Idea For Improving Advanced FTL Navigation

General discussion about the game.
Leylite
Posts: 85
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2014 4:21 pm

Idea For Improving Advanced FTL Navigation

Postby Leylite » Tue May 06, 2014 5:27 pm

As far as I can tell, there's a general consensus on both Reddit and this forum that the Advanced FTL Navigation augment, as presented in the game, is not very useful. Since you can only use it to visit blue, already-visited beacons (and for one blue option), its main uses are to jump to known-safe beacons (if, e.g. your ship is on fire, you have boarders you need to deal with, you need to jump away from a ship that's about to kill you, and you really need a fightless beacon to fix up your ship), jump back to an already-visited store, or explore several jumps into a dead-end and then jump back out into the main sector.

These are all highly situational and in most cases people never buy the augment, or if they receive it for free they sell it.

So, here's my suggestion for making the augment better: upgrade it so that when installed, the player ship can jump to any beacon in the sector map. This would give it a variety of small benefits that might make it more desirable to buy. Some examples:

  • Jump directly to the exit beacon, no matter where you are in the sector (if, e.g. you're intentionally getting a few extra beacons by letting the Rebels overtake the exit, and only want one Rebel fight on the way out)
  • Jump directly to any quest beacon
  • Jump "around" nebulae or known hazard beacons
  • Jump directly to repair beacons or the Flagship in Sector 8, skipping some of the potentially dangerous fights there
  • Since Long Range Scanners give you info about beacons that are one jump away, and this Advanced FTL Navigation means that every beacon is one jump away, having both of these augments gives you a free sector map at the start of each sector.
  • If you already have a sector map (either from the above or from an event), you can search for things like the Zoltan Researchers, Zoltan Ship Quest and Rock Homeworlds Crystal Sector Wormhole by visiting all the non-ship nodes, even if they're not connected.

The thread can probably come up with some other applications, too.

Thoughts? Comments? Tomatoes? Let me know what you think about this.
English Narwhal
Posts: 402
Joined: Tue Dec 03, 2013 9:12 pm

Re: Idea For Improving Advanced FTL Navigation

Postby English Narwhal » Tue May 06, 2014 5:30 pm

I love the idea, but unfortunately, FTL is most likely not getting another content update.
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Elhazzared
Posts: 162
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2013 10:45 am

Re: Idea For Improving Advanced FTL Navigation

Postby Elhazzared » Tue May 06, 2014 6:24 pm

I don't really find this overpowered. At most it allows you to explore some end and then jump ahead of the fleet ensuring you are not caught which let's be honest. It's great when the fleet now is so OP BS.

Another very helpful use for this is if you are doing a run specificly for certain end allowing you to get to where you want quickly without any fights except if one occurs at the exit beacon.

Probably I'd agree this would be a way to get the C type efortlessly, but again you need to find the store with the augment for sale and already have enough scrap for it anyway.

But it would be great for cases where you are just searching for specific sectors, in some cases it will turn a long run into a quick one in case the sector wasn't even present in the first place... I still think they should let players see since the very beggining the map seeding so that they can plan their route acordingly to what they are looking for.

Lastly. Yes, it's unlikely anything will be added, but this is not someone asking to add more stuff. It's a request of a balancing tweek and i belive that would be very much possible.
"The heavens burned
The stars cried out
And under the ashes of infinity
Hope, scarred and bleeding breathed it's last."

For my Let's play series of FTL please follow the Link
Elhazzared
Posts: 162
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2013 10:45 am

Re: Idea For Improving Advanced FTL Navigation

Postby Elhazzared » Tue May 06, 2014 8:59 pm

By jumping anywhere we mean within the sector.
"The heavens burned
The stars cried out
And under the ashes of infinity
Hope, scarred and bleeding breathed it's last."

For my Let's play series of FTL please follow the Link
Jai
Posts: 36
Joined: Mon Apr 28, 2014 9:28 pm

Re: Idea For Improving Advanced FTL Navigation

Postby Jai » Wed May 07, 2014 6:21 am

I think jumping 'anywhere' would be a bit much, but simply being able to jump to any 'frontier' node would be a little more reasonable, and bring this augment to a place where it's useful but not ridiculously OP. By 'frontier' node I mean a node you 'could have' jumped to in the past. This way you can't simply leap across the map in a single jump, but you can have more freedom to explore without wasting nodes or having to make horribly long back-tracks.