I'm a bit surprised that anyone can consider save-scumming with this game "cheating". I made progress in the game. I earned that progress by spending my time and effort playing. To have the devs suddenly take my progress away with completely random, unpredictable and unreasonable events is, in my opinion, "cheating" me. In my opinion, by save-scumming, I am simply removing the devs ability to "cheat" me. Using this technique, I've finished the game. I enjoyed it, and will probably play again sometime, perhaps even without using this technique. But, quite honestly, I don't believe I would have learned anything more or had a more satisfying experience if I hadn't used this technique. No offense to anyone, but the omission of saving is, in my opinion, a cheap attempt to prolong the play-time and induce a "roguelike-so-it-must-be-cool-cuz-you-can-die-at-any-moment-and-you-gotta-be-hard-core-to-play" vibe.

Again, I don't expect anyone to agree, but my time is just too valuable to waste on that kind of sillyness.

Well, i am really surprised that you are surprised ;-)

I'm fairly sure that you keep your save to have the ability to reload and retry in case of "bad" randomness... but what about "good" randomness?! are you reloading also when some undeserved free scraps/weapon/crew event happens, or when a shop sells just the weapon you need, or when you get a lucky enemy-always-miss barrage during combat?!

I guess not, and that's why is a cheat... you artificially twist all the odds in your favor, by keeping the "unpredictable" that suits you while refusing the opposite; with these kind of games is even worse than a simple "give me a bit more scraps" cheat, which at least can be used for an easier headstart while keeping the gameplay intact.

The option to only "save for quitting', in contrast with 'save for retrying', just follows the same principle that drives games with a major random component (even when permadeath is not involved ) like Diablo and such... with the latter available, they lose a core mechanic

Mind, i'm not judging you for not liking this kind of gameplay, many don't and in some really hardcore roguelikes it kinda pisses me off too... but in this one is so lightly implemented and playtime for a single run is so short, that it just feels a waste

Antaniserse, I don't know why you've decided to turn this into some kind of debate, but none of what you say describes my playing of FTL, and I don't know why you would you spend the time and energy typing such nonsense.

I have finished FTL, enjoyed it, and it was money well spent. I am now moving on to the next game in my HUGE backlog of unplayed games.

If you're a "gotta have the last word" guy, go, man. I'm out. Enjoy.

I don't believe the "randomness" in this game is that harsh compared to other rouge-likes - to be honest I don't play those because I find them too annoying (and I'm not really into one-man dungeon-crawling).

There is a distinct difficulty curve, that gets a sharp increase after/on sector 5, so it's not too difficult to ensure you upgrade your equipment to be able to deal with whatever comes your way. On the odd occasions where you're up against something you can't beat (which can happen often at the start if you play a ship that's built for boarding and you're up against an unmanned craft), then you've always got the option of retreat.

Sure, sometimes it's difficult to come back from a bad scrape - but it's not impossible, and when you do, it's all the more satisfying.

Sure, the random events that cause a crewmember to just die or disappear may appear to be unfair - but if you don't want the risk, don't accept the event. I've had all of my seasoned crew members wiped out just before getting to the final sector once, so I had three green crew members left. Managed to up that to 4 greens by the end of sector 7, so faced the mothership with unskilled crew. Sure, I got hit more times than otherwise (probably), but I still defeated the mothership.

Sure you're often screwed by the shops - good stuff is often available to me after I've just bought some other, lesser upgrades or repairs - but that's life.

I guess in the past I've played games like Close Combat 2, where your little soldiers can earn medals, promotions and even "level up" some of their skills between battles - yet no matter how careful you are or how good your strategy, your best team of elite troops led by a Captain can get wiped out by one lucky mortar hit. Boom. Multiple levels of success, multiple medals each, toughest guys you have - one mortar, all gone. War's a bitch, and so are rogue-likes. You take your punches and adapt.

It's not like a game like Fallout 2 for example, where some hidden speech roll can determine your chances of passing a speech check or failing it, and where failing in will immediately make you hostile with a faction you may have been spending considerable time on working with, cutting off all other quests with that faction, possibly a whole town, and no way to ever get them to be non-hostile for the rest of the game. That's just stupid, and I don't blame people for save-scumming in situations like that at all.

On the other hand, games COULD provide an option for saving anyway - there's no reason to alienate people who want to play like that. Jagged Alliance 2 is an example - I would very rarely save-scum in that game, instead accepting my losses and moving on - but I still could if I wanted to.

But these events only seem this way to you because you were unprepared or don't know how to deal with them. It is just like any other strategy game where you can lose because of inexperience.

The game is really catching. The only problem I can see in long term is that combining the mechanics of roguelikes (many replays) with procedural text you'll eventually become used to every possible event. Roguelikes at least has random dungeons different every game. Despite the randomness the surprise that comes for new situations fades away.

Yes, the text events are not extremely varied, some different equipment can add unique "blue" choice but they are quite limited in number.

There's a mod around that adds some new ones to the game, if you are interested.

Sure, with the text choices, you might know the exact 3 possible outcomes. But, except for the choices that always work, (usually leaving the event, or selecting blue text), you don't know WHICH outcome will occur. Not knowing which planet they will appear at is significant, too. The non-text bits, like space battles, are randomly placed and can play out differently based on the circumstances. The big picture has tons of replay, even if the text choices do not.

I would say the space map is the "random dungeon". It has random placement of stars, ships, events, shops, etc etc. It's not like you can write down a flight plan to bypass all the hard fights and land on the easy quests.

I guess I should say it's definitely fun for me every time I play. I know that's what you're after, enjoying it more. I think of the things I mentioned and that's where my replay value comes from.

Yeah they do get boring after a while, time for some sort of expansion maybe. But its not all the gameplay, equipping your ship and fighting is still undetermined.

My only grievance with the game is the final sector. It just doesn't feel fair; namely, because the Rebel Flagship throws the game's rules out of the window. The sector itself is frustrating enough; repair stations can be almost impossible to get to reliably, there's rarely a chance to restock or move uninhibited, but the Flagship is the kicker. First I find out it moves when you first critically damage it, and of course I get destroyed when I follow it.

So I try disabling the cockpit and engines first, but it can still engage FTL. Then I try and capture it, and when I finally, after a great many attempts, get a crew capable of wiping out the Flagship's crew and successfully manage it, it decides it's not having that either. I still get hammered at the second stage despite fully upgraded shields and engines for one reason or the other.

I get that the final boss has to be tough, guess I'm just a bit annoyed that I went to so much effort for it to be casually rendered useless, but I'll get there eventually.

I didn't like the way the rules changed in that sector, and also didn't think it was explained very well. That said, you adapt. Without giving strategy tips, when you do finally figure out how to beat the final boss, he becomes cake every time. In fact, once you've played the game for awhile, he's the easy part of the later sectors.

If you want strategy tips, I could break it down, he's pretty easy if you know what to prioritize, but I do not want to interfere if you wish the satisfaction of figuring him out for yourself.