... now it feels like this game is a lottery: losing/winning doesn't feel like it's dependant on the way you play.

Is this a "feature" or a possible improvment?

Just unlocked the engi ship (couldn't get far with the Kestrel) and it felt uber powerful at first then a random ship destroyed me easily: fires everywhere, every system down, within a minute...

I'm a bit dissapointed for now...

Well, I'm still playing on "easy" (it's hard enough for me), but for some reason, even though I still can't defeat the flagship, I reach it on almost every play.

There was a time where I could hardly reach the 5th system.

So, yeah, I do guess that one gets better at this game. Not to mention the "desktop dungeon" aspect of unlocking new ships and layouts, which makes things either objectively easier, or just easier for your own playstyle.

I know what you mean

After a few games it becomes clear that progression has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with how lucky the player is in terms of the randomness of it all. I'm not a big fan of full fledged randomness but i can live with it when it's there in a way that allows the player to adjust but with FTL i can't help feeling like i'm playing a dice game. A somewhat rigged dice game, because when i'm lucky the results are moslty irrelevant for progression and when i'm unlucky most of the times it's game over.

The game is fun and addictive but i can't see myself playing it for much longer as is.

Eh, no, the game is indeed based on skill. Luck does play a role, but how far you get on average is based on how practiced you are at playing it. Some people just get it better than others.

The game has a noticeable number of events that are literally a die roll. Giant Alien Spiders either kill a crew member or not, hailing ships either turn out to be traps or not. When you run into these, it's not a question of skill, but whether you think that potential gain outweighs the potential losses. There events also seem to be repeated most frequently.

It's unrelated to some players being better than others or getting it better than others, unrelated to a complaint about difficulty or a complaint at all.

It's more about what determines progression and if whether or not this is a game suited for players who don't like luck based progression. Skill ends when you figure out what counters what and to what each of the recurrent events leads to, that takes 10 minutes and from there on the player is completely at the mercy of luck. Skill would come into it if the player was given a chance to adapt but there's no way to adpat to sheer randomness.

Eventually the player will get a session when lady luck puts everything into place to enable a 'perfect' run just like if given enough tries someone will eventually get a double six when throwing two dices.

This is just frustration speaking.

As far as I'm concerned, on "easy", I now reach the flagship every time.

I do agree that there are a few too many of these. It'd be nice if there was some way of minimizing them, maybe via safety procedures that make your systems run slower but protect your dudes or something. Still great gamr though.

It's not about getting to the flagship or not, it's about how progression works by virtue of the scope of randomness in the game. It's not "OMG, this game is so freaking hard", it's "oh, this game is mostly designed around luck".

If i were to get frustrated whenever i come across a game that doesn't quite measure up to what i mostly look for in games i'd be frustrated all the time. Like i said, the game is fun and addictive, don't regret buying it, i'm simply not a big fan of games where luck has this kind of weight on the in game 'goings ons'.

That's fine as a personal preference, but luck is as much a part of the this "genre" as permadeath is. If luck were not a big factor it would be much faster to figure out the optimal play, which would make the game boring faster.

This kind of game is closer to poker than chess. The challenge is to play the hand you have while taking into account the probabilities. Poker has an element of luck, but it is still very much dependent on skill, like this game. Now, if the game would function like roulette and skill would play no part then yes, that would be bad. But that is not the case here.

It is. It shows a regular progression due to experience. I used to be ba at this game, I'm getting better. This doesn't happen with dice. You don't get better at making 6s.

You should play dungeon crawl stone soup. It is punishingly hard. It is very random. Yet, there is a difference between good and bad players. You'll assume it's pure luck, then you'll realise that you get more "lucky" the more you play, you cease dying at level 2, you die around level 11, and other players consistently reach level 40 (on average, with some bad luck catastrophies now and then). What makes some players better at it than others is not obvious. I know why I'm better at stone soup than before, yet I still don't see how people manage to go so much deeper than me : it seems random to me.

Yes, there are random elements in FTL. Some of them can make or destroy you. But in the long run, it's still a skill game, and a game that you get better at, increasing your chances, to the point where -at least on "easy"- your success statistics improve to the point where you reach the last system almost every time. And games that are based on randomness do also demand some probability management. Most random encounters have easy solutions (multiple ones) if you have the right systems or crew members aboard. If you don't, you can also choose to take the chance or not (I for one simply avoid space spiders, which IS a "game move"). It is not desktop dungeons, it is not chess. It's closer to poker : you are dealt cards, a good player maximises their use, and attempts to make them win. Sometimes he loses because luck is too much against him. But statistically, a good player wins way more often than a bad player, despite of this amound of randomness.

So, your interpretation of FTL is reductive. If you have the patience to get better at it, you'll measure it. If not, well, I just suggest you avoid randomized permadeath games. They will most often give you this first impression.

Those would be the ten minutes i mentioned it takes to figure out the mechanics, the outcomes, the counters, etc. From there on you have as much chance of getting better at making a good run than you do with the dice. It may have taken you more than ten minutes, a littler more or alot more, but once you cross that threshold that's all she wrote skill wise.

It's not that i don't have the patience to get better at it, it's that apparently i got better at it alot faster than you and i'm now waiting around fr you at that point where you realize that even when you know the game you know that if you're not lucky in any given particular run you're not going to be able to pull off a good run regardless. Ultimately luck is what makes or breaks a run. On top of it seems that when you're unlucky the outcome is often catastrophic and when you're lucky the outcome is mostly irrelevant in terms of coping with the next bout of bad luck.

How many different strategies have you experimented against the flagship, in "ten minutes" ?

Figured out the mechanics in maybe 10 plays.
Being slapped around the map the whole time.
Got one(!) usable weapon (second laser).
Met once the flagship.

Is that normal or just extraordinary bad luck ?

About normal I'd say. Hang around and you'll do better.

And yes, some things are highly random. Part of the skill I mentioned is ballancing the randomness and knowing when to take chances. I've learned to avoid some of the random events that just kill crewmembers when I have none to spare, for example. Also, most of these have a hidden blue option that unlocks with the right crew or equipment. These always turn out well. For example, if you have a Rock crewmember, you can do the mission that involves helping with a fire without any bad result happening. Most events with a random bad result are the same, it's just the matter of having the right equipment or crew.