Dreadnought scenario idea

[Jerjare]

I had an idea for a slightly alternate scenario in the game. In this scenario, you are a surviving dreadnought from a fleet that just got wiped out by the rebels. You start with a big, powerful ship but it's not only damaged, you immediately are in an encounter. Once defeating the enemy ship you proceed to link up with the surviving federation ships to face the flagship much like the current game mode. Some significant proposed changes:

Everything is scaled up. More crew, more slots, more systems. Your ship has multiple "decks" you can cycle through with tabs. You can engage multiple ships at once, occasionally have allies that help you or try to protect ships under attack. In addition to subsystems I proposed in the other thread, there are the following new systems:

Turbolifts: These allow you to travel between decks. There is a 5/3/1.5 second delay when traveling between decks. Small turbolifts can move 1 crewmember at a time, large ones 2. They can be disabled but this only slows, not prevents enemy passage. Only destroyed turbolift systems prevent passage between decks.

Shimmy tubes: An inter-ship teleporter that allows friendly crew to instantly travel from one 1x1 pad to another. They can't be upgraded.

Reactor control: Starts with 2 bars. Damaging it down to 1 bar causes a 1 second delay when re-routing power. When completely destroyed, you can't reroute power at all and radiation (functions the same as suffocation, but neither drones nor lanius are immune) spreads through the ship. When Reactor control is offline, FTL, cloak, hacking, and shields take 2x as long to recharge.

Power conduit: A room filled with cables connecting Reactor Control with critical systems. Systems connected via conduits will recharge and reroute power even if Reactor control is offline.

[obliviondoll]

Shimmy tubes: An inter-ship teleporter that allows friendly crew to instantly travel from one 1x1 pad to another. They can't be upgraded.

I'm guessing this was meant to be "intra-ship" not "inter-", because that would be a crew teleporter used for boarding, and having it so it could only be used to board enemy ships with the same system would be... kind of silly.

Interesting idea, but I can't help thinking it would make more sense for a starship to have multiple redundancies for getting between floors, AND to have more simple technology for such a simple task. Teleporters aren't really the most practical method of traveling short distances. Having lifts AND stairs would make more sense (with door locks on the stairwell rooms, of course).

[Elhazzared]

I find the idea interesting, however there are a few problems I see with it.

First, the scrap isn't scalled for that kind of thing. If you have multiple weapons, much more possible power, systems can take much more power. You have to completly rebalance the scrap earned per fight in order to balance it.

Second, boarding. It's going to be completly overpowered when it comes to board enemy ships since I can't even imagine anything less than a 4 man teleporter not to mention, much more crew... This in turn also turns you a pain in the ass to board since you have a huge number of crew.

Several decks that can't be displayed at all time partially removes what this game is all about. Micromanagement. You need instant access and instant knowledge of all that is going on everywhere. Information and the way it is presented to you is the absolute most important thing in FTL.

[Jerjare]

Decks could be represented like steps of a patio; instead of overlapping they are all visible (think of plateus link climbs up/hops down in A Link to the Past). Turbolifts would be natural choke points. Beam weapons would only affect the deck of the room they initially hit.

Your crew and weapon capacity is balanced by encounters with multiple ships. Clear out the crew of one ship, and enemies in the second ship may attempt to recapture it or even scuttle it to deprive you scrap. Enemy ships would also be proportionally bigger so you'd be on the receiving end of tons of boarders as well. Enemy ships would now have redundant systems, so they might have two shield or weapon rooms, making it harder to cripple them quickly.

Your own ship's reactor room is also a big weak point. When destroyed it leaks radiation which can't be vented and will damage lanius, drones, and other crew alike.

Another way to balance the Dreadnoughts is through hardpoints themselves; certain weapon slots might be limited by type like our favorite type, missiles.

[English Narwhal]

Decks could be represented like steps of a patio; instead of overlapping they are all visible (think of plateus link climbs up/hops down in A Link to the Past). Turbolifts would be natural choke points. Beam weapons would only affect the deck of the room they initially hit.

Your crew and weapon capacity is balanced by encounters with multiple ships. Clear out the crew of one ship, and enemies in the second ship may attempt to recapture it or even scuttle it to deprive you scrap. Enemy ships would also be proportionally bigger so you'd be on the receiving end of tons of boarders as well. Enemy ships would now have redundant systems, so they might have two shield or weapon rooms, making it harder to cripple them quickly.

Your own ship's reactor room is also a big weak point. When destroyed it leaks radiation which can't be vented and will damage lanius, drones, and other crew alike.

Another way to balance the Dreadnoughts is through hardpoints themselves; certain weapon slots might be limited by type like our favorite type, missiles.

Sorry to spoil it, but you can't do any of the stuff listed here. And, from what I know of FTL's Hard Code, this would require more than a few tweaks- this would require an almost pointlessly large rewrite.

[xlandar]

Although this is a cool concept, I completely agree with narwhale, it would almost be easier for them to create a new game then do this.

[Elhazzared]

I do suppose that when you don't understand jack about coding (like myself) then it's easy to just think that everything is already there and it's just making a few tweeks when the reality couldn't be any more wrong lol.