Modded System Limits

[Zoura3025]

Hey all! I've been busy playing around with FTL's code, and my latest victim has been system limits.

I've learned a decent amount about the coding, and I thought I'd share my discoveries.

Working Systems

Currently, I've got Weapons, Drones, Shields, and Cloaking working. These systems can be theoretically upgraded to infinity (untested but theoretically supported), since they use predictable formulae fhe game can use to calculate an endless steam of upgrades.

Weapons and Drones use the same formula: 1 upgrade = 1 max power. Of course, the eventual practical limit is based on weapon slots and weapon power requirements, but you can push these to the next galaxy if you want.

Shields uses the formula of: 2 power = 1 shield layer. I've gotten this working up to 8 layers of shielding (which, btw, can block missiles ).

Cloaking uses the formula of: 1 power = 5 seconds of cloak. And yes, this goes infinitely; with cloaking 12 you get a minute of alone time.

Broken Systems

Some systems cannot work with higher upgrades, because their upgrades are not formulaic.
Currently, I've only tested hacking, which freaks out past level 3 (at level 4, 0 seconds of hack time, at level 5, -2.14 BILLION second hack).

Untested Systems

These are systems I haven't tested: Engines, Clonebay, Medbay, Oxygen, Mind Control, Artillery, Teleporter.

I have reason to believe that Teleporter and Artillery might be able to have 1 more level squeezed out of them (due to their effects eventually reaching 0), Oxygen and Medbay should work, Clonebay probably won't (due to jump heal), and I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that Engines just don't.

[fdagpigj]

At least in theory people who have been around in the modding community longer should know these, though many probably have forgotten some uninteresting specifics (because they're rarely used due to being either useless or overpowered and/or GUI-breaking), and I guess it may have changed considering there have been updates to the game in recent years, and it doesn't hurt to collect all the info in one convenient place anyway. I don't have a good modding setup anymore since I haven't done any modding of this game in a few years so I unfortunately cba to properly contribute atm.

But here's what I seem to remember anyway, though my memory isn't perfect: Teleporter level 4 works and provides instant cooldown. Oxygen, medbay, engines, clonebay (and hacking) break beyond usefulness aside from damage buffer at best. Mind control has an extremely long duration (don't remember strength). Artillery works as expected on level 5 but breaks beyond that but since level 5 has a fifth of the cooldown of level 1 it's near impossible to balance.

Btw if by "code" you mean the XML data files, referring to it as "FTL's code" or "coding" is a bit cringy because most of the game is programmed in C++ and is closed source.