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FTL Advanced Edition: Cloning, hacking and mind control… oh my

Cloning, hacking and mind control being added to FTL

The Advanced Edition free update for FTL is just getting bigger and bigger. It’s silly, really, that this isn’t going to cost anyone a penny. Don’t tell Subset Games that, though. After being quiet for a couple of months, Subset is ready to spill the beans on yet more of the Advanced Edition’s growing feature list

Mind control, hacking and cloning are the big additions, and crikey do I want to get my hands on them right bloody now before being smashed into space dust. 

I name every single one of my original crewmembers. I care about them. They can come to my Ready Room to discuss whatever they want, from unsightly alien rashes to complaints about the lack of oxygen in the engine room. So when they die, I’m devastated.

The Clone Bay looks like it might solve my abject misery at losing a chum, though not without throwing a few spanners in the works. It’s an alternative to the med bay, you see, so you’re swapping healing out for the ability to bring crew back from the dead, after a fashion.

“The goal of the Clone Bay was to really disrupt the core way you play the game,” Subset explains. “You’ll be able to send crew off into dangerous situations without fear of death. Giant alien spiders will no longer be the terrifying, unstoppable force that you’re used to, since the system can simply revive your crew after the event. But, if a stray missile takes out the system mid-clone, you’ll find death can still be quite permanent.”

Hacking will also be a thing. A terribly ungentlemanlike thing. For the price of a drone part, you can launch a hacking drone that attaches itself to selected systems. You’ll be able to see that system, and different things will occur depending on what type of system you’ve just penetrated. Bugger up the weapons and the charge will drain and firing will be delayed. Fiddle with the teleporter and all enemies will unceremoniously be sent back to their ship. As an added bonus, the hacking drone locks the doors of the room the system it’s interfering with is located, delaying the crew from fixing the problem.

The final flashy new addition is mind control. How delightfully insidious. You can be properly devious here. “You’ll be able to make a boarder temporarily man the weapon system, cause in-fighting on the enemy ship, or lock your teleporter onto your new ally to teleport him into an airless room back on your ship,“ says Subset. It sounds like a cheeky, powerful tool, but one that requires the vision of the crew to activate.

On top of all this – as if it wasn’t already rather chunky – back up batteries are being added when you need to get a bit more juice, and a brand spanking new difficulty is being tossed into the mix. There will be a harder difficulty if you don’t feel like you’re being blown to smithereens, the life of your crew wasted in yet another futile attempt to survive, quite enough.