ftl game sourced
FTL: Faster Than Light
A roguelite starship sim where the player allocates reactor power and directs crew through room-level oxygen, fire, breach, and system-damage simulation while fleeing a rebel fleet across eight sectors.
core loop
jump to a beacon -> resolve an event or fight -> allocate reactor power and direct crew under fire -> repair breaches, fires, and systems -> spend scrap on upgrades -> stay ahead of the rebel fleet to the flagship
design notes
FTL models a ship as rooms with oxygen levels, doors, systems, and crew positions; hits create breaches, fires, and system damage that crew must walk to and repair, so a combat is a spatial triage problem as well as a damage race. The reactor's power bars are the central budget shared by shields, engines, weapons, oxygen, and medbay, and the player shifts them during paused combat. Manual reactor power allocation and per-system damage that removes capacity until repaired have no dedicated taxonomy ids (power-grid is the closest fit); both are recorded as new-mechanic proposals.
relations
14 stored edgesCrisis countdown
Each jump advances the rebel fleet across the sector map; overtaken beacons yield hard fights and no reward, forcing a trade between exploration and speed.
Fluid and gas simulation
Each room has an oxygen level that equalizes through open doors, drains through hull breaches and opened airlocks, and is refilled by the oxygen system; crew suffocate in empty rooms.
Permadeath
Losing the ship or all crew ends the run and deletes the save; dead crew members are gone.
Power allocation
Reactor power bars are assigned among shields, engines, weapons, oxygen, medbay, and other systems, usually while paused in combat; each system caps how many bars it accepts, and damage removes usable bars until crew repair it.
Subsystem damage
Hits damage the system in the struck room (shields, weapons, engines, oxygen, piloting), removing its usable power bars until crew repair it, and the player targets enemy rooms to disable specific systems.
Unit commands
The player moves crew between rooms to man stations, repair systems and breaches, fight boarders, and put out fires; crew act on their own only within the room they occupy.
Agent skills
Crew gain skill in piloting, engines, shields, weapons, repair, and combat through use, improving station bonuses.
Fire spread
Hits and events start fires that spread between rooms, damage systems and crew, and burn oxygen; crew extinguish them or the player vents the room.
Fog of war
Beacon contents are unknown until visited unless revealed by upgrades such as long-range scanners.
Personality traits
Eight species have fixed traits such as faster repair, fire immunity, or extra combat damage.
Procedural terrain
Each sector is a generated map of about twenty beacons with stores, hazards, and events.
Statistical combat resolution
Each weapon shot rolls against the target's evasion, shield layers absorb hits, and hits damage the room and the system inside it.
Triggered event chains
Beacon events offer text choices, with extra options unlocked by specific crew, systems, or equipment, and some quests chain across beacons.