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

[Mr. Mister]

Mmm, all the burst weapons would be so much more versatile if AE could implement individual targeting for each salvo's shot. For instance, light anti-crew burst lasers could be used as downgraded breach clusterbombs.

[Estel]

It could solve the long balance problem with the Mantis B.

I really don't get what everyone's problem is with the Mantis B. You get a heck of a ton of scrap from boarding and if you come across an AI ship you can just run away. AI ships generally appear in nebulas so I just avoid nebulas like the plague and everything's fine.

This. Or do it like me - visit every nebula in the galaxy and just use teleport 2 to breach lvl 1 engines (or piloting) of auto-satellites, and teleport my mantises back before they suffocate. If they managed to repair, rinse and repeat. I don't get what problems people have with this. Adapt!

Mmm, all the burst weapons would be so much more versatile if AE could implement individual targeting for each salvo's shot. For instance, light anti-crew burst lasers could be used as downgraded breach clusterbombs.

Don't quote me on this, but wasn't it working the way, that if you pause between each shot from the burst, and choose different target, next projectile flies to new target? Cumbersome to use, but works. Or worked, as I haven't tried that for ages - maybe it was before n patch? I'll test it as soon as i get my hands on some burst.

Cheers,
/Estel

[Mr. Mister]

Clearly you haven't had your teleporter effectored, bombed or sawrm-missiled while doing so.

[Estel]

Clearly you haven't had your teleporter effectored, bombed or sawrm-missiled while doing so.

Same apply for any other ship with any other weapon - you could have your weapons system hacked, bombed, missiles, torn to pieces and disintegrated

Sadly, only remedy to this would be invincible ships, but for that, there are some OP ships in other sections - no need to mess with it in CE

/Estel

[Kartoffelr]

This. Or do it like me - visit every nebula in the galaxy and just use teleport 2 to breach lvl 1 engines (or piloting) of auto-satellites, and teleport my mantises back before they suffocate. If they managed to repair, rinse and repeat. I don't get what problems people have with this. Adapt!

This is one of the first things people learn when using this ship

[Estel]

I just had quite decent run with Slug ship. As a result, here is a list of encountered bugs/problems:

Tested version: FTL Captains Edition 1.099.ftl
1. Is it intentional, that treacherous slugs don't accept slavery? I can imagine that this may be part of characterizing factions (rocks - piracy only, mantises - piracy and slavery, slugs - piracy and breaking truces), but such caring it sounded quite strange for our slimy pals. (Severity: Medium or "It's a feature")

2. No matter if point #1 is a bug or not, you can't break truce, after accepting slave as tribute. Letting those slaving bastards go freely, made me a sad snail's captain.

Here is list of other situations, where breaking truces wasn't possible, despite that it should:
a) After accepting trading cargo as surrender tribute from "pirated" merchant.
b) After fight with pirate trap-shop and accepting their surrender, there isn't option to break truce and finish them. Well, currently, due to bug #3 the truce is automatically broken no matter which ship we command (after accepting surrender, fights continue), but I guess it isn't how it meant to be.
(Severity: Medium)

3. Shop-trap in pirate sector - as someone reported earlier - is a little broken, now. After climatic event text - and catching a glimpse of enemy ship on "Target" section of screen, already - ship window *still* opens, with normal shop content (contrary to what event text says, about useless derelict parts). Then, after closing shop window, we can fight pirate. His surrender is broken as per part b) of bug #2. (Severity: Major)

4.Have you changed anything about when enemy surrenders, or was it always at 2 hull left, and I just haven't noticed it before Slug surrender-forcing run?

BTW, I've noticed that you've introduced small chance, that breaking truce won't be possible (for various event-text reasons). Frankly, after looong fight, during which I've been very carefully planning and executing tactic to force surrender (then accepting and finishing them off), it felt quite penalizing. Still, if chances for it happening are relatively small (it seemed so during my run), it's OK - especially, that flavor texts are nice and it *almost* never felt out of place.

*Almost*, because there was one ridiculous situation, when I got attacked (just after jumping) by pirate blackmarket in pirate sector (well, they wanted me to pay them for leaving, to be precise). I've forced their surrender and tired to break truce, but I wasn't able to, because something along the lines of "by the time they've offload tribute, some ships of local authorities showed up". "Local authorities" in pirate-filled sector came to help pirate battle-station and prevented me from blowing it up, WTF? I guess it's generic text for failing to break truce with stations, but in case of pirate/unlicensed ones, it sounded very off and was quite immersion/breaking, IMO. (Severity: Minor)

5. Scanner done states that it cost 20 scrap (sounds right for thing with such limited functionality), but it deducts 30 scrap from our total. Haven't checked what happen if we choose it when having less than 30 scrap (or if it's even possible to do so, then). (Severity: Minor)

6. Dual laser Mark II is downgrade from Mark I. They do same damage and have same characteristics (unless description lies), the only difference is that Mark II shots every 8 seconds (as opposed to Mark I's 10 seconds) and it cost *two* energy bars instead of one. To be real upgrade, Mark II it should either cost still 1 bar (it would be, then, negligible upgrade of 8 sec vs 10 sec), or, at worst case, their names and prices should get swapped. That is, Mark II becoming Mark I and vice-versa - Mark I is plain better for all intents and purposes. (Severity: Minor)

7. There is this empty-beacon event, where you meet a small fleet of engi ships, threatening us because "piracy have negative impact on social" something, and "Can't be permitted". I think there should be option to, well, pirate them

I'm just thinking, hoever - last time, I've also reported empty-beacon type situation (engi ships that refuses hail), and changelog claims that you've introduced pirating option there. I'm wondering, if doing this won't result in making *less* empty beacons in galaxy, hindering player's possibility to socialize/engineer/etc? Or you have done something to keep chances for encountering empty beacons intact? (Severity: Minor)

Cheers,
/Estel

[Mr. Mister]

Estel has a point: while it might be a paint in the ass for you to implement (given that you would hafve to make their own event list), it would make sense for those external influences to vary between sector types.

Hell, pirate sectors could maybe speciallize in surrenders: put a chance of you accepting (and adhering to) an enemy surrender having a surprise enemy crew member asking if he could join your team, as he's had it with those crustlubbers.

[Sleeper Service]

1. Is it intentional, that treacherous slugs don't accept slavery? I can imagine that this may be part of characterizing factions (rocks - piracy only, mantises - piracy and slavery, slugs - piracy and breaking truces), but such caring it sounded quite strange for our slimy pals. (Severity: Medium or "It's a feature")

There is nothing in the lore indicating that Slugs are directly into slavery. Unless you acknowledge the oppression that capitalism subjects people to, which they are obviously very much into. To me, it feels like "Slug culture"(if something like that that actually could be defined, they are all induviduals, you know? ) would rather shackle people in contracts and loan pay than in, well, actual shackles.

Also its part of the balance.

2. No matter if point #1 is a bug or not, you can't break truce, after accepting slave as tribute. Letting those slaving bastards go freely, made me a sad snail's captain.

Here is list of other situations, where breaking truces wasn't possible, despite that it should:
a) After accepting trading cargo as surrender tribute from "pirated" merchant.
b) After fight with pirate trap-shop and accepting their surrender, there isn't option to break truce and finish them. Well, currently, due to bug #3 the truce is automatically broken no matter which ship we command (after accepting surrender, fights continue), but I guess it isn't how it meant to be.
(Severity: Medium)

This is to provide some kind of narrative coherency and also for balance reasons. Again there are plenty of moments in the game when not all options you could think of are available. CE does no try to give you all options you could think of.

3. Shop-trap in pirate sector - as someone reported earlier - is a little broken, now. After climatic event text - and catching a glimpse of enemy ship on "Target" section of screen, already - ship window *still* opens, with normal shop content (contrary to what event text says, about useless derelict parts). Then, after closing shop window, we can fight pirate. His surrender is broken as per part b) of bug #2. (Severity: Major)

Well right, that ship should not be there from the start. Apart from that the event kind of explains that you are already in the store, at which you are informed about the ship and asked to return to your command. So you get a chance to look at the store and then fight the ship. The event obviously does not transport that well yet. This is kind of as close as we will get to a real shop ambush though. At last if you want to have the shop tag on the map, that requires the shop being spawned in the first event lvl as far as I remember.

4.Have you changed anything about when enemy surrenders, or was it always at 2 hull left, and I just haven't noticed it before Slug surrender-forcing run?

BTW, I've noticed that you've introduced small chance, that breaking truce won't be possible (for various event-text reasons). Frankly, after looong fight, during which I've been very carefully planning and executing tactic to force surrender (then accepting and finishing them off), it felt quite penalizing. Still, if chances for it happening are relatively small (it seemed so during my run), it's OK - especially, that flavor texts are nice and it *almost* never felt out of place.

Wow, you noticed that? Yeah, it's possible for surrender to be called with one hull less now. The chance of breaking truce being impossible is indeed small. Pirate authorities will be disposed of.

6. Dual laser Mark II is downgrade from Mark I. They do same damage and have same characteristics (unless description lies), the only difference is that Mark II shots every 8 seconds (as opposed to Mark I's 10 seconds) and it cost *two* energy bars instead of one. To be real upgrade, Mark II it should either cost still 1 bar (it would be, then, negligible upgrade of 8 sec vs 10 sec), or, at worst case, their names and prices should get swapped. That is, Mark II becoming Mark I and vice-versa - Mark I is plain better for all intents and purposes. (Severity: Minor)

Yep, severity: minor. Weapon marks seem often little determined by power effectiveness. Even Heavy II is less power efficient than it's MK I. (Maybe vanilla BL 3 should become BL 2 then...) Dual Lasers Mark I is not available to buy anyway and MK II is still as good as BL2 by DPS per power ratio. So IMO it deserves to be a MK II.

7. There is this empty-beacon event, where you meet a small fleet of engi ships, threatening us because "piracy have negative impact on social" something, and "Can't be permitted". I think there should be option to, well, pirate them

I'm just thinking, hoever - last time, I've also reported empty-beacon type situation (engi ships that refuses hail), and changelog claims that you've introduced pirating option there. I'm wondering, if doing this won't result in making *less* empty beacons in galaxy, hindering player's possibility to socialize/engineer/etc? Or you have done something to keep chances for encountering empty beacons intact? (Severity: Minor)

These are text spawned drawn from the empty beacon textlist. I merely transferred them to the textlist for transport ships. Does not effect overall occurrence of empty beacons, but slightly decreases the variety of available texts for empty beacons.

This kind of leads to the question if the civilian transport encounters maybe should count as empty beacons as well...

[ikeelyou300]

I'm glad you made it so that Slugs can't enslave people without consequence. Slugs are the most human like creatures in my opinion. But it seems that they are all "slimey" whereas people have diverse views so not everyone would agree with your actions. Besides balance reasons it just makes sense. Slugs don't seem to care about things like the interstellar rules of engagement treaty. They live in their nebulas isolated from everyone else.

[Estel]

There is nothing in the lore indicating that Slugs are directly into slavery. Unless you acknowledge the oppression that capitalism subjects people to, which they are obviously very much into. To me, it feels like "Slug culture"(if something like that that actually could be defined, they are all induviduals, you know? ) would rather shackle people in contracts and loan pay than in, well, actual shackles.

Also its part of the balance.

I'm glad you made it so that Slugs can't enslave people without consequence. Slugs are the most human like creatures in my opinion. But it seems that they are all "slimey" whereas people have diverse views so not everyone would agree with your actions. Besides balance reasons it just makes sense. Slugs don't seem to care about things like the interstellar rules of engagement treaty. They live in their nebulas isolated from everyone else.

Not that my opinion matters much but agreed and agreed (minus the "most human" parts, but it's subjective - for me, Slugs are quite an extreme, with rocks and zoltans presenting 2 opposite aspects of human nature). For some reason, I was very surprised by that (first thought: bug), but the more time passes, the more appropriate it seems. I really like how characterized factions become.

2. No matter if point #1 is a bug or not, you can't break truce, after accepting slave as tribute. Letting those slaving bastards go freely, made me a sad snail's captain.

This is to provide some kind of narrative coherency and also for balance reasons. Again there are plenty of moments in the game when not all options you could think of are available. CE does no try to give you all options you could think of.

Frankly, I fail to see the point here. Whats is coherent, when I can accept surrender and goods from almost everyone, but can't attack slaver after freeing/putting to work on my ship a slave that their offer as surrender? I can perfectly assume, that all factions (maybe except zoltans) would be quite happy to break truce here, board and kill all slavers on their ship (possibly freeing whole transport), or - a little less - with breaking them to pieces and ending slaving proceeder. Slavers seems to be lowest in the moral pyramid of FTL society, it seems from the lore.

Now, I understand that this can't happen for all factions due to balance reasons. But, slugs, that actually have "breaking truces" as a "perk", should be perfectly able to do so, IMO. Getting two crew members from single event would be *very* rare anyway, and I - again - fail to see where it would break the balance. Especially, considering how much work forcing surrenders take, and how random result is. Balance aside, it would, for sure, feel more coherent re narration (and less confusing for Slug captains, especially ones doing run for the first time ).

Well right, that ship should not be there from the start. Apart from that the event kind of explains that you are already in the store, at which you are informed about the ship and asked to return to your command. So you get a chance to look at the store and then fight the ship. The event obviously does not transport that well yet. This is kind of as close as we will get to a real shop ambush though. At last if you want to have the shop tag on the map, that requires the shop being spawned in the first event lvl as far as I remember.

I think I got misunderstood here - enemy's ship wasn't visible from the start, it spawned just after/during (can't say for sure) event text, when first mate tell us about detecting pirate ship and asking us to move our ass into position - that's why I've said that we "caught a glimpse" of it |(just when the store was about to open). So, everything is fine here. Unless you meant it to appear after we close store, but it may be hard to achieve and IMO not worth bothering.

About the rest, fair enough, it sounds logical. What was misleading, was that event text suggested that things in this shop are totally useless, so I assumed I won't get shop event - this one might need a little tweaking for narrative coherency (i.e., we may "get impression, that sellers are suspiciously apathetic, it almost feel like they're not interested in selling their goods", or something like that, instead).

Now, what *is* definitely broken - for all factions - is that after pirate surrender ("you shouldn't be fighting in protected trade space", etc) and transfer goods, fight *doesn't* stop and we may finish him off. Slugs or not Slugs. Which lead to the point that - if you fix it (and if fix is possible at all) it may need to implement breaking truce for slugs, too, or it will become another event where slugs treacherous coherency is broken

Wow, you noticed that? Yeah, it's possible for surrender to be called with one hull less now. The chance of breaking truce being impossible is indeed small. Pirate authorities will be disposed of.

Yea, and I like it. Now, it really requires *very* careful planning, if one is aiming for most profitable (most of the times) scenario of forcing surrender + killing crew. It is risky for boarders, as ship may get torn apart by sneaky fires. It require constant awareness of what our guns are marked at, and exactly what enemy crew is doing. 2/3 of times, I ended such fights with exactly 1 hull for enemy ship, so my boarding party really lived "on the edge". So, summing up all those things, one need to be really at 100% combat awareness during whole fight, so even such details as reduced surrendero-hull (;) ) are grasped instantly

Summing it up, great work on making forcing surrender-breaking truces so intense, hard, and rewarding now. It really makes every fight as NON monotonous as it gets (not that fights in CE are monotonous otherwise , but you know what I mean). I think Slug ships will be my favorite, for a while. Even, despite that my awesome run was ended by battleship at his last three hull points

These are text spawned drawn from the empty beacon textlist. I merely transferred them to the textlist for transport ships. Does not effect overall occurrence of empty beacons, but slightly decreases the variety of available texts for empty beacons.

This kind of leads to the question if the civilian transport encounters maybe should count as empty beacons as well...

If civilian transport encounters may be empty beacons *and* pirating possibility at the same time, why not. But, it may hit the evasive border of "FTL isn't going to present you with every imaginable choice at every situation". I think that empty beacons may as well remain empty, and civilians as "wasted" or "to be pirated", depending on faction we're playing. Such things as putting engis/traders into "I'll pirate you" basket just adds to narrative coherency, thats why I'm reporting even such minor things

Unless it's really not much work and doesn't pose any problems - because, indeed, when playing non-pirating faction, meeting those civilians is quite sad ("Hell, I'm not gonna risk my crew members to pirate some stinkin' trader, but I would very much like to, as sucker just prevented me from producing drone parts, and I'm already on the last one!").

Cheers,
/Estel