Subset Games Forum

So after beating the game I feel the replayability begins to dwindle a little - I really enjoy battles and there are some strategies I really love adopting, however I don't get long to use them before I end up in the final battle.

With that premise, I wondered why there wasn't a freeplay option where you can freely roam the universe without a fleet chasing after you, and without such a limited number of sectors. A really cool feature I think would work with an "open universe" idea would be actually having the ability to modify room layouts and add doors, airlocks, etc. yourself, system positions, and in fact having to buy the more basic systems such that you might only start with the very basics - no shields, weapons, medbays, etc. only the ftl drive, pilot room, O2 and have to complete smaller missions (courier missions?) in a "safe" home sector first to build up the money you'd need to gain the systems like shields before you venture out into more dangerous space. Hey, maybe even to begin with you are in scrap "debt" - you maybe borrowed the scrap to build the ship from a "scrap bank" and it becomes a goal to pay off your dues?

With this as well, you would be able then to have proper questlines and sidequests, factions, reputations, the possibilities would open up dramatically from there. Even if it were just a base initial mod which opens up the world like this, with the capability for others to mod the more advanced features on top of it, the game's replayability could be improved tenfold.

If this is already a thing I must apologize for my ignorance, I just felt it was worth putting the idea out there and wasn't aware of any other mods which dealt with this kind of feature.

On that note, I'm trying to learn to do all this myself, but I'm in the deep end with it all. If someone picks this idea up I'd love to help with it - even if it's just me brainstorming ideas with them or otherwise - and perhaps learn how the game actually handles things to do parts myself. From deconstructing other basic mods I have a semi-basic idea of how things work, but that's really it.

Thanks for reading!

Mostly impossible, you could however check out FTL: IS.

agigabyte wrote:Mostly impossible, you could however check out FTL: IS.

Impossible because of the extent of work needed?
And sorry, what's FTL: IS?

FTL: Infinite Space is the closest thing to existence from what you want.

only problem is = it repeats sector 1/ hidden sector over and over.
there is no ending besides you dying.

You can't unlock any ship besides type B's for the first problem because your always in sector 1 / sector ?, not even the engi ship can be unlocked if your that new (which I doubt, you already beat the boss).


The thing is it is really hard to give a story or quest line to FTL because FTL wasn't made for that, it is possible for the line of quest beacons leading you away from the end beacon and ending up getting caught by rebels, or if you go for the end then you can not continue the line of quests anymore due to you missing one.

you can make these lines to be more sector specific or racial specific but there is nothing preventing you from doing it again in the next zoltan area.

FTL: Foundation of the Federation was kind of something like this but all 8 sectors still there, just it adds story.
Sadly FotF was never finished and only the ships and menu screen along with some enemies were released before it hit the dust.

EDIT:

Agit beat me to it I guess.

And if you mean by "Extent of work" you mean literally rewriting the whole game (most likely by yourself) yeeeaaaaaaa......... To many things are hard coded and what you wish can not happen, one of them is the big bad boss at sector 8 in the end of the game (and tons of things regarding boss)

I'm downloading it right now, thanks for that

As for it not being made for a proper questline - Surely you could mod it to be made for a proper questline? I was thinking more in the scope of games like Skyrim and other roguelike-RPG ish games where, after a "main quest" if you like has been completed you can still go about and there are side quests and events to witness. It shouldn't be too hard to put in a proper questline - it shouldn't be terribly hard to actually implement "ground missions" either, if you can twist the current system to your advantage. Consider: on a "ground mission" all you'd need is a teleporter to put crew members into what the game might consider another ship. Give the other ship an oxygen supply which is never depleted, and with no weaponry or shields. From there you'd probably disable the player's ship from warping away without the crew and disable all weaponry, since we're calling the other ship a "ground base". Now all you need is to change the artwork on the other ship to make it look like ground, add in some enemies to kill, maybe a loot chest behind locked doors which adds scrap or weapons or a quest object, whatever, to your ship when the crew walk over it - and voila, you have a kinda believeable ground mission. For others you might give the "ground base" super shields and weapons to make the entire thing harder, since you'd need to first get the shields down to get your guys in, fend off the weaponry, get to the loot, take down super shields again to get your guys back out again, and all the while make sure your ship doesn't get destroyed.

(If that's not making sense it's my fault, but I'm just kinda glazing over topics to give you an idea)

As for the issue of events occurring twice:
For the initial, start of the game part I was talking about this issue is more difficult to deal with, but as the devs have already demonstrated sectors can be made to always occur (the last stand is one such sector) and some sectors (like the crystal place) can be isolated from normal space. Using those you could get past this initial hurdle I think, if you were smart with your scripting.
About events occurring twice, you'd need to have the game remember events which have occurred in a session. I don't know how you'd do that, but I don't think it's impossible, just requires an adept modder to do it.

I just really think this could get done, if the best modders picked it up - and I think it has unlimited potential if they do. I have my fingers crossed the devs or the modders have this kind of idea in mind, because the game would be EPIC with this kind of thing in place.

If I'm talking nonsense just slap me, because I tend to do that sometimes - it would be a massive project no doubt, and there would be a lot of work to be done I imagine - but I think what I'm saying is feasible on some level? Maybe?

EDIT:

R4V3-0N wrote:And if you mean by "Extent of work" you mean literally rewriting the whole game (most likely by yourself) yeeeaaaaaaa......... To many things are hard coded and what you wish can not happen, one of them is the big bad boss at sector 8 in the end of the game (and tons of things regarding boss)

Hmm... It would take a lot of messing around with the hard-coded stuff, yeah... And it would be a painful amout of work to be done, it would probably need a bit of cooperation between a few people and even then it would be difficult to pull off - I, personally, would pay for this kind of extension though, I don't know about everyone else. If the devs gave modders permission to sell mods I'd buy it without hesitation, but that might be a big ask of them. Can dream though, right?

FTL: Overdrive is a Work in progress (WIP) at the moment.

It is a rewrite of the game that is easier to mod (at least most parts of the game that create huge barriers).
It isn't dead but there are times it goes slow, I do not know when it will be finished but when it is we may see a mod that is your "Freeplay".

oh and skyrim and FTL are completely different games, but I get your point.

The ideas you listed above just now still run into the issue of hard coding.
1 loop around is make all sector 2 sectors the same sector, all sector 3 the same sectors, etc to the point where no matter where you go on the star jump sector map it will be identical (ending up in worse replayability then normal FTL) but give it sector specific quests, how ever if you miss one then it can get confusing.

Imagen skyrim where you were about to go to the throat of the world to kill Aldiun (2nd major encounter, he runs away) but instead you stop by at a shop to buy some more stuff and then when your out you hear everyone around you warshipping you for saving the world even though you didn't do anything.

that is an example if you play skyrim.

Anyway to much hard coded issues involved. RNG (Random Number Generator) is also another issue against you.
Also the main boss is really hard to mod just so you get an idea and simply removing it will break the game. (in terms of no finish = stuck forever in sector 8)

It will be impossible until Overdrive comes out, even then you will be unable to everything.

Hmm, so is there a limitation on how many sectors you can have? I mean, if you could change the number of sectors you could move the boss fight infinitely far away, right? Or even cheat and have the starting beacon on a sector 9, that way no matter how many sectors you go through you can't ever reach a boss fight?
Is it possible to restructure the layouts of the sectors? You might be able to have them in a web formation which radiates away from the starting sector, and if you can make new "factions" or premade sectors you could actually just script quest events to occur as soon as you enter, provided you've done the previous missions.
One way of ensuring you can't skip missions would be to either code for a log of everything that has hapened, and if the quest has occurred the next one becomes available; or simply give ships an extra augment slot and award a "mission augment" at the end of every mission to replace it. Then you can just use the basic "req=" thing with the previous mission's augment, right?
But yeah, these are questions and ideas which are only relevant when it becomes possible to do them.

Auranfox wrote:Hmm, so is there a limitation on how many sectors you can have? I mean, if you could change the number of sectors you could move the boss fight infinitely far away, right? Or even cheat and have the starting beacon on a sector 9, that way no matter how many sectors you go through you can't ever reach a boss fight?
Is it possible to restructure the layouts of the sectors? You might be able to have them in a web formation which radiates away from the starting sector, and if you can make new "factions" or premade sectors you could actually just script quest events to occur as soon as you enter, provided you've done the previous missions.
One way of ensuring you can't skip missions would be to either code for a log of everything that has hapened, and if the quest has occurred the next one becomes available; or simply give ships an extra augment slot and award a "mission augment" at the end of every mission to replace it. Then you can just use the basic "req=" thing with the previous mission's augment, right?
But yeah, these are questions and ideas which are only relevant when it becomes possible to do them.

Pretty sure all of these just got hardcoding.jpg'd.

most of these are hard coded or not even able to be done if everything wasn't hard coded, FTL isn't just that kind of game sorry.

Infinite Space works by looping sector 1 with sector (spoiler) ?, so that is how you never see the boss but also never leave sector 1 or enemies progress harder.