Query - is there a mod to (or) is it possible to

[EdwardReynolds]

1. Increase crew capacity past 8
2. Remove crew death from text encounters

Disclaimer: before anyone tries to convince me I don't want either of these things because 'that's not what the game is', or 'that's good enough' - consider that this is the modding forum, so those arguments are completely irrelevant We are all here because the base game could be tweaked to more fit our own desires

I want more crew for boarding/defense/variety. I absolutely hate hard caps on population being so low in strategy games, especially when the enemy clearly can have greater number then this (iirc the final boss had 11 or 12).

Crew death from random text encounter is simply incredibly frustrating in its current form, a random death and you have absolutely no way of stopping or mitigating, and worst of all no way of deciding or even influencing what crew member gets axed. I call it poor design choice, artificial difficulty, and not an actual game element. In a game you must be able to make a decision, otherwise you are simply witnessing, like a film or TV show. Injury and convalescence are also conspicuously absent as alternative outcomes to these events :<

Help and/or direction is appreciated love this game so much so far bar these 2 gripes.

[xlandar]

having a crew total of 8 is almost definitely hardcoded (can someone confirm please). as for the random crew deaths, its very easy to change them, just create a mod that overwrites all the events were you can lose crew. hope that helps.

[Sleeper Service]

Crew death from random text encounter is simply incredibly frustrating in its current form, a random death and you have absolutely no way of stopping or mitigating, and worst of all no way of deciding or even influencing what crew member gets axed.

Well you actually have. In most events you can decide not to endanger your crew. But AEs clone bay system might make your dreams come true soon anyway. Modding this in would require modifying a lot of events.

[English Narwhal]

I want more crew for boarding/defense/variety. I absolutely hate hard caps on population being so low in strategy games, especially when the enemy clearly can have greater number then this (iirc the final boss had 11 or 12).

The final boss cheats. It has weapons with less recharge and power usage than they should, it has 4 artillery weapons... the list goes on.

[EdwardReynolds]

Crew death from random text encounter is simply incredibly frustrating in its current form, a random death and you have absolutely no way of stopping or mitigating, and worst of all no way of deciding or even influencing what crew member gets axed.

Well you actually have. In most events you can decide not to endanger your crew. But AEs clone bay system might make your dreams come true soon anyway. Modding this in would require modifying a lot of events.

No, you do not - if you enter the text event a crew member is executed at random. The only exception to this is blue specific events which I don't have a problem with, so long as you only have 1 crew member of that race (thus giving the player an explicit choice on who is becoming endangered), otherwise you are back to random executions so it isn't actually designed better, simply marginally and incidentally better. If there is a dangerous job, give me the option to send someone expendable. I have no issue with crew death, as long as it can be manipulated or influenced. This game in no way allows for a meaningful direct player input.

And yes of course you are right, about 'just don't endanger the crew' - which is what I now have to do, making for a significantly less exciting game since I'm skipping anything that I remotely think will have a chance to randomly execute my limited crew members.

I dont really like the idea of the clone bay very much, I like that death is permanent - but if you cant fight back it is simply frustrating.

Re: final boss - 'cheating' is irrelevant, the game engine is clearly capable of these things since the boss is doing it. The limits that make things a 'cheat' are imaginary impositions, modding is all about blowing those impositions away to change the game play

[agigabyte]

You would have to mod the files and redistribute them, which the makers don't want. This is impossible with XML editing, which is all we can do.

[5thHorseman]

The game engine is clearly capable of these things since the boss is doing it. The limits that make things a 'cheat' are imaginary impositions, modding is all about blowing those impositions away to change the game play

The game engine is capable of many things, but the entire game has been balanced around the idea that you can only have 8 crew. If you allow 12 (or even 9) then the game will be slightly easier. Same goes for more hull points, or more energy bars. You can make a single ship that's balanced around more energy bars or more hull within the game, but to allow for ALL ships to have more of these things (and more crew) would take a monumental rebalancing of the entire game.

Now, we can add extra energy and hull, but we can't ad more crew with the modding we have available to us. I would like to see how someone could design a balanced ship around the idea of having more than 8 crew. However, that's just not possible for us. And rewriting all that code in the base game is just not going to happen from the game's creators.

[EdwardReynolds]

The game engine is clearly capable of these things since the boss is doing it. The limits that make things a 'cheat' are imaginary impositions, modding is all about blowing those impositions away to change the game play

The game engine is capable of many things, but the entire game has been balanced around the idea that you can only have 8 crew. If you allow 12 (or even 9) then the game will be slightly easier. Same goes for more hull points, or more energy bars. You can make a single ship that's balanced around more energy bars or more hull within the game, but to allow for ALL ships to have more of these things (and more crew) would take a monumental rebalancing of the entire game.

Now, we can add extra energy and hull, but we can't ad more crew with the modding we have available to us. I would like to see how someone could design a balanced ship around the idea of having more than 8 crew. However, that's just not possible for us. And rewriting all that code in the base game is just not going to happen from the game's creators.

Refer to OP, 'thats how the game is' is irrelevant - we are modding, we are disregarding developer vision. Something could be improved, that's why we are here.

As for balancing, yeah nah not so much. There is a ratio/scale to things. More of X is countered by more of Y. The game is hardcoded to 8 (thanks for this bit of info, exactly what i was after, thanks! ) because the devs wanted to focus on small scale. I would far prefer scaling in size, but would have settled for *any* increase in crew size.

[agigabyte]

The game engine is clearly capable of these things since the boss is doing it. The limits that make things a 'cheat' are imaginary impositions, modding is all about blowing those impositions away to change the game play

The game engine is capable of many things, but the entire game has been balanced around the idea that you can only have 8 crew. If you allow 12 (or even 9) then the game will be slightly easier. Same goes for more hull points, or more energy bars. You can make a single ship that's balanced around more energy bars or more hull within the game, but to allow for ALL ships to have more of these things (and more crew) would take a monumental rebalancing of the entire game.

Now, we can add extra energy and hull, but we can't ad more crew with the modding we have available to us. I would like to see how someone could design a balanced ship around the idea of having more than 8 crew. However, that's just not possible for us. And rewriting all that code in the base game is just not going to happen from the game's creators.

Refer to OP, 'thats how the game is' is irrelevant - we are modding, we are disregarding developer vision. Something could be improved, that's why we are here.

As for balancing, yeah nah not so much. There is a ratio/scale to things. More of X is countered by more of Y. The game is hardcoded to 8 (thanks for this bit of info, exactly what i was after, thanks! ) because the devs wanted to focus on small scale. I would far prefer scaling in size, but would have settled for *any* increase in crew size.

Listen. The devs WILL NOT ALLOW us to do the kind of modding we need for this.

[English Narwhal]

As for balancing, yeah nah not so much. There is a ratio/scale to things. More of X is countered by more of Y. The game is hardcoded to 8 (thanks for this bit of info, exactly what i was after, thanks! ) because the devs wanted to focus on small scale. I would far prefer scaling in size, but would have settled for *any* increase in crew size.

Not only is it unacceptable to try this according the developers of the game, the older part of the community would come down on it like a ton of bricks- Though I am a newer member, I remember when the devs asked that mods be restricted to .ftl files. The modding required to alter crew amounts at all would involve decompiling and recompiling the game, which is also practically impossible without the metadata.