History VideOGame / FTLFasterThanLight

* AwesomeMcCoolname: A few ships' default names fall into this. For instance, you have names such as ''The Gila Monster'', ''The Basilisk'', and ''The Stormwalker''.

** The individual sectors in the sector map fall into one of three different colors: green, red, and purple. Green sectors (Civilian, Engi, and Zoltan) tend to have more friendly and non-combat encounters and are a low-risk choice, while red sectors (Rock, Rebel, Mantis, Pirate-Controlled, and Abandoned) have more combat encounters and dangerous enemies, but can potentially provide you with more scrap thanks to the numerous battles. Purple sectors, fittingly ambiguous compared to the normal danger level spectrum, are reserved for nebula sectors — Slug and Uncharted — in which fleet pursuit is slowed and rebel [=ASBs=] cannot shoot you should you be overtaken, but where you often lose system functionality.

* 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 its military.

* PowerupLetdown: The Repair Arm [[HealingFactor repairs a few points of hull automatically]] each time you gain scrap, but you get a 15% scrap reduction as long as it's installed. Compare to the Scrap Recovery Arm, which gives you a 10% scrap bonus which you can then spend at a shop to repair your ship for less scrap than the Repair Arm consumes (or purchase something to reduce damage taken in the first place, like shield upgrades or defense drones).

* 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]].

* HealingFactor: Medbays grant this to occupants, as long as they're powered on. "Engi Med-bot Dispersal" grants this to your entire ship at a reduced rate. "Reconstructive Teleport" can take this UpToEleven in short bursts, by completely and instantaneously healing anyone who uses your teleporter.

** Possible in the vanilla game with enough laser weaponry, but taken UpToEleven with [[GatlingGood the Chain Vulcan]] 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.

''[[http://www.ftlgame.com/ FTL: Faster Than Light]]'' is a "{{Roguelike}}-like" spaceship simulation game developed by Subset Games.

* DifficultButAwesome: The 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.

** 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.

In November 2013, the developers announced ''[[http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=598 FTL: Advanced Edition]]'', a free ExpansionPack that adds new equipment, events, weapons, ships (for both the player and enemies), and various other goodies, as well as an [[UsefulNotes/IOSGames iPad]] port. Both ''Advanced Edition'' and the port were released on April 3rd, 2014.

Not to be confused with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTL_Games FTL Games]], a video game development company that has been defunct since 1996, and 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.

* AchievementMockery: You get an achievement for dying in the tutorial mission. Since tutorial enemies can't damage your shields, this requires venting your entire ship of oxygen or turning your shields off manually — two actions that are completely unnecessary to completing the tutorial, and thus amount to killing yourself on purpose.
-->''"Somehow you've died during the introduction training exercise. Feel free to try again but this doesn't bode well for your mission."''

* BetterOffSold:
** Many 3-power and 4-power weapons can be hard to add onto a weapons loadout, since they take up a significant fraction of the maximum of 8 power in the weapons system, requiring many weapons upgrades (let alone the cost of purchasing the weapon itself). Thus, if you receive something like a Burst Laser III (4 power, 19 second charge time, 5 damage at most) or a Breach Missile (3 power, 21 second charge time, 4 shield-piercing damage), it's often easier to just sell them to a store for a decent chunk of scrap rather than try to fit them into a loadout.
** The two small utility bombs, the Stun Bomb and the Lockdown Bomb, have very little effect when you aren't boarding, and are only marginally better when you are, making them prime sell material.
** Most augments are at least slightly useful, but few provide a large effect compared to selling them for scrap at a store. The most noteworthy examples are Advanced FTL Navigation (allows you to jump to any previously-visited beacon... which will 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.

* MinimalistRun:
** The Zoltan Cruiser achievement "Manpower" requires you to get to sector 5 without upgrading your reactor.
** Federation Cruiser achievement "Artillery Mastery" requires you to get to sector 5 without upgrading your weapons.
** The game has several achievements gained this way, like surviving to sector 5 without buying anything at a store, never purchasing repairs, or never upgrading your reactor.

* NoCasualtiesRun: Acknowledged by the game; reaching Sector 8 with no crew losses unlocks the "No {{Redshirt}}s Here!" achievement.

** Weapon drops and store sales are both essential to winning the game, and both are affected by luck through what they can give you, meaning that you might end up with a run that only gets VendorTrash, leaving you woefully underequipped for later sectors, let alone the flagship.

* VendorTrash:
** 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.
** Many 3-power and 4-power weapons can be hard to add onto a weapons loadout, since they take up a significant fraction of the maximum of 8 power in the weapons system, requiring many weapons upgrades (let alone the cost of purchasing the weapon itself). Thus, if you receive something like a Burst Laser III (4 power, 19 second charge time, 5 damage at most) or a Breach Missile (3 power, 21 second charge time, 4 shield-piercing damage), it's often easier to just sell them to a store for a decent chunk of scrap rather than try to fit them into a loadout.
** The two small utility bombs, the Stun Bomb and the Lockdown Bomb, have very little effect when you aren't boarding, and are only marginally better when you are, making them prime sell material.
** Most augments are at least slightly useful, but few provide a large effect compared to selling them for scrap at a store. The most noteworthy examples are Advanced FTL Navigation (allows you to jump to any previously-visited beacon... which will 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.

* CharacterSelectForcing: In ''Advanced Edition'', the Mind Control subsystem is almost a necessity. Otherwise, the FinalBoss Mind Control attacks is going to absolutely ''wreck your shit''. Alternatively, you can get an all-Slug crew, but good luck with that, considering their rarity.

** The Kestrel Tupe B ship, the Red-Tail, starts off with four Basic Lasers, single-shot lasers with a charge time of 10 seconds. While each one is weak on their own, four of them at the same time allows you to inflict more damage than a Burst Laser II, but with less recharge time. In fact, it's not even necessary to target the shields on single-shield enemies for the first two sectors since you can still do pretty reasonable damage with three lasers; sometimes you can even shut down an enemy's weapons before they can fire ''at all''. Later on, swap them out for Burst Laser [=Is=] or [=IIs=] to pile up the damage some more. Crewmembers manning weapons gaining experience each time ''each weapon fires'' — meaning you often max out the gunner before Sector 3 or 4 — is a bonus.

** 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. Its benfits are lower on harder difficulties, where you gain less scrap to begin with.

->''You find nothing of major importance reading through the page. However, exploring it [[{{TVTropesWillRuinYourLife}} has taken a lot of time and allowed the Rebel fleet to catch up]].''

* GameMod: Although the game doesn't have official modding tools, the files are very open, simple, and easy to work with. Images are .png files, and most data is held in .xml or .txt files. Modders have already successfully modified ship layouts and added new weapons. The official game forums have a [[http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=11 subforum dedicated to modding the game]]. Two such modes have their own pages: [[VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLightCaptainsEdition Captain's Edition]] and [[VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLightMultiverse Multiverse]].