Hello, my name is Tim F and I would like to talk about my addiction. But first let me finish just one more turn on FTL.
Just a minute, ok.
How’d it get dark out?
Talk about whatever.
by Tim F| 59 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, General Stupidity
Hello, my name is Tim F and I would like to talk about my addiction. But first let me finish just one more turn on FTL.
Just a minute, ok.
How’d it get dark out?
Talk about whatever.
Comments are closed.
Crashman06
Love that game, but damn is it hard. Music’s great too.
WaterGirl
I had to google FTL. Please pardon me, I must have come to the wrong meeting room by mistake. That same thing happens to me, but for me it’s BJ. Do you happen to know where that meeting is?
big ole hound
Wake up and smell the roses and go to nice places that still exist. A couple of decades from now you will wish your games never existed and the years wasted will haunt you.
Citizen_X
You have a faster than light drive?!?
greennotGreen
@Citizen_X: Yeah, I was out in space on that one, too.
dmsilev
@Citizen_X: He has a game named after the drive type. It’s a fun little thing, as long as you don’t mind dying over and over and over again (winning is hard).
peach flavored shampoo
FTL? Floridian Transit Laborers? French Toast Lunches? First To Launch?
daveNYC
Hell, just getting past the first few jumps can be hard. It’s a great game, but the random encounter nature of each jump is painful.
negative 1
Someone light a candle for us here in Rhode Island because twice convicted felon and general shouting neanderthal Vincent ‘Buddy’ Cianci is running for Providence mayor yet again. He’ll probably win, too.
Lost in the news coverage of how neat it is to have a real mafioso to gawk at is the fact that other than his very good record on public works he’s flat out awful on education, the police during his administration were basically a gang, and he perpetually underfunded anything that smelled like a helpful social program and he’s horrible with organized labor. In other words, underneath Goodfellas he’s essentially your typical rethug.
Tim F.
@daveNYC: I just set the difficulty level to Easy. Has anyone ever won on Hard? How would you even do that?
gene108
Marc
@Tim F.:
Slowly, Carefully. Heavy usage of the pause key in fights.
Amir Khalid
@negative 1:
I couldn’t help but wonder if Vincent “Buddy” Cianci has a relative named Nancy Anne.
Villago Delenda Est
Civilization. Just one more turn…..
Joel
Pretty much every Civilization game.
Feminist MRA
Masturbation. Just one more wank …
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Been there. Done that. Still doing that.
Also, waiting eagerly for the spiritual successor to SMAC, coming this fall (_Civilization: Beyond Earth_).
Paul in KY
@gene108: Nerlens is going to be a revelation to y’all next year. He is a great player & person.
Gin & Tonic
@gene108: Could be worse. You could be a Knicks fan, as I unfortunately am.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: That’s an urban legend. But as negative1 said, he will very likely win. He already won once after being convicted of a felony, so that’s no drawback here.
You’ll like this. Yesterday the top-ranked Ukrainian tennis pro playing at Wimbledon, Serhiy Stakhovsky, walked out of his post-match interview rather than speak to a Russian reporter. He said, very emphatically, in Russian, “I do not speak with Russian media.” 20-second clip here. And emphatic indeed, in American it would be written Do. Not. Speak.
C.S.Strowbridge
FTL is an awesome game. I think I beat it three times out of 100 or so tries.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Bad linky.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Sorry. Here it is, since I can never edit.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: He also wrote this for SI.
gene108
@Paul in KY:
Nerlens doesn’t bother me and getting him last year was a big bonus. He was not a draft pick we had, but acquired view some draft day trading.
I’m cool with him missing a season because of an ACL. He’s a bonus, like I said, and players can comeback from ACL injuries.
Embid has back and foot/leg problems. Those can be career destroying and big men can go from looking great to being fragile before their time in a hurry, like Greg Oden and if go back a bit Ralph Sampson, who had knee problems that ended is career prematurely. I’m sure there are more examples, including Bill Walton, who I only remember as a back-up for the Celtics, but apparently had legendary foot problems that curtailed his career accomplishments.
I’d be happier with Exum/McDermitt and have people, who can upgrade the SF and SG positions than hope and pray that Embid recovers and Euro-guy decides he wants to play here, which not every Euro-player decides to do, as the money is pretty good in the top Euro-leagues.
srv
Obama abandons the surgers:
Morzer
@Tim F.:
Haven’t you seen the 1 weird trick everyone is talking about?
Old Dan and Little Ann
The Google told me what FTL is about about. Not my cup of tea. I randomly searched racing games on my iPad apps a few months ago and found Real Racing 3. I loved any and all racing games back in 80’s so this game has since taking days, if not weeks from my life. But it’s free so I got that going for me.
Laertes
Love FTL. Can’t even imagine winning on hard mode. Normal is tough as hell.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: That was a classy (non) interview. I also read the article he wrote. I don’t even begin to understand the politics of what is happening there – but he seems like a good guy who loves his country and is trying to do the best he can.
schrodinger's cat
I have no idea what FTL is besides the name which I googled.
BTW more information about Karla Caves, that I had posted under the Wednesday Afternoon moment of Zen
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Have you tried to edit in another window or another tab? That is how I have to edit on my iPad, and I’m sure it would work on a computer browser, as well.
Morzer
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-mark-mayfield-suicide
This whole shemozzle in Mississippi just keeps getting stranger and sicker.
StringOnAStick
We’re having an old friend over for dinner tonight, so I guess that means I have to abandon my experiment in just how long one can avoid vacuuming while living with a longhaired cat. I guess that means I need to go to the store and get some cooking done too.
StringOnAStick
@Morzer: I just went to read that TPM story. Interesting how the Tper who tweeted his response to the death blames it on “a campaign to destroy lives”, referring to the arrests of the people who invaded the nursing home to photograph Sen. Cochran’s wife. Talk about some inversion of reality….
? Martin
.@Marc: This. Upgrades are key so it takes a lot of early luck before you can get through more reliably. I find that what you need for the final ship isn’t optimal for most of the battles leading up to it, so I usually prioritize what I put on the ship for the final battle and opt to fail early. Early fortune usually determines if I’m going to make it final sector or not. So it tends to be feast or famine for me, I’ll either make it to the end and win or nearly win, or I’ll die in the 2nd sector. I’ve not yet won on hard, but I’ve gotten close.
And I’ve decided I like the iPad version better than the desktop version.
Morzer
@StringOnAStick:
To me the teabaggers seem to be generating a perpetual motion insanity engine. They’ve lost any awareness of critical thinking or how to assess facts and argue from them. It’s all rage, resentment and blaming others for their own problems.
RaflW
Ron Fournier, Mark Knoller and other useless hacks are having twitter fun because Obama dared to say in minneapolis that Congress is opposing everything he wants.
As if pointing out the blindingly obvious makes Obama a terrible whiner. I guess there is no bully pulpit when, in your vaunted journalistic opinion you think POTUS is a WATB.
I once again, as always, hate these pufferfish dickweeds.
catclub
@Morzer:
BJ is the same, except also pets.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Morzer: Jesus, just when you think the tea sickness has hit its worst, you get proven wrong yet again.
These guys were up to something truly nasty and we don’t know what it is yet. That’s more than a bit scary to think about.
Morzer
@catclub:
And the naked mopping. Let’s not forget that. There are some things that both sides don’t do.
Morzer
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I am waiting for Cthulhu to put out a press release denying any involvement in this ongoing madness.
SatanicPanic
@StringOnAStick: Seriously. Stop blocking my punches! You’re infringing on my right to punch your face! /teapartiers
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Morzer: Yeah, it’s kind of taking on those aspects, isn’t it?
Any word of weird statues being found?
Morzer
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Not yet, but I must confess to wondering what is lurking beneath the surface of all this. What McDaniel’s people did was bad enough, but surely not something to drive a man to suicide. I have trouble imagining what tipped him over the edge.
BruinKid
Mark Mayfield, one of the Tea Partiers arrested for helping break in to the nursing home to photograph Thad Cochran’s bedridden wife, has committed suicide. This whole saga just took a turn for the even MORE bizarre and tragic.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Morzer: Not even close. We have the guys getting locked in the courthouse and no satisfactory explanation of how they got there or what they did there. We have this whole “taping the Alzheimer’s wife in the nursing home”, which is just flat out weird – made Cochran more sympathetic more than anything else. And now this suicide. About the only thing I can say I know about what’s going on here is that whatever these guys are up to, they’re pretty fucking sloppy about it. Which tells me they did not expect to get caught, or prosecuted.
WaterGirl
@Morzer: I’m thinking: lawyer, public humiliation, arrest, possible conviction, possible loss of license to practice law, possible time in prison, public humiliation. I suspect that’s enough.
Edit: I guess I missed the whole “guys getting locked in the courthouse and no satisfactory explanation of how they got there or what they did there” thing.
D58826
GOP still digging to China part 2 from CNN
The Onion would have a hard time topping that
Paul in KY
@gene108: I understand your concerns there, Gene. Was just commenting that Mr. Noel will soon be your best player.
Paul in KY
@StringOnAStick: I’ve gone 9 months. How long did you go?
Paul in KY
@D58826: My thought was that The Onion must have hacked his site & posted that themselves. If not, it must be a bummer as a great Onion story was undone by reality.
Wallace Winfrey
Tim, if you haven’t tried it yet, give the Captain’s Edition mod a try – it really expands the game in a number of gratifying ways (the weapons expansions in particular are very well-done).
Another mod worth checking out is the Better Planets and Backgrounds mod – it really improves the way the game looks.
I recommend use of the Slipstream Mod Manager to install and manage the mods. It’s a java app, so will run in both OSX and Windows. I don’t think you can mod the iOS version yet though.
I’ve been playing FTL for close to a year now and only recently discovered the modding scene, but the ones I’ve posted really do enhance the game quite a bit, without detracting from overall game balance (it’s still hard as sh*t) or stability (every once in a while I’ll get a crash, say every 30-40 sector transitions).
Amazing game, one of the best strategy games ever.
Arclite
The free FTL update got me back into it again. So many fun new tactics like mind control and new weapons like the Gatling gun (Just gotta hold out until that puppy gets warmed up).
Those guys are master designers. So well balanced, so may equivalent paths to victory. Yes, it’s hard, even on “easy” but that just makes it so much more satisfying when you win.
Arclite
@Wallace Winfrey: Hey Wallace, I couldn’t tell from the links you provided, but do you know if those work with the Advanced Edition that Subset games put out a couple of months ago?
StringOnAStick
@Paul in KY: OK, you win!
Wallace Winfrey
@Arclite: Yes they do!
Arclite
@Wallace Winfrey: Okay, very cool.
Love that FTL runs on my work laptop so I can play it anywhere. Not good for work though.
Also, if you hadn’t heard, OpenXCom made version 1.0 a couple of weeks ago, and fixes all the quirks and issues with the original XCom (from 1994!) which is still one of the best strategic and tactical games ever made. And speaking of games that run on the laptop, it runs windowed completely stably and has improved resolution. I’ve been working my way through a campaign. They even made a version that will run an an android device, although it’s a bit tricky to use, but still very playable.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
I like FTL, but the Civ IV mod Rise from Erebus (an evolution from Fall From Heaven) is what really sucks up my time.
You Civ fanatics – give it a go. It takes teh game to a whole new place.