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

[meklozz]

Adaptive effector will stack with itself when fully manned.

I generally look at most of the CE stuff as a sort of theme-building. Not everything needs a purpose other than making the world feel more diverse. I think I agree with the light laser thing, though, as there are an awful lot of them.

I think it was also said somewhere that CE ships aren't really built for balance as much as to showcase the new stuff. I guess that mean that playing with the vanilla patch is still somewhat recommended.

[ledtim]

Adaptive effector will stack by itself fully charged, but only with a fully trained guy manning the weapons, and if it doesn't miss. That's really bad for a 3 power requirement weapon.

That's really horrible for a chain weapon that's fully warmed up. It has the second worst DPS/power among all ion weapons in CE AFTER it's fully warmed up. Only thing worse in DPS/power is chain ion that's not warmed up.

It's so horrible that I keep feeling like I'm missing soemthing in the game's .xml and I'm going to check the thread later and look stupid.

[meklozz]

Hey, I didn't say it was great, but the ability to stack does matter, especially for an ion that bypasses shields (I'm thinking of the right weapon, right?).

[Sleeper Service]

Thanks for the constructive comments, I'll take this into account for the next update. Stuff under consideration now:

Adaptive Effector
So CE's ion families have some of everything right now. Burs Ions are decent, effectors and phase Ions have special uses and ion flaks are garbage. Since the effector family misses a decent high tier member I'd consider lowering adaptive effectors charge time to 14. I wouldn't touch its charge time since two effectors already reside at two power.

Hadur Mine
I'm more or less comfortable with this one being complete garbage, mostly because I don't like giving enemies different stats for their guns. The thing is that hardur is a considerable thread in enemy hands, giving it faster charge or lower power usage will only reinforce that, the later will even cause it to appear more often in enemy hands. One thing that could be considered is having the player variant use only one power, but again, I'm not a big fan of having player and enemy operated on too different rule sets.

Defense Turret Mark I
Agreed, that will be cheaper.

Swarm Missile Drone
Agreed, should be slightly faster.

Kestrel C
I consider doubling the Baton and Bo Beams system damage and removing their crew damage altogether while also giving them longer stuns. Overall I'm ok with Ketrel c being garbage though. The baton buff would make the ship a little better at suppressing enemies. As mentioned, the load-outs are to some extend designed as a showcase, so suggestions in changes should include CE weapons exclusively. I also tried to remain close to the original loadouts whenever possible. I agree that the playing the ship can seem really stale, but I found myself having some fun with it regardless, as every fight kind of needs your full attention. But yeah, combat should probably go faster for that ship.

Crew Killing Weapons
So I don't try to force play-styles on anyone here, but CE does kind of introduce this whole "remote crew killing" and "covering fire for boarders" as a new play style. It is up to you whether you want to roll with that, however I wouldn't agree that typical runs don't want or need these builds. Crew kill builds are a straight upgrade from normal ship destroyers and since boarding became quite a bit harder in the mod they kind of fill or support that niche. But I agree that the light scatter series is very similar to the light burst family. I guess the light scatter series could be mothballed, but that basically depraves players of ways to gain more scrap. *shrug* I think a big part of this matter is whether player can accept crew killing builds to be a bigger part of the game than before. Personally I find them quite interesting to play.

[ledtim]

Hadur Mine:
I don't understand, is Hadur a particularly common weapon in enemy ship loadouts? Genuinely asking, I'm not familiar with how ships are generated in the game.

I mean, I would rather face an enemy with a hadur mine then a hull missile or a titan missile (both 2 power missile weapons strictly superior to hadur mine), but I don't want hull missile or titan missile to be nerfed to be as bad as hadur mine, so I don't understand why hadur mine has to stay bad as it is because the enemy uses it.

Crew killing weapons:
Yeah, perhaps I haven't given that play method enough of a chance, other than few runs with Slug A.

I guess it wouldn't be bad for light laser to be fairly common for players who want to have easy access to the play style, but it's very annoying to visit a shop and see two or more slots taken by anti-crew weapons you don't currently need.

In my opinion, light auto laser, light laser I-II, and light scatter I-II all blend together, more or less the same thing with slight stat differences, with same power requirement and near identical DPS. Same with light artillery, light laser III, and light scatter III.

If you asked me, I would make each light laser item more common, but reduce the number of redundant types.

Something like:
1 power:
1 rarity common light laser that's same as current light laser II. This would be the common everyday basic multishot light laser.

2 power: Have these items at 1-2 rarity each.
Keep the Light artillery laser.
Create a new light scatter laser that's 2 powers that's similar to current light scatter laser III, except it pierces only 1 shield instead of 2 and has a lower cooldown. This is to differentiate between the remaining 2 power light laser weapons, artillery laser with high shield pierce, the light scatter laser with higher DPS but lower shield pierce.
[edit: oops, I originally wrote light laser III while writing the post, but changed it to light scatter laser III before posting, and forgot to change the rest of the text properly. Light scatter laser III already pierces only 1 shield. I do think it needs a bit lower cooldown then it currently has, because it's just worse than light artillery in most situations though they have same rarity and cost]

3 power:
Keep the light chain vulcan.

So this would get rid of the most redundant light lasers, and rarities would be lowered so they would be still fairly accessible, but there would be less situations when shops have multiple of slightly different but functionally same light lasers, and each light laser type has a unique identity.

[stylesrj]

Hey if we're going to be ripping on certain ships here, what's the story with the Stealth B?
The Naginata Beam is basically a longer Halberd but much worse in charge time and actual damage since it hasn't got a shield busting weapon like the Zoltan A has.
This means after holding out for 25 seconds and hoping Weapons doesn't get hit, you have to hit the enemy ship again to finish it off! (And don't say that you hit shields first then sweep the rest. Sometimes the enemy has 3HP shields in Sector 1)

And the 4-missile rack... works only when used against you. Takes forever to charge up and by the time you've used it to disable the enemy's shields and swapped back to the Naginata, the enemy's fixed them up and you've wasted a missile.

If I had to fly the Stealth B, I'd have to do it with the Vanilla loadout because the Glaive Beam is enough risk/reward. The CE loadout means greater chances for the RNG to screw you over.

Also, why are Mine Drones still here?

[stylesrj]

Because I want to rip on the Stealth B some more, here's video evidence of why the ship is both good and bad.

https://youtu.be/emy2GOTKFVg

I guess I can see the appeal but the fact it requires so many shots fired to get a kill makes it rather frustrating early on until you get Shields or Hacking. And it means by Sector 2 you better have a decent shield-piercing gun (I actually had to use missiles!)

[Captain Trek]

I find the CE Kestral C is actually pretty strong. If it weren't for the fact that dying of old age is a very real possibility while you're flying it, it'd be a straight up 7/10 ship for me (as it is I rate it at 6/10). I wouldn't recommend upping the system damage, because in my experience from A Strange New Galaxy, 2 system damage, 0 hull damage beams are the single most overpowered thing in the world. As it is, the fact that it takes 5-evar might very well be the only thing balancing it, because with enough patience the Baton Beam can de-crew every sector 1 and 2 enemy ship for better rewards. Its only real weaknesses are suns and enemies you don't manage to de-weapon quickly, as the long-running battles typical of the CE Kestral C can really cause incoming damage to mount up.

I wholeheartedly agree that the CE Stealth B is a pile of pigeon poo, however...

You know, I should probably post my ratings for the entire roster of CE ships. I've had them for months and never presented them because I never actually wound up posting here after signing up...

[Estel]

AIUI, some low-tier mine launchers are more of a event-tool (delaying fleet, for example), than weapon actually meant to be very useful in battle (but you still can fire with it, why not). Personally, I'm fine with it.

As for the CE ships layout thing, I have no idea, as I always play with vanilla loadouts (as it was recommended way to play, anyway). I *do* think that vanilla loadouts should be - then - default state after installing mod, and separate sub-mod required to turn ON CE's loadouts - exactly opposite to what we have now. Otherwise, 90% f players treat it as core element of the mod and complain about balance.

/Estel

[ledtim]

AIUI, some low-tier mine launchers are more of a event-tool (delaying fleet, for example), than weapon actually meant to be very useful in battle (but you still can fire with it, why not). Personally, I'm fine with it.

/Estel

Yeah, of course if mines were as good as missiles in combat, they'd be overpowered. The thing is Hadur is terrible among mines. It has worse DPS than Frigg which takes 1 less power, and Baal has higher DPS and has stealth on top of it for example, and it's expensive in shops compared to other mines too.

I'd suggsest either buffing Hadur a bit, or lowering it down to like 15 cost in shops (50% off current price) and say something like "an outdated design that lays down huge but unwieldy mines". That'd at least give the player a hint that it's a weapon that's not too good in combat, and more for utility.