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

[Tycho X]

Stuff, $€£¥.

I'm completely with you here. 'I feel you'
This is why I wish to actually learn flt scripting and do it myself, so that A) I'm actually really helping FTL/CE and I'm more part of the team effort and B) to give these little/big ideas a better chance of being integrated. Not to mention so that they really work the way I intended, and don't get any accidental typos added during creation.

Anyway. What I'm getting at here is I'll first try to do it myself via error and trial, and if I so happen to learn what i need, I'll do it for you Doing this will take at least a couple weeks though, (plus I'm not at home for the next 2-3 weeks).

Nice speaking to you by the way!

[mothballs]

I've flirted with CE several times over the past year. The first couple times, it kept repelling me for reasons I found hard to articulate. This last time, I stuck with it through many frustrating playthroughs and I've documented as best as possible what it is about this mod I find very hard to digest. Kudos, as always, is afforded to SS and all contributors for their hard work on a very thorough, impressive mod. But there many design choices I disagree with:

-Most importantly, with the array of new weapons and ships out there, the player dies (often), but usually not knowing exactly why. In the base game, you might suffer an unavoidable loss due to bad luck, but even in those scenarios it's still quite clear why you died - you got boarded by 4x Mantis as Engi B, or you got overrun by the fleet since you ran out of fuel - it's due to a known weakness of your ship, or due to poor choices on your part. In CE, things just sort of happen to wreck you and it's not entirely clear why, or what weakness of yours is being exploited, or how you could have shored up that weakness and avoided that death. Weapons like effectors, heavy ions, and mine/missile drones disrespect the fundamental Rock Paper Scissors relationship that defines encounters in this game. You're rock, so you know you beat scissors and need to watch our for paper. Then CE whacks you upside the head with a clothes iron and you're left wondering how you were even supposed to respond as your ship breaks apart.

-This is compounded by some poor audio/visual choices regarding the weapons. Seems many or most of the new weapons have extremely loud reports and/or very fast projectile speeds. This leads to situations for the new (or experienced!) player where all they hear is a loud BANG and a flash of light, and suddenly their pilot is dead and their shields are totally down. It perpetuates the feeling that the game is just sort of mindlessly aggressing on the player, rather than presenting clear challenges with knowable solutions.

-The player should be in absolute control of himself, his ship, and his crew at all times, except in the event that a clearly defined 3rd party has compromised that control. Events like enemy mind control or system malfunction due to enemy hacking events are fine, since you know who the culprit behind it is. CE adds a bunch of mid-fight events where your ship just powers down or catches on fire for No Damned Reason, which is deeply insulting to the player's sense of agency. Now along with facing enemies from without, there are enemies from within too. The crew and ship can't even be trusted to do their job. Imagine if you told your weapons guy to go fix the O2 room and instead he just walked over the airlock (no mind control), opened the door and suffocated himself. If that's unacceptable (and it is!), then having your crew and ship fail inexplicably to do their job through event dialogue is unacceptable too. This extends to the piracy / diplomacy gameplay as well. The player shouldn't even be given the option to go through with an act that'll cause crew to revolt. If he has a piracy-enabling item, show the blue dialogue. If he doesn't, don't show it. Leaving the piracy option is a false choice (you'd be dumb to ever take it without a blue option) and just further instills in the player the sense that his crew are not his to control, undermining his sense of agency.

-Extend this further to certain combat augs, especially Targeting Jammer. The jammer itself seems to jam more often than it works. For an augment that's eating up a slot and forcing me to reserve two power for it (even if it fails to 'hit'), it is unreliable to the point of uselessness. If the Jammer failing was uncommon as getting engine-hacked is, it might be fine. But as-is, it is the first thing I sell off of Slug A and just build myself Shields 2 with the proceeds. I don't know if the other combat augs (internal effector, are there others?) have this same success rate or not.

-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. In CE I sent mining drones ahead to mine an asteroid for me (blue choice that sets a quest marker). When I went out of my way to get there, I'm greeted by zero rewards, automatic hull damage, system fires and an interminable wait game as my crew fix the engines and my FTL charges. Or, another time when I visited a shop and was immediately greeted by a gang of four Rock thugs that pulped my slug crew into slug juice. That's not a challenge. That's just spite.

-Trading is enough bother already, clogging up an aug slot with no guarantee of payoff if you can't find a shop that'll buy. Getting a rebel fleet advance on buying AND selling trade goods unless you have ANOTHER near-useless aug that enables instant trading, just makes the whole process unappealing in the extreme.

-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. But someone had to put their finger in that pie and swirl it around, just because they could. Another example: "Stealth Weapons" augment changed to "Advanced Cloaking Field." So, an augment that tells you what it does right there in its name has been changed to something you have to read the description for to find out what it does. It all lends an unprofessional, kitchen sink feel to the mod, that everything's been altered not because it needed to be altered, but just because it could be.

-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 (unless I'm playing one of THOSE ships, like Stealth B). In CE, I'm luckily if I don't die in zone 1 nine times out of ten. And that's a reversal of fortune I don't think I can entirely blame simply on getting blown out of orbit by new enemy weaponry.

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.

The mod in its current state is not one where "your mistakes will be punished. Severely." Rather it seems to be one where the player gets punished (severely), just for playing the game at all.

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.

[Artamba]

snappitysnip

I read your 2 scrap with a very open mind and I find that your points are something I want to ponder on. I haven't played enough to be sure if you are correct about the lack of all-round control the player has over their fate, but I understand what you are talking about with the pie-swirling business just because they could - although, for some alterations I must say they do serve a little more of a purpose than just 'changing it 'cause you could'. Stealth Weapons to Advanced Cloaking Field is just a little more lore-delicious; it makes sense and immerses me into the pond of ftl just a little bit more. I know your problem stretches out further than that example.

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.
The Heavy Scatter Laser is one that makes little sense. It seems to not be consistent with the idea of sacrificing OOMPH (system damage, breach chance) to bring down shields. I assume that there is no way to get one projectile to bring down multiple layers of shields, so the heavy scatter just seems like a shittier, heavier laser. So I feel you on the idea that there is a sort of false sense of choice... if you did make that point, that is.

The trading and combat augment situation is probably anpther thing that is unavoidable. You probably cant add more augment slots (I don't know nuffin) so the only thing to do would be to 'buff' the benefits of trading?

I like that the game is harder, and that there are so many more variables added to the mix, but I have not played long enough to figure out if the mark was missed. If the soup was ruined.

[Tycho X]

I agree with a lot of the things said above. Although honestly, I really like it that way. 'Variety is the spice of life.' Plus it makes the game more difficult for veterans. Just switch to easy mode.

The only thing which I really dislike is the inefficiency of the trading system. I understand that this probably can't be changed. The other day I came up with an idea; every ship has 4 cargo slots. So why not make trade goods unusable weapons with no textures and a high price? I think that might work. The Endless Loot addon adds 'vintage' weapons, and from what I can tell, you're just supposed to sell them for a load of scrap.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I don't know if it's a bug in CE, but I seemed to get a lot less fuel my first time playing it than I get in a normal game. This coupled with the various ways to spend more fuel caused me to find it very difficult to progress. I was buying all of the fuel at every store I came across, and they weren't selling much, but it was the only thing keeping me afloat because I seemed to almost never get fuel from combat. Whatever is causing it is a game-breaking issue. All of these neat features aren't worth getting brutally slaughtered on easy difficulty just because fuel never shows up.

[Artamba]

I agree with a lot of the things said above. Although honestly, I really like it that way. 'Variety is the spice of life.' Plus it makes the game more difficult for veterans. Just switch to easy mode.

The only thing which I really dislike is the inefficiency of the trading system. I understand that this probably can't be changed. The other day I came up with an idea; every ship has 4 cargo slots. So why not make trade goods unusable weapons with no textures and a high price? I think that might work. The Endless Loot addon adds 'vintage' weapons, and from what I can tell, you're just supposed to sell them for a load of scrap.

I think the cargo hold cannot be used for trading because items in the cargo hold can't trigger any kind of event choice. Just a guess :3

Also, TheReaverofDarkness, it's easy to blame the game for bad decisions you didn't even understand you took. It's also easily possible that you got damn unlucky not getting any fuel from encounters, but there's so many options to avoid fights and get resources in CE that I think it might just be that you're not used to it all! Especially since you lowered yourself to easy mode!

[Tycho X]

I think the cargo hold cannot be used for trading because items in the cargo hold can't trigger any kind of event choice. Just a guess :3

That's a pretty good guess! Yes, that must be why it doesn't work.

[Estel]

-Most importantly, with the array of new weapons and ships out there, the player dies (often), but usually not knowing exactly why. (...)
-This is compounded by some poor audio/visual choices regarding the weapons. Seems many or most of the new weapons have extremely loud reports and/or very fast projectile speeds. This leads to situations for the new (or experienced!) player where all they hear is a loud BANG and a flash of light, and suddenly their pilot is dead and their shields are totally down.

Experience, experience, experience. With enough (personal) experience gained, those are nill-issues (and, in fact, you learn to use them for your own good!).

-The player should be in absolute control of himself, his ship, and his crew

No, why should he? Hes the captain, he gives orders, but crew have "mind of their own". They're not mindless drones.

CE adds a bunch of mid-fight events where your ship just powers down or catches on fire for No Damned Reason, which is deeply insulting to the player's sense of agency.

Just like with random events between fights, random events in-fight can happen to BOTH you and your opponent. Sometimes i't just lore-text, sometimes it helps you a little (when enemy burns his reactor), sometimes, you get a little "minus". Who said that that equipment can fail *only* outside of battle (in events)? Expecting that seems like getting used to game limitations, and being irritated, when those limitations are lifted.

Not to mention, that those effects are really, really negligible, if they happen, at all.

This extends to the piracy / diplomacy gameplay as well. The player shouldn't even be given the option to go through with an act that'll cause crew to revolt. If he has a piracy-enabling item, show the blue dialogue. If he doesn't, don't show it. Leaving the piracy option is a false choice (you'd be dumb to ever take it without a blue option) and just further instills in the player the sense that his crew are not his to control, undermining his sense of agency.

And it is as it should be - you have OPTION to do something morally ambiguous, but you don't have permanent mind control over your crew members, so you can't know if they will feel the same. CE clearly communicates, when such action can disturb your crew.

In game-mechanics terms, it's all risk vs. reward. You can get nice reward (for example, in case of piracy, which otherwise would give you a wasted beacon), but there is risk. Certain augments or blue options mitigate the risk.

-Extend this further to certain combat augs, especially Targeting Jammer. The jammer itself seems to jam more often than it works.

This irritates me too, but only because i think that risk/gain ratio is screwed here. Using those external artillery batteries of targeting jammers is "expensive" enough (cost of getting them, power cost), and if they have random, quite-high chance of fail, it's simply better to invest the resources (scrap and power bars) into straight weapon/drone/whatever. Cost of failure is simply too high, for the "reward" when it works.

In CE I sent mining drones ahead to mine an asteroid for me (blue choice that sets a quest marker). When I went out of my way to get there, I'm greeted by zero rewards, automatic hull damage, system fires and an interminable wait game as my crew fix the engines and my FTL charges.

I must say that I never got this outcome (so I think it's quite rare). If it would happen often, I agree that it would be a little over the line. If it happens very, very rarely... Well, you just have stepped on wrong foot of RNG

Also, some augments mixed with those possibilities give even better results (for example, having both beam drones and drone recovery arm, give you free scrap AND your drone parts back), so I guess that low chance of catastrophe might be there for balancing reasons.

Or, another time when I visited a shop and was immediately greeted by a gang of four Rock thugs that pulped my slug crew into slug juice. That's not a challenge. That's just spite.

Nope - you just visited a "shop" in pirate-infested sector. They spawn in addition to normal shops, and are meant as a traps. BTW, if sole shop-spawned boarding event mopped you, I don't think you would get much further, really...

-Trading is enough bother already, clogging up an aug slot with no guarantee of payoff if you can't find a shop that'll buy. Getting a rebel fleet advance on buying AND selling trade goods unless you have ANOTHER near-useless aug that enables instant trading, just makes the whole process unappealing in the extreme.

Complains about trading are often, and always based on lack of experience. Check Biohazard's videos of CE Hard attempts, to see ridiculous amounts of scrap it can give , if used properly. BTW, I must say that I almost never buy trade goods myself - I just don't like being too dependent on shops - but I can't pretend that other players are getting coconuts from it.

[/b]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
(...)
But someone had to put their finger in that pie and swirl it around, just because they could. Another example: "Stealth Weapons" augment changed to "Advanced Cloaking Field." So, an augment that tells you what it does right there in its name has been changed to something you have to read the description for to find out what it does.

Lack of experience, again. The things you've mentioned were changed VERY extensively - you just lacked certain pre-requiments to experience alternate scenarios. All changes things have good reason for changes, trust me(tm). In some rare cases it is for consistency, in all others - they just got additional uses. The slavery thing you mentioned gave me especially good laugh, cause meetings with slavers is one of MOST changed vanilla-events, in CE

[/b]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 (unless I'm playing one of THOSE ships, like Stealth B). In CE, I'm luckily if I don't die in zone 1 nine times out of ten. And that's a reversal of fortune I don't think I can entirely blame simply on getting blown out of orbit by new enemy weaponry.

Learn to adapt, ye scumvy dog! Seriously though - CE *is* meant to be harsher, and *is* meant to require thinking outside of "rock, paper, scissors" box, that you may get used to. It is like complaining that - upon switching from "rock, paper, scissors" to chess - you get overwhelmed by possibilities.

/Estel

[R4V3-0N]

-snip-

Well some of the stuff you say may be true. Most mirror much of what a new person often has when first playing FTL... for eg the part you said 'you know what killed you in vanilla, and don't know what killed you in CE'.

of course to a veteran a 1 engi vs 4 mantis fight is already over kill for a 1 man ship the Engi B. but to a new player they do not know possibly about the mantis combat bonuses or the engis problems, or how much of a problem there is, there is probably a time earlier they thought they got the jist of it and think 2 humans on ship is enough to kill 3 boarders, when seeign some mantis they think it's just another brawl... until one of your humans nearly die instantly and the other run runs to the medbay which the mantis out damage your healing rate and removes your sense of invincibility.

same applies to CE, to someone who has played CE for some time those times are clear as well.

"ah, the local hazzard that has a beam ASB firing at me just got 5 shots off me because I ignored it and had low / no shields" or "I was low on health and let the enemy self destruct... whoops".
It's things you learn and then progress. And do not pretend there is about 80% of the augments in FTL vanilla are useless to begin with.

Things like advance FTL adv navigation, FTL jammer, stealth weapons... etc...
CE changed the name in some of them to apply to more blue events and such.

If trading isn't your style, you do not have to really do it. but if you want to do it, there are large rewards at hand. Sometimes tripling your normal profits.
Also your rock papers scissors analogy is still there. just broken up into many little categories that interchange...

Kinda like IRl combat. x can beat y while y beats z and z beats x, but then you got x2 that can beat y and z but is weak to 1 and 4 a little bit more, and so on and on...
CE isn't the most 'balanced' per say, but it is meant to be like that, where there are some lower/ higher energy weapons that got a trade off in damage/ scrap/ rarity and so on.

But one problem you have is that you forget that the vanilla game is very much like what you described in a way... useless augments... features... mechanics... rock paper scissors...

you probably can not propperly depict me a non isolated rock paper scissor event in this game anyway...

Engi can't be harmed by rock... but what if rock had a boarding party?
mantis often beat engi... but engi got nano bot medbay and possible AP drones... hard to beat what is basicly a lanius + rockman + mantis combo with just a mantis...
What if the Engi ship is manned by Mantis?

so many table turners...

[Sleeper Service]

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:

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...)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!