The game is not based on luck, everytime I lost, it was because I did something wrong. If you didnt have enough weapons, you should have visited more stores, or defeated more ships by killing only their crew (and thus getting a high chance to loot weapons).
To avoid rolling dice with missiles, get a defense drone mark 1.

Disclaimer: I am a total fanboy, since I could not put this game down since the release. Haven't had this much fun with a new games since Fantasy Wars and Kings Bounty.

That's exactly what I thought the first few times I played through FTL. It's more like poker than anything. You have to take a lot of things into account, "can I risk losing a crew member to "spiders" to gain 17 scrap?", "Should I engage an enemy ship even though I have 65% hull strength or give up the chance to get needed supplies and sneak by?".

There's a lot of elements of Risk/Reward here. I think that's what keeps me playing. That feeling of, "WOW! What an idiot I am for answering the distress call or engaging that ship". There's also a sense of triumph when you pull out a victory by the skin of you teeth. Then you have to deal with the aftermath.

I will honestly say that after watching the video for this game I wasn't initially impressed by FTL, but now that I've played it for myself, I'm glad I didn't pass on it. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone looking for something a little different. Completely worth the $9!

Not running out of fuel (can happen if you run into an unlucky string of sectors) and finding the right armament to be a match for the final boss is a bit of a poker game.

The rest is skill.

I don't discount skill as a factor in battles, and strategy matters in terms of planning upgrades. But randomness, dice rolls, whatever you call it is a definite factor in the game. It's inherent, FTL is a tabletop game with a digital interface.

In the play through I mentioned I went to great effort to find a store and kick ship ass, but please consider there is a rebel fleet after you, not to mention fuel. (Also consider you can't control what a store sells) You always have a time limit, and normally have to commit to a certain rough route across a sector for logistical reason. You simply can't visit every system. What you find when you jump is a gamble, you have to make a choice. In my case I visited 75% of planets, clearly the other 25% were where I needed to be. But it's a total gamble without cheating. There is no skill in drawing a straw.

Even the combat has some level of a die roll going on. To note: I had a defence drone mk II and 45% evasion when I got slammed by missiles. In my prior encounter with the boss I had no drone and about half the evasion; missiles were not really an issue. There are lots of skill related things I can do to counter that, like target enemy weapons. That's a conscious decision to disable what ails me. But it still comes down to whether or not my shot hits the target, which I have no personal control of.

It's just like terminator armor in 40K; you're pretty damn invulnerable with it, statistically you will survive the will of the dice, but sooner or later you will throw an 'unlucky' roll and you've had it. Likewise, sometimes (rarely haha) the imperial guard will survive an onslaught, despite being protected with cardboard.

I love the game, it's possibly the best thing I've played this year. But die rolls are a part of the package, and I'm ok with that, it's what makes the game so engaging for me. It's all part of the charm; as the game says, "dying is part of the fun". But the dice can be cruel sometimes, and yes it sort of sucks.

I managed to almost kill the final boss with only the starter weapons. I would have done it too if I had payed a bit more attention to my crew, so it can be done.

(I concentrated all fire on their shields and only their shields, in case you were wondering.)

When I first started playing this game, I thought that it was heavily luck based, but the more I've played, the more I've discovered that most of the things that were killing me due to "bad luck" can actually be managed through careful planning and tactics. I can say with confidence now that the game is definitely not a die roll - luck is a factor, to be sure, but the 'game' is all in how you manage the probabilities.

Something I've noticed is that your ship build at any given point will go through three "stages". In Stage 1, you can easily take down enemy ships with little or no damage. In Stage 2, you will still be able to take out enemies, but you'll be struggling to do so, and probably taking more hull damage in the process. In Stage 3, your ship build just won't be effective enough to kill the enemies.

The key to the game, from what I can tell, is to notice when you get to Stage 2, and to analyse why your ship build isn't working any more, so that you can correct it before you hit Stage 3 (which is usually where you die). Got a great beam weapon, but can't get through their shields? Maybe add a missile so that it can punch through their shields, and then follow up with the beam weapon. Your shots miss all the time? Try targeting their helm - it's easy to break and they can't take evasive manoeuvres until they fix it, which usually gives you enough time to blast whatever other system you were having a hard time hitting.

Here are some other tips I've come up with:

1. You're not going to be able to buy everything, so make your purchases count. DO NOT buy something just because it looks neat and you currently have the scrap for it - e.g. don't buy a drone control system unless drones are going to be part of your strategy. That scrap could be better put towards upgrading your shields, or even just saving for emergency repairs.

2. On a related note, don't buy upgrades you don't need yet. I can't tell you how many times I've kicked myself for upgrading my scanners just 'cause, only to jump to a store with that perfect weapon that I can't afford now. (Shields, and to a lesser extent engines, are an exception here - upgrading those early will save you scrap in the long run because you won't be spending it on hull repairs.)

3. Remember that breaking a system causes a point of hull damage, so if the enemy is about to go under, targeting their O2 supply or the helm might end the fight faster than continuing to focus fire on that big fat shield unit they're busily repairing.

4. As I mentioned before, if you are having trouble hitting them or just happen to have a spare shot to spread around, target the helm. Dropping their evasion to zero even briefly makes a HUGE difference.

5. Don't be too tempted by the autofire button. One huge mistake that I kept making early on was to just target everything on whatever system I wanted to take out, and then just run the fight on autofire until I beat them (or died). The timing of your weapon shots actually makes a big difference - for example, laser weapons are WAY more effective if you wait until they're all charged and fire them all at once, as otherwise the enemy's shields have a chance to recharge. Missiles and teleporter bombs should usually be fired just BEFORE laser weapons, since they ignore shields and may make it easier for your lasers to hit/penetrate (depending on what the missile was targeting). Ion weapons should be fired just before lasers for the same reason (unless you want to ion something other than shields). Beam weapons should be fired just AFTER the lasers connect with the shield, so that they're firing through a minimum of resistance.

6. In general, don't just target blindly - think about what systems you need to cripple. If they're light on shields such that several points of damage will get through on each volley, then I usually favour targeting their weapons and helm - the shields aren't enough of an obstacle to be worth taking down, when doing so would let the enemy get another shot off on me and possibly cause some expensive hull damage. On the other hand, if I'm usually only getting a single point of damage through per volley, then I try to wear their shields down a bit so that I can then hit the other systems more effectively. (If you ever get to the point where you're not getting ANY damage through on most volleys, then you've hit the Stage 3 I mentioned above and are in trouble. Consider fleeing the battle and hoping you can find an upgrade before you die.)

7. As soon as you enter a 'solar flare' hazard, immediately open your airlocks and start venting air from any rooms that don't have your crew members in them. That way if the flare starts a fire in any of those non-essential rooms, you can ignore it because it will go out soon. This is also a good tactic for repelling boarders - start venting air as soon as you see that the enemy has a teleporter. Don't wait for them to jump on board. That way, if they teleport into an airless room, they start taking damage immediately, instead of five or six seconds later. Then, you can have fun slamming doors shut in their face as they scramble to get to your door control subsystem.

8. Know the strengths and weaknesses of your different crew members. Engi are better at repairing things. Mantises and Rockmen are good at repelling boarders. Since it's usually safer to send your engine guy off to do some repairs or fighting than to take your weapons guy away from the console, stick your mantis or Engi in the engine room and have a human or a zoltan manning the more critical stations. (But don't stick a zoltan at the helm - their energy bonus is wasted there.) If you have a spare Engi sitting around, stick him in the weapons or shield rooms so that if they get hit, he's right on hand to start fixing them. Putting a little thought into how you distribute your crew can help your ship run much more efficiently.

9. End boss tips: I've only beat the end boss once, so I'm sure there are a number of strategies I don't know about, but here are two that I found helpful. First, if you have four shields, then the only weapon that you need to worry about in the first phase of the battle is the missile launcher located on the inside-right of the enemy ship. Once that's down, the fight is a cakewalk, as their laser weapons will rarely if ever penetrate your shields. (The second and third phases of the battle are another matter...)

My second boss tip is this: while the enemy will repair any damaged systems between phases of the battle, lost crew members are not replaced. See those four guys manning the four weapons systems up front? Notice how their rooms don't connect to the rest of the ship? Once you kill them, those rooms will stay empty for the entire rest of the end boss sequence, which also means that those systems ain't getting repaired (except between phases of the fight, as noted above). Though I haven't tried this, I imagine that a teleporter would be a singularly effective way to deal with those four rooms. Try to kill off some guys in the main body of the ship too, if you can - it will make the enemy's repair efforts much slower.

Good hints, Azilut! I would say there is only luck and dice roll in the beginning of the game,maybe the first 2 or 3 sectors, when you don't have the proper equipment to defend against everything.
After that it can become extremely easy, when you have a defense drone mark I (Mark II gets distracted by shooting down lasers and lets missiles through) to shoot down missiles and enough shields and evasion to absorb anything else.
Avoiding missiles is the most important thing, until you have a drone, you need to take out their weapons quickly.
If you have a teleporter you can become a scrapyard, engi and slug ships will be easy prizes, you get much more loot. The end fight is also very easy with a teleporter, just take out their weapons,starting with missiles. Bombs would also work for this. I just took out the whole crew of stage 3 to see what would happen, and I won't spoil it, go do it!

This only applies to the first 3 ships, I am guessing it will be harder with other ship designs.

Anyone know if the augmentations stack? For example if you have 2 scrap recovery arms, do you get the 10% bonus twice?

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think so. I got two weapons pre-loaders once (the ones that cut weapon recharge down by 10%), and I didn't notice my weapons firing any faster than with just one.

If you get the same augmentation a second time you receive a message that they don't stack and the second one gets broken down into scrap.

For some thats true, xy2345, but I just tried two scrap thingies and got 20% bonus, so they do stack.

Oh, that means I only got stuff that didn't stack. Too bad.

Thanks for the info.