[Request] FTL Arena mod & adding a distance factor

[Mr_Wary]

Hello FTLovers,

I'm just a french player, new in the community, who request your skills. So correct me if I make some mistakes + it's my first post too.

Do you think it's possible to :

1 - Create a mod in which you fight enemy ships until you die, without choosing where to go and without events. Some sort of Arena/Survival/Horde type mode. Every X amount of wins there could be a store or a boss, etc.

Why you may ask ? I personally think the game is made for this type of gameplay. Procedural sector generation, randomness, combat focus mechanics, score system... It all make sense in a Arena (or Survival) type mode ! It push you to try harder in order to beat your best score, or the one of your friends !

Example :


I kept the map because I like the idea of a sector-based difficulty but a button "Next fight" could do the job too (and it may be easier to code). ^^

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2 - Add a distance factor to the fights that modify the precision (accuracy ?) of some weapons and the "flight time" of projectiles. This new factor is randomly generated but is affected by the ship you have. It add another layer of depth to the gameplay and some "realism".

Basic rules : If you are at X km to your target (like 5 km) no penalties/no bonuses, like the actual game.
Obviously, the further you are to X, bigger will be the penalty but if you are closer you gain a bonus.

The "realism" comes now (it follows the actuals rules of the game too) :

Examples of weapons types :
@ beams / travel at light speed -> no modifier
@ lasers / normal speed -> flight time and precision modifiers
@ missiles / normal speed but radio-guided (thermo-guided ?) -> flight time modifier only
...
Examples of ships modifiers :
@ Kestrel is the basic ship, so most of the time around X km to the enemy
@ Furtif is ... Furtif (:P), so is near to its taget to have the best bonuses possibles
@ Torus, on the other hand, is further to let its drones do the job
...

I am a big fan of this details in games/movies



Maybe the distance factor's bonuses needs to be only apply to the player to prevent the furtif to take too much damage without shields. The distance to target could be also affected by the power of your engines or the skill of your pilot but it could be too complicated. Keeping things nice and simple is pretty good too !

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Sooooo, I took too much time to write all that, excuse my bad english again guys and girls please !
What do you think ? Is it dumb ? Impossible to mod, even with your skills ?

PS : enjoy my Paint skills !

[English Narwhal]

Both of these things are impossible to mod. Period.
Sorry about that.
One of the rules of FTL modding is that all of it, with the exception of ships, is done through events.

[Kieve]

Both of these things are impossible to mod. Period.
Sorry about that.
One of the rules of FTL modding is that all of it, with the exception of ships, is done through events.

Out of fuel / Wait events.
As long as you're pushing back the fleet when OOF events are called, it's not technically impossible.

[Mr_Wary]

Thank you for your replies guys
Oh, that's a shame we can't freely mod the game, like starbound for example...

Out of fuel / Wait events.
As long as you're pushing back the fleet when OOF events are called, it's not technically impossible.

Are you talking about the Arena mod ? Can you explain how this idea COULD work ?
(I don't know the subtilities of the FTL modding but I will check)

[Sleeper Service]

The various Infinite mods already provide a kind of survival gameplay. Arena mode would really just be a different version of that with less interesting events. It could be handled via infinite sectors, or by depraving the player of any fuel and forcing him/her to wait in place after each fight. Waiting can then "call the next round" if you want so. The fuel events can be modified to spawn various enemies, but in this scenario it is difficult to have enemy progression, because enemies scale according to which sector you are in and if you keep waiting you never advance.

So having the arena as a kind of "disguised infinite" mod would work better, cause you can give players the choice to "start fighting more experienced oponents" at the end of each sector. But IMO, that would actually be less interesting then simply playing Infinite.

Some people though about the first variant as a kind of story driven mod where you do not command a ship but a space station instead. Instead of exploring the galaxy, you would just wait in place, get visitors and witness how the whole conflict develops around you. But again, implementing any kind of enemy progression would be really tedious, it could only be handled via a lot of dummy augments.

[Mr_Wary]

Thank you Sleeper. (Your mod seems very good ! )
I didn't know how the modding was so limited in FTL, but it forces you to be creative...

It could be handled via infinite sectors, or by depraving the player of any fuel and forcing him/her to wait in place after each fight.

- Do the enemies become more and more powerfull after sector 8 at least, in the infinite mod ?
- Is it possible to ask if the player want to do an Arena run at the first event ? Maybe a quest in the first sector ?

-> If yes, can we teleport him somehow to a sector with a lot of stuff ? (because the fights are more interesting at high level ^^)


PS : did you guys try to remplace each sectors by the "boss sector", or to have the rebel fleet always everywhere ? ^^

[Sleeper Service]

Unless the player gets to the actual exit beacon, he/she can not progress through the sector progression. The player can be teleported endlessly to modified crystal sectors, but that does not make enemies scale. A mixture of the can allow player controlled difficulty scaling and endless playability.

-> If yes, can we teleport him somehow to a sector with a lot of stuff ? (because the fights are more interesting at high level ^^)

You could spawn the player with a lot of free scrap and then offer endless fights against hard scaled maxed out enemies. You can not teleport the player to any sectors, just to the next regular one or anywhere to the crystal world. All of these sectors can be modified though.

[Mr_Wary]

hmmm ... I don't have your knowledge so I start running out of ideas ...

You could spawn the player with a lot of free scrap and then offer endless fights against hard scaled maxed out enemies. You can not teleport the player to any sectors, just to the next regular one or anywhere to the crystal world. All of these sectors can be modified though.

What type of modification you can do to the sectors ?

So if I understand correctly... A possible Arena could be an endless crystal modified sector with maxed out enemies ?
But is it possible just after sector 1 or there is NO WAY to have the biggest enemies without jumping to EVERY sectors ?

[Sleeper Service]

You could have that from the first beacon on. Sector modification and difficulty scaling would not be necessary if you only want high lvl fights right away. Everything I said was hypothetical, but maybe you find someone who is interested in making it.

[Mr_Wary]

You could have that from the first beacon on. Sector modification and difficulty scaling would not be necessary if you only want high lvl fights right away. Everything I said was hypothetical, but maybe you find someone who is interested in making it.

So there is a possibility to make something happen after all !

A modder interested will know how to create a combat only focus mod ! So if someone is interested, just tell me here !

If nobody find it interesting, maybe I will mod think of another mod... I really want to do something with my game ^^