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

[engi]

does this conflict whith infinte space?

[Nider_01]

yup

[Kartoffelr]

I just had my maybe most challenging fight yet with the Rock Type B, but managed to win without loosing a single crewmember.
Phase 1 was pretty easy, i just disabled the gun bays and let the minelayer drone do the work. Rebels only had time for one fleet artillery strike - and didn't hit thanks to my cloak (i guess).
Phase 2 i had a bit trouble, since my weapons weren't able to disable 4 shield layers and that damn heavy defense drone somehow always shot down my drone instead of the mines. The boarding was no help here, too. But after i realized i could distract the drone with constant laser fire, so again the drone did most of the work. Funny thing, neither in phase 1 or 2 the flagship was able to inflict any damage to me!
In Phase 3 i had to deal with constant eruptions, i was busy all the time in extinguishing the fire (since that ship has no door to empty rooms of O2). The eruption killed the last enemy crew member, then a gang of A.I. boarded and i decided to scram, jumped away to a (thankfully) empty beacon, killed them of, repaired and healed everything.
Phase 3 second try. No eruptions anymore but now the Flagship used its Internal Effector to disable my healing bay completely . Still i was able to take of the again-spawned holograms and damage the shield system enough with my rock boarding crew to finish him of.
Initial fight and further progress.

Nothing to complain about this time, i just wanted to tell this

[Sleeper Service]

Sweet! Diverse boss-fights like this are exactly what we are going for here. Glad you got a challenge and enjoyed it.

[The wise Sten]

Are you able to use the unused soundtracks or are those a no-no?

[Delphi]

Just an absurd idea I had: Would it be possible to create an augmentation with the slugs ability to sense crew? If yes this could be called a something like an "heat signature scanner", which could come on especially handy in nebula without slug crew. I guess there might even be some thematic event choices. But I fear this might not be possible, otherwise I´m almost sure it would already be in the Captains edition

[Sleeper Service]

I can only use music that was originally in the game or music that does not fall under commercial copy rights. If you refer to the bonus tracks of the original sound track by Ben Prunty here: Yeah, would be great to have them in the game, but they are not included in the original game files, so I can't use them.

Some unique music for the new sector types would be great, but it's pretty much impossible to find free music of quality that matches FTLs style. Id also would want it to have a separate explore and battle track, so it's really unlikely that I find some custom tracks for CE.

Just an absurd idea I had: Would it be possible to create an augmentation with the slugs ability to sense crew? If yes this could be called a something like an "heat signature scanner", which could come on especially handy in nebula without slug crew. I guess there might even be some thematic event choices. But I fear this might not be possible, otherwise I´m almost sure it would already be in the Captains edition

Nice idea. Unfortunately you guessed right, as this is currently impossible.

R&D fun fact: Bombs completely reveal rooms, so dummy bombs could be used to to "scan" the enemy ships. One concept involved using this for a kind of "scout drone" that does nothing but reveal rooms aboard the enemy ship. Bomb weapons on drones don't work well and it's not sure if continuous fire from such a drone would actually work as intended. Also the effect is almost useless if you have to spend a drone part on it, so the idea was scrapped.

[Estel]

About crazy ideas - I wonder, have you found use for fact, that negative ION damage *repairs* Zoltan's supershield, until it collapde completely? It could be used by special bombs (targetting your own shield subsystem) - with lore explanation about something creating micro FTL fluctuations during explosion (think self-destructing drones, just in micro scale, thus (partially) recharging Zoltan shield, which, as we know, can be only charged during FTL discharge

It creates very interesting tactical possibilities (sacrificing missiles for supershield buble), but OTOH, it might be a little "too specialized". Unless it would become a starting weapon in player ship addon for CE (for Zoltan B?).

/Estel

[The Captain]

Yay, Shiny, a Zoltan B, got a win! Though my offense wasn't the greatest - Ion Burst Mk II, Heavy Effector, Pernach Beam and Breach Missile (Mk II?), along with a Heavy Antiship drone, which later got swapped for the Heavy Mk II - it was enough to get through shields and kill ships, eventually. (I think the Heavy Effector was the only weapon I bought.) I had an encounter with radiation affecting my life support that was a very near thing, because it took so long to kill the enemy. Even though I had Engi Medbot Dispersal, once my crew started taking damage, it went pretty fast. But I killed the enemy just in time and survived, sending all of my Zoltans to the medbay just in case the rooms weren't replenished in time.

I had a teleporter, but didn't go boarding till the boss - my Rock and 2* Human pilot were my away team, the rest of my crew being Zoltan and Engi. Survived the artillery hits in the first round and survived my max cloak being disabled ( ) in the third round. 11HP at the end!

[ikeelyou300]

It would be nice if the special race related augments could be upgraded like the artillery on the Federation Cruiser. It would really make each faction's ships even more unique. The Zoltan Shield should be able to be upgraded to take more hits, the Rock ship should be upgraded to have a higher chance of tanking damage, etc... Maybe some like Mantis Pheromones could add extra benefits when upgraded. Like the pheromones could work on enemy ships or increase attack damage. Rock Armor could prevent fires from starting. So many things could make those faction specific ships more unique...

But unfortunately... All completely not possible to include in a MOD... I can dream though...
I hope Matthew and Justin monitor popular mods like this to get ideas and feedback. I would if I were a Dev. Is there like some other kind of topic where we can pray to those gods of FTL?

Probably dreaming about this because I recently checked out the Advanced Battle Systems mod. It's a shame it's sooo buggy UI, balance, and gameplay wise because it would be nice to be able to customize each ship more. Right now I usually max most of my systems by the end of the game so the ships are only unique for the beginning of the game. It would be nice to have a near instant cooldown teleporter on a Mantis ship in exchange for level 4 shields or higher weapons power at the expense of secondary systems. In fact each ship should have different costs for upgrading systems. A mantis ship's teleporter upgrades could be slightly cheaper, but it's weapons or shields could be more expensive. ANother way to encourage different playstyles and tactics.