History YMMV / FTLFasterThanLight

** Ion Blast II. Capable of firing faster than a system can shrug off its effects, it only takes a few quick salvos to take down even level 4 shields, making it an ideal complement to beam weapons. With another ion weapon or a stack of Automated Reloader augments, you can keep two or more systems indefinitely suppressed, allowing you to eliminate your opponent at your leisure, whether by firing up another weapon or targeting their oxygen system. Its rate of fire and nonlethal nature is also excellent for leveling up your crew's Weapons skill.

** The Burst Laser Mark III fires [[MoreDakka an impressive five-shot barrage]], but players generally avoid it due to its high power requirements and long charge time, and because the same amount of firepower can be easily achieved by firing several cheaper lasers at once.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: "Lanius (Explore)" has a melody that sounds a lot like Carbon Based Lifeforms' [[https://carbonbasedlifeforms.bandcamp.com/track/mos-6581-album-version "MOS 6581"]].

** Pulsars heavily ionize two systems on both ships, and if shields are acive, one of the two affected [[OhCrap will always be shields]]. The result is a mad dash to destroy your opponent before it scores heavy damage on you. Oh, and you better pray that [[FromBadToWorse the other affected system isn't weapons]]... Of all environemental hazards, pulsars are by far the most likely to outright end your run if the RandomNumberGod has decided to screw you over.

->''[[{{BrickJoke}} By using the navigation to find the subpage, you stumble upon tropes in which you may or may not agree with. It didn't take long to read and you're still ahead of the Rebel fleet.]]''

** The Crystal race, though their Game Breaker properties are justified by the sheer difficulty involved in [[LuckBasedMission unlocking them]]. [[spoiler:Their lockdown ability prevents entry and escape from a room, which can be used to contain enemy boarders, trap enemy crew inside a room, or prevent them from accessing a room while you hammer away at its occupants and systems. Extra hp allows them to defeat most opponents (excepting Mantis, Rockmen, and Anti-Personnel/Boarding Drones) without suffering any drawbacks save for a slightly reduced movement speed]].

*** Ironically, killing a fellow [[ImmuneToFire Rockman]] can be easier way of getting the achievement. Rockmen are immune to fire and thus 1) don't flee from it, 2) fire can't steal your kill. Of course, this still means fighting [[StoneWall the tankiest race in the game]] in hand-to-hand combat, but at least it's more straightforward.

* GoodBadBugs:
** The new features of ''Advanced Edition'' have some possibly unintended effects on achievements, making them far easier to unlock.
*** "The guns... They've stopped" requires using the Engi ship to simultaneously cause ion disruption to four different systems. Normally this would require at least two ion weapons. However, with the addition of pulsar nodes, the ion burst can potentially knock out enough systems to let you earn the achievement with only one ion weapon.
*** "Avast, ye scurvy dogs!" requires you to kill five enemy crew using the Mantis ship without taking hull damage or having any of your own crew die. While that many crew don't become common until late in the game, cloned enemy crew count toward the total, making it much easier to get the achievement in an early sector if you can find one with a Cloning Bay.

** "The guns... They've stopped" requires using the Engi ship to simultaneously cause ion disruption to four different systems. Normally this would require at least two ion weapons. However, with the addition of pulsar nodes, the ion burst can potentially knock out enough systems to let you earn the achievement with only one ion weapon.
** "Avast, ye scurvy dogs!" requires you to kill five enemy crew using the Mantis ship without taking hull damage or having any of your own crew die. While that many crew don't become common until late in the game, cloned enemy crew count toward the total, making it much easier to get the achievement in an early sector if you can find one with a Cloning Bay.
*** Mind Controlled crewmembers are treated as AI-controlled members of the opposing crew. A controlled enemy is treated as one of your own crew, and as such you can use a Teleporter to "return" them to your ship... where they are easy pickings for your crew once the Mind Control wears off.

** As far as crew examples go, [[PunyEarthlings humans]]. In the original version, they trigger no blue events, [[MasterOfNone have no special abilities]], and are only effective in combat when against Zoltans or Engi, and will lose to the former in ''Advanced Edition'' thanks to Zoltans exploding upon death. Slugs have the same stats as humans, but also have telepathy (which was further improved in Advanced Edition) and can trigger blue events. The Advanced Edition mercifully gave them [[HumansAdvanceSwiftly slightly faster skill progression]] and a new blue option, but it still doesn't really save them in the eyes of most players and they tend to be the first crew to be kicked out of a full ship.

* LowTierScrappy: The Engi type-B layout is disliked on account of the fact that it has only a ''single'' crewmember, which becomes problematic if boarding parties appear and the player hasn't been able to hire or otherwise receive a new crewmember (and due to the RNG-based nature of each run, that's quite likely). Its weapons also leave much to be desired: A Heavy Ion and a Heavy Laser, which by themselves are incapable of harming any ship with just two shield layers or more, while the most of other ships at least have some way of dealing with multi-shielded enemies right off the bat (such as missiles, the Engi A's ''much'' faster Ion Blast II, or multiple laser weapons). This more or less makes it a "hard mode" ship minus the [[DifficultButAwesome "awesome"]] or [[MagikarpPower latent potential]].

* LowTierScrappy: The Engi type-B layout is disliked on account of the fact that it has only a ''single'' crewmember, which becomes problematic if boarding parties appear and the player hasn't been able to hire or otherwise receive a new crewmember (and due to the RNG-based nature of each run, that's quite likely). Its weapons also leave much to be desired: A Heavy Ion and a Heavy Laser, which by themselves are incapable of harming any ship with just two shield layers or more, while the most of other ships at least have some way of dealing with multi-shielded enemies right off the bat (such as missiles, the Engi A's ''much'' faster Ion Blast II, or multiple laser weapons).

** The Slug B cruiser; see TierInducedScrappy below.

* TierInducedScrappy:
** The Slug B ship, The Stormwalker, which is a boarding-oriented ship. The catch? It has no starting medbay, and all three of its starting crew are Slugs, which are average boarders at best. The idea is to use Healing Bursts to recover your Slugs so they can keep fighting, but Healing Bursts use missiles, happen to be your only means of recovery (which means post-battle recovery will consist of wasting ''another'' missile), if your Burst misses you will have to beam your boarding team out, and if your missiles run out, you're screwed. Early game tactics involve making a mad dash for the nearest store so you can purchase a Medbay, which costs 60 scrap.
** The Engi B ship, the Vortex, starts with one Engi crew member, and its weapons consist of a Heavy Ion and a Heavy Laser. You can depressurize every room except the cockpit to stop fires and hold off boarders (especially in conjunction with your Anti-Personnel Drone), but if you get boarded in the cockpit (especially if the boarders happen to be Mantis), you are in a ''lot'' of trouble, as Engis have halved combat damage and leaving the cockpit will drop your evasion to 0% unless you have the cockpit upgraded to have an autopilot, and even then your evasion will remain nearly nonexistent unless your engines are maxed out (though the Advanced Edition improved the autopilot). As for the weapons, the Heavy Ion takes a long time to charge, and if it misses, you won't be able to use your Heavy Laser on anything unless you're up against an unshielded Auto-Scout or are in an asteroid field with a one-shield ship. The slow recharge rate of the Heavy Ion also means that if you don't find another gun to help supplement it, you're basically dead when you start facing enemies with 2 shield blocks, since even with maxed out gunnery skill, the ion damage on shield will dissipate before another ion shot hits. It also starts out without sensors and, unlike the other ships in this category, doesn't even have a real late-game advantage in form of a great weapon or special ship-property.
** The Stealth B ship, DA-[=SR12=]. Like the Stealth A ship, it starts with a cloaking device and the shield system must be purchased separately for 150 scrap. Its main differences are that it has only level 2 engines instead of level 4, has level 2 cloaking, and its only weapon is the [[AwesomeButImpractical Glaive Beam]], a beam that does 3 damage per room, but takes ''25 seconds'' to charge (about 23 if you have a zero-level gunner) and uses 4 bars of energy. Even the Federation Cruisers' Artillery Beam fires faster when maxed out. If your weapons and/or your cloaking get hit in the early game, your best choice is simply to restart.
** The Stealth C ship, Simo-H. ''Unlike'' its sister ships, it lacks a cloaking device, instead opting for a special version of the Shield Overcharger that takes less power and charges up slightly more rapidly, an Anti-Drone, and a third slot for drones, being the only non-Engi cruiser with that many slots for drones. However, the Shield Overcharger+ only puts out 1 bar of Super-shielding, the ships that only have one weapon are few and far between, and you can't keep both the Shield Overcharger and the Anti-Drone powered at the same time without spending precious scrap to upgrade the Drone Control and your reactor, and you obviously need that to buy a set of Shields for the ship. It can be powerful later on, but the other Stealth Cruisers can reach that same level of power much more easily.
** The Federation Cruisers. Their Artillery weapon (beam or flak) takes a long time to charge (making it often useless until fully upgraded) and occupies a valuable system slot, especially when compared to Advanced Edition systems.
*** The type C, in particular, stands out as the weakest of the three by far. It starts with no weapon at all except for a special flak artilery, and has a two man teleporter. This means that not only [[EarlyGameHell does it struggle immensely in the early game]], but also that you can only buy one single extra system between drones, hacking and cloaking. As drones are probably out due to their struggle to defend the huge ship and lack of offensive play, this means that your ship will remain vulnerable to missiles for the whole game, making late game missile enemies [[DemonicSpider demonic spiders]].
** As far as crew examples go, [[PunyEarthlings humans]]. In the original version, they trigger no blue events, [[MasterOfNone have no special abilities]], and are only effective in combat when against Zoltans or Engi, and will lose to the former in ''Advanced Edition'' thanks to Zoltans exploding upon death. Slugs have the same stats as humans, but also have telepathy (which was further improved in Advanced Edition) and can trigger blue events. The Advanced Edition mercifully gave them [[HumansAdvanceSwiftly slightly faster skill progression]] and a new blue option.

** Not many fans depict the FTL engine as a jump drive (essentially, the ship teleports), but either a warp drive or a hyperdrive, so as to get some downtime that doesn't involve sitting around nav beacon 180,000,000 doing nothing.

** Nobody but the devs depict the FTL engine as a jump drive (essentially, the ship teleports), but either a warp drive or a hyperdrive, so as to get some downtime that doesn't involve sitting around nav beacon 180,000,000 doing nothing.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: As mentioned above, the developers responded to one of the more notorious ass pulls in the game by not only having a justification for how boarders get past the supposedly impenetrable shields in ''Advanced Edition'', but also making it available for the player so that it's not a case of "[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the computer's rules are not your rules]]".

** The Slug B ship, [[AwesomeMcCoolname The Stormwalker]], which is a boarding-oriented ship. The catch? It has no starting medbay, and all three of its starting crew are Slugs, which are average boarders at best. The idea is to use Healing Bursts to recover your Slugs so they can keep fighting, but Healing Bursts use missiles, happen to be your only means of recovery (which means post-battle recovery will consist of wasting ''another'' missile), if your Burst misses you will have to beam your boarding team out, and if your missiles run out, you're screwed. Early game tactics involve making a mad dash for the nearest store so you can purchase a Medbay, which costs 60 scrap.

** Federation Cruiser achievement "Artillery Mastery" requires you to get to sector 5 without upgrading your main weapons system.

** Federation Cruiser achievement "Artillery Mastery" requires you to get to sector 5 without upgrading your weapons.

** AI Controlled Scouts when using the Mantis Cruiser B. No weapons, you have to send over a boarding drone to very slowly blow up each of the ships systems, wait until they repair a few times, and then finally the drone will blow up the ship for measly scrap, often less than 10 value on Normal.

** The Crystal race, though their Game Breaker properties are justified by the sheer difficulty involved in [[LuckBasedMission unlocking them]]. [[spoiler:Their lockdown ability prevents entry and escape from a room, which can be used to contain enemy boarders, trap enemy crew inside a room, or prevent them from accessing a room while you hammer away at its occupants and systems. Extra hp allows them to defeat most opponents (excepting Mantis, Rockmen, and Boarding Drones) without suffering any drawbacks save for a slightly reduced movement speed]].

** Upgrade your engines! [[labelnote:Explanation]]Ugrading the engines of your ship is a good way to take less damage, so, on the subreddit, it has become somewhat of a catchphrase to berate failed builds if it did not have sufficient engines. It has gotten to the point there is a CargoShip between the subreddit and engines.[[/labelnote]]

* NightmareFuel: The game is thankfully light on graphical depcitions of violence, though the game still has its [[NightmareFuel/FTLFasterThanLight scary moments]].

** As far as crew examples go, [[PunyEarthlings humans]]. In the original version, they trigger no blue events, [[MasterOfNone have no special abilities]], and are only effective in combat when against Zoltans or Engi. Slugs have the same stats as humans, but also have telepathy (which was further improved in Advanced Edition) and can trigger blue events. The Advanced Edition mercifully gave them [[HumansAdvanceSwiftly slightly faster skill progression]] and a new blue option.

* BreatherLevel: Due to the Engi being peaceful and generally non-aggressive by nature, Engi-controlled sectors tend to be easier to clear than most other kinds of sectors.