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

[Brian2]

I tried out this mod, and created an account to post my thoughts about it. It is an amazing mod though.

What I liked about it.

- Attacking traders, civilians & stranded ships is now an option, but with some risks.
- Additional events (What FTL should definitively have), variety of sector types, sector names, ship types, hazards, weapons and a new race: The AI
- Socializing with crew members makes me feel like they are not just mindless people and do care about morality.
- Stations!
- The rebel fleet that catches up to you is now an actual fleet.



What I don't like with this mod & problems

- Hazard symbols. Some of the new hazards does not provide a description of what it does when I hover my mouse over them. Other vanilla hazards does this.
There are no sprites of the new AI race, thus ends up being invincible. There was an event where there were supposed to have a few AI's board my ship, but nothing happened.

- The trade system seems OK, but its better to have goods be put in the cargo area instead of putting goods in the ship augmentations area. [rant] When I first looked at the trade system on the front page, I got annoyed (or should I say, really annoyed?) by the fact that it had to be a ship augmentation that provide no benefits at all whatsoever other than just to earn more scrap at stores. Not only that, but it is wasted space. It is cheating apparently, and you could had thought of something better. Earning scrap while not giving away the 'trade augment' with the blue event, players are still going to cheat the system anyways. [/rant] See my changes to this trade system below.

- Mine weapons. The projectiles move so slowly that it feels like it could have been easily dodged. I don't like this idea personally.


What changes could be made to this mod

- Trade system
- Make trade augments as items that can be placed in the cargo hold.
- Add a new cargo section and list it as trade items, so you won't have your cargo hold filled with these. Trade items can be stacked.
- Please provide descriptions of what these new hazards do when you hover your mouse over it
- Different nebula types. The nebula in the industrial sector is misleading (green nebula), as I mistook it for a vanilla nebula when I went through it with my stealth cruiser. Its the one that takes hull damage. If likely, rather then damaging the ship through certain text events, it could have taken damage for every 5 seconds or so.


I have little knowledge of how the FTL game engine works. But its an idea that could be done better.

[ikeelyou300]

A few of those things probably can't be done at the moment. You can't change the way the stores or ship cargo works and you can't change the color of the nebula for the different "nebula" events. But I think it wouldn't be hard to convert the trade item augments into "weapons" that do nothing that you can place in your cargo hold. The best thing about it is you could give them all images. The best way would probably be to make them drones, I'm not sure if this is possible, but you might be able to make them cost like 999 drones to deploy so you can't ever use them.

Another nice addition would be some blue options at places like cantina's for the goods you're carrying. Maybe when you have goods the blue option can cause the bartender or whoever gives you advice to give you advice pertaining to what you're actually carrying.

Another thing that I would really like is if you could buy and sell items at the same store, since it's going to take time anyway.

Lastly, and this is a long shot that wasn't my idea, is you could make ripping off the merchants a legitimate option, but I'm still not entirely sure how but it would be nice. I don't mind the little warning when selling goods but it could say instead something like "Don't forget to transfer the goods at the store Captain. These people are trusting you t uphold your part of the deal".

Which actually gives me another idea... Slugs are notorious for cheating people so maybe if you have slug crew people wouldn't trust you as much and give you a worse deal? Or maybe the reverse where you can get a better deal when your crew trades with third own race?

I don't think any of these changes (but maybe the last two) would unbalance the game as long as you increased the cost of the cargo teleporter and maybe decreased some of the trade rewards slightly. Right now the trade system is in need of a massive overhaul for multiple reasons. Piracy has no risk/reward since you usually only get a trade good and if you have 3 augments you won't want to take it or you won't want to waste your time at a store. It severely limits how many augments you can use and the CE augments add so many new fun options for the game. A legitimate trade only ship would need a cargo teleporter and manufacturer and then would only be able to hold one good until they reach a store and some sectors it's likely you won't even find one store. Please consider adjusting the trade system somehow. It's such a good idea, but can still use improvement.

[Mr. Mister]

Mmmmm, turning the trade goods into drones seems like a really cool (though a bit tedious to implement for poor sleepy) idea.


As for the new hazard symbols: they're part of the bacground, so it's hardcodedly impossible to provide mouse-hover info on them. Best you can do is read the event text!

Regarding the green nebula, sleepy: I haven't had the chance to meet it yet, so I'm not sure if you already thought of this, but wouldn't it be cool if it had a blue choice for each level of engines, each time with reduced damage? Plus an extra one with for the FTL Recharge Booster, so you can know you're prepared for industrials sectors if you have that augment.

[ikeelyou300]

Oh that's what he meant about the hazard symbols. I actually had no idea mousing over them gave info for the vanilla ones. That's cool, but yeah it's impossible to implement. I'm glad someone else thinks that making the trade goods into drones is a possibly maybe potentially somewhat good idea. I know it would be a pain for sleeper to implement, but I'd still like to hear his thoughts about that.

[Knightmarez]

turning the trade system into drones ruins the gameplay for drone-based-ships.

Basically the trade system is a genius way of circumventing the strict modding rules. However, i totally agree with you that being called a cheater for no reason leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It should say

[Reminder: You can sell the aug slot or keep it to harvest/create the next batch]

raw asteroid ore needs smelters, drugs can be synthesized.

On the topic of balance, first people are doing it anyway, 2ndly unless you have a cargo teleporter the 'time' cost of trading can often make it worse than getting 2 jumps worth of scrap. especially in later levels.

[kartoFlane]

There is no way to control the drone part cost of a drone. They all take one drone part to activate, always.

Also, I'm fairly certain that items held in the cargo area cannot be used in blue events -- so if trade goods were to be remade as weapons held in cargo area, the whole event-driven part of the trade system would have to be scrapped, and you'd only be able to drag the item from your cargo to the sell window. No backstory, and fixed price regardless of sector.

Were it not for this limitation, it could actually be feasible, I guess... Have the sprites only contain one frame, designated as the charged-up frame (so that the item has the appropriate icon), and looooong cooldown (an hour or so) to prevent the icon from showing up at the weapon mount. Could also be made to use 999 missiles, as an ugly way of preventing the user from trying to fire the "weapon".

[Mr. Mister]

Ah, Karto is right about the blue choice limitation. Guess it'll have to stay at augments.

[jep]

Also, I'm fairly certain that items held in the cargo area cannot be used in blue events

Welll... DARN. I had gotten a decent way into my Factory Ship mod idea without managing to realize this. *sigh* Oh well, they can still be sold, just not used for blue events.

The way I handled it is just by giving the drones a power req that's higher than you could ever power drones anyway. It's a little ugly in that the bars go over the line. But that's just more encouragement NOT to equip my fake drones.

The other downside is that all events that give you these items now say "Drone: Blah blah" in front of them. Cosmetic, but annoying.

[Sleeper Service]

Concerning the crashes:

The crashes only seem to happen when going to sectors that feature combat augmented enemies. Current theory is that repeatedly called event lists which only contain a single event create this crashes. This is a thing used in the new enemy combat aug events, but was changed in 1.083. Did anyone still get this sector load crashes in this version?

[Mr. Mister]

Wait a moment though... apart from the Fed Contraband, is there any other blue choice for trade goods, outside of stores?

I think "surprise" stores (end of quests) don't trigger the trade event, so considering you always know that you're jumping to a trading store bacon, you could simply equip what you wanna trade before jumping.

But oh wait, you can't change equipment if you jump from a hazardous beacon... and there's also the fact that, be it weapon or drone, there's starting ships that lack one of both systems.


We'll let it stay at augments then. Which also reminds me something I found out: if you buy trade goods while already having three augs, it will still show the store window, but the "Drag here to sell" will be overlayed by "Drag here what you wanna get rid of" until the enxt jump. However, you can still drag an aug over the general zone to sell it (as with other stuff), even if, IIRC, you won't be shown the value you'll be selling things for.