Subset Games Forum

Star Trek has the holodeck, which is sometimes used to test out battle scenarios. Why can't FTL, as a separate gamemode, have a Simulation Mode to do something similar?

This mode would be exploration and story free. It would just consists of endless mock battles. First you'd design your ship and crew free of charge, selecting whatever upgrades, equipment, augmentations, and crew you want. Then you'd select an enemy from a database of hostile ships and tweak that ship's default crew and systems to your liking.

Then you'd press a start button and play the battle out. After one side wins you can restart the sim, adjust the build on either ship if you want, and play the battle again to see if there's a better way of handling that situation.

As a fun twist, Simulation Mode could require you to encounter items in game before you can run simulations with them. For example, when you defeat an enemy only then do they get added to your hostile ships database. And you can only get access to weapons, drones, or augments in the sim by first owning them in standard gameplay. And you can only play as ships that you've first unlocked. The idea is once you acquire an item, the schematic is sent back to your hangar for use in simulations. Might be a fun way to run quick battles, without letting people spoil the game for themselves by checking out every item and enemy there is.

I guess some modder could make a galaxy which is just a straight strip of predetermined battles.

xdiesp wrote:I guess some modder could make a galaxy which is just a straight strip of predetermined battles.

The idea isn't to just battle but to min-max your ship by testing it out as much as you like in different battle situations. Just fighting wouldn't be the same.

I do like the idea of "unlocking enemy ships that you've defeated in the game", and this could provide the "reuse ships from games I won with" option that many people seem to want, as well. That is, instead of free-build, you would have to find all the weapons/augmentations/etc and still beat the base game with that ship, which would unlock a per-ship "survival mode" of each unique enemy type that you've defeated in the main game, in a row, with no repairs/reloading/etc in between (or maybe just small scrap rewards with a shop after each battle, chained with another fight immediately upon closing the shop window).

I wouldn't expect this anytime soon, but I do like the idea, quite a bit.

Icehawk78 wrote:I do like the idea of "unlocking enemy ships that you've defeated in the game", and this could provide the "reuse ships from games I won with" option that many people seem to want, as well. That is, instead of free-build, you would have to find all the weapons/augmentations/etc and still beat the base game with that ship, which would unlock a per-ship "survival mode" of each unique enemy type that you've defeated in the main game, in a row, with no repairs/reloading/etc in between (or maybe just small scrap rewards with a shop after each battle, chained with another fight immediately upon closing the shop window).

I wouldn't expect this anytime soon, but I do like the idea, quite a bit.

A survival gauntlet might be a fun option too. Sort of a "see how long you can last against an endless series of slowly improving ships with no stores". That mode would be more like an infinite runner than a roguelike though, since death is now guaranteed instead of just likely.

Being able to simulate battles between two ships of your own design is a bit different though. You wouldn't necessarily play it as a game, but as a sort of practice mode to try out different weapons combinations and find ideal combinations of equipment and upgrades.

You could also treat it as a challenge mode, in which you dare other players to defeat a certain design of enemy with a certain design ship. For example you could say, "Using the kestrel with this many upgrades and these weapons, I was able to defeat this incredibly powerful design of enemy ship. Can you replicate my feat? And can you beat my score by surviving with more of your hull intact?"