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

[stylesrj]

Any way to disable the inflated prices in CE Infinite? It's not very fun being incredibly weak for the first hour of gameplay because you can't afford anything else.

It's also not very fun to have an overpowered ship after a few sectors of grinding.

Although I do admit I think getting Level 2 shields should be much cheaper. Because you're always are going to encounter an enemy ship armed with a Pernach Beam that'll constantly pepper away your hull with 100% accuracy.

[Sleeper Service]

CE Update 1.281b
- Fixed some very old issues with a rare event in hazard sectors, potentially fixing a crash

[Suu the Spider]

Any way to disable the inflated prices in CE Infinite? It's not very fun being incredibly weak for the first hour of gameplay because you can't afford anything else.

It's also not very fun to have an overpowered ship after a few sectors of grinding.

Although I do admit I think getting Level 2 shields should be much cheaper. Because you're always are going to encounter an enemy ship armed with a Pernach Beam that'll constantly pepper away your hull with 100% accuracy.

I like having an overpowered ship. Makes me feel like a feared space pirate or merc.

[Captain Trek]

I must admit that I haven't tried CE Infinite yet, so I can't really contribute to Suu and Styles' conversation. However, I will say that the importance of the second shield bubble (already vital in vanilla) definitely went up a lot in CE due to things like Pernach and the proliferation of one power, two shot weapons (mostly Scatter I and Flak I).

Anyway, I'm sorry for not giving more feedback on the ship changes Sleeper made in the most recent major patch sooner, but today I finally got around to sitting myself down and simply refusing to give up until I was able to grind out a win with the Rock A on Normal.

It took ten hours.

Ten hours across nine attempts (for reference, it takes me one to three attempts with most ships, mostly depending on RNG), at one point during which I was left literally pounding my head on my desk in fury after being fucked over by an unavoidable plague sector (both options for the next sector were plague) followed up immediately by a Rebel Fighter (not even a Laser Barge, mind you, a FIGHTER) in sector 4ish (can't quite remember) that was sporting EIGHT shots worth of lasers. One run got as far as three jumps before sector 8 before being fucked over by a Pirate Troopship that sent WAY too many boarders (that run and the successful run ate up at least the lion's share of the ten hours), but for the most part the runs were short, painful, and predictable. Constantly on the verge of running out of ammo by early to mid sector 2, sector 1 and 2 enemies bristling with an absurd amount of firepower, the weapons room blowing up with every second volley that was fired at the Bulwark, desperately trying to scrape together something... ANYTHING... that could replace the greedy, scrap intensive and utterly mediocre (even for a missile weapon. More on that later) Cockatrice battery, and taking enough stupid (but unavoidable) damage to make Northerlion quit playing the Binding of Isaac forever.

It wasn't fun, I'll say that much...

But oh, the satisfaction when it was finally all over. I'll freely admit that coming out of my successful run and seeing the Shivan waiting for me in the hanger (that 9th and final run was also the run where I finally unlocked Defence Drones Don't Do D'Anything after having already unlocked Is It Warm In Here way earlier, because defence drone equipped ships are rare in CE and usually quite effective at running away from ships with slow, cumbersome weapons like, say, Cockatrice missiles, which more than once forced me to accept a surrender from a ship I had wanted to kill, or just lost it entirely) made my love and adoration of the CE Rock B reach an all time high. Almost every single solitary little thing I despise about the CE Rock A is made up for in the joy and wonder that is the CE Rock B. I was completely drained, but I was happy. I even at last completed the Rock Cruiser Quest during that victorious run, too, just as an added bonus.

So how did I do it? Humorously enough, it was by effectively turning my Rock A run into a Rock B run (and also partially a Fed A run, which is a ship to which I have unfavourably compared the Rock A in the past). After struggling along with a teleporter and a Chain Vulcan acquired from a Lanius research process event for a bit and having made a hopeful purchase of a Flak I, I did one of those Mantis ship attacking an Engi base encounters where an engi asks if you want fuel, a drone, or a weapon afterwards.

I asked for a weapon.

It was an Artillery I.

It was like the heavens had opened. I could practically hear the heavenly choir playing. Between that, the Flak I, and a Burst III taken from boarding a Civilian Miner around the same time, I just knew this was the one... that this had to be the one and that if I didn't beat the Rock A now, I never would... Indeed, I grew quite paranoid for a while, taking much of sectors four and five extremely slowly for fear of making a mistake. (the run that died in sector 7 I'd made a couple of tiny mistakes that wouldn't have mattered a jot with any other ship but which were just enough to sink the Rock A in its masterful shittiness) I ran with the Arty for a bit before switching to the Burst III (more shots meaning more chances to scalpel out clone and medbays on any given volley for my boarders, initially two rockmen and later a mother and daughter mantis wrecking crew. On a side note, Daughter was, hilariously enough, born with gold level in repairs of all things). A second Flak I got added and the Arty I returned mid sector 7. Between this amount of firepower, full power bars, four shields, five engines, and three cloak, the flagship was the easy part. Took exactly two damage the entire fight.

It's a frankly harrowing experience, taking the Rock A through CE. Complain as we may have about the Naginata-armed version of the Stealth B (justified though those complaints certainly were), the Rock A is simply in a whole different, utterly soul-crushing universe.

So that was my anecdotal experience of at last completing the Rock A on normal. I need to sleep now after typing all that but I'll give balancing and game mechanics feedback on this ship as well as the Zoltan A and B in my next post. Cheerio for now.

[BlueTemplar]

I'm sick of those events where you bust your butt saving some ungrateful civilian's life and they say "Thanks for saving our lives. Have a hull repair!" or they upgrade your maxed-out reactor to no avail or give you trade goods. Is there any way to have in the post-battle outcome to decline the reward?

I'll take the code from "RANDOM_GIFT" under events.xml for an example (The vanilla version, not the CE version).

Code: Select all

<eventList name="RANDOM_GIFT">
   <!-- JUSTIN - ADD STUFF-->
   <event>
      <text>"Thank you so much! We don't have much to offer, but have a look at the sector scans we took."</text>
      <choice>
      <text>Accept</text>
         <event>      
         <text>Your map is updated.</text>
         <reveal_map />
         </event>
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Decline</text>
      <event />
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Ask for scrap instead</text>
         <event>
         <text>The civilians do what they can to provide you with usable scrap materials</text>
         <autoReward level="LOW">scrap_only</autoReward>
         </event>
      </choice>
   </event>
   <event>
      <text>"Thank you. Here, have this extra scrap as payment."</text>
      <choice>
      <text>Accept</text>
         <event>
         <text>The crew loads up the scrap into the cargo hold</text>
         <autoReward level="HIGH">scrap_only</autoReward>
         </event>
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Decline</text>
      <event />
      </choice>
   </event>
   <event>
      <text>"Thank you. Here, have this extra scrap as payment."</text>
      <choice>
      <text>Accept</text>
         <event>
         <text>The crew loads up the scrap into the cargo hold</text>
         <autoReward level="HIGH">scrap_only</autoReward>
         </event>
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Decline</text>
      <event />
      </choice>
   </event>
   <event>
      <text>"Thank the Gods. We can finally get out of here! We're jumping straight home so take this extra weapon. We won't need it, hopefully."</text>
      <choice>
      <text>Accept</text>
         <event>
         <text>You take the weapon onboard</text>
         <weapon name="RANDOM" />
         </event>
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Decline</text>
      <event />
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Ask for scrap instead</text>
         <event>
         <text>The civilians do what they can to provide you with usable scrap materials</text>
         <autoReward level="MED">scrap_only</autoReward>
         </event>
      </choice>
   </event>
   <event>
      <!--DLC!-->
      <text>"Thank you. Perhaps as payment our engineer can try to optimize your ship's reactor output?"</text>
      <choice req="reactor" lvl="">
      <text>Accept</text>
         <event>
         <text>Your reactor is upgraded</text>
         <upgrade amount="1" system="reactor" />
         </event>
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Decline</text>
      <event />
      </choice>
      <choice>
      <text>Ask for scrap instead</text>
         <event>
         <text>The civilians do what they can to provide you with usable scrap materials</text>
         <autoReward level="MED">scrap_only</autoReward>
         </event>
      </choice>
   </event>

That way you can take the reward (as most people will) or be a nice person and not take any reward (if you want a challenge or because you want to roleplay or something). Or in the case of weapons/sector scans or reactor upgrades, request a monetary reward instead. It won't be as much as a pure Scrap reward but it's better than nothing.

I adapted by never repairing the last 5 points of the hull myself...

Any way to disable the inflated prices in CE Infinite? It's not very fun being incredibly weak for the first hour of gameplay because you can't afford anything else.

It's also not very fun to have an overpowered ship after a few sectors of grinding.

Although I do admit I think getting Level 2 shields should be much cheaper. Because you're always are going to encounter an enemy ship armed with a Pernach Beam that'll constantly pepper away your hull with 100% accuracy.

Shouldn't you just run away at that point? Albeit I guess you won't have that many engine bars in the early game, but focusing on disabling the Pernach should help?

I must admit that I haven't tried CE Infinite yet, so I can't really contribute to Suu and Styles' conversation. However, I will say that the importance of the second shield bubble (already vital in vanilla) definitely went up a lot in CE due to things like Pernach and the proliferation of one power, two shot weapons (mostly Scatter I and Flak I).

I might be a bit crazy in that I generally upgrade shields last. Maybe because I like maximizing the (offensive) potential of what I find/start with, or that I'm playing on Easy...

which more than once forced me to accept a surrender from a ship I had wanted to kill, or just lost it entirely)

Is it that bad? Surrender often gives you way more fuel and missiles...

[Captain Trek]

which more than once forced me to accept a surrender from a ship I had wanted to kill, or just lost it entirely)

Is it that bad? Surrender often gives you way more fuel and missiles...

I was talking about accepting surrenders from fleeing defence drone-equipped ships while trying to get Defence Drones Don't Do D'anything, because the achievement requires you to fully destroy an enemy ship equipped with defence drones. Accepting their surrender won't cut it.

[stylesrj]

Shouldn't you just run away at that point? Albeit I guess you won't have that many engine bars in the early game, but focusing on disabling the Pernach should help?

Running away? Can you please explain more what this "Running away" concept is?
It sounds similar to "Not fighting the enemy and looting it for Scrap so I can get Level 2 Shields ASAP"

Disabling the Pernach is difficult when that blighter can zap through your shields and damage your Weapons/Engine/Shields/Medbay/Teleporter, cause a fire or a hull breach. Even when a missile flies at you, there's a slight chance of it not hitting anything important.

[Captain Trek]

Here's that ship feedback I promised:


Zoltan A:

I kinda like what's been done to the Zoltan A. A more effective missile launcher paired with a lower DPS beam weapon better promotes the remove-shields-then-scalpel-systems playstyle the ship is designed for while also representing an overall nerf to the ship across the whole run, as the auto-beam rapidly loses its lustre compared to the Bardiche (which is potentially useful even late game provided you have an effective way of depleting the three bubbles that are left after Ion Field activates).

Ion Field is exceptionally powerful, so a bit of a nerf was probably warranted. But what I also like is that whilst the ship is now weaker across an entire run, it is stronger early game (and I do like ships with strong starts) due to the rapid rate of fire of the auto beam allowing you to gouge out the weapon systems of most enemy ships long before they can get through the Zoltan Shield. This allows to scrimp on shield upgrades, which gives you more options in early sector stores. The play style overall is now reminiscent of the Kestral B, although unlike the Kestral B, which is all about trading, the Zoltan A cannot do any trading at all due to Zoltan Shield, Ion Field, and Internal Generator taking up all of its augment slots. But for the sheer excellence of Zoltan Shield and Ion Field, this is quite an acceptable trade, especially when you get Zoltan surrenders thrown in as a bonus.


Zoltan B:

I adore what you've done with this ship. At first, I wondered how you could have come to believe that two Ion Burst and one Bardiche would be any more acceptable than the old two Ion Burst and two Hasta combo you had considered to be OP, but I later realized that it was probably to do with being unable to hit the same room twice in one volley with the Bardiche, compared to the two Hastas. In any case, the strong suite of weapons feels like an acceptable trade for the expensive shield system considering the ship (unlike the Stealth A, B, and C) starts only with a special augment and has no special systems such as a cloak or drones. It also isn't TOO broken, already starting to lose its lustre against two-bubble ships and being almost useless against three bubbles.

Overall, the ship is definitely powerful now and fun to play (something its old Pernach combo counterpart could never boast), but it isn't god-tier. God-tier boarding ships aside, I'd say the Slug A and Rock B beat it out, mainly because those ships can effectively de-crew with their starting gear and the Zoltan B cannot. Although Zoltan surrenders DO partially counterbalance that...


Rock A:

Urrgghhh...

Okay, in fairness, the upgrade from Hull I to Ogre definitely helped. When the guns get damaged or you encounter one of those particularly cunty auto-ships that partially disables your weapons, the Ogre can and will save your sorry ass. It doesn't help in combo with the Cockatrice as much as it should simply because using it exacerbates the Rock A's already crippling ammunition problems, but hey, it's something, at least.

Besides that, though? There is still absolutely nothing to like about this ship. And indeed, that's not just due to running out of ammo and having to spend scrap you desperately need for other things on more of it, but also due to a number of more subtle factors that I got to experience in their full, smelly glory during my ten hour marathon of nearly killing myself playing this ship:

1: Cockatrice missiles just suck. They suck an inordinate amount. The whole slow charge leading to unnecessary damage like with the Fed A's Burst III thing aside, they also cause no fires and no breaches, which is kind of a big deal on a missile weapon. I can understand why they don't, but the fact remains that never being able to lock down enemy repairs with them only exacerbates their slow reload. I don't know if I'd necessary prefer switching back to having a chance of losing the entire three damage to a single miss in exchange for decent breach/fire chance like on the vanilla Rock A, but what I will say is that the Cockatrice missiles are, to my surprise, bad enough that I can't really say they represent a net improvement in performance over the vanilla ship's single-shot missile. Rather it's more of a wash. They're just that bad.

2: The layout and starting crew of the Rock A is abominable. Of course, I already knew this, but playing the ship for 10 hours really hammered home just how wretched this layout really is. Having only three Rockmen and shields, oxygen, and doors that are miles away from the piloting, engines, and weapons is incredibly frustrating and leads to, you guessed it, unnecessary damage. I honestly don't think there is a ship in this game with a worse internal layout, and it just piles on the aggravation to what is already an aggravating ship.

Additionally (although in fairness this may have just been shit-tier RNG at work), this thing's weapons room gets hit a lot. This ship has a shit-ton of redundant rooms to hit, yet despite that the weapons room just seems to be equipped with electromagnets that suck every passing missile and laser bolt right into it. Every second sodding enemy volley seemed to knock it out and set it on fire.

3: Rock Plating is a double-edged sword at best. Being able to pirate sounds great in theory, but the slow, shitty missiles you're sporting will allow many a civilian ship to get away before you can kill them and I've found that attacking them may not actually be worth the missile expenditure at all. Yes, that's right, the ship is so bad that it cannot benefit from piracy without reservations (or at all, necessarily. Kinda depends on your RNG more than anything).

This leaves the occasional damage resistance, tiny handful of blue events, and ability to fly into acid clouds without harm as being the only unreservedly good things about the ship. Everything else about it is either outright bad (layout, Cockatrice), or has its good points counterbalanced by its bad points (Piracy, Ogre, Rock crew, Ammo Manufacturer).

So yeah. The Rock A. Terrible in so many overt and subtle ways that I had to count them. This concludes the nightmareish saga of this craptacular ship. I don't think I'll be saying much more on this thing because, frankly? Now that I've got a win with it I really don't ever wanna think about it again...

Although I will say this: It's kinda telling that after I finally got done with the Rock A, the Rock B and Rock C proceeded to achieve respectively my second highest and highest scoring runs to date on this new save file, with only the Engi B and C, Zoltan C, Slug B and C, and Crystal A and B left to still win the game with at time of writing. (and indeed to unlock in the first place, in the case of all but the Engi B and Zoltan C)

[Sleeper Service]

Yep, Rock A is pretty much garbage, both in vanilla an CE. I'd still say it is slightly better in CE, since you can get ammo more efficiently and piracy options persist throughout the game, no matter your loadout. I definitely don't think its worse than vanilla (things like the layout are the same as vanilla to begin with), so I don't think it needs a bigger buff. Cockatrice indeed trades suppression through status effect for higher guaranteed flat damage. That isn't an upgrade, but its still more damage per ammo than the primary missile of vanilla Rock A has, again contributing to making the ship less ammo dependent in CE.

[Captain Trek]

Well of course it's overall better in CE, but that's at least partially counteracted by the increased difficulty of CE. It could just be me, but I think the underlying nature of the mod exacerbates the existing problems with the Rock A by way of it being more important than ever to not fall behind the scrap curve, which makes the ship somewhat different from ships like the Kestral A and Stealth A, which didn't change excessively much from their vanilla counterparts but weren't left as far behind by the added difficulty as the Rock A was.

Don't get me wrong, I still can't really think of a viable way of actually buffing the ship that wouldn't be a case of going full retard (drone control with missile drone, two shield bubbles like the Mantis B, start the ship with 99 missiles, etc.), and I can respect that you may actually want, as a design decision, for the Rock A to be the worst ship in the lineup just as it was in vanilla. However, I still wanted to relate my experience of grinding out my Normal difficulty win with it, which included coming to grips with all the more subtle ways the ship is terrible.

I will say this though: At least it's not the Federation colony ship from Strange New Galaxy...