Last April 3 (4 here), the expansion for 2012's multi-awarded space rogue-like FTL: Faster Than Light dropped for the PC and iPad (iPad 2 and above) and started wrecking lives anew through time dilation (surprise, it's 2AM already!) and general ragequit-inducing RNG fickleness. Called FTL: Advanced Edition (FTL: AE), the expansion features a ton of new content including:
- a new race in addition to the original seven and their ships
- new ship layouts
- new ship weapons, systems and sub-systems, and augmentations
- new environmental dangers - going to rebel-controlled systems is now more dangerous with the other rebel ships now firing at you
- new scenarios - and you thought space spiders were bad
- a new Hard mode for those who find Normal boring already
FTL is still the same at its core: you're in command of a starship that's running from Rebel forces with intel for the Federation fleet which will turn the war to your favor, jumping star systems to get to the next sector, making decisions that seem small but may mean life or death for a crew member (who knew that survivor was a madman?), and hoping the RNG gods smile upon you (oh look, awesome weapon just drifting in space!).
Some highlights:
- Members of the new race Lanius suck out the air in the room they're in, adding new twists to boarding mechanics.
- Hacking allows the user to disrupt the enemy on a per-system basis at the cost of one drone unit. Imagine hacking the enemy ship's helm, reducing their evasion to zero, then doing an alpha strike to all major ship systems. YES.
- The cloning bay resurrects fallen crew members at the cost of some skill points. Suddenly, space spiders ain't so scary anymore, and boarding raids need more thought, since the cloning bay replaces the med bay.
- Mind control allows for players to temporarily conscript enemy crew to do their bidding.
- Emergency batteries now give you that extra juice when you most need it for some time
I've been playing FTL: AE for a couple of hours now and the new content adds a lot of wrinkles to my usual formulas in vanilla FTL without overturning what made the original great. More than anything, the new content gives you more options in a game laden with it already, creating new game meta based on whatever weapon, crew member or system the RNG gods give you. Do you wait until the weapon gets its full charge or do you shoot now? Do you send your men to glorious battle even if the enemy has a cloning bay? Do you use the usual Mantis-Rockman tandem or do you send a pair of Lanius to wreak havoc on the enemy ship?
The new unlock mechanism reduces the amount of ragequit while hunting for the random events needed to unlock a ship but still retains the effort needed to get them. The new "C" ship layouts also give you more reason to play with all ship variants.
FTL: AE is available for free for those who already own the original game, and is now also available for the iPad (iPad 2 and above only). The iPad version is identical to the PC version, with changes to the UI to make it more touch-friendly. Get it for PC through Steam or their site or in the Apple Store for iOS.