FTL Captain's Edition 1.308/Inf 1.301b/EL 1.308

[Joshklement]

Whoo!! CE IS! Can't wait to try it out.

[Estel]

Well, there you go. It has been requested countless times and now it actually happened. The CE Infinite Addon is up, as you might guess it turns FTL CE into an open end sandbox game.

Whoa.... HELL YEAH!!! I literally jumped on my chair and clapped my hands (to infinite amusement of my 5-years old son... It's always most cherish, when adults do such funny and strange things ). It's absolutely amazing new, and I'm super-glad that it happened. Thanks a lot!

Now, the only thing that I'm worried about, is that it may become too easy without enemy-scaling progression between consecutive deep-space sectors - but, lets just check it, it seems that you've took some precautions to avoid that. Well, in the "worst case" scenario, one may do "pacifist run" for 5 or 6 sectors (fighting only first 2, for example), then jump to deep space at end of sector 7, and backup save - recovering it (manually or via FTL Homeworld program) every time when in mood for super-tought CE's Infinite experience.

Now just ruuuuunning to check it!

... (BTW, "klick" was used in European military slang at least 20 years before Vietnam war)....

Do you have a source for that? Just curious. My Oxford American English Dictionary says Vietnam. And technically 20 yrs prior would be even before WWII, with December '56 as starting date.

Only personal source - my grandfather was forcefully mobilized in '54 (which, BTW, was quite a dark time, here in Poland. even if not as bad as before '53) and some of his superiors were using the term. and believe me, considering who they were, there is rather low possibility that they borrowed it from americans But, if I haven't messed it up, here it was a *relative* unit of distance - i.e. a distance passable by certain soldier/vehicle with "Cruise" speed at normal circumstances, in given (rather short) period of time (lowest rank soldier was given the task of keeping track on mechanical clock and making characteristic noise every given time - I don't remember the period). That's the reason i interpreted it as correct for FTL, as it would be relative distance passable in certain time by our space-ship, indicating, that thing mentioned isn't very far away.

Out of curiosity, I've duckduckgo'ed for it, and this site:
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/theorder ... ickdef.htm

...seems to claim that US soldiers stationed in germany borrowed the term from "locals" (amongst other "legendary" sources, like that nice, although probably fake, story about Australians). It seems that broadcasting distance by making clicking noises might have been developed separately in many military organization around the world (and mean different things), until it got "unified" into American-vietnamese 1000 meters.

Cheers,
/Estel

[The Captain]

@Estel - interesting. I wonder if that was why sleepy was using "click" - as in sound a mechanical clock makes while marking time.

I saw that post from about.com - my impression was that "klick" was American military slang used for the "European" distance kilometer, possibly originating in Germany, not borrowed from locals (but who knows).

Also, I am looking forward to the CE Infinite fusion. If I can survive, then eventually I will be able to have a better weapon loadout, right? Right? (Last run was in Stealth A: ion blast mkII, and starting weapons hull beam mkI and old dual shot laser - got killed by boss in first round. )

[Mr. Mister]

I think that light scarrer bursts are fine as they are: their main purpose is to deploy shields for other weapons, and they're damn good at it. Increaseing their projectyle speed is a bit out of the question, as with their speed, tier 2 defense drone already have trouble on some ships, as half the times it will hit the shields before it can be intercepted, and in that case heavy laser defense drones won't have reloaded in time to intercept the shot(s) once your shields are down (only time when they can reliably shoot down the projectyle).

Also, I found out that defense drones will still target and shoot at a projectyle when it has impacted on the shields as long as its explosion animation is still taking place. Therefore, the UI displays, which extend the explosion animation, make it less effective to micromanage drones... and I'm okay with that, as micromanaging them kinda defeats their purpose.

[dalolorn]

BTW, I loved the star wars'ish (as in original trilogy, nor prequel crap) "enlightened crew member and Zoltan monastery" quest! For a second, I thought that I'm really going to meet my former crew member before eight sector... But, even now, the "we will meet again" thing is good idea! Indeed, I keep wondering what will become of my former crew member.

/Estel

I wonder how events like this will work with AE's clone bay system. I'm pretty sure that this event, and others like it, "kills" the crew member to remove them, and I'm fairly certain that the clone bay will revive them after the event, despite the fact that they didn't really die. Nothing is certain yet, but it might make these events seems a little bit weird, but it shouldn't be a major issue.

I believe it was stated in the AE thread Sleeper started back when it was originally announced. *goes off to find the post*

Yes, here it is:

I just got some mail from him, and he added a few things.

Hey Ryan,

As I don't know what you've changed, it's difficult to say what you'll need to do. Ideally it should not be too difficult to make the switch though. 85% of the data works in the same way.

I believe door and sensor stations will default to a certain position, but you'll want to add specific locations if the defaults don't work.

And you'll need to change all of the crew death events to include a new tag that accounts for the possibility of cloning that dead crewmember. I think that's the only significant change to old events.

Cheers,
Matthew

In essence, the clone bay will only make a clone of the 'killed' Zoltan if the event has the appropriate tag.

[Russian Rockman]

You know this new infinite addition could become even more popular than the main Captain's Edition... It's that awesome!!! Its almost like it needs its own thread to not detract from base CE too much...

I can see many lets plays on CE Infinite, I'm looking forward to that. It will take much longer, but actually has an end goal and possibility of being finished, unlike the original Infinite Space. Because of its marathon-esque nature though, normal Captain's Edition will probably what people stick too most of the time. It's REALLY nice to have the CE Infinite addon when you want something different though. And if you save your continue file you can even play other games in between.

First, you've done a great job of balancing this. I freaked when I saw the upgrade costs, but then I remembered that that was a big problem with Infinite Space, you get way to broken way too quickly. (It's a shame you cant change the reactor costs though). I like the idea that you can stay in Sector 1 Infinite Space forever or proceed on to harder enemies when you feel ready and in turn higher scrap rewards for each encounter. So bravo there!

Second, originally I thought about a way to allow Infinite Space, AFTER, beating the Boss, but this way is much better for several reasons. One, its actually possible... (Although I'm still not sure what would happen if you got sent to the Secret Sector from the Last Stand? Has ANYONE, tested this, I would think it would crash the game, it can't spit you back out in sector 9...? ) Being able to actually fulfill your mission allows you to actually finish the game and have your score count, forever breaking your statistics. Every game needs an ultimate goal of some kind I think and so its good you can actually make it to the Boss now. So Bravo there as well!

Lastly, this Infinite addon to CE sticks to the main style and story of FTL pretty closely whereas Infinite Space is a bit weird in how it throws all of the events into a melting pot. I also enjoy the fact that the Rebel Fleet pursues you albeit at a much less threatening pace. So BRAVO there!



I see little that needs to be changed about this, for the most part it seems to work very well as an addon to CE and I'm glad you've found a way to get it to work with little updating. So these are the only comments, suggestions, questions, and food for thought I have about this new AMAZING addition:

• I peaked at the files and may have accidentally on purpose looked at the blueprints and saw the Boss. Not too much has changed, but I do see a few changes I like. Not many people may agree with this, but considering this is "Infinite" and you can always fully upgrade your ship and get your dream arsenal to take on the Boss I think you could go all out on your most truly evil ideas for the Boss. I could come up with several ideas... I'm talking increasing its health to 22-26-30, increasing the power of its systems even more, more crew, even more drones, etc... All the stuff that would be unbalanced in normal CE. I would greatly appreciate a challenging and epic conclusion to a run on this "marathon" mode for CE.
  (BTW I think drones should be moved to room 6 from stage 1 for consistency.)
• Which brings me to my next couple thoughts, you could TOTALLY include mini-bosses now. You could include them at the beginning, middle, or end of each of the "normal" sectors. They could be in the style of Infinite Space and award you with awesome weaponry, or they could give you lots of scrap, or they could just be necessary to beat before passing back into deep space. I'm sure there's SOME WAY to make beating the mini-boss in each sector a requirement before jumping to the next sector. The mini-bosses could be all different enemies like in Infinite Space or they could be an extremely powerful Rebel ship. OR they could even be a copy of the big Boss himself! Couldn't this be a way to offer people a "diversified" Boss that we all want so badly?
• Kind of along those lines. Would it also be possible by tweaking with the unique and minimum sector settings of each of the "normal" sectors to make them appear in a certain order or always appear? I would just really love it if each of the "normal" was a Homeworld of each of the major races since all of the other generic versions of these sectors kind of constitute "Deep Space." (You could maybe "remove" the generic sectors in the Infinite Addon by giving them a high minimum sector setting.) And this would kind of explain why these sectors are so important. There really isn't a way to make each Deep Space Sector randomly generate a unique style with each sector other than filling the sector with quest events, but I would like to still be able to know I'm travelling through different parts of the galaxy. The first sector is technically humans, the next 6 could be for each of the other 6 major races including the crystal (yay unique crystal homeworld in infinite space still) and then the final Boss.
• I really like the idea that it costs 10 fuel to travel a "long-range" beacon. It totally makes sense. I'm not sure i would have thought of that. But, I think this number could be increased even more. Like 20 fuel per jump? This would give you kind of another goal of having to collect enough fuel to get out of Deep Space. Its not like being stuck there is a bad thing, you basically have to stay there anyway before moving on because of the high upgrade costs anyway. I just like the idea of having a resource you need to collect. Combine this with the other things I mentioned before, it might even be possible to have the fuel cost to go to each new sector increase or have something you need to get from a mini-Boss to go to the next sector.

Anyway, I'm going to stop now. That's the most important stuff I wanted to say. Again, FANTASTIC job with making this work in a "Infinite", but complete-able format. I've been wanting something like this for a long time. Looking forward to whether anyone has anything to say about what I've said though.

I think that light scarrer bursts are fine as they are: their main purpose is to deploy shields for other weapons, and they're damn good at it. Increaseing their projectyle speed is a bit out of the question, as with their speed, tier 2 defense drone already have trouble on some ships, as half the times it will hit the shields before it can be intercepted, and in that case heavy laser defense drones won't have reloaded in time to intercept the shot(s) once your shields are down (only time when they can reliably shoot down the projectyle).

Well that's kind of what I was saying. I don't think scatter lasers should be able to be shot down. They seem to be a quite underused weapon by players. Scatter Missiles on the other hand seem to scare the living daylights out of people when used by the enemy, myself included, even though I know it's totally unjustified because I don't usually rely on defense drones for most ships anyway and they don't do system damage (maybe its because of the sound effect when they hit). Anyway, scatter missiles are hard to shoot down, but tiny high velocity scatter lasers should barely be able to be shot down at all. It seems like what "scatter" missiles would be used fore. Like the "railgun" esque light anti-crew lasers. Except these ones could do actual damage. If you think they're good enough as is though that's fine. It's just I don't think they're unique enough, they seem just like lasers that don't damage systems, scatter missiles are better, there are currently no "damage dealing" projectiles that cannot be shot down. I think this one little change could be balanced out by increasing charge time slightly or the power cost if necessary as well. And i think in sMPK they have shield piercing, increasing they're velocity would make this unnecessary as there are already enough shield piercing weapons.

[Acceleratio]

Oh god Sleeper thank you! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!!!

[slowriderxcorps]

Well that's kind of what I was saying. I don't think scatter lasers should be able to be shot down. They seem to be a quite underused weapon by players. Scatter Missiles on the other hand seem to scare the living daylights out of people when used by the enemy, myself included, even though I know it's totally unjustified because I don't usually rely on defense drones for most ships anyway and they don't do system damage (maybe its because of the sound effect when they hit). Anyway, scatter missiles are hard to shoot down, but tiny high velocity scatter lasers should barely be able to be shot down at all. It seems like what "scatter" missiles would be used fore. Like the "railgun" esque light anti-crew lasers. Except these ones could do actual damage. If you think they're good enough as is though that's fine. It's just I don't think they're unique enough, they seem just like lasers that don't damage systems, scatter missiles are better. And i think in sMPK they have shield piercing, increasing they're velocity would make this unnecessary as there are enough shield piercing weapons.

The spread projectiles in the 'kit had been tweaked repeatedly in order to give them a more unique feel to conventional weapons. The Burst Spread-Lasers have a high volume of fire for their power cost (2 for one on the Mark I and 5 for 3 on the Mark II), the Heavy Spread-Lasers have increased hull damage so as to not make them completely inferior to conventional Heavy Lasers, and the Swarm Missiles did have their shield-piercing abilities reduced to 2, so a means to defend against them is easier to obtain. A minor point I should point out is that I did decrease the travel speed of all the spread-weapons by about 1/6th (the difference between the default CE Light Lasers and Light Scatter Lasers), giving them even more of a unique feel.

My counter-argument to the inevitable 'Tier 2 Defense Drones are a counter' point is that it's not guaranteed that you'll even find one. Indeed, in the last five full playthroughs of CE I've had to date, I've only ever seen one of them. Altering the rarity of something like the Heavy Defense I to the most common level could alleviate this, but given how many drones are in CE now, I'm not even entirely sure that this would even work all that well..

[Russian Rockman]

Fair points, I like a lot of the stuff you've done with the sMPK. For vanilla CE though I was just thinking it would be good to have scatter lasers have the added benefit of being unable to be shot down at all, making them the laser variety of scatter missiles, minus shield piercing. Maybe your right though, perhaps increasing th espeed would be too much. Or maybe I'm confused, are they already hard to shoot down with drones? I remember shooting down some scatter lasers before.

[slowriderxcorps]

Fair points, I like a lot of the stuff you've done with the sMPK. For vanilla CE though I was just thinking it would be good to have scatter lasers have the added benefit of being unable to be shot down at all, making them the laser variety of scatter missiles, minus shield piercing. Maybe your right though, perhaps increasing th espeed would be too much. Or maybe I'm confused, are they already hard to shoot down with drones? I remember shooting down some scatter lasers before.

The unfortunate problem is that Tier 2 Defense drones can and will target at any incoming shot that isn't a beam weapon. There's no known way to have a projectile be completely invulnerable to them outside of giving them a travel speed so absurdly fast that they hit the target before the drone can intercept it.