Balanced and useful augments?

[Twinge]

Since you mentioned about the Anti-Ship MK2 being suck and all... You sure you're not playing the older version of the game? ... The MK1 attack drones got nerfed (move slower) while the MK2 got a pretty nice boost (move faster) a few version ago. The MK2 is quite kick ass now— even better than the 2x MK1 IMO.

I was indeed judging this on old info - but the numbers look identical and I can't find any patch notes about this.

Either way, though, I will certainly look at tweaks carefully and test to consider what changes should actually be made - especially with equipment I'm less familiar with like this.

[Twinge]

Alright, been working on a balance mod fairly heavily over the past week or so, chatting in detail about potential changes with several good players. Upon further testing Ant-Ship II is indeed stronger than I gave it credit for - I now consider it is ever so slightly weak, but not nearly as bad as I'd thought.

Keep in mind these are my initial tweaks and while I'm happy with most of them I still have a lot of testing to do. Full list can be found here: http://pastebin.com/cmWKrurk. For augments specifically, this is where I'm currently at:

Crystal Vengeance Sell Price 40->15 (The Crystal ships are already on the strong end - they don't need 40 free scrap to start with.)
Crystal Vengeance Effect 10%->15% (Meanwhile, the effect is really lackluster; this provides at least a little incentive to keep the augment around rather than selling it at the first opportunity.)

Titanium System Casing Sell Price 50->40
Titanium System Casing Effect 15%->20%

Repair Arm Cost 50->40
Repair Arm Scrap Loss 15%->5% (Scrap amount rounds against you and also costs scrap even when at full health.)

Automated Re-loader Cost 40->60 (Getting cooldowns low enough to get the first volley off is very strong - there's a reason the Pre-igniter costs so much, and in many fights this can serve a similar purpose while also being great in extended fights.)

Shield Charge Booster Effect 15%->20%

FTL Recharge Booster Cost 50->30
FTL Recharge Booster Effect 25%->30% (Upgrading Engines instead of still going to be better in most cases, but this might be cheap & powerful enough to be worth considering sometimes. Potentially most useful for hitting an extra beacon and then fleeing rebels.)

FTL Jammer Effect 100%->200% (Still on the weak side, but now solidly slows an escape. Potentially useful on defense-heavy builds that can't kill ships as quickly.)

Adv. FTL Navigation Cost 60->50

Reverse Ion Field Cost 60->40
Reverse Ion Field Effect 15%->50% (Game says 20% but is actually 15%.)
Reverse Ion Field no longer stacks (Necessary to prevent 100% protection from ion effects.)

Scrap Recovery Arm Cost 50->65

Drone Reactor Booster Effect 25%->80% (Game says 50% but is actually 25%. 100% is the same speed as normal crew.)

Stealth Weapons Cost 50->40

Damaged Stasis Pod Sell Value 15->18 (Reduces the sting of not activating the pod ever so slightly.)

[Twinge]

My Balance Mod has been released, and just got updated to 0.5: http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14766

Full changes to Augments can be found here: http://www.it-is-law.com/ftl-balance/in ... e#Augments

[Sleeper Service]

Seems well thought out. I specially like the new blue options you consider for systems/augs that don't have any yet. Some hints on your "Test" and "Possible Content to Add" section:

Test station sick 2 crew result = crash with too many crew to start?

In case you mean adding two crew member in one event capsule: that crashes the game if the player has already max crew. Can be done by using another follow up event capsule though.

enemy ship event that has a pre-igniter? -- part of a trap event.

I tried that, pre-igniter has no effect on enemy ships.

[Thunderr]

I think it would also be cool to add new augments as well as balancing the old ones. It's like what BA did with weapons.

[Twinge]

I tried that, pre-igniter has no effect on enemy ships.

Ah - that's a shame. I assumed augments worked correctly on enemy ships since the full framework for that seemed to be in place. Unfortunate. Have you tried other augments?

I think it would also be cool to add new augments as well as balancing the old ones. It's like what BA did with weapons.

Not something we can really do with mods, unfortunately. Augments are basically just hard-coded, so we can change 'how much' and the cost, but little more.

[Sleeper Service]

Ah - that's a shame. I assumed augments worked correctly on enemy ships since the full framework for that seemed to be in place. Unfortunate. Have you tried other augments?.

Yeah, I really wanted ambush events as well, would be really cool... and surprising... and annoying. Just like this events should be!

I have ships with most of the other augments in my mods, that stuff works correctly I think. Reloader, shield charge booster and system casing can nicely differentiate enemies, the effect is quite noticeable. Drone reactor booster and reverse ion also take effect. FTL charge booster is very noticeable on enemies with good engines. I guess it has no effect if they flee via an escape timer, cause then their time till escape is predefined anyway. Enemy FTL jammers also have a noticeable effect on the player. Can make enemies quite dangerous in a unique way, as it really makes escaping for the player difficult. I don't know if stealth weapons really are useful in enemy hands, cause enemies wait till the end of their stealth to fire anyway, right? Thought I observed that, but I'm not sure. All the arms and the advanced FTL navigation are of course useless in enemy hands.

[Twinge]

Good info, thanks. I imagine Stealth Weapons would have slightly more than no effect - the AI generally waits to fire until cloaking is up, but sometimes it will fire during cloak. This is most true for Ion Blast II, but it'll fire other things during cloak as well. Any effect it would give would be almost imperceptible to the play, though; maybe if you wanted to make a custom enemy ship specifically with Ion2 and Stealth Weapons? otherwise I wouldn't suggest using it at all.

For the balance mod, I don't want to get TOO crazy, but I have already been considering some system casing possibilities on shieldless Automated Scouts or such. Unfortunately I have no way of setting up 'if it's past sector 2 and it was generated with no shields, THEN give it System Casing', but I can still set up some creative ways of potentially adding it in even still.

[Sleeper Service]

For the balance mod, I don't want to get TOO crazy, but I have already been considering some system casing possibilities on shieldless Automated Scouts or such. Unfortunately I have no way of setting up 'if it's past sector 2 and it was generated with no shields, THEN give it System Casing', but I can still set up some creative ways of potentially adding it in even still.

I think this could actually be done. Ship can made available in specific sectors only right? There is a function for that in superkuminal at last... You can easily make copies of the vanilla scouts with superluminal as well. The auto scout could have two variants that appear to be completely the same to the player, one without shields but with casing, the other always with shields. You should be able to make them available only after sector 2 and modify the vanilla scout to available only till sector two. Just add the new scouts to the _AUTO ship list and add some vanilla _autos to make probability even.

Code: Select all

<blueprintList name="SHIPS_AUTO">
	<name>AUTO_BASIC</name> <!-- only avalable till sector 2 -->
	<name>AUTO_BASIC</name>  <!--only avalable till sector 2 ,copy to even out probility -->
	<name>AUTO_BASIC_CASING</name> <!-- only avalable after sector 2 -->
	<name>AUTO_BASIC_SHIELD</name> <!-- only avalable after sector 2 -->
	<name>AUTO_ASSAULT</name> <!--copy to even out probility -->
	<name>AUTO_ASSAULT</name> <!--copy to even out probility -->
</blueprintList>

You might have to use superluminal copies of the vanilla scouts for this to work properly, as mixing ship-lists with vanilla ships and moded ones in them somehow made almost only vanilla ships appear for me. Don't know why.

[Twinge]

Ah ha, that should work quite well indeed. I knew about the min/max sectors, but hadn't quite thought it out far enough to figure out how to make it work in a nice even way - that should work just fine. Implemented, will test out next time I play.