[Suggestion] Multiplayer Skirmishes!

General discussion about the game.
magicwalker
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 3:54 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Multiplayer Skirmishes!

Postby magicwalker » Wed Feb 20, 2013 6:53 pm

Not necessarily- you might be able to bait people into using their cloaks during bad times... or select an order of system destruction that leads to a doom-spiral. You can come up with A LOT of variation, so I really don't think it would be as stale as you are suggesting, BKT.
BKT
Posts: 211
Joined: Sat Nov 24, 2012 3:17 am

Re: [Suggestion] Multiplayer Skirmishes!

Postby BKT » Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:29 pm

I didn't meant it literally, but that Bombs (Breach 2 in particular) would be very powerful in PvP situation; if there's are enough missiles to feed to bomb bay, that is... :roll:

And yeah... Cloak complicates everything in so many way it's quite amusing just to imagine about it. :lol:
MoD1982
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 2:05 am

Re: [Suggestion] Multiplayer Skirmishes!

Postby MoD1982 » Sun Mar 03, 2013 2:55 am

I for one would love to duel my FTL friends on my Steam list, I imagine you'd have to do away with pausing the game but other than that I believe it could be perfectly doable! Loving this idea!
happycamper
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Sep 01, 2013 8:22 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Multiplayer Skirmishes!

Postby happycamper » Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:02 pm

Duels would be awesome. Some considerations:

- Hogging the pause is going to get annoying, so players should negotiate a clock mode. Options:
  - no clock (pause disabled)
  - free clock (players can pause whenever and for however long they want)
  - "chess clock": each player has a set amount of pause time to use, e.g. 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, etc. Handicaps can be implemented by providing differing clock time to each player. If player's clock runs out, the penalty is loss of match or perhaps more gradual handicaps like random crewmember death, failed subsystems, etc.

- There should be some kind of "get ready" message displayed when coming back from pause.

- Players can specify their acceptable clock modes as part of the match-up criteria.

- As mentioned earlier in this thread, players choose a scrap category and build a ship before being matched with an opponent. Scrap is used to
  - purchase a base ship. Costs of ships will need to be worked out so that they are decently balanced.
  - purchase things normally found at stores — weapons, augments, crew from all available in the game
  - train crewmembers

- ships can be named, saved, modified, cloned, etc. They are stored online to prevent people from hacking their savegame files to cheat. There is a "top designs" gallery of ship designs with the most wins for each scrap category that players can play, clone & modify, etc.

- To make repeated play more appealing, players start out at the lowest scrap level and work their way up with successive wins.

- In a manner similar to chess.com, players are ideally matched with an opponent in their scrap category with a similar win/loss ratio.

- Some item scrap values will need tuning for proper balance. Otherwise stuff like the burst laser 1 might as well not even exist, since the dual is better in every way and cheaper. Also, what the heck do you do against two Ion Blast II's and a Pike Beam?

- Missile ammo in particular will need careful tuning attention, because it is normally a resource that has to be conserved for multiple battles. One option might be to make the contest a best 2 of 3 with missiles not replenishing across matches. But especially for a single-battle contest, missiles are going to have to be pretty expensive. Think of how much damage you could do in 14 seconds with 4 Artemis launchers for only 4 bars of energy.

- There will be a pretty intense rock/paper/scissors effect. For example, somebody with 2 defense drones is going to be invincible against paired Ion Blast IIs and a Pike Beam.

- it may prove helpful for the sake of balance to extend subsystem boosting beyond the current limits, e.g. 5 or 6 shield levels, more than 8 points in weapons, etc. This could also make things very interesting in very high scrap categories: imagine having a couple of ion blasts and two glaives.

- It might be interesting to provide scripting capabilities as an alternative to using the clock. There could even be a category for full AI battles, with AIs listed with win/loss ratings for selection, clone, & modification in the same way as ship designs.