Subset Games Forum

I started playing FTL yesterday, and have played it... far too much... in the last two days. I've noticed a consistent trend in all of my playthroughs, and I'm wondering if this is a known thing.

I've steadily seen that stores have an overwhelming tendency to stock the opposite of what my ship needs. For example, if I start with the Kestral or Federation cruiser, the stores will almost exclusively stock drones, and finding a weapon is an absolute nightmare. However, if I use the Engi Torus, I find that stores almost exclusively stock weapons, and finding drone schematics is nearly impossible.

This seems too consistent to be random. It's hurting my enjoyment of the game a lot. Has anyone else noticed a pattern like this?

Sorry if this has been brought up before, but apparently the words "store" and "random" are too common to be used in the forum search.

Hi lonesoldier, and welcome.

I know the feeling of playing this game 'far too much', having pretty much played it for two straight weeks after purchase. The stores don't sell the opposite of what your ship needs, but rather FTL is a very unpredictable game and one where making do with what you find is much more important than trying to find exactly what you want. Some items are also very rare, so hinging your succes at being able to buy something later is very risky. I guess if you're dissapointed at not being able to put exactly the kind of ship together that you want, you should know that no ship build is ever safe or unbeatable and that by design FTL doesn't have a perfect weapon or super system or anything that would ever guarantee victory. Some items are better than others but nothing is useless.

One reason that FTL stays interesting is that it doesn't have a perfect build/strategy. It isn't nearly as luck based as some would have you belive, and as your own knowledge of the game's nuances increases, your enjoyment should increase as well. The Did you know? thread is full of good tips.

Stores will randomly sell a combination of weapons, systems, crew and augments. They allways offer repairs and sell basic supplies. They are utterly random. The enemies you face are utterly random as well, but i have often cringed at just how many enemies have Mini Beams when i'm flying the Stealth B or Zoltan B... it's unbelivable. It's just FTL. Once i was offered a chance to buy an 'unknown' weapon from a smuggler for 65 scrap. I was in the Bulwark and i jumped at the chance to buy any non missile weapon. What did i get? Only the freaking Pegasus Missile. It's just FTL.

Both the forum and sub-forum searches are... shall we say limited? In fact retarded is probably a better description because if what you're interested in is actually well covered, you are guaranteed not to be able to search it.

Hi there, thanks for the welcome!

I understand the roguelike aspects and the importance of making do with what you have, but I really feel like there is a pervasive pattern with the store giving drones when your ship is designed for weapons, and weapons when it's designed for drones. Last playthrough I made it to the last sector, stopping at 2-3 stores in each sector, and only found weapons in 3 stores total, and never a single missile weapon to take advantage of the over 80 missiles I'd stocked up. That's just a single example however, I'll try to count what I get from the stores in my next playthrough.

I'm getting a hang of the game, I know proper playing strategies can dramatically increase your odds and I'm starting to get things down; there's just this one thing that feels like it was coded it, but maybe it's terrible coincidence.

thelonesoldier wrote:Last playthrough I made it to the last sector, stopping at 2-3 stores in each sector, and only found weapons in 3 stores total, and never a single missile weapon to take advantage of the over 80 missiles I'd stocked up.

That actually happens quite often. The stacking up of supplies you dont need. Occasionally there are events that allow you to trade them in for other supplies or scrap.

thelonesoldier wrote:...there's just this one thing that feels like it was coded it, but maybe it's terrible coincidence.

Well the devs confirmed that they didn't use the scaling technique to match the enemies to players power levels. They said they dislike the practise. The enemies get tougher with each sector though but the game never considers the players strenthgs or weakneses. System levels and weapons are allways completely random. I belive enemy crew skills are random as well, though i can't confirm this.

I don't think anything is coded to flat out kill the player or ruin the game, but bad luck can happen. I have on two occasions made it to the end only to have no means of defeating the enemy. Once i ran out of missiles and the other time i just didn't have strong enough weapons.

My experience is that it is totally random; some runs the stores have nothing you want, some runs you get everything you could possibly want. Of course, it always seems when you are really struggling and desperate for that defence drone/teleporter/laser weapon that you can never find a store with them..

thelonesoldier wrote:I really feel like there is a pervasive pattern with the store giving drones when your ship is designed for weapons, and weapons when it's designed for drones.

Humans are very good at noticing bad luck, and very bad at acknowledging good luck. Item availability in stores is purely random.

I dislike the notion of a ship being "designed for weapons" or "designed for drones"

With that logic the fed cruiser would be designed for using the artillery beam, the rock cruiser would be designed to use missiles, the slug cruiser would be designed to kill crew and the stealth cruiser designed to use cloak/beams.
To be successful at this game, you need to be a tinker.

You can plan nothing in this game. Not the weapons you get, not the crew you get, not the augments you get.
You can barely plan to visit a shop or buying system like drone control.
So get in the mindset of making do with what you get. You probably won't be happy with the game otherwise.


Ps: Any ship can benefit from a drone control, any ship can board and most of all, every ship needs decent weapons, even the Torus.

To be fair, the Rock crusier leans heavily towards missile use and the Mantis towards boarding. The Fed pretty much demands that you rely heavily on the arty beam. Other ships don't lean heavily one way or the other, except the Torus during the early stage of the game.

It's not neccesary to fully go in that direction but it does make sense to play to a ship's strengths.