History VideoGame / FTLFasterThanLight

* HonorBeforeReason: If you make a deal to spare somebody, you take only their bribe and leave them alone, even if they blow up after the fact, which would allow you to scavenge the ship otherwise. [[GoogBadBugs This can be circumvented]] by saving the game and taking a trip to the menu after the ship explodes: upon reloading the game, you ''do'' scavenge the ship.

* HonorBeforeReason: If you make a deal to spare somebody, you take only their bribe and leave them alone, even if they blow up after the fact, which would allow you to scavenge the ship otherwise.
* HopelessBossFight: Supposedly. In the early Alpha builds, there was a NighInvulnerable pirate ship that stopped players from advancing past Sector 2. [[LordBritishPostulate Not that this stopped player Ohmwrecker from defeating it and getting his name in the random crew names]].
* HordeOfAlienLocusts:
** The Mantis, giant alien... well, mantises that are stated to be the most aggressive and antagonistic race in the game. However, they aren't [[HiveMind hive-minded]], nor are they concerned with consuming everything, and [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch have plenty of reasonable members you can recruit]].

** The Lanius, debuting in the ''Advanced Edition'', fit this mold better than the actual space bugs. They regularly enter periods of hibernation and reawaken when large metal deposits make themselves available (such as a galactic war providing lots of tasty debris) then set about consuming it all. Apparently, they do have rules that forbid attacking the ships of living sapients. However, this is not the most popular policy, and a lot of Lanius you encounter disregard this. Tellingly, Mantis zones are labeled as such; it's their home territory. Lanius territory, though, is listed as ''abandoned''.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: The Rebels are the bad guys. At the beginning of the game, they've already defeated TheFederation. Now you're on a run through alien-controlled space to reach and regroup with whatever little Federation-loyal forces remain.

* PlanetOfHats: The Mantis are a ProudWarriorRace of SpacePirates, the Rockmen are [[ChurchMilitant religious]] and territorial, the Zoltan are peaceful but [[ObstructiveBureaucrat bureaucratic]], the Engi are [[AmbiguousRobots possibly robotic]] and [[TheStoic stoic]], and the Slugs are [[ManipulativeBastard backstabbing]], [[TheHedonist hedonistic]], [[OnlyInItForTheMoney capitalistic]] [[{{Jerkass}} assholes]]. [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch Among your crew, however]], all races are helpful and can be made to be different from the rest, i.e. your Slug crew sees into adjacent rooms when your sensors are down (or nonexistent), you have a boarding party of Engi, and so on.

* HopelessBossFight: Supposedly. In the early Alpha builds, there was a NighInvulnerable pirate ship that stopped players from advancing past Sector 2. Not that this stopped player Ohmwrecker from defeating it and getting his name in the random crew names.

* HoldTheLine: To unlock the Rock ship, you have to meet the ship at a node with a nearby sun, then wait for it to jump away and follow it to its base. Destroying it or killing the crew nets you [[strike:nothing]] standard rewards [[WhatTheHellPlayer and a guilt trip]], and it will shoot at you while its jump drive charges. You ''can'' shoot it to disable its weapons, so long as the ship survives.

** There's a reason the Crystal Cruiser is considered a GameBreaker. Its weapons ignore one level of shields and don't use ammo, making it trivially easy to beat the early sectors. This is mitigated slightly by being the only non-missile weapon which can be intercepted by a Mk. I Defense Drone, but most enemy layouts will not have such a drone in the early sectors. [[note]]The Rock Cruiser B, the Shivan, has a unique Heavy Pierce laser that also bypasses one level of shields and cannot be intercepted by Mark I Defense Drones, but that ship has [[CripplingOverspecialization several... difficulties]] (including a lack of airlocks, which cannot be addressed no matter how the ship is upgraded) that keep it out of GameBreaker territory (though it still qualifies as a DiskOneNuke, as seen in the next bullet point).[[/note]] Crystal crew members also make for a powerful boarding crew should you choose to go down that path, so much so that the B layout of their ship is based around that strategy. That said, the process for unlocking this craft is so convoluted and improbable that you might as well have won a minor lottery if you get it.

* SuspendSave: You can save and come back later, but this only lets you resume your progress once.

Not to be confused with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTL_Games the developer]], which was best known for its own Roguelike, ''VideoGame/DungeonMaster'', and its sequels. Also not to be confused with the trope FasterThanLightTravel, even though this game [[{{CaptainObvious}} obviously]] uses it for getting around.

* AlmostOutOfOxygen: It could happen to you, or to the enemies, if someone's oxygen generator gets busted. Short of sending Lanius crewmen through a teleporter, oxygen starvation is typically too slow-acting to take a ship's crew down[[note]]with the notable exception of a certain class of Slug ship, which lacks a door to the Oxygen system and therefore can't repair it ''at all''[[/note]]. Enemies will tend to flee rooms that have no oxygen (since they take constant damage), even if this means allowing your crew to destroy their systems.

* LanguageBarrier: Between the Lanius and pretty much everyone else. This causes problems, especially considering the Lanius' first instinct is to eat the ships of everyone they meet.

* AlienInvasion: Inverted. The antagonistic, [[FantasticRacism human-supremacist]] Rebels are trying to destroy TheFederation, which comprises many different alien races alongside humans.

** Yahtzee of ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' eloquently summed up the experience, "You could spend all your scrap on fuel and keeping your various bits together, until you're five sectors in facing [[DemonicSpiders triple-shielded dreadnoughts]] with nothing more than [[CherryTapping a bag of dried chickpeas]] and a dustbin lid."

* VisualInnuendo: The Federation Cruiser (Osprey/Nisos) is an extremely [[PhallicWeapon phallic ship]] ([[http://ftlwiki.com/images/thumb/1/1a/Cruiser_Hull_Federation_A_The_Osprey.png/280px-Cruiser_Hull_Federation_A_The_Osprey.png take a look at it]]). Just to make things less subtle, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything it has a one-of-kind laser which it can shoot from its tip and penetrates all shields. However, it must wait a long time between each discharge]].

** One of the sidequests has you escorting the RunawayFiance of an ArrangedMarriage. If you choose to complete the arrangements when you arrive at the quest destination, you'll get a weapon as a reward, but not without said fiance screaming "May your children erode to dust!"[[note]]The alternative is to [[ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules refuse to hand her over, foregoing the weapon]] and starting a fight, but the bride joins your crew as gratitude for helping her flee her forced marriage.[[/note]]

** One of the sidequests has you escorting the RunawayFiance of an ArrangedMarriage. If you choose to complete the arrangements when you arrive at the quest destination, you'll get a weapon as a reward, but not without said fiance screaming "May your children erode to dust!"[[note]]The alternative is to refuse to hand her over, foregoing the weapon and starting a fight, but the bride joins your crew as gratitude for helping her flee her forced marriage.[[/note]]

** One of the sidequests has you escorting the RunawayFiance of an ArrangedMarriage. If you choose to complete the arrangements when you arrive at the quest destination, you'll get a weapon as a reward, but not without said fiance screaming "May your children erode to dust!"

* AttackDrone: Can be used once you have the Drone Control ship system. Comes in either laser or beam varieties, the former being useful for suppressing shields or doing heavy but random damage to unshielded enemies, and the latter being useful for doing even heavier damage to unshielded targets at the cost of being completely ineffectual against shields. Other drones can defend against incoming fire (especially missiles), repair damaged systems, repair your ship's hull, repel boarders, or be sent over to board the enemy. Advanced Edition adds more drones, including ones that board the enemy and release ion bursts to knock out systems and crew, steadily regenerate a Zoltan Shield around your ship, attack enemy combat drones, etc.

* AutoDoc: The Med Bay explicitly works by automatically pumping the patient full of healing nanomachines, no human (or alien) operator required. The Engi ship comes with an augment that allows these nanomachines to be pumped into the ship's life support system and offer (somewhat slower) healing throughout the ship, and [[HealingShiv a weapon system]] can be found that packs the nanomachines into a ''bomb'' that can be teleported onto an enemy ship to heal boarding parties mid-operation.

** We don't get to the actual piece itself, but the Anti-Ship Batteries are these. They fire one single, powerful shot that pierces all shields, deals 3 damage[[note]]for reference, the weapon with the greatest damage-per-hit, the Breach Missile, deals 4 damage (though it's not the weapon with the greatest DPS — that honor goes to the Chain Vulcan, with the runners-up being the Glaive Beam, Halberd Beam, Burst Laser II, Burst Laser III, Charge Laser, and Hermes)[[/note]], and is guaranteed to breach your hull if it hits.

** ''Advanced Edition'' adds the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Lanius]], a race of metal creatures that suck oxygen out of rooms (but are ''not'' vulnerable to asphyxiation) and absorb metal into their bodies.

** An upgraded teleporter system has very little practical use, since the majority of the time your crew will fight long enough for it to recharge. It does have one very important use, though; at level 2, the teleporter recharges fast enough to beam your crew into and back out of a completely depressurized room without killing them (they have to have 100 health, and will just barely survive with ~10 health if not otherwise damaged), making teleportation a viable strategy against drone ships (as long as you don't accidentally send in a [[SquishyWizard Zoltan]]).
** An upgraded medbay allows for many "blue-choices" to appear during numerous random events, enabling the player to obtain better outcomes regardless of whether the medbay is powered or not. Upgrading the medbay also allows the healing to outpace the health drain caused by oxygen deprivation.

** The Drone Recovery Arm augmentation which recovers unused drones after a battle or upon jumping out of a sector can combine with the Hull Repair Drone as well. As the Hull Repair drone repairs between 3-5 hull pieces before being expended, if you warp out of a sector before it has vanished, you will get that drone part back automatically, repairing your ship without any expenditure of resources.

* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: The default Kestrel was decommissioned already prior to the game start and had to be pulled out of mothballs.

** Chain weapons fire faster or hit harder the more often they're fired. The Chain Vulcan, the ultimate iteriation of the series, can rip the shields off of anything, up to and including the final boss.

* ClippedWingAngel: [[spoiler:The third form of the Rebel Flagship; while it [[DamageSpongeBoss can take a lot of punishment]], it's a far cry from the murderous second form. With good evasion and a well-aimed shot at the missile launcher, it will be practically incapable of hurting you. Its wings are even ''literally'' clipped, since the wing-like nacelles on either side blew up in the last two rounds. The ''Advanced Edition'' of the ship could [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zag]] the trope, however, since the Flagship now has Mind Control, which can be extremely hard to counter if you don't have one of your own, and will take you a while to break through the ship's Zoltan shield before you can disable it. If the Flagship still has a large crew contingent left, the enemy boarding team and mind control together has a very good chance of wrecking you.]]

* CoitusUninterruptus: Your two other options in the above event: either leaving or getting TheTalk from an Engi crewman. Choosing the latter causes you to salvage the debris floating around; although you feel icky for doing so.

*** Rebel manned ships are bright orange, with light blue stripes. Interestingly, the Kestrel's Type B counterpart, the Red-Tail, has Rebel colors, suggesting that you stole it from them along with the intel about the flagship. Rebel automated ships, on the other hand, are dark matte grey.

* CowardlyBoss: {{Justified|Trope}}. The Rebel Flagship is attempting to complete a mission that doesn't involve the player's destruction, though it won't jump away once its drive is charged like in certain enemy encounters.

** The Type B Stealth Ship can OneHitKill most enemies in the early sectors thanks to its Glaive Beam. That is, if you can keep the beam online for its 22.5-second charge time, enough time for many other weapons to fire at least twice, with low-level engines and no shields, with only a 10-second cloak offering any real protection.

** The Rock Cruiser Type A has two missile weapons only. They are powerful and can take out a lot of ships in only 2 or 3 hits, but if you run out of missiles, you can't hurt the enemy at all. An enemy with a Zoltan Shield or Defence Drones will often cost as much cash in new missiles to blow up as you get in scrap for killing it. The Slug Cruiser Type B has this problem even worse; not only does it only have missile-based weaponry, but it also lacks a medbay at the start, so healing your crew after a boarding operation requires the use of ammo-consuming Healing Bursts.
** The Engi Cruiser Type A starts with an Ion Blast II and a Combat Drone. If you can't keep the enemy shields permanently stunned with the Ion, the Combat Drone, your only source of damage, will uselessly shoot at the enemy shields, since it can shoot only one one-damage laser at a time and shields recharge faster than it can fire. [[note]]The Ion Blast II does fire faster than ion damage wears off, so it can eventually shut off any number of shields... but it will take a ''long'' time to get through 3 or 4 layers, and if any shots miss, it will provide a window for some ion damage to wear off, and it will take even ''longer'' to replace the lost momentum.[[/note]] Anti-Drones will also take out your combat drone, leaving you with just an Ion Blast II that can't do hull damage and can only occasionally disable the anti-drone. Because of this, it's imperative that you find a missile weapon or other support weapon or drone as soon as possible.
** The Crystal B begins with only a 4 man teleport and 3 Crystal crewmen.

* CruelMercy: When you damage an enemy's hull enough, they'll usually offer to give you some scrap and other resources, as long as you stop shooting at them. In most cases, they'll survive, but if you've damaged their oxygen, they'll die if they can't repair it, meaning you've basically doomed them anyway. A similar thing can happen if you've destroyed their doors system and set a large amount of their ship on fire, usually resulting in them burning to death slowly but surely, or their ship spontaneously exploding after you've accepted their surrender. Of course, these things can happen to you just as easily.

* DarkReprise: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tAShpPu6K0 Last Stand]], the Sector 8 theme, to the CutSong [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glAEauHXu0s Federation]].

* DesperationAttack: The final boss has an ability called Power Surge which it uses during the second and third phases of the battle. [[spoiler:During the second phase, Power Surge will launch a massive group of attack drones, though they'll go away after the surge wears off. In the third phase, it will fire a barrage of eight lasers that can overcome even a full set of shields if they all connect.]]
* DestructibleProjectiles: Projectiles can occasionally collide with one another in midair, destroying both. And the Defense Drone II can shoot down incoming fire, including ''plasma beams''.

** If you have a Zoltan Shield, which among other things prevent teleporters from working, and encounter a random event where some boarders are teleported to your ship, the event will play normally but the game will point out that it is a mystery how they managed to bypass the super-shield. With the addition of a purchasable Zoltan Shield bypass augment in ''Advanced Edition'', the message instead says that the boarders must possess that augment.

* DifficultButAwesome: Stealth Cruiser Type-B is normally [[CripplingOverspecialization extremely specialized]] and difficult to use in the early game — that is, until you upgrade your stealth matrix to level 3, which gives you 15 seconds of invisibility. Since almost every enemy weapon takes longer than 7.5 seconds to charge and can't lock onto you[[note]]meaning that they stop charging[[/note]] during the 15 seconds you're stealthed, the combined 22.5 seconds of safety is plenty of time to charge your [[InfinityPlusOneSword Glaive Beam]] and OneHitKill most ships through the first couple of sectors, before they can even fire their weapons.

** The Zoltan Cruiser Type B, "Noether", starts with two Ion Blasts and a Pike Beam, which, given an experienced weapons officer[[note]]which you can easily have by sector 3 or 4, given how fast the Ion Blasts can fire[[/note]], is actually ''enough firepower to bring down the boss''. The two ion weapons can quickly and efficiently disable enemy shields and keep them down, and you can even divert one to disabling enemy weapons once that's done. And once the shields are out of the way, the Pike Beam can do widespread and severe damage to the now-defenseless enemy, as it cannot be dodged and is the longest and most energy-efficient beam weapon in the game. More heavily shielded enemies take longer, but can eventually still be rendered defenseless and cut down. Throw in a laser, an extra ion weapon, and/or an attack drone, and you're pretty much set. The downside to the initial firepower, of course, is that your normal shields need to be upgraded before they can properly function, and you depend entirely on your Zoltan shield and evasion at the start, which can lead to hairy situations in fights against drone-heavy enemies or in asteroid fields, or, if you're ''really'' unlucky, [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs fighting drone-heavy enemies]] ''[[BreadEggsBreadedEggs in]]'' [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs an asteroid field]].

* DroneDeployer: While all ships have the ability to send out drones, Engi ships are particularly focused on drone-combat. Engi Cruiser Type B starts with ''three'' onboard drones and only one lonely crew member.

* DummiedOut: By looking through the Data.dat XML files, you can see data for sectors not included in the main game, such as abandoned sectors and quarantine sectors which would reduce fleet pursuit speed like in nebula sectors, and even data left behind to show that each sector was supposed to have a unique name. There's also an additional "Ghost" race, which has 50% less health but can survive without oxygen[[note]]The abandoned sectors and the "Ghost" race were retooled and added to the Advanced Edition, with the race becoming the Lanius, who not only don't need oxygen, but actually suck it out of the room they're in; furthermore, instead of having even less health than Zoltans, they have identical slightly-reduced speed as Crystals[[/note]].

* EliteMook: Some of the heavier enemies you come across; Zoltan Energy Bombers, Mantis Bombers, Slug Assaults, and the rarely-seen Rock Assaults all qualify. And the Rebels have of course have a massive fleet of Elite Fighters chasing you the whole time.

** You, the player, require a pilot at the helm to FTL jump, and so do most enemy ships but this doesn't apply to automated ships or the [[spoiler:Federation cruiser]] you can send back home (and then it does apply to that Federation Cruiser when you actually play as it). This is taken to a ridiculous extreme by [[spoiler:the Rebel Flagship]], which is not only able to jump without anyone in the pilot seat[[spoiler:, even if it still has crew members alive and the A.I. hasn't taken over]], but can even jump if both the piloting and engine systems are thoroughly demolished and in no state to be repaired — it doesn't matter if the piloting and engine rooms have every tile on fire and containing a hull breach, with the crew all the way on the other end of the ship, [[spoiler:the Rebel Flagship is still going to jump away the first two times its hull points are reduced to zero]].

* GracefulLoser: Many of the enemy ships you encounter will surrender to you when low on health, offering scrap, missiles, drone parts, and/or fuel (and possibly even weapons, drone schematics, and/or augments) in exchange for letting them live. For some reason, however, they will never demand your surrender, so if your ship is losing a fight, you will have to jump away or die fighting.

* HealingShiv: There's a bomb that heals your crew, and another bomb that completely repairs a system (the latter was added in Advanced Edition).

* HeroicSacrifice: Before [[ExpansionPack Advanced Edition]], if the rebel flagship and your ship were destroyed at the same time, you would still get a GameOver even though you won the war. This was changed in the Advanced Edition; you now get the win if you destroy the flagship, even if your ship is destroyed as well (see AntiFrustrationFeatures above).

** The Lanius, debuting in the ''Advanced Edition'', fit this mold better than the actual space bugs. They regularly enter periods of hibernation and reawaken when large metal deposits make themselves available, like a galactic war providing lots of tasty debris, then set about consuming it all. Apparently, they do have rules that forbid attacking the ships of living sapients. However, this is not the most popular policy, and a lot of Lanius you encounter disregard this. Tellingly, Mantis zones are labeled as such; it's their home territory. Lanius territory, though, is listed as ''abandoned''.

* KeystoneArmy: Destroying the Flagship of the Rebels cripples the fleet trying to destroy the last Federation base, winning the game. Justified because the Rebel army's morale is [[DespairEventHorizon obliterated]] by the destruction of the Flagship (the game explitly states that the Flagship's destruction throws the Rebel Fleet into chaos).

* LastStand: [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Sector 8]], whereupon you and the Federation [[spoiler:face down the massively advanced Rebel Flagship]]. It's even ''called'' "The Last Stand" in-game.

** In ''Advanced Edition'', nodes completely under Rebel control will be within range of their anti-ship batteries. At these nodes, you'll be periodically attacked by a projectile that, if it hits, tears through your hull, bypassing your shield, doing 3 damage[[note]]for reference, this damage-per-hit is only matched or surpassed by a select few weapons (including the Glaive Beam, Hermes, and Breach Missile)[[/note]], and leaving a hull breach.
** AE also added the Backup Battery system, which provides extra reactor power (2 or 4, depending on whether it's been upgraded) for 30 seconds.
* LimitedLoadout: Depending on ship type, you can have only three or four weapons and two or three drones, and each set can only use a maximum of eight reactor points.

* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: Oh, you've just jumped across half the universe, surviving by the skin of your teeth to bring us this vital information about the Rebel fleet? Good job. Here's some fuel and some repairs. Now go defeat their Flagship for us. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], as it was mentioned that they used their fleet to fight off and distract the Rebel fleet (the one that's been chasing you all game) while you deal with the Flagship.

** Ion weapons disable systems, but their effects are temporary and deal no actual damage. They can also miss, just like lasers, missiles, and bombs. On the plus side, they generally charge faster than most weapons, with one ion weapon, the Ion Blast II, having the fastest charge time of any weapon short of a fully-warmed-up Chain Vulcan (specifically four seconds).

* OrangeAndBlueMorality: The Engi tend to value knowledge and technology over their individual members. There is at least one random event where the Engi would actually prefer you save their drone schematics rather than their lives. They will still thank you, however, if and when you do save their lives, and will often reward you with scrap and technology. They may also join your crew.
* OverratedAndUnderleveled: The famous Mantis pirate, [=KazaaakplethKilik=], shivers your timbers at the mere mention of his name. With the right preparation, you are able to [[DefeatMeansFriendship defeat him and have him join your crew]]. He starts with no extra skills, just like any other ordinary Mantis to join you. ''Advanced Edition'' remedies this: He now starts with all skills at maximum.

* PaddedSumoGameplay: If you dump all of your scrap into upgrading shields and/or engines but don't acquire or upgrade offenses, and neither you nor your opponents have missiles, both ships will be stuck this way. It is possible to jump away from an unwinnable battle, go through a sector or two to upgrade, and return, though the Rebel fleet will likely continue toward you.

* RandomEvent: You almost get one at ''every'' jump beacon, which can result in everything from combat, to trading options, to situations that present you with an option to intervene or ignore it and keep moving. You can, however, get no activity at all, and [[spoiler:the final boss is not a random event, for obvious reasons]].

* RealTimeWithPause: This is how ship and personnel combat pans out. Use it wisely. The iPad version has an option to automatically pause when you aim, select crew movements or use door controls because of the additional dexterity using the touch screen.

* RockMonster: The Rockmen, whose bodily materials give them 150% health but limit their speed. [[spoiler:Ditto for Crystalmen, who are Rockmen's ancestor.]]

* SalvagePirates: If you run out of fuel and are drifting in space (with or without you distress beacon) there is a chance you 'rescuers' will be more interested in helping themselves to your ship.

** A common encounter in Slug sectors. Many events involve suspiciously generous offers, most of which turn out to be ruses to sabotage your ship. On the other hand, choosing the exact same option in said situation in a different playthrough CAN give different outcomes. For instance, a Slug trader talks to you about special deal for his wares for a while only to be revealed as distracting you from his mates looting your ship. The next time you meet him, choosing to talk to him instead have him appreciate your trust in him and give you some extra bonus. So the only way to know whether it's really a SchmuckBait or not is to take it.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Both you and your enemy can do this, though it takes time for the jump drive to charge. It's generally unwise for the player, because retreating doesn't reward scrap, though it is useful for running through Rebel nodes which give almost no reward and are more difficult than normal.[[note]]If the player isn't strong enough to defeat an enemy, they can also jump away, upgrade, and return, though the ever-present fleet will move closer with every jump.[[/note]] The enemy occasionally does it right at the start of the battle, either out of fear or to warn the Rebels, or when they've been damaged enough, but you can stop them by disabling their engines or pilot system or by keeping the piloting crew members busy.

* SnipingTheCockpit: It is possible to kill the crew of enemy ships by firing upon the section they are in, and if all of the crew are killed, win even more scrap, although it is too likely the ship's hull will fall apart before then. With the Anti-Bio Beam, however, you can kill the crew without damaging the hull.

** Engi and Zoltan. Engi do half damage in combat and Zoltan only have 70 health, making both inferior combatants (though with ''Advanced Edition'', Zoltan make good suicide bombs if you have a clone bay). However, Engi repair twice as fast while Zoltan provide one bar of power to whatever room they're in, making both ideal for ship support during a battle.

* TakeAThirdOption: Called a 'blue option' in game, these allow you to use a unique member of the crew, weapons, or ship upgrades to get around random events; for instance, using an advanced medbay to cure an unknown virus, or using an ion gun to disable a defense system gone haywire. While standard options can pose a risk to your ship's hull, crew, or cost scrap, the vast majority of blue options are zero-risk, and might even contain greater rewards!

* TaughtByExperience: Your crewmen become better at the stations they're assigned to, become better at repairing the more they do it, and do more damage by killing enemy crew.

* TotalPartyKill: Damage to your ship's life support and/or door controls, especially when combined with fire, hull breaches, or doors you left open to fight a fire or enemy boards but were locked open by an attack, can easily result in this if not addressed quickly. The same is true for your enemy.

* UnblockableAttack: Bombs are unblockable except by a Zoltan shield, but don't do hull damage. They can also miss, dependent on the target's engine power. The Artillery Beam is even more unblockable — except for the Zoltan shield, it can pass through any defenses and cannot miss.

** Similarly, there is an event where a space station's satellite defense system has a broken AI, and the repair crew ask if you can fix it. If you offer to help and destroy the satellites that were shooting at them, they won't be happy and will give you a small payment.

** Pick up lots of scrap, take a minimum of damage, and have good encounters, and you have good chances to go far. On the other hand, taking lots of damage and being forced by the RandomNumberGod into poor encounters where you can't get much scrap will force you to use that scrap in repairing and hobbling on with poor equipment, which will further lower your chances of survival.

** Many 3-power and 4-power weapons can be hard to add onto a weapons loadout, since they take up a significant fraction of the maximum of 8 power in the weapons system, requiring many weapons upgrades (let alone the cost of purchasing the weapon itself). Thus, if you receive something like a Burst Laser III (4 power, 19 second charge time, only 5 damage) or a Breach Missile (3 power, 21 second charge time, 4 shield-piercing damage), it's often easier to just sell them to a store for a decent chunk of scrap rather than try to fit them into a loadout.

*** [[http://postimg.org/image/xz02abme9/ Here is an example. If anyone leaves the room they are in, they immediately suffocate.]]

* CoitusInterruptus: One RandomEncounter has you encounter a pair of Engi ships smashed together. [[BizarreAlienReproduction As it turns out, this is how Engi breed.]] If you try to help get them unstuck, the larger half of the pairing tries to kick your ass for it. Notably, this is one of the only instances where defeating a ship (either by destruction or crew death) nets ZERO reward, so you're better off not trying...

** The Zoltan Cruiser Type B "Noether" starts with two Ion Blasts and a Pike Beam, which, given an experienced weapons officer[[note]]which you can easily have by sector 3 or 4, given how fast the Ion Blasts can fire[[/note]], is actually ''enough firepower to bring down the boss''. The two ion weapons can quickly and efficiently disable enemy shields and keep them down, and you can even divert one to disabling enemy weapons once that's done. And once the shields are out of the way, the Pike Beam can do widespread and severe damage to the now-defenseless enemy, as it cannot be dodged and is the longest and most energy-efficient beam weapon in the game. More heavily shielded enemies take longer, but can eventually still be rendered defenseless and cut down. Throw in a laser, an extra ion weapon, and/or an attack drone, and you're pretty much set. The downside to the initial firepower, of course, is that your normal shields need to be upgraded before they can properly function, and you depend entirely on your Zoltan shield and evasion at the start, which can lead to hairy situations in fights against drone-heavy enemies or in asteroid fields, or, if you're ''really'' unlucky, [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs fighting drone-heavy enemies]] ''[[BreadEggsBreadedEggs in]]'' [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs an asteroid field]].

** The Mantis, giant alien... well, mantises that are stated to be the most aggressive and antagonistic race in the game. However, they aren't hive-minded, concerned with consuming everything, and [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch have plenty of reasonable members you can recruit]].

** If you're lucky enough to find four Burst Laser Mark II's (and crazy enough to equip them all and upgrade your ship to supply the eight bars of power they'll collectively need), you can launch precisely 1.5 times more dakka than the Rebel Flagship's [[LimitBreak Power Surge]] in a single AlphaStrike. Sadly, you cannot equip four Flak Mark II's to launch 3.5 the Flagship's level of dakka, as you cannot upgrade your weapons system enough.

** By extension of the above, the Type B Stealth Cruiser, [=DA-SR12=], is this. A sleek, shiny vessel, it sacrifices the engine power, the Titanium Systems Casing augmentation, and the weak but efficient combo of a Mini Beam and Dual Lasers used by the Type A for a Glaive Beam and level 2 cloak. The Glaive Beam is rightfully considered to be the game's [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Beam]], as its damage per shot is the greatest in the game; its obscene damage output can often kill pretty much any ship in the first sector (as well as the second and third). However, it takes so outrageously long to charge that they're practically guaranteed to get at least one clear shot off before that happens, even if you time your cloak perfectly. If that shot hits your weapons room (and you likely haven’t if you're saving your scrap to buy a shield system), [[ShootTheShaggyDog your Glaive Beam goes offline and you have to start charging it all over again]]. God help you if the enemy has [[AlwaysAccurateAttack beam weapons]]; if they have [[BeamSpam beam]] ''[[FrickinLaserBeams drones]]'', YouAreAlreadyDead. Put together, this basically makes the first sector a LuckBasedMission until you can find some shields.

** The Burst Laser series. A gun that fires 2, 3, or 5 single damage shots may not sound exciting compared to the bigger guns and missiles, but it doesn't need ammo and chews through shields better than anything short of a missile aimed at the shield generator. The Burst II model is especially practical, using the same amount of power as Burst I to fire three lasers instead of two. With 4 Burst Laser II's, you can output MoreDakka than the freaking ''[[FinalBoss Rebel Flagship]]'' '''using its [[LimitBreak Power Surge]]''' (though this veers into AwesomeButImpractical by requiring 8 bars of power and actually finding and equipping 4 Burst Laser Mark II's, leaving no room to use other weapons).

** The Rock Cruiser Type A has two missile weapons only. They are powerful and can take out a lot of ships in only 2 or 3 hits, but if you run out, you can't hurt the enemy at all. An enemy with a Zoltan Shield or Defence Drones will often cost as much cash in new missiles to blow up as you get in scrap for killing it. The Slug Cruiser Type B has this problem even worse; not only does it only have missile-based weaponry, but it also lacks a medbay at the start, so healing your crew after a boarding operation requires the use of ammo-consuming Healing Bursts.

** The "Zoltan Great Eye" event can see your crewman vanished from existence, regardless of your clone bay or DNA bank. There are also a few other events where you cannot clone a crewman (usually due to disease), or they are left behind without being able to clone them (Federation regulations prohibit the cloning of anyone who is currently alive).

** There's a reason the Crystal Cruiser is a considered a GameBreaker. Its weapons ignore one level of shields and don't use ammo, making it trivially easy to beat the early sectors. This is mitigated slightly by being the only non-missile weapon which can be intercepted by a Mk. I Defense Drone, but most enemy layouts will not have such a drone in the early sectors. [[note]]The Rock Cruiser B, the Shivan, has a unique Heavy Pierce laser that also bypasses one level of shields and cannot be intercepted by Mark I Defense Drones, but that ship has [[CripplingOverspecialization several... difficulties (including a lack of airlocks, which cannot be addressed no matter how the ship is upgraded) that keep it out of GameBreaker territory (though it still qualifies as a DiskOneNuke, as seen in the next bullet point).[[/note]] Crystal crew members also make for a powerful boarding crew should you choose to go down that path, so much so that the B layout of their ship is based around that strategy. That said, the process for unlocking this craft is so convoluted and improbable that you might as well have won a minor lottery if you get it.
** The Rock Cruiser Type B "Shivan" starts out with Fire Bombs, a unique Heavy Piercing Laser and a strong Rock crew. The Heavy Pierce is incredibly effective early on, charging fairly quickly and ignoring one layer of shields, while taking no ammunition and not being vulnerable to Mk I Defense Drones. While it becomes less effective later on, it's strong enough to the point where you can collect the supporting crew and a teleporter to assemble your Rocks into a fire-augmented nigh-unstoppable boarding crew for the late game, or else acquire further weaponry to help combat more heavily defended foes. It does have 2 disadvantages: no airlock and no door control. This means that you can't hurt enemies by opening airlocks, and have no way to contain fires or extinguish them unless you divert crews from their position to stop them. Door control can be purchased at a store for 60 scrap, but there is no way to solve the lack of airlocks; the closest things to a "solution" to that problem are creating a hull breach in an empty, out-of-the-way room or getting a Lanius crew member, and you still need door control to actually use the deoxygenated room as an impromptu airlock.