FTL: Captain's Edition - A Review

[stylesrj]

Well you should at least have Level 2 Oxygen for when the Flagship comes knocking... or if any event requires at least Level 2 Oxygen to bypass it.
Same with Sensors and Doors. Every system will have some sort of relevance and you should at least get an extra bar in each of them.

FTL is an abusive spouse yet just like in those bad romance novels, we leave only to come back again.

[R4V3-0N]

Too be honest, I originally started playing FTL and for a week I considered vanilla easy to be too hard- however I stuck to it as I found each and every death fun, I did slightly cheat my way through, began looking at mods to well... not 'cheat' myself a victory but to allow me to use weapons or combos that I couldn't get in a run 100% of the time... ranging from fire boarding rocks to a ship that has no shields but dozens of drones and other counter measures in way. It is an unorthodox way of learning FTL but through this I learned weapons and crew and aliens far more quickly as I got a chance to explore them (makes me wounder if I should make an "easy" FTL mod that gives people a bit of a starter bonus and to possibly venture into normal or hard mode with training wheels or what have you... or maybe make an 'advanced' tutorial kestrel or sector 1 that is just an expanded version of the in game tutorial in the 'live' field.)

With this sort of mindset, I stepped into CE into the unknown, this time I have my skill and experience to allow me to survive long enough to test the new weapons and enemies instead of leaning on mods to give me that early experience. The game is hard; always has, always will be. But my first step into CE easy was easier then Vanilla easy way back when I first started playing, and now I play regularly on Normal CE, I have to tell you I may not be the best player; perhaps I have a personal sense of morals and goals and I usually do not resort to pirating or potentially 'ill' actions even if they have no penalties or if I am playing an aggressive race like the rock or mantis but that is my personal faults- not FTL or CE. I may not win often, but I still win on the occasion in CE Normal and that's what drives me every time.


I have to say a lot of CE's weapons are useful...

From my memory, Scatter Lasers are far cheaper then their Burst counterparts, giving you their worth in simply making them affordable but If I remember correctly also they do have a rate of fire or shots per energy count advantage over regular lasers. eg: the Burst Scatter Mk I fires 2 shots for 1 power and it is true the duel laser exists, but the problem with the duel laser is that it's a very rare weapon that is often only found on some ships by default (I do believe CE made it available, though not very common find).

TBH I look at the list of new CE weapons and I can't find one that is just a steep downgrade for no disadvantages besides the "Hasta" laser, a weapon that is like a mini beam but worse... however I assume it's the beam equivilant to the Leto missiles in the vanilla, which is also an out dated weapon that's bad.

Perhaps you may grow to like some of the new weapons much as you did with the Light lasers as every different weapon in CE does have a purpose, though I can understand if the RNG nature of FTL doesn't let you enjoy those weapons as they throw the incorrect systems or events into your face.

[Captain Crunched]

I registered just to chime in regarding how much I hate this mod.

There are three things that are fundamentally wrong with it, that, when working together, make it a miserable experience for all but the most dedicated.

The first and most important: FTL's weakest point was always its coin tosses. Heads you get treasure, tails your crew member explodes. This isn't intellectual, it isn't interesting, and CE's new events double down on this lazy design.

The second is something we all already know and have talked about many times: The pool of "technical" weapons is so big in CE relative to dependable all-round heavy hitters that you can and will go entire games without seeing a single decent generic damage weapon show up in a shop. There's nothing wrong with providing an increased variety of options to the player. CE doesn't do that - it demolishes the loot tables to make room for finicky armaments that cater to very specific build strategies, and if you don't good rolls that cater to what you're trying to do, you're going to be woefully underpowered. And don't even get me started on all of the weapons that are just flat out worse than the default weapon archetypes they emulate all but the most unlikely of situations.

The third kind of works in tandem with the second to make combat generally that much more frustrating: The new enemy ships tend to randomly generate with setups that, while doing very little to preserve themselves, are excellent at a kind of kamikaze attrition strategy. Attrition was always a big part of FTL, but it's pretty toxic here.

And to the maker of CE: A couple guys getting win streaks isn't an ironclad defense against the constant complaints you're getting about frustrating randomness. That's the funny thing about randomness - a few people are going to win the lottery. That doesn't mean playing it is a good bet.

[mr_easy_money]

The first and most important: FTL's weakest point was always its coin tosses. Heads you get treasure, tails your crew member explodes. This isn't intellectual, it isn't interesting, and CE's new events double down on this lazy design.

I too despise this fact that once you put in an event outcome that the crew member dies or something like that, the event choice should be avoided altogether, though I don't quite know how it would be rebalanced... ... how would you fix this problem, while still keeping negative event outcomes?
also, doesn't this make CE closer to vanilla?

The second is something we all already know and have talked about many times: The pool of "technical" weapons is so big in CE relative to dependable all-round heavy hitters that you can and will go entire games without seeing a single decent generic damage weapon show up in a shop. There's nothing wrong with providing an increased variety of options to the player. CE doesn't do that - it demolishes the loot tables to make room for finicky armaments that cater to very specific build strategies, and if you don't good rolls that cater to what you're trying to do, you're going to be woefully underpowered. And don't even get me started on all of the weapons that are just flat out worse than the default weapon archetypes they emulate all but the most unlikely of situations.

The third kind of works in tandem with the second to make combat generally that much more frustrating: The new enemy ships tend to randomly generate with setups that, while doing very little to preserve themselves, are excellent at a kind of kamikaze attrition strategy. Attrition was always a big part of FTL, but it's pretty toxic here.

Captain's Remix solves both of these problems and "fixes" some other ones (though I will say in some cases it sort of takes away from some of the stuff that makes CE interesting): viewtopic.php?t=17187&hilit=Captain%27s+Remix

And to the maker of CE: A couple guys getting win streaks isn't an ironclad defense against the constant complaints you're getting about frustrating randomness.

I will agree that the listed reasoning on the CE thread is a rather flimsy response, but also say that CE isn't meant to be vanilla, even though it says that on the thread...