mothballs wrote:That's my probably very unpopular 2 scrap... if it seems like a lot, it's cuz I had a lot on my mind. Really wanted to enjoy this mod, and really wanted to explain (to myself as much as others) why I seem not to be able to.
And that's great! Thank you for taking the time, I do appreciate your feedback. Also I don't think your opinion is unpopular or is to "rated" in any way. There are plenty of people that don't get much out of CE and that's totally fine! I don't claim that the mod is perfect or "the true way FTL should be" or anything like that. FTL vanilla is pretty brilliant by itself and CE definitely is flaws. However there seem to be plenty of people that still get a lot out of it, so I generally assume that my design choices can't be that far of. R4V3 already summarized pretty well what I would have said, but I can address some points in detailed if you want:
Artamba wrote:Some weapons I feel make little sense or are simply there for the sake of variety and 'choice', like the Hull Smasher Laser 1 has the same charging time and power-cost as the Heavy Laser 1, but other than a little more breach chance (I think) it is all around a directly worse option. I am not sure if the mark was missed when the idea around a large range of weapons that are all a bit similar - I have not played more than 10 hours of it, though I imagine that there would be a lot of limitations upon creating a vastly different kind of weapon.
Yep, creating broader choice was the intention. I do agree that some weapon can appear pretty useless. Sometimes I literally put stuff in because I thought its cool and that didn't always realy work out well. Who would ever actually buy a CE swarm missile launcher, right? But then again who would actually buy a missile weapons in vanilla to being with? Like R4VE said, this is a matter of taking things for granted. My weapon designs aren't perfect, but I'd say my standards are pretty similar to the vanilla game. Humans and Slugs, BL1 and BL2, Hermes and Pegasus, BLIII and Flak II - those things are all pretty much straight upgrades to another. Should the first be removed from the game? Rhetorical question.
I mean when you get to a vanilla store and find a BL1 than you could argue that this is just there for the sake of variety, considering that a BL2 would be straight up better, I guess. But my general assumption that this game is about making due with what you get, about adapting to rapidly or slowly changing circumstances and challenges. Getting a CE Hull I is ultimately just a situation that you have to make the best of. It is a circumstance that you are supposed to take for granted and the mod doesn't expect you to take more bad stuff for granted than vanilla, just different stuff. The existence of better weapons doesn't matter.
Another thing is that balance doesn't automatically mean total symmetry. There has to bad stuff for the good to shine. What you dind't mentioned or might not have realized is that CE also adds weapon categories that work vastly different from vanilla (Light Lasers, Phase Ions...). It also added weapons that are pretty good compared to same tier counterparts. (Burst Scatter I, Ion Burst III, Maul, Flail, Scatter Flak, Ifrit...)
mothballs wrote:The player should be in absolute control of himself
As others have pointed out, that is debatable to begin with. But ultimately CE does really change how much control you have over your crew. I see little difference between enemy weapon fire randomly starting causing a breach compared to the event randomly causing a breach. Both times this creates a changing environment you are expected to adapt to.
mothballs wrote:Extend this further to certain combat augs, especially Targeting Jammer. The jammer itself seems to jam more often than it works
Fail chance seems to be 30% right now. Might be lowered. Preventing the enemy from using one of its weapons is a pretty bit perk though in my opinion, you can't take that for granted. Few ships start with an aug that is worth keeping for the entire game in vanilla, I'd say the jammer alongside the Ion Filed potentially is.
mothballs wrote:Negative outcomes in blue choices and shop nodes. CE is ten times more fickle and openly hostile to the player than the base game already. All that danger and uncertainty needs a foil - something, somewhere, sometimes in the game that is unambiguously good for the player. In the base game that's always been blue choices and shop nodes.
Well in CE its not. Blue options in vanilla where not always in your favour to begin with. Hostile encounters at shops still follow predictable patterns in CE though. So does fail chance for drone mining, although it might not be obvious at first. CE also gives you a lot for free by the way. Essentially every empty beacon is an additional chance for a free advantage in CE.
mothballs wrote:There is a lot of pointless fiddling-around in written events and game descriptions that conveys a sense of meddling ineptitude, frankly. For instance, I encountered a slaver event where "drawing straws" was changed to "drawing cards." Nothing else about the event seemed to have changed.
That particular change was made by one of my editors and I left it in mostly out of respect. However I'm pretty sure I never changed any vanilla event texts without reason. Feel free to give further examples. Changes to vanilla augment and equipment names always have had reasons. Those augments lore-nature and description was changed because they have certain new uses in events throughout CE, making them ultimately more useful.
mothballs wrote:I think even beyond the emergent RPS issues with all the new ships and weaponry, the starting zone has gotten buffed across the board? All I know is in vanilla or smPK, I can at least survive zone 1 in Normal mode nine times out of ten
It hasn't buffed other than by adding more enemy variants and guns to deal with, alongside some events added to the pool. But CE is neither vanilla, nor the smPK and you aren't entitled to success just because you are good in vanilla or other mods. I know plenty of people who can consistently beat it though, chances are you need more experience.
mothballs wrote:Well, summing all the above up, my feelings about the mod are that it is deeply, gleefully spiteful, and truly delights in killing off the player in a way I don't even think anyone contributing to the mod really designed for. I hope I'm not wrong on that account. It's an emergent feature of jamming so much shiny new functionality into one mod - "how about this? why not these? how about those? oh, and this too, that'll be great! put all that in!" - that affords the game a zillion new ways to shred the player into tiny pieces, without giving the player much more in the way of defensive options to counter them. I suspect this becomes less so the case in the later game, when the usual zero-damage strategies of weapon pre-ignition or stealth+hacking are as viable as ever. But I've played the mod five or six hours now (normal) and not yet gotten past zone 3. It would have been fun if my losses were comprehensible to me, but as described above, for the most part they weren't. It was just a fickle universe slapping me around for the hell of it.
Well, to be honest I'd say six hours is nothing, considering how long some people play vanilla FTL till they get successful. And as mentioned in the OP, the mod is designed to be harsh. But as others have pointed out it isn't unbeatable and you can get consistently successful with enough experience, just like in vanilla FTL. Of course I didn't make it that harsh to offend you or be spiteful towards a player. I played FTL, started to beat it, thought it would be cool to add additional level of challenges for players like me and before I knew it I had this 20k user mod at hand. There seems to be a lot of players enjoying the challenge and that is good enough for me for now. But I'm open for suggestions on how to improve. Should the targeting jammer always work? What weapons would you cut from the mod? Should combat fluff events be removed or should they always be positive? Should the mod give you more free stuff? Should the first sector be easier? How? Discuss!