Postby Hissatsu » Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:05 pm
This game is based on luck, but right now i am winning 100% of my Normal games (i only restart the game if i get screwed up badly in the first several encounters), even though i have done only around ~30 playthroughs. I dont play wierd ships, like Torus B, Mantis B etc, but even those, i bet, i'd only restart after a few starting encounters, and if i got past S1, i'd be set to a sure victory.
Problem is, in my opinion, that this game is capped at its enemy's difficulty. What this does is that at start, game is challenging, but then, it loses its challenge once you reach a point at which you can beat any possible enemy in the game. This happens because enemies are capped at their strength:
1) Defense.
* You can only have an enemy that has 4 shields tops, this means if you can penetrate 4 shields, you're good to go up to the final boss...
* And you can penetrate ANY amount of shields with several weapons in game, namely a variety of bombs, Ion II canon or 2x Ion I canons, which means, it is really easy to attain that status. Effectively, sooner than later you can deal damage to any possible enemy ship in the entire game.
2) Offense.
* Enemy is capped at 4 guns tops, and cannot sync them (like, wait to lower your shield before he fires a beam), this means he has a very low cap of max damage he can do to you.
* Since only ONE beam weapon in the game can theoretically pierce more than 3 shields in one volley, with a miniscule chance, this means that usually 3 shields mean you are very well defended, and 4 shields mean you are invulnerable to beam weapons. Since enemy cannot sync, his different beam weapons will fire at different times, meaning you will have very rarely deal with more than one weapon at the same time, and even if you do, those will be weaker weapons that combined cannot pierce 4 shields still.
* In majority of cases, rocket weapons can be disabled with one defense drone mark 1. That is because again, enemy doesnt know how to sync them, so if he has small and big rocket, you shoot down small, then big, small, then big... Very rarely enemy has two kinds of same rocket launchers.
* Bombs very rarely damage hull. There are ion, fire, and small bombs that do not. This, coupled with the fact that AI doenst know how to target systems, means that those are largely ignoreable (how many times did you get ion bomb to a O2 room, or even EMPTY room?)
* Plus, for all cases of "Oh shi~" situations you have a cloak, which is basically a "get out of any situation with your ass intact" card.
* Effectively, this means that very soon into the game, you can sustain fire from any possbile enemy in the entire game for enough time to either run away or take his weapons down.
3) Crew combat
* Player has huge advantages in crew combat
* There is no 4 - slot crew teleporter for enemies in the game, but ships with a teleporter are very common, which makes it easier to assault them since they split up their crew.
* No enemy ship without a 2-size room in the game so your 2 invaders can always fight on even ground.
* AI doesnt know how to rotate his guys inside a room, and doesnt know how to run if he doesnt have a medbay, which you can always target specifically if you need.
* You can vent your ship, suffocating enemies even without upgraded doors, and you can mostly force a fight either in the medbay or next to medbay, effectively meaning you cannot ever lose against a boarding party of any size if you have at least 2 crew members.
* Against any size or difficulty of a boarding party, you can always prevent any system damage by venting your ship.
* If enemy has no upgraded doors or those have been taken care of, he cannot kill your invaders ever.
* You can teleport more people in, while enemy can never do it, and you can force a fight inside a 4-slot room, while enemy fights where it is more benefitial for you.
* Enemy cannot evade shots of your ship, so you can always damage his crew by shooting at specific room, while you can almost always dodge shots of enemy ship with your crew (move crew to different room to prevent taking a hit), plus you can guide enemy inside a room which you'll shoot
* Enemy always puts out fires by hand, you can almost always afford to vent fires.
4) Player ship has serious advantages over enemies:
- Player can sync up his weapons (which means with the same "gear", for example, burst III, burst II and a pike vs 4 shields, enemy will deal 1 damage tops while player will deal 5-9 damage)
- Player can cloak intelligently, negating huge amounts of incoming damage once in 25 seconds, which, giving the nature of the game, usually means "negate every attack where enemy managed to sync up its weapons"
- Player only needs to deal ~3 damage to the enemy to cripple him (take down enough weapons to ensure a victory), while AI needs to deal way more, i'd say on average around 15 damage, because it aims at random rooms, and player can vent fires, but even then, he has to do ~25 damage to actually win (kill the player)
- AI has no augments, and often fewer crew than the player (most often not all stations are manned), plus AI crew starts not on its posts (for example, rockmen have a long walk to the weapons console, meaning you always have an upper hand on those)
Now, what does AI have to his advantage? Really, nothing much. It seems that AI cant even have more power than player to power his weapons, and can never have more than 2 drones. The only advantage of AI is that he has, at first, more "scrap worth" than player - more shields, better weapons. But this is entirely negated by previous points.
Effectively, this means that enemy in the game can only be superior to the player at the starting few sectors, until player gets a cloak, crew teleporter, 3 shields, extra weapon or two, preferably a defense drone, and energy to power all that. Only weapons are random factor here, and drone is not mandatory, so effectively, most of the time player will quite easilly become unkillable, and when he wont, this would be because of a hilairous unluck (no weapon drop and no weapon shop unitl enemies are only 3+ shielded) in which case you will not really consider it a loss.
So yes, that is a big problem. Game has a cap for encounter difficulty which is very easy to reach.
In other roguelikes, enemies often:
1) Outnumber or greatly outnumber the player
2) Are superior in at least some aspect - firepower, defense, speed, special abilities...
...and thus, you always rely on tactics to win (corner shooting, attacking in melee only when you know it will be your "turn" again after your attack,...) and you can pretty much always lose if you are left without space to maneuver (like, get yourself cornered, or overrun and surrounded, etc) or enemy gets a lucky hit on you or else.
Unlike them, FTL is a roguelike where enemy difficulty is capped and player can by some point of the game become more powerful than any possible encounter ever, thus becoming (practically) invincible (you still can take damage but not enough to lose).
