FTL Captain's Edition 1.308/Inf 1.301b/EL 1.308

[Kartoffelr]

What if you just give the Crystal Vengeance a null price? Would make sense since it's something that has to grow inside the ship, so removing ti won't make it installable somewhere else, and it would encourage more players to keep it on both the starting Crystal ships and if a Crystallite grows it.

Why? IIRC the augment has a sell price of only 15 scraps or so. This is pretty low, comparing other augments. No need to lower it.

Also, it does not grow "in place", the crystal crewmember cultivates it in his room.
Same with the weapons.

If anything, crystal Weapons and augments should be one of the most expensive stuff one can sell, because of their rarity. For the weapons, this is true already (50 scraps for the Lock II )

edit:
what the... i encountered the "you find a jettison pod" thing and decided to "pry it open". The message told me it was a survivor of something with mantis, but after calmed down, he offers to join my crew.
But i lost a (crystal) crewmember and got a new (human) one.

[Sleeper Service]

I've been busy lately and haven't gotten my fix of ftl lately. I still have a few questions about the surrenders...
So Mantis and Rocks still can't betray enemies??? That makes sense because the Rock aren't evil and the Mantis have some sense of honor.
And the Slugs can still betray people with no consequence??? That makes sense, but it seems like it might be broken if you get like double rewards. Have you balanced this somehow?.. Slugs can do every dirty thing imaginable if I'm correct, including slavery, piracy, and betrayal.
Do zoltans try and negotiate surrender, before a fight?
What are the outcomes of the player surrendering? Can other people betray you? Do they always accept your surrender? Do thy maybe demand extra for acceptance sometimes?
I think those are the only questions I have...

As always, I won't tell you hard probabilities, that would spoil the fun. It seems like it might surprise you but yes, I actually thought about how to balance this somehow.

Most important probably: Attacking an opponent that has surrendered does not always work. The opponent might get away after you exchanged goods (not physically, in the event). That reduces your flat profit from breaking truces regularly and also should have you reconsider if you want to take even the worst offer in the hope of killing the opponent anyway. But there some more synergies that are considered balancing this new possibilities for the Slug ships:

1. As we all know, enemies do not always surrender. The opportunity for extra gain is actually kind of unpredictable, it definitely is not included in the majority of the fights. A lot of fights don't even include the possibility for enemy surrenders. Sector type also features into this (AI crews never surrender for example).

2. Enemy surrender offers still consist mainly of resources. You can get a nice missiles and fuel supply by breaking truces, but that does not automatically translate into more scrap. You have to sell the stuff first, and that might not always be possible. The amount of supplies you get might even exceed the capacity to sell it. The immediate scrap gain will remain small.

3. Both of the Slug ships are kind of designated crew killers. But you have to damage enemies in order to force surrender. Transition to a ship that can deal good damage is often possible and necessary with the Slug A and B, but switching to pure damage would actually reduce your overall gain. I estimated that you still gain less with a ship that takes surrenders and then destroys the opponent, than with a average crew killer ship. To really gain from breaking truces you have to have a ship that can deal good damage and easily kill crew afterwards. Manageable, but more demanding than just running a crew-melter or boarding ship. Ion base crew killing strategies don't are less favourable in that context for example.

4. Forcing surrenders increases risk. Fire, Asteroids, bad weapon management; all these things can destroy the enemy ship, which reduces your actual gain. To really profit from breaking truces, you have to skilfully juggle damage to enemy ship and crew, if you can achieve this also without getting wrecked at the same time than you get rewarded. This is even more relevant for Slug B. By attempting to force surrender you endanger your boarding crew, sometimes with enemies that you otherwise would have stopped firing at. Well, as long as you keep you minelauncher (CE for Player Ship addon required) you have a good way of dealing damage alongside boarding, but you also burn away your missiles, therefore decrease your gain.

Overall the raw scrap gain from this new possibilities for the Slug ships is hard to estimate. The whole balance of this new feature will probably still be subjected to change. But I love the new synergies it creates. You know that you could gain a little more. But succumbing to your greed might not be worth it in the end and can even get you into trouble. Sounds pretty sluggish to me.

But, would it be possible to maybe, "bribe" Rebels sometimes? It would have to be more expensive obviously, but maybe... Just an idea.
Thanks

IMO the Rebels seem pretty determined to get you. There is a whole fleet after you. There probably is a lot of pressure on each individual Rebel. Unlikely that anyone would risk court martial for some scrap.

I also did not allow surrender to Rebels to further set the sectors apart. Rebel Sectors, Federation Controlled Sectors and the Last Stand are now the sectors where you definitely can't surrender. Well, to Rebel stations, but that's another story. I'm pretty pleased about how CE as a whole started to differentiate difficulty depending on sector. It feels now like there is a difficulty progression even when just comparing the hostile sectors and that surrendering to Rebels is impossible further set some sectors apart.

[Mr. Mister]

So, easy sectors are Civil, Coreworlds, Pirate, Engi and uncharted Nebulae; medium are Mantis, Zoltan (depending on your loadout) and Slug; hard are Rock, Hazardous, Industrial and Quarentine (different kind of hard); and very hard is AI Overrun.


Are you sure there is a high enough risk-reward quocient to enter the nanocloud? I felt like weapon and drone drops were more common, but I'm not sure. That would make it very interesting. Also, give a consideration to the Frankenstein ship, now that would be a cool nanocloud event I would visit again for.

[Sleeper Service]

The ship is OK, but It can't really fit the enemy window. Also the shading is a little off.

Nano Clouds are actually designed to be dead zones. They are the one nebula you really should try to avoid, that's hinted a little in some flavour texts. If you can take the damage and have some buffers bars you can easily pass through them but It generally is not recommended unless you really have to.


My impression of difficulty progression, mainly concerning damage potential to ship (Its all situational of course, there is no real fixed progression):

Civilian Coreworlds
Quarantine Sectors
Civilian Sectors
Engi Controlled Sectors
Uncharted Nebula
Industrial Sectors
Zoltan Controlled Sectors
Pirate Controlled Sectors
Mantis Controlled Sectors
Slug Controlled Nebula
Rock Controlled Sectors
Hazard Sectors
Rebel Controlled Sectors
Federation Controlled Sectors
AI Controlled Sectors
Last Stand

[Mr. Mister]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Contested Sectors. Those definitively host the most common hard fights. Though I would put Rebel Sectors behind Rocks.

Clearly Quarentine sectors operate on another kind of difficulty.

One last thing though: on the naming, maybe the AI Overrun sector names should never explicitely state that they're, well overrun/controleld by AIs. For new players, not knowing what lies behind [redacted], Off-Limits and the like is part of the excitement.

[sign1000]

Hey, how come for some reason this happened???
(mind, I was playing the SLUG ship a)

[Mr. Mister]

Hey, how come for some reason this happened???
(mind, I was playing the SLUG ship a)

Since the option is white, it means that sleepy forgot to put the Zoltan shield as requeriment.

[spudcosmic]

I just had a run with the Mantis B cruiser, and I have to say, starting with the clone maker is a little bit overpowered. By sector three I had a full mantis boarding crew, and before sector 6 I had a full crew of mantis on board, all of them clones except for the two starting mantis. I not sure who is in charge of the ce for player ships addon, but you might want to take the clone augment away, it's sad to say too, because having a boatload of mantis was loads of fun.

Adding onto the discussion earlier about making the crystal sector easier to reach, I'd have to say that's a pretty good idea. I have yet to get the crystal cruiser, and I feel if I have any chance of unlocking it I'll have to uninstall CE, and I really don't want to have to do that. I think that when you collect the stasis pod, it should make a quest marker at a zoltan research facility, making it a little bit more likely that you find one. Also, the event in the asteroid field where you find the pod should be more common.

[Estel]

But I love the new synergies it creates. You know that you could gain a little more. But succumbing to your greed might not be worth it in the end and can even get you into trouble. Sounds pretty sluggish to me.

I just *love* it too! When posting idea about Zoltan's surrenders, I thought about "what could make other factions more characterized", but haven't got any idea (beyond what was already implemented). As usual, you got the right idea - slugs breaking truces is so obvious and natural, that I could only faceplam about "why I haven't thought about it!"

Adding onto the discussion earlier about making the crystal sector easier to reach, I'd have to say that's a pretty good idea. I have yet to get the crystal cruiser, and I feel if I have any chance of unlocking it I'll have to uninstall CE, and I really don't want to have to do that. I think that when you collect the stasis pod, it should make a quest marker at a zoltan research facility, making it a little bit more likely that you find one. Also, the event in the asteroid field where you find the pod should be more common.

I agree that making it a little easier to reach would be good idea but I think that means you propose are wrong.

1. Finding crystal pod is quite easy, especially in rock ship. If you dedicate your run(s) to unlocking it (jump to correct sectors, search sectors for distress calls, instead of "gain and profit"), you're almost guaranteed to find it early. I don't think it need boost, would be only irritating to run into same even again and again.

2. Same for finding zoltan's research facility - it's not so hard to get into Engi's or Zoltan's sector, and scan for non-distress no-ships beacons. I don't think it need boost.

The thing that *really* makes this quest *much* harder in Ce, is the fact that you need to get into Rock Homeworlds as last step. Because CE added bunch of sector types (which is great thing in itself), it's ABNORMALLY hard to get rock homeworlds in your line of flight, even if you have crystal crew member. I remember running into Rock Homeworlds only *once* since CE added new sector types. And my last ~70 runs were *dedicated* to unlock crystal ship (thus the poorest and poorest victories-to-run ratio ).

Yes, with stats like that, all while playing CE:
http://s1.postimg.org/yeqjo6v5a/ftl.jpg
...I still doesn't have crystal ship unlocked

Now, the thing that we need to remember is: Crystal ships quest *is meant* to be rarest of them all. so, thinking about how to counter side-effect of CE's new sectors that made it ridiculously hard, we must be vigilant to not make it easier and more common than some other ship-unlocking quests (slug's one comes to mind, it was quite hard to get).

Unfortunately, I have no idea, how to counter the fact, that there are much more sector types, and Rock's Homeworld become so many times harder to chain with Crystal quest Any thoughts?

Cheers,
/Estel

//Edit

While I love new main menu, i *hate* how pixelated and blurry the planet in background (and, overall, whole background, although stars are little better) is, especially compared to menu's background from "Better Planet's and Background". New stations and Drones of Rebels are OK (although, Automated Drones are little too pixelated, when compared to Rebel's fleet ships on the same screen)

Sleeper Service, would it be possible to recreate this menu background with mesh-up from Better Planets and Backgrounds?

[Sleeper Service]

Sleeper Service, would it be possible to recreate this menu background with mesh-up from Better Planets and Backgrounds?

I'm authorized to use sanmunkos stuff, but I don't want to use it for the title screen. Feels like I show off with other peoples work. If you want the better planets and background screen you can just find it in the modfieles and override CEs title screen with it. You could also ask sanmunko to have his mod use .append files instead of the current clobbering files. That would allow to load BPAB after CE and show the admittedly sweeter title screen (I just did the CE title to give credit to the artists originally).



Well you summed up the Crystal sector situation pretty well. I still come across the pod regularly, but I rarely manage to find the research facility. Both of these event, as well as other ship unlock events, have been added to a lot of new sectors in CE. So it feels that this is not so much the problem. But Rock homeworlds are indeed more rare. Overall, I like that the player can only get to the crystal sector ever so often. Keeps it mysterious and preserves a part of the game to an extend that most players can never really fully grasp it. I think thatÄs neat, but I do want to level crystal sector likelihood with the vanilla game.

Some things that are planned for that:
- An alternative, rare quest to get a Crystal Crewmen, probably linked to the Crystal encounter in the Hazard Sector
- Giving Rock controlled sectors a chance to have a Crystal jump gate


Concerning the Basilisk Clone-Lab:
Do you think that the ship was allright before? Cause I felt pretty alone with that opinion last week... I guess you can never make everybody happy. Enjoy the Broodship while it lasts.