Earlier this week I wrote about the game FTL: Faster Than Light. It is a surprisingly difficult game to master and complete, so I’m going to explore some basic tactics, strategies, and tips for playing FTL well.

I will be covering which enemy space craft systems you should target, how to get skill points, how to micromanage your units to stop boarders, when to repair your hull, and much more.

1. Priority in Attacking Enemy Space Craft Systems

Typically the first system on the enemy’s space craft you want to target is their shield generator. Once their shields are down, your non-shield piercing weapons can do damage to their hull. Typically you should target their weapons system after their shields. This will minimize and prevent the damage they can do to you. If you have only shield piercing weapons then you can often just take out their weapons system and not worry about the shields.

2. Abusing Automated Ships for Skill Upgrades

If you have an ion weapon like on the starting Engi ship, The Torus, you can set it to autofire on an automated space craft’s weapons systems. This will prevent the space craft from hurting you, while you shoot at it repeatedly with your ion weapon to build up your crew member’s weapons skill.

Sometimes enemy space crafts will only have ion weapons or something that can’t penetrate your full shields. You can sit there and keep absorbing the shots with your shield, earning your crew member shield skills.

3. Medical Bay Micro

It is easiest to defend your ship from boarders by gathering your crew and fighting in your medical bay while it is powered on so that it heals them.

Only a limited amount of people can be in a room at once. When your crew members that are fighting get to low health, switch them out of the fight room for a full health crew member. If you can access your medical bay, put the hurt crew member in there to heal, and when he gets his health back, switch him back into the fight, pull out the current fighter, and heal him up in the medical bay, rinse and repeat.

4. Pick Dialogue Paths That Suit Your Current Needs

Play through Faster Than Light for long enough and you’ll start to get a good feel for what will happen if you choose certain dialogue options for events. For example, if you are prompted to “look for survivors” at an event, usually the reward will be an extra crew member, while the punishment may be the loss of a crew member. If you’re in sector 7 and have three crew members that are all highly skilled, then the reward of getting a crew member will mean a lot less than the possible punishment of losing one of your crew members. On the other hand if you are in sector 1 and have just started the game, it is worth the risk to try and get that extra crew member.

5. Don’t Repair Your Hull Unnecessarily

Don’t spend money now, that can be spent later. Saving up your scrap, instead of spending it needlessly on repairing minor hull damage, will give you more options. Just reached the store and see a good crew member, weapon, or augment you want but are short on cash? Not spending scrap on unnecessary hull repair or fuel could have given you that extra scrap needed to buy it.

Different stores charge different prices for repairing hull damage. Don’t spend four credits on repairing each point of hull damage if another store is only charging two credits to repair each point of hull damage.

6. Boarding Ships

Boarding ships and/or eliminating their crew members will typically earn you more scrap, fuel, missiles, and drone parts than if you simply destroyed their ship.

Before boarding take out their weapons system so your space craft doesn’t take any damage, and take out their medical bay so that they can’t camp in it and overpower you.

When boarding, teleport your crew to a two-man room so your crew doesn’t get surrounded and outnumbered.

7. Priority in Manning Space Craft Systems

The pilot system should be the first one manned. Without a pilot you have a 0% chance to evade enemy fire – unless you’ve invested in auto-pilot, which I wouldn’t really recommend.

The weapons system is next in line to be manned. If your weapons crew member is making you reload weapons 10% faster, then you will be doing 10% more damage to enemies.

Engines should be manned next. Manning the engines in the beginning will give your ship a 5% increased to evade enemy fire, which equates to taking 5% less damage.

Shields are the last in line to be manned. Though shields are very important, the benefit of manning the shields early on is small. In the beginning most ships start with one layer of shields that recharges quickly anyway. Later in the game manning the shields becomes much more important.

8. Venting Your Space Craft

Venting your space craft can be a good way to put out fires rather than pulling crew members off of manning systems. Venting your oxygen out of certain rooms can also be a good way to punish boarders, especially in combination with upgraded doors so that they can’t escape the room.

9. Pirates, Bribing, and You

Pirates who are willing to offer you a bribe to forget about them, often will make another bribe worth more resources if you beat it out of them.

If the pirate was chasing civilians, it is often worth it to destroy the pirate’s ship and then talk to the civilians for a reward. That way you may get double what you would have if you just accepted the bribe.

10. Investing in Your Space Craft

Two of the most important systems you can invest in are shields and engines. Shields are a rechargeable damage soaker that will prevent damage to your hull, while engines will increase your evasion rate significantly with each upgrade.

Failing to invest in weapons will also cause a problem. You may have no trouble finishing off enemies in a sector, but once you jump to a new one you may find that you can’t defeat anyone, nor get to a store to upgrade your weapons. Upgrade your weapons before you are forced to and you will save yourself and crew from an unnecessary demise.