Dekonstructor: FTL

FTL: Faster Than Light is a game that I've recently started playing and it is a pleasantly surprising and addictive experience.

Story & Setting

FTL is a top-down real time strategy game set in space. Players manage a crew on a ship who are on a mission to deliver important data to the allied Federation fleet. The data will supposedly save the Federation from the attacking Rebel forces. Players must deliver the data before the Rebel fleet intercepts them or attacks the Federation base.

Players travel between different randomly generated sectors of space. Sectors of space could include different ships, civilizations and space objects such as asteroid fields and nebulae. Within each sector of space are nodes which the player travels between every turn. Each node presents the player with a story, and could be the specific location of enemies, space stations, distress calls, quests or stores.

Players

FTL is a single player game, using a player versus the game system.

When starting a new game the player picks a ship from a list of ships they have unlocked from previous play-throughs, otherwise they are given a starting ship which they can play with. Each ship has different weapons, systems and augmentations as well as different capabilities such as a teleporter. From the ship selection screen the player can see the augmentations, systems, weapons and crew that the ship comes with. Players can also select the layout of their ship once they unlock the layout. The ship and crew members can be renamed to a personalized choice.

Objectives/Goals

The main objective of the game is to reach the final sector and defeat the final boss. To do this however will require a ship powerful enough to defeat the final boss, meaning it's almost impossible to complete the mission in one play-through. Players will have to play the game multiple times, with deaths, to unlock new bigger ships with different capabilities. Players will also have to take the time to explore each sector of space such that side quests are revealed that could potentially reward them with new weapons, augmentations, ship parts for upgrades, and even new crew members. There are also personal goals that players can set for themselves, such as having a weapons focused ship versus an extremely fast ship.

Resources

Crew Members:

Each crew member has the following attributes

• Race: Human, Mantis, Rockman, Zoltan, Slug, Crystal, Engi
• Health: All races have 100 health except Zoltans (70), Crystal (125) and Rockmen (150)
• Movement speed
• Skills:
• Piloting
• Engines
• Shields
• Weapons
• Repair
• Combat

Ship Systems:

A ship can contain several systems:

1. Shields: powers the ships shields. Each shield layer can absorb one attack. The shield systems can be upgraded to increase the number of shield layers. Shields can be manned by a crew member to increase recharge times.
2. Engines: Powers the FTL drive and allows the ship to dodge. Upgrading the engines increase the rate that the FTL drive charges at and increases a ship's dodge chance. Engines can be manned to increase the ship's dodge chance.
3. Oxygen: Refills the oxygen in the ship. Upgrading increases the rate of refill in the ship.
4. Weapon Control: Powers the ships weapons. Upgrading the weapon control system allows you to power more weapons at once. Weapon controls can be manned in increase the charge times for weapons.
5. Drone Control: Powers all of the ship's drones. It can be upgraded to support more drones.
6. Artillery Beam: This system is a high-powered beam that pierces all shields and does one damage per room hit. It can be upgraded to reduce the cooldowns.
7. Medbay: Heals all crew members within the Medbay. Upgrading increases healing speed.
8. Cloaking: Cloaks the ship and increases your evasion chance, and prevents the enemy ship from locking on with their weapons. Firing weapons while the cloak is active will reveal your ship. Stealth weapons can negate this effect.
9. Crew Teleporter: Gives the player the ability to send crew members to an enemy ship. Upgrading reduces the cooldown.

Subsystems:

1. Piloting: Allows the ship to travel between node and dodge during combat when piloted by a crew member. Upgrading adds a level of auto-pilot, increase the ship's evasion chance. This requires a crew member to function
2. Sensors: Reveals the interior of your ship, and can give information on enemy ships if upgraded.
3. Door System: Allows remote opening and closing of doors, and can be upgraded to stop fire spread, and slow down enemy intruders.

Reactor: 

The reactor provides power to all of the ships systems. Power is represented by power bars and a ship's systems cannot consume more power than what is in the reactor.

Consumable resources include:

• Scrap: Used to purchase weapons, upgrades, augmentations, new crew members, fuel, ammunition, drone parts, and repairs
• Fuel: Used to travel between nodes and sectors.
• Missiles/Rockets: Used as ammunition for bombs and missiles.
• Drone parts: Used to deploy drones.

The final resource in the game is the hull integrity, which is essentially the ship's health.

Rules/Mechanics

Travel:

The player travels between different levels known as sectors. Each sector has a map composed of nodes within which the player travels between. Sectors and node maps are randomly generated. Nodes may have special events such as combat events, distress calls, or quests. Between each node the player "waits" for their faster than light (FTL) drive (the engine in their ship) to charge at which point they can travel to the next node, which consumes one fuel. If there is no special event at the node, usually there is no actual wait.

If the player runs out of fuel, they can turn on their distress beacon and wait for help, or for the rebel fleet to intercept them and engage them in combat. Both give opportunities for the player to regain some fuel.

There are also special regions in space that have different effects on ships. Nebulae disrupt a ships sensors. Asteroid fields will damage the ships hull. Suns will blast solar flares at the ship and damage the hull and set it on fire.

Combat:

Battles are played in real time, although the player can pause the game any time to plan their attack, manage the distribution of power in their ship or manage their crew members. A battle is over when the a ship is destroyed, when it's crew members are killed, if they forfeit, or if either the player or enemy ship escape using their FTL drive.

A ship is destroyed when its hull has been destroyed. The hull integrity is represented by a bar, and is essentially the ships health. Ships also have shields that can absorb certain attacks, at the expense of depleting the shield.

During battle, ships target each others' systems. Each system is separated in a ship and systems can be damaged. The player targets an enemy's systems by clicking on the specific room or rooms they want to target. Some weapons allow the player to place a line across several rooms, or target a specific number of rooms at once. Bombs and other ammunition based weapons will of course consume ammunition resources and cannot be used without ammunition.

Different weapons have different effects on the enemy ship, and some weapons can even target the player's own ship. For example there is a heal bomb that can be used to heal all members in a specific area of a ship.

When system or subsystem has been damaged, the player can move crew members to that room to repair it. When an area of the ship is hit by weapons there is a chance that it will be set on fire, or even a chance that the hull breaks and begins draining the oxygen. Fire will spread if it isn't put out and damage the systems in a ship and drain the oxygen in those rooms. Fires and hull breaches must be repaired before systems are repaired. There is no option given to the player here.

Crew members also begin to lose health when oxygen levels start depleting.

Upgrades:

Players can upgrade their ships systems any time except for when they are in battle. Upgrades cost scrap.

Random Events:

There are many random events that appear in the game. The most important ones however are the ones that offer choices. For example, you may have a conversation with a passing ship and you choose what to say from a few options. These conversations have completely unclear consequences and could result in positive or negative consequences for the player.

Perma-Death:

Death is permanent for that play-through of the game, and the random elements ensure that overall, your experience will not be the same.

Game State Information

Most of the state information is related to resources and position:

• Hull integrity
• Shield levels
• the state of each system and subsystem in the ship
• Whether or not it is disabled, damaged, on fire, or has a hull breach
• How much power it can support
• How much power is allocated to it
• The players fuel level
• Number of scrap parts
• Number of drone parts
• Number of missles/rockets
• Total reactor power they have
• Crew member health
• Crew member skill levels
• Crew member positions
• Ship position in space

The game also tracks statistics such as how many times you dodge an attack, how many ships you've destroyed and so on. These statistics are only revealed at the end of each play-through however.

Sequencing

As I mentioned before each sector is randomly generated. The first and last sectors are predetermined however. Players can set their own pace in terms of how quickly they travel from sector to sector, however there are many random events that stops any predictable patterns from forming. As such the sequencing is difficult to explain or estimate in any other way other than saying it is random.

The only thing that is certain in terms of sequencing, is that the player travels from sector to sector, and within sectors the player travels from node to node in a more turn-based style of gameplay. Upon arrival at each node, the game goes into more of a real-time strategy mode while giving you the ability to pause at any time.

Theme

Finally the theme of the game is space exploration. The game thrusts you into the role of being the captain of a ship and gives you a be all end all mission to save the Federation from extremist rebels.

How these game atoms come together

The simplest way to describe how these game atoms come together is to say that the game presents the simulation of being a captain of a spaceship in a very good way, giving many opportunities for choices to be made and strategy. the random and ambiguous elements of the game leave the player wondering what exactly they could have done differently, and ensures that every play-through is different.