FTL: Faster Than Light - Firefly Roguelike Spaceship Sim (in space)

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Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

I'm looking on the ftlforums at their mod list which is enormous. Can anyone recommend a good place to start or any of the better mods? There's so many I just dunno wtf

# ? Mar 9, 2017 18:58

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# ? May 6, 2024 14:13

Bald Stalin: Jul 11, 2004; Our posts

Captains edition is one that gets mentioned a fair bit.

# ? Mar 9, 2017 19:18

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Captain's Edition is worth trying, but be aware that it has a few balance issues. In particular, every time you rescue a slave and then add them to your crew, there's a chance your crew will mutiny (apparently there's no difference between Mantis slavers and human ones), and at the end of every sector you're given the option to spend more fuel to get a head-start on the Rebel fleet, depending on how improved your engines are. Higher-level engines let you spend more fuel to get more free turns in the next sector (conversely, low-level engines mean that the Rebels get a head-start on you). This creates a snowball effect where ships that have lots of spare fuel and upgraded engines get more turns to find more fuel and improve their ship with, and ships that are struggling (got unlucky with fuel or couldn't afford to upgrade engines) will get pounded into the dirt by the Rebels as soon as they land in the new sector.

That said, I love the station fights and there's a number of interesting weapons to try out.

# ? Mar 9, 2017 19:41

Leylite: Nov 5, 2011

Here's a few mods I can endorse, roughly in order from small changes to large changes:

Better Planets and Backgrounds - Adds more background images to the game.
Equal Opportunity Employment - Adds more names to the name pool, and balances it so there's 50% male names and 50% female names, so any human you get from a random event (or default human crew in a ship) is 50-50 likely to be male or female. (In the base game, there's way more male names than female names, so humans tend to be male more often than female. This may say something about Kickstarter backer demographics, or it may not.)
Extended Pursuit Indicator - Adds a graphic overlay helping estimate how many regular-sized jumps it'll be before the Rebel fleet overtakes some beacon way in the distance. It beats eyeballing it or trying to use a ruler to estimate those pixels, but note that it does technically give you more information than is provided in the base game since you get to see what the shape of the rebel fleet wavefront is before it actually arrives on screen. Note that since it's just a graphic it won't take into account nebula beacons, events messing with fleet delay/advancement, etc.
Player Ship Randomizer - A program that generates a player ship mod; this basically gives you a palette-swapped version of an existing player ship, with a new layout and new weaponry/augments. Your new ship will tend to fit the theme of the old ship, but you might get something weak or something strong.
Flagship Randomizer - A program that generates a random flagship to fight at the end. To balance this, at the beginning of each sector you can take a look at the Flagship's data to see descriptions of what weaponry, augments and floor layouts it will have in each phase, although they aren't super-precise. Note that the Flagship's power-surges are hard-coded, so there will always be a drone swarm in phase 2 and a laser surge / Zoltan Shield recharge in phase 3. In general this seems to make the Flagship a lot harder; most of the new weapons are really obnoxious to deal with, particularly the heavy ion which both ionizes your shield *and* pierces it to do actual system damage; it seems to be borrowed from Captain's Edition.
Twinge's Balance and Bugfix Mod - Changes the costs of several upgrades, weapons and systems to make strong ones very slightly more expensive, and weak ones cheaper; messes with event results to make event choices slightly more interesting so there's less often an "always correct" choice among the default options. Adds a few blue options to events. Removes Advanced FTL Navigation from the game because DarkTwinge hates it.

Note that I usually only install/enable one of the gameplay mods at a time.

Leylite fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Mar 9, 2017

# ? Mar 9, 2017 19:43

give me thread: Dec 29, 2008

Man, this game can be brutal sometimes.

- Flying the Kerstel
- Crew x 5
- Third stage boss fight
- Maxed shields
- Reactor lvl 6
- 2 x BLII, 1 x heavy Laser, 1 x Small bomb
- Lvl 3 hacking
- Lvl 3 mind control
- Lvl 3 battery
- Hull repair drone
- Full health

Unbeatable, right?

All 3 boss missiles hit me causing fires in weapons and reactor rooms. Once their zoltan shield went out I shot off a hacking drone to their shields, but the next missile volley connected as well - more fire! This time in the helm. By now the fire had spread to doors, the battery and the weapons room was fully ablaze. I was losing control. My guys were focusing on containing fire in the weapons room but died, while the clone bay didn't work quickly enough.

My helm went offline but by now every boss volley hit while fire roared throughout the ship. I went down like sack of poo poo.

give me thread fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Apr 12, 2017

# ? Apr 12, 2017 03:09

Prav: Oct 29, 2011

i never feel all that confident about the flagship unless i have either a defense drone or stealth. the missiles are a bitch and a half.

# ? Apr 12, 2017 03:15

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

That's why I always board that weapon pod first.
Oh you were on the super shield stage. Well that blows then.

# ? Apr 12, 2017 03:26

give me thread: Dec 29, 2008

^^ Same here man, my first priority is that drat missile room.

On a side note this has probably been posted before but there's a crazy challenge run I was watching last night - no shields/weapons/offensive drones/doors/sensors/O2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siatyVUdn6A
Completely bananas!

Prav posted:

i never feel all that confident about the flagship unless i have either a defense drone or stealth. the missiles are a bitch and a half.

Haha yep I hear ya.

Although the RNG can be a bitch. Yesterday I was in Slug A and throughout the whole run I couldn't find any worthwhile weapons so I fell behind the curve by the last stand. Behold! There was one final store en route to the flag ship with a flak and heavy laser. Saved my life!

give me thread fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 12, 2017

# ? Apr 12, 2017 03:31

Bogart: Apr 12, 2010; by VideoGames

No shame in retreating to regroup on the flagship.

# ? Apr 12, 2017 17:49

ate shit on live tv: Feb 15, 2004; by Azathoth

Bogart posted:

No shame in retreating to regroup on the flagship.

Yep. If you've get hit bad on the opening volley before you can start dpsing the flagship, retreat to the base and come back. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

# ? Apr 12, 2017 23:44

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

Yep. If you've get hit bad on the opening volley before you can start dpsing the flagship, retreat to the base and come back. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

Sometimes you get unlucky and get hit in the helm/engines so you can�t jump. :unsmigghh:

# ? Apr 12, 2017 23:51

ate shit on live tv: Feb 15, 2004; by Azathoth

You should have lvl 2 piloting and lvl 5 engines by then.

# ? Apr 12, 2017 23:55

Shibawanko: Feb 13, 2013

You should probably have lvl3 piloting actually. You get blue events from it and it acts as a buffer against damage and keeps up your evade if your helm gets boarded (it will).

# ? Apr 13, 2017 07:08

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

Slug > Crystal> Rockman pilot

I don�t know what comes after that. Lanius? But it�s really bad if you have a Lanius pilot and they get mind controlled in the early sectors when you don�t have the crew and oxygen overkill to deal with it.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 07:20

Hannibal Rex: Feb 13, 2010

Lvl 3 piloting only gets you some better rewards in a Lanius sector event. It's still a good upgrade for the final battle, but you don't need it for the rest of the game. I get lvl 2 early, usually when I'm about to jump into a nebula.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 12:01

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Shibawanko posted:

You should probably have lvl3 piloting actually. You get blue events from it and it acts as a buffer against damage and keeps up your evade if your helm gets boarded (it will).

I thought that the pilot was still able to give a full dodge bonus even when fighting off boarders, because the devs considered it otherwise too obviously OP to board/mind-control the helm.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 16:03

ate shit on live tv: Feb 15, 2004; by Azathoth

Mind controlled pilot you only get the auto-pilot bonus.
Hand to hand Combat in enemy ships piloting it still counts as manned. Not sure about fighting boarders on your ship though.

Every other room loses the manned bonus, not sure why cockpit would be different.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 18:27

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

Mind controlled pilot you only get the auto-pilot bonus.
Hand to hand Combat in enemy ships piloting it still counts as manned. Not sure about fighting boarders on your ship though.

Every other room loses the manned bonus, not sure why cockpit would be different.

Shortly after you mind-control the pilot, another crewmember will show up to fight them (and to pilot the ship). So there is a narrow window in which you can try to take advantage of reduced dodge. In any case you get to remove the pilot's training bonus.

As I noted earlier, if the cockpit could not be manned while fighting is happening, then mind-controlling the pilot would be a ridiculously OP technique. Mind control pilot, then attack with impunity because most ships will have basically zero dodge.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 18:35

ol qwerty bastard: Dec 13, 2005; If you want something done, do it yourself!

Comedy dual fire beam loadout is hilarious and fun and I recommend it.

# ? Apr 14, 2017 03:19

insta: Jan 28, 2009

I had a 3-Pikebeam + 1 beamdrone + hacking run. It was similar, most encounters lasted 1 volley.

# ? Apr 15, 2017 17:28

give me thread: Dec 29, 2008

ol qwerty bastard posted:

Comedy dual fire beam loadout is hilarious and fun and I recommend it.

nice!

There's an awesome weapon available in Captail's Ed (I think??) that's like a Flak II except the pellets set everything on fire. Loads of fun. It's either CE or one of the weapon mods though, I don't remember.

I reset the game recently so have a lot of ships to unlock but had an excellent run today and managed to unlock 3 ships at the end of it. Flying the Fed B I picked the stasis pod early on in a pirate sector, then managed to open it in a Zoltan homeworld, then in sector 5 unlocked the Fed C and it was a Rock homeworld so I ended up going to the Crystal sector and unlocked the Crystal ship. Ended up beating the boss in the end and that unlocked the Zoltan ship. Woop woop!

Could it possibly have been a 4-ship unlock if I was flying some other type B (eg. Rock B) and managed to unlock the Rock C, Zoltan A, Crystal A as well as the subsequent Stealth A? Have you guys unlocked 4 ships in 1 run before?

give me thread fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Apr 16, 2017

# ? Apr 16, 2017 02:36

ClassH: Mar 18, 2008

insta posted:

I had a 3-Pikebeam + 1 beamdrone + hacking run. It was similar, most encounters lasted 1 volley.

I had a similar combo once and 50% of the ships I fought managed to have a defense drone.

# ? Apr 18, 2017 20:04

BobHoward: Feb 13, 2012; The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull

ClassH posted:

I had a similar combo once and 50% of the ships I fought managed to have a defense drone.

You can cheese that by pausing just after the defense drone fires at your incoming drone, depowering your hacking system, unpausing just long enough to let the shot miss, then re-pausing and powering your hacking up again. Defense drones have to lead their shots to hit incoming so doing this trick makes them miss.

# ? Apr 18, 2017 20:48

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

BobHoward posted:

You can cheese that by pausing just after the defense drone fires at your incoming drone, depowering your hacking system, unpausing just long enough to let the shot miss, then re-pausing and powering your hacking up again. Defense drones have to lead their shots to hit incoming so doing this trick makes them miss.

This always struck me as stupidly cheesy. Depowering a hacking drone in-flight shouldn't immediately halt its trajectory.

# ? Apr 18, 2017 20:54

Leylite: Nov 5, 2011

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

This always struck me as stupidly cheesy. Depowering a hacking drone in-flight shouldn't immediately halt its trajectory.

It is nice to be able to use this interaction "as intended" by shooting out an enemy's hacking system with the help of a pre-igniter, cloaking, or some way to destroy the hacking drone (defense drone, hacked hacking) so as to halt the enemy's hacking drone in flight before it actually lands on your ship. (The same thing applies to boarding drones.)

It's just unfortunate that the game doesn't distinguish between the player's hacking system being damaged and the player manually turning the hacking system off.

In theory, the developers could have prevented this exploit by locking the hacking power as soon as the drone was launched, for about five seconds (similar to the ion damage lock mechanic and the power-lock going on while a system is in active use, like with the hacking pulse). This would mean that the only way to continue doing similar stuff would be to use Zoltan power tricks, or hitting yourself with an ion/stun bomb, which are limited. But, they don't seem particularly interested in preventing this exploit, so it's basically just an optimal thing to do that isn't indicated by the game. Which kind of stinks from a game balance perspective; hacking is already one of the most powerful systems even without the ability to just ignore defense drones like that.

Anyway, the combo of hacking and beams is nice, since neither of those miss, but the beams do have a long charge-up time which allows most other conventional offenses (particularly missiles) to strike first. Where this gets really broken is with cloaking, which gives you plenty of time to get the beams charged up.

Leylite fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Apr 18, 2017

# ? Apr 18, 2017 21:35

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Leylite posted:

It is nice to be able to use this interaction "as intended" by shooting out an enemy's hacking system with the help of a pre-igniter, cloaking, or some way to destroy the hacking drone (defense drone, hacked hacking) so as to halt the enemy's hacking drone in flight before it actually lands on your ship. (The same thing applies to boarding drones.)

It's just unfortunate that the game doesn't distinguish between the player's hacking system being damaged and the player manually turning the player off.

Yeah, the "proper" fix IMO would be to just disable the drone's ability to latch onto the enemy ship if it's ever depowered when in flight. Maybe let it do a comedy 1 damage if you do this, turning it into an extremely expensive missile...but just immediately halting in mid-flight is weird even for a highly abstracted game like FTL.

# ? Apr 18, 2017 21:39

bobfather: Sep 20, 2001; I will analyze your nervous system for beer money

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Yeah, the "proper" fix IMO would be to just disable the drone's ability to latch onto the enemy ship if it's ever depowered when in flight. Maybe let it do a comedy 1 damage if you do this, turning it into an extremely expensive missile...but just immediately halting in mid-flight is weird even for a highly abstracted game like FTL.

No, the mechanics of depowering it to make a shot from a defense drone miss are solid. The problem is that depowering it makes it instantly halt, when in reality depowering it should make it slow down and eventually come to a stop.

If it were changed so that by depowering it you could cleverly manipulate the controls and speed of the drone to bypass a defense drone shot, it would be perfect. As it stands, it feels like a cheat. But I still use it on Hard mode against some ships, because Hard mode is a cheat (against the player) a lot of the time.

# ? Apr 18, 2017 22:00

Shibawanko: Feb 13, 2013

That exploit is cool and I use it every time. It's still hard to pull off sometimes though, especially against a defense 1 + antidrone or a defense 2

# ? Apr 18, 2017 22:02

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

bobfather posted:

The problem is that depowering it makes it instantly halt, when in reality depowering it should make it slow down and eventually come to a stop.

Are we fighting in an atmosphere now? What would make it stop?

# ? Apr 18, 2017 22:11

bobfather: Sep 20, 2001; I will analyze your nervous system for beer money

JawnV6 posted:

Are we fighting in an atmosphere now? What would make it stop?

Well, unless the drone launches at full speed, I assume it accelerates at a constant velocity towards the enemy ship. In reality then, depowering it would stop it from accelerating, which would throw off a defense drone that fires a leading shot that expects the hacking drone to be at any given point (given constant acceleration).

This is too complex to portray in FTL though, and right now turning the drone power off stops it completely (which is a complete violation of inertia). So the middle ground would be, the drone slows down when depowered.

I mean, you can choose to be pedantic about the idea if you want. If you prefer to, let's debate the realism of teleportation technology next, shortly followed by cloning bays!

bobfather fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 18, 2017

# ? Apr 18, 2017 22:26

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

We�re talking about a game called FTL: Faster Than Light.

It breaks physics in the title.

Hacking drones can behave however they want.

Continuing to travel, stopping instantly, being subject to space friction�none of these options are inconsistent with the setting.

# ? Apr 18, 2017 22:36

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

bobfather posted:

Well, unless the drone launches at full speed, I assume it accelerates at a constant velocity towards the enemy ship. In reality then, depowering it would stop it from accelerating, which would throw off a defense drone that fires a leading shot that expects the hacking drone to be at any given point (given constant acceleration).

This is too complex to portray in FTL though, and right now turning the drone power off stops it completely (which is a complete violation of inertia). So the middle ground would be, the drone slows down when depowered.

Well, as coherent as "accelerates at a constant velocity" is, ships during combat are clearly orbiting each other from the beam/laser/missile trajectories. It makes more sense to assume that this orbit is contained to a plane perpendicular to a constant vector.

The fact that drones show constant fuel usage can be interpreted as minoradjustments along this plane, with inertia along the constant vector remaining when the power is cut. When the power is restored, the drone must accelerate towards the enemy ship's since-rotated position.

bobfather posted:

I mean, you can choose to be pedantic about the idea if you want.

I'm sorry, I hadn't realized this was your first time on an internet forum. Welcome, enjoy ur stay!

# ? Apr 19, 2017 00:09

A.o.D.: Jan 15, 2006; The Suffering of the Succotash.

Platystemon posted:

We’re talking about a game called FTL: Faster Than Light.

It breaks physics in the title.

Twice!

# ? Apr 19, 2017 16:12

scuba school sucks: Aug 30, 2012; The brilliance of my posting illuminates the forums like a jar of shining gold when all around is dark

So that's your story. THAT'S your fuckin story. You're seriously sticking to that story? Okay you know what you're hired kid, you got some balls on you.

# ? Apr 20, 2017 03:58

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Not sure if I should pull the trigger on Captain's or not, considering. Deeper is fun, but too deep without enough elegance and it's just a well to fall into.

# ? May 18, 2017 09:22

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

PMush Perfect posted:

Not sure if I should pull the trigger on Captain's or not, considering. Deeper is fun, but too deep without enough elegance and it's just a well to fall into.

It's probably worth trying, because there are a lot of neat ideas in there, but yeah, on balance I found it to not be an improvement over the base game.

# ? May 18, 2017 15:47

Gniwu: Dec 18, 2002

Does anyone know how to actually mod stuff into the game yourself? It's one thing to install a pre-packaged Captain's Edition, but what I would like to do is modify the Lanius B to have no oxygen module at the start. I even found something online in an ooold forum post amid a sea of dead links that did just that and also replaced the engi crew member with two further Lanius.

Too bad it doesn't work when I try to integrate it with Slipstream Mod Manager 1.6! For the record, I am following the instructions on this page.

This is the code I'm trying to insert into the game:

code:

<shipBlueprint name="PLAYER_SHIP_ANAEROBIC_2" layout="anaerobic_cruiser_2" img="anaerobic_cruiser_2">
   <class>Lanius Cruiser</class>
   <name>The Shrike</name>
   <unlock>Complete 2/3 of the Lanius Cruiser Achievements to unlock this ship.</unlock>
   <desc>The racial ability of the Lanius make them fearsome combatants in small quarters. Combine that with a Mind Control system and this ship is a force to be reckoned with.</desc>
   <systemList>
      <pilot power="1" room="9" start="true">
         <slot>
            <direction>right</direction>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </pilot> 
      <doors power="1" room="16" start="true" img="room_doors_2"> 
         <slot>
            <direction>down</direction>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </doors>
      <sensors power="1" room="0" start="false" img="room_sensors_2"> <!--F-->
         <slot>
            <direction>up</direction>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </sensors>
      <oxygen power="1" room="5" start="false"/>
      <engines power="1" room="8" start="true" img="room_engines_2">
         <slot>
            <direction>down</direction>
            <number>2</number>
         </slot>
      </engines>
      <shields power="2" room="4" start="true" img="room_shields_3">
         <slot>
            <direction>left</direction>
            <number>2</number>
         </slot>
      </shields>
      <weapons power="1" room="13" start="true" img="room_weapons_10">
         <slot>
            <direction>up</direction>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </weapons>
      <drones power="2" room="2" start="false" img="room_drones_7"/> <!--F-->
      <clonebay power="1" room="11" start="true">
         <slot>
            <number>2</number>
         </slot>
      </clonebay>
      <medbay power="1" room="11" start="false" img="room_medbay_7"> <!--F-->
         <slot>
            <number>2</number>
         </slot>
      </medbay>
      <teleporter power="1" room="12" start="true"/> 
      <cloaking power="1" room="1" start="false" img="room_cloaking_3"/> <!--F-->
      <mind power="1" room="17" start="true" img="room_mind_3"/>
      <battery power="1" room="15" start="false" img="room_battery_12"/>  <!--F-->
      <hacking power="1" room="3" start="false" img="room_hacking_4">  <!--F-->
         <slot>
            <direction>up</direction>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </hacking>
   </systemList>
   <weaponSlots>4</weaponSlots>
   <droneSlots>2</droneSlots>
   <weaponList count="1" missiles="0">
      <weapon name="SHOTGUN_PLAYER"/>
   </weaponList>
   <droneList drones="0"/>
   <health amount="30"/>
   <maxPower amount ="8"/>
   <crewCount amount = "4" class="anaerobic"/>
   <shieldImage>anaerobic_cruiser</shieldImage>
   <cloakImage>anaerobic_cruiser</cloakImage>
</shipBlueprint>

When I zip the .xml file and change the extension to .ftl, Slipstream recognizes and lets me add it to the game, but without any actual effect. I'm at my wits' end.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 22:13

Gniwu: Dec 18, 2002

Ok, I got it to work and it's AMAZING, even if that usually means you have to beat the flagship with your starting crew of four. I would put this modified Shrike at around the Carnelian's level of strength, but without the annoying helplessness against drones in the beginning.

Note that the missing oxygen module counts as 'large', so you can fit one more of them on your ship than you usually would be able to. That just gives you more flexibility, though, not extra firepower - There isn't enough reactor capacity available to operate everything at once and you can't use Zoltans.

What a unique and fun playstyle. Does anyone want me to upload the mod file somewhere?

# ? Jul 4, 2017 14:01

dud root: Mar 30, 2008

Ugh man I really hate the 'Oops! you lost a dude into space!' random event. Too bad you've got a medbay and not a clone bay!

Had a decent run going with Slug B on hard, but now its pretty much screwed

# ? Jul 16, 2017 08:05

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# ? May 6, 2024 14:13

Bald Stalin: Jul 11, 2004; Our posts

dud root posted:

Ugh man I really hate the 'Oops! you lost a dude into space!' random event. Too bad you've got a medbay and not a clone bay!

it gets better. There are events where you lose a crew member and the game says "well technically he's still alive on that planet/ship so you're not allowed to use the clone bay lol!"

# ? Jul 16, 2017 17:36

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > FTL: Faster Than Light - Firefly Roguelike Spaceship Sim (in space)

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