Suggestions to improve gameplay and interface

[Tamren]

Hey that's interesting. It would be like using the distress beacon and waiting, only instead of when you run out of fuel you could use it for other things.

Found another bug. I think I mentioned earlier that enemy crew who are fighting on their own ship can still repair systems and fight in hand to hand at the same time? Well apparently they can also man systems. Friend of mine had boarders fighting on the bridge of the enemy ship and the ship still managed to charge it's engines and jump away.

On my ship I can't do the same. The pilot has to be in his chair in order to charge the FTL drive or man other systems like Engines. I lost one boss battle because a boarding drone hit my bridge and my pilot stopped piloting the ship because he was too busy fighting this drone! My dodge chance dropped to 0% and well... yeah. Slaughtered.

That should be changed, it's only fair. This game is hard enough as it is.

[Tamren]

I was thinking up new ideas for weapons and I discovered that it's actually quite hard... FTL has the bases covered. Beams slash across rooms but don't pierce shields. Missiles pierce shields but require ammo. Laser pew pew into shields and hull. Ions disable systems. That about cover it?

I did think of one unique idea though. Mass Driver weapons have been mentioned on the boards a couple times already. But in order to make them distinct from lasers they need a new mechanic.

- Mass Drivers are rapid fire projectile weapons that pierce shields. They have a high chance of causing minor hull breaches but do not start fires. Minor hull breaches are the same as regular hull breaches, but can be repaired much faster and leak less air.

- Instead of charging to full before you can fire the weapon, mass drivers have a magazine. One round is loaded every cycle until the magazine is full. Loading cycles are greater per-shot compared to laser weapons.
- If you activate the weapon it will fire all remaining rounds in its magazine in a burst. If left activated it will then load and shoot single rounds as fast as it can. Weapons can be toggled between burst/auto/off
- Mass Drivers can be fired, but not loaded while unpowered. Weapons will instantly load to full if the ship is in no danger. When you jump the magazine retains all loaded rounds. A Weapon Pre-Igniter doesn't work on mass drivers.

- Unguided projectile weapons are inherently inaccurate. To target the weapon your cursor changes into a grid which you place over the enemy ship. Shots fired will land randomly onto this grid. Grid size varies between weapons and may be 2x2, 3x3 or a 3x3 cross shape. Shots that do not land on a room have landed at an angle and deflected off the enemy ship.
- Because of the high number of shots fired at once, mass drivers have an increased chance of colliding with enemy shots, missiles and defense drones.

Do those sound like sufficient drawbacks? They fire many shots at once which gives them a high damage potential. But they also have great difficulty targeting small ships with widely spread out rooms and can't focus fire the same way a laser can. The provide great burst damage at the start of a fight, but worse DPS compared to lasers combined with the lesser accuracy.

Here is a subtype of mass driver:

- A flak cannon operates like a mass driver in that it pierces shields but does not have a magazine and can't be targeted. Instead it reloads and fires rapidly at the enemy ship like a single shot laser.
- When fired a flak projectile will fly over to the enemy ship and detonate into a large a cloud of shrapnel above a random room with a *CLAP* sound. This has a small chance of causing minor hull breaches and damage to any room caught under the blast. The chance increases the closer a room is to the centre of the explosion.
- Defense Drones will take damage from flak, it takes multiple hits to destroy a drone but damage will reduce movement and firing speed. If the enemy ship happens to fire a missile at that moment and it gets caught in the blast, the missile has a chance of being destroyed.

Flak Cannons would come in I and II versions like Ion Blast weapons. The difference being firing speed versus power draw. There are two subtypes.

- Cluster Flak splits into three charges which each target a random room. This makes the weapon more accurate and gives a better chance of hullbreach/damage even though the blasts are smaller.
- Proximity flak will detonate early if it passes near a drone. (including attack drones if they happen to fly near the weapons mounted on your ship). If you fire the weapon while an enemy missile is in flight it has a chance of intercepting it. Missiles will be damaged and the wreckage will fly past your ship with an "INTERCEPTED" message instead of a "MISS".

[Tamren]

Just lost a game on Normal. Final fight with the boss. It was down to the wire. I was fighting IN the fed HQ system. I beat the first two stages of the boss with just 5 hits on my ship. I had my back to the wall in every possible way. Then I got to the very last stage and lost because my TWO defence drones were too STUPID to fire at different missiles. Every single time they would both shoot at the first missile, and the second and third would fly casually past. I don't think I can fully describe how frustrating that loss was. I was THAT close.

Please improve the drone AI just a little so that they don't waste shots like this. If they are not smart enough to AT LEAST pick different targets then having two drones is no better than having one.

[SushaBrancaleone]

To be honest
the game is just fine and i'd rather have justin and matthiew work on more content (even as payable DLC) and bug fixes rather than have minor changes to the interface...

but maybe that's just me.

[Tamren]

Even if they add more content the repetitive controls are still a drag. i would rather they fixed those first because they would hinder my enjoyment of any new content. As much as I would like to have some.

[SushaBrancaleone]

dunno once uve unlocked all the ship, and as fun as the game is, improving my highscore will keep my interest so long.
I can adapt to an intricate system or interface, what i cant do is force myself to keep doing something beyond my interest, and as beautiful as FTL and as replayable as it is, it isnt extensive in content. FTL has a lot of potential of growing into something more (whatever that may be) but with the speed of culture nowadays, not riding the wave of the attention now might mean that this game might be forgotten in 6 months. Matthew and Justin seem to have more in store for FTL than just that. Guess we'll find out eventually.

[splette]

Lots of good ideas in this thread. I hope the devs will pick up a few of them.

As a general note, one would want to keep the interface as simple as possible. Therefore I am a bit sceptic about adding a button for letting the crew go to the medbay after a fight, one button for manning the stations, one more button for this and that... you get my point.

[dbgager]

Seems like a lot of these ideas are ways to do things faster. In my opinion that not always a good thing. THe fact that you have to click and actually do things, including moving your crew around, and activate things is what makes the game fun. SImplifying the game by putting a bunch of buttons in the interface to do all these things for you, will detract from the game, not add to it.

[DarkKenji]

I didn't have time to read all the posts but I personally would like,

1. A way to set the weapons to attack a certain room at the start of a battle if you have auto fire on, so I don't have to do the same clicks at the start of Every battle.

and

2. For the game to remember things like auto fire setting after quitting and hanger selection and crew names when restarting.

[UberFubarius]

Here are some ideas for augmentations/ship abilities I thought of during my most recent game.
- Hull Sealing Membrane: Hull breaches will slowly fill with a green gummy substance. This halts depressurization but the hull breaches still need to be repaired. If a room with sealed breaches is hit by damage they will all break open and have to seal themselves again.

I don't think its different enough from Slug Repair Gel (repair hull breach automatically) to warrant a separate augment.

- Emergency Fire Suppression: Adding this Augment to a ship gives you another subsystem on the bottom right of the UI beside doors and sensors. It has a button beside it, and when pressed it floods all rooms that are currently on fire with retardant foam. This instantly puts out fires, but any room foamed up in this way slows the movement of crew and prevents stations from being manned for 20 seconds. The system also has a cooldown of 30 seconds.

Like this idea.

- Point Defense Laser: This adds a small automated turret to your ship that functions like a Defense Drone II. However since the system does not draw power it has drawbacks. The turret overheats quickly and each shot reduces it's rate of fire by 5% to a minimum of 10%.

Seems a bit... like Zoltan shield actually, except instead of it stopping 5 damage guaranteed, it's damage mitigation falls off as battle went on.

- Counter-Missile Battery: Adds a button to the UI. When activated instantly destroys all incoming missiles and asteroids for the next 10 seconds at the cost of 1 missile ammo.

That seems a bit over-powered, 1 missile stopping all missiles for 10 seconds?

- Nanofuel Recombiner: Allows the player to transmute 2 Missiles or 1 Drone Part into Fuel. 25% chance of failure!

Quite interesting, although perhaps of a random failure chance, have a fixed cost?

- Ablative Armour: Increases the hitpoint capacity of your ship by 5. You can only have 1 of these augments. These extra hitpoints count double when it comes to repairs of any kind. (in other words it costs the same to repair to 35 as it does to repair to 40)

This is kinda like the Rock armor, which mitigate hull damage 10% of the time (in short, effectively the two augments perform the same function as extending the hull's life. For Rock Armor, 10% damage reduction means you get 4 extra hull health).

- High Resolution Teleporters: Allows you to abduct crew off the enemy ship! This does not function through shields.

Not sure how well this will work, considering that you might require a functioning sensor lvl 2 to even use it.