FTL: Advanced Edition release date confirmed

Neverhoodian

New member
Apr 2, 2008
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Mark your calendars for April 3rd, FTL fans. The galaxy's about to get whole lot bigger.

http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=688

For those out of the loop, the starship manager/roguelike-like FTL is slated to get a substantial expansion free of charge called FTL: Advanced Edition. The expansion boasts a plethora of content, including a new alien race (complete with a new playable ship), new weapons, new drones, a new "C" variant for preexisting player ships, new subsystems, more quests and random events, new music and the inclusion of a "Hard" mode for masochists who feel the standard game's blisteringly hard "Normal" difficulty just wasn't painful enough.


I'm excited. I purchased the game practically on a whim during a Steam sale for only three bucks, and I got far more than my money's worth of entertainment from the bargain. I almost feel guilty having spent so little on the game, especially with such a massive free update inbound. In this day and age of nickel and diming players to death with various paid DLC and microtransactions, I feel like I need to reward devs like this that are more consumer-friendly. Perhaps it's high time I bought a t-shirt from their shop...

But I digress. Who else is looking forward to this?
 

Tanis

The Last Albino
Aug 30, 2010
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I sort of am, then I remember how a few of the unlockables are pretty much a 'well, if you get lucky'...
And I kind of hate they style.

It's one thing to suck at something (Hello, Contra).
It's one thing to have the game suck at some mechanic (STILL haven't gotten under 0.00 in the shitty Chocobo Racing for FF10).

It's another to have things like ship hulls unlock because the Nth random map you are in, FINALLY, had enough of something to complete.
 

Lokis Maliki

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Nov 19, 2013
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awesome. i have sunk over 50 hours into FTL. looks like at least another 50 hours is inbound. i am that masochist. with the right build, normal was over a 50% win rate.

it is pretty easy to unlock the hulls. you can look up what conditions unlock what and then hit only those quadrants. one of the few i didn't get was the "crystal?" ship... the one where you had to get the sleeper pod and then do something weird.
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

(Insert witty quote here)
Sep 10, 2008
3,782
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I hope the new music are released to those that already own the soundtrack. I would buy it anyway but it would be nice.

My entire family (including my casual mother) is going to love this.
 

Sonicron

Do the buttwalk!
Mar 11, 2009
5,133
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Well, I don't much care for games that keep kicking my arse up and down the garden path and consequently have no love for roguelikes.
And I absolutely love FTL. By far one of the best examples of solid entertainment value, derived from solid aesthetics and pure gameplay.
To hear that it's getting a sizeable expansion makes me a happy camper indeed. Been a while since my last playthrough, but I guess it's time to warm up the drives again. Can't wait to dominate pirate vessels with boarding drones once more. :D
 

endtherapture

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Nov 14, 2011
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I liked FTL but it was frustrating so I stopped playing it. I realised I was only playing so I could unlock new stuff, and I literally played for 10 hours without even unlocking anything new - so I was like "Why am I playing?".

Having new races is cool but the amount of chance and coincidence you needed to even unlock the crystal ship (getting a crystal crewmember I think) was not worth it.
 
Sep 14, 2009
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Tanis said:
I sort of am, then I remember how a few of the unlockables are pretty much a 'well, if you get lucky'...
And I kind of hate they style.

It's one thing to suck at something (Hello, Contra).
It's one thing to have the game suck at some mechanic (STILL haven't gotten under 0.00 in the shitty Chocobo Racing for FF10).

It's another to have things like ship hulls unlock because the Nth random map you are in, FINALLY, had enough of something to complete.
don't know if you know or not, but there are mods/edits where you can unlock the ships and stuff without having to depend on the random map generator and to have the stars align perfectly with a nice ship to get it done.

OT: Will definitely hop back into the game after the update comes out, it's kinda hit the wayside with so many games in my backlog, but I did enjoy the shit out of it in the time I put into it.
 

Darkong

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Nov 6, 2007
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Speaking as someone who has sunk more than 200 hours into FTL all I can say is

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
 

Eve Charm

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Aug 10, 2011
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Tanis said:
I sort of am, then I remember how a few of the unlockables are pretty much a 'well, if you get lucky'...
And I kind of hate they style.

It's another to have things like ship hulls unlock because the Nth random map you are in, FINALLY, had enough of something to complete.
This is why you wait for the first person that posts the "every ship unlocked" save edit and play around with the new ships.
 

Liquidprid3

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Jan 24, 2014
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I played for about 8 or so hours, but never beat it. Only tried the first two starting ships, I got some achievements, but never unlocked any new chips. I'll definitely play it some more with this update, looking forward to it.
 

Neverhoodian

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Apr 2, 2008
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endtherapture said:
I liked FTL but it was frustrating so I stopped playing it. I realised I was only playing so I could unlock new stuff, and I literally played for 10 hours without even unlocking anything new - so I was like "Why am I playing?".

Having new races is cool but the amount of chance and coincidence you needed to even unlock the crystal ship (getting a crystal crewmember I think) was not worth it.
As much as I like the game, I'll be the first to admit that it's definitely an instance of "your mileage may vary." As for unlocking ships, the devs have toyed around with an alternate system that's based on beating the game at any difficulty rather than chance (though you can still unlock ships via the old method):

http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20034
 

endtherapture

New member
Nov 14, 2011
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Eve Charm said:
Tanis said:
I sort of am, then I remember how a few of the unlockables are pretty much a 'well, if you get lucky'...
And I kind of hate they style.

It's another to have things like ship hulls unlock because the Nth random map you are in, FINALLY, had enough of something to complete.
This is why you wait for the first person that posts the "every ship unlocked" save edit and play around with the new ships.
I did that and it killed the fun though. I was playing it for the unlocks basically, but when you just can get the unlocks it's not fun anymore.

If there was a way to unlock the ships easily that wasn't just cheating or relying on chance (ie. accumulating points and buying ships, like getting to the boss is 1000 points, sector 5 is 500 points etc.) then that would be fun.
 

rodneyy

humm odd
Sep 10, 2008
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nice i knew there was an update due at some point but i thought it was more a summer time thing.
lost track of how long i've played but been great fun. some new styles of play to mess around with will be nice.

most of the ships werent too bad to unlock. especially if you go onto the wiki and find out what you need to do. but the crystal ship was a real pain. that is one to feel no shame in cheating to get. took me ages to do legit and looking back would have been easier to just get the save file. its a pity as its a great ship to play around with some nice different weapons.
 

Battenberg

Browncoat
Aug 16, 2012
550
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Sweeeeeet. Now I just need to get my laptop to run again. This game is ridiculously good, I'm still amazed that this update/expansion is free, especially considering the original game was something like a quarter of the price of a AAA release and far more engaging and replayable than of those bigger titles.
 

Idlemessiah

Zombie Steve Irwin
Feb 22, 2009
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I am very excited about this. Particularly the new soundtrack. The FTL OST is not just one of my favorite videogame soundtracks but ranks very highly in my wider music collection.
 

flying_whimsy

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Dec 2, 2009
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Oh man, what a relief to finally have a date. I've been waiting ages for this and "first quarter 2014" is pretty much over; they only missed it by a few days.

I tend to agree with the other folks about the luck needed to unlock things (which they are fixing with the new edition, by the way: they'll unlock in sequential order and/or through random encounters), and while I got lucky enough to get the crystal ship on my first attempt to get it, I'm still missing the mantis and slug ships after 100+ hours. Oh god, I had to check how many hours I put into the game and I had no idea it was more than fifty, let alone a hundred.

I'm really psyched to play the new species, too; can't wait to suffocate all of my enemies. I hope there are lots of new encounters and decisions to be made. Woo.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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Aug 30, 2011
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An update this massive being free is just amazing. And the game was already great. Looking forward to cloning bay, maybe finally invading AI ships will be worthwhile.
 

DeimosMasque

I'm just a Smeg Head
Jun 30, 2010
585
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Wait this is a thing!? This is happening? I didn't even know this was going to happen! I am now very very excited! I might have to play the next couple days to get back in the swing of it.