, and a lot of Lanius you encounter disregard this. Tellingly, Mantis zones are labeled as such; it's their home territory. Lanius territory, though, is listed as ''abandoned''.

* HumansAdvanceSwiftly: In the ''Advanced Edition'', humans learn skills 10% faster to make up for having no other special abilities.
* HumansAreAverage: In the base game, humans are the only crew race to have [[JackOfAllStats no inherent advantages or disadvantages]]. The game describes them as "common and uninteresting".

** The Zoltans have a special augment unsurprisingly called the Zoltan Shield, which comes standard on almost any ship they build. It's a non-replenishing green BeehiveBarrier that consumes no power, is independent of the ship's normal shielding system, and only gets recharged during FTL jumps. It can only take five damage, but as long as it holds, it can block any form of attack and prevent teleportation, hacking, and mind control. On the downside, it takes double damage from ion weapons and can be stripped rather quickly by drone attacks or asteroids.

* DesperationAttack: The final boss has an ability called Power Surge which it uses during the second and third phases of the battle. [[spoiler:During the second phase, Power Surge will launch a massive group of attack drones, though they'll go away after the surge wears off. In the third phase, it will either fire a barrage of eight lasers that can overcome even a full set of shields if they all connect or fully recharge the ship's Zoltan Shield.]]

** Inverted with the "Crushed Pirate" event. Even if you are on a ship that doesn't have any weapons, you still get the two basic options of shooting the rocks or simply smashing the pirate ship. Likewise, you always have the option to fire upon the malfunctioning defense system.
* DifficultButAwesome: Stealth Cruiser Type-B is normally [[CripplingOverspecialization extremely specialized]] and difficult to use in the early game — that is, until you upgrade your stealth matrix to level 3, which gives you 15 seconds of invisibility. Since almost every enemy weapon takes longer than 7.5 seconds to charge and can't lock onto you[[note]]meaning that they stop charging[[/note]] during the 15 seconds you're stealthed, the combined 22.5 seconds of safety is plenty of time to charge your [[InfinityPlusOneSword Glaive Beam]] and OneHitKill most ships through the first couple of sectors before they can even fire their weapons.
* DifficultyLevels: Easy and Normal in vanilla ''FTL''. Note that even Easy is NintendoHard. Normal gives you 10 starting scrap instead of 30 and beefs up enemy ships to have more shields (up to ''[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard five]]'' for late-game enemies) and stronger weapons. ''Advanced Edition'' adds Hard, which gives you ''no'' starting scrap, practically gives enemy ships steroids starting in sector 2, and adds two connecting rooms to the [[FinalBoss Rebel Flagship]] so that the strategy of killing all crew except the one manning lasers won't be as effective. [[HardModePerks You get a score multiplier for trying the harder difficulty levels]], however.

** The Lanius commonly reside in abandoned sectors in the wake of interstellar conflicts, the evidence of which "[[SarcasmMode mysteriously]]" disappear.
* DiscardAndDraw: Exemplified by [[spoiler:[[FinalBoss the Rebel Flagship]]. Even though [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules it can survive having its hull whittled down to nothing]], ''[[SequentialBoss twice]]'', and escape to recover, each defeat it suffers causes it to lose several rooms and the systems they contain; it compensates by installing new systems between battles to replace the systems it lost]]. See ClippedWingAngel above and OneWingedAngel below for more information.
** You can also resort to this if you find a new weapon, drone schematic, or augment when your ship already has as many as it can hold. You don't get scrap by doing so, however, so it's better to sell excess weapons, drone schematics, and augments at a store.

** As of ''Advanced Edition'', Clone Bays, a purchasable replacement for the Medbay, can revive your own units should they die, although the cloned character gets a penalty to their skills. Even then, a unit killed while the Clone Bay is offline or broken will not be coming back unless you get it back online ''immediately'' (unless you have the Backup DNA Bank augment).

* ChargedAttack: ''Advanced Edition'' introduced Charger weapons, volley gun versions of regular weapons. Rather than getting more powerful the longer they charge, they fire +1 shot for every level of charge they have. They come in missile launcher, laser, and Ion flavours.

** There's also a system you can install that is literal MindControl; you can take over an enemy on their ship. (Or a boarder on your ship, or if one of the enemy ships has it and takes over one of your crew, you can take them back.)
* ClippedWingAngel: [[spoiler:The third form of the Rebel Flagship; while it [[DamageSpongeBoss can take a lot of punishment]], it's a far cry from the murderous second form. With good evasion and a well-aimed shot at the missile launcher, it will be practically incapable of hurting you. Its wings are even ''literally'' clipped, since the wing-like nacelles on either side blew up in the last two rounds. The ''Advanced Edition'' of the ship could [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zag]] the trope, however, since the Flagship now has Mind Control, which can be extremely hard to counter if you don't have one of your own, and it will take you a while to break through the ship's Zoltan shield before you can disable it. If the Flagship still has a large crew contingent left, the enemy boarding team and mind control together has a very good chance of wrecking you.]]

* CloningGambit: The Clone Bay system, which replaces the Medbay on some ships, makes it possible to have your entire crew killed and not immediately lose. However, if your entire crew is dead and your Clone Bay is completely destroyed with no means to repair it (like a Repair Drone), the game is rendered {{Unwinnable}} and you're forced to reset.

*** Federation ships are light grey with orange stripes, with the exception of the Stealth Cruisers, which weren't completed until after the Rebellion. This includes the playable Kestrel and Osprey cruisers.

*** As seen in the ''Captain's Edition'' mod, civilian ships and stations are a dark green-brown with yellow stripes. The Federation B ship, the ''Nisos'', also follows this colour scheme.

*** It has an ability called [[spoiler:Power Surge, which allows it to either launch a ridiculous number of drones or fire a massive laser barrage in the second and third phases, respectively, which recharges independently of any of its visible or target-able systems. Finally, it's the only non-Zoltan ship with a Zoltan Shield, which has 12 points instead of the normal 5 points, and is the only ship able to recharge its Zoltan Shield in combat, an alternative to the laser barrage Power Surge previously mentioned]]. Exactly how advanced ''are'' the Rebels?
* ComputersAreFast: Specifically when it comes to cloaking and drones. A cloak-equipped computer ship can activate it the instant a battle starts, preventing you from getting a shot off even with a Weapon Pre-Igniter or beaming any crew over. It can also respawn drones the instant you destroy them, so fast in fact that there is no visible interruption in service in some cases. ''Advanced Edition'' addresses the drone problem, giving them a slight delay before they can be respawned.
* ConMan: The Slugs are a whole race of them.

* CoolButInefficient: The Repair Arm repairs a few points of hull automatically at each jump point, at the cost of 15% of your earned scrap. Over time, this adds up to far more scrap than you would have spent if you just repaired your ship at a store or waited for an event which is cheap/free. Furthermore, if the player is taking enough damage that the augment is actually reasonably spending the scrap it's stealing, then keeping the hull intact is the least of the problems they're facing. If you are [[PowerupLetdown "awarded"]] it as part of a random event, you are well-advised [[ThatOneDisadvantage to dump it as quickly as possible]]. As of the Advanced Edition, it is significantly more efficient: it will repair your hull every time you receive a scrap reward (so if an event rewards you twice, it will repair you twice), and it will stop taking its percentage of scrap once your hull is fully repaired. Addition of Hard difficulty also helps, since you earn so little in earlier sectors, Repair Arm actually pays for it's repairs.
* CosmeticAward: While most achievements do nothing, each ship has a set of unique achievements that allow you to unlock a new layout.

* CrazyPrepared: An encouraged playstyle, due to the sheer amount of SchmuckBait and the fact that choosing the same option in different playthroughs can give a different outcome. You will want to have as diverse a crew and upgraded systems as possible, perhaps including weapons, to get those [[TakeAThirdOption blue options]] when dealing with the various Random Events throughout the galaxy.
* CrewOfOne: A ship needs at least one living crew member to make jumps. The Engi Cruiser Type B starts with just one Engi, with drones picking up the slack for defense and repair until you can get more crew. Operating with only one crew member is extremely sub-optimal, though, as you don't get bonuses for manning systems, you can't repair systems or fight off boarders effectively, boarding enemy ships is out of the question, and if anything happens to your one crew member, you lose the game. AI-controlled enemy ships (including [[spoiler:the Rebel Flagship after losing its crew]]) don't need crew and hence can only be defeated through hull destruction. They can automatically repair their systems, all their rooms are depressurized, and they don't need a pilot to dodge or charge their FTL drive. Their one weakness is that they cannot repair hull breaches, which, due to the way repairing works, means they can never repair a system if there's a breach in the room.

** The Type B Stealth Ship can OneHitKill most enemies in the early sectors thanks to its Glaive Beam. That is, if you can keep the beam online for its 22.5-second charge time (enough time for many other weapons to fire at least twice) with no shields, low-level engines, and only a 10-second cloak offering any real protection.
** On the other side of the spectrum, the Type B Mantis Cruiser has only two crew, two drone slots, and no starting weapons. However, it [[StoneWall comes with powerful shields]], a four-person teleporter room, and is crewed by Mantises, who are the masters of hand-to-hand combat. They can make short work of most any ship by boarding it. If you wind up against a drone ship, however, you either have to wait for the boarding drone to slowly break and re-break all of the robot ship's modules, or just escape. Also, until you get a weapon or happen upon the Zoltan Shield Bypass augment, you are impotent against anything with a Zoltan shield.

** The Engi Cruiser Type A starts with an Ion Blast II and a Combat Drone. If you can't keep the enemy shields permanently stunned with the Ion, the Combat Drone, your only source of damage, will uselessly shoot at the enemy shields, since it can only shoot one one-damage laser at a time and shields recharge faster than it can fire. [[note]]The Ion Blast II does fire faster than ion damage wears off, so it can eventually shut off any number of shields... but it will take a ''long'' time to get through 3 or 4 layers, and if any shots miss, it will provide a window for some ion damage to wear off, and it will take even ''longer'' to replace the lost momentum.[[/note]] Anti-Drones will also take out your combat drone, leaving you with just an Ion Blast II that can't do hull damage and can only occasionally disable the anti-drone. Because of this, it's imperative that you find a missile weapon or other support weapon or drone as soon as possible.
** The Crystal B begins with only a 4-man teleport and 3 Crystal crewmen.
** The Type C Stealth Cruiser takes this UpToEleven by sacrificing the cloaking system for a more power-efficient Zoltan overshield generator drone that can block beams and bombs; with this ship, emphasis is more on "Crippling" than "Specialized".
** The Mantis Type C and Crystal Type B are perhaps even more specialized than the Mantis Type B. An extra crewman on both means you won't have to leave your ship empty (or can send an even bigger party). But they both lack the extra shields and the drone system (which was the only weapon against airless auto-scouts). Mantis C trades them for weapons that can't damage hull but make boarders even more effective, while Crystal B trades them for a cloaking system.
** The Type B Zoltan Cruiser starts with powerful weapons, but no normal shield underneath its non-recharging Zoltan Shield. Prolonged fights will leave you defenseless, and asteroids or combat drones will tear through your shield (and hull) before you can hope to respond.
** The Type C Zoltan Cruiser has a power-hungry arsenal but a near-useless reactor, instead relying on its Zoltan crew and a 30-second battery. Boarders, repairs, or fires that require you to move anyone from their post will force you to shut down systems, and if your drone doesn't kill the enemy in 30 seconds you'll have to shut off your engines, ion gun and oxygen to keep the drone and shield online.

** Less severe than most of the above, but the Type A Slug Cruiser has no sensors. Your slugs can tell where enemies are and see into adjacent rooms, but you'll have to search your ship for fires and hull breaches manually.

* CrutchCharacter: Many ships' early loadouts can become this once enemies become too strong for them to deal damage. On a broader level, the Engi A is often one of the first ships players unlock, simply by reaching Sector 5 with any Kestrel ship. Its typical gameplay -- set your Ion Blast to auto-fire, and allow your combat drone to do all the work of attacking -- requires little active input from the player. This playstyle will backfire when using later ships that require much more micromanagement.

** By extension of the above, the Type B Stealth Cruiser, [=DA-SR12=], is this. A sleek, shiny vessel, it sacrifices the engine power, the Titanium Systems Casing augmentation, and the efficient combo of a Mini Beam and Dual Lasers used by the Type A for a Glaive Beam and level 2 cloak. The Glaive Beam has the highest damage per shot ratio in the game; its obscene damage output can often kill pretty much any ship in the first two sectors in a single shot. However, it takes so outrageously long to charge that the enemy is practically guaranteed to get at least one clear shot off before that happens, even if you time your cloak perfectly. If that shot hits your weapons room and you haven't upgraded it (and you likely haven’t if you're saving your scrap to buy a shield system), [[ShootTheShaggyDog your Glaive Beam goes offline and you have to start charging it all over again]]. God help you if the enemy has [[AlwaysAccurateAttack beam weapons]]; if they have [[BeamSpam beam]] ''[[EnergyWeapon drones]]'', YouAreAlreadyDead. Put together, this basically makes the first sector a LuckBasedMission until you can upgrade your defenses.

** An upgraded medbay allows for many "[[TakeAThirdOption blue choices]]" to appear during numerous random events, enabling the player to obtain better outcomes regardless of whether the medbay is powered or not. Upgrading the medbay also allows the healing to outpace the health drain caused by oxygen deprivation.
** The Burst Laser series, which fires 2, 3, or 5 single-damage shots, may not sound exciting compared to the bigger guns and missiles, but it doesn't need ammo and chews through shields better than anything short of a missile aimed at the shield generator or a fully warmed-up Chain Vulcan. The Burst II model is especially practical, using the same amount of power as Burst I to fire three lasers instead of two. With 4 Burst Laser [=IIs=], you can output MoreDakka than the freaking ''[[FinalBoss Rebel Flagship]]'' '''using its [[LimitBreak Power Surge]]''', though this veers into AwesomeButImpractical as this would require a fully upgraded weapons system.

** The A-layout Kestrel's starting missile launcher, the Artemis[[note]]also equipped on the Rock Cruiser A and Slug Cruiser B[[/note]], will be a mainstay in your arsenal, even as you get lasers that chop through hulls and bombs of radiation. It only uses one bar of power but deals two damage per shot, and still has the shield-piercing capabilities of every other missile in the game. The same is true of the Leto missile on the Federation B; a weak, one-bar missile that, while only dealing one damage per shot, is every bit as capable of piercing shields as any other missile.
** The Ion Bomb is this. It does nothing more than disable an enemy system, expending a missile to do so. However, as a consequence, it does its task with such reliability, bypassing shields and defense drones, and at such relatively low cost in terms of ship power (requiring only 1) that as long as you can feed it, it can serve even better than an Ion energy weapon. It helps that it's by far the strongest ion-damage weapon in the game, at a whopping 4 ion damage; that is '''20 seconds''' of system lockdown, matched only by a fully warmed-up Chain Ion (which requires 3 power). The Ion Bomb can't quite manage to accumulate ion damage on a system by itself (it has a charge-up time of 22 seconds, slightly longer than the time required for 4 ion damage to wear off), but the ability to immediately remove 4 bars of power from any system means that any system except drones, weapons, shields, and engines can be entirely shut off in one blast, regardless of strength, and those other four can be ''severely'' weakened.
** Boarding Drones (or Lanius boarders) against AI-run Auto-Scouts, especially for ships that don't start with any real weapons, like the Mantis Cruiser Type B. They will slowly but surely kill every system on the ship, doing one point of damage every time they take the system down, until the ship itself blows up after losing its last hull point. This doesn't work on the scout's larger Auto-Assault cousins, though, which are compartmentalized and thus prevent boarding drones from being able to move around within them. To beat those, you need to have a level 2 teleporter so your crew can get in and out without dying, leaving the drone to deal the final blow.
** Basic lasers are dull, firing only a single laser beam and doing a relatively pitiful one damage on a hit. However, the Kestrel's B-type layout, the Red Tail, comes with ''four of them'', which, combined with their single power requirement and a decently trained weapons officer[[note]]and with four weapons with only 10 seconds' charging time firing per salvo, that training will happen quickly[[/note]], will chew through anything with two or less shields. It's only when enemies start getting three shields that you need to seriously consider upgrading (by that point, enemies will have engines powerful enough to reliably dodge at least one of your shots from almost every salvo).
** The Scrap Recovery Arm boosts your scrap collection by 10%. Doesn't seem like much, but the scrap bonuses add up over time, and it's much more pronounced in later sectors when defeated ships dole out more scrap. If you somehow manage to pick up a second SRA, the boost stacks up. Having one also adds a blue option to a relatively common event, resulting in a nice pile of scrap if you happen to get it. Although benefits are less on harder difficulties, where you gain less scrap to begin with.

** The Drone Recovery Arm augmentation, which recovers unused drones upon jumping away from a beacon, can save you scrap needed for vital equipment or repairs. It also works well with the aforementioned Hull Repair Drone; as the Hull Repair drone repairs between 3-5 hull pieces before being expended, if you warp out before it has vanished, you will get that drone part back automatically, repairing your ship without any expenditure of resources.

** On many ships you will usually end up with exactly one combination of weapons and systems which can pierce high level shields, so you will find yourself using the exact same strategy for every fight for a large stretch of the game.

** Missiles, bomb teleporters, and boarding drones can bypass shields entirely, as long as you have the ammo to use them. One of the earliest strategies the game teaches you is to use missiles to knock out the shields on enemy ships, allowing the lasers to finish the job.
** Crystal weapons and piercing lasers can pierce a single layer of shields. Not as powerful as a missile, true, but they have unlimited ammo.
** The Federation Cruiser is equipped with a high-power artillery beam that can't be dodged and cuts straight through any defenses short of Zoltan shields, as long as it has [[NecessaryDrawback enough time to power up]]. It also can't be aimed manually by the player, which can result in less than optimal shots.

* AscendedFanboy: "Robert Smith", [[ObliviousAdoption the Mantis raised by humans]], can become this if you opt to offer him a spot on your crew during his event. He mentions that he always wanted to serve in the Federation.

* AttackDrone: Can be used once you have the Drone Control ship system. Comes in either laser or beam varieties, the former being useful for suppressing shields or doing heavy but random damage to unshielded enemies, and the latter being useful for doing even heavier damage to unshielded targets at the cost of being completely ineffectual against shields. Other drones can defend against incoming fire (especially missiles), repair damaged systems, repair your ship's hull, repel boarders, or be sent over to board the enemy. Advanced Edition adds more drones, including ones that board the enemy and release ion bursts to knock out systems and crew, steadily generate a Zoltan Shield around your ship, attack enemy combat drones, etc.

** The Mk. II Defense Drone fires faster than the Mk. I and can shoot down any kind of incoming projectile, including laser bursts and ion blasts, not just missiles and boarding drones like the Mk. I. However, like all drones, it's computer-controlled and has no threat priority system, meaning it will often prioritize a closer, weak laser over the more dangerous missile that will go right through your shielding. It also requires four bars of power to operate, compared to two for the more reliable Mk. I. It's good, just not as good in practice as it is on paper. ''Advanced Edition'' reduced the power consumption by one bar and made it slightly faster, but it still falls short of the Mk. 1.

** By extension of the above, the Type B Stealth Cruiser, [=DA-SR12=], is this. A sleek, shiny vessel, it sacrifices the engine power, the Titanium Systems Casing augmentation, and the weak but efficient combo of a Mini Beam and Dual Lasers used by the Type A for a Glaive Beam and level 2 cloak. The Glaive Beam is rightfully considered to be the game's [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Beam]], as its damage per shot is the greatest in the game; its obscene damage output can often kill pretty much any ship in the first sector (as well as the second and third). However, it takes so outrageously long to charge that they're practically guaranteed to get at least one clear shot off before that happens, even if you time your cloak perfectly. If that shot hits your weapons room and you haven't upgraded it (and you likely haven’t if you're saving your scrap to buy a shield system), [[ShootTheShaggyDog your Glaive Beam goes offline and you have to start charging it all over again]]. God help you if the enemy has [[AlwaysAccurateAttack beam weapons]]; if they have [[BeamSpam beam]] ''[[EnergyWeapon drones]]'', YouAreAlreadyDead. Put together, this basically makes the first sector a LuckBasedMission until you can find some shields.
* AwesomeMcCoolname: A few ships' default names fall into this. For instance, you have the Mantis Type A, ''The Gila Monster'', and the Mantis Type B, ''The Basilisk''. The Slug Type B cruiser, ''The Stormwalker'', has a cool name, but that's about the only good thing about it.

* BeamSpam: Several weapons fire multiple shots. At the extreme, if you're lucky, you can have a ship that can fire 12 lasers at once, easily overwhelming just about everything. The FinalBoss has a triple-barreled laser cannon and a triple-barreled ion cannon, [[spoiler:but will lose the second after its first loss. In the second phase, its Power Surge ability launches numerous anti-ship drones that will tear through your shields in seconds, on top of the drones it has already and its lasers. In the final phase of the battle, its Power Surge move launches a barrage of eight 1-damage laser shots at you, which is practically frivolous in comparison to the previous phase (and is roughly 50% less dakka than the aforementioned 12-laser barrage you can potentially pull off)]].

* BeehiveBarrier: Shields are these. The beehive gets more pronounced with additional layers.

** The Slug Interceptor shares the same problem with the above, with its Oxygen and Engine rooms completely detached from the rest of the ship. This means that you can easily asphyxiate them to death with no fear of them jumping away (though you still might need to fear their missiles). Even in Hard mode, where a crew member is placed in the Engine room, you can achieve the same effect by killing the crew in the main part of the ship.

** The ''Artillery Beam'' system on the Federation Cruiser. In exchange for having no target control over the weapon, you get a beam that can pierce all shields except Zoltan shields, and dish out serious damage as a result.
** The Vulcan is a GatlingGood chain-laser introduced in ''Advanced Edition'' that increases its fire rate with each consecutive shot, eventually becoming fast enough to rip through any number of shields.
** Flak Mk 2. Introduced in ''Advanced Edition''. Very inaccurate, but ''extremely'' deadly if the shots hit due to the fact that it's a gun that fires ''7'' shots in a single launch (which means it's also extremely good at plowing through shields). Plus, it only costs 3 energy to operate. Federation C also has this as the Flak Artillery.
** Player ships can't equip them, but the Anti-Ship Batteries are these. They fire one single, powerful shot that pierces all shields, deals 3 damage[[note]]for reference, the weapon with the greatest damage-per-hit, the Breach Missile, deals 4 damage (though it's not the weapon with the greatest DPS — that honor goes to the Chain Vulcan, with the runners-up being the Glaive Beam, Halberd Beam, Burst Laser II, Burst Laser III, Charge Laser, and Hermes)[[/note]], and is guaranteed to breach your hull if it hits. ASBs are one of the reasons why it's a good idea to stay ahead of the Rebel Fleet.

* BoardingParty: Some events will result in the player's ship being boarded. Both players and enemies can send in boarding parties if they have the Crew Teleporter ship system. Mantis ships, particularly types B and C, are designed around this, since they get bonuses in hand-to-hand combat and 4-man teleporters.

** As a general rule, upgrading crucial systems even if your reactor is not good enough to power them fully yet. The empty power squares serve as a damage buffer, which means said systems ''may'' not be immediately shut down if they take damage. This is especially true of the oxygen and piloting systems.
** An upgraded door system can mean the difference between life and death. Upgraded doors block fires from spreading and force boarders to breach the doors first. This allows you to starve either of air or rally your crew to handle the problem.
** A fully upgraded oxygen system can outpace the oxygen drain of a hull breach, which is useful for dealing with boarding drones. Upgraded oxygen is even more important in ''Advanced Edition'', since a level 3 Hacking system can drain oxygen faster than a level 1 oxygen system can replenish it.
** An upgraded teleporter system has very little practical use, since the majority of the time your crew will fight long enough for it to recharge. It does have one very important use, though; at level 2, the teleporter recharges fast enough to beam your crew into and back out of a completely depressurized room without killing them (they have to have 100 health, and will just barely survive with ~10 health if not otherwise damaged), making teleportation a viable strategy against drone ships as long as you don't accidentally send in a [[SquishyWizard Zoltan]].

** Your teleport and FTL drive charge instantly when you're not in battle. This can help avoid situations like your crew burning to death or suffocating in an otherwise empty ship, as well as sparing you the wait to bring your crew back or charge your engines if you defeated the enemy quickly. The exception is levels with environmental hazards like asteroids or solar flares, but even in those, your FTL drive will charge at an increased rate after the battle.

->''The distress beacon appears to be coming from a TV Tropes page for FTL: Faster Than Light. \\
\\
1. Read the page. \\
[[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Videogame/FTLFasterThanLight?action=edit 2. Make edits to the page.]] \\

* AscendedFanboy: "Robert Smith," [[ObliviousAdoption the Mantis raised by humans]], can become this if you opt to offer him a spot on your crew during his event. He mentions that he always wanted to serve in the Federation.

** Ion weapons disable systems, but their effects are temporary and deal no actual damage. They can also miss, just like lasers, missiles, and bombs. On the plus side, they generally charge faster than most weapons, with one ion weapon, the Ion Blast II, having the fastest charge time of any weapon short of a fully-warmed-up Chain Vulcan[note]Four seconds, compared to the Chain Vulcan's 1.1 at full speed[/note].

* DummiedOut: By looking through the Data.dat XML files, you can see data for sectors not included in the main game, such as abandoned sectors and quarantine sectors which would reduce fleet pursuit speed like in nebula sectors, and even data left behind to show that each sector was supposed to have a unique name. There was also an additional "Ghost" race, which had 50% less health but could survive without oxygen[[note]]The abandoned sectors and the "Ghost" race were retooled and added to the Advanced Edition, with the race becoming the Lanius, who not only don't need oxygen, but actually suck it out of the room they're in; furthermore, instead of having even less health than Zoltans, they have the same slightly-reduced speed as Crystals[[/note]].

* RealityEnsues: Solving people's problems in a way that creates more problems will not endear you to anybody, and you should not expect much of a reward for doing so. The standout examples are sending a boarding drone to deal with giant alien spiders (leaving the space station with a big open hole to outer space), dealing with a malfunctioning defense satellite by shooting it until it stops working entirely (meaning that the space colony it was protecting now has no defense against pirates, Mantis, Rebels, and other unwelcome visitors), and attempting to separate two Engi ships stuck together (accomplishing nothing but preventing the formation of a new ship.)
** Also, if you are being chased by a hostile, aggressive, and violently unfriendly army, keep in mind that the people currently living in any region you pass through will ''also'' have to deal with ([[NiceJobBreakingItHero read: get attacked by]]) said army as they follow you, and said native inhabitants are ''not'' going to be happy about this.

** Offensive drones attack continuously, but are limited by your supply of drone parts and are computer-controlled, aiming at random rooms. Furthermore, the Mark I Combat Drone's rate of fire is insufficient to overcome enemy shields without support, while both varieties of Beam Drone and the Fire Drone are entirely incapable of bypassing shields. On top of that, offensive drones they can be shot away by accident by enemy weapons, or disabled and potentially destroyed on purpose by Anti-Combat Drones[[note]]Anti-Combat Drones fire ion shots rather than damaging shots, but drones directly afflicted with ion damage have a chance of self-destructing rather than reactivating when the ion damage wears off (ion damage to Drone Control or to a room containing a drone does not count)[[/note]]. Mark I Defense Drones will ignore combat drones, but Mark II Defense Drones will attempt to shoot down the lasers fired by combat drones (they will not respond to beam drones).

* ArtificialStupidity: A necessity in this game; it's NintendoHard even with dumb AI. If the AI could do half the stuff a player can, the game would be unplayably hard.
** Enemy ships use autofire constantly, meaning their weapons will likely fire out of sync, giving your shields time to recover. However, they sometimes won't fire weapons while cloaked, which can result in an AlphaStrike if the cloak lasts long enough.
** Enemy ships fire weapons without regard to their effectiveness — missiles at a defense drone, beams at a shielded ship, etc. In combination with randomized enemy loadouts, it is possible to have a ship which is incapable of hurting the player yet won't stop trying, turning it into an experience fountain to train up crew skills.
** Enemy ships pick targets at random, instead of strategically targeting systems, even when doing this is detrimental to the weapon in question — ion weapons, for example. This extends to specialized systems like hacking, teleportation, and mind control.
** Enemy ships will deploy their cloaks as soon as they recharge. This allows the player to know precisely when they'll use the cloak and plan accordingly. The same applies to the hacking and mind control systems.
** Enemy crew members follow a specific pattern when dealing with threats, which makes manipulating their behavior incredibly simple:
*** On their ships, they will run to their medbay as soon as their health starts to get low, and will [[TooDumbToLive fight an unstoppable boarding party to the death if it's full]].
*** They will prioritize the protection/repair of shields and weapons, occasionally even forsaking defending other systems to repair them. The former system is the absolute highest priority, allowing you to draw them away from other systems by having your crew attack it or damaging it with weapons.
*** They won't cease attacking a blast door once they've begun attacking it, even if another door is opened in the same room.
*** They will immediately retreat from any airless room. While sensible, this makes it trivially easy to herd a boarding party into your medbay, where they are guaranteed to lose. A number of boarders that can easily overwhelm the crew [[http://imgur.com/X9XmfCG will still refuse to travel through an airless room]].
*** They teleport into random rooms, much like how weapons will target random rooms. This means they can end up in a system-less room. Or worse for them, an open airlock on a ship with upgraded blast doors.
*** If the enemy ship has a teleporter, they will ''always'' use it. Even to send just one crew member, or to send in Engies[[note]]a poor choice because they do half the attack damage of most races[[/note]] and Zoltans[[note]]a poor choice because they have only 70% of the health of most races, although ''Advanced Edition'' has them [[ActionBomb explode]] upon death, enabling suicide bomb strategies[[/note]] if no other choice of boarders are available, regardless of how much more effective it is to just keep the entire crew on board.
*** They only retreat from your ship at low health, even when faced with a battle they can't possibly win.
** Enemy ships have random arsenals; it's entirely possible to wind up fighting an enemy that relies solely on beams, making it incapable of harming you if you have any amount of shields active. Some enemy systems are also randomized for each encounter, leading to the amusing sight of a shieldless auto-ship attacking you in an asteroid field and [[WinsByDoingAbsolutelyNothing ending up dead without you having to fire a shot]].
** Your own boarders will cease destroying systems on the enemy ship as soon as the enemy crew is dead — even if the ship still has an active mind control system. Since you're also prevented from shooting at enemy ships after the battle is over, this refusal can lead to you having to kill or maroon one of your own crew.
** Your boarders will target drones on the enemy ship before targeting enemies, even if their drone system is ioned/broken.
* ArtificialBrilliance: Despite the enemy normally targeting systems at random, on hard mode they have an increased chance of targeting any system that is currently "important", such as oxygen if you're almost out, artillery if you're about to fire, or shields/weapons at any time. This has even been confirmed by the developer.

* TooDumbToLive: Whether on their controller's orders or their own volition, unshielded rebel drones pretty much commit suicide when they decide to enter an [[AsteroidThicket Asteroid Field]]. You literally don't have to do anything but watch the ship get demolished by the hazardous asteroids, making it a miracle that it even lasted long enough to encounter you.

* FinalDeath: For [[AnyoneCanDie crew members]] and for [[GameOver the ship itself]]. You can only save if you exit the game. On the plus side, destroyed systems can always be repaired, and as long as you've got one hull point left, you can repair up to full. The Clone Bay system in the ''Advanced Edition'' will clone dead crewmembers after a short wait, based on how much power it has, but takes the place of the Medbay and cloned crewmembers take a hit to their skills. You can also still lose them if the clone bay stays offline for too long[[note]]by which we mean about three seconds[[/note]], unless you have the DNA Bank augment.

-->''One last explosion marks your fate as your ship is torn apart.''
-->''All crewmembers have died. Your ship will continue to drift for eternity. Or until looters destroy it.''
-->''[[spoiler:[[NonStandardGameOver The Rebel Flagship is within range of the Federation base. All is lost, they've won.]]]]''

** Flak weapons, also introduced in ''Advanced Edition'' always fire multiple projectiles at once, up to five with the highest tier, making them great at taking down shields. However, they can be shot down by defense drones, and they deal damage in a wide circle, meaning some of the projectiles might not even hit the system you were aiming at.

* StealthInSpace: A cloaking device is one of the ship systems you can pick up. Normally, firing [[InvisibilityFlicker weakens the cloaking effect]], but an augment removes that limitation.

The player controls the crew of a lone spaceship affiliated with TheFederation, which is currently on the losing end of a [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized massive rebellion]]. The objective is to deliver important information to the remains of the Federation fleet in a distant sector. Unfortunately, as those familiar with Roguelikes will suspect, this is [[NintendoHard far, FAR from easy]]: the galaxy is an extremely dangerous place for a lone vessel, filled with dangers such as pirates, deadly environmental hazards, rebel scouts, hostile alien races, and others. Not to mention that the vast rebel fleet is in hot pursuit...

Not to be confused with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTL_Games the developer,]] which was best known for its own Roguelike, ''VideoGame/DungeonMaster'', and its sequels. Also not to be confused with the trope FasterThanLightTravel, even though this game uses it for getting around.

** The Burst Laser series, which fires 2, 3, or 5 single-damage shots, may not sound exciting compared to the bigger guns and missiles, but it doesn't need ammo and chews through shields better than anything short of a missile aimed at the shield generator or a fully warmed-up Chain Vulcan. The Burst II model is especially practical, using the same amount of power as Burst I to fire three lasers instead of two. With 4 Burst Laser [=IIs=], you can output MoreDakka than the freaking ''[[FinalBoss Rebel Flagship]]'' '''using its [[LimitBreak Power Surge]]''' (though this veers into AwesomeButImpractical by requiring 8 bars of power and actually finding and equipping 4 Burst Laser Mark [=IIs=], leaving no room to use other weapons).

* GradualGrinder: The Federation Cruiser ship starts with a special beam weapon that takes an extremely long time to charge, but ignores all defenses. The strategy is typically to raise your defenses as much as possible and wait for the beam to destroy the enemy for you.