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

[Mr. Mister]

Yeah, trade systenm can actually be really nice. Oh boy, can't I wait until I find a Cargo Teleporter for sale in the first sector with a pro-piracy ship.

Anyway, sleepy, something I noticed: apart from shops and the (Hologram!) AI Avatar Generator, there's no other way of getting (Holograms!) AI Avatars, isn't it? Is it a legacy from the fact that it's an unplayable race in vanilla, and so it isn't included (at least by default) in the generic get.crew event? I was thinking to make it an occasional outcome from autoship surrenders, what with them being new from CE too. And honestly, unless you're just into the sector and in need for a shop, autoship surrenders are almost worthless. Apart from probability, you can also add a small scrap fee to build his projector (also, they will most of the time impose the condition of not destroyiing their previous body).

[Sleeper Service]

Ah I see, I indeed misread that post before.

Well, this is doable I guess. There is no way to upgrade your production aug directly, but you could give the player a new one with the requirement of having the old one.

Still I feel this would add a lot of augs to float around. The whole Idea of giving the player some free scrap/goods at an empty beacon if he/she has a certain aug has some appeal; mostly as an alternative to the scrap recover arm. But it could also be achieved in a less complex way, maybe by having one single production aug and no further requirement? I can see that the idea of running a full self sustainable cruiser that even produces it's own goods on board is kind of neat, but IMO the requirement of having certain trade aug in order to produce things would make trading in the current system incoherent. In the way of: Are the trade goods a batches or not? If yes, why can I use them as resources to produce further stuff and still sell it for the same price?

Well yeah, but as I said, having a production line on board the ship that turns scrap into basic goods might be something to consider. Maybe with some synergies to make the production of certain goods depending on environment or crew...

@ Mister:
Haha "The satellite offers to join your crew." That's great! The whole auto station surrender actually has been reworked to be less useless a few updates ago. I think I forgot to mention that in the changelog.
Directly after their implementation, the AI avatars where way more common. But that felt off as they where frequently seen on enemy ships and a lot of events made less sense if you have these things join your crew. It alos weakened enemy boarding. Making all this events less likely to include the avatars would be a lot of work and I also felt they should be more of a secret kind of crew that is not broadly available. You can still buy them in shops in some sectors though and they might join your crew in certain events.

[jep]

That's a pretty cool idea, Mr Mister. Feels like it adds a nice bit of extra flavor to the game.

I haven't actually ever gotten any ghosts in CE yet. Do they function as regular humans (or any other race), or do they have their own unique abilities like being fireproof, being incredibly weak fighters, having increased speed, etc.? I suspect you'll say they're just flavor text added to the existing races due to mod limitations.

--

On the topic of factory ships, I felt like the two aug thing was more interesting because it's more of a commitment. It's not just a "here's an aug that gives you stuff at empty beacons" like we already have with fuel recyclers, etc. It's a whole new variant play style, because you'll likely never use any non-manufacturing augs and you'll need to concentrate on using your production facilities to make money that you can then put into better ship upgrades, weapons and drones. You'll never get a pre-ignitor, never get a teleportation blocker, never get a fuel recycler or the countless other augs in CE that give you a little bit of an edge. But you'd plan out your routes to make it most likely that you'd hit a store ASAP after hitting an empty beacon (to avoid hitting another empty beacon and wasting your chance to make another unit of goods).

Does that make sense about where I'm coming from?

Also, I just want to stress again that my suggestion would be completely perpendicular to the trade system. It wouldn't touch it in any way at all.

[jep]

Sometimes I wish the community had standardized on a pre-processor for mod files. By this I mean something you could use to extend the FTL xml format to avoid a lot of repetition or to make some of the kinds of things modders want to do easier to write out in text. Then the preprocessor would run on it and spit out the final FTL xml format files.

And then you could do things like <text><nospellceck>Thiss persson wantsss</nospellcheck> to manipulate you <nospellcheck>ssir</nospellcheck>.</text>



Speaking of which, I'm off to do more spellchecking...

[Mr. Mister]

Jep: They don't need any oxygen, but only have (50? 20?) health. They're super cheap at stores (20 or 25 scrap), so they're a decent solution if you're in need of someone to man things but don't swim in scrap. The Vortex comes with an aug (also avaliable at stores) that, for 15 scrap, can generate an AI avatar at an empty beacon, so go give it a go right now. I use the sMPK version of CE's alternate starting ships, so my Vortex also has auto-ship capabilities but doesn't come with any crew, not even the lonely Engi. Not that I mind, since that means that I can just vent the whole ship out and save on powering oxygens without affecting my holograms. Fire and boarders solved! They can also be used to indefinittely damage auto-ships internally, but if they have an AP they're all gonna die.

You can still allow AI avatars on the pirate ships with an unconnected oxygen room. Whenever I'm facing one of these with basic sensors or in a nebula, the moment I destroy their system I actually turn my own oxygen off (if I'm safe) to see how much time is left until they start suffocating, then count from that point onwards (and turn mine back one), praying they don't have an hologram on board.

They can still make for very ocasionally interesting situations even when boarding. I've seen a LPer lose a run once because he had oxygen systems disabled and he had tried to suffocate an hologram boarder, who simply kept on wrecking systems on vacuum rooms.

You could totally make some unique ship layouts for them, without oxygen. Unless auto-scouts (the ones without AP drones though), you probably wouldn't suffice with a lv2 teleporter to get non-rockem back on your ship before they die, as they would take fight damage as well. Of course you could get them back the instant you kill them all since the cooldown is negated then, but oh well.


What happens if you make a 0-health drone? Does he die the instant he is deployed? If does, I sense a great opportunity for an hologram-invading event: you give the enemy 4-8 drone parts (plus one for a sys repair or AP so the drone system isn't just used for this), and give them 0-health boosted boarding drones, as well as a full team of hologram boarders.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

[jep]

I would try it now, but I'm in the middle of a game that got paused for spell-checking and hasn't been revisited yet.

How are they on combat, repair, speed, fireproofness? I could see them having zero combat (they're just holograms), normal repair (logically maybe it should be crap repair since they're just a hologram, but that would make things wonky), super speed and fireproof.

Of course, some of the logic of these things falls down if they have to bring a portable hologram generator with them, like they would if they boarded.

Edit: Also, is ARTILLERY_BOSS_1 supposed to have crap data because it's never seen or something?

Code: Select all

<weaponBlueprint name="ARTILLERY_BOSS_1">
	<type>LASER</type>
	<title>Boss Laser</title>
	<short>Boss Laser</short>
	<desc>ssss</desc>
	<tooltip>Fsss</tooltip>

I ask because ARTILLERY_BOSS_2 and 3 both have fully filled out data.

[jep]

Spellcheck question:

Should

Code: Select all

<short>M. DefenseII</short>

be

Code: Select all

<short>M. Defense II</short>

or is it jammed together due to length limitations?

Also:

Code: Select all

<short>Light L.I</short>
<short>Light L.II</short>
<short>Light L.III</short>
<short>Light C.I</short>
<short>Light C.II</short>

Then again, you have

Code: Select all

<short>Burst L. III</short>

and others with a space before the numeral. And you have other shorts that are much longer. Seems like just typos but I wanted to make sure.

[R4V3-0N]

AI Hologram (CE name)
Ghosts (Vanilla name)

50 health.
No suffocation damage.

I believed it was 30 scrap how ever I may be wrong and I do not know if CE changed the price of it.

they use the same sprite as Humans but with a transparency. meaning if you change human sprite, they will change too.

EDIT: Sleeper service I just had an idea for augments that allow you to mine (well mine more effectively). while me and another person were debating about your asteroid outpost.

Gas mining and/or Asteroid mining augment that (if in a good beacon/ specific beacon/ empty beacon) can mine recourses from an asteroid or the surrounding gasses.

maybe at 3 options.

1) continue... (Skip)
2) med scrap
3) high scrap/ more scrap (rebels advance faster)

just an idea.

[Sleeper Service]

Wow jep, you really spell checked a lot. Thanks so much! I would leave the files on, but I couldn't find a working Linux install for the github app, so I'm probably going to remove the files after reaching the deadline at the 15th.

The short names are usually slapped together for display reasons. The weapon tab does not leave much space and I feel like it sometimes behaves glitch if the names have to many separated words.

You could totally make some unique ship layouts for them [AI Avatars], without oxygen.

There is already the class of the AI ships for certain factions, but it currently is still equipped with oxygen and partly crewed by non Avatars. Might get changed next update.

It's a whole new variant play style, because you'll likely never use any non-manufacturing augs and you'll need to concentrate on using your production facilities to make money that you can then put into better ship upgrades, weapons and drones. You'll never get a pre-ignitor, never get a teleportation blocker, never get a fuel recycler or the countless other augs in CE that give you a little bit of an edge.

I feel like creating a whole new play style around the mechanic is pretty hard to achieve. Even with normal trading players seem very reluctant to actually change their play style, and the current trading allows to use augs on the side and switch back to full aug easily. Fully committing to the system would be difficult due to the randomness of shops. But it might indeed be a feasible idea for a player ship mod?

[Estel]

@ Mister:
Haha "The satellite offers to join your crew."

This is, actually, a very good idea. If I was to run on it without having it spoiled, it would leave me surprised like hell, in the positive way. Especially after all those "my brain have 0.0003456 percent of human brain capabilities" and "please stop, you hurt me a lot".

Although, I agree, that it should be very uncommon outcome of surrender event (low probability), keeping hologram crew unique thing for player. Believe it for not, I haven't run into hologram generator or holo-crew on shops (i play without CE addons for player ships) - only saw few of them as part of enemy crew/boarders. It's always a flavor-heavy encounter - especially first time, when I miss-read it's health bar and thought that this f'cker have 150 HP (while being suffocation-resistant).

/Estel