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

[Mr. Mister]

Hahaha, it's not only missiles and bombs: keep in mind a single effector on your teleporter can be enough to doom a mantis to asphyxiation.

[Sleeper Service]

I'll consider download alternatives. Will probably be up tomorrow.

Meanwhile: That is the good ship FS Bliterator at the end of the first sector (first and only run I did today). Getting Mantis offspring in sector one was lucky, also picked up some space-ponies to sell, but among other things a had to run from I also stumbled into two asteroid fields, a medivac and an auto scout near a sun. Going for engine power early on helps if know that you will have to run away sometimes.

I made it to the last stand, but had no guns to actually fight the boss. Sold my Leto after running out of ammo and apart from that thing I never picked up any real fire power. This wouldn't have been such a problem if things wouldn't have gone topside in sector six and seven already. My elite Mantis got kidnapped by a fleeing auto scout after I ran out of fuel for the third time. That's also how I missed a store that I really wanted. Made a lot of scrap with piracy on the side. I had no real scrap problems in the late game, but losing my borders was kind of the death sentence.

Thats all pretty much how I would expect the ship to play. Really seems like CEs enemies use a lot more boarding counter measures. Seeing all these in action again was kind of interesting. Stations where much weaker to boarding before, and some ships classes, like medivacs, also put up a good fight IMO. Nothing you can't overwhelm with four boarders of course.

So I'm not convinced the ship really needs a buff. But I consider giving it the Onboard Clone-Lab, simply cause that would offer some interesting possibilities but still further pronounce it's play style.

[Omen267901]

I can't use Rapidshare. It's trying to force me to install a bunch of crap and won't let me download if I don't. Also, my antivirus is going nuts blocking crap on the site.

[Sleeper Service]

New download is linked.

Meanwhile CE keeps antagonizing the let's play community.
That was during 1.083 I think...

[Estel]

I just realized that during outcry about rapidshare, we, *erm*, forget something. The classic SW:ANH line, "Don't thank me all at once", comes to mind.

So, big Thank You for next update, again. It is really awesome how actively you support this mod, and I'm amongst the people that are going to keep playing FTL:CE without AE not only 'till first patched-up speedy release, but until you release version that you're happy to call a first "official" CE to FTL:AE (integrating stuff). I just can't imagine playing FTL without CE anymore, and I don't think AE can introduce anything, that would make me put it ahead of CE.
---

Now, after this pinky'ish (although genuine) part, controversial idea:

We have few ship classes that allow to do piracy and slaving without fear of consequences. We have Rocks, who can do piracy, but no slaving. Still, wouldn't it be interesting to characterize other races even more, where applicable? For example, Zoltans. They're, generally, all about peace, fairness, compassion etc. SE seems to empathize that, too. Wouldn't it be interesting to make Zoltan ship playthroughs even more morally restricted, as a trade-off for buffed Zoltan Shield augment?

for example, we have whole bunch of situations, when someone want to surrender or offer other Peaceful Resolution To Current Situation (tm). Couldn't Zoltan ship's crew react to *denying* those attempts just like "regular" ship's crew respond to piracy? To compensate this, thing characterizing our ship as a real Zoltan's one could get buffed slightly - so, we get more powerful ship to start with, but less "scrap potential". Not to mention, that both Zoltan's are quire powerful vessels anyway, even without buffing.

following the same line of thinking, traditional Engi's ships could have better outcomes of AI surrender options, etc. Just an idea.

/Estel

Ps. I know that you can't force players to use blue-option for Zoltan ships, that gives *worse* outcome for surrender events, that "white text" ones. But, it could be easily labeled "WARNING: not choosing this option means that you're cheating". This way, people who don't like additional flavour-heavy nerfing of Zoltan's ships would be happily ignoring blue options, while rest of us would gladly welcome more diversity between factions

[Mr. Mister]

The problem keeps being that blue options can't be forced. It would be nice if the devs had time to include such a feature for AE, it would greatly increase what could be done in events, specially regarding the crew. I don't think it's a good idea to extend the "If you don't do this you're cheating" to negative consequences events, because let's be honest, most of us wouldn't do it come the real thing.


Anyway: While Mantis do clearly practice slavery, I''m not so sure they also do the same with piracy: they do hunt for the hunt, not for the prey.

So you could try and delete the mantis ships' free pas to sack civilian ships. Maybe to compensate a bit, you could instead add a blue option on the beggining of the act only and based not on the ship, but on Mantis Pheromones:

"You're about to commit an act of piracy, let's see how the crew reacts."
"(Pheromones) Release a rush to get the crew too excited to think about ethics" or something.

The trick would be that such a blue option wouldn't be present on the post-battle morale check. Wouldn't that be another interesting factor? If you're out of fuel and run into a civilian, you're at least assured you can battle the ship.

It would also make the pheromones more useful. You could put them for sale on mantis homeworlds too.


This would leave only the Slug as the only pirate+slavery supporting species, which kinda goes with their reputation (and loadout). If you want to give even more differences in that respect amonmg the ships, consider giving the Zoltan ships a free pass when they're buying a slave, an only when they're buying it (and not when they're accepting it as a surrender), since it's a legal transaction or something.


EnterElysium had the bad luck of launching his boarding drone into the laser room.

[Estel]

I don't think it's a good idea to extend the "If you don't do this you're cheating" to negative consequences events, because let's be honest, most of us wouldn't do it come the real thing.

Really? I have never, ever, even single time, cheated on trade system. I can't imagine doing so for other situations, too - like blue-event option that I'm supposed to choose. I absolutely doesn't see the point - I could, as good, use some custom OP ship to blow away everything on my path (which, BTW, I've never done, too, as it would be "uber" boring experience).
---

As for Mantis and piracy - I can't really imagine seeing Mantises that fill "formal complains" and "leave my ship via shuttle" because we've murdered a bunch of people and robbed their dead ship. It just''' doesn't fit for Mantises, really.

/Estel

[KJ4VOV]

And that Rebel ship with the twin Titans and a Fire Beam drone? I just ran into it again. It wasn't an interceptor though, it was a Rebel repair ship. I lasted less than 60 seconds against it with a brand new ship.

Out of curiosity - 60 seconds wasn't enough to charge engines and run away? Also, wasn't mantis ship having two shield bubbles? How the flaming fire drone passed through 2 shields?

/Estel

It's MantisB. Unless he upgraded Engines, he was charging his FTL at the slowest possible rate, and with a whopping 15% Evasion, against two weapons that deal 4 damage each (and enough system damage to completely disable said means of Evasion). He died in four volleys, minimum.

I think it was five, but yeah, exactly like that. Until I find I store I try to avoid upgrading anything (so I'll have maximum scrap to use if I find a good weapon), and this was on my very first jump. First two hits took out the life support and the helm, starting fires in life support that quickly spread to the doors, the next two hits took out the shields, the fire drone ignited the medbay, then the drone control, then shields, then both crew got caught in the fifth shot while trying to repair the helm. It was a very short game.

[Estel]

No shorter than encountering zoltan supershield ship while on Mantis B during your first jump, which i remember happening pretty often in vanilla

BTW, frankly, while I understand tactic of saving scrap till store (and use it often, too), I can't shake feeling that it's still lack of adaptation from your side (apart from encountering your favorite foe on first jump, but I guess it happened only once, the second encounter was after few jumps, right?). IF I'm going to play specialized ship, that is very good against certain enemies (boarding with out Mantises can slice and dice many types of opponents), but next to useless (before upgrade) against some others, I'm going to upgrade engines at first possibility. And in second too, probably. Shop may have interesting things or not, but the fact that I'll meet something that I have to run from, while starting a Mantis B game, during first 5 jumps is something like 99,99%

/Estel

[Acceleratio]

Yea um... I also have to apologize for that quite unthankfull comment I made before. I was just in a rush and couldn't really wait. I'm sorry! Im glad you consider alternatives for people like me and the others who complained about rapidshare! And I'm more than happy to see you updating the mod so often and still adding so many cool features. I can not play vanilla anymore so I NEED my CE

About that streaming guy hating your guts for the disabled cloak...