FTL:Faster than light x Borderlands x Mass Effect
Developer Synopsis:
Launch Trailer:
Announcement trailer:
Take control of your ship (alone or with 2 other players) and make your way back to Earth one system at a time. Along the way you'll need to micromanage resources like fuel, take care of and command crew members, make repairs, trade with merchant ships, take down enemy ships, help space stations in need of help, board enemy ships and stations, defend yours from being boarded whilst making sure the giant alien mothership doesn't get to Earth first.
The game also features permadeath if either your ship is destroyed or you run out of crew members!
Weapons
In addition to this, the game features a large variety of weapons which similar to borderlands have randomised stats. Some of the weapons that were available in the open beta:
- Standard laser pistols
- Assualt Rifles
- Guns that shoot out ricocheting bullets
- Flame throwers
- Toxic gas guns
- heat seeking plasma guns
- shotgun
- Grenades
- Holographic shield (think Phil Coulson in Agents of Shield)
- Repair Gun
- and plenty more
There is no regenerating health in the game, instead you'll need to use med stimpacks to heal any lost health during missions or you can rest in your ships med bay. Health packs can be found during missions.
Ship Battles
Your Ship comes with default weapons and shields, but you can buy new weapons from merchants (as well as find them when looting a ship's cargo). Weapons you own can be upgraded at merchant vendors too, alongside your shields.
When engaging in combat with other ships, they will attempt to hack your ships teleporter to board your ship whilst launching their ships weapons in real time. Its down to you to target specific areas of the enemies ship. Do you target the weapon systems first? the oxygen supply? Permanently take down their shields?
Resources
To jump from system to system you need fuel. This can be purchased from merchants you find or from ships and stations you come across. Using a hacking device, you can loot other ships and stations for their cargo (fuel, currency and even weapons to use on your ship). Different ships and stations have varying levels of security, which require stronger hacking devices, these devices can be found throughout missions. Depending on the quality of the hacking device you'll get a success % , if the device fails an attempt it will break so you'll want to stock up on as many high level hacking devices as possible.
You'll come across NPC's that can join your crew (or you can hire them from merchants or purchase them from pirate slave traders). NPC crew members can die during ship battles or if your ship is boarded by enemies so keeping them healthy is important. NPC crew members will monitor your ships condition and repair areas of your ship that are damaged such as the engine, med bay, weapons systems, oxygen supply etc. Also, whenever you die you respawn at the cost of a crew member, so they also act as your lives for the playthrough. dying with no crew members left will result in permadeath.
Missions
As you progress through different star systems via the ships navigation map, you may come across missions/quests that will take place on a procedurally generated ship, station or facility. Missions are varied, some examples from the beta:
- Take out all pirates occupying a space station
- Steal intel from a facility overun by hostile AI and robots
- prevent pirates from escaping to the hangar of a space station to recover stolen blueprints
- Help repair areas of an NPC's ship
- Defeat a pirate captain with a bounty on their head
- Take out a rogue machine (boss battle)
- and many more
Multiplayer
Whilst the game can be played single player, but you can also play it with 2 other players.
If you are playing with friends the side consoles allow others to operate the weapons or command the crew. As you jump closer to earth space battles become more challenging and you will need to coordinate to repel boarders, fox systems and hull breaches ect...
The game allows you to find games with random players, create private rooms for you to invite your friends into and of course, single player.
VR movement options:
The game offers a massive amomunt of customisation for movement such as:
- Free locomotion with analog stick
- Free locomotion (head relative)
- Free locomotion (controller relative)
- Teleporation
- Smooth Rotation
- Snap Rotation
- Rotation rate adjustments
- Seated Game mode
Additional Media
Developer Walkthrough & interview
Gameplay Vid of the open beta weekend (no commentary)
Here ares some gifs the devs put out on reddit over the past month(some of these a giphy gifs so I'll just link to them since i have no idea how to post them on forums):
- Sharing is caring gif
- Movement Options implemented based on beta feedback
- Improvements from loot based on beta feedback
- Playable Alien Race: Nagrin
- Healing other players (for the record, I did not write healz bruh, lol)
- The Archivist Boss from beta
REVIEWS
Tips & tricks
- Hackathons have different tiers. Highest I have found is a mark 5
- Ship battles jump in difficulty once your pass 50% progress
- There are permanent unlocks tied to achievements (for example, theres one about killing a number of pirates that unlocks a legendary pistol for each new playthrough you create)
- There are 7 ships to unlock in total (you select which one to use when creating a new game. Each unlocked ship has better stats than the default ship. You unlock one ship by completing the game the first time.
- Try to save your ordinance supplies for the 2nd half of the game, so use lasers only when possible (getting 2 lasers allows you to rapid fire them and keep their shields down). Lasers dont use ordinace, but use capacitors instead which is self replenishing ammo.
- Teleporting to an enemy ship yeilds more loot, blowing them up will only provide a little salvage. So if you're confident enough, take out their weapon systems and teleport over to them.
- Placing more crew members in a single ship function room increases the efficiency of that function
- NPC Crew upgrade their pistols the closer you get to Earth
- upgrading med bay = higher max hp for you and crew
- upgrading oxygen = increase max crew amount
- 50 pirate away missions - legendary scattershot mk1 (325dmg)
- 50 robot away missions - legendary shock burst mk1 (253dmg)
- 125 crimson marauder pirates - legendart plasma explosive mk1 (325dmg 32ammo)
- 150 unaffiliated pirates - legendary auto pistol mk1 (144dmg 260ammo)
- 450 (150+300) unaffiliated pirates - legendary auto pistol mk2 (260dmg 300ammo)
- 300 robots - legendary shock disc mk1 (217dmg)
- get back to earth - corvette class ship (called "asa radiance" )
- get 20 crew from missions - legendary laser beam (163dmg 195ammo)
- 50 pirate captains - pirate corvette mk3 (ship)
- 500 Jumps - Corvette ship
- Destoy 100 Pirate Ships - Pirate Skimmer (ship)
Ships Stats
- To complete the timed mission where you have to prevent a pirate ship from departing, you need to find the dock/harbour room and take out the 4 yellow nodes (circles) ont the ship. 2 located on the side and 2 on the top of the ship. Shooting them a couple of times will cause them to turn red, shooting them further will completely destroy the node.
- In the Archivist boss battle, you can avoid getting aggro from the side turret drones by not shooting them
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Titan boss is immune to damage so aim for the 4 red vents underneath its arms when they open (you can tell which one is open when its brighter in colour and letting out a lot of steam). If you have shock burster, use it since the lightning arcs towards the open vents.
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On any Xeno mission, if an alien dissappears through a vent and never returns, its probably on your ship so get back to it asap and scout the area out. Always keep your map open after completing these missons as they may be hiding on your ship even if you never encountered any during the mission. These guys deal a lot of damage so try to keep distance from them
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The crabhead type enemies can deal alot of damage if they jump on to your face. There is atleast one upgraded version that have green sacks on their backs, kill them at a distance since these sacks will explode on their death.
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Be sure to kill the optional boss in the first area. Killing it will unlock a permanent alien gun for each playthrough you create (its located in the captains cabin).
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