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FTL: Faster Than Light Wiki

The universe of FTL is inhabited by friendly and enemy ships. These ships come in a variety of layouts, and can be equipped with various systems and subsystems, weapons, drones, and augmentations.

Each player ship can carry a maximum of eight crewmembers of various races, with an initial crew of between one and four members. Each ship starts with varying systems, weapons, power levels, missile ammunition, and drone parts.

Playable ships[]

For ship strategies, see Ship guides.
For ship comparisons, see Ship comparison.

There are ten playable ship classes available in FTL:

Kestrel Cruiser A
Engi Cruiser A
Federation Cruiser A
Zoltan Cruiser A
Lanius Cruiser A
The Kestrel Cruiser The Engi Cruiser The Federation Cruiser The Zoltan Cruiser The Lanius Cruiser
 
Stealth Cruiser A
Rock Cruiser A
Slug Cruiser A
Mantis Cruiser A
Crystal Cruiser A
The Stealth Cruiser The Rock Cruiser The Slug Cruiser The Mantis Cruiser The Crystal Cruiser

Layouts[]

At start only the Kestrel Cruiser is available. Upon reaching the 5th sector with the Kestrel Cruiser, the Engi Cruiser is unlocked. To unlock other ships and layouts, certain objectives must be accomplished:
  • Layout A - complete a respective quest or defeat the Rebel Flagship with the previous ship in the list (denoted by the arrows).
  • Layout B - earn 2 out of 3 ship-related Achievements.
  • Layout C - reach sector 8 with Layout B and Advanced Edition Content enabled.
  • The Lanius Cruiser and the Crystal Cruiser:
    • The Lanius Cruiser becomes available after unlocking 4 ships.
    • The Crystal Cruiser can either be unlocked with the quest or by defeating the Flagship with layout A and B of every ship (excluding the Lanius Cruiser).
    • Do not have Layout C.
FTL ship unlock progression cropped

The ship list with achievements and progress of unlocking all of the playable ships


Enemy ships[]

Main article: Enemy Ships


Hull[]

Hull is the remaining life of your ship. Every playable ship starts with the maximum of 30 hull points. Maximum hull points of enemy ships vary by the type of a ship, sector progression, and game difficulty setting.

Whenever a ship's shields are down or pierced, weapons and asteroids can hit rooms (including systems), thus damaging a ship's hull (and rooms). Whenever a system is completely destroyed by fires or due to sabotage by boarders or mind-controlled crew, the hull is decreased by 1 point. Ship's hull can be (almost) unavoidably damaged in some events, while other events possess a certain risk to hull damage. Solar flares can inflict hull damage as well (even with shields up).

Some weapons can deal double damage to a ship's hull, when they damage systemless rooms. These are: Hull Beam, Hull Laser I and II, Hull Missiles.

Bomb weapons, on the contrary, can only damage system or rooms, but not the hull. However, fires, caused by some bombs, can inflict hull damage when a system gets destroyed due to fires.

Some weapons, asteroids, and boarding drones (guaranteed) can inflict hull breaches, but this effect doesn't cause additional hull damage. The hull breach only causes a loss of O2 in the room and needs to be sealed before a system can be manned or repaired.

The Rock Plating augmentation has a 15% chance of negating any hull damage caused by weapons and asteroids (it cannot prevent damage from fires and sabotage, solar flares, or events).

Hull can be repaired in stores by paying scrap, by using Hull Repair Drone, or gradually with the Repair Arm augmentation. There are also random events that are capable of fixing the hull, either for a price (such as repair stations) or as a reward. Special repair beacons in The Last Stand, including its entry beacon, repair your ship's hull as well as supplying resources the first time you visit them.


Power[]

Power provides functioning of various systems, weapons and drones, and needs to be allocated accordingly. Subsystems, however, do not require power to function. The absolute maximum amount of power a ship can have is 37 (25 Reactor Power + 8 Zoltan Power + 4 Backup Battery Power).

Reactor power[]

Reactor power is indicated by green horizontal bars in the bottom left corner of the UI. Enemy ships always have exactly enough reactor power to fully power their ship, except in ion storms where this power is halved.

The reactor can hold a maximum of 25 power bars. The reactor power can be added to the ship in the upgrade menu, which is available when the ship is not IN DANGER (nebulas and ion storms, imposing the danger status, still allow accessing the upgrade menu when there is no hostile ship or intruders). Reactor upgrades become more expensive to upgrade.

Player ships start with varying amounts of reactor power. The average amount of power in a ship is about 8. In order to fully upgrade a ship with 8 power, it costs 490 Ftlgame-scrap. Reactor can also be upgraded in some events as a reward or via trading.

Reactor clear
Reactor power 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25
Cost 30 Ftlgame-scrap 20 Ftlgame-scrap 25 Ftlgame-scrap 30 Ftlgame-scrap 35 Ftlgame-scrap

Zoltan power[]

Each Zoltan provides a single power bar to the system room they are in. A Zoltan energy power bar is displayed yellow, contrasting with the green for normal ship reactor power.

Zoltan power is not affected by ion storms, providing a constant power to a system with Zoltan crew.

Zoltan power cannot be removed from a system by ion weaponry, thus constantly powering a system (weapon, drone) even if the system is completely ionized. Hence, Zoltans can be used for ion shielding. Zoltans can power Clone Bay or Medbay enabling their functionality despite ion damage to the systems.

Zoltans power the weapons and drone schematics from left to right.

Zoltans can remove reactor power from systems on cooldown like Crew Teleporter, Mind Control, Hacking, Cloaking. However, removing all power from a Hacking system will void its passive hacking benefits until it is re-powered again.

Notes:

  • Be careful when moving Zoltan crew between rooms: if there is no spare reactor power when a Zoltan moves out of the powered room into a room which doesn't use power at the moment, the power will be removed from the system (and that can be Shields, Weapons, or Drones)
  • Due to specific Zoltan power distribution in the system, it is possible to not be able to activate a weapon in slots 2-4 or drones in slots 2-3. In that case, in order to use the weapon/drone it must be moved all the way to the left-most slot (the swap can be freely performed during a fight)
  • Moving Zoltans through activated systems like Hacking, Cloaking, or Mind Control will remove power (equal to the number of Zoltans simultaneously present in the room) from a system, which leads to premature and sometimes undesirable de-powering of a system

Backup Battery power[]

The Backup Battery can provide additional 2 (or 4 when upgraded) bars of power for 30 seconds.

The Backup Battery power does not get halved during Ion Storms.

However, if the Backup Battery gets hacked, then 2 power bars will be drained from the ship's reactor on top of forcing the system cooldown (and losing the temporary power bars along it).

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