FTL Infinite Space: It just isn't playable

[omgwtfbbq]

Upon seeing the endless version of FTL, I immediately downloaded it in hopes of finding the ultimate space adventure game, something the vanilla FTL teased at before abruptly ending with a boss with a rapid-fire missile launcher. I downloaded the mod, and after a few options for my ship and starting loadout, it cut the chains and let me play indefinitely.

Jump one: Mantis ship. No problem; one shield, and it went down quickly.
Jump two: Rock Assault cruiser with level 4 shields and 2 missile launchers. Four Rock men teleported onto my ship and immediately slaughtered my weapons guy. What the hell.

I'm sure you can figure out what happened next. The problem with this mod is that there's no difficulty curve to it at all; in vanilla FTL people often accuse it of being too random, but there was at least some sense of increasing difficulty, with the first two sectors having easier enemies than the last two. Here in the endless version, the difficulty lies in 1) whether or not the game decides to kick my ass or not, and 2) having barely any scrap due to most of it being spent on repairs.

The second issue is in the rather absurd amount of battles. Far, far more often than not you will come across a battle at a random beacon, and the chance of "Nothing here" or "Random event resulting in options that could reward some scrap" is almost zero. Whenever I find a sector scan, more than half of every beacon has a ship waiting to annihilate me, and all the ones that don't are either a store or a boarding party.

The third and most painstakingly brutal of the flaws with the mod is the reward system. At its current state, defeating an unmanned drone with no shields and 4 health has exactly the same payout as defeating a Mantis Bomber with full shields and multiple missile launchers and beam weapons. This also results from the lack of a difficulty curve, but if we're going to be hit on all sides with complete randomness, at least assign certain levels of rewards for whichever tier of a ship you destroyed. Even bribes an attacking ship offers (halfway through ripping me to pieces) are nearly identical to the reward of destroying the ship completely.

[MID-RANT RANT]
I don't understand why people defend the absurd difficulty of this mod. Yes, the main game can be punishing. All the times I died before the final boss I felt were very fair, because I made the wrong investment choice or I wasn't paying attention and one of my crew was killed. That's fine. I like that. Ridiculous difficulty but fair in every time you lose is something I enjoy, because it forces you to strive to become perfect to win. What isn't fair is the final boss's rapid-fire missile launcher. 10 hits from it and you die. And that's on top of all the lasers and drones it showers you with. That's not difficult, that's cheap bullshit. Take out the missile launcher, or reduce it to launching one at a time, and suddenly the boss becomes fair. (If you say I'm raging because the boss is too hard, I have beaten the boss before, so I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just unfair)


Either way, I love the idea of endless FTL. I support this idea greatly. I want to enjoy this. But I can't unless something is done about the difficulty. Here is what can be fixed:

1: Gradual difficulty curve that becomes indefinitely harder or peaks after so many sectors
2: Fewer battles, more non-combat random events
3: Balanced rewards for killing different tiers of ships

Constructive criticism only

[Metzelmax]

They only way to make that even remotely possible, you'll need to add difficulty choose options within every event. Have fun makeing that.

[Kieve]

They only way to make that even remotely possible, you'll need to add difficulty choose options within every event. Have fun makeing that.

To clarify this a little further, IS works by looping you through the "secret sector" continuously. That means from the moment you hit the first Exit beacon, your typical game progression stops dead. Scrap rewards, enemy power levels, and so forth are all scaled to Sector 1.
To counteract that somewhat, the mod adds a host of new enemies that are intentionally scaled to compensate (as well as miniboss-type cruisers and other encounters). The problem, as you've noted, is that it's all random. The scaled-difficulty ships are mixed right in with Sector-1 pushovers, and thanks to the way the RNG works in FTL, there's really no practical way to differentiate encounters. With regard to your second point, I do remember DrkTemplar partnering with another fellow (a writer whose name escapes me at the moment) to add in more content, quests, and general non-combat events. I haven't played IS in some time personally though, so I couldn't tell you how far along that was.

Now in natural game progression, enemies do get harder as you move on the next sector. Unfortunately, no one's managed to figure out a way for IS to progress naturally through the usual sectors before beginning its "infinite" loop. I'm not necessarily defending the difficulty here, as I've felt the nasty sting of bullshit encounters myself - I'm merely explaining that due to the way the mod works, the problems you're noting are byproducts of the mod's core function. If there's a fix, no one's discovered it yet.

[UltraMantis]

I don't have much to add except Infinite Space is hard as hell. Which you already know. One thing you can do is take a look at modships as some are quite OP for the vanilla game, but can be fun and fitting for IS.

[R4V3-0N]

It is playable, just you do not know how modding works and not experienced enough in ftl to do it.

[Kieve]

It is playable, just you do not know how modding works and not experienced enough in ftl to do it.

That should not be taken as discouragement - per my explanation above, no one has yet figured out a workable solution for more natural game progression. Maybe you'll be the first? DrkTemplar coded it as he did to prevent people from potentially breaking out of the loop and "ending" Infinite Space, but that just means he found a solution that worked, not necessarily the ideal one.

Honestly BBQ, if you've taken the time to write up as detailed feedback as you have, I'd suggest looking into the mod itself, learning what you can, and perhaps you can expand on it and alleviate some of the problems you've outlined. You'll find some of us may be a bit quick to defend the hard work of modders who've invested their time and energy into these projects, but if you're willing to make that same investment, we're just as willing to help out with advice and fixes (where we can).

[omgwtfbbq]

That should not be taken as discouragement - per my explanation above, no one has yet figured out a workable solution for more natural game progression. Maybe you'll be the first? DrkTemplar coded it as he did to prevent people from potentially breaking out of the loop and "ending" Infinite Space, but that just means he found a solution that worked, not necessarily the ideal one.

Honestly BBQ, if you've taken the time to write up as detailed feedback as you have, I'd suggest looking into the mod itself, learning what you can, and perhaps you can expand on it and alleviate some of the problems you've outlined. You'll find some of us may be a bit quick to defend the hard work of modders who've invested their time and energy into these projects, but if you're willing to make that same investment, we're just as willing to help out with advice and fixes (where we can).

The problem there is that I have no idea how to mod this. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Yes, I can look up some tutorials on google and likely find an answer there, but I presented the issues with the mod as a possible guideline for the developers of the mod. I created this thread in hopes of getting the attention of someone who knows how to mod such things. I personally don't have enough time through my day to look deeply into this, as I just play FTL for an hour or so every few days.