Subset Games Forum

FTL Mk. II is a mod intended to expand FTL, providing new options while maintaining the overall feel of the original game.

Features:
Redesigned Player Ships - Every starting layout has been changed, each one designed for a different feel from the original ship. Available ships include a haunted stealth cruiser, an Engi ship with AI support and hacking tools, Zoltans with exotic weapons, and a ship that grants a randomized loadout each time.

New Augments - Several new augments have been implemented, including a hacking device to weaken enemy ships when they attempt to surrender, a replicator to provide additional resources, and others.

New Events - Battle a haywire Engi AI ship, hack into vulnerable enemy computer systems, seize an opportunity to strike a deadly pirate battleship as it attempts to break free from its moorings, and experience several other new custom events, as well as some new blue text options in existing events.

New Weapons and Drones - A wide array of new weaponry and drones have been added for your arsenal, with custom graphics included. Toast enemy ships with plasma weapons, weaken them with the System Demolisher Laser, terrorize them with the Anti-Bio Terminator Drone, and more. Be wary though, as enemies can also make use of this new technology.

New Enemies - Face powerful new enemy ship designs, including the Rock torch ship, advanced Rebel prototype, and the Engi Drone Cruiser.

Boss Rebalance - The final boss has been edited to with a few new tricks, and its weapons have been rebalanced. Prepare for a new fight against the boss ship, adapt and overcome the challenge.

Screenshots
See a few of the new starting ships in this screenshot album.

Download:
Github link
Gamefront (mirror)

Notes:
Why release now, when new official content is coming soon?
Mainly because one of my favorite features of the mod is hacking, both in the hacking augment and various hacking-related events. Since it's likely that this will need to be changed quite a bit with the new content, I wanted people to have a chance to try it the way I implemented it originally.

Is this compatible with other mods?
This mod is designed to be compatible with other mods that change the starting event, such as beginning scrap advantage and no rebel pursuit, and it should work fine with graphics mods and new name lists (including my Sci-Fi name list). Due to the many changes, FTL Mk. II is unlikely to work with other mods that change weapons, ships, or events.

I hope you all have fun, and enjoy the mod.

Quite the concept, but this should be in Mod Development.

I don't know, seems to be a working release.

Some interesting concepts here. Having hacking tied to in-combat events, like surrenders, is something new. Some of the other augments are also feature interesting ideas, like the Syndicate Contracts, or the Mysterious Crate that gives you random starting load-out. The weapon designs are also nice, I quite like some of the new projectiles, although some of the weapons could be differentiated stronger from their original graphics. A lot of the drones are also very close to the vanilla drones, which makes them look very coherent with the original drones, but also misses out on the possibility to give them a fleshed out new style.

And of course, intentionally or not, a lot of this mod does things that are very similar to FTL Captain's Edition (the Stellar Cartography is basically CE's Mapping Computer for example, hacking is overall also very similar, but more random) I'm all fine with that and CE is open source anyway, but yeah, felt like I should point that out.

Some technical stuff I noticed:
I don't know if you tested this, but there is a high probability that this is way to much text in one tag for FTL to handle. This might cause a crash on text load. I recommend splitting this up into two event levels.

I'm also not sure how you make the Loot Crate work. I failed to see how START_BEACON_FIRSTSECTOR is called, unless this has something to do with Kartos universal starting beacon framework. How do you prevent the player from getting free weapons at every civilian beacon? On a side note: The Loot Crate can also easily be abused, the player can just restarts the game till a weapon appears that is favorable. Kind of the players problem I guess, as there is no way around this... The loot that gives could be modified to only give Low tier weapons.
Hm, I though hull burst is either true or false and always deals double damage if true. Does this work as intended? If yes that would be an interesting find...
Just my personal opinion, but this thing exceeds FTL max damage values quite a bit, which might make it a little too powerful. Even with four power cost, this missile can destroy three shield layers and prevent their repair for a long time, while sometimes also burning out the system even further. I wouldn't want to get hit with that thing. It's like a breach missile on crack.
Again, thats just my approach to balance, but this weapon also exceeds vanilla damage range quite a lot. It sits somewhere between BLII and BLIII seen from its laser/shield depletion performance. But it also sets everything on fire. Multiple hits yields a high chance to ignite every tile of a four tile room it hits, which is almost certain system death for systems in this room. Pretty powerful. I'm actually working on plasma weapons myself for CE right now and I found it useful to use the fire beam as an orientation.
A weapon with a minute long cool-down becomes quite impractical in actual games. There is little you can do in late game if you spend four of your weapon power on that device and there is a hight risk that the weapon gets disabled before it is ever charged. It also makes for a very powerful alpha strike in case you ever get a Pre-Igniter with that weapon. Depending on your other load-out, you would be able to annihilate every ship immediately, or you would severely cripple it and then sit out another 60 seconds wait.

And of course, intentionally or not, a lot of this mod does things that are very similar to FTL Captain's Edition (the Stellar Cartography is bacially CE's Mapping Computer for example, hacking is overall also very similar, but more random) I'm all fine with that and CE is open source anyway, but yeah, felt like I should point that out.

Thanks for mentioning it. I assumed there would be some overlap with other mods, although I haven't actually played Captain's Edition yet. I've actually been out of the loop for a while due to work and other things. I've been wanting to try out Captain's Edition though, because it looks really interesting.

I don't know if you tested this, but there is a high probability that this way to much text in one tag for FTL to handle. This might cause a crash on text load. I recommend splitting this up into two event levels.

Yes, this was crashing the game, which is why it isn't called anymore. I left it in the code because I hoped to re-implement it. It's nice to know what the issue was. Hopefully I'll be able to get that working for the next version.

I'm also not sure how you make the Loot Crate work. I failed to see how START_BEACON_FIRSTSECTOR is called, unless this has something to do with Kartos universal starting beacon framework. How do you prevent the player from getting free weapons at every civilian beacon? On a side note: The Loot Crate can also easily be abused, the player can just restarts the game till a weapon appears that is favorable. Kind of the players problem I guess, as there is no way around this... The loot that gives could be modified to only give Low tier weapons.

Check sector data, under structure sectors. You can set a different beacon to apply to the first sector. START_BEACON_FIRSTSECTOR actually calls the regular civilian start beacon as well, for compatibility with certain other mods (like beginning scrap advantage).

Hm, I though hull burst is either true or false and always deals double damage if true. Does this work as intended? If yes that would be an interesting find...

You're right unfortunately. It looks like I forgot to change the tooltip on that after testing. Thanks for pointing it out.

Just my personal opinion, but this thing exceeds FTL max damage values quite a bit, which might make it a little too powerful. Even with four power cost, this missile can destroy three shield layers and prevent their repair for a long time, while sometimes also burning out the system even further. I wouldn't want to get hit with that thing. It's like a breach missile on crack.

I think you're right about that. I'll probably tone this one down for future releases.

Again, thats just my approach to balance, but this weapon also exceeds vanilla damage range a while lot. This weapon sits somewhere between BLII and BLIII seen from its laser/shield depletion performance. But it also sets everything on fire, with a high chance to ignite every tile of a four tile room it hits, which is almost certain system death for this room. Pretty powerful. I'm actually working on plasma weapons myself for CE right now and I found it useful to orient them along the fire beam.

Thanks for pointing this out too. That weapon is supposed to fire 3 shots not 4. That'll definitely get fixed.

A weapon with a minute long cool-down becomes quite impractical in actual games.

I agree, which is why that weapon doesn't actually appear in-game. The original concept was for a Mantis ship to start with this + pre-igniter, so that you'd need to cripple the enemy on the first shot, and then board before they recover. However, the starting aug is really powerful along with any weapons you might find over the course of a game, coupled with the weapon making starting sectors very easy. I could never get it to feel reasonably balanced, so I dropped that idea.

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

I had a brain fart when I said this should be in Mod Development.
I like it, but as Sleeper said, this does have some impractical elements- but, erm, he said all of them that I can find.

Morat48 wrote:Check sector data, under structure sectors. You can set a different beacon to apply to the first sector. START_BEACON_FIRSTSECTOR actually calls the regular civilian start beacon as well, for compatibility with certain other mods (like beginning scrap advantage).

I never succeeded in modifying the first sector or the civilian sector via sector_data. All the names or event list one adds to STANDARD_SPACE seem to be overwritten by some internal hard coding. Did you try if this really won't spawn the Crate event again when going to a civilian sector? I might be mistaken here cause I gave up messing with this at some point, but I thought these sectors can't be modified unless going through modifying event lists.

Morat48 wrote:I agree, which is why that weapon doesn't actually appear in-game.

Oh, sorry, I just quickly glanced over the xml to see what you are up to. I did not check what is actually in the game.

Anyway, you definitely put quite some effort into the mod. Keep it up.

The crate has been tested pretty extensively, and no problem there. In fact I just tested again to check, making sure to take the crate to a civilian sector, and everything is working as intended. It only gives random equipment at the first sector beacon.