Some Changes I'd Like to See

[SandMan13]

FTL is a great game and tons of fun but there are some things I'd want to change.

First would be involving drones. There should be some cool down timer after a drone is destroyed. 10-15 seconds before you can re-deploy the destroyed drone. Boarding drones are crazy. As soon as you destroy the first another is already on its way. There should be "rebuilding" or "assembly" time for drones. Different drones could have different cool down times.

Second shields should get overloaded if hit with a heavy laser and it only has 1 shield bar. The overload could have a chance at causing a fire and slow the recharge rate of the shield.

Also lasers should do their damage amount to the shields. A heavy laser should take out 2 shield bars as it is a more powerful laser.

And lastly we should be able to use the distress beacon more. Maybe have it as a button you can press so that other ships know you are in trouble. If you are in a fight you can't win or escape from or if fire gets out of control on your ship you could use the distress beacon to attract other ships. These ships could be helpful or hurtful, it's all up to luck!

These are just some ideas I've had while playing. What do you guys think?

[BKT]

- It's the same thing as fire; if it's bad for you, it's also bad for the enemy as well— Instead of whining about the Boarding drone, I would suggest you buy/find one boarding drone of your own and sent them back at the enemy one after the other; oh so hilarious!

Anyway, the trick about dealing with the boarding drone is to simply leave it alone and just continue killing the enemy; wasting your time with it will get you nowhere— unless it landed on the O2 room, which in that case it must be dealt with ASAP.

- Heavy laser would be OP if it does 2 damage to shield. Not to mention that a lot of enemy has Heavy laser... I think it work fine as it is.

[UltraMantis]

All good ideas. Though i'm worried that Heavy Lasers would become overpowered, and would also make Ions less usefull. It would require some balance changes and i can't help but feel that FTL should stay as it is when it comes to balance. Heavies alsready have a longer recharge, and it would need to increase to accomodate your suggestion. The shield overload idea is great though. Maybe a 25% chance that if last remaining shield bubble is hit by a Heavy Laser shot, it would overload the shield and disable it temporarily.

Drones are a bit unrealistic the way they work currently. Adding some short timeout would be good.

[ExtraCheesyPie]

Heavy lasers are already very powerful. MK1 has high damage with a small cooldown and low power use, and the next is also good. MK1 is common, and its the best 1 energy weapon except for dual lasers.
It doesnt need a buff.

[UltraMantis]

Best? Well i will not argue, because it's up to personal preferences, but i will say that i outfitted one ship with no less than three Ion Blast MkIs and... well in a word: "Lockdown!"

They still cant destroy a ship though, so another weapon is needed, but for 3 power and only 8s base recycle, those Ions are insane.

[BKT]

The Heavy MK1 is probably the best weapon you could get early game if play a ship that start with 2+ laser shot, even more so with ship that has BL2 as starting weapon, or even Engi_A for that matter; can save you a lot of drone parts early on!

I even use it in my last slug run instead of the Dual laser, and heck, even the BL2 which I do have at hand, believe it or not...

[Number43]

Enemy ships do have limited amounts of drone parts. Once I destroyed like 4-5 boarding drones during a fight and they stopped coming. They will also run out of missiles eventually.