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

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Delphi
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Delphi » Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:39 pm

Sleeper Service wrote:First of all: Keep in mind that the faction event options are only one way that set ships apart. Their respective engineering options also can proved unique play styles. This already features in the crystal ship.

The crystal ships are already very powerful. Giving them another perk alongside their retaliation does not seem necessary. Also the Teleporter Disruptor already has the same function. It would be interesting to implement this for the events that do not feature teleport based boarding, but these are few. Doing this with a chance based eventlist call would make it really complicated.

Any crystal perk should come with huge downsides. CE establishes at some point that Crystal Ships can change shape and function over time. One thing that was considered lately, is giving them the options to restructure parts of their hull into weaponry, basically trading damage for crystal gear.


Yes, I get what you mean. Perhaps the downside of the boarding protection could even be damage to your ship, since the vengeance is activated to the inside so to speak. It could even work in a way, that the damage is guaranteed, but killing the boarders is not. That would be quite a downside.

Sleeper Service wrote:That's not exactly how rules of war are supposed to work. :D Its hard to justify that your cruiser crew has a problem with piracy, but is okay with executing prisoners. The Fed cruiser allready has some blue options that focus on interaction with other Fed ships. These will still be extended and if the wingmen concept comes together nicely, will make very differentiated play style for that two ships possible.


To be honest, it was the only thing I could come up with that would work inside the system of CE and would be somewhat sensible. If this sounds too fishy, then just scrap(:D) the idea. But I´m very excited for the wingmen implementation.

Sleeper Service wrote:These are interesting, but the Engi are obviously on the receiving end of the current conflict. Auto ships make up a significant part of the Rebel fleet. If the Engi would be such technomancers, they probably have an easier time. Some of this stuff might happen for AI. The Engi ships also have very differentiated ways of specialization available via engineering.


In this case AI Ships might be the best option to do this. The poor Engis need some love :)

Sleeper Service wrote:It should work again since 1.1. Did you have sensors to check if the enemy system is affected?


Didn´t test it with 1.1, since I already installed 1.102, but I can tell you, that it is working with 1.102 again for me :)
Mr. Mister
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Mr. Mister » Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:51 pm

Sleepy, is the nebula exit beacon decision final? I mean, SUDDENLY PLASMA STORM wasn't that big of a deal (worth the benefit of events), so maybe this is just a temporary fix until you've completed a custom list of events for it that doesn't include plasma storms (or includes them from the get-go so they get marked in the map) and has some empty beacon-like events as well?
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Estel
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Estel » Mon Feb 17, 2014 6:07 pm

I think that Sleeper is rather concerned about crashes. Are you absolutely sure, that enabling events on nebula exit beacons and sudden increase of crashes was just a coincidence, and it doesn't come from that events? IIRC, all my crashes where when jumping from Nebula's exit beacons. Sudden plasma storm is no problem, but crashes definitely are.

On different note - Sleeper, which font you've used to create "Captain's edition" text (with glow) from menu background? Also, do you happen to have those ugly ( :D ) pixelated auto-satellites and rebel stations, that complemented rebel fleet on same background?

I would like to recreate nicely looking menu graphic from BPAA, while keeping CE's modification. I hope that CE text and fleet is just different layer (like CC note and authors of music), so it would just be matter of replacing background image, but apparently, it's integrated into graphic.

Cheers,
/Estel
Kartoffelr

Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Kartoffelr » Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:04 pm

The Light Crystal Mark I laser has the following bug: Hits are never animated in the room where they aim at, but most of the time outside the ship. Always a few cm below and to the right. But they do hit and injure the enemy crew correctly, as far as i can tell.

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Russian Rockman
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Russian Rockman » Mon Feb 17, 2014 8:54 pm

Delphi and Sleeper got me thinking about a couple things, lets see if I can remember... :roll:

Delphi said the Improved Internal AI should be able to talk to AI ships, but only for the Engi ship. Engi Med-Bot Dispersal, as well as Internal AI have become more useful with Engineering and Med-Bots was already a very useful augment for Blue options. However, this is still an interesting idea, although it shouldn't be unique to just the Engi. Perhaps this augment could be used in place of an AI crew member when blue options for them are added to talk to an Ai ship. It would also be neat if defeated AI ships could become the Internal AI augment upon surrender instead of a hologram sometimes, or maybe they could become smaller drones? Because not all AI ships are intelligent enough to retain a hologram form. ;)

Sleeper's idea of creating Crystal weapons out of the Crystal Vengeance augment is excellent and really cool. :) It would further make Crystal Vengeance more worth keeping. Crystal Vengeance could probably be given some pretty good blue options for engineering and, perhaps to explain it's necessity in these blue options, it could be renamed, right now it has kind of a silly name anyway. It would of course have to be balanced by the additional scrap cost (for creating non-crystal components ;) ) and the amount of hull damage it does to your ship. Another interesting possibility would be the ability to manufacture upgrades to your current Crystal weapons, producing MkII and MkIII variants. One engineering option could be to produce a random low tier crystal weapon with Crystal Vengeance and then you could upgrade the Crystal weapons you want to make a permanent part of your loadout while selling the other ones. This gives Crystal ships almost exclusive access to all the crystal weapons. I think the whole system could use some discussion and testing to be refined, but I think it could work really well.

One additional possibility is making some (or all?) crystal weapons use "missiles" even if they're not necessarily "missile" weapons. The lockdown weapons for example. You could manufacture "missiles"/crystal projectiles from your ship's own hull at any empty beacon (For cheap, but then this may not be balanced with other missile weapons, although I suppose the projectiles could technically be shot by other weapons too. Maybe the Crystal projectiles aren't all Crystal, they have some conventional missile parts too...) and this would further keep you damaged all the time. To offset all this damage I originally thought turning the Repair arm aug into a Regenerative Crystals aug would work, but you could just use the Crystal Vengeance itself to repair your ship at empty beacons as a trade off to taking all that damage similar to the hull repair kit. Perhaps having multiple Crystal Vengeance augs could also give you an even greater added benefit somehow by making repairs/manufacturing cheaper, but I'm not sure if that's possible... I think all this would make Crystal Vengeance way worth keeping. You would either have a tank ship that can easily repair itself at empty beacons or a ship that could pack a punch, but for a cost, or a balance. I thought about having a playstyle like this for the Crystal ship a long time ago, but wasn't sure how it would work, with Sleeper's idea I think it would work well.

Other things to consider:
---Creating weapons should never be economically beneficial, the price for repairing your hull and the scrap cost should be equal to the cost of what the weapon could be bought for at a store.
---Perhaps it could be possible to choose what kind of weapon you want to manufacture, but I think a randomly generated weapon would be better because it adds risk of getting something you don't want and/or if you get something that is good, but you didn't expect you may have to change your play style up a bit, making each run with the crystal ship different. (Hey, on that note maybe the game's start event could give you enough scrap to engineer a random Crystal weapon if you have Crystal Vengeance and the crystal ships could start with 1 less or no weapons that would be very interesting)
---Perhaps when creating a weapon you could choose what color you want it to be... :P :mrgreen:
---Creating or upgrading different weapons should maybe do a different range of damage to your ship. A warning for this even would be necessary because if it does 5-10 damage it would be possible to kill yourself when generating the weapon... :shock:


Blue options for other ships like the federation ship would be interesting, but it's kind of difficult to implement. I think if it could work the federation would have the reverse effect of all the other ships. When doing any deceitful or treacherous activities you would always get a negative outcome or not be allowed to do it. The same thing could go for the Zoltan ship. These ships instead would get benefits like the diplomacy options or the possibility of recruiting wingmen. :D But implementing negative outcomes for the slavery, piracy, and betrayal are difficult because, as someone proposed this would require the player to choose that blue option all the time and no one will choose a blue option that will be bad... There are only couple alternatives to the current system... The current system in CE works the best.
---One possibility is to make Rock, Slugs, and Mantis the only ones with the option of even choosing to force slaves to work for you, pirate innocent civilians, or betray someone after surrender in the first place.
The Downside: The non-race specific ships or someone playing with a specific ship and wanting to try these options would be unable to try those options at all. This also makes the rave specific ships way more buffed in that sense.
----Upon choosing the slavery, piracy, or betrayal options and choosing "See how your crew reacts" the player could be sent to a screen that generates only blue options, no Continue choice, forcing the player to choose the blue option for their ship.
The Downside: Every ship would need to have a way to distinguish the ship from others and get a blue option and all race specific ships would be forced to keep their unique augment. Otherwise the Continue... Option would be automatically generated and close the window without anything happening.
This would work only if we could distinguish each ship from others and currently there is no way to do that effectively. I thought about even giving each ship a unique system distinguishing the ship from others, but currently we can't add new systems.

This is kind of a shame because I think it is nice to have ships like the Kestral, which I think is more of a privateer ship with a diverse crew, have the option of choosing any action they want. This is kind of a good thing rather than bad. Other ships like the Engi Stealth Cruiser or main Engi ship will have Engi crew that choose the most "logical" rather than "moral" outcome. ;) But I wish that as a trade off other ships would have negative outcomes for certain things. For example, although Mantis ships can enslave people and pirate them breaking a surrender would always be prevented because of the Mantis' code off honor. Same with the Rock. Slavery could be against the a Slugs ideals like Sleeper said, or against the Rocks religion.

:idea: Perhaps instead the Federation ship give could give you occasional rewards for doing good things (carrot) rather than bad (stick), sort of the concept behind the Zoltan ship. Like maybe slaves if you free them could have a higher possibility of joining your crew, or civilians that you run into but don't pirate could occasionally help you out slightly, not sure how keeping surrenders would work thought I feel like the federation should not be able to break surrenders. The idea of making a surrendered Rebel ship also surrender one of their crew as collateral, taking Rebel POWs, is a good idea, though I'm not sure if you should benable to make them work for you, doesn't sound like a good idea to put them on weapons immediately... (Until the AE mind control system is implemented :D) Although you could ransom them perhaps. Maybe even taking prisoners could be a potential option for other ships to...

Also, on a somewhat related note, since the bad mutiny outcomes with an AP drone are so satisfying perhaps it could be used when forcing a slave to work aboard your ship when they, even if you are a Mantis ship, rebel against you. They don't want to go from one slaver to another! You could either have to fight a boarder or they could die from your AP drone. (Again, until you get a combination of an Ion stunner drone to stun them and Mind Control drone to brainwash them :D :D :D) :idea: I also think occasionally forcing slaves to work for you could cause them to try and buy their freedom. They could either give you scrap then or give you a quest marker for someone to visit who will pay you. This quest could either give you scrap or have you get attacked by the prisoners' friends. Piracy could do a similar thing.

And I think I this is the last thing... Whew. Sorry everyone. I've noticed that some people have been reporting problems with systems not resetting properly after being hacked or by a hazard etc? I was thinking that maybe certain hazards or events could cause this to happen on purpose. This would make them extremely annoying. Like what if the Radiation kept your Life Support limited to 1 or an anomaly kept you shields/drones limited or whatever it does for a while. Since these things all get reset at empty beacons anyway you would have to wait until then to re-vent the entire ship or reset the shield generator etc... Which could be explained in the event where it happened. This would also further make certain augments or system upgrades to avoid the effect in the first place even more useful.
Potential problems: you wouldn't want this to have a chance of happening during the last stand or you couldn't b reset you systems.
Also, If you ran into another event that affected the same system it would override the lasting affect.

That's it. Thanks for reading.

P.S. Sleeper, did you see my Boss blueprints, I posted the here instead of PMing them to you in case others wanted to take a look. It should be on one of the previous 5-3 pages.

Also, how are you planning to implement the wingmen idea? Changing the artillery of the Fed Cruiser to be a targeting system or making the targeting an actual weapon that comes with the cruiser, in this case the lack of a 4th weapon wouldn't be a huge loss because of the extra beam weapon. A weapon could also be "upgraded" t flag mor targets and fire more "shots" as you acquire more wingmen for your squadron.
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Sleeper Service
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Sleeper Service » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:20 am

Estel wrote:On different note - Sleeper, which font you've used to create "Captain's edition" text (with glow) from menu background? Also, do you happen to have those ugly ( :D ) pixelated auto-satellites and rebel stations, that complemented rebel fleet on same background?


I coppy pasted the letters from the other menu options (for ingame text, like the ui prompts, i use the C&C Red Alert Font). Sorry, lost the WIP of that image, whiyh Im kind of anoyed of myself. You could still try to cut that stuff out.
The Captain
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby The Captain » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:08 am

Russian Rockman wrote:...the Kestral, which I think is more of a privateer ship...

Huh? :? Where did you get that idea? It's an old Federation cruiser taken out of mothballs, refitted and updated for a desperate mission.

A few things re: grammar/usage from 1.1:

'Greeting* Captain, I am Ips-25f .... known as "The Curator".** Me and my AI brethren*** ....' - 1) "Greetings," and add comma after; 2) period inside quote; 3) My AI brethren and I.

'Your Mantis crew member describes in detail the taste of human blood. "Ah sorry Captain* ...." You'd rather not contemplate on** that.' 1) add commas after "Ah" and "sorry"; 2) think about.

"My master and I are very pleased* Captain." - add comma after "pleased."

Anecdote about Auto Lasers Mk I: I modded the Red Tail, adding another Mk I (so total of 3 and the Old Laser) and an Auto Reloader, though not increasing starting weapon control. I bought a Breach Bomb Mk II and Missile Drone Mk I and was given a Weapon Preigniter. Things went pretty smoothly early on, though I had a tough time taking out some ships later in the game, especially with the boss. Even though they shoot fast, with only three shots, misses really hurt. Prior to the Missile Drone, I was using another Antiship drone, which was another necessary shot. I managed to win, but finished with only 8 HP. I never encountered another Auto Reloader, so if I had not started with one, I have doubts about this being a viable build. I still would have wanted to acquire weapons with more shots.
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Estel
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Estel » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:46 am

Bug hunting continues!

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Tested version: FTL Captains Edition 1.102.ftl

1. Got a crash upon destroying slaver ship, meet after very first jump. Shouldn't matter, but before death, the slaver had 1 hull and got hit by 2-damage dealing rocket. I guess that game crashed at the moment of trying to call one of event outcomes. Maybe one of them is bugged? (Severity: Major)

2. Hacked weapon system isn't properly reset after fight with this enemy (it surrendered):
http://s8.postimg.org/y0a23099v/energy.jpg
(Severity: Minor)

3. There is this event in rock-controlled sectors, in asteroid field, where we meet mad rockmen talking about "Our co-ordinates led us here", where our captain wonders "how long have they been stuck here". When they surrender, it lack option for Zoltan'ish negotiations:
http://s12.postimg.org/81ocb8sor/co_ordinates_led_us_here.jpg
(Severity: Minor)
---

Out of curiosity, as you have confirmed changing the moment, when enemy decides to surrender (hull level) - was it changed globally, or only for slug ships, like, people must be more desperate to try bargaining with slugs?

I'm asking, as playing other ships (Zoltan, especially), people tend to surrender to me at the beginning of fight, record after just 1 hull damage (to battle station, that had shitload of hull). Maybe it was just RNG, but it seemed to me that Slugs have it unusually late (which feels OK, as it adds to the challenge of forcing surrenders and killing crew afterwards, without destroying ship), while for Zoltan's, everyone wanna stop fight ASAP (which made some encounters even too easy).

/Estel
Russian Rockman
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby Russian Rockman » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:45 am

The Captain wrote:
Russian Rockman wrote:...the Kestral, which I think is more of a privateer ship...

Huh? :? Where did you get that idea? It's an old Federation cruiser taken out of mothballs, refitted and updated for a desperate mission.


Well I think that was the wrong usage of the word. Privateer usually means pirate, what I meant was more of a freelance ship. Even in the Captain's Edition events you don't necessarily answer to Federation command, (in fact I think they even call you a free asset) but then when you get to the Last Stand its like nobody knows who you are. Unless you're playing as the Federation CIA, which forgot to tell them about you, its strange they have no knowledge of your mission. The Kestral is the main "canon" ship, if you will, FTL is about the Kestral. The Kestral is also pretty balanced ship so you can usually use it for a lot of different play styles which is why its OK to not have Blue options as the Kestral. That's what I meant, sorry.

The Red-Tail on the other hand is painted like a Rebel ship which makes me think its totally a Han Solo smuggler ship. :D I meant the Kestral was kind of like that too, in a way. A freelance ship. Since its an old obsolete Federation cruiser it could have been acquired by anyone. Its not being used by the Federation anymore. Anyway, that's my opinion.

I like what you did with the Red-Tail by the way. I like that it uses Auto-Lasers mainly, but they totally can't be relied on by themselves.

Also, since The Captain was talking about surrenders it got me thinking maybe the Federation Cruiser could be unable to surrender? I mean its not a huge loss no one could until recently, but if you're commanding a small squadron of ships you'll need to be a strong leader so maybe you can't surrender? I don't know just throwing ideas out there again trying to make things more unique... :roll:
The Captain
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.102

Postby The Captain » Tue Feb 18, 2014 7:01 am

Russian Rockman wrote:Well I think that was the wrong usage of the word. Privateer usually means pirate, what I meant was more of a freelance ship. Even in the Captain's Edition events you don't necessarily answer to Federation command, (in fact I think they even call you a free asset) but then when you get to the Last Stand its like nobody knows who you are. Unless you're playing as the Federation CIA, which forgot to tell them about you, its strange they have no knowledge of your mission. The Kestral is the main "canon" ship, if you will, FTL is about the Kestral. The Kestral is also pretty balanced ship so you can usually use it for a lot of different play styles which is why its OK to not have Blue options as the Kestral. That's what I meant, sorry.

The Red-Tail on the other hand is painted like a Rebel ship which makes me think its totally a Han Solo smuggler ship. :D I meant the Kestral was kind of like that too, in a way. A freelance ship. Since its an old obsolete Federation cruiser it could have been acquired by anyone. Its not being used by the Federation anymore. Anyway, that's my opinion.

Actually a privateer was a private ship given letters of marque by a government authorizing them to attack foreign vessels during wartime. Freelancer isn't the right term either, because it's a Federation ship, not a mercenary. Free asset is different - you're not attached to any Federation fleet (or maybe you're attached to a fleet at the last Federation base, which would be unusual for any Feds you encounter along the way), but you do answer to the Federation. I imagine other Feds don't know about you, because the Federation is collapsing, and communications are probable unreliable. At least the admiral who issues your orders thinks so, and you have to deliver the secret information in person. [Edit]Also, if you're on a top secret mission, other Fed forces wouldn't necessarily know about it anyway.[/edit] And I don't think that an obsolete cruiser could necessarily be acquired by anyone. Even if the Feds aren't using it, it's still a cruiser, a major warship. Rebels might put captured ones into use, but I would think civilians would only get access to something small, like a scout ship. Or maybe noncombat ships like a transport.

I like what you did with the Red-Tail by the way. I like that it uses Auto-Lasers mainly, but they totally can't be relied on by themselves....

It was overpowered early: first volley was two AL1s, then second volley added the Old Laser. And with manned weapons and the Auto Reloader, this was all before most enemies could get off a first shot. Ultimately, though, it's two power for one shot, and I often wished for more shots.

[Edit]Another crash, though this may be my fault. I had started a game in the previous version, though I hadn't made any jumps, patched to 1.102, then played the first sector. Jumping to second sector Midway Beta, and crash to desktop.